Page 67 of The CEO Alpha’s Substitute Mate

Corinne whimpers and falls to the ground, her face white as a sheet.

“This is not acceptable,” Samuel shouts. “The pack elders—”

“Since when have I cared about those treacherous fools?”

I go out through the window after my target. Silas is on his hands and knees on the gravel with blood running out of his hairline, glass in both palms. The lawn behind him runs two hundred yards down to a hedge, and it’s empty.

“Shift,” I order.

He looks up at me with his lip already off his teeth, then shifts. His wolf comes up gray, heavy through the shoulders, and it leaps into the air before the change has finished arriving. I let mine come.

The first pass takes us both off our feet. His teeth find the loose skin at my throat and slide off it, while mine close on his foreleg above the joint. The bone makes a sound I feel through my own skull. He screams out of his nose, which is a noise no human throat can produce, then twists off me and leaves skin behind.

He comes again on three legs, and it’s the last decision he makes on his own account. I throw him down, and he rakes his hind claws down my belly, so I put my whole weight onto his ribs until something under there stops pushing back.

After that, it isn’t a fight. It’s forty seconds of a large animal explaining a point to a smaller one, on a lawn, in front of his sister’s window. There’s a wet sound coming out of him on every breath by the end of it, which means something in his chest has opened, and I have him by the back of the neck when I decide to stop.

I let go and shift back.

Silas has one eye open. The other one isn’t opening today.

“Next time try to remember who I am before you enter my home and harass my people. I’ve left you alive today, but keep in mind that the next time you try to converse with my son’s mother without my permission, I will throw your corpse in front of your family.”

Silas doesn’t move.

I shift into my wolf form and walk away, point made.

Chapter 13

Ariela

I wake up to the sound of water running. I turn over to my side and open my eyes blearily, muttering, “Who turned on the rain?”

The sound stops, and I crack one eye open to see a man walk past the other side of the bed, his waist wrapped in a towel. My eyes fly open, and I meet Callum’s gaze.

“Why—Why are you naked? And in my room?!”

He arches one of his magnificent brows and says, “This is my room.”

I look around and belatedly realize he is right.

“Then what am I doing in your room?”

He shrugs before walking over to the wardrobe and pulling out clothes. “I found you in here. I assumed this was your way of saying you wanted a repeat of our time together the other night.”

“I—What?” I sit up, clutching the sheets, bewildered. “No, I don’t. No, I don’t!”

He gives me a doubtful look. “Then what are you doing here?”

I stare at him as he casually puts the clothes on the bed and reaches for his towel. “Callum!”

He looks over his shoulder. “What?”

I scramble out of bed, ready to run out, but he moves faster. In one smooth motion, he cages me against the mattress, not pinning me flat but bracketing me with his arms, his body a solid wall of heat and power. One large hand settles on my jaw, thumb resting just beneath my lower lip, tilting my face up so I have no choice but to meet his eyes. The towel is gone. He is gloriously, unapologetically naked, and the sheer size of him steals the air from my lungs.

His voice drops, quiet and devastating. “Did you know every shifter in my estate can smell me inside of you?”

The words land like a physical blow. Understanding crashes through me, hot and mortifying. My stomach flips. Heat floods my cheeks so violently I feel light-headed. I whisper, horror-struck, “No.”