The Pack: Rule Number 1 - No Mates

Chapter One Hundred Ninety–Eight

GRYFFIN

with the little bland man–child chained up in the After Quinn left I made à point of staying upstairs where I couldn’t be tempted to loy basement. I need to gather myself first and maybe even pat ingether at of questions to ask him when he finally comes to. It may sound stupid, but the truth is Ive never had one in my care that I didn’t outright minder. There have only been a handful of times that Gayle or I have been fortunate enough to take one of them alive, and each of these times my anger got the better of me. I ended up shifting and tearing them to hits. However, I can’t shift these days, so this time will different. This time, maybe I’ll get a few answers that I need and finally figure out which hunter it was that killed my mother.

Whoever he was, he took her body before we could retrieve it. I want it lock.

I’m not stupid. I know what the fucker probably did with it. It turns my stomach to imagine her that way, but what kind of son would I be if I let some bastard keep her like a stuffed trophy. Passing her down from generation to generation as if she wasn’t someone’s mother,

She was a queen, but we never treated her like one. We should have. We took the fact that we were shifters for granted. Thinking we wer safe. Thinking we were invincible. Well, we’re not. We’re just a lot harder to kill.

She asked me to help her that day. She said she needed me to help her track some hunter because there was something different about him. I blew her off thinking she was paranoid..

There was this girl, her name was Amber, she was a cheerleader at my high school. I wanted her for my mate. I even pretended she was my mate just so my mom would let me bring her around, but deep down I knew she wasn’t much more than a human girl with a bangin body. I was young, stupid, and horny. My mother was killed while I was out fucking the ditzy bimbo in an abandoned parking lot.

Believe it or not, I felt it when she died. The sad shame is, once I was finished fucking Amber, I didn’t want her anymore. Dumped her that same day. She cried and called me an asshole and I langhed as i rode off on my bike. In the next few moments, I felt it. The loss. The dread. The acute realization that something had gone terribly wrong and nothing would ever be the same again.

Back at the den everyone was in tears and right away, I knew, Goose had been with her. I guess when I refused to help her, she asked him to join her instead. According to Goose, she saved his life. He was just as young as I was, but with less training and ended up making some rookie mistake that put him right in the hunter’s path. Gouse said my mother yowled in warning, signaling that the hunter was in the trees, but by the time he spotted the guy it was too late. So my mother, forever the protective lioness, stepped in the line of fire like the queen that she was.

It should have been me

Gayle was her baby. I was her protector! Her oldest! I failed her.

She deserves a proper

burial.

Shaking off the ghosts of the past, the sound of a helicopter overhead catches my

attention.

I “Gryff!” Goose screams from downstairs and I race out of my ro

of my room as fast as my non shifting legs will carry me.

a mask of panic. “What? What happened?

shakes his head and Taedora

killing her quickly, she had her by the throat, trying to make the girl suffer. For whatever reason, Bartlett

door and stalking into the yard to scan the woods. I cant

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Hundred

helicopter hovers overhead

woman’s voice could be heard coming from the ginnt

searching for a large adult conger. Assured to be near seven feet in length and two hundred pounds. This animal is extremely aggressive, please be advised. This is a warning. All residents… The voice continues, repeating the same message as the helicopter proceeds to circle a different

the fuck?” | hiss

are men all over the woods,” Goose says, idling up next to me. Duys from all

the wolves?” I ask, knowing they’ve got more than

a lot of commotion at the campsite, so we went our separate ways right when

all Gayle. They’re

me. “But she’s not stupid and she’s not deaf. She’s not going to head back toward

it was that she just needed to meet him again. As her human self. She really thinks he won’t recognize her. She may be right, but I’m not willing to risk it, so I forbade her from trying to track him. I am the king of this den, but that doesn’t mean she’ll listen. Good thing she doesn’t know where to start

We wait.”

DELILAH

where I am. Sitting up in bed

is

the other side of the bed, I see it remains untouched. He must not have come to bed yet. The clock on the nightstand tells

night or something? He

TAT,

left grabs my attention and I listen intently, trying to figure out where the

TAT,

the shades, so I have no idea what is making that sound. But what if it’s Quinn? What if he somehow got

TAT, TAT,

need to check

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Hundred Ninety–Eight