Alpha Hayley's Destined Mate novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Hauler

Locked in her hauler with Torrey, Hayley hears his story, refuses his offer to be her mate and kisses him anyway, until she learns the pack has surrounded them.

For one second nobody in the pit lot breathed.

Then thirty wolves moved at once.

Tow drivers in coveralls, two women from the concession stand and the boys who work the gate all came forward.

Their lips came off their teeth, and the yellow came up in their eyes.

Torrey didn't turn around. He kept looking at my shoulder.

"Down," I said.

It hit them.

Every head in the lot dropped. One growl stopped halfway out of a throat.

Lon didn't lower his eyes.

He's the Beta, and a Beta only has to bend so far.

He smiled at me over the hood of his Cadillac.

I grabbed Torrey by the front of his white shirt and hauled him toward my hauler.

He let me. That was worse.

Myra held the side door. I shoved him up the steps and slammed it behind us.

The hauler smelled like race fuel and hot rubber and him.

A wrench fell off the tool wall and rang on the floor.

"Say it again," I said.

"They're mine."

"My father died that night. I woke up on the bank with your scent all over me."

"I know. I put it there."

He didn't come any closer. He kept his hands where I could see them.

"I pulled you out of the Kern by your left shoulder," he said. "My wolf had you in his claws. The river kept trying to take you back. I didn't let go."

"Liar."

"I don't lie, Hayley. Ask anybody on my mountain."

"Nobody on your mountain is worth asking."

He almost smiled. Then he didn't.

"There was a rogue in the canyon that night. A grey. Bigger than me. He killed my grandfather a month before, on our land. I tracked him down the mountain to your river."

"There's no grey rogue. There's you."

He reached into his shirt pocket and held out his hand.

On his palm lay a silver cap for a wolf's fang, black at the root with old blood.

My skin itched just from being near it.

His palm under it was red and blistered. He'd been carrying it against his own skin.

"I knocked that out of his mouth," he said. "He had your father down on the rocks."

I couldn't look away from it.

My father's throat had been torn open, and the wound never closed, not even a little.

Everybody said it was strange.

Silver doesn't let a wolf heal.

"Your uncle's men came down the bank with rifles," Torrey said. "I could smell the silver rounds from the water. They'd have shot me on sight, and nobody would have hunted him. So I ran."

"You ran."

"Yes."

He put the cap back in his pocket.

"Take me as your mate," he said. "Out there, tonight, in front of them. It voids the challenge."

I laughed. It came out ugly.

"I'd rather die."

"That's what happens if you walk into that ring."

"I can take Cleve."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he said, very quietly, "You can't shift."

The hauler went silent around me.

"My scars burn every time you're close," I said. "So what?"

"So your wolf should have come up to meet mine. She didn't. She's under ice somewhere."

I slapped him.

It was a good one.

His head didn't move.

The mark came up red on his cheek.

He just stood there and let it.

"Get out of my head," I said.

"I'm not in your head."

"Get out of my hauler."

"Okay."

He didn't move. Neither did I.

I don't know which of us went first. I think it was me.

I had his shirt in both fists again, and then his mouth was on mine.

It wasn't sweet. It was furious.

I kissed him.

He made a sound in his chest and turned us, and my back hit the tool wall.

Every wrench on it rattled.

His hands went under my tank top and spread across my ribs, rough from engine work.

Then one hand slid around to my back and covered the three scars.

They went hot under his palm, so hot I gasped into his mouth.

He pulled back an inch.

"Say you don't feel that," he said.

"Shut up."

I bit his lower lip. He groaned and lifted me up the wall with one arm.

My legs went around his waist. I pulled his shirt open, and two buttons hit the floor.

His skin was hot. His heart was slamming under my hand.

Mine, something in me said. Mine.

I hated it. I kissed him harder.

His mouth went down my jaw, slow, then to my bare shoulder, then to the top of the first scar.

My whole body shook.

The door banged so hard the hauler rocked.

"Hayley!" Myra's fist hit it again. "Hayley, open up!"

I tore my mouth away.

Torrey set me down.

His hands stayed on my waist a second too long.

I yanked my tank top straight and opened the door a crack.

Myra's glasses were crooked. Her face was white.

"Lon's out there telling everybody the Ossler who killed your daddy is in your hauler with you," she said. "He's got them worked up. It's the whole pack, Hayley. They're all the way around us."

Behind her, in the floodlights, I saw them.

A ring of my own people, three deep around my hauler.

And some of them had already started to shift.

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