The Logical Girl’s Guide to Mating with a Werewolf (Mate Hunted #5)

Chapter 1

one

ZOE

I sat in my car, staring at my best friend’s ridiculously pink house with my hands on the steering wheel, and wondered what the hell I had been thinking.

This was the craziest thing I could possibly do.

And yet, there I was.

Doing it anyway.

I let out a slow breath through my nose and adjusted the sleeves of my oversized sweatshirt.

The pop music playing on my radio said something about sex.

My decision had nothing to do with that, even though sex would likely be unavoidable.

Everything was about my safety.

Security.

Well-being.

Hell, my sanity, too. Which was clearly lacking at the moment.

Even considering what I was thinking about made me a terrible person, and I hadn’t just considered it. I’d planned for it. Taken time off work. There was even a fucking vision board.

I dragged a hand over my face.

I was an awful human being.

I’d be an even worse werewolf.

Emmy stepped out of her house, chatting animatedly with the gigantic man whose hand she was holding. He had a book tucked under his other arm. It was a romance book about dragons and vampires, the first in the Burning Kingdom series.

I’d liked it.

It was a good distraction, at the very least.

Distraction was necessary when you were planning to make a truly horrible decision. Like I was.

Emmy waved at me, and I let out a slow breath.

Was I really doing this?

Fuck.

It wasn’t too late to change my mind, but… well, it kind of was.

And what was the other option?

Just accept the awful fate my parents were trying to force on me?

Not a chance.

I was going to have to get myself mated to a werewolf.

Of course, my plan might not work.

I couldn’t force anything.

The odds were in my favor, but that wasn’t a guarantee.

I got out of my car in time for Emmy to hug me, and tried to enjoy the moment.

It might be the last time my best friend considered showing me any affection for a long time.

When she figured out why I’d finally agreed to go to her werewolf mate’s book club, she was going to freak out. I was fairly certain she would make the same call if she had been in my situation, but that wouldn’t stop her from being furious with me for keeping it from her.

And for being a terrible person.

I’d deserve her wrath when it arrived.

On second thought, I’d deserve the wrath of all four of my friends who were mated to guys in the pack.

I’d have to come up with a strategy to manage that afterward.

For now, I needed to focus on the plan.

Emmy held my hand as she dragged me through the forest, headed to the clearing where they apparently always held their pack’s book club.

Mentally, I ran through the steps of my plan while I forced myself to participate in Emmy and Finn’s conversation. Luckily, the lovebirds—er, wolves—were too obsessed with each other to notice that I was acting a little off.

I forced my breathing to stay even. I really needed to take my anxiety meds, but they made me fall asleep, so that wasn’t an option at the moment.

You would think the dozen panic attacks I already had about this book club meeting would’ve forced me to work through my nerves.

They hadn’t.

So I just tried to keep breathing.

It felt like I was walking toward my death, but I tried to remind myself that this was my only shot at real survival.

Everyone else was already gathered. I could hear them talking and laughing as we approached. Emmy was always late, and I’d waited for her, so that was to be expected.

Finn probably could’ve helped her be more on time, but I genuinely didn’t think he cared that they were the last to arrive to literally everything.

Emmy had told me multiple times about how mate bonds were created.

It was really simple—you just had to look a werewolf guy in the eyes.

If fate wanted you to be together, when your eyes met, theirs would turn red.

The werewolf would then shift, and he’d be trapped in his wolf form until he decided to bite the woman.

That part of the process was called the Mate Hunt.

I needed to skip over that when I enacted my plan. The length of a mate hunt was an uncontrollable variable, so I had to remove it.

From my friends’ stories, I’d put it together that stressing out the hunting wolf was the best way to get them to bite you sooner than they otherwise would’ve.

When I’d carefully pressed for information about what bothered male wolves from my friends, my plan had come together pretty easily.

Ignoring the squeezing pressure in my chest and my shallow breathing, I forced my gaze to move over the werewolves sitting around a fire pit.

Abby and Nico were on the left. They were the first couple to form from our friend group and the Feral Pack. They’d been together more than a year, and were still obsessed with each other.

Jade and Wyatt were next to them. I had a hard time seeing how their relationship worked at first, but it hadn’t taken long to understand. He clearly thought she was brilliant, and she seemed to love talking to him.

Austin and Enzo were in the center of the circle. They were chatting easily with Stella and Graham, who were on their other side. Both couples looked incredibly relaxed, and out of the four of them, not a single one was wearing shoes.

Next to them, there were two men. They were the only two guys I might end up mated to, and Emmy had shown me pictures of them as well as described their personalities.

The one on the right was Ethan. He was staring at me. He had golden hair and skin, and his lips were stretched in a grin. Emmy told me his smiles never met his eyes. Everyone knew he was going through something, but he refused to talk about it.

That made me curious about him… but I’d never been the kind of woman who hoped to find a broken guy to fix.

I wanted someone who had already fixed himself.

Beggars couldn’t be choosers, though, and I was most definitely at the point of begging. If fate wanted to give me the hot blond guy, I’d make it work somehow.

Making it work was far preferable to the alternative.

Ethan held my gaze.

I gave it a few seconds, to see if the strange werewolf mating magic had a delay or something.

One…

Two…

Three…

Yeah, that was a no.

My heart sank. Just a little.

I bit my lip.

One more chance. That was all I had.

I looked at the guy next to Ethan. According to Emmy, the two men’s personalities were extremely different. Their looks confirmed it. Both men were verifiable giants compared to human guys, but other than that, they were quite different.

Ethan was clean-shaven, wearing nice jeans and a t-shirt, and had put on a fake smile.

Connor’s chin was scruffy. His wavy brown hair was at least six inches longer than my straight, collarbone-length blonde strands, and while mine hung smoothly, his was tied up in a wild bun on top of his head.

He looked insanely relaxed in his chair, wearing just a pair of basketball shorts. I couldn’t even imagine being that comfortable.

It would probably feel amazing.

Ethan said something, and Connor’s head turned toward me.

My last chance had arrived.

Please let this work.

His eyes met mine, and I felt something. I had no words to describe the sensation.

His eyes went red.

His lips moved.

It had worked.

Holy fuck, it had actually worked.

For a moment, I was overwhelmed with excitement.

It faded quickly, though. Because the next part of my plan sucked. It sucked really, extraordinarily badly.

Now or never.

Vaguely, I heard familiar voices say something. Connor’s mouth wasn’t moving, though, and he hadn’t shifted yet. So whoever was talking wasn’t my priority.

The plan was a go.

I took a step back.

Connor’s wolf snarled through him.

Guess the beast wasn’t as comfortable as the man.

Granted, that could be my fault, considering what I was about to do.

With a soft breath out and a bite down on the inside of my cheek to fight the panic making my heart pound, I spun around.

And I sprinted into the forest as fast as I possibly could.

I nearly tripped as I flew through a few bushes, ignoring the burn of what had to be cuts on my legs. The fabric of my leggings was too thin to protect me from nature.

The wolf had to be catching me.

I pushed myself harder.

My heart beat wildly.

A few minutes passed.

Then a few more.

I jerked my head to look over my shoulder, and nearly screamed when I saw the wolf literally at my heels.

He no longer looked pissed.

Now he looked like he was just… following me.

What the hell?

My right foot collided with a massive rock, and I screamed in pain as I went down.

Hard.

A massive, thorny bush tore my skin as I fell into it face first. My cheeks burned with cuts, the pain in my right leg so fierce that my eyes stung and breathing grew even harder. Thinking straight wasn’t happening. My eyes were leaking badly.

Something was definitely broken.

Maybe a few somethings.

That wasn’t part of the plan.

I couldn’t remember exactly what was part of the plan, at the moment. But breaking myself definitely wasn’t part of it.

Connor’s wolf whined, shoving his head into the bush with me so our eyes met.

“You were supposed to bite me when I ran from you,” I moaned through the pain.

My face was definitely bleeding too.

The wolf looked confused.

I shouldn’t have acknowledged the plan aloud.

The wolf licked the wounds on my face gently. My tears, too.

I lowered my head to my arm and closed my eyes, trying to get myself together.

The pain was probably fate’s payback for my awful mating plan. I deserved it.

Whether or not I was going to make it out of the forest was currently very much up in the air.

Emmy’s tailbone had healed when Finn’s wolf turned her into a werewolf, so getting Connor’s to bite me was the only way.

But the wolf didn’t seem inclined to chomp down on any part of me.

He was still licking the blood away from my face gently.

He whined.

“Bite me,” I gritted out. “Please.”

The wolf whined again.

This.

Was.

Not.

The.

Plan.

He nudged my arm, and carefully slipped his head beneath it.

I bit back a cry of pain as he worked his head beneath my chest, then his back.

He was trying to lift me on top of him. To get me out of the bush.

He made a soft, rumbly noise that I was pretty sure was supposed to be comforting. My leg hurt too badly to feel any way about the sound.

The wolf slowly eased me out of the bush, inch by inch. The pain was so brutal, I blacked out for a few seconds.

Eventually, I was free of the sharp branches and stabbing thorns.

Connor’s wolf lowered me from his back. I landed lightly on my hands and knees, my body shaking almost violently as I struggled to hold myself up.

He nuzzled the side of my neck with his face.

I was breathing too hard to respond. Or even really notice.

The wolf’s nose bumped my shoulder, then arm.

Then my hip.

I cried out when his teeth cut into my waist, but a small amount of relief followed.

He’d bitten me.

That was the plan.

There would be an end to the pain in my ankle. All I had to do was survive a minute or two of shifting. Emmy said it wasn’t bad, and—

A bone in my back snapped.

A blood-curdling scream filled the air.

HOLY FUCKING FUCK.

That was worse than the ankle.

Way worse than the ankle.

Way, way worse than the ankle.

More cracking sounded.

More pain exploded.

I swayed as my vision grew spotty.

I was going to pass out.

Would I wake up at all?

Anything to make the pain go away.

Just before everything went black, a pair of warm hands wrapped around my face.

Deep brown eyes met mine. They were dark enough to get lost in, but steady. So fucking steady.

“You’re going to be fine, Zoe. Take a breath,” a low, smooth voice said calmly.

I tried. Desperately. Only a tiny amount of air entered and left my lungs.

“Good girl. Take another one.”

The praise dragged my mind right to the gutter. It was enough of a distraction that I managed another small inhale before the air escaped again.

“Just like that.” Connor’s eyes bobbed as he nodded lightly. “One more.”

I sucked in more air, and automatically let it out.

There was another snap.

I screamed, and my arms grew too weak to hold me up.

Connor’s hands left my face in time to break my fall by lifting me into his arms. Onto his lap.

Somehow, I was conscious enough to wonder if he was hard. Not enough to feel it if he was, though.

“Take another breath.” His voice was more commanding, this time.

I obeyed. It was shallow again.

“Listen closely, Gorgeous,” he said. “You’re fighting the wolf, and it has to stop. If you can’t let go, you won’t shift, and you won’t survive.”

Somehow, he stated that fact in a way that didn’t make me panic more.

That was why the pain was so bad.

I was dying.

“I’m not going to let that happen,” he said. “You’re mine now, and I protect what’s mine. I know it fucking hurts, but I need you to breathe with me. Ready?”

I tried to nod.

Somehow it came out a whimper.

He lifted my hand to his bare chest, holding it lightly to his skin. Our eyes remained locked as he took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

I did too. Or tried to. Mine wasn’t as deep as his.

He took another.

I did too.

And another.

And another.

The pain eased, just the tiniest bit.

“There you go. Feels good, right?” His voice was so low, it sent shivers up my spine.

Hello again, gutter.

“That’s better. Just keep trying to relax, Zoe.”

“I don’t—ever—relax,” I gasped out.

He nodded. “It doesn’t come easy for everyone. Distracting yourself helps some people. Focus on whatever you can lose yourself in, despite the pain.”

Something I could lose myself in, despite the pain?

The only thing I could think about other than my agony was… well… the way he’d said good girl.

If I hadn’t already been a sweaty mess, I would’ve flushed.

I didn’t want to sit there and think about having sex with a man I didn’t know, whose lap I was sitting on, while he wasn’t aware of what I was thinking about.

But I also didn’t want to die.

Really, really didn’t want to die.

So I thought about the praise.

And the way his body had looked, sprawled out on that camping chair like he didn’t have a care in the world.

I imagined what those eyes would look like, staring at me from between my thighs, and groaned.

Hopefully he thought it was because of the shift alone.

Something else within me snapped. Somehow, the pain from it was manageable.

“Damn, that’s good. Your wolf is going to be beautiful.”

Another snap.

“Look at that fur. You’re gorgeous.”

One compliment followed another from the man whose mouth I was currently imagining on my body. In all the best ways.

So, so slowly and so, so painfully, I shifted.