Page 25 of His Wild Mate

“Guys, I can help.”

“Honestly, this I'd love to see,” James teased.

“I hate you guys.”

“Pouting doesn't look good on an Alpha,” Austin teased.

“I'm regretting even coming over here to help. Remember, without me you'd all be fighting for your lives right now.”

That sobered us all up quickly.

Thomas may be our Alpha, but at times it was hard for any of us to see him that way. We'd grown up together and he was our friend, our brother from another mother, a hardcore member of the Six Pack.

We truly did respect him, and we loved him, but sometimes, it was just too easy to let something go. It was a tightrope of honoring his position in the Pack and keeping our easy-going banter of friendship. But this time, he was right.

“I really appreciate all you did, bro.”

“I know. And I get I'm not used to doing much manual labor these days, but I'm not entirely worthless either.”

“We know that. We were just harassing you,” James assured him.

“Someone's gotta keep you from letting that head get too big,” Austin teased.

And just like that, we were back to ragging on him while taking a full assessment of the damage. It was extensive. A window, the front door, and numerous sections of siding would need to be replaced or repaired. I should be pissed about it, but I wasn't. This house and my closest friends had protected my mate. It more than served its purpose, and I'd do it all over again and sacrifice almost anything to keep her safe.

“So, you found your mate,” Thomas said.

“I did.”

“Has she shifted at all?”

“Only for a second during the peak of the chaos. She begged me to keep her safe. And then she shifted back into her fur.”

“She's your mate. Of course you're going to keep her safe.”

I loved that no one questioned it and that they weren't blaming me for what had happened.

“So what are we going to do with her? I mean we don't even know how long the Alpha order will last,” James reminded us.

“In theory it should last forever, but I've never tried anything like this before, so we really don't know,” Thomas admitted. “I've never even seen anything like this before, so I'm going to put out an inquiry. Maybe you could try and get her to shift and talk to you. It would help to know if this was an isolated incident or something that occurs often.”

“I don't get why you weren't losing your shit over it,” Austin said to me.

I shrugged. “It's not like I wasn't affected by it. I could smell her. I was definitely attracted to her in both skin and fur. But it was different for me, I guess.”

“More like a mating male attraction than an obsessive I need to tap that insanity like the others.”

I growled at Austin.

“What? I’m just saying. There has to be more to it than that. People literally killed each other trying to get to her.”

“Maybe she's a witch?” James suggested.

I didn't like the sound of that. Witches were feared and often killed for their powers. Many of them were dangerous too. I looked back at my house and gulped. Was my mate a witch?

“We don't get many witches around here, at least not that I know of, but Kyle Westin has been dealing with a lot of them lately, plus his mate's a witch. Maybe he'll have some ideas. His Westin Force units may have crossed something like this before. It's worth asking.”

I didn't like the idea of my mate being put under a scope like this or more attention being drawn to her.

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