Free The Tiger's Mate: (Book 12, Grey Wolf Pack Romance Novellas) by E A Price Page A

tired, can I go?”
    He glowered for a little while longer, but eventually he said, “Yes.”
    “What?” screeched Nita.  “But she stayed out, and she…”
    The Alpha gave her a sharp look, and she quieted.  “Take your mate home, son,” he said to Parker.
    Simone avoided looking at Nita.  She could feel the heat of her displeasure; she didn’t need to see it.  The fact that she was annoyed was probably the only bright spot of the day.
    Carrick wordlessly led the two of them out.  He nodded at Simone and his jaw ticked, which she supposed was his approximation of a smile.
    Parker waited until they were in the safety of their own house before he turned to her.  “You sure you’re okay?”
    She shrugged, and her tiger grumbled that she was far from okay.  “I’m fine, considering.”
    “I wish you’d called.  My dad… well, he’s been going nuts.”  Parker gave her a playful tap on the shoulder.  It was the closest they ever got to affection.  “Thank fuck Carrick offered to get you, I don’t want to think about what my dad might have done.”
    “How did he know where I was?”  It was something that had been niggling at her.
    “I think he put a tracker in your car.”  Parker shrugged like it was an everyday, normal kind of thing to do.  Instead of creepy.
    She guessed Carrick must have seen where she crashed and followed her scent.  Simone shook her head sadly.
    “You know how he gets when a female tries to leave the pride.  It’s just the way he is.”
    Parker said it in such an offhand way that Simone’s tiger ground her teeth.  Why was he okay with the way his father behaved?  Parker couldn’t have been happy with the situation.  He wasn’t interested in females, yet he seemed content to pretend to be mated to one.
    “How can you defend him?” she snapped, and her tiger bared her fangs.
    “I’m not defending him,” said Parker, wearily.
    “But you’re okay with the way we live – pretending like this?!”  The house she had lived in for the last four years suddenly seemed so small, and constricting.  She didn’t feel like she could breathe there anymore.
    Parker glared at her.  “I thought it suited us both.”
    Yes, she supposed it did – at first.  They had been friends growing up, and everyone had assumed that they would be mated, but neither of them really wanted that.  Parker had no desire for a female mate and Simone wanted… well, she just didn’t want a tiger mate.  She wanted to be free to do what she wanted.  However, her bid for freedom at eighteen-years-old, merely involved falling head over heels for a human in town, only to have him screw her and then dump her straight away.  Freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. 
    She had confessed everything to Parker in a moment of teary weakness.  She was no longer a virgin, and since the Alpha insisted that all females be virgins upon mating, her indiscretion would have meant punishment.  And she feared what that meant.  Patrick, he Beta was vicious at best, and often punished parents for cubs’ errors.  Given Patrick’s desire for her mother, Simone feared the worst.  So she and Parker had come up with a plan to mate one another.  She escaped punishment and another mate who would treat her like a slave, plus it meant the Alpha would pay her mother’s medical bills.  And Parker had a mate so he didn’t have to worry about what his father would do if he knew Parker was gay.
    The arrangement was satisfactory enough.  But that didn’t stop Simone trying to make plans to get away from the pride.  And now that she had met Acksel… no, she couldn’t possibly go on like this.
    “Parker…” she tried in a softer tone.
    He looked pained.  “My father’s a powerful Alpha; he has friends in the Supernatural Enforcers Agency.  Our life here… it is what it is, and it isn’t going to change so we should make the best of it.”
    “But…”
    “You really do smell like male wolf.  You