Branches tore at his skin. His body responded by growing fur along his arms, protecting him from the scratches, the brambles, the wood. He could feel his fangs lengthening, his eyes glowing a vibrant golden color as his head swiveled, searching for the woman who owned that delectable scent.
And there she was.
A blanket was spread out beneath her. She had a pink plastic water bottle beside her, a book clamped loosely in her hand. Before he showed up, she had obviously been leaning back, enjoying her book as she read alone in the early afternoon sunlight.
No one else was there.
Just him.
Just her.
He stared. Shocked and caught unaware, she stared back.
Alpha, she was gorgeous.
Maddox zeroed in on her, gobbling her up with his hungry gaze. Her long legs were stretched out in front of her, her toes pointed. She was a slender woman, probably a few years younger than he was, with dark, wavy hair cascading down her shoulders. He picked up on a smattering of freckles lying across the slope of her nose, a pair of tiny studs in her ears winking in the light.
No ring on her finger, he realized next to an overwhelming relief. No male scent clinging to her skin, either.
Good. One look and he was already smitten. He would’ve taken out any threat, any competition, and he’d do it with a smile.
His mate. No doubt about it. The punch of attraction, the sweet yet rich scent coming from her… she was his.
And, he was almost positive, she was a human.
Her eyes—green, the loveliest shade of forest green—went wide. Her mouth dropped just enough, forming the most adorable little “o”. Slowly, as if she didn’t want to spook him, she pulled her legs into her as if she was preparing to get up and dash away.
He sure as hell hoped not. Nothing would excite his wolf more than a run and a chase. And when he took down this prey, the warmth of her body instead of the rush of blood.
At that temptation, Maddox’s heart thumped wildly, all of his blood continuing to pump south. He felt his cock pulse, bulging against the confines of his jeans.
She was there. She was real.
She was his.
He took a hulking step forward. Another.
She screamed.
He froze.
His entire body locked down, the beginning of a growl caught in his throat. His instinct was to protect his mate, shield her, keep her safe. But that flash of fear on her face a split second before she let loose a shriek that nearly deafened him? He never wanted to see her afraid.
Because, if something was causing her worry, it could only be—
Gritting his teeth, tilting his head back, Maddox pulled her scent in toward him, snuffling as it changed in an instant.
And then he whimpered.
He fucking whimpered.
His protective instincts immediately went into overdrive. She was afraid of him, wasn’t she?
And why wouldn’t she be? He was the out of control moron engaged in a partial shift who crashed through the trees, then stood there, staring at her. Of course she was afraid!
And there was nothing else he could do but protect her from him.
With a nod and a silent promise to this woman that he would return for her later when she wasn’t so scared, he turned and started to jog away. Ten steps into his run, when he was far enough that her fear didn’t scald him, he felt his muscles tighten and his whole body bow. His clothes burst into tattered shreds as his wolf exploded into its fur, letting out a mournful howl as Maddox forced it to abandon its mate so soon after finding her.
2
Maddox didn’t go home. Instead, leaving his truck behind, he allowed his wolf run the entire way to his younger brother’s place.
Colton Wolfe didn’t live too far. A half hour’s dash through the woods that surrounded the aptly named Woodbridge, Colt made his home in a nearby Bumptown. He lived on the edge of the Zoo, the corner of the Para settlement where the shifters all congregated.
Like Maddox, Colt purposely left his father’s immediate territory, heading east to build a home a couple of towns over from the pack’s main headquarters. Since Colt had never been the biggest fan of humans, it made sense that he relocated to a Bumptown. Bumptowns—where “things go bump in the night”—might make Maddox itch, the way they were segregated and controlled by the type of Para you were, but Colt was happy.
There wasn’t a single human within miles of the secluded community.
Born an alpha wolf without a pack to lead, Colt slid easily into the top predator spot in the Zoo. With Maddox next in line to succeed their father, running the Zoo gave Colt’s wolf free rein to rule while also submitting to his father’s stronger beast. It was a perfect arrangement for all involved.
But, while he might be the big man in the Bumptown, Colt was still second to Maddox. Due to his place in the pack’s hierarchy, he owed Maddox his respect.
Then again, Colt was also Mad’s younger brother, so while the pack member sympathized with Maddox and his wolf over what happened in the park, he also let out a burst of laughter as soon as he discovered the extent of the awkwardness surrounding his older brother’s situation.
Even if Maddox wanted to hide it, he couldn’t. The instant he shifted back to a man, he was still completely naked and the erection had returned with a vengeance as soon as he was in his skin again. Not even the memory of her fear did enough to deflate it.
Colt got an eyeful of his brother and his bobbing cock, laughed again, then went to get him a change of clothes. Colt’s best friend, Dodge—the ghost who haunted Colt’s home—popped in as soon as Maddox was dressed. Once he’d gotten himself under control, the pair listened as Mad admitted to everything that had happened in the park.
The sudden shift. The even more sudden hard-on. The human mate. How Maddox spooked her enough that he turned tail and ran rather than approach her and risk scaring her even more.
Once he was done talking, Maddox paced the lengths of the house Colt constructed himself, torn between going back to the park and chasing after her or staying put, cooling off, and waiting until he was ready to make a better second impression before going after her again.
Dodge McCoy was a smart ass who, predictably, offered smart ass comments that Maddox pointedly ignored. Colt, on the other hand felt sorry for his brother. Because of that, and how he was begrudgingly submissive to Maddox’s wolf, he tried to offer the best advice he could. Too bad he knew even less about mates than Maddox did. At least Colt tried.
It didn’t last, though. A few days later, both Colt’s sympathy and his good humor seemed to have run out. And it was all Maddox’s fault.
Finding his mate was making the big shifter crazy. Being second in his father’s pack left Maddox already teetering on the edge. Knowing she was out there and his own impulsive nature had kept him from wooing her properly? It gave him that final push.
Colt told him to spend that first night on his couch, maybe start fresh in the morning. Nope. Maddox only made it a couple of hours before he wolfed out and decided to head back to the park. Once he got over his shock, he was determined to at least introduce himself to the woman, maybe get her name.
He promised he would stay in his skin, wearing Colt’s borrowed clothes; they were nicer than anything he owned and he was grateful for the loaner. When Colt realized that there was no stopping him, he offered Maddox his truck. Curious to see if he could already follow her scent wherever she went, Maddox turned him down. If she was his mate, he should be able to.
And he did.
He followed his nose—and his instincts—to a narrow two-floor house on a cozy residential street not too far from where Cilla lived. Even a block away, he immediately sensed that the dark-haired, green-eyed beauty he saw in the park was inside of there.
That was the good news.
The bad news?
She lived in a house that was so completely warded, Maddox felt the power of the magic crackling against the hairs on his arms whe
n he was on the sidewalk across the street from her place. He’d singe off all of his fur if he tried to force the ward and he’d still be stuck on the outside.
That bothered him. Maddox didn’t know enough about her to guess if she used such strong wards because she was afraid of something—he still hadn’t gotten the stink of her fear out of his snout—or because she was simply being careful. Didn’t matter. It was impossible for him to get any closer to her either way. Unless she coded him into the spell, he couldn’t even get near enough to walk up her drive, let alone knock on her front door.
Wards like hers weren’t unusual in mixed neighborhoods. Some humans were nervous enough about their Para neighbors that they paid witches to protect their homes. Sure, it was hypocritical, humans willing to pay one paranormal an exorbitant fee in order to keep other paranormals out, but Maddox was used to it. That’s just how it had been since the paranormals revealed their existence to the humans almost fifty years ago.
The wards also made him more sure that his mate was as human as they come. Except for the witches, paranormals didn’t need to rely on magic to protect them. Humans used bureaucracy and laws and red tape to save themselves—and, when that didn’t work, they paid for magic.
He didn’t mind if she was. Human, shifter, vampire… whatever. Maddox was so damn happy to have finally found her, she could’ve been anyone or anything and he wouldn’t have cared.
The wards might be a problem, but he forced himself to think on the bright side. Until he could figure out a way to tell her that she was his mate, at least he could rest easy knowing that she was protected. No one could get to her unless she willed it.
Telling himself that he was doing his due diligence as her future mate, Maddox decided to test the extent of the wards. They wrapped around her house, bordering the lines of her property, reaching all of the way to the fence that separated her house from the woods behind it. A thick copse of trees reached outward and he spent that first night patrolling it and marking the territory. Any other predators—paranormal or wild—would scent his wolf and steer clear of his mate’s home.
Then he found a spot tucked in a darker part of the woods where the wards couldn’t touch him. With his shifter eyes and the perfect sightline, he could still watch the back of her house, hoping for a glimpse of the woman.
She poked her head out once, peeking into the shadows of the woods long after nightfall as if she could sense him watching her out there, before disappearing inside.
That second glimpse was all Maddox needed to affirm his first impression. His cock immediately went rock hard again, his wolf scratching against his chest to get out and run to her.
She was a human and his mate, and he was already lost for her.
That made things a little more difficult. Humans had funny ideas when it came to mate bonds. So many lawmakers were afraid of the magic behind the bonds—something their science couldn’t explain—that they came up with Ordinance #7304, otherwise known as the Bond Laws.
Paras like Maddox referred to them as the Claws Clause. And while he always knew he’d have to follow them, since he was a shifter, it would be so much easier if his mate was another Para who thought the laws were as ridiculous as he did.
She wasn’t, though. She was a human. And Maddox new that he would have to tread carefully when it came to courting her.
So maybe her equally human neighbors might consider what he was doing stalking. Maddox liked to think of it as protecting her from afar until he could finally claim her. Besides, he felt more at peace, lingering just outside of her wards, than all of the nights he had spent alone in his bed before he met her.
He found his mate. He had hope. All she had to do was give him a chance to prove that no one would love her better, more faithfully, more earnestly than an alpha wolf shifter, and he’d be set.
Only it didn’t seem as if that was going to be as easy as he wished it would be. Whether it was her fright or something else entirely, the wards stayed at full power without any sign that she had slipped out through the front door at all. As if she could sense him out there, lurking, watching, waiting, his mate stayed inside—with Maddox just out of reach.
He couldn’t stay there around the clock, and not because he had anything he’d rather be doing. After the first few days he spent waiting for just one chance to get to his human female, Colt threatened to take his brother’s erratic behavior to their father if Maddox didn’t stop.
Maddox didn’t like it, but he understood. If he got caught harassing his mate and she refused his attentions, he could bring the law down on the pack and neither one of them wanted that.
At night, when it was harder for anyone to catch him loping through the shadowed woods, Maddox stayed, reinforcing his territory markings while hoping to get closer to his mystery mate. Once or twice—or a hundred times—when his erection got too hard, too hot to ignore, and his wolf howled a lonely song inside his chest, he unzipped his jeans, pulled out his cock, and leisurely stroked it to the edge of his orgasm.
He never let himself finish. Not yet. Not while she was tucked away inside, unaware that he was out there, waiting for her to notice him.
It was a punishment and a tease at the same time. He’d had his mate right there and he fucked it up by letting himself strain against the leash all shifters kept on their wild beasts. It was torture, but if it helped him learn control, it would be worth it when he finally earned his woman.
If he finally got her to come to him.
3
It… wasn’t going so well.
By the fourth night, when he still hadn’t sampled her scent again, Maddox returned to Colt’s house, frustrated, dejected, and with three bottles of whiskey tucked in a black plastic bag he carried with him as he slunk inside.
Since the day he first discovered his mate, he had basically moved in with his brother. Colt lived closer to Woodbridge than Maddox did, and he was careful to ignore his father’s call while he was hunting her, luring his prey close. A mate bond was one of the only exceptions when it came to blind obedience to the Alpha.
Terrence would understand, Sarah would adore finally having a daughter to spoil after raising two rambunctious male pups, and the alpha couple in their pack could start hounding Colt to go after his mate.
Maddox hoped he claimed his mate soon. Already the separation was beginning to weigh on his nerves, making it impossible for him to do anything except wait until he could try to see her again.
Which, of course, explained the bag of liquor.
Colt wasn’t at home that night; at least, he wasn’t in the main house, his scent inside a few hours old. Maddox could guess where his brother had gone. Colt had a private shed in his backyard, a workroom where he focused on his hobby: creating hand-crafted wooden furniture that he sold to his father’s clients for more money than Maddox made on a single job. Colt was also a construction worker, like most of the pack, but the furniture pieces he crafted were absolute works of art.
Ever since Maddox refused to return to his house in Wolf’s Creek, Colt had been spending more and more time either at work with the construction crew or hiding out inside of his work shed.
Maddox might have had something to do with that. Maddox, and his tendency to mope with a bottle of human whiskey in one hand, a nostalgia playlist piping out of the phone he held in the other.
As he crooned along to 1980s hair bands later that night, Colt found him sprawled on the living room floor and immediately threatened to find some silver bullets to put Maddox out of his misery. When that didn’t stop Maddox, and Dodge chose to join in on his pity party, Colt threatened to find some silver bullets to put himself out of his misery.
Since then, he put his foot down. He refused to let Maddox get his paws on any more whiskey. Considering how Maddox immediately went back to pacing outside of the woman’s wards when he sobered up, Colt probably regretted it.
They both knew that the Claws Clause worked against Maddox. If the woman invoked the ordinance, it
didn’t matter that he was certain she was his mate. He’d be separated from her, possibly even locked up depending on how he reacted to the distance.
Getting drunk didn’t help. Watching her house, waiting to ambush her, stroking himself until he was ready to burst from sexual frustration… that was no better. He settled on a compromise before he ended up being tossed inside the Cage.
Maddox took his truck out and traveled down her street twice each day—first thing in the morning, then late at night—hoping for a peek of her while praying that none of her neighbors reported him for constantly passing by.
In between, he tried to return to work, giving up when he spent the whole time obsessing over what his mate was doing, before going back to annoying the shit out of his younger brother.
And, okay. He might have staked out his territory behind her house again when he couldn’t quite keep away.
* * *
A week after he first scented her, Maddox was sitting on the edge of Colt’s couch, his legs spread, his boots tapping against the hardwood floor. He had spent the last half an hour pacing, watching the clock on the wall tick-tock, tick-tock as night slowly crawled closer.
“This fucking sucks,” he snapped out. “I just… I can’t get comfortable.”
Maddox palmed his erection with a heavy hand, trying to tame the bulge. It wasn’t working. The limp cock that always lay perfectly against his thigh was making a damn tent out of his boxers, fighting to punch through his most worn, most loose pair of jeans. It was like trying to wrangle a lead pipe into a new position, he was so hard, and nothing he’d done in the last seven days had changed it.
Colt was sitting at the table on the other side of the room. Head bent over a sheet of paper, he didn’t even look up from his sketch. “Stop playing with that damn thing.”
Mates: Prequel (Claws Clause Book 0) Page 2