DUD FOR A MÀTÉ ~~~

ALEXANDER POV ~~~

"FÚÇKING let me shift, Xander." I screamed at my wolf. He doesn't, refusing to hurt her, even though she was fúçking tearing shreds off me. I grabbed the fur on the back of her neck, ripping her head away, her teeth pulled away from my arm painfully.

“ENOUGH!” I scream at her, forcing my Alpha aura over her to make her submit. She whimpered, going limp in my grip. My blood-stained the cave floor as it ran down my arm and dripped off my fingers.

I let her go, and she dropped her head on her paws, whimpering. Standing up, I reach down to grab her and force her to shift when she turns on me. Her teeth snapped at my hand before she took off running from the cave.

An annoyed growl left me at this game of cat and mouse. She won’t escape me this time. Turning around, I find Tim still frozen on the ground, having not moved an inch.

“Help me catch her, and I will let you live another day,” I tell him. He nods, all too eager to get up.

“She enjoys hiding in the caves,” he says, and I nod while walking out.

“The others? Who are they to her?” I ask him. He looked behind us as we walked out of the cave.

“Her parents,” he mumbled, giving me a nervous glance. FUCK!

I followed her scent. Tim looked around anxiously at every noise. Every snap of a twig had him jumping. His nervousness had me confused. What could he possibly be scared of with me beside him?

Coming to another cave entrance, we could hear the feral sounds of a fight. I could smell blood, her blood, along with the blood of a bear. Xander pressed against my skin. Fur sprouted along my arms as he fought for control. Control I wasn’t willing to give him yet.

As I walked into the cave, my eyes adapted to the endless darkness. The pungent smell became stronger when the growls suddenly stopped.

The sound of a high-pitched whimper makes my heart jolt for a second until we stumble across the bear. Torn to pieces, its fur lying in clumps on the cave floor.

Tim notices the dead bear a little too late as he trips over its fallen form. A shriek of fear left him before I gripped his arm, pulling him from the torn-up remains, his body drenched in the blood of the huge bear.

Surely she didn’t do that, as I looked down at its torn-out guts spilling over the ground, organs ruptured and on display. I could tell her blood had been spilled too, her scent everywhere as we continued our trek through the winding caves. Tim jumped at every noise irritating me.

“Why are you so jumpy, nothing to fear in these caves except myself,” I tell him, and he stops looking at me.

“I would rather take on you than her,” he says, making my brows furrow in confusion. He was scared of my little mate? Standing next to a hybrid, and he is scared of a she-wolf?

“Just hurry up, before we lose her scent,” I tell him, pushing him ahead where I can keep an eye on him.

The cave comes out on another side of the mountain, a side that I actually recognized as RED RIVER PACK TERRITORY.

Looking out at the forest, I know she must have headed for the road crossing between packs. Jumping over a fallen tree, I listened, looking for any sound I could pick up, listening for the sound of paws on the dirt. Only I got nothing, not even a whiff of her scent.

Not a single sound. I never met a rogue that wasn’t happy to find their mate, especially one from a pack. Most would jump at the chance to be taken into the safety of being in a pack, instead of surviving off their hunting skills and ability to survive in the wild.

I found it odd she was going to the extremes of taking on a bear just to evade me. Slowly trekking through the forest, careful not to make much noise, though noise was inevitable in a forest this thick.

“How long have you known them for?” I whispered to Tim.

“Not long, they came with the hunters.” He says, making me stop.

So my mate is one of the ones helping the humans. I couldn't stop the growl that escaped my lips. Once again, THE MOON GODDESS CURSED ME WITH A DUD FOR A MATE. Bad enough, she is a rogue, now she is a traitor to our own kind.

“YOU KNOW HER NAME?” I ask him.

“Never spoke to her, never seen her either, only her wolf.” He says, forcing me to stop again. Something was definitely amiss, exactly what is my mate hiding or, more importantly, who is she hiding from?

We moved through the forest for around ten minutes, before I picked up her faint scent. She can mask her scent, but not her blood, and she was running directly toward Tate’s Pack. Smart girl, she backtracked. Using the mind-link, I summon Tate and Drake.

“She is about to hit your Pack edge. I think she is heading for the road.,” I tell them.

“On it, are you sure it's her?” Drake asks.

“Positive,” I tell him before taking off, leaving Tim behind to follow my scent. If he is smart, he will follow or die by Tate’s warriors.

Zipping through the trees and jumping over fallen debris and rocks, I can just see the road coming into my line of vision through the trees, Tate and Drake's black wolves running toward me when I spot her white fur. They herded her back toward me, and now I was going to catch her.

Picking up my pace, I manage to get right on her tail, tackling her, and we roll. She pivots just in time, her teeth sinking into my shoulder, her claws ripping down my bicep before we both hit a tree, sliding along the leaves.

I tried to keep a grip on her, but she managed to slip out from under me and run for the road, which was about twenty meters away......