Page 22 of Betrayed Pregnant Mate

Since everything that happened, my place within the team feels more tenuous than ever. None of them know how to treat me, it seems—with some of them constantly giving me looks of pity, others joking too much, and some struggling to talk to me at all.

Aris looks at me like a father looks at his wayward son. Like he has to figure out how to get me back on the right track. Like he’s still trying to decide if he can put the door back on my room, trust me, with the keys to the car.

When the elevators slide open, we step into the long, cool hallway, and Veronica sucks in a breath. The inside of the building is just as impressive as the outside, but the top floor is decidedly more high-tech. Like in our previous agency building, there are digital maps lining the walls, communicating the movements and whereabouts of other teams.

There are diagrams of the different paranormal creates, where they live, and their current danger levels. On the other side of the hallway, updates from paranormal news run the length of the wall, sharing news about current fairy dust levels and what to do if you find an abandoned gnome in the forest, which is becoming more and more common with deforestation.

“Every day, I feel like I’m living a fever dream,” Veronica mutters, shaking her head, and I can’t totally blame her. I try to imagine what it would be like to grow up as a human, not to know about paranormals, and suddenly be thrust into their world.

To be mated and blood-bonded to a shifter. The problem presents itself yet again—what are we going to do about this situation? Veronica will leave Rosecreek after the threat of the vampire venom killing me is gone, and I’ll live in pain every single day, resisting the urge to go to her, to find her, and make her mine. It seems like the only possible solution.

When we walk into the meeting room, every head turns in our direction. Aris quirks an eyebrow at me, his eyes darting to Veronica.

“Hey, everyone,” I say, “sorry I’m late.”

“Shit,” Byron says, leaning back in his seat and crossing his arms. “I was really hoping you were going to bring donuts.”

He’s alluding to the last time we were all together like this before a mission, back at the old headquarters, and it makes my stomach squeeze.

“Next time,” I manage to get out, pulling out a chair for Veronica, then taking one myself.

“You didn’t miss anything,” Aris says, “we were just getting started. First—do you want to update us on your situation? Linnea told me some…interesting things. Yesterday.”

“Well,” I say, clearing my throat and glancing at Veronica. Maisie is also sitting at the table and starts relentlessly picking at her cuticles. I wish I could project to her, telling her to stop being so obvious about her nervousness. “I was bitten, as you all know. Turns out, Veronica is immune. Maisie found a way to use that immunity to help me.”

“Is that why Veronica is still here?” Olivia says, from the other end of the table. I haven’t talked to her much, but she’s a certain type of pretty—big eyes with that soft, bubblegum pink hair that never seems to wash out or get more intense.

“Yes,” Veronica says, clearing her throat. “I…had my first shift. In the clinic, with Maisie and Percy there. I guess the vampire venom triggered it in me. I had no idea. My parents have a lot of explaining to do.”

I glance at her, remembering that she was raised by a single father, and that her mother died in childbirth.

“I have never heard of something like that,” Aris says, leaning forward, his eyes bright and intense. “Have you been able to project?”

“To…what?”

Aris looks to me, then seems to remember that I can’t project, either.

“As shifters, we have the ability to project to others in our pack. It’s a skill like anything else, and the better you get at it, the more directly you can send things. I can talk to Linnea about working on it with you.”

“Okay,” Veronica says, her glance skittering over to Maisie, who is covered in a fierce blush, spreading all the way down to the collar of her shirt. It never occurred to me that she might be a terrible liar, but it’s going to make this whole thing a lot more difficult.

“We can explore that more later,” Aris says, clearing his throat. “But for now, let’s get into our priority assignment: the vampires.”

“Since getting here, I’ve been scrubbing through the hard drives left behind by Varun,” Olivia says, her face growing more animated as she talks. I notice Byron roll his eyes from across the table, crossing his arms and leaning back in his seat. He’s always been our trusted source for tech needs, and I imagine he doesn’t like having his toes stepped on by someone better than him. I refocus on Olivia as she continues.

“They are heavily encrypted—at least they were. The other night, I finally had a breakthrough, and it gave me access to all of Varun’s files. I found some old correspondence, and tracked down the IP address associated with the sender—”

“This is all very interesting, Olivia,” Aris cuts in, “but can you just tell us the part that we’ll understand?”

“Right,” she says, practically bouncing in her seat with excitement. “Basically, Varun was talking with the vampires. We already knew that he was working with that commander at the agency, but based on these communications, it looks like it goes deeper than that. The entire agency might be filled with traitors, who have all communicated with the vampires.”

The room is stunned, silent for a moment. It’s somewhat fuzzy from time to time, but I remember Aris dragging us all down to the water, forcing us to strip and get soaked just in case we were somehow bugged. Learning that the commander had betrayed us was heartbreaking.

“Based on the information Olivia sent to me,” Aris says, “I believe this has the potential to become an all-out war between shifters and vamps. The development of the serum was definitely an effort to give the vampires a leg-up over us, but we don’t know what their overall goals are.”

“Yes, we do,” Byron says, letting out a quick breath of air. “Their overall goal is to use human as cattle, and they don’t like that we get in the way of that.”

“I hate vamps as much as the next guy,” Aris laughs, “but the last thing I want is another war. We will be looking for alternative solutions, but until then, I think we all need to be increasingly careful when it comes to our interactions outside of Rosecreek. We don’t need anybody else turning up with a bite.”

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