Chapter Two
“Does watching two men fuck each other up get you hot, pet?” Jasper growled in her ear.
Ana had to fight the urge to flinch away. She knew from experience that wouldn’t end well for her.
She stood as still as possible, wanting the concrete floor to simply open up below and swallow her whole. She didn’t want to be here. She wasn’t a dominant. Her wolf was as submissive as they come, and standing in a room filled with the scents of dominants and predatory males had her knees buckling with fear. The need to run was hard to resist, but with Jasper pressed against her, she had no hope of escaping.
Eight months ago, Jasper’s brother Ezra had killed her Alpha and taken the pack as his own. Jasper became their pack Beta. They were both cruel, sadistic sons of bitches and for some reason, despite her submissive nature and the plethora of other female wolves all vying for his attention, Jasper had decided to take Ana as a Beta female hopeful. Ana’s wolf cowered in his presence and she knew her scent filled with fear whenever he was near, but that seemed to only make him more determined to have her for his own.
“I-I don’t know, Beta. I’ve never been to a cage fight before,” she whispered. Jasper didn’t like it when she didn’t answer his questions. The first time he spoke to her, she couldn’t manage more than a squeak. That had been the first time he’d slapped her, and the shock of it had her crying out. A sound he said was as alluring to him and his wolf as any perfume or scent could be.
“Then let’s go inside and see if I can’t do something that will get that hot little pussy of yours wet.”
He pushed into her until she stepped further into the crude arena. It was nothing more than an old wooden warehouse with tiered seating leading down to a circular cage at the center of the room. The walls of the enclosure were halfway to the roof of the three-story building, and two men stood within, stalking each other. The scent of dominance was thick in the air now that she was physically inside the building, but she caught the coppery tinge of blood in the room. Jasper pressed into her again. The sensation of his erection pressed against her ass had her gasping in shock and fear, and that was when she caught it.
Wrapped within the metallic scent of blood, Ana was struck with the wild scent of man, laden with a strong hint of earth and forest and just a touch of something spicy she struggled to name. It was a scent that called to her and her wolf like nothing else, and it was just as her mother had always told her it would be when she scented her mate. The woman she was and the wolf she could become both recognized the man the Fates had bound her to from the moment she was born. She had always dreamed of finding her mate. Never would she have thought it would be somewhere like here, with Jasper pressed against her like he was.
Anxiety began to build within her and she knew she was headed toward a full-blown panic attack. She took another deep breath to take comfort from the scent and froze. Her mate was dominant. Alpha dominant. More dominant than any male she had ever encountered. What the hell were the Fates thinking? Why would they pair a male as dominant as that with a wolf so submissive she turned tail and ran from her own damn shadow?
Jasper pushed her forward again and the crowd parted to allow them a better view of the cage. Ana’s mouth opened on a silent cry of dismay when she caught sight of the two shifters in the center of the ring. Her gaze was drawn immediately to the slightly shorter of the two men who stood on the far side of the cage. He was huge, heavily muscled, with the words angelus mortis tattooed in an intricate cursive font across his chest. He wore the label ‘angel of death’ on his skin. This was what he believed he was. This was her mate. She gasped when he stepped toward his opponent and the two of them began to punch and kick each other with blurring preternatural speed that had the crowd roaring in appreciation.
By the time the two stepped apart, Ana’s heart was in her throat. When his opponent, a man she knew to be a wolf shifter, seemed to slip, she thought the fight would be over in seconds, but her mate hesitated. A move that saw the wolf take advantage, and come back with a hard punch to her mate’s side. She winced as she imagined she heard his ribs breaking beneath the power of the hit and he dropped to the ground. Ana caught a glimpse of more ink on his back when he rolled back to his feet, but she had no time to catch it in detail before he turned. His stare swept over the crowd methodically.
His gaze swept passed her and then slammed back until their eyes locked. Ana lost the ability to breathe. Despite the blood and sweat streaming from him, Ana could tell he was gorgeous. His dark-blond hair, lightly stubbled jaw, and piercing brown eyes held her captive and she felt her body soften with arousal at the heat in his stare.
“Damn, Ana,” Jasper groaned behind her. “These fucking fights do turn you on. I can fucking smell your sweet arousal on the air and it’s driving my wolf fucking crazy.”
Ana was caught between her body’s visceral reaction to her mate and her disgust and fear of the man behind her. She kept her eyes trained on her mate. She watched in horror as his opponent stepped to the side and whipped his body around in a hard roundhouse kick she knew was aimed again at those same ribs.
“Look out!” She saw him react a little to her warning and her heart filled with joy for a moment, before it flooded with fear as Jasper yanked her head back with a cruel hand in her hair.
“Please!” she cried out, lifting both hands to try to hold his wrist against her head, desperately trying to alleviate some of the pain he was inflicting.
“Please what, Ana?” Jasper snarled.
“P-please, Beta,” she pleaded, pushing onto her tiptoes trying to ease the pain. “Please, don’t hurt me. I’m sorry.”
Vaguely, she was aware of the crowd roaring, but Jasper started to drag her backward out of the arena and all her focus turned to him. “You are sorry, Ana, a sorry little bitch that just fucking cost me a goddamn fortune. I had a bundle on that damn wolf. Now, you are going to pay.”
Ana sobbed as she fell back, still holding onto Jasper’s wrist. She cried out when her lower back slammed into the gravel of the carpark. “I’m sorry. I-I’ll pay you back. Please!”
Jasper’s laugh was pure evil and had Ana’s skin crawling. “It’s not money I want from you, Ana. I thought you might have been getting turned on by the violence, but it was that fucking razorback, wasn’t it? I saw the way he looked at you, and you warned him! Well, fuck that.” Jasper began to drag her through the carpark. Ana could see flames suddenly reaching out through the top of the warehouse and the crowd that had been packed within the building now poured from every exit, the air around them filled with panicked screams.
“I need to see fear in my women. The dominant females of the pack can never give me that. Like I told you, my wolf and I love it when you cower in fear. The scent of your terror makes me so fucking hard.”
Ana cried out, tears streaming down her cheeks. She could feel the bite of the gravel tearing into her skin as Jasper continued to drag her toward his truck. Her cries seemed to amuse him and his crew, because all three of them laughed as she continued to beg and whimper. Jasper dragged her over a broken bottle and Ana screamed out in pain.
“Let my mate go now, and I promise to leave something recognizable about you for your next of kin to identify.”
Ana’s heart began to beat faster at the voice that came from nowhere, and she shivered as she caught the alluring scent of her male on the air. “You decide to keep dragging her like that then I won’t leave a fucking inch of you unbroken. I will turn you inside fucking out.”
Despite the increased pain from the change in angle, Ana looked up at the man who stood three feet from her staring at Jasper with deadly intent. His body was tense, his fists were clenched at his sides, and he seemed to be covered in what looked like soot and a whole lot of blood. Not all of it his.
Her mate had come for her. No doubt she should be thankful. And Ana was sure she would be, if her fear of the man with death shining in his eyes didn’t have her quivering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.