The Pack: Rule Number 1 - No Mates

Chapter 309

Chapter Three Hundred Nine
TIMMONS
I hear it the moment I step out the door. The unmistakable sound of a body tumbling to the ground. A viselike pain coils around my chest and as I take my next steps and I tell myself that sound wasn’t her. She didn’t fall. It wasn’t her.
I didn’t just throw her onto the go***n table like a f***ng l***tic and threaten to take her a***to jail. Nah, that wasn’t me. I wouldn’t
do that. Not to her.
But I did though.
What the f***k?
“SHIT!” I scream up into the sky, my body shaking, my hand on the door to my Charger.
Some of the locals meandering down the sidewalk send me a startled look, pausing in their steps to see what I do next. But I could give a f**k about that part. None of them would dare to approach me. Even after what they may or may not have seen me do to their sweet little bartender, I know I won’t get any shit about it. That’s just the way things are.
My head swivels and I glance behind me, toward the windows on the side of the bar and through them. I should be able to see her standing there, or moving around the space, or sitting down in the booth.
But I can’t.
F***k!
Where is she?
A clawing pain scratches into my center, like nails trying to dig into my heart. Poison burrowing deep within me as I wait, and I wait. Hoping that any moment now I’ll see her tawny blonde head bobbing around behind the heavily tinted glass. But I don’t.
With the speed of a cheetah on ***k, I race back into the bar and nearly stumble over her body on the ground. My breath stutters, gliding over her still form and having the f***ked up thought that I’d finally done it. I’d finally made her feel something for me so ruthlessly that it
sent her barreling into the ground.
She’s your mate Timmons, of course she feels for you.
F***k!
A quick scan of my surroundings shows Charlie has no idea. That little f***er is still outside turning away patrons and jibing with them as they laugh and walk away.
“F***k Chuck,” I say to myself as I drop toward the ground and give Kendall the once over.
My heart is pounding in my ears, the same way it has been from the moment I saw her traipsing down from Charlie’s apartment. The sound is so loud I can’t discern anything else beyond it. So I take couple deep, calming breaths and lean in close, tuning myself into her vitals. The thump thump thumping of her heart is barely distinguishable behind my own and I have to labor for it, telling myself to calm my emotions, to listen like a wolf and not a man.

And that’s when I hear it.
What the f***k?
Does she have an arrhythmia that I’ve never noticed before or…
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11:31 Tue, Dec 24 G
Chapter Three Hundred Nine
Why does it sound like her heart is jumping over itself?
Almost as if it is doubled?
F***k. This could be the reason she passed out.
What the f**k did I do?
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“Shit,” I mumble, sliding my arms beneath her as carefully as I can and gnoring the thousand watt voltage that passes through me every time I touch her. Just as I lift her up and off of the floor, Charlie stumbles back inside and I hear his outraged gasp harp from the front of
the bar.
“No!” Charlie moans out, rocketing toward me on his clumsy clown legs. “Why?”
“I didn’t hurt her!” I lie, lifting her body gingerly from the ground and being as careful as I can with her head. As I study her angelic profile, regret climbs into my throat and her words come floating back to me.
“God how I hate you! I hate you so much…”
Again. F**k!
She doesn’t appear to have any lumps, or any bleeding. Lucky for her, she landed on one of the new plush runners that Bartlett added to prevent drunken sailors from busting their teeth on the hardwood floor Not having anywhere else to go with her, I draw her up close, cradling her into me as I face Charlie. “Call an ambulance! I think there’s something wrong with her heart. Maybe she has Tachyarrhythmia. Maybe I just scared her into having a panic attack or
“Tachyarr-what?” Charlie sputters, reaching out to pet Kendall’s forehead.
I growl, jerking her away from him. “Don’t!” snarl, flashing my fangs.
Charlie’s hands go up in surrender and he backs up a step, shaking his head. “She doesn’t have-”
“Did you **ing here me, idiot? I said, call her an ambulance! Her heart rate is crazy weird and I may have just-”
“She’s pregnant, Tim!” he spits. “Not panicked!”
ド
My entire body rocks up as if it has just been covered in ice and the cold I feel lathers over my heart, sealing it behind frigid steel claws, then clamoring up my throat like liquid nitrogen. “What?” My voice cracks out, a chip of glacier ice.
Charlie shakes his head. “It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, but she…she didn’t want anyone to know.”
I can feel
it when my eyes bulge and burn and I know that my gaze just became feral. “Pregnant?” My voice sounds like I’m juggling gravel in the back of my tonsils. “By WHO?”
E
Suddenly my head is full of all manner of thoughts. Questions that shouldn’t be questions. Facts that might have been lies we were taught as children that became the laws in which we shifters have always simply seen as truths.
Could we have been wrong?
Could Bartlett have marked her as his?
Could she be of shifter blood?
But I don’t scent him.
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11:31 Tue, Dec 24
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