She nearly came apart right then and there. His mouth on her tightened every nerve and muscle and instinct inside her. She arched her back, attempting to give him better access. He growled around her nipple, biting down just slightly on her now-aching flesh. She wasn’t sure there was a single part of her that wasn’t throbbing in time with her pulse.
Suddenly, pain sliced through her like someone had struck her in the temple with a hammer. She crumpled forward with a muffled scream, pulling her breasts from his grasp. The pain wrenched through her, overwhelming all her other senses. “Ryan,” she croaked, curling into a ball on his lap, clutching her head. “Help me.”
He tensed beneath her. “What’s going on?”
“It hurts. He’s hurting me.”
“Who?”
“My al-alpha,” she bit out, curling into an even tighter ball. Then the pain intensified again. She leapt from Ryan’s lap and sank to the floor in the middle of his room. Maybe her grandfather could tell she was touching Ryan. Or that they were together. She had no clue what he could or couldn’t sense or feel or know. All she knew was that she was trapped. The only way to break an alpha bond was to pledge to another alpha. She couldn’t pledge to Ryan. A group would need to make him their alpha before a single wolf could pledge to him. The rules helped ensure one person couldn’t easily overthrow a pack. It was why no one had ever successfully taken power from her grandfather. And no one ever would.
The alpha bond was a gift in some men’s hands, but others wielded it like a weapon. Phillip used his power often and harshly to keep the pack in line—the women anyway.
The pain sliced through her again and she pressed her lips together to keep from screaming. Ryan was next to her on the floor. Then his arms were around her, and she was being lifted. All she could feel was the pain in her head, like someone was pulling it apart nerve by nerve. Phillip Quade hated to be defied. He would come for her. He would make sure she mated Christian. She’d never be free. Not unless Ryan chose her first.
“Make it stop, please,” she begged.
“I need to get you further away from him. It should lessen with distance. They must have followed you.” He slipped into a pair of running shorts, a T-shirt, and tennis shoes, and carried her through the house. Kate vaguely registered the change when they went outside. The breeze blew across her throbbing head. The sun beat down on her skin. But there was only one thing she could really feel through the pain of her grandfather’s psychic anger: Ryan’s touch.
“Fuck,” he growled. He turned one direction and then another. “Dee will have to do without for now.” Kate tightened her grip on his shirt as another wave of pain lanced through her mind and body. Grandfather was getting closer.
“He’s coming,” she gritted out between clenched teeth. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“We’re getting out of here. I’m taking you away,” he said, his voice near a breaking point. He lifted her, lowering her into a seat, and then closed a door behind her. “It’s the only thing that will help.”
She managed to open one eyelid and peek around. She was in Dee’s truck again. Ryan? Where was Ryan? She missed his touch already. Tears poured down her cheeks. Sobs shook her body. Her head felt like it had been cleaved open with an ax blade. She slumped down, splayed across the seat.
“Hang in there, Kate. It’ll be better. I promise. We just have to get some distance between you and him.” The truck roared to life beneath her cheek. Gravel pinged the wheel wells as he gunned the gas and tore down the drive. Kate kept her face glued to the coolness of the leather seat. The power her grandfather had over her was nauseating, literally and metaphorically. It wasn’t fair that he was trying to force her into a marriage she didn’t want. It wasn’t fair that he treated his pack mates as property and assets and used them to collect his precious cowboy team. She’d always known he considered the women in the pack as brood mares—no more, no less—but she hadn’t thought he would hurt her this badly. She shouldn’t be surprised. Nothing Phillip Quade did surprised anyone anymore.
Ryan’s hand stroked Kate’s head, caressing her hair. He was saying something about putting some space between them and the ranch. She couldn’t hear anything anymore, not through the roar of the pain between her temples. Not over the excruciating searing fire in her body. It was taking everything she had not to scream like a damned banshee from hell.
“We’re almost to town,” he said, his voice soft and hopeful. “Is the pain any better?”
It wasn’t. She shook her head. “Not far enough,” she whispered.
A few minutes later, he pulled to a stop in town. “I’ll be right back. Need gas and some cash.” He slipped out of the truck before Kate could even think about forming words. A minute or two passed. She could hear him outside the vehicle. Feel his comforting proximity even through the subsiding pain. It had finally lessened. The spike in her brain had dulled to a throb. She sat up in the truck and peered around outside. They were at a gas station in the middle of town.
The driver’s side door opened and Ryan met her gaze. “Better?”
She nodded. “A little. He’s probably deciding who he’s going to send to hunt me down.”
“I’m not going to let them take you, Kate. I won’t let him hurt you. Whatever’s going on.”
“Julian fought them so I could get away,” she said, sniffling just a little. “He was bloody, and he yelled at me to run from the barn. To find you. What if…”
“Wait,” Ryan said, climbing into the cab. He closed the door behind him and started the truck again. It roared to life and he pulled out onto the road and merged with traffic. “You were hugging Julian. You had a ring on…have a ring on.” His gaze drifted to the diamond solitaire still on her finger.
She frowned. It was rare for anything that wasn’t physically a part of her to make it through a shift. But she’d heard stories that sometime jewelry did. Pure jewelry, without synthetic materials. She pulled the ring off and dropped it into the empty cup holder on the dash. “He had it already. Old rejection and broken heart. It was just his idea to get you to notice me. To prove to you that you don’t want to lose me. He thought if it looked like your plan was working—me falling for him—you’d change your mind about pushing me away.” Kate sobbed a little. “It was wrong. I’m sorry. I was so desperate to have you choose me that I played a dirty trick. It wasn’t right. It was almost as bad as what my grandfather is trying to do to me. Ryan, I’m so sorry.”
“You still haven’t told me what’s going on with you and your family. Why are you so afraid of your pack? What is your alpha trying to do?”
Kate shook her head. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m going to run. As far and as long as I have to. I won’t let him ever get close enough to—” She bit her lip and stopped, reminding herself of her decision not to put Ryan in any more corners. It wasn’t how she wanted anything to be between them.
“To what, Kate? What the fuck is going on?”
“Do you have a phone? I left mine in the barn.”
He pulled a black cell phone from his shorts pocket, unlocked it, and handed it to her. Kate punched in Gretchen’s number. It’s Kate. I’m with Ryan. Running from grandfather.
“Where should we go?” he asked, his voice edgy.
“I don’t care.”
The phone buzzed with Gretchen’s answer: What the hell is going on, Kate?
She took a deep breath. Finally, with shame filling her insides, she typed in, Grandfather’s trying to mate me against my will. He’s at the ranch and I’m running. I can’t come back. Ever.
Kate clenched her fists as the pain returned, sliding up her spine like sharp claws digging into her flesh. She dropped his phone and winced as it clattered to the floor of the truck. The pain was back. They must be coming.
“Sorry,” she whined, pressing her head to the back of the seat. The claws kept moving up, digging into her psyche until her head felt as if it would explode from the pressure.
“Don’t wor
ry about the phone,” he growled. “Why is he doing this to you?”
“He’s a fucking asshole who controls every aspect of my life. Every single female in the pack lives under his thumb. We’re nothing but property to him,” she spat out angrily and buried her face against the leather of the seat, trying desperately not to scream. The pain burned through her body like wildfire. She couldn’t give in. She wouldn’t go back.
Chapter Nineteen
The damn traffic inside the town of Somewhere was crawling. It was just before midday on Friday in a college town, and it was like frozen molasses on an iceberg in the middle of January.
Kate was still squirming beside him, in pain, alternately reaching for his hand and dropping it to wriggle in the seat. Dammit. He just wanted to fix this for her. But the fucking traffic… He laid on the horn when the car in front of him didn’t respond to a green light. Damn kids texting. He blew around them, pulling into the turn lane, and zipped through the intersection.
Don’t have time for this.
“So, your alpha thinks you’re disobeying him,” he tried to say without grinding his teeth. “And he just decides to turn his magick on you?”
“Yeah.” She took his hand again, gripping it tight. The pain seemed to lessen the farther they got, but he had to be in a vehicle, too, to maintain this kind of pressure on her.
“And you’re not engaged to Julian?”
“No.”
Ryan released a breath and squeezed her hand back. He felt more relaxed whenever they were touching. This was all kinds of fucked up. He couldn’t do this. Couldn’t be with her. Not yet. But he couldn’t leave her. Couldn’t let her alpha hurt her like this.
“You didn’t have to pretend to be engaged to Julian, y’know,” he said, his voice dark and gravelly. “I would have come for you.”
She rolled her head to one side and looked at him through long, curling lashes. “It’s good to hear you say that.”
They finally got out of the crowded interior town area, and he could pick up some speed. They were driving north, out of town, the way that Ryan and Bracken and Beau had come in to town only the previous day. So much had happened in that one day…
“I don’t understand this,” he said. “The way I feel about you. No one prepared me for this.”
“It’s okay, Ryan.”
“But I feel like you belong to me.”
“Me, too.”
“How is that possible?”
She blinked, slowly, like there was still a little pain in her body. “It’s Fate, Ryan. There’s nothing to figure out.” She ran her thumb over the veins in his hand. “I choose you. I don’t know what it will look like, but you’re the one I belong with. I know that much.”
He shifted in his seat, a little bit of discomfort rolling through him. Could he really say that he was choosing her when he had every intention of not bonding with her for at least five years? Would she choose that?
Now that he’d felt the pressure of her body on his, smelled her desire for him, and protected her from her grandfather…he couldn’t imagine choosing five years of pack leadership over the beautiful, fearless woman beside him.
His wolf couldn’t either.
Once out of the city limits, he climbed his speed up to highway levels and set the cruise control. He felt bad about borrowing Dee’s truck without asking her first, but she’d understand. She’d want him to protect his mate.
He would text her as soon as they stopped.
“It’s better now, isn’t it?” he asked, feeling Kate relax beside him.
“It is.” She adjusted herself in the seat and released his hand, pulling at the shorts.
“There’s a band in those, y’know, to tighten the waist.” He gestured at the clothing, which was hanging off her. She practically had to hold them up to keep them on.
Kate pulled the waistband out, moving her fingers along the edges, and Ryan couldn’t help the eyeful he got of soft flesh and her natural thatch of hair. It took him a moment to force himself to look away. Dammit, she was mouthwatering. And boner-inducing.
But they were in a car, and her grandfather was behind them somewhere, and he needed to get his erections under control. I’m not a damn teenager.
“Where?” she asked, continuing to move her fingers along the waistband.
He reached for the fabric without thinking about it and felt along for the telltale bump that would indicate the start of the little rope. But his fingers were so close to…to her skin, to the core of her, to…
It would be so easy, so simple, to dip his fingers into her. To lift her leg just enough that he could open her. To pull those shorts down and have her scent on his fingers.
Dammit. He was hard as stone.
Ryan let the band snap back. “Can’t find it.”
“It’s okay.” She grasped his fingers and held them between both of her hands, resting them against the console. “We’ll only be in the truck.”
He tried to smile, but couldn’t. Yes, she was safe. Yes, her alpha’s range had lessened enough that she wasn’t in writhing pain. But they were on the road. On the run. He had no idea where he was going, or why, or even how they’d find her appropriate clothes. And it felt like his whole world had been upended.
“If it happens again, now that we’re in the truck on the road, you should shift into your wolf,” he said, gripping her hand tight. “I don’t like the idea of him hurting you like that.”
“I want to be here with you, Ryan.” Her smile was sad, almost resigned. “It’s worth a little pain. This is what I’ve wanted since we first met.”
He quirked a brow up. “It is?”
Kate nodded, glancing out the window at a big white cross that seemed to pop up out of nowhere. She seemed so at peace, even though she was essentially running for her life. Was it because she was with him? Was it really that easy?
“I know something’s holding you back,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s just the alphas-have-to-be-single stuff, because that’s just ridiculous.”
He snorted. “It’s not ridiculous in my pack. It’s how we’ve always had to do things.”
“But that’s—”
“Don’t.” He released her hand, and immediately felt the loss of her touch. But he needed to think clearly. “Don’t downplay what I have to do to keep my pack together.”
“Keep your pack together?” Kate shook her head. “Why do you have to do anything to keep your pack together? They’re family. What are they going to do?”
“Split off from the main pack. Or split right down the middle into four or five different tiny packs. That’s what happens when there’s pack violence.” He rubbed his hand against the rough material of his jeans, part of him feeling like he needed to get her touch off his skin so he could think clearly. But she just kept reaching for him, which put her hand dangerously close to his half-mast erection. He put her hands back on her side of the console. “Just… hold on for a second while I think.”
“What do you need to think about?”
“I have to figure out where we’re going, first of all.” He glanced down at his phone, which lay at her feet. The way back to Durant was easy. He wasn’t worried about getting lost. But he still had responsibilities—which he’d conveniently forgotten the moment he smelled the sex between her legs and lost his damn mind.
This was a prime example of why alphas were supposed to be single.
“Aren’t we going to your home?” she asked, a little bit of a pout in her tone. “I don’t know where else I can go. I need you more than I’ve ever needed anyone, Ryan.”
“Dammit, don’t say that,” he hissed out. “I can’t think straight when you say things like that.”
“What? Like I need you? Like I want you?” She moved closer, leaning in like she might try to jump over the console and onto his lap. That would just be too much.
“You have to let me think.”
“Fine.” She backed away, slipping back into the confines of her seatbelt
and looking away from him. “You take the time you need, Ryan. I’ll be here.”
She curled up against the window and they rode in silence for a long time. Ryan didn’t know what to say or do. Everything was swirling out of control. He’d made an instinctive choice to save her back in Somewhere—one that had set them on this path. Now, it was his job to fix it.
Kate’s eyes started to flutter, but she sat up when his phone started buzzing against the floorboard. She picked it up from where it had fallen and looked at the front. “Bracken,” she said, almost reservedly. “You want to take it?”
“I have to,” he said, reaching for it. She swiped the call on and held it to his ear so he could keep both hands on the wheel. He’d just been about to ask…wow.
“You coming?” Bracken asked, through the phone.
“Um…” Ryan didn’t dare lie to his alpha. Bracken knew him too well. “Coming to…?”
“The alpha council meeting.”
“Right.” Ryan glanced over at Kate. He couldn’t afford to tell his alpha about her, just in case anyone else was around. He couldn’t give away their location like that. “Say, speaking of alphas…”
“Yes?”
“Is Phillip Quade around?”
There was a long pause, some shuffling on the other end of the line, and then Bracken came back with, “No. Why? Do you have some news about his granddaughter?”
Ryan couldn’t help the stifled laugh. Do I have news…Ha! “Well… that depends on what you mean by news.”
“Well, what she thought of our—” Bracken began, but Ryan cut him off quick.
“She’s right here with me,” Ryan butted in.
“I hear a truck engine. Where are you, exactly?”
He looked out the window. They’d passed a road sign with Tyler on it not long ago, but it was still a good hour away. He had no idea where they were. “On the road.”
“Well, are you coming back for the alpha—” His uncle stopped talking, and when he spoke again, his voice was barely audible. “Phillip Quade just walked in.”
Rodeo Wolf: Fated Mates of Somewhere, Texas (#2) Page 13