Page 15 of A Beta Protects

“She’s your mate?” His eyes are shocked as he approaches, and they would be. Shifter's mate with other shifters. For one to have a human mate isn’t the usual way things go. All shifters learn one important lesson in childhood, necessary for the survival of themselves, their pack, and all other packs.

Never let any human get close enough to learn you are not the same as they are.

Hard to do with someone you sleep with, live with, and potentially have children with.

I nod.

“And you knew this…”

“Back when I first met her and her husband in Missouri. I was struggling to control my wolf before I joined the Marines. But after? I couldn’t stay in the same town as her husband.”

He stares a little longer. “No wonder you were determined to drink Boston dry. You keep every single fucking card close to your chest, don’t you?” He grabs my arm and shakes me. “Why the fuck didn’t you ever say anything before?”

“What would I have said? What would I have done?”

There was nothing to say.

Kira’s brother died, and I came home, but I couldn’t stay with Kira. How could I live in the same town with my mate and her husband? I fought hard to stay distant when I was around her, to always leave at the first opportunity so she would never know how desperately I wanted her. Every night I had a cold shower when I thought of her. Even in my dreams she haunted me.

There was no way I could have lasted long without killing the husband and biting her. She’d have hated me, and I’d have lost her.

So I left, headed for Boston, and I was drunk, pissing in an alley when I met Galen and some guys tried to mug us. As first meetings go, learning you fight well together seemed like a good start to building a pack together.

“Does she know?” Galen immediately shakes his head, answering his own question. “Of course she doesn’t know. How could she?”

She smells like mine. Wolf and man are certain of it. Kira is human. Fully human. She doesn’t have the same way of knowing it too. And even if I changed her, if such a thing didn’t turn her feral as it can to humans, then what?

She’s here. But not because she wants me. Because she had nowhere to go to escape him.

And I need her to want me as badly as I want her.

“So what are you going to do?” he asks, frowning.

I look at him and tell him something I’ve never said before. “I don’t know.”

His expression is blank, and then slowly amusement filters across his gaze. “This isn’t a laughing situation, but I never thought I’d see the day you would be the frazzled out of control one. Mr. Check the weather on five channels so as not to be surprised and have our football game rained off.”

His words provoke a smile that I didn’t think I had in me. “You were waiting to throw that in my face all this time, weren’t you?”

“If only you knew how long.” His amusement fades. “We’ll rally around Kira, look out for her, and if that prick thinks he can grab her, he has another thing coming.”

“You think that was the husband who sent the fax trying to get her back?” I’d thought the same. Her husband was a deputy sheriff back when I was still living in Missouri. Aaron, Kira’s brother, said he took after his father in that regard. It’s been years, which means Bryce is probably the sheriff, so he has the potential to be dangerous to Kira and to us if he ever learned we were shifters.

“I do.” He tilts his head, his gaze speculative. “What do you make of Shawn’s lie?”

Kira’s fear had almost distracted me from all the attention Shawn was paying Chloe, whose cheeks were suspiciously pink. “Not sure.”

I think if Shawn didn’t feel a certain way toward Chloe, I’m not so sure how eager he would be to fight our—and Kira’s—corner.

Galen stares at me.

I shake my head. I’ve been getting a feeling for a while now that something was growing between Chloe and Shawn. A union like that, between a female shifter and a human sheriff, is a problem. Not so much the human/shifter aspect, than the fact he’s a cop, and if there’s one thing we shifters know, it’s avoid law officials and government types.

Normal humans would discount if they saw us heal a little quicker than normal or run a little fast. But someone in power with the ability to have us locked away and dissected?

That’s a big problem. Not just for Chloe or our pack, but for all shifters everywhere.

I’ve given Chloe a subtle warning, but if Galen knew how serious it was getting, as alpha, he would have to do something about it.

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