all love and acceptance.
“This is Jai’s pack?” Caleb asked, coming to stand by my side.
“Yep.”
“And them?”
He eyed the old fellas suspiciously, and why wouldn’t he? They stood as one, a quiet island of power in amongst all the hysteria.
“That’s the alphas, the ruling council of the pack. They are the law.”
One I’m going to feel the full brunt of, I thought as they stared at me.
Caleb let out a low growl, shifting to partially block their view of me. Didn’t matter, some young upstart wasn’t going to stop them from delivering their message.
A memory, not mine, tugged at me, dragging me away from this fucking place, back to pack grounds. Back when the night air was soft as cat’s fur on our skin, Mother Moon beaming down at us as Jai and I played at mating, casting our bodies silver. Back to the moment when he first pierced me, his gasp and mine, when I didn’t realise that hard lump at his base was his knot, not his stomach.
“This’ll be the last time,” one of the old fellas said, staring into the fire. He looked across at us, where the faintest shapes of us could be made out in the distance, while Rob and the other senior men sat around on the logs. “Let him have his taste, then no more for him. That one, she’s dangerous.”
“Touching minds,” another old man said. “Bad business. It’s not right, not for Jai.”
“He loves her, y’know,” Rob said. “She’s his mate. There’ll be no other for him.”
“Plenty of men not able to find their mates. They settle down, find women.”
“Not when she’s in the same town. Not when she wants him too.”
“Ole Moira Bruce, she told me, not them together. We were promised a daughter after hers ran away from you, but she said not that one. Whoever the father was made her too much, too powerful. She can’t be controlled.” The man stamped his cane in the dirt. “Let them have their fun, then you tell Jai the news, Rob.”
For a moment, all I could hear and feel was my breath rasping in my chest, ballooning out in clouds of vapour. Just breathe, I told myself. Just keep breathing.
Old Billy, he nodded to me, just once, all I’d ever get from the fucking pack for getting their golden boy out of this mess. Because no matter what I thought, in their eyes, I’d been the one to get him into it. Then he raised that cane of his, those gnarled hands, ropy arms bloody strong and stable right this minute, as he pointed it at me.
Run, rabbit, run.
“What the fuck!” Caleb snarled, his body dropping automatically into fighting posture. “Who are these old bastards?”
You knew, I thrust at the lot of them, soaking in the stiffening of old bodies as it speared through their minds.
They didn’t say much, the old fellas, because they didn’t need to. They hadn’t wanted me with Jai and had been persuaded to relent. That had been revoked. Because I might be a little rabbit, but I’d taken out the threat for them.
But now I was the threat.
With the ability to twist any of them, to force them to do my will, they wanted me out. If I went against them, they’d come for me, for Jai, and for any with me. My hand went to my stomach. I shook my head, not wanting to accept what I knew to be true, and when it sank in, to deny them any fucking power over me.
You tell him what you’ve done, I said, speaking mind to mind to the fucking lot of them, watching that stony composure shatter with a sly smile. You tell him what you’ve taken from him, or I will.
Witch. Abomination. Unclean thing.
Jai’s mate, I shot back. The enemy that will be at your throat until he’s by my side.
The old men laughed at that, with that pitiless manner that held within it the weight of age. They laughed like I was a silly little girl.
“C’mon,” I said to the others, too low for the Heller’s to hear. “We’re getting out of here, getting you home.”
“What?” Nero asked with a frown, but when I took off for the steps on the side of the building, they all followed, leaving Jai behind.
Every step felt like knives were stabbing into my feet, my heart, and I broadcast that to the old men, not pulling my punches, hitting them with exactly how it felt. This is wrong! my body