***Conlan's POV***
'Where is she? Where is she? Where is she? Where -' Karr muttered side stepping into short circles.
'Enough! I don't know why you can't feel her wolf okay! Just be quiet or I'll shut you out.' My wolf has been becoming more and more irritating. She was very irritating. 'Where is her wolf?'
'Shut out me and I make you shift.' He growled angrily and he picked up the pace.
I had to bite my tongue. In this situation, with tons of humans around, shifting was a very bad thing to do. To shift in front of a human, or a ton of humans, was extremely taboo. To think that Karr would do that was absolutely horrifying.
I knew from the beginning that Karr's eyes were shining through. His emotions were so heightened that it was impossible to block this part of him from coming out. The little hints as to how she looked at me with wide eyes full of fear and how she most irritatingly backed away from my advances was a dead give away that she knew exactly who and what I was too. Like most rogues, they often fear pack members.
'Get closer. Get closer. Get closer. Smell Her. Smell Her. Smell-'
'KARR!' I yelled at him. 'You're driving me insane. Calm down. It's not like she is our mate.' 'Oh Goddess. Did I just say the 'M' word?'
'MATE!' He stopped pacing and started jumping excitedly. I'm sure there is a stupid grin on his face from his excited tone. 'Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate. Mate.'
'I think I just broke my wolf.'
At this point yelling at him was getting me nowhere, and shutting him out was dangerous. So I decided to speak his language. 'Ooooh Karrrrrr?' I waited for him to be still. 'Do you smell mate?' My tone was holding an annoying quality. The kind of voice someone makes when they ask a question that they already know the answer to but they want you to know that you're a dumbass.
He huffed angrily and gritted out, 'No. Smell. Mate.'
'See. She can't be our mate, we can't smell her scent.' I tried to reason with him.
'Ask her. Ask her. Ask her. Ask her. Ask. Ask. Ask. Ask!'
'For the love of all that is holy in this world, BE QUIET!' My patience was flying out the window. At this point I'd do anything to stop his frantic pacing and bizarre behavior. Irritation started to claw at my insides as I filled up the space in the dark corner. She shifted and tried to establish an anchor on the floor. The urge to make her and her nowhere wolf submit to me was getting stronger. But something else happened when I had the moment to carefully observe her features alone; I felt worry.
"You're bleeding." Karr perked his ears up and then bowed his head down in shame.
My words completely threw her for a loop. The bewildered look on her face suggested that she didn't believe me. I wanted to smile at her as her earthy green eyes searched mine for the meaning. I pointed to my nose.
"Huh?" Her eyebrows raised in shock and she parted her mouth a fraction from the confusion. Before I knew it, I was engrossed with her perfect lips.
'Sniff her neck.' Karr's words drew me out of my trance.
'No.' I said firmly. It was an action only mates were supposed to do. The act of inhaling one's scent from the neck is extremely intimate for wolves and only should be done between mates or those that are suspected to be mates. 'She's not ours.'
'SNIFF! MINE!' Karr snarled possessively.
'Fine.' I said as coldly as I could. As tempting as this rogue was I knew from others that have found their mate that she could not be ours. Through their scent alone our wolf would be able to tell a mile away that our mate was near let alone in the close proximity of a bar.
This time I leaned in so I could almost touch her. The loose hairs around her face moved when I took a deep breath trying to draw in as much of her natural smell. Nothing.
'She doesn't smell like anything?'
Disappointment. Disappointment is what we felt. I didn't even know I was hoping for the improbable. My heart clenched and there was a heaviness in the air that suppressed my lung capacity.
*Whine**Whine* Karr whined and pawed at the air between us trying to touch her wolf that wasn't there. It wasn't in his nature to cry or whimper but it was the saddest whine I've heard since our family died eight years ago. 'Where is she? Where is mate? Find mate. Find mate now!' He said with renewed restlessness.
'Calm down!' There was a brief struggle of will, but in the end I got him to submit begrudgingly. 'I don't know. I can't feel her wolf either, but she has to be there.' I said trying to keep my composure. Just pretending that she didn't affect me as much as she has in this raw and unsettling situation was wearing me out.
"Where's your wolf?" Karr's voice seeped into my words unbidden and I was surprised at how low and primal the words came out. 'I guess we really wanted to know.' My face was almost touching hers. Again, I took a deep inhale trying to find her scent. Nothing. The rogue had no scent at all. Impossible. Not even shampoo or the stench of that man that held her. She should have at least had some scent lingering on her somewhere along the lines of exhaust and leather.
A gasp escaped her kissable lips and she visibly shivered ruining my train of thoughts. Somewhere deep inside I rumbled a guttural growl. Her attractiveness was on a whole other level. Since I first saw her, I've done my absolute best to sensor my thoughts. This girl worked out. There wasn't an inch of her that wasn't perfectly sculpted and filled out in perfect proportions. Goosebumps formed on my skin and I looked at her slightly pink expression darkly to see her reaction. My carefully button-upped reserve was unraveling faster by the minute. She was undoing me at the seams.
James was trying to mindlink me, but I didn't let him into my thoughts because at this moment there was nothing that could tear me away from her. Then the look of earth shattering loss marred her rosy tinged face and contorted it into a wretched look. It was enough to make Karr whine again and the air to become so thin I couldn't breath. Her hurt was so real. In a flash the look of heartbreak was gone and she looked concerned. Her bottom lip tucked in her mouth as she bit down like she was trying to figure something out, like a problem she was trying to solve. She looked past me with a frown, distracted by something and shook her head. I wanted to lift her chin up to capture her attention once more.
'Touch her. We feel if she mate.' Karr said with final resolve. There was no denying the feeling of touching your mate, or so I've been told. The idea to touch her seemed very reasonable and logically sound. It also would be very appealing to touch her smooth flawless skin. She didn't wear any make-up like every other woman in the bar, but honestly she didn't need it. Her natural beauty paired with beautiful greenish brown eyes were part of an untouched part of the forest that I could wander around in for hours.
Persistently James continued to try and mindlink me. "What?!" I finally growled at him as I reached up to touch her face.
"NOOOOOO!" She yelled.
Karr and I both recoiled in hurt.
*SMACK*
I looked around to see what dead asinine thing punched me. My chest heaved and my claws itched to come out. All I saw was red as I searched. A part of me secretly hoped it was the man that had his arms around the rogue earlier. James was squaring off with the one I hoped to see. Now my mouth felt too small.
'I wanted a reason to hurt him.'
Then I saw him. He reeked of hard alcohol and he had a determined look in his smug blue eyes. The One That Is Going To Die tried to strike me again and I quickly dodge his expert move.
"I waaazzz trying to warn you that you had company." James mouthed off.
"Shut up. I'm not in the mood."
"Obviously. It's not everyday that you of all people gets sucker punched."
I growled at James and then turned to my opponent.
"Turn around and go back to your friends at the bar. You don't want to do this." Every word I said was enunciated between clenched teeth.
"I'm not going anywhere until you leave my girl alone." Something snapped within me and Karr's unstoppable anger surged forward.
"BETA!" James yelled. "You can't shift here, you have to leave! Now! GO!"
"Karr won't let me leave without her."
"FIGHT IT CONLAN!"
The world was rolling. Pain shot through me. My bones are starting to snap. I fell forward but I didn't fall. The rogue caught me in a big bear hug. Instantly, my body starts to relax.
"That was close." She whispered into my ear. Her warm breath lingered on my skin. Now she's pushing up against my chest with enough heat that I could feel her hands' warmth through the fabric of my shirt. With her incredible strength she helped stand me up on my own feet. I felt emptiness crawl over me when she started to step away. But before she could get too far I grabbed her hand. Skin to skin, we looked at each other.
Her nose bleed started again but worse making me frown. With her free hand she wiped her nose and then used her fuzzy turtleneck to stop the flow with the sleeve poking out of her leather motorcycle jacket. She looked at me in expectancy. Those mossy green eyes were so clear and unwavering that I didn't want to pull away. But I did. Hurt displayed in her eyes as they filled up with water.
*Whine* Sadness overcame Karr as he gave the most pitiful whine.
"You're not my mate." I said softly, surprised at the statement I made. Karr was finally quiet. James was looking at me with concern. The guy she was with and the one that punched me are coming closer to take her back now that the situation has calmed down.
She clutched her chest with the hand I held and I thought she was going to sob. The rogue coughed instead.
"Zara!" Her human male friends said together and ran over. A woman screamed. I felt her friends rush over as they bumped into me to get to her. She had coughed up blood. The color was draining from her. They were frantically trying to clean her up.
"I'm okay." Zara the rogue said sadly as she looked at me. She smiled at me with blood on her lips and the light gone from her eyes. I couldn't feel Karr anymore. Worry was also eating away at my nerves. I shifted from one foot to the other and kept my hands in fists and turned away from her gaze.
"What did you do to her?!" The blue haired friend spat.
"We were just talking. Nothing happened." I said quietly looking into her troubled face.
"Nothing?!" I forgot about him, the dead asinine thing. He approached me. "She coughed up blood. That's not nothing asswipe!" My angry side was quickly seeping back into place.
"I think it's time for me to go home." I whipped my head around to look back at her. She gave me one last look before she turned to her other friend with a matching motorcycle jacket.
The same one that had his hands all over her. The same one that I looked at like I was better than him when she said she knew me. The same one that is now boring his dark eyes into mine telling me to stay in my lane. The same one that is claiming her as his own. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop him or retaliate. I had no leg to stand on. She wasn't my mate. Hell I wasn't even sure she was a werewolf.
She didn't have a wolf.