Mated to the Billionaire Werewolf: BBW Paranormal Bad Boy Billionaire Werewolf Romance (Kingwood Pack Book 3) (3 page)

*

Of all the screwed-up, shitty situations to find herself in. Still fuming, Eva stormed through the manor like all the hounds of hell marched at her heels. She had no real idea where she was going, and to be honest, she really didn’t care. All she wanted was to get as far from Alex as physically possible.

Her expression was like thunder, so dark and ominous that the staff scattered before her, even though they were full lycan and she, apparently, was not. At the moment, though, she really didn’t care. One more asshole mentioned pack law and she’d tear them a new one, lycan or frigging not.

By the time she’d worked her way down to the kitchens, her usual refuge in times of stress, her anger had turned to misery and a hard knot formed in the back of her throat.

Hearing voices ahead, she ducked into a storeroom and pulled the door shut. Leaning against it, she closed her eyes. As a human she hadn’t been good enough for Alex, she’d known that… accepted that. But to find out she wasn’t good enough when she was a werewolf either…

She swallowed. Hard. She wouldn’t cry.

Her eyes didn’t seem to have gotten that memo. Tears built and prickled hot needles into the back of them. Breathing deeply, she fought them. Not happening. She was done crying over Alex.

“...says she’s not changed yet.”

“Really? Like at all?”

Eva opened her eyes at the sound of voices on the other side of the door. Great. Even the staff were talking about her. Not that she should have expected anything else. They were all lycan and therefore part of the pack. Probably a higher level than she was since most were born wolves, and she was a bitten wolf who hadn’t even got enough juice to prove she
had
an inner wolf.

“Nope. No fur, no hint of amber when she’s stressed. Kevin said that only happens with the weakest of wolves. Like well below beta level.”

“Oh my word. Well, if her bite came from the alpha and she’s still that weak… Alex isn’t going to take her to mate, is he?”

“Fuck no, he can’t. An alpha needs a strong mate.”

Eva turned against the door, jamming her foot against the bottom of it when the voices stopped just outside. Shit. If they found her in here, they’d know she’d been listening to their gossip. Panic started to overwhelm her, then she stopped. Frowned. What the fuck did she have to be ashamed of?
They
were talking about
her…
so fuck them.

Still, she wanted to hear the rest of the conversation so she pressed her ear closer to the door.

“Yeah, but the Master of the City mated that Trevais woman… the one they all said was nearer to human than lycan.”

The other woman snorted in amusement. “He’s the Master of the City. Would
you
argue with Veyr?”

“Do I look suicidal to you? I like my throat the way it is, thank you very much, not shredded from ear to ear.”

“Exactly. Veyr is a different matter. Alex? Not so much, he still has to adhere to pack law.”

Eva’s lips curled back from her teeth, and with supreme effort, she kept the snarl in the back of her throat a silent one. Pack law, pack law, everyone was so freaking worried about pack bloody law. Assholes. All of them.

“Hey, is this all the linen we have? We’re missing some towels and at least two tablecloths.”

“I think we’re due a delivery from the laundry service later.”

“Well… it does explain one thing.”

“About the tablecloths?”

“No… about Alex’s little pet.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“She’s not exactly svelte-like, is she? My cousin married a bitten woman, emigrated to England where she was from. She was well, rather large when she was bitten, but the weight dropped off her when her wolf took hold. So that would make sense, because doesn’t look like this one lost any.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point. Like
any
wolf woman would be that… curvy.” She spat the word like it was distasteful and the snarl in the back of Eva’s throat rose to just below audible. Anger burned within her. Rose from the depths of her soul to scorch the inside of her veins as her blood boiled through them. Her nails flexed, biting into the wood as she fought the need to tear the door open and launch herself at the lycan woman, her rage so intense and complete she shook.

“Yeah. Good point… Hey, did you hear about the deal tonight with the vamps?”

The words stopped Eva’s anger dead in its tracks. The vampires had Davie.

“Yeah. Not a moment too soon either.”

The voices grew quieter as the women walked away up the corridor. Eva cracked the door open a notch to hear better.

“Too true. Have you had to take a blood bag down to that one in the basement yet? Fucking thing freaks me out. The sooner it’s gone, the better.”

Eva blinked slowly, absorbing this new information. Alex had a vampire prisoner, and a deal with the vampires going down tonight? Hope filled her heart. He’d sworn he’d help her and he was making deals with vampires, with what sounded like a prisoner exchange. And there was only person she could think of for Alex to exchange a captured vamp for.

Davie.

Chapter Three

Eva managed to avoid Alex for most of the day by escaping to the library. Not hard when he also appeared to be doing his best to avoid her. Probably didn’t want reminded of his mistake.

The more she thought about it, the more she became convinced what they’d had was just a bit of fun for him. That she was just a human plaything to be put aside when his duty to mate for the pack came calling.

Asshole. She’d thought that about him so often in the last few hours, she should really append it as a prefix to his name. Scowling, she realized she’d re-read the same six sentences of her book for the last hour or so.

With a sigh, she closed it and stood. It was a new one by her favorite author, one she hadn’t gotten around to reading yet, so to find it on the shelves of Alex’s library had been a surprise. In fact, there was a whole shelf dedicated to romance, so someone in the house must be a fan.

Not Alex though, she couldn’t see him reading anything so frivolous. Perhaps something dry about the history of lycans or war amongst the paranormal race… that seemed more his style, not romance even if he did totally fit the mold of
asshole-alpha-male-who-needed-bringing-down-a-peg-or-two
perfectly.

Her lips quirked as she headed for the door. There was that word again. Asshole. It just seemed to slide so perfectly through the mind when she thought of him. Unfortunately, her over-active imagination didn’t stop there. Oh, no. Once it had latched onto him, it rifled through her memories and raided them, presenting her with images of Alex naked, his gloriously muscled form stripped for her perusal… the way his eyes flared with amber and darkness when he was aroused. The way his cock felt when he drove int…

Shit. No. Hissing in anger at herself, she shut down the thought before it could get any further. She was not a bitch in heat to be panting after the pack alpha. There would be no more nights wrapped around his heavily-muscled form, or him moving over her as he drove into her again and again. Not now. Even if he wanted to, her pride wouldn’t allow it. She refused to be good enough to screw, but not good enough to mate.

Fuck that.

Or in this case, not.

Voices on the other side of the library door made her pause, her hand on the doorframe. Every cell in her body went on alert as she froze in place. Male voices.

“I’ll be gone until nightfall. Make sure our guests are fed and watered,” Alex said, his voice more familiar to her than her own. Yearning filled her heart for a second at the deep tones, but she chased it aside with a spurt of anger.

“Yes, boss.”

The second voice she also recognized. Frank. She still wasn’t sure how rankings in the pack worked, but if Alex had a right-hand man, Frank was it. A wash of guilt hit her hard and fast. And he’d lost his nephew because of her so if she was looking for help, it wasn’t going to come from that quarter.

She pressed a little closer to the door, her breathing shallow as they stopped nearby.

“Get someone to clean thoroughly in here. Smells like half the damn pack have set up camp. And before I forget, make sure Eva gets a little something ‘extra’ to help her rest. I don’t want anything to go wrong tonight.”

Eva’s eyes widened. He planned to drug her? Of all the low down, assholish things to do. Her lips curled back again as anger surged, almost overwhelming her. A small crack under her hand warned she needed to get a handle on her temper.

Even from the other side of the door, she felt him pause. Heard the rasp of his breath as he turned. She squeezed her eyes shut, clearly seeing in her mind’s eye the frown she knew marred his brow. Any moment now the door would be flung open. Alex had to know she was there.

A deep scent filtered through the closed door. Wild and male, it reminded her of dark forests and forbidden places. Her body ached with the need to run, to escape. To feel her heart pound and the dirt beneath her feet—

“Sure thing, boss. I’ll make sure it happens.”

Eva blinked, yanked back to reality by Frank’s voice. Shit, what had that all been about. She’d never had a smell affect her so strongly. Sucking in a deep breath as quietly as she could, she tried to calm her racing heart.

“Good. And make sure everything is in place for the exchange. I can’t stand the Earl at the best of times, so I want this done and him off our land as soon as possible.” He turned and walked away as he spoke, his voice receding at the same pace as his footsteps.

She sagged against the door, resting her forehead against the cool wood as all her senses extended, following the distant sounds of Alex and Frank’s conversation. Finally, a door opened and shut near the front of the manor and she heard the deep, throaty sound of Alex’s car as he drove away.

He was gone.

Opening her eyes, she looked down to find her fingertips buried into the wood of the door frame as though it had no more consistency than cheese. Fuck. She snatched her hand back and looked at the imprints. Perfect impressions of her nails marked the painted surface.

Shit. How the hell had she managed that? She didn’t need to add property damage to her list of werewolfy sins. Biting her lip, she tried to smooth them over, but it was no good. The wood was hard and immovable.

Realizing there was nothing she could do about it, she opened the door and checked the corridor before slipping out and heading to her room.

They couldn’t prove anything because she wasn’t a werewolf.

Right?

***

Eva had never been in the forest that surrounded the Kingwood family estate on her own. Not at night. Or during the full moon.
Especially
not during the full moon.

Oh no, she smiled to herself as she slipped out a side door and into the shadows of the garden. When she’d lived here, all the humans were locked up nice and tight during the full moon with a guard patrolling to ensure they didn’t leave. Wouldn’t want to tempt some poor schmuck of a lycan into biting them.

She shook her head and crouched in the deeper shadows by the rose bushes. They moved slightly when she brushed against them and she was enveloped by their sweet, heady scent. For a moment she was caught, transfixed by the fragrance wrapping her in its coils. They smelled amazing. How had she not noticed before how wonderful roses smelled? Like a complex symphony for her olfactory senses, the perfume cascaded over and through her, holding her in thrall before it ebbed away. Shaking herself, she took a deep breath and brought her attention back to the task in hand.

Alex was trading a vampire somewhere in the forest and she intended to be there to find out what the hell was going on. The possibility that he was trading the vampire for Davie still wouldn’t leave her.

She chewed on her lower lip. If that was the case, why hadn’t he told her? Perhaps he wasn’t… perhaps there was some other deal going on with the vampires. But, if that was true, why had he wanted her drugged?

Feigning feeling sick earlier, she’d managed to get a tray sent up to her room. The chicken soup and its accompanying sparkling water had been easy to ditch in the en suite. Her stomach had growled, complaining at her because the soup smelled so good, but she couldn’t risk eating or drinking anything Frank brought her. She didn’t know which he’d slipped the drugs into and she wasn’t taking any chances.

Besides, she had a real craving for steak recently which was weird. She was normally a chicken person, maybe lamb for a rare change. Not steak unless it was grilled to boot leather. But now she was craving steak, blood red and juicy.

Huh, she might not be a werewolf, but it seemed her appetite was. She should’ve figured her stomach would get in on the act. It usually did.

Crouched in her hiding place, she watched the house for movement. Most of the wolves had left earlier, alone or in pairs, until there were only a few left. Frank appeared to be the last to leave, cracking her bedroom door open a little to check on her. She’d pretended to be asleep, sprawled across the bed like she usually did.

He hadn’t entered the room, simply closed the door and shortly after the house had gone quiet. Her cue to get dressed in the darkest clothes she had and do her best ninja impression.

A rosebush hugging ninja, that was. She’d never get anywhere sitting here. Confident she hadn’t tripped any silent alarms, Eva made her way to the edge of the garden and slipped into the forest. There was no boundary wall to mark the separation between the garden and the wilderness beyond. For a manor house belonging to a werewolf family, there didn’t need to be…

She broke into a light jog. For all of three point four seconds before she remembered why she didn’t jog without wearing a sports bra with structural steel support. Slowing to a pace the girls would sustain without threatening to black her eye, she followed the path deeper into the forest.

Which then petered out…

Well, shit.

She stopped in the middle of the non-path and looked around. She tried her best to ignore her heart hammering against the inside of her ribs. The trees loomed threateningly and the darkness closed in.