Page 25 of The Predator's Wolf Mate

“We’re here.” I helped Bryant out of his car seat, and we walked up to the porch where the healer, Saul, was waiting. He was old enough to be my grandfather and had a way of making me feel both welcome and safe with only a smile.

“Oh, you brought a helper today.” The raccoon shifter waved at Bryant, who waved back with a smile.

“Come on in, and we’ll have some tea and cookies I made. Would you like that?”

The cabin worked as both his office and his home, which was pretty common. It wasn’t like you could get a healer’s office in a strip mall. But, as common as this was, Saul was different than the healer I saw while living in the warehouse.

Unlike him, Saul was very old school. He was much less about modern medicine and more about the ways of old. Not that the other one was a full-on doctor, but he had more doctor vibes, and that wasn’t what I was going for. I wanted to be in tune with my patients’ shifter sides, and unfortunately, human medicine didn’t take our beasts into consideration—you know, because they don’t know about them.

We sat down at a small table, the walls filled with rows and rows of spices and tinctures, all on narrow built-in shelves. I wasn’t sure how he found the one he was looking for, but I was confident I was going to learn his system and so much more.

“Would you like chocolate or strawberry?” Saul held up two cookies, and Bryant looked back and forth between them both.

“Both it is.” Saul placed them on the plate, put it in front of my son, along with a travel cup, complete with lid and a straw, filled with milk.

Saul gave me a couple of cookies and tea before breaking out his binder. “This is going to make me look more organized than I am. Trust me.”

Ten minutes in, I had to disagree with him. If that binder wasn’t organized, I didn’t know what was. We spent the next hour going through his plan for me and with each section of the notes we discussed, I got more and more excited. By the time we were ready to call it a day, we had a solid plan in place.

“There’s one thing we haven’t talked about. Money,” I said.

“No, and we’re not going to.” Saul closed the book.

“That’s not how this works.” He was giving me so much of his time. Of course, he deserved to be compensated.

“Yes, it is, because you are young, my friend—you are helping those like my great-nephew.” His eyes glistened, tears there at the ready. “It’s too late to help him, but you’re giving others a better future. One day, when there aren’t little ears around, I’ll tell you about him, okay?”

“Okay.” It was the best I could come up with. I didn’t want to make what was obviously a painful subject worse for him. We said our goodbyes, and he gave Bryant a wolf sticker for being so well behaved. It was perfect.

“Lesson number one: stickers make everybody happier.” He was right. They did.

I got Bryant buckled in and started for home. About halfway there, the car started making a noise like there was a rock caught in the undercarriage. Then came the odor. I rolled down the windows to clear the air, but it only got worse, so I rolled them back up again.

“Okay, Bryant, Papa’s gonna figure out what’s wrong with the car and then we’ll call Daddy, okay?” I loved that he’d taken to calling Aziz Daddy.

“Okay, Papa.”

I pulled over, grabbed my phone to call my mate and see if he could come get us or if it was possibly still safe to drive the rest of the way home. Before I could unlock it, there was a knock on the window, and, when I turned to see who it was, my blood ran cold at the sinister smile staring back at me, his gun holster out for all to see.

Chapter Twenty

Aziz

I called Hammer the second I got the message.

He and the others, minus the lion, got here in minutes flat. “What is it?” Hammer asked, coming in and pouring coffee.

“They have Jack. Goliath has Jack. And it came from the same number as the threats beforehand. I have to call them, but I wanted everyone present. I need witnesses.”

“We’re here. Go ahead and call. Let’s nail this fucker for messing with one of our own.” Hammer was right. Jack was our family now. I knew that he was my family, but now he was all of our family.

I called, and my blood ran cold with what I heard. Bryant could be heard in the background babbling it up, but the sniffles from my mate brought me to the edge of sanity and back again.

“You hear them, Aziz? They are here, waiting for you. Don’t worry. We are taking good care of them. We simply wanted to get your attention. We have no desire to hurt the omega or the pup, either of them.”

My brothers eyed me but I pushed forward. I would tell them in a few minutes. “Then, what do you want? I’m right here. There was no reason to bring my omega into this.”

“We tried, hyena,” the person spat. “We sent you a message and then proceeded to send a bigger one with your clan. You ignored us. This, we knew, you would not ignore.”

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