Taze (Rise of the Pride, Book 11)

by Theresa Hissong

  “Fuck,” she groaned as she shook her head and moved back in place. “Haven’t you heard it’s not respectful to hit a lady?”

  “I can hit the lady when she shows up on the blue mats with fighting gloves in her bag,” he smirked. “Outside of this facility, I would kill a man for hitting you this way.”

  “Good to know.” She nodded and bounced back on her feet. “How long are we going to go at this?”

  “Until you tap out,” he teased.

  “Me? Don’t you mean when you tap out?” she replied, a saucy smirk tilting the corner of her mouth.

  The next hour, they worked through several of her old routines. Taze was impressed with her ability to recall everything she’d learned. He was sore but happy. The panther inside him was itching to touch her, but he held the animal back.

  “I have an appointment tomorrow,” she announced as they walked back to his place. “It’s later in the day, and I want you to sleep. I can take myself.”

  “Are you sure?” he worried.

  “Yeah,” she replied, but her mind was elsewhere. He let her work through her thoughts until they arrived at his place.

  “You can always ask your brother to go with you,” he reminded her. “It might be good for him.”

  “He won’t,” she replied sadly. “He’s playing the macho bit, thinking he is handling things, but he’s not. He’s using his anger to deal with the things he saw in that cabin.”

  “I’m so sorry, Calla,” Taze cursed. “Neither one of you deserve that.”

  “I’m going to work hard at this therapy thing,” she swore, looking off into the distance. A noise brought his head around, and he narrowed his eyes when he saw her brother approaching as if them talking about Malaki made him appear out of thin air. In all reality, he probably saw them coming from the training facility since it was right across the new road from his house.

  “Mal?” she asked in question. “What’s going on?”

  “Can I have a moment to talk to you…in private?” he asked and jerked his head to the side. He wanted Calla back at her place, and when she sighed and hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder, Taze knew she was going to give in.

  “Call me later,” he whispered, knowing Malaki had caught his words with his super hearing.

  “I promise,” she answered and stepped off the porch. Taze watched until they were safely inside her house. He went to his fridge and grabbed two beers, returning to the porch to keep an eye on her tiny home. If he saw or heard anything that indicated she might be upset or they were fighting, Taze would be over there in an instant, and the truce he had with her brother would be broken along with his fucking face.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Dr. Lyons closed the door and took her seat across the coffee table from Calla. The human therapist had been welcoming from the first day. It was easier to open up to her about the bullshit in her life.

  “Good afternoon, Calla,” the tall, brunette began. “How are things today?”

  “They’re good…better,” she admitted. “I feel better, too.”

  “That’s good,” the doctor said, picking up her trusty notepad. “Can you tell me why it’s better?”

  “I actually trained with Taze today,” she stated, feeling a bit of pride.

  “Did you two touch?” she pressed.

  “Not skin to skin. I was covered from head to toe,” she supplied. “I don’t know what made me get up and dig out my old training gear, but I did.”

  “What did Taze say about that?”

  “He was shocked when he woke up and I was at his place fully dressed,” she laughed. “I couldn’t tell what excited him more; me showing up like that or the fact that I kicked his ass.”

  “You sound very happy about your time in the training facility today,” Dr. Lyons noted.

  “I felt…good,” she sighed. “I don’t know if I did it to remind myself that I could do it, or if I did it to appease Taze.”

  Dr. Lyons paused to think. Calla knew she was going to come back with a question to make Calla think long and hard about her decision.

  “You have to break it down sometimes, Calla,” she began. “You’re second guessing your decision this morning, but I think you know, deep down, why you decided to train.”

  She thought about it for a minute or two. There was a lot of emotion when she pulled that bag from her closet. She’d laughed at herself for being scared of a gym bag, but that bag held a lot of memories for her; both good and bad.

  “That training facility and the time I spent there holds a lot of growth for me over the past six years,” she replied. “It’s where I learned to get my confidence back, but it’s also a place I associate with my brother and Taze’s dislike for each other. There was a lot of fighting between us back then, too.”

  “What about now?” Dr. Lyons continued to ask questions, and it had Calla spilling so much more than she had intended.

  “The two of them say they’ve reached a truce, but I honestly don’t believe them,” she scoffed, rolling her eyes. “If something happened to me in Taze’s presence, Mal would kill him. Same goes the other way.”

  “They’re both protective of you,” the doc noted.

  “They are,” Calla agreed, thinking about the way they acted. “But each of them acts different.”

  “Different how?”

  “Malaki uses his anger at the world as an excuse to protect me,” she sighed. “He has his own issues that he refuses to get help for. So, I think he uses our captivity to shelter me from the world.”

  “Okay,” the doc nodded. “And Taze?”

  “He’s my mate, and I know you know how we find our mates,” she blushed. “I’ve told you a lot about how our animals show us they know before we touch.”

  “The mating scents?”

  “Yes,” Calla answered. “Taze is protective of me because of our panthers. However, Taze is more supportive of me defending myself. He accepts my strengths, but he’s there if for some reason I can’t protect myself.”

  “I understand a lot of the old ways of the shifters through my friendship with Harold,” Dr. Lyons said, crossing her legs as she set down her notepad and leaned back in the chair. “Your kind had lived a certain way for thousands of years. The males played the role of protectors for a very long time. The women of the pride let them because that’s all they’d known. When your pride mate, Evie, snuck around and asked one of the males to teach her to fight, it changed things. Other women in the pride realized they could contribute to the safety of their families, and that set off a chain of events.”

  “Even Taze hated us training in the beginning,” Calla admitted. “He was such an asshole.”

  “What made him change his mind?”

  “Word is, the alpha threatened his Guardianship if he didn’t cooperate,” she confessed.

  “What happened to make you two train together?”

  “I really don’t know.” Calla stopped to think. “He was twenty and was new to the Guardian program. I was seventeen. He saw me fighting one day, and the next thing I knew, he was stopping me to correct a move. After that, he was there every time I trained. We clicked, and after that, we were inseparable.”

  “How did Malaki take that?”

  “Not very well,” Calla admitted, thinking back to her brother’s outburst. She remembered crying alone in her room at Talon’s, keeping her face buried in a pillow to keep the sound from reaching the alpha’s ears.

  “Why do you think Malaki was so upset?”

  “I don’t know,” Calla said as she shook her head. “He always said it was his job to protect me, but I’ve always felt there was something more to it.”

  “Do you think maybe he was angry because he wasn’t the one training you?”

  “We trained together for a very short time during those years,” she said in defense, but frowned when she remembered the time he’d stopped coming to work with her, leaving Taze to jump back in to help her.

  “What is it, Calla?”


  “He couldn’t hit me on those mats,” she sighed. “It was just too much for him.”

  “Malaki was having a hard time because of the things he saw and couldn’t protect you from,” Dr. Lyons explained. “Calla, your brother feels responsible for your kidnapping, rape, and beatings. He’d most likely tried to get over his aversion to seeing you in pain to bond with you over your new status in the training program, but once he had to physically harm you on purpose, he couldn’t go through with it.”

  “I never thought of that,” Calla sniffled. Gods, she’d made him hit her in that training facility while he hadn’t even coped with what he’d seen in the cabin. “I feel so bad for making him train with me.”

  “You shouldn’t feel bad.” Dr. Lyons sighed. “We all cope with trauma in different ways. Just because the training worked for you doesn’t mean Malaki sparing with you was helping him.”

  “I see,” she frowned. “I wish he’d come talk to you. It hurts me that he’s so angry all the time.”

  “He does need counseling,” she agreed. “You also have to remember that you can’t heal when you’re walking on eggshells around him. You’re taking the steps to move on with your life, Calla, and your brother’s anger is keeping you from progressing. It isn’t your job to keep the peace between him and Taze, either.”

  “I take their hatred toward each other to heart,” she admitted. “All I want is for them to like each other. I don’t have a family left. Malaki is it, and since Taze will be my mate someday, I would like to have them by my side without the fighting.”

  “They’re not helping your anxiety, either,” she added.

  “That’s the damn truth,” she mumbled under her breath. “I just want to get my degree and not be worried over the two of them beating each other to a bloody pulp.”

  “I think it’s time you step aside from playing the peace keeper, Calla,” the doc advised. “They are grown men. Let them work through their differences.”

  “That’s easier said than done, doc,” Calla laughed. “They are shifters, and if you hadn’t figured it out yet, that’s how they work through their differences.”

  “Then let them fight it out,” she shrugged. “I’ve heard you all heal very quickly.”

  “We do,” Calla agreed. “A black eye won’t be black for long.”

  “I’d like for you to work on stepping back from their fighting this week,” she said, looking at the clock. “When I see you on Friday, I’d like a report of how things are going.”

  “I hope they go well,” Calla admitted as she stood to shake the doctor’s hand. “If not, I’m sure our hour together will be well spent.”

  That night, Kye sat in the control room, monitoring the activity on the pride’s land, at The Deuce, and at Landon’s animal clinic. Even though Landon had handed over the office to a new animal healer, they still kept a close eye on the place since Landon controlled ownership of the building and Savage’s baby sister, Sophia, still worked the front desk during the day.

  The night nurse, Amaya, was sitting on the floor of the kennels, checking on one of the animals that had stayed overnight. Kye had no idea what was wrong with it, but the female was showing compassion for the animal as she stroked its fur to keep it calm.

  The night vision cameras around the land were quiet; other than an occasional rabbit or mouse scurrying about the dead leaves. The Deuce had closed a few hours ago, and it, too, was still.

  He pulled up the tracking app on his phone. Evie and Kye had added another layer of security for each other once they started working for the FBI. He wanted to make sure he knew where she was at all times, and she felt safer having easy access to his location as well.

  Kraven had just returned from picking up two male Gadaí Evie and her team had captured before they attacked a human female on the north side of town. He breathed a sigh of relief when he didn’t get a call from her because she’d had skin to skin contact with a male.

  The Protectors had taken special precautions in making sure every inch of their bodies were covered, and so far, it’d worked. He had to give credit to Ranger for his help in getting the females special gloves, and the females had come together to ensure they were protected. As much as he worried over Evie, he knew this was her calling in life. He loved his female with a deep passion, but he wasn’t going to stop her from fighting for the pride.

  Storm and Lucky were finishing up their rounds and heading back to the pride since they’d come up empty on their search with Agent Murdock. Everyone was on alert when it came to that agent. Talon had never felt comfortable with him anyway, and from the information Agent Tabor had brought to the table, they were going to help the FBI build a case against him once they figured out what the connection between the Amburo family and the agent meant.

  An alarm at the vet’s office had Kye jerking from his thoughts. He clicked on all the cameras in the building and identified a single male using a crowbar to pry open the back door. Amaya was on her way back from the kennels, but she froze at the sound.

  “Storm, get to Landon’s office,” he barked into the phone once the male answered. They were the only ones close to the office. “Male subject attempting to get in the back door.”

  “Fuck,” he barked. “We are close, but still five minutes away.”

  The male wrenched the door open and was coming up the hallway leading to the waiting area. Amaya stopped, pressing her back to the wall. She slipped inside one of the exam rooms, and it looked like she was searching for a weapon. He clearly saw the panic on her face.

  “Storm, you need to hurry,” Kye advised as he felt his heart race.

  “Almost there,” he replied. “Get that damn sheriff on the phone.”

  Kye cursed when the male burst through the exam room door, immediately attacking Amaya. She screamed and put up a fight, but the male knocked her out with a single punch to the jaw.

  “Fuck, he has her, Storm,” Kye advised. “Calling Garrett.”

  He immediately pressed the speed dial number to Garrett’s cell phone.

  “Sheriff, get to Bryant Animal Clinic, there is someone breaking in,” he said once the angel answered the phone. His heart rate thundered as the male tossed her into the trunk like she was nothing more than a ragdoll. “You might want to use that flashy shit to get there. Suspect has Amaya, and he’s putting her in a vehicle. Nineties model Lincoln; solid black with tint. Cannot see license plate number. Two suspects; one is a driver.”

  “On it,” he replied.

  Sheriff Lynch appeared behind the building, making sure he wasn’t seen doing his magical grand entrance just as the tires on the car started rolling. Kye let out a heavy curse as they spun out, heading toward town. Two seconds later, Storm’s truck flew into the parking lot, immediately finding Garrett racing toward their vehicle. The angel climbed in and they were off in search of the car.

  “Did you ever get a plate?” Storm bellowed into the phone the moment Kye answered.

  “No,” he cursed. “They didn’t pass the camera at an angle where it could be seen.”

  Storm’s voice shook. “I’m going to find her. I have to find her.”

  “I’m going to wake Landon,” he stated. “Stay on the phone with me.”

  “They can’t take her, Kye,” Storm growled, rambling on. “God damnit! She can’t be gone.”

  “Let the sheriff call in backup,” Kye interrupted. “I have to get Talon.” Storm belted out a string of curses and hung up.

  He knew better than to wake the male with a phone call when his mate was out on the streets working to find the Gadaí. Landon would immediately think the worst, and it was better to have a Guardian go to their house.

  “Axel, come to the control room, and make it fucking fast, man,” Kye said in a rush. The male hung up and was there within a minute. He gave him all the information he had and sent him on his way to bring Landon to the main house. His next order of business was to wake his brother.

  He hurried out of the r
oom where he worked nights to keep an eye on the cameras, passing Talon’s office. Once he was up the stairs, he knocked on the alpha’s bedroom door and waited. A sleepy alpha cracked the door, and the moment his brother saw the look on his face, he knew something had gone down.

  “Talk to me,” Talon ordered as he closed the door quietly as not to wake his mate.

  Kye ran through everything he had seen, cursing when he relayed how fast the male had moved to get Amaya in the trunk of the car.

  “Do you think they were Gadaí?” Talon inquired, wiping a hand over his face as he tried to come awake.

  “I couldn’t see his eyes,” Kye replied. “He never looked up, but he was fast. Not as fast as a shifter, but it was close.”

  “Maybe he didn’t move as fast because he didn’t know the building,” Talon wondered aloud.

  “He has to be a wolf,” Kye growled, downloading the footage and emailing it over to Storm and the sheriff.

  “Play the footage again,” Talon ordered as he took a seat to Kye’s right.

  “He had to have scented her,” Kye replied as he clicked a few buttons and backed up the footage.

  Talon watched it with his keen eyes, pointing to things instead of talking while the video played. There was audio, but the male had been silent. Even when he found Amaya, he didn’t say anything to her as he knocked her out with one punch.

  “What’s going on?” Landon asked as soon as Axel opened the door.

  “Sit and watch this,” Kye advised, waiting until Axel brought a chair over for Landon to use.

  Kye started the video again and made note of the time. He zoomed in on the car and still couldn’t make out a face other than the male had a short beard. The male who’d taken Amaya was built like a fucking tank, but he moved with ease.

  “Jesus,” Landon gasped. “Did they find her? Where is the sheriff?”

  “I’m calling them back now,” he replied and made the call to Storm. He didn’t put the phone on speaker, deciding to keep the information private between the Guardians. Kye didn’t want Landon hearing anything graphic should the outcome of Amaya’s abduction come to a tragic end.