A Mate's Denial: Read Free

didn’t like meeting his friend in the middle of nowhere, but if life had taught Trager anything, it was that there was safety in secrets. His home was a secret. No one knew its location and he planned to keep it that way.
    Tonight, they were due to meet again. He’d planned on warning Farrow about the threat to his pack, but his friend didn’t show. That left Trager with one more option before his hail Mary play. If this worked, he wouldn’t have to bring his mate—there was no way her name was really Sam Adams—into the mix. If there was any possible way to leave her out of this mess, he’d do it.
    Which is why he found himself pacing outside the borders of his former pack’s land, just after midnight.
    Trager had run all the way from Joplin to the Ozark national forest, and not only because his bike was dead. His wolf needed to burn off steam, and a two hundred mile run seemed like the best option at the time. Now, Trager was just as frustrated as when he’d started except he was tired too.
    Fur ruffling in the night breeze, h e paced another round. Nudged a rock with his nose. They’d probably already scented him, but he couldn’t cross the borders. All he could do was wait for them to show, and hope they didn’t try to kill him.
    His ears twitched with the rustling of tree leaves. His wolf nose drew in the faintly familiar scent of others like him. Wolf shifters. Many of them. At least ten.
    Ten to one, if they tried to kill him. Best to play it safe.
    Trager put his paws forward and brought his nose to the ground, his hind legs pulled inward, and his tail tucked. He was the picture of sweet submission. Yielding to people who had forsaken him felt like hide being ripped off. The only thing that kept his nose to the ground was the thought of his sister’s safety.
    Several pregnant minutes passed before three large wolves emerged from the thick brush. Trager didn’t look them in the eye, but he recognized them. The black one with the golden eyes and scarred ear was Vesh, the pack’s fiercest hunter. Avan, a white wolf, was the smallest of the three. A female, a few years older than Trager, she wouldn’t be here unless she was a boundary defender. She must have grown to be ferocious. The last wolf was a unique combination of brown, red, and black.
    Farrow.
    This could be a good sign. With Farrow here, maybe this could work.
    Trager held very still as the black wolf creeped forward. A barely contained growl, rumbled in Vesh’s throat. He circled Trager, sniffing the ground around him. When he came back to Trager’s face, he released a threatening snarl.
    Don’t lunge, don’t lunge . If Trager attacked the guard, this whole thing would be ruined. Not to mention, he didn’t stand a chance against these wolves when several more of them lurked in the woods, waiting to bite his head off. He locked his jaw to prevent himself from responding with his own roar.
    Trager kept his prone pose while the other two guards circled him. Farrow’s jaw snapping near Trager’s nose gave him an odd sense of pride for his friend, even as it felt like another knife in the back.
    The whole thing went on for too long. He had things he needed to tell them, and they were wasting the night away sniffing his ass and grow ling. Trager’s patience was on its last string when the three of them finally shifted, letting their wolves fall away.
    Trager remained as he was.
    “You’re not welcome here.” Vesh’s snarl was almost as bad in this form as his wolf’s. “Go now, and you’ll live.”
    Trager considered the warning. Although his life was pretty damn important to him, so was what he had to say. And waiting to be told he could shift was getting him nowhere.
    Slowly, so they wouldn’t think he meant to attack, h e stood to his full wolf height and changed. It felt good to stretch, and to be back in his body after such a long run.
    Vesh scowled. “What do you want, straggler?”
    Trager ignored the insult. “I need to