Rejected And Claimed By Her Trio Alpha Mates

chapter 23

Little wisps shoot outward and dissipate into smoke. Within seconds, nothing’s left.

I’m lying on the tabletop, my legs splayed and my t-shirt riding up on my stomach as I breathe heavily through the pain. My fingers are still curled around my knife, but it’s more out of a need to squeeze something so I can ignore that the skin on my wrist is scalded with third-degree burns.

The blond man glances at me. He’s not even winded. His expression is hard to read, though his piercing blue eyes glitter darkly as his gaze sweeps down my way-too-exposed body.

Then he lunges past me, throwing the curtains aside as he leaps through the window.

Startled, I leap to my feet and stumble over my own legs to follow. I throw back the curtains to find the window open, a cool, desert breeze blowing inside. That’s how the fucker got in my room. I didn’t even think to check that it was locked before I went to sleep.

His hair shines in the moonlight as he sprints through the motel lot.

No time for hesitation. I throw a leg over the edge of the windowsill and drop to the sidewalk, then shift into wolf form to take off after him.

I’m either running on fury or determination, and the emotions are so similar I can’t tell the difference. But I’m not letting this guy get away. I don’t know what the f**k is going on—why that shadow attacked me or why Blondie boy ended up in my bedroom—but I’m getting answers.

No matter how far I have to run.

Blondie vanishes under the overhang of a dark gas station—apparently closed for the night—and when he re-emerges in the moonlight, he’s no longer human, but a giant blond wolf. He barrels into the street and heads for the shopping center, toward the outskirts of town where the wilderness will give him places to hide.

I spare a glance both ways before crossing the street, since I’m not really interested in getting flattened by a late night car, then go full throttle. My burned wrist aches, and I feel every pounding of my foot on the ground through the raw, sensitive nerve endings. I push through the pain anyway, my sight trained on the wolf ahead of me.

Blondie’s fast. Too fast. He swings wide around the shopping center and vanishes into the trees.

I put on a burst of speed, ignoring the pain in my paw. When I hit the grass, it dulls the pounding enough to clear my head, and I glance around the forest for my mate.

Only darkness and the murmur of the wind through the trees. At least when Kian crashed through the forest, I could hear his big, bumbling body in the brush and follow him based on sound alone.

This guy has vanished like a phantom.

Putting my nose to the ground, I sniff around in the area where I saw him leave the pavement. I pick up a hint of him after several seconds, and I’m floored by the smell—contrary to his pale, icy good looks, Blondie smells spicy and warm, like the steam rising off a mug of chai tea. The scent sends a thrill through me, and my wolf whines for him. She wants him for reasons contrary to what I’m here for, and she is not winning that battle.

I take off into the trees after him with my nose to the ground. I don’t need to see to follow scent markings, so I just rush through the undergrowth, testing the ground every few feet to make sure I’m still locked onto Blondie’s scent. But I hardly make it half a mile before his trail goes cold.

Frustration makes my fur bristle, and I let out a long, angry howl.

Again.

How did both Kian and this guy cover their scents so thoroughly?

They were both right in the palm of my hand today, and I lost them. I turn a couple more useless circles before finally giving up.

I return to the motel at a slower pace than I left it, limping on my burned wrist. Now that the rush of adrenaline has faded, all of my aches and pains from fighting Kian earlier today have returned. I feel chewed up, spit out, and left to die.

Which reminds me—if Blondie hadn’t shown up in my room… maybe I would have.

Or maybe because Blondie showed up in my room, he put my life in danger. Living shadows have never tried to kill me before, after all. Seems a little suspect to me.

Back outside the motel, I realize climbing through the window after Blondie had been a stupid idea, given the fact the door was right there. I shift to human form, glad it’s the dead of night and no one seems to have heard the commotion. So no one’s around to see the crazy naked lady climbing through a motel room window. I grimace as I haul my beat-up ass back through the window, then turn around and lock it behind me.

I turn on the light that dangles over the table and grimace at the state of my room. I hadn't realized it was happening in the fury of the fight, but we made a mess of the place. I right both chairs at the table, then pick up the dislodged alarm clock and return it to the nightstand, as well as my water glass and wallet. There are knife marks in the headboard, on the wall, and on the table.

Not a chance in hell I can explain that to the manager. At least I didn’t pay with a credit card. Maybe I can slip out before the staff notices and tries to make me pay for damages.

I turn on every light in the room—both globes over the bed, the strip of buzzing fluorescents over the sink, the combination light-and-fan in the shower, the sound of which makes my teeth hurt. Then I check for shadow beings who want to kill me, but there don’t appear to be anymore lying in wait.

At the sink, I run cold water over my burned wrist, hissing at the pain. It looks better than it feels, probably because shifting sped the healing process. But the skin is still fairly mangled in a strange approximation of a handprint.

I wasn’t able to hurt the shadow, so how was it able to hurt me?

I clean up the wound as best I can, then bandage it up before I crawl back into bed. A night of rest and letting my natural healing stitch me up is just what I need, because tomorrow, I’m going to find my mates. All three of them.

They’re nearby. I know it.

Just in case, I leave all the lights on.