Guarding His Mate

by Jenny Tia

  “Yeah, I think you might be right. Thanks, Josie.” I raised my coffee in thanks, and she gave me a big smile before turning to her next customer. I pushed through the door, and the bell jingled behind me, reminding me again: Don’t give up. He’s the one.

  I hurried across the parking lot and did some mental arithmetic about the hours I had left in the morning. The meeting with Alpha Hughes was an hour from now, but if Casius had already been to the coffee shop, that meant he was already on his way to the Supreme Mansion. In fact, he was probably already there. It wasn’t like the alphas would wait for me or any other beta before starting their meeting, and I felt bad I wasn’t there to support him from the start. I fully intended to jump in my car, drive straight to the Mansion, and slip seamlessly into the proceedings, but then I found myself driving downtown, toward the hospital.

  I couldn’t help but smile as the hospital came into view. I pulled up, grabbed the paper bag heavy with muffins, and let my wolf lead me in the right direction. He took me down a warren of corridors that all looked the same to me. It kind of reminded me of the station, except it was much emptier. My boots squeaked against the linoleum and echoed through the quiet halls until I reached an unmanned central desk that had a cross intersection. I stopped short. I had no idea which way to go, so I inhaled deeply, and caught ginger and cinnamon. My mate!

  I took a sharp left and spotted a shock of blond hair. Stefan was leaning against a tall desk at the nurse’s station, hunched over paperwork and writing quickly. A smile burst across my face when I caught sight of him, and he looked up as I drew closer. He gasped and the pen dropped to the floor with a thud. He looked completely shocked.

  “Are you injured?”

  Flattered by the slight hint of concern in his voice, I nevertheless shook my head. “No, I’m healthy as an ox. I mean, I did hurt my leg, but it’s okay now.”

  “Mm-hm. So, you’re not injured, but you’re in the hospital?”

  “This is one of my favorite places, actually. It’s peaceful.”

  Stefan looked me over like I was pulling his leg.

  “I’m serious. Am I wrong? It’s so quiet in here.”

  “No, you’re right. It is peaceful. You just don’t hear that very often. We mostly get people going into labor, and that’s anything but peaceful.”

  “I bet.” I wet my lips and let my gaze dance down Stef’s body. My mind ran wild and I imagined what he’d look like knocked up, with his scrubs stretched around a big belly full of my baby. Damn. He’d look so good.

  “So if you’re not injured, what the hell are you doing here?” He growled at me as he bent down to pick up his pen, but he kept his eyes on mine. I also liked how he looked bent over.

  “I heard it’s your first day, so I brought you breakfast to say congratulations.” I held up the bag and gave him my cheesiest grin. For a second, just one microscopic second, he looked truly touched. A tiny smile cracked through his sassy exterior. But in the next breath, it was over.

  “Thanks, but no thanks.” Stefan snapped upright and thumped the pen against the desk.

  “C’mon, it’s a cranberry and walnut muffin. You can’t say no to cranberry.” I opened the bag to release the scent of the muffins, and I took a deep inhale myself. They smelled damn good.

  Stefan glanced into the bag, then back up and me, and shook his head. “You don’t need to feed me.”

  I shrugged and pulled a muffin out of the bag then held it out to him as an offering. “I know. You’re a big boy. But first-day jitters can make anyone forget to eat properly, right? You know more about blood sugar and all that, but I’d just feel better going about my day if I knew you at least ate something.”

  Stefan stared me down with a clenched jaw, his arms across his chest, and his eyes narrowed. His gaze felt like daggers. A weaker man might have backed down. But my wolf was strong. I held my ground.

  I thrust the muffin in front of his face, and he let out a relenting sigh as he snatched it out of my hand.

  “Fine. I’ll eat something in front of you. You freak.”

  He bit into the muffin and made me smile with his exaggerated chewing motions, all while he kept eye contact. But a moment later he closed his eyes, and a moan of pleasure escaped his throat before he tried to cover it up with a cough. Too late. He clearly loved that cranberry muffin, and I felt triumphant. Yes! Victory!

  “Don’t look so happy. It’s not that good,” he said through a mouthful of crumbs.

  “Uh-huh. Sure thing. Hey, I have to run. I’ll see you later.”

  I could have sworn his face fell a little, and I wanted to stick around and talk to him more, but I really had to get to the Mansion. I placed the muffin bag on the desk, pointed to Stef, and turned around.

  The bond between us felt like a piece of ribbon tied around my heart and connected to his. As I walked back down the corridor, the ribbon stretched taut the further away from him I got. It hurt, and my wolf whined, worried the ribbon might snap. I took a bracing breath, gritted my teeth, and shoved my hands in my pockets. I just had to bear it.

  “Nic!”

  I immediately spun around. Stefan held up the muffin in his hand and half-waved to me.

  “Thanks. Thank you. For breakfast.”

  I grinned. Yes! Another victory. I’d take that.

  I gave him a wink and a wave, and then bounded out of the hospital with so much lightness in my step I felt like I could just about fly.

  That feeling didn’t last long. The heaviness in the Supreme Mansion was stifling. I felt like there was a weight on my back the minute I stepped into Alpha Hughes’s office. I stood beside Casius at the desk, watching as he clicked through footage of the captives on Hughes’s laptop.

  The Supreme Alpha paced back and forth in front of his intimidatingly stuffed bookshelves. I noticed the creepy-ass portrait of the Alpha’s late father, Jebediah Hughes, was missing from its usual spot on the wall. Instead, there was a beautiful landscape painting of an Everglow waterfall, iridescent blue and sparkling. Much more relaxing to gaze at than the creepy old dude who was usually there.

  Not that I had any time to relax.

  “We need information and we’re not getting it,” Casius growled. “Neither of them are talking. Neither of them are giving anything away. I’ve gone over these tapes of the guards’ interrogations with them at least a thousand times, and the humans aren’t even giving away body language clues. Nothing. We’ve sent written transcripts to our codebreakers, and they’ve all concluded there is no code. The humans are just rambling nonsense.”

  Alpha Hughes grunted in agreement. “We need one of them to talk, and soon. The humans will be planning retaliation for us taking these two. And I can only imagine how bad their vengeance will be if we return them withered and underfed. That is not a good step toward peaceful relations.”

  My stomach sank.

  “They’re still not eating?” Casius sounded angry rather than worried about it.

  Alpha Hughes shook his head. “Eli, some. The older man, no. Not water. Not a drop. I’m worried about his health, and his state of mind.”

  “Eli, then. We should focus on him.” Casius shut the laptop, and Alpha Hughes nodded.

  “There’s something about him, isn’t there?”

  Casius glanced at me and I raised my eyebrows as he replied cautiously. “Yes…”

  “Let me cut to the chase.” Alpha Hughes stopped pacing and flattened his palms against his desk. He leaned forward and lowered his voice, as if anyone could hear a peep from outside the soundproofed room. “I want to have Eli’s blood tested. I want to find out what it is about him that makes him so…different to the other human. Through his blood, we could find what kind of shifter he might be, if he is one. But we need his consent.”

  Casius crossed his arms. “He’s a prisoner. Do we really need his consent to test him?”

  “We may be animals, Casius, but we’re not monsters. And think of the end game here—we need Eli to talk. Giving him any
reason for hostility isn’t going to help. We need to make this as easy as possible for everyone involved.”

  I felt myself standing up straighter. I was all ears, but I wasn’t loving what I was hearing.

  “Eli is young. Impressionable. He’s following what they’ve taught him. He needs understanding, not total force. We should treat him like a young cub.”

  I caught Casius’s gaze and he showed surprise at the same time I did. This sounded a lot like what we’d been talking about in Cas’s office. Alpha Hughes let out a short chuckle and nodded. “Yes. I have reason to believe Eli has wolf blood in his veins. I don’t know how potent it is, but the way Eli was reacting to my commands is enough for me to believe there is a good amount of wolf in him.”

  I cleared my throat. “And if he knows that we know… Then maybe he’ll talk?”

  Alpha Hughes nodded. “Maybe. At worst, we’ll have more information about what’s going on. We just need a sample of his blood…”

  Casius ran a hand over his short-cropped hair and blew out a heavy sigh.

  “We could just ask him for it,” I said, admittedly a little naively, and when the two of them looked at me with humored grins, I waved my hands to dismiss the whole idea.

  “There is one thing going for us. The other man is in bad shape. We’re going to have to move him to the hospital soon. We could transport Eli there at the same time.”

  I frowned and lowered my eyes from Alpha Hughes’s intimidating stare. My gaze rested on the laptop. While Casius and Alpha Hughes brainstormed ways to get blood from Eli, I flicked the laptop open and played a section of the monitoring tapes from when we’d first brought the humans in. I watched myself getting the older human into his cell, and my attention caught on the way he yelled back toward Eli.

  Resist, Eli! Resist the beast.

  Of course! How had I missed it before? “He knows,” I said loudly.

  Casius and Alpha Hughes practically jumped, and then stared at me. “Who?” Alpha Hughes asked.

  “The older human, he knows Eli is a shifter.”

  “How can you tell that from some silent film?” Casius frowned and motioned to the laptop.

  “It’s what he said. Before I put him into the cell, he yelled at Eli. I thought he was talking about us, but he was talking about Eli. He said, ‘resist the beast’.”

  Alpha Hughes wet his lips. “Resist the beast…”

  Casius’s eyes grew wide. “Resist? That’s what Eli has been muttering this whole time, isn’t it?”

  “The older guy was telling him to resist the beast—or the wolf—inside Eli. If the human knows what Eli is, then we can use it. Let’s give Eli the impression the other one gave up Eli’s secret. Eli might confess it to us if he thinks he’s already been outed.”

  “Shit. We might not even need the blood.” Casius grinned, and Alpha Hughes clapped his hands together in excitement.

  “Casius. You’ve picked one hell of a second in command.” Alpha Hughes beamed at Casius, then slapped me on the shoulder. “Your father would be proud of you, Nic. You smart lad. Right. Let’s get to it.”

  Seven guards were hovering outside the older human’s cell when we got to the station. When Alpha Hughes asked for an explanation for the blockage in the hallway, Mikel stepped forward.

  “I just came down from the observation room and gathered some reinforcements to check on the older human,” he explained. “In the monitor, he looked…”

  “Looked what?” Casius asked.

  Mikel grimaced and held his chest. “He looked dead.”

  I held my breath while Alpha Hughes shook his head. “And is he?”

  “No, he’s alive, we just checked. He’s breathing. But he may need medical attention. Soon.” Mikel wet his lips and fiddled with the middle button of his shirt as he glanced nervously between Alpha Hughes and Casius. Mikel’s usual ruddy complexion looked drawn and pallid. He looked as bad as I had after observation duty. I felt for the guy but the idea of going back into that room made me nauseous. Better him than me.

  Casius asked, “And Eli? The other human?”

  “He’s been refusing food from Lachlan again. He’s malnourished. But he’s up.”

  Casius and Alpha Hughes glanced at each other, then both of them nodded at me.

  Hughes instructed Mikel and the rest of the guards to organize a transfer to take the older human to the hospital. Once the troops had scattered, the Supreme Alpha turned back to us.

  “Casius, you try your hand at Eli. See if he’ll react to your alpha pheromones. Nic, go in with him—play ‘good cop’ and get him to talk. I’ll check the feed in the observation room and make sure we get this recorded on tape.”

  I crossed my arm over my chest and gave Alpha Hughes a quick bow of respect, obedience, and duty before turning toward Casius and doing the same to him. Cas held his stern Alpha Select expression, but as soon as Alpha Hughes was out of sight, he broke out laughing and threw an arm around me, got me into a headlock and dug his knuckles into the top of my skull. I cried out and swatted at him, but he was too strong.

  “Bully. You’re such a bully.” I swung my fists and landed a few good punches into his belly, but they just made him laugh even harder. I tried to kick his ass with the flat of my foot, but he swerved away from my reach. As a consequence he pulled me over onto my butt, almost falling over too, until he let me go. He stumbled backward and caught himself against the wall in a fit of giggles. I lay on the linoleum tile as I laughed and made karate moves in the air.

  “Yeah, that’s what you get. Don’t you come near me or I’ll kick your alpha ass again!”

  “Oh, that’s what I get, huh?” Casius cackled, holding his sides. “What’re you doing down there? Kickboxing in your sleep?”

  “I’d kick your ass in my sleep.”

  He helped me up and we dusted each other off, still giggling like cubs. It was like old times. Like it was before the humans had shown up talking vengeance and wreaking violence. It hadn’t even been that long ago, but I missed the lightness of how things had been then.

  “I can’t wait to get back to the way things were.” My voice was low as I smoothed down the front of my shirt.

  Casius’s eyes took on a compassionate glow, and he nodded. “Let’s do what we need to get our lives back.”

  He wove an arm over my shoulder and turned me so we both faced the door to Eli’s cell. The lock came open with a clang, and the door itself creaked on its hinges. Though we had a stronghold for prisoners, we hardly had to use them. They certainly hadn’t been built for humans.

  Eli looked up at us from where he sat on the edge of the cot. He’d made the bed, tucked in the blankets and sheets, and pulled them tightly up over the pillow. It was a strange detail, but it hit me. I imagined I would have done the same. Anything to pass away the hours in here; anything to feel sane.

  We stood above him, but far enough away he didn’t have to crane his neck when he looked up at us. I would have crouched, to get down to his level and not seem intimidating, but maybe that was just my beta instincts. Casius was all alpha, so we stayed standing.

  Eli parted his cracked lips, and his gaze darted between us. He didn’t make a move to stand. He didn’t make a sound.

  Casius cleared his throat, and the reverberation of it echoed through the room. “Eli. You need to eat more.”

  Eli let out a snort and shook his head slightly.

  I jumped in. “We want you to eat more. We don’t want you to suffer while you’re here.”

  A heavy silence hung between us all. Eli clenched his fingers into fists, then relaxed them again. I noticed his boots were off, and he’d pressed his bare feet onto the floor. I looked for his shoes and found them under the end of the bed where he’d neatly placed them.

  Casius, never one for hesitating, pushed right to the point. “Eli. Your friend… He didn’t eat or drink the whole time you’ve been in here. Maybe it was some kind of protest, maybe he was suspicious we’d poison him or something. Ma
ybe you both agreed not to eat or drink what we offered. But whatever the reason, his physical and mental strength are gone. His will is broken.”

  Eli didn’t move or make a sound.

  Casius glanced at me, and I nodded. He moved a little closer to Eli and spoke quietly. “He broke down, and he told us things. Do you understand what I’m saying? He told us about you.”

  Eli was quiet, but he curled his toes.

  “You must feel terrible in here, locked in this cage.”

  Their eyes met. Eli started to fidget.

  “Wolves like to run. They don’t like to be kept in one place like this. You need the dirt under your paws.”

  Eli’s chest began rising and falling, his breath quick and heavy. His face was blank, but his eyes were wild. He searched Casius’s face and glared at him.

  “And having to resist…” Casius took another step forward and Eli grimaced.

  “Having to resist your wolf. I don’t know how you’ve managed to do it for so many days. I could never last that long. When my wolf comes to the surface, I have to let it loose.”

  Eli squirmed and let out a pained whine. My heart surged and my wolf was at full attention. Something was wrong. And then I saw it. It was just an instant, a flash I could have missed if I’d blinked; worse, it was a flash Casius didn’t see.

  Eli’s claws.

  I ran across the room just as Eli sprang at Casius with fangs and claws bared. He lunged for my best friend’s neck.

  “No!” I went to tackle Eli, but there was no time. His claws were inches from the soft flesh of Casius’s throat, or they would have been if I hadn’t thrown myself between them and taken the damage myself.

  Eli’s claws sank into my neck and ripped through my skin. They were sharp like steel and for a moment, I felt nothing… Until he ripped them back and tore through my flesh. I felt the cold shock of flayed skin, the hot release of bright red blood, and the heavy thud of my body hitting the floor.