The Alpha And The Prey

Chapter 3

Nathan Pov

    I was pacing, he was pacing. I was pacing because of everything that just happened, and I have no idea why the Hell he was pacing. Sometimes Isaac was just extra. “Are we done yet? I’m getting a leg cramp and I’m more fit than you are.” Isaac whined. 

    “By all means go sit down, or leave, for all I care,” I muttered, continuing my pacing. He stopped in the middle of the office and placed his hands on his knees, taking a deep breath. 

    “The girls left, you know. After you called that shifter your mate they didn’t want to date us anymore.” He complained. 

    Honestly, I didn’t really care. “I never wanted to go out on a date, to begin with,” I mumbled, annoyed. My mate, the shifter girl. A shifter? Why was there a random shifter close by? Who was she?

    Isaac frowned, sitting down in my chair behind my desk, putting his feet up on the corner of it. I stopped pacing long enough to glare at him and he mumbled something about me under his breath before lowering his feet. “I thought Shifters were rare and they tended to stay away from werewolf packs. There’s no way her or that other bunny she was protecting lives somewhere close by.” He said, breaking into my thoughts. 

    “They are rare. Shifters were almost extinct, about ten percent of those on earth were shifters and gradually lowering. The fact that they shift uncontrollably as they grow makes them die faster.” I muttered. But not her, she looked over eighteen.

    ‘Obviously, she’s over eighteen, otherwise, we wouldn’t have felt the mate pull.’ Ray muttered unnecessarily. 

    I rolled my eyes at him, stopping my pacing as I took a seat in the chair across from my desk. Normally I would have shoved Isaac out of my seat but I was too caught up in everything to really care right now. “So, who is she? When you meet your mate, do you instantly know everything about them? Oh, damn…Jason is going to be pissed.” Isaac said, suddenly realizing what this means. 

    “No, I don’t know anything about her besides what we’ve seen.” Every part of her was etched in my mind, from her beautiful form to her mysterious heterochromia eyes. “And she ran off, Isaac, probably somewhere far away. Jason doesn’t need to know, who knows if I’ll ever see her again.” I said, pleading with him to shut up and not say anything. 

    Isaac’s eyes flashed in frustration for a moment, but it was too fast for me to really notice it before his normal easygoing expression resumed. “No problem. Hey, I’m going to go, gotta chase down a new date.” He said. I should have paid more attention to his words and how he was saying them but I didn’t care at that moment. All I could think about was her. 

    I nodded, standing when he did as he walked to the door. “See you later,” I muttered, before closing the door behind him and locking it. I just wanted to be alone. I needed to think. Distantly, I sat down at my desk and started to type out the business proposal I had sitting there from earlier, but in the end, I neglected it to pull up heterochromia eyes in google. There were so many different kinds, but hers were unique to me. A warm chocolate color in one eye, and a light blue in the other. I shook my head, frustrated. 

    ‘She’s not what I was wanting.’ I muttered, frustrated. 

    Ray frowned, though he agreed with me. ‘We wanted a wolf, a strong and fierce wolf to help us lead the pack. A beautiful white wolf.’ He whined. 

    I sighed, placing my elbows on my desk as I set my head in my hands. ‘Well…she’s got white fur…just not a wolf.’ I said unnecessarily. He growled at my lame attempt to joke and I frowned, shaking my head. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter. We have to find her and marry her. It doesn’t really matter in the end who or what our mate is, she’s our mate and this was dad’s decree. We were blessed with being the ones to find our mate first, and if we can get her to cooperate we can be the true Alpha of the pack.’ I told him. 

    He nodded, agreeing with me. ‘Yes, but how are you going to convince her? She’s not going to want to marry a stranger and shifters don’t feel the mate pull as wolves do. I highly doubt she’s just going to nod and agree.’ He said. 

    I shrugged, already opening up my email and starting one to send to my secretary. ‘It doesn’t matter. She’s a bunny. Bunnies are soft and docile creatures. She’s probably off quivering in a den somewhere wishing I’ll find her and save her. I’m sure the moment we find her again she’ll run into my arms crying begging me to never let her go.’ I told him. I mean how stubborn or hard to get could a bunny be?

    I typed a quick detail of the girl to my secretary, letting her know the girl was at least eighteen, if not older. I doubted she was older, she was so tiny looking. Even crouched down like she was, her long black hair brushing against the grass, she looked like she was seventeen or eighteen. Obviously, as Ray said she was at least eighteen to have the mate bond with me but once again all it did was remind me that I was now mated to a tiny weak girl. I wondered as I sent the email asking my secretary to look into finding her, I wondered if I could reject her. Would I get a second chance mate? They were very rare, and usually only for those whose mate died or ended up being a horrible person. It was like the Moon Goddess apologized for screwing up the first time by giving a second chance mate. However, I wasn’t sure if this was a screw-up or just a horrible twist of fate. To think that I would be paired with a bunny…it was horrifying. And to think when I was a child I wondered about love. How it would feel to find my mate, to love them, and to take over the pack together. Love was about as foreign and useless as the knowledge of Santa Claus, so in that aspect, it didn’t bother me. I didn’t need to find her to fall in love with her, I needed to find her to take over the pack. 

    Without another word I got up, leaving my phone, my keys, my wallet, everything behind. I simply grabbed a small bag and walked out of my office, down the stairs of the packhouse, and found myself back at the front of the meadow as I had earlier this morning. Quickly I stripped, placing all of my clothes inside the bag and when I shifted, I leaned down and clasped the back in my mouth and moved to the spot I saw her last. I wasn’t going to forget this spot. However, I soon realized this was impossible. I was planning on getting her scent, hoping I could track her with it, but despite the fact that her dry blood was laying in the grass, I couldn’t do it. I felt sick to my stomach realizing that this meadow was filled with dead animals' blood, their scents mixed together, making me wonder just how many shifters we’ve killed. It was stupid, because shifters were so rare, but now that I almost killed my own mate, I couldn’t help but wonder. Was the squirrel Isaac killed earlier a shifter too? It wouldn’t make sense if it was, shifters rarely stuck together unless they were the same kind, but who knows. How many previous bunnies hopped through this field, torn apart by us wolves for nothing but a fun sport, only to end up being someone related to her? ‘Stop it. Isaac was right. Shifters don’t tend to stay in one place and if they do it’s never really near wolves. She was probably passing through. Maybe the little one near her was a child of hers…’ Ray started to say, making me growl without much warning. I don’t know why it mattered to me, but the idea that she had been touched by someone else, a child with someone else, disgusted me. I wanted nothing to do with that thought. ‘Or a younger sibling…’ He added quickly, appeasing the anger racing through me. ‘But we won’t know until we find her. I say we start searching where she disappeared.’ He said. I nodded, slowly following the path she moved before she disappeared through the bushes. He was right, only because this path was the same the smaller bunny took as well before they vanished into the forest. Why did both of them run in the same direction unless they had somewhere running to? Whether it was a house, or a tent, something, anything…I was determined to find it. I was going to find her. 

    I searched for hours, Ray complaining about his mouth aching from holding the bag forever, and still, there was nothing. How could she have just disappeared into thin air? It was starting to get darker and I headed back, knowing not to be in the Rogue-infested woods in the dark alone. I am an Alpha, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid. I know even an Alpha could be killed by a pack of Rogues, it was how my father died after all. I ended up shifting back into my human form once we got out of the woods and changing to stop Ray from complaining. He was frustrated, I was frustrated, and all we wanted was to find our mate and get this all over with. “I don’t know what to tell you, maybe she’ll come to us.” I said, throwing my hands up into the air as I marched back to the pack. 

    Ray snorted in my head, clearly not believing that any more than I was. ‘Sure, okay. Cause everyone wants to run back to the arms of the person who nearly killed them.’ He said, the sarcastic bastard. I sighed, groaning slightly in annoyance. 

    ‘I didn’t know she was our mate! I wouldn’t have chased after her or the little bean with her, I wouldn’t have bit her, I wouldn’t have done any of that! I didn’t even know she was a shifter! I thought she was just a normal little bunny! And I didn’t see you stopping me, you were just as excited by the game as I was.’ I scolded him. How dare he place all the blame on me. 

    He growled at me, but quickly lowered his head to his paws and whined in defeat. ‘You’re right, I know. It’s just annoying. We’ve wanted to be the Alpha of the pack forever and now that we’re finally taking a step closer, we can’t find her. We drove her away, and she won’t feel the mate pull. We probably won’t ever see her again.’ He said. 

    ‘Don’t be dramatic. You never know what’ll happen in the future.’ I said, walking through the gates once more before darkness fell. I didn’t care enough to find Isaac or anyone else, I simply went to my office once more and checked my phone and my email. My secretary said she was searching for her, but without a proper name or age or anything, it would be nearly impossible. However, her eyes make her stand out slightly more, and it might be the key to helping us find her. I told her to drop everything else, even if she had to hire someone else to take over her work at the corporation and find her. She replied back with an okay, and asked permission to get in contact with a private investigator. I told her to go ahead and sat back in my chair, pressing my hands to my eyes in exhaustion. Nothing was going the way I planned, absolutely nothing. 

    “A f*****g bunny, for a mate,” I muttered, shaking my head back and forth with a groan. What could get worse than this? I wasn’t even sure anything could get worse. I groaned once more, before pressing my forehead against my desk. I needed to find her and get this over with.