Never His Mate: a Rejected Mates Shifter Romance (Claws and Fangs Book 1)
Chapter 18

Before I can react, Shane lunges at me, hand swinging toward my face.

It’s my fault. I never expected he’d lash out like that. And if he did? I’m a predator myself, one who was trained by an Alpha. Even if I didn’t think he’d turn on me, I was ready for him to go for something vital if he did attack. My heart. A lung. Maybe even a kidney if he snuck around my back. But my face? I never thought to guard my face.

His claws rake down my cheek. It’s only pure luck that he misses my eye.

The rusty, tangy scent of my blood fills the air. I gasp, part in shock, part in agony, before I push the pain aside and fight back.

Either he’s faster than I’ve ever given a beta wolf credit for or I lost a step or two living as a lone wolf. Hell, Shane was there during that fateful council meeting. Maybe he picked up a couple of pointers because, no matter how quick I am when I go for his heart, he dodges me easily.

Which just means I have to try harder.

Since I had to pretend to be an omega, I couldn’t train with some of my other packmates. Mom was the only one who knew that I was an alpha, but as a true omega herself, she didn’t have the training and the skills I needed to learn and flourish.

Paul, on the other hand, did.

Mom didn’t trust her new mate right away—thanks for her lingering trust issues, Dad—but when she finally confessed that I was different, my adopted father did everything to prepare me to protect myself. He took care of my training himself, and there’s no one better than a pack Alpha to teach fighting to a young pup.

Too bad Shane seems to have had just as good of a teacher.

He’s toying with me. He let me get in a few good hits—before long, his blood perfumes the air alongside mine—but nothing to compare to the slash marks on my face. My skin feels like it’s on fire, and I have to spit out the blood that gets in my mouth. From the taste, I know it’s mine, and that just makes me angrier.

Angrier, and more reckless.

I see an opening. He went for my knee, trying to knock me under his right side, but that left his other half wide open. I dig my claws into the meat of his chest, just like I did to Ryker last year.

I want that heart—but I miss.

In the fury of our fight, my aim is off. I scrape his ribs, tearing through muscle, but I can’t find his heart.

In response, he backhands me.

It’s such a vicious, cruel sort of slap. Cowardly, too. At least with his claws, he fought like a wolf. But maybe that’s the beta inside of Shane, throwing all of his strength into a backhanded hit that sends me flying. I’m sure I took a chunk out of his chest with me, but he’s still standing when I crash into the ground with so much force that I nearly snap the tree I hit with my back.

By the time I can recover, popping back up to my feet, all I see is a pile of tattered, blood-stained clothes in the dirt.

Shane’s gone wolf, and he’s already disappearing into the forest.

I’m bloody. Aching. My body is still trying to fight off the effects of the mercury, and now I have countless injuries to heal.

But Shane is escaping, and I call desperately on my wolf.

With a keening howl, she responds.

Fucking hell, I can finally shift again.

Yes!

I don’t even hesitate before I tear off after him, adding my shredded clothes to the pile.

In my wolf form, I’m faster than Shane. It’s part of being an alpha. My sight is keener, my instincts sharper, my pads more sure as I fly across the terrain.

Plus, I want it more.

Forget the way he slashed at me like that. I’m a shifter. Unless I want the scar, or I accepted his offer of a mating—ha, yeah, right—my face will be back to normal come morning. I’m a big girl, and despite acting like an omega for nearly my whole life, I’m still a wolf. I’ve been in worse scrapes than this one.

But for him to threaten Ryker?

To admit that he’s responsible for Trish coming between us?

To bring Wicked Wolf Walker into this?

I have to get to him before he escapes.

I almost do. At one point, I get so close to him that I get a mouthful of fur when I lunge at him and snap my jaws on the tip of his tail. I misjudged his speed and he turned it on right as I pounced. If I’d waited for another second or two, I might’ve got my fangs in his flank, but I missed.

He spun around, tongue lolling as he turned his snout toward me. His wolf’s eyes glittered before he changed direction, a quick yip letting me know which way he’s gone.

I dig my paws into the dirt, stunned.

That crazy bastard actually thinks we’re playing some kind of a mating game!

Ha. I bare my fangs at him as I arrow my body, loping after him. My wolf mimics his yip, inviting him to let me catch him. Only, unlike what happened when I let Ryker catch me down in Muncie, Shane’s not going to like what I do to him if I tackle him.

I’m so focused on my prey that I don’t realize that we’re not alone until Shane slips between a gap in two towering trees and I’m blocked from chasing after him. Four wolves cut me off, forming a line that separates me from Shane.

No!

I snarl but, for the second time tonight, I find myself being surrounded.

No!

Now that there are intruders in our little game, Shane’s not going to stick around. He might’ve been playing with me, but it was obviously a game just for the two of us. While I’m blocked from chasing after him, he’s tearing off as fast as his wolf will let him.

Oh, come on.

I reach out with my senses, but the four wolves prowling toward me are the only ones I can pick up on. So either they’re the advance guard, or they were just together when they caught the scent of my fight with Shane and they came to check it out.

One thing’s for sure: they never expected to find me in my wolf form.

Four wolves. One with a black coat, one that’s brindled, and two grey wolves. They’re all regular packmates. Deltas, though, instead of gammas since they’re all younger; no elders in this quartet. I outrank them easily, both as a born alpha and the sweet, pure omega I’ve always pretended to be.

If they’re still convinced that I’m an omega, their instincts will be to separate me from the threat and herd me back to the heart of pack territory. But if they’ve finally accepted that I truly am an alpha, this could be trouble. Their loyalty is to Ryker, and Shane’s their Beta. I’m covered in Ryker’s scent and wearing Shane’s blood.

Either way, I’m screwed if they think I’m a threat to their Alpha or their Beta.

Unless—

Pack lore says that the Luna’s howl can control any packmate. Now’s probably not the best time for me to see if mine will do the same, but I can’t let these wolves get between me and my prey. Their snarls and their posture makes it pretty clear: they’re not just going to let me continue after Shane unless I force them to.

Here goes nothing.

I throw back my head and howl. A deep, guttural howl that rips out of my wolf.

As one, the four wolves in front of me drop to the dirt. Front legs straight in front of them, bellies to the ground, they lower their muzzles and they lower their gaze. They might’ve been yipping and snarling moments ago, but my howl has turned each of them submissive.

Holy shit. It worked.

I wasn’t so sure it would. I’ve never used my alpha status against another shifter; not on purpose, at least. For too long I let my packmates believe I was an omega like my mom, and this last year nearly everyone I’ve met has been convinced I’m human. I was always too afraid to really tap into my alpha side for so many different reasons⁠—

Because Mom made me swear I wouldn’t.

Because I was afraid my bio-dad would come after me.

Because I never wanted to take advantage of something I couldn’t change even if I wanted to.

—but after twenty-six years of hiding who I am—who I was born to be—there’s no point in hiding any longer. Wicked Wolf Walker knows about me. Shane has betrayed both Ryker and me all for the promise of becoming an alpha himself. I only got one real good swipe in, but he’s leaving enough of a trail for me to track him down.

The other wolves are waiting for me to do something. My howl put them under my sway. As the only alpha around, they’re waiting for me to give them instructions.

They’re confused. I don’t blame them. Even if they believed I was an alpha before now, none of the Mountainside Pack has ever seen me in my fur until a few moments ago. Without the blonde hair, pretty honey-colored eyes, and petite shape to fool their senses, it’s undeniable that I’m a born female alpha. Add that to the scent of blood and sweat in the air—mine and Shane’s—and they know that their Beta has been here.

I can’t just take off after Shane. I might be an alpha, but I’m not their Alpha. These wolves are devoted to Ryker, and not in the sneaky, slimy way that Shane was. Right now, they’re listening to me because of my howl. If I go back to chasing Shane, these wolves will come after me.

I recognize their scents. That brindled wolf is Jace. The oversized grey wolf is the big shifter who carried me earlier tonight. The black wolf over there is Dorian. Each one is a part of Ryker’s inner circle, and they were all there tonight to present me as a kind of sacrifice to their Alpha. I don’t know if they’ll hunt me down because they’ll want to drag me back to Ryker’s basement, or if they’ll try to shield Shane when I go for his throat, but I can’t just run off.

There’s only one thing I can do. Shifters can communicate basic thoughts and intentions to each other when we’re in our fur, but nothing beats shifting back to human when you want to make sure there are no misunderstandings.

So that’s what I do.

I grew up in a pack. Nudity’s nothing to be ashamed of when it involves shifting. There’s no intimacy involved. It’s just my body, and I don’t even think about how I’m standing bold as brass in front of four wolves with my tits hanging out.

I point in the direction that Shane has gone. “I’m hunting your Beta,” I announce, my voice husky and raw as I put as much alpha power into it as I can. “He’s betrayed your Alpha. He’s betrayed the pack. He’s sold us all out to the Wicked Wolf of the West.”

Jace snaps his fangs at the mention of my sperm donor. Or maybe it’s because he’s gotten a good eyeful of my ruined face.

Yeah.

Same, Jace. Same.

“I’m going after him. If I have to drag him back to the Alpha myself, I will, but his fate belongs to Ryker.”

It’s true, I admit to myself. As pissed off as I am that Shane worked with Trish to come between me and Ryker, and how skeeved out I am at the idea of choosing to mate with him so he can become Alpha, even I know that pack law puts Shane’s fate in Ryker’s claws. By interfering with his mating and working with another pack’s Alpha, he’s challenged Ryker—and only Ryker can answer to the challenge.

But Ryker is still chained up in his basement, sure that his Beta is trustworthy and that I’m safe.

Okay. So Shane is a lying prick. But I’m doing just fine, and I’ll be doing even better once I get my claws in Shane again.

I flash my gaze over the wolves, my shifter’s eyes flaring to the molten lava color that tells them that my alpha wolf is in control. “You can come with me to run him down, or you can return to the pack. Either way, no one is stopping me.”

The massive grey wolf—I really have to learn the big guy’s name!—is the first to pull himself up to his paws. His lips pull back from his muzzle, showing off his canines, but his drawn-out rumble of a growl tells me that while he’s pretty fucking pissed, it’s not me he’s pissed off at.

That honor belongs to the former Beta.

I flick my eyes over the other three. “You in? Jace? Dorian?” A flash of recognition hits me. I’m pretty sure the smaller grey wolf is another Danvers. Trish’s younger cousin. “Bobby?”

Bobby yips. Dorian echoes it, while Jace stretches out his front legs before resting on his haunches. His head cocks in an obvious, “We doing this or what?”

I can’t keep the smile from tugging on my lips. I might’ve spent a year convincing myself otherwise, but hell if I didn’t miss being part of a pack.

I leap forward, already shifted to wolf by the time my four paws hit the dirt. The other wolves give way, letting me speed right past them before they form a line at my back.

I wish I could say that we found him. With the five of us hot on his tail, I wish I could say that we surrounded him and took him down.

But we didn’t.

Because I’m in the lead, I’m the one who first notices when the trail goes dead. I was following the scent of Shane’s blood mingling with his wolf, and I stop short when I get a snout full of exhaust. The blood trail disappears right when the exhaust starts and it doesn’t take an alpha wolf to figure out what went down.

Two wolves dart past me when I stop, the other two staying at my back.

A soft rumble has Dorian and the larger grey wolf returning. The big guy cocks his head as he comes clomping back to where the rest of us are crowded around a visible tire mark left in the dirt.

I know this path. We took a roundabout way to get here, but this is one of the mountain roads that leads straight into Muncie

In case the other two haven’t caught on yet, I paw at the dirt, drawing their attention to the tracks.

Jace nods, then lets out a soft growl. I know what he’s asking and I use my front paw to swipe the nearest wheel mark away.

Do I want them to chase after the vehicle into Muncie? Not even a little. After a year of living in the vamp town, I know just how lucky I was to meet Aleksander my first night. Without the protection of the Cadre, the Nightmare Trio would’ve torn me to shreds just because I’m a shifter—and that’s if I didn’t slaughter them first, inevitably starting another Claws and Fangs war.

I’ve made contacts. Friends, too. Aleks’s fang kept me safe, and my reputation as someone not to fuck with has made it so that I can still walk around Muncie even without the charmed necklace.

But that’s just me. With Ryker in town, things were getting a little more dicey, and only the fact that he’s Mountainside’s Alpha—and, thanks to Roman’s suspicious peacekeeping measure, made untouchable by the Cadre—stopped the local vampires from going after him.

These shifters wouldn’t have the same protections. If I invited them into Muncie, I’d be a naive fool to believe that all four of them would be walking out again.

Here’s hoping that a hungry vamp solves my problem for me. A car hadn’t saved me from being caught, and only Aleks’s inexplicable urge to claim me at first sight kept me from becoming a vampire’s late night snack. There’s always a chance that one of the vamps on the outskirts will get to Shane before I do.

If not, then I’ll get my chance.

Not now, though. I won’t risk Ryker’s packmates just because I have a personal vendetta against his Beta. I’ll track him into Muncie myself as soon as I can.

But first⁠—

With the others waiting for my next command, I swing my muzzle back toward the mountain. A soft whine escapes my throat, echoing in the still night’s air as I pad away from the tail end of the tracks before opening up my legs and sprinting for the path.

As one, they all follow me back toward pack territory.

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