Total pages in book: 61
Estimated words: 58295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 291(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58295 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 291(@200wpm)___ 233(@250wpm)___ 194(@300wpm)
I can never have a mate.
“Almost there,” Teddy mutters. And my phone comes alive in my hand, beeping with notifications. A dozen texts from Lance, but I don’t have time to read them because Teddy is cursing and telling me to look. Ahead of us is a barrier of two fire trucks and several military vehicles. They’re blocking the road, their flashing lights washing over the wreckage of what used to be the cartel’s mansion.
It looks like a bomb went off. No, not a bomb but some sort of fire. The scent of smoke hovers in the air. The center of the building is gone. There’s a blackened hole where the house used to be. Scorch marks bloom over the crumbling outer walls. Everything's charred but in a strange pattern.
Colonel Johnson stands on the lawn, feet planted and hands on his hips. Lance and the guys are with him.
Thank fuck.
My fear morphs into fury as I stride over.
“What are you doing here?” Lance asks, as if he hadn’t called me yelling two hours ago. “I said don’t come here. Don’t come here! What the hell are you doing? Where’s Adele?”
I splutter, about to launch into a tirade, but Colonel Johnson thrusts a manila folder in my hand. “It was your boy Gabriel Dieter. Look what he left you.”
I shoot a startled look at Lance who nods at the folder. I flip it open. Inside is a dossier on our family. Of Lance and me, in particular. Our ages, lineage, stats. The address where we’d lived. Where our parents had been murdered.
My hand shakes as I turn the pages. “Wh-what is this?”
“Looks like it had something to do with your parents’ death.” Colonel Johnson meets my gaze. “They were hunting young shifters.”
“Who?” I roar. I’m going to kill them. Every last one of them. I will have my revenge if it’s the last fucking thing I do.
“It doesn’t say.”
“You think Dieter left this?” I flip the folder over and see the message written in… fates–it looks like it was written with an old-fashioned quill pen. In a neat, loopy script are the words,
Alpha Rafe,
Want revenge? Give up my mate.
–G. D.
Adele
I’m not upset, I tell myself as I pace back and forth through the house. It’s fine.
I’m not mad Rafe rushed back to his home to do his mission and help his brother. And there’s no reason for me to be worried. His work is dangerous, but he can handle it. He’s an adrenaline type person. I keep imagining him on his missions, as cool and in control as he is in normal, everyday life. Delivering commands like he’s ordering a burger.
Of course, in my daydreams, he’s never wearing more than camo fatigues and work boots. Maybe he has a bullet bandolier strapped across his chest, aka Rambo-style, but mostly he’s just topless, his awesome pecs and abs flexed and flecked with sweat. Every muscle on him honed to perfection by Mission Impossible stunts, necessity rather than vanity at the gym.
It makes my nether parts very happy when I replay this image over and over in my mind. It’s almost enough to keep me from stress baking three different types of Christmas cookies.
Almost.
No, I'm not mad that he went on a mission. I'm not even mad at what he said in the heat of the moment. I can’t deal with distractions. Not the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me, but I get it. During the mission, worrying about me will be a distraction.
What does upset me is that he’s treated me like a distraction from the beginning. I can deal with his high-handedness and our constant sparring matches, but what rankles, deep down, is how Rafe is constantly hot and cold. He pulls me close, only to thrust me away. He doesn't really want me in his life.
We're like magnets, drawn to each other in one moment, repelling each other in the next.
After eating my weight in raw cookie dough, I pace the house and end up downstairs, passing the indoor sport court, the massage room with the Himalayan salt wall, the 8-bed bunk room, and the bowling alley. This mansion is so luxe it’s nuts. It’d be fun to be snowed in here all winter–if I were with Rafe. The chillaxed, non-secretive version of Rafe. I know that Rafe exists, I’ve caught glimpses of him. Intense but not stressed. Dominant, but not overbearing.
We were so in sync before, the absence of him hurts.
I heave a sigh and head out of the ski locker room to the outdoor patio. I know Rafe said to stay inside, but I’m too restless to be cooped up, and he’s way too controlling. The snow-covered world looks so beautiful. If the cartel were here, wouldn’t they be more likely to find me in the house versus in the woods?