Her gaze slid to the door before returning to my face. “You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right? How else did you expect me to react to the stunt you pulled? You can’t just go around kidnapping people and then act all surprised when they’re afraid.”
“It worked for Zeke,” I grumbled, wondering how my beta had gotten Allegra to accept him so damn quickly.
“I’m still unclear on exactly what happened between my best friend and Zeke last night, but I’m pretty sure you can’t compare him rescuing her from a car accident to you carting me off in the middle of a conversation you weren’t even a part of.” The cutest little wrinkle formed in the middle of her forehead, and I wanted to brush my lips across it. “He was acting like a hero, but what you did was more along the lines of a villain.”
My wolf almost went berserk at the possibility of my mate preferring Zeke over me. I held still, forcing my beast to remain within my skin until she was ready to meet him. Once he was no longer ready to tear across the street to rip Zeke’s throat out, and I had him back under control, I prowled closer to my mate. My lips curved up in a satisfied smirk when she held her ground, refusing to back down from me. There was only the slightest whiff of fear in her delicious scent. No matter how scared my mate thought she should be, she felt the pull between us the same as me, and it was stronger than her uneasiness with the situation. “You can kid yourself all you want, but Zeke would’ve done the same damn thing with Allegra if he’d had to.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” she scoffed with a frown. “He’s the freaking sheriff. It’s not like he’s going to run around kidnapping women when his job is all about upholding the law.”
I shrugged my shoulders, and my smile widened. “So what if he’s the sheriff? I’m the mayor of Timber Ridge, and that didn’t stop me from taking you out of his house.”
Her blue eyes widened as her gaze swept down my tall body to take in the flannel shirt and faded jeans I’d put on after my run earlier. “You’re the mayor? You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this why I never heard much about Timber Ridge even though I moved to Stewart three months ago?” She paced back and forth in front of me, waving her hands in the air. “With you at the helm of this town, there are probably all sorts of illegal things going on that you need to keep quiet.”
I barely held back the chuckle that rumbled up my chest at her rant. Pressing my lips together, I shook my head. “Nope, there’s no illegal shit going on in Timber Ridge that we need to hide.”
We didn’t need to add crime to our collection of secrets. The fact that we were a town full of people who could shift into animals was more than enough to keep on the down low from the human world.
“Oh, really?” She quirked a brow at me and tilted her head to the side. “What do you call kidnapping me then?”
“I wouldn’t call it a kidnapping, that’s for damn sure.” I grinned when she parted those plump lips of hers to argue, hurrying to add, “And based on the lack of reactions from the sheriff and your best friend when they saw me carry you away, they didn’t think so either.”
“Thanks for reminding me”—she marched past me—“that I have a bone to pick with Allegra. Just because she’s all loved up doesn’t mean she should let some strange guy haul me away like a sack of potatoes.”
When her hand wrapped around the knob, I came up behind her and crowded her against the door. “There’s a flaw in your logic.”
Her lungs expanded, her back brushing against my chest. She held perfectly still as she asked, “How so?”
“I’m not just some strange guy.” I wound a stray lock of her hair around my finger and let it drop down her back. My wolf wanted to mark her bare neck, and my canines pressed against my gums as I rasped, “Your best friend already trusts Zeke, and he knows you’re safe with me because I’m his alpha.”
“Alpha?” she echoed, twisting her head to meet my eyes. “Do you guys have a whole different vocabulary or something? Zeke wished me luck with his alpha, but I didn’t know what he meant.”
I knew a few shifters besides my beta who’d mated humans, and I’d heard stories about how they’d broken the news to them. Learning from their experiences, I figured it was best to spit it out sooner rather than later. Otherwise, I was running the risk of her discovering my secret when I shifted in front of her without any warning, which was the worst-case scenario when it came to her accepting who and what I was. With no better choice, I said, “It’s fair to say shifters have our own language since we need words for things that don’t exist in the human world.”
Her eyes widened, and the wrinkle popped up on her forehead again. “What in the ever-loving heck do you mean?”
“The residents of Timber Ridge aren’t fully human,” I confessed, my muscles tensing as I waited for her reaction. “We’re able to shift into animal form.”
3
Larissa
I blinked up at him before turning to face the door and letting my forehead drop against the hard surface. For a little bit there, I’d thought maybe Allegra had stumbled across an awesome town full of hot guys, and I was looking forward to visiting her on the regular. And that was after being kidnapped, which
