The Pack: Rule Number 1 - No Mates

Chapter Two Hundred Thirty–Five

ROSE

Staring at the creamy, unmarred length of my neck, the pulsepoint beneath the scar seems to throb in the light. The mark that rides over it isn’t nearly as devastating as I would have imagined it to be. I thought for sure I was going to have a few jagged rises along both sides of my throat. Instead, what I’m left with looks almost like a vampire bit me. Or an animal with a much smaller mouth than a lion has.

Could I have been mistaken somehow? Could the lion that bit me have actually been a much smaller version of the beast I remember? Then again, even a smaller version would have left a larger mark than this.

On top of that – I felt my throat rip front and back! Felt the blood flow down beneath my hair and behind my ears. The trickling of it as it poured from my nape! I felt all of that! But where is the evidence???

Maybe I was in a coma and while they were waiting for me to wake up, my parents decided to have plastic surgery done on me. Or skin grafting. But then that would mean I was out for a long time wouldn’t it? And would Bartlett have really been by my side if my recovery took two or three months? I doubt it. Wouldn’t 1 be weak as fuck if I’d been unconscious that long?

Bartlett will have the information. Just the fact that he brought me anywhere, tells me he must have been at the hospital a good deal of the time, right?

No, no. Not right. It is possible that he heard about my warrant from an outside source, I suppose. Maybe that’s what happened and that’s why he decided to boost me. There’s only one way to know for sure.

I’ll simply have to ask him.

With a hefty sigh of resignation, I turn away from the mirror and

open the rain glass doors of the eight by ten foot shower. Holy Moly, that’s a lot of space. It’s almost as big as my bedroom it home. Elegant onyx walls surround me, gilded with golden accents and radiating with heavy yellow lights. Concave shelves line the walls, stocked with an array of different products in a variety of different scents. There: even a long stone bench that presses out of the back wall that is wide enough for two people to lie upon, should they be so inclined.

My family’s pretty well off, but we could never afford a bathroom as extravagant as this one. It makes

of shower Bartlett has at home. And… where is

brand new, settle on a couple of hygiene items that are so deliciously scented that I outright moan in delight.

carry me clasped against his chest bridal style? Maybe he simply seated me in a wheelchair and rolled me out the front exit. Or came in

enough to risk something as outrageous as kidnapping floors me. The man is staggering and I have to wonder how old he might be. Judging by his face alone, I’d say he doesn’t look much older

those deliciously muscled arms of his when he

hope so.

must have, right? An image of myself in that paper thin hospital gown that

1/3

Hundred Thirty–Five

hunger. When I think about the fact that my bare ass had to have felt the warm shift of his skin at least once while he held me, I’m suddenly flushed with

notice when it happened? And if so, did he

an arm behind myself. Then, imagining that I am Bartlett, I close my eyes and

time I thought that was exactly what it was. But then one day while Ted was over to the house, I walked in on Rosen with his hands white knuckled around Ted’s throat. He said,

in contact with treated me with respect. Rosen is also the one that taught me how to handle a rifle. I had always wanted to learn, but my father had forbidden me from it. Rosen could see how much I wanted to be included by my dad so he taught me how to

father threatened to disown him. Dad began to yell and scream, but through it all Rosen remained calm. Eventually, my dad realized he wasn’t getting through to my brother and as he raised his arm to strike

Everyone adored him. Delilah even went out with him once. Most of all though, he was my big brother and I

the heated rain, I lay down along the bench beneath the spray to give in to a daydream. Pretending I’m still unconscious, I imagine what might have happened when Bartlett kidnapped me. The fantasy has my hands sliding all