Steel: Blue Collar Wolves #3 (Mating Season Collection) by Ronin Winters, Mating Season Collection Read Free Book Online Page B

that you think you hide but I see it so clearly. I see your compassion and warm heart and your deviousness and your cunning, calculating side, and I love it all.”
    He swallowed, turned then, as if it was hurting him to look at her. “But you don’t know how you feel about me, and you staying here won’t make things clear for you. The only way you’ll know is by having the freedom to walk out that door, knowing you never have to come back through it.”
    “I’m a hunter. I could bring others.”
    “If anyone comes to hurt us, we’ll fight them. Otherwise, we do as we always do. We leave people be.” His head tilted back, and he drew a deep breath. “I’m not looking at you again because if I do, I’ll fold. I’ll grab you up and never let you go. If you want to meet the woman, call that number. The person on the other end will arrange it. And if you decide to come back to me, the door is always open for you.”
    Regan’s throat went tight, and as Steel walked towards the front of the house she called, “How long will you wait?”
    Without pausing, he said, “That’s a stupid question.”

Chapter Twelve
    ‡
    H er mother’s red hair was duller, streaked with grey, and the face had more lines than in Regan’s memory, but otherwise the woman before her was a near copy of those last moments spent in the kitchen – before she went to bed, before the gunshots, before the shouting, before her father screaming revenge and before her world became soaked in blood as red as her family’s hair.
    It had taken her weeks to get to this point, debates within herself with the scale sliding both ways, veering between she can’t be alive and but what if she is . She hadn’t told Bethie, both because she was afraid she wouldn’t find her mother, and because she was afraid she would. She would be the one to go forth and discover, as always.
    And now she was here, with the impossibly dead woman standing smaller before her, chin lifted high and mouth tight. No greetings for her eldest daughter. No tears. Only a straight back and set jaw and rebellion within her frame.
    “We thought you were dead.” The words burst forth, a tsunami of fear and hope and missing within them. “We searched and we prayed, but we never found you. All Dad ever found was blood. He saw the wolf shift, and after we found out what happened with kidnapped women we assumed…”
    Regan’s words choked in her throat. Her mother stayed where she was, not lifting a hand or walking a step towards her. Her words were a long time in coming, with a voice tight and low. “You weren’t supposed to know about the wolves. That was an accident. I wanted you all to be able to move on with your lives, so I thought it would be best to make you think I was dead.”
    “You left willingly? Without us?” Regan’s voice was a broken wing of a baby bird, fluttering and helpless in the wind. “You’re telling me he didn’t kidnap you? You left us on your own?”
    “His name is Rafe, and we’re true mates. You know enough about wolves to know what that means.”
    “I know all about wolves, all about true mates, and I guarantee, it doesn’t mean you leave your kids .” Of all possible outcomes, until this very moment, Regan hadn’t realized this was the worst possible one. Anything’s better than dead , and fool her actually believed that. A mother alive but willingly abandoning her? Leaving Bethie ? For what, a man, a true mate? Mel wiping Danny’s face as her two true mates looked on, their smiles of the wolves directed at both of them. Neither put up with Danny just to get to his mother. Without a doubt, they’d tear out anyone’s throat who suggested such a thing. Without a doubt, Mel would have kicked Brick and House in the balls and left them without a backwards glance if either of them made her think that was the case.
    Her mother stood there, tall, unflinching, prepared for the guillotine. “I had to leave, and it wouldn’t have been possible