Story Excerpt
Ollie's Haven

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Griffin Gates stared over the hood of the truck, watching the other people he was traveling with as they all sat around a picnic table at the rest area they had stopped at. They were pretty much a ragtag group and each and every one of them were on the run because they were gay.

It was a run for their very lives.

If the Senate Sentries caught them, they were dead, right down to the last one of them, which happened to be a brand new baby. In fact, the baby might be in the most danger. He was living proof of the lies that the Senate had been telling their people for centuries.

The poor thing was less than three weeks old and he already had a price on his head. It made Griffin want to tear something apart—preferably a member of the hunter team sent out by the Senate to track them all down and kill them. Griffin knew it like he knew the sun would come up tomorrow.

He used to be a Sentry, a sanctioned killer for the Loup-Garou Senate.

That had all changed when he discovered that one of members of this ragtag little group was his mate. Now, due to his actions that night, he was on the run just as much as his new friends were. The Senate would never forgive the fact that he had shot the members of his own hunter group or helped Rico and his friends escape.

He hadn’t had any other choice.

Letting the hunters get to Oliver Fremont became unacceptable the second he discovered the man was his mate. Due to his increased Loup-Garou genetics, he was probably one of the few wolves around that didn’t need to sleep with his mate to discover they were mates. He just had to smell Ollie to know the truth.

Not that it did him a damn bit of good.

Ollie was denying him, refusing to have anything to do with him. He wouldn’t even speak to Griffin, but that didn’t change the fact that they were mates. And Griffin would protect Ollie till his dying breath, whether the man accepted him or not.

At the rate things were going, Griffin was leaning toward not.

Griffin sighed and rubbed a hand down his face as he pushed away from the truck. He shoved his hands into his pockets and began to walk around the parking lot, stretching his legs out a bit. Sitting in the truck for hours on end made him a very cranky wolf. It didn’t help that Ollie refused to sit in the truck with him, not matter which truck he sat in.

Hell, Ollie refused to have anything to do with him at all. Except for one incredibly hot incident in the woods soon after they met, Ollie did his level best to pretend Griffin didn’t even exist, and Griffin didn’t think that was going to change any time soon.

No matter how much his heart ached for his mate.

Griffin glanced over at the group for a moment, waiting until he caught Rico’s eye, then nodded is head toward the bathroom. When Rico nodded back, Griffin headed for the bathroom. He was under orders to let Rico know whenever he went somewhere unescorted.

It only made sense considering that they were all running for their lives. Because of who Griffin had been, and the things he had done while working for the Senate as a hunter, he was still watched pretty closely by the group.

They didn’t trust him.

Griffin understood it. He just wished they understood that he wouldn’t do anything that would harm a hair on Ollie’s head, and he would kill anyone that tried to hurt his mate. Nothing else mattered except Ollie’s wellbeing.

He wished Ollie understood that as well.

Griffin walked into the bathroom and did his business then went to wash his hands. The mirror above the sink wasn’t made of glass but rather polished metal, but he could still see himself in it and he didn’t like what he could see. The lines around his mouth and eyes were more pronounced, deeper. He looked older, tired.

He looked like shit.

Griffin sighed and turned away. There was no hope for it. He was in an impossible position and there didn’t seem to be any way out of it. No matter how many times he tried to approach Ollie, the man really wanted nothing to do with him. And Griffin couldn’t bring himself to be angry about that.

He deserved every hateful word Ollie tossed at him.

Griffin had spent the better part of the last few years doing the Senate’s bidding, tracking down the Loup-Garou deemed rogue by the Senate and bringing them to justice. Granted, he had been following orders and enforcing the laws of his people, but it was only now that he understood that those laws were not only wrong but implemented by a group of people that didn’t want to give up their power.

Griffin hated the Loup-Garou Senate and everything they stood for. If he had his way, every damn last one of them would be put to death for the people they had ordered executed and the laws they had enforced to keep the truth from all of wolf kind.

They deserved nothing less.

And after Griffin made sure that Ollie was safely hidden away on the property he had secretly purchased to hide away on, he planned to do just that. But getting Ollie there came first. Griffin wouldn’t do anything until he knew that Ollie was safe.

Dejection rode Griffin hard as he turned off the water and went to dry his hands. It seemed that he had nothing to look forward to in his life but planning the take down of the Loup-Garou Senate—and his death, because he knew he wouldn’t come out of that battle alive.

It would be worth it to keep Ollie safe.