The Reluctant Mate

Porter

Amanda was late getting home, and I didn’t let it bother me. Sometimes she stopped to grab groceries or coffee or something else on the way home. I was being paranoid and she didn’t like that, so I forced myself not to overreact.

Once she was an hour late, I texted her. She didn’t respond, and the text remained unread. My wolf was uneasy, and I was getting nervous. She was usually quite fast with responding unless she was driving.

Once it had been long enough to rule that out, I gave up trying not to worry. I started by mind linking the people Amanda usually hung around with in the pack, and by texting Amanda’s friends and casually asking if anyone knew where she was. Then I called her work, and they said that she had left at her normal time.

“Jason,” I said through our link, “Amanda is late and no one knows where she is. I need to drive into town to see if she broke down or something.”

“Go find her, let me know when you do.”

“Will do.”

Two minutes later I was driving off of pack territory, desperately hoping that I’d find her with a flat tire along the side of the highway, and was disappointed in my hopes. My next hope was that she would be in the parking lot at work with car issues and a dead phone to explain why she wasn’t responding.

I drove around the parking lot and was relieved and then stunned to find her car still there, but no Amanda. Even worse, her car door was unlocked and barely ajar, and there were groceries sitting in the back seat. I glanced through the bags, some of the items perishable. She wouldn’t buy milk and leave it in a hot car intentionally.

Pulling out my phone, I called Jason. “Her car’s here, groceries going bad, and she’s nowhere to be seen.”

Jason cursed. “Check the area to make sure it’s not just a misunderstanding.”

“I will.”

I texted her again, and tried to call her while I searched the store and the area around it. I could smell her in a few places, but it was a faint, fading odor that told me it had been a while since she had been there. Much of the trail had already been covered by the multitude of scents of other humans.

I called Jason again. “No sign of her anywhere around here.”

“Come back to territory then, we’re working on something. We’ll explain when you get back.”

My wolf wasn’t interested in obeying my alpha. He wanted to come out and search for her with sharper senses, but I knew it was probably futile. If someone had taken her, it would have been in a vehicle, and there was no way to track that trail. I wished I could sense her direction from me.

At least the bond hadn’t snapped, which meant she was alive.

I drove home, trying not to rouse the human’s notice by speeding too fast. A text flashed across my screen, and I glanced at it and saw it was from her.

Hitting the breaks, I pulled over and hit the screen to see what she said.

Amanda: It’s not working between us. We’re over. Don’t look for me.

My wolf howled at the words before I had a chance to think rationally, but I pushed away the instinct as I accelerated back to full speed. Even if she did want to leave me, she knew that she had to completely break the bond via a proper rejection, and it was obvious that whoever had dared to text this had no idea about the fact she was the mate of a werewolf. And she wasn’t going to abandon her car just to leave me, and even if she was angry at me I doubted she would leave Uno or Carrie, Krystal, or Kain without a second glance, either.

No, this was a really poor attempt to cover a trail. I was going to find this person and kill them for threatening her.

I couldn’t get home fast enough. Jason and Michael were waiting as I slammed into park and jumped out. “What’s the plan?” There better be a plan. My wolf was hanging on by a thin thread.

“Vampires.”

“Took her?” I would kill every bloodsucker I could get my teeth into.

“No, calm down.” We strode back to the pack house as he explained further. “Carrie’s talking with Nathaniel right now and they traced the last place that Amanda’s cell phone pinged, five minutes ago.”

Probably when I had gotten that fake text. I couldn’t wait to catch the person who took her. He or she would beg for death before I was done. Once inside we headed straight for Carrie’s office. “Yes, we’ll be in touch. Thanks again.” She hung up, and wordlessly handed me coordinates that were east of the city.

Everyone was in a flurry of motion, but for me it was as if time stood still. Everyone we could spare was coming along to search the area or to travel further ahead in case they’d ditched her phone and kept going.

“Be careful,” Carrie said, her hand on her growing stomach, as she leaned to kiss Jason. “We don’t know what you’re walking into.”

“I’ll be fine. Make sure everyone here stays on guard, this could be a decoy.” He kissed her again quickly and jumped in the truck. I jumped in the other side and Lee and Krystal in the back, trying not to begrudge him this small moment of affection when my mate was missing. We didn’t know what we were walking into.

As we drove, we debated the possible culprits. Of course, her ex was my go to suspect because I was biased in favour of wanting to kill him either way, but Jason believed Bluegorge might have gotten wind of what we were planning and might be making an attempt to distract us or frame us. Either way, I was happy to kill whoever had my mate.

As Jason drove, I coordinated with the other groups on who would search the highway. I had a feeling about the signal, and I wanted to find it.

Eight of us shifted into our wolf forms to comb the area, searching for any traces of her scent. I ran through the forest, praying that we’d find her before something worse than being stolen happened to her.