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.

These people obviously have money My family’s pretty well off, but we could never afford a bathroom as extravagant as this one. It makes me curious about what line of work these people are in. They’re definitely not hunters, that much was clear

has at

brand new, settle on a couple of hygiene items that are so deliciously scented that I outright moan in delight. Something about stepping under the hot spray of this stranger’s shower, that much was obvious. I can’t say I really blame her, but Bartlett must be a pretty close friend of theirs if he’s allowed to walk

sneaking me out of the hospital. Did he toss me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes? Or carry me clasped against

me important 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 than twenty, but his body screams of a virile

arms of his when he finally had me here? When

hope

that paper thin hospital gown that opens at the

1/3

Hundred Thirty–Five

with a throbbing hunger. When I think about the fact that my bare ass had to have felt the warm shift of his skin at least

when it happened? And if

driven to replay the dreamlike scenario and imagine what I might have felt like to him, I slide an arm behind myself. Then, imagining that I am Bartlett, I close my eyes and push my forearm against the globe of one ass cheek, trying to recreate a moment I’m not even certain existed. The plump, buoyant resistance that I meet with is surprisingly

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, “You don’t ever talk about my sister’s ass again, do you got that? Ill fucken kill you if you so much as look at it agate?” A fearful Ted had frightfully agreed, swearing that he had only been trying to compliment me, but my brother would hear none of it. He shoved

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

announced that he had gotten a full ride scholarship to a University. He admitted that the Elder Few was not what he wanted and my father threatened to disown him. Dad began to yell and scream, but through it all Rosen

star, the hockey star, the fucking Prom King for God’s sakes! Everyone adored him. Delilah even went out with him once.

under 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 over my body greedily and before I know it I’m touching