Better Mate Than Never (New Adult Werewolf Romance) by Adriana Hunter Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes flicked briefly over them. “Good, Blair. You have her.”
    “Nice to see
you too, Randy. You got it?”
    Randy nodded,
wordlessly passed it over, and Paige backed up at the sight of the large, thin needle.
    “Oh no. No,
no, no. Please, you don’t have to do this. I’ll cooperate, I’ll go anywhere you
want me to.”
    The creature
grinned. “Sorry, but the boss man is a little leery of you after you shot their
friend in the neck. We’re taking no chances here.” Randy came to stood behind
her, grabbing her roughly, reaching around to grip her chest, holding her in a
bear hug that left her desperate to breathe, as she struggled against him. He
smelled of sweat and grease, and his chest rumbled as he roared with laughter
at her attempts to be freed.
    Blair moved
quickly, grabbing her arm and pushing the sharp needle deep into her flesh.
     “Ahh, yes…there
you go,” he said soothingly as her head started to spin. Her body reacted
quickly to whatever was in the syringe and she began to sway, still in the grip
of Randy’s strong arms.
    “Don’t worry.
We’ll be there before you know it. And then the real fun will begin.”
    His cruel
laughter chased her as she sank into blackness.
     
    *
     
    Caleb paced
back and forth in Adam’s living room, struggling mightily against the desire to
punch a hole in the wall. He’d already ripped Matt a new one, and would do the
same to Ryan, who was downstairs in the medical room being treated for his
injuries. His spine had been cracked by the force of the blow—whatever
had thrown him had been strong enough that the tree trunk Ryan had slammed into
had been split in two.
    What the
hell had come after him that was so powerful it could sling his men around as
if they were children? Whatever it was, it had Paige now. His palms grew
sweaty at the thought of her being at the mercy of such a beast. God, what had
he done? He should have never left her alone.
    “Stop blaming
yourself,” Adam ordered as he stepped into the room. “The only thing that might
have changed if you had been there is that you’d be the one laying on a
hospital bed instead of Ryan.” The vein pulsing in the clan leader’s temple
told Caleb he wasn’t nearly as calm as he sounded. “Matt and I have finally
figured out who these goons are.”
    “You have?” Caleb
stopped pacing and turned his full attention to Adam. “Tell me,” he demanded.
     “The
two shifters who attacked you and Paige in the alley are deserters from the
Columbia shifter clan… or at least, that’s the surface story.”
    “What does
that mean?”
    “They didn’t
so much as desert their clan but disappeared off the map completely. One day
the two of them were gone. Their mother had just died of a serious illness, so
some speculated that maybe they’d just gone mad with grief. They’d never shown
signs of discontent with their clan before, but when they never came back the
clan just wrote them off as deserters.”
    “Adam, I’m
not really interested in their backstory,” Caleb said tightly. “They took Paige
and all I care about is finding out how I can get her back.”
    “If you’ll
calm down long enough to think this through, you’ll realize this information
about them is relevant. Or don’t you remember a certain warlock with a penchant
for collecting superhuman creatures for his menagerie?”
    “Darius?” Oh
God. “But that’s impossible. My father killed him nearly fifty years ago.”
    “Doesn’t mean
he didn’t have an offspring or prodigy following in his footsteps.”
    “Fuck.” Caleb
scooped his hands through his hair. If it had been a fellow lycan he could have
just tracked him down by scent. But a warlock was a whole other story. “This is
all just speculation at this point though, Caleb. We don’t really know if these
two are enslaved by a warlock, or if Darius did have an apprentice loyal enough
to seek vengeance so many years later.”
    “No. But I
did manage to track down the place