Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
My mates are in the trucker diner. I walk past them and go and order myself something to eat. Pancakes and bacon with a chocolate milkshake. The lady behind the counter is lovely and warm, the sort of person sent from the heavens to make weary travelers feel better about their often lonely lots.
They’re all knee deep in meat of course. Sausages, steaks, pepperoni, bacon. They’re proper men. Proper wolves. They’re everything a good little wolf girl should want, and I am pretty sure I am going to ruin them if they stay with me.
I sit in the booth behind them, wondering if they’ll recognize me or not. I kind of assume they will, just by scent. But I have to check. If I can fool them, I can fool the vamp and his minions.
A hand reaches over and snatches a piece of bacon covered in syrup and powder. Damon pats my head with his other hand, and flickers me a wink as he slips down into the booth.
“Why aren’t you sitting with us?” Conroy growls the question. He growls most things.
I have fooled nobody.
“Cute… everything,” Conroy says as I pick my food up and go around to sit with them.
“That outfit is… heinous,” Tailor says.
“Heinous,” I grin. “I know. It’s perfect. Isn’t it?”
“And the hair,” Conroy says.
“The hair,” Tailor says, in a different tone. “You’ve made yourself look…”
“Generic,” I say. “I look generic. That’s the point. In this part of the country, girls dye their hair blonde and generally have blue eyes and they dress like this. So this is how I’m dressed.”
“We need to talk,” Conroy says.
“About what?”
“About your bratty little attitude. We’ve been driving all day, and I know that there’s been so much going on, and there’s been a lot of attitudes all around, but you need to understand that we are your mates. You have to understand that. You have to acknowledge that.”
“I’m sorry, is me trying to survive bratty now?”
“I’ve whipped your ass in public once before. Don’t think I won’t do it again,” he warns me. I think he just likes threatening me.
“Is this like, foreplay for you?” I squirt a great deal of the contents of the whipped cream can the waitress left with me onto my pancakes. I like a two-to-one cream to pancake ratio. “My attitude is the least of our problems.”
“I am your alpha,” he reminds me.
“Your port just burned down. You want to be the alpha of the truck? Well, you can’t be the alpha of that either, on account of it’s mine. But maybe you can be alpha of something else. What about this?” I slide the can of cream over to him. “You can be alpha of the whipped cream.”
Conroy’s eyes darken.
“I am being patient,” he says. “But my patience has limits. You are our mate, and you are going to have to obey me. Us.”
“I’m going to deliver my cargo,” I tell him. “And I took you with me because last I saw you, you were about two seconds away from…”
Next thing I know, his hand is on the back of my neck, his lips close to my ear.
“You’re being hunted by an ancient vampire,” he says. “And you are going to need us.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve never needed anyone, and I don’t intend to start needing you now. I can look after myself.”
“You’re our mate. We all look after each other.”
“I wasn’t looking for a mate. I don’t want a mate. I’m not ready for a mate. I don’t have anything to offer a mate, let alone three of them, and I don’t need anything. You can come with me. But stop talking about being my mate.”
He lets me go and sits back with something like a smirk. He looks less worried now than he did before.
“What? What are you smiling about?”
“You’re scared,” he says.
“I am not scared. I have never been scared. What am I supposed to be scared of?”
“Love,” he says, looking satisfied. “You’re afraid of being our mate because you’re afraid of being loved.”
“You grabbed me, beat my ass, fucked me until I was so sore I didn’t know if I could walk, and then almost got yourselves killed, and you think I’m afraid of love?”
“Yes. I tried to be nice to you. Every time I try to be nice, you make it impossible.”
“Would you know how to be nice if you tried?”
Tailor
They’re bickering. They don’t know it, but those two are perfectly suited for one another. Damon smirks at me and steals the last rasher of bacon from Conroy’s abandoned plate.
Our mate is rough around the edges, that much is true, but she has also only been our mate for just over a day. She needs time to settle down and Conroy is going to have to find that patience he claims to have.