Wolf's Huntress

Chapter Nine

Ruth's POV:

"Clover, what's your ETA?"

"Thirty minutes out, captain. And set things up for five extra visitors."

"Five more," I asked, my voice sounding more worried than I wished.

"It's not going to be an issue, is it?" Crap, I had gotten Clover concerned.

"No, it's not going to be a problem. You know that we have the room. I'll get things ready here." And with that, I ended the call before looking over to Alastair. "Consider yourself lucky. I now don't have the time to make you reject me."

"Anything that I can help with?"

My eyes narrowed as I tried to read him. He would try to weasel his way into my operation if he were hired to kill me. "Your kind has done enough damage as it is."

I left him in the park after that, heading straight to the nightclub and going down to the headquarters area. Ox and Stephon were already setting up the beds with fresh sheets, and I went to assist them. We were just finishing up when Clover, her small coven of witches, and the hunters I sent out with her all walked in from the tunnel system with nineteen women.

Many were skinny and pale, and they all looked scared as hell. "Ladies, my name is Ruth, and I would like to welcome you all here today. Think of this as the start of your new lives. You all must be tired, so go ahead to the showers to clean up. We'll have dry clothes waiting for you. And then we'll get started with serving you food after that if any of you are hungry."

The rescued women slowly went in the direction of the showers as Clover walked up to me. The witch in question was slightly taller than me, with deep green hair and pink eyes. She was in charge of all the witches that were helping with my program. "As soon as we caught wind of them bringing in more, I made the call to stay so that we could get them too."

"You made the right call, Clover. Now, I know that you are tired, but I have another job for you to do."

"You are sending me out again," she whined, and I shook my head no in response.

"Remember that wolf pack that moved into the abandoned lands? Their gamma is claiming to be my mate." Clover stood there wiggling her eyebrows at me until I put my hand to her face to push her away. "Shut up."

"Oh, come on! Our captain finally has a man! I never thought this day would come. I mean, it's you out of all of us here that needs to get laid."

"I said that he claims to be. Nothing has been proven yet. Besides, you know that I'm public enemy number one in his world. This could be their way of getting in here. You guys can survive without me, but this place won't if we let the wrong outsider into our circle. Those women and others like them need this place."

Clover put her hands up in surrender. "Okay, I'll look into it. Though you are wrong about one thing." I looked at her, confused, confident with every word that I spoke. "We need you with us. None of this, or any of us, would be here without you. So don't belittle your purpose here like that." She walked away to prepare things for her next task. If any of those women had supernatural mates and they were the ones involved in the torture that happened to them, it was up to Clover and the others to break their mate bonds.

I went about the task of getting clothes that fit the different women that were brought in. It was easy to tell who was held for a long time and who was recently kidnapped. There was a range in their ages as well, from as young as fourteen to as old as twenty-nine. I honestly wasn't surprised. They usually didn't keep humans past certain ages for breeding and feeding purposes. The only good thing about groups like that one was that they knew what each of them went through because they saw it firsthand and experienced it themselves. So they helped each other with just about everything from bathing, dressing, eating, and therapy. And I saw that happening as the women moved about to try and get themselves situated.

After getting them settled and allowing them to rearrange the beds as they wished, I gave them a tour of our base. They were allowed to wander as they pleased and used anything they wanted. The hunters and witches rotated shifts of who would work in the club and who would stay in the base to help those that they just rescued. Stephon moved into his mini apartment there to help as a therapist during scheduled meetings and when someone was having a moment of crisis. The last thing that was talked about was Ox, and I always told those that we save that he was a Minatuar, but his job was to protect everyone until they believed they could live out in the real world once again. I also showed them how they could get in touch with Ox if they felt the need to call him down to the base.

Once it seemed like the others could handle things and I could walk away, I went up to the club floor to start prep for the night. I was getting an order together in my office when Clover knocked on my open door. “Hey, captain, I finished what you requested of me.”

“Okay, that’s great. So that is one less thing I need to worry about then.” I continued to look at my screen. However, I sensed that Clover was still there. So I looked up and locked eyes with her. “Was there something else?”

“Yeah, about that. So when I said that I did as you asked, it means that I checked if this Alastair guy was your mate.” I waved my hand to encourage her to continue. “And that checks out; he is your mate. He wasn’t lying about that.” So, his reaction to me at the bar was truthful. My possible killer could have been hired before he knew that I was his mate, or he was hired after the fact because he was my mate. “The thing is, the process I use to break mate bonds doesn’t work the way you think it does.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Basically, I end up requesting the Moon Goddess to break the bonds between those we save and those that hurt them. Sometimes, she does it right away, and other times, I am brought face-to-face with her, and we talk things out.” I arched an eyebrow at her, wondering where she was going with this. “When I inquired about you and Alasatir, the Moon Goddess brought my spirit to her so we could talk.”

“And what did she have to say?” Clover took a deep breath, and I instantly cursed.

“She said that she will not break the bond between you two. That you need to give Alastair a fair chance.”

“You have to be f*****g kidding me right now. This is why I hate Gods!”

“To be fair, you hate a lot of people.”

“Not the point, Clover,” I shouted at her before rubbing my temples. “Back to Plan A it is then, make him reject me.”

“And what do you plan to do if that doesn't work?”

“What I’ve always done, I get rid of the problem.”

Clover looked at me, somewhat worried. “Are you sure that is the right thing to do, considering he is from the pack that just moved into town? Are you willing to piss off a whole pack so that you don’t have a mate?”