The Pack: Rule Number 1 - No Mates

Chapter One Hundred–Forty–Nine

DREAM SEQUENCE

I’m running through the woods, wearing nothing but an inversized button ap shirt that I’m fairly a

doesn’t belong to me. Although my (feet are bare, I somehow don’t feel the sharp rocks when I land on them or the thorny bushes as barrel through them um laughing and playing. Iraping nimbly from tree to tree as hide. Each time I hear a brunch break, or catch a whisper in the wind, I move on. Slowly but surely making my way deeper and deeper into the kingdom of Evergreens. The further in Ign, the higher the ground becomes and soon I am climbing. over boulders and shattered tree stumps. Hurding my way toward the sover hala of light that beckons beyond a tight circle of redwoods. I must there. I have to find him. He is searching for me. I know it. No matter what it takes. I have to make it to that point so that I can fully meet Him. My guardian in the woods, my wolf I havent heard him howling for me but in my heart I can feel him calling. He waits at the highest point. Minding his secrets and my own at the top of this grueling hill.

Suddenly, I catch my foot on something and look down. At first, 1

the streets of LA Except

ether you might

slivers of

In woods so brevity beced

what is staring back at me. It just appears to be a face, like any

forest, on a mountainside rodilled with spikes of green and “there is a part who uta atop this peak smoking a cheroot and dressing the

trees in curfs of smoke.

This face ducunt belong here. As I pert closer, Enota

sht about the neck that I didn t before, it appears to be torn. A long gash has (the first tattered and uneven. I pop en my eyes curch on the letters written’ulong the chin and

“are ubu mumbers circling the evelib, hed etched along

ripped the onær soft skin of the thereket over the forehead. They mean some the jawline that end just at the aman

of the

I fall to my needs a pot of the face o Tinije”

meuth any bat bytt

and the terribly dead eyes burn incu ime and follow my movement. The ground

arway from the face. A rumble bus sturted behind me. An

Jew, than a black beast made from the dark of the trees. Soon I

thrums at the base of

of the

out of the black

body almost

Font of me. Freach and for him,

can’t understand any

settling in the side

my neck and shoulders

I

the perfectly

growl erupti frum has bya as he darts forward, plunging the points at his fangs into the

DREAM

panting

I guow about

• “While the fud.” I

meal beling dia,

Bartlett

Chapter One Hundred–Forty–Nine

to be on the yacht. Then a lingering scent

My mind is still Hazy, and the events of the morning mill fogo, bet atsto where I am. “Shit,

cry it out, but a whispering in my head won’t let me release my tears. Bly neck on the tight side tingles and

the windows and a tiny lamp near the front door. Looking down at my hands, I realize I’ve been clutching something to my chest. It’s a dark, navy blue shirt that smells just like Heaven

did he go? When did

instant anguish… the panic. Then his loss of control when he snapped and latched onto my body,

To his wife. You know the one

what I’m looking for, but when I do my eyes widen like saubers and the ending of my dream resurfaces. “Oh my God! 1 hiss, shifting closer to the mirror to

at the junction of my neck and my shoulder- there is a mark that isn’t like any

He

le bit m

I could have som he punched right through my flesh. Studying it, I notice the two darkest points of the bitemark. Right above where the incisors

the first

and realize for the first time that it is ripped beyond repai “Did that shit really happen?” I whisper, closing my eyes as the image of Rainier hovering over me on the couch superimposes onto the image of Rainier in my dream. “No fucking way,” I say to

turn reality y

trade me to Hector for his debt – I relied on my intuition. I was hurt, certainly. Ashamed, definitely. But

I was right

right,” I scolded myself.