Read Online The Mermaid's Mate by Kristin Miller - Free Book Online

another few moments alone together before they left for Mer territory.
    “Where is she?” a scratchy voice asked from behind him.
    Jerking upright, Timber set his sights on Ryder. The bastard was dressed head to toe in combat gear: black leather pants, matching shirt and coat, thick-soled boots and knives on his belt.
    “What the fuck are you doing here?” Timber stood, searching over Ryder’s shoulder to the fur blocking the entry. Ryder should’ve been back at the lair—he and Marian hadn’t been gone that long.
    Marian.
    “I asked you a very simple question,” Ryder said, striding closer. “Where. Is. She?”
    Timber was asking himself the same thing.
    “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” Timber felt his shoulders hunch as the instinct to shift into wolf form nearly overtook him. “But since you’re here, you’ll save me the trouble of tracking you down—I was about to head back to the lair to report that there’s been a death.”
    “Your mermaid?”
    “No.” Shaking his head, Timber snatched the sheet off the bed and clutched it against his loin. “Slater. He slipped off the rocks near the southern edge of the mountain and fell into the river.”
    “That so?” Ryder scrubbed his hands over his head and exhaled heavily. “Well, we’ve got about a dozen trackers on your mermaid’s tail, so I guess we can afford to lose one. Sapphric sent one of his scouts to let me know you were here. Good thing he did. I was starting to wonder about you.”
    “I don’t have time for this shit.” After snatching his pants off the floor, Timber shoved his legs into them, zipped up and brushed past Ryder, giving him a shove with his shoulder as he went. “I’m going back to the lair to call it a night.”
    He had no intention of going back, but Ryder didn’t have to know that. Timber would make sure Marian got out of Were territory and back to her home in one piece. Only then would he return.
    “You’re so full of shit, I can smell you from here,” Ryder hollered after him. Ryder followed Timber into a dimly lit antechamber that separated Sapphric’s main quarters from the ones designated for his patients. “I command you to tell me where I can find your mermaid friend.”
    Timber stopped in his tracks, blood beginning to boil. Being that Ryder was his Delta, his superior, commands were followed under penalty of death.
    “You can find her where you find the other mermaids. In her colony.” Timber listened carefully for whispers or the quiet thump of a foot on hardwood. Any indication of where Marian and Sapphric might’ve gone. They weren’t hiding out in the patients’ den. They weren’t in here and he couldn’t sense them anywhere close.
    “See, that’s what bothers me.” Ryder stalked around Timber, pulling back his shoulders in a way that was meant to intimidate. “I know she just left. I can still smell her scent on you.”
    The tension coiling inside Timber unraveled with a crack. “Fucking prick.” Timber grabbed Ryder by the throat and rammed him against the wall. Cabinets shook, shelves rattled. “You don’t know when to quit, do you? You could’ve had everything in the main pack, Ryder. You were only a few positions below the Alpha. You could’ve had control over the young pack mates, teaching and training them to be better wolves. But no.” As the words tumbled out of his mouth, unfiltered and teeming with rage, Timber’s arms twitched. He banged Ryder’s head against the stone wall to relieve more pressure. “You have to be a greedy son of a bitch and go after everything. You really think our Alpha is going to give you property in Were Mountain just for turning over the Mer stone?”
    Ryder just smiled, his lips pulling back into a devilish grin. “I think our Alpha is so desperate to keep peace, that she’ll do anything to return the stone to the mermaids.”
    No refuting Timber’s words. No denying his mission. Ryder really was going to steal the