Page 41 of Betrayed Pregnant Mate

“Wow,” I say, laughing for the first time since he came inside. “You’re really…passionate about that.”

“There are a lot of paranormals with these antiquated views,” he says, shrugging and taking another sip of his coffee. “It just contributes to the overall lack of progress in our community. I mean—can a shifter and human relationship be dangerous? Yes, of course. But I think a lot of shifters conflate that danger to keep our kinds separate. To avoid weakening the bloodline and all that.”

I think of Maisie, a medical professional, and how she probably got her information about intimate relationships from humans and shifters out of a nursing book, how some old guy with the kind of backward thinking the agent is talking about probably wrote most of it.

“Well,” I say, “this is…a lot to take in.”

I still can’t decide if I still hate him, but like earlier, I have this sense that there’s nothing he’s said so far that’s been untruthful.

“Unfortunately, there’s more,” he says, setting his mug out and letting out a suffering sigh. “The Serum X development and the recent vampire attacks on shifters doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. With the intel we’ve been able to gather, it seems like the vampires have been scheming for years to start taking on the shifters. My hypothesis is that the attacks on pregnant women in our area have something to do with that. I think they intended to target shifters, but one of them messed up and went after a human. I think they were trying to weed out the new generation of shifters, but what they didn’t expect to happen was a whole segment of us who are immune to the vampire venom.”

“Holy shit,” Percy says, shaking his head, then dropping it into his hands. “This is insane.”

“Yeah,” the agent agrees, grabbing his mug again and finishing the last drop. Then he looks over to me sheepishly. “Any chance I could get another cup?”

“I think I need to call Aris,” Percy says, standing, then sitting again when he cuts his eyes to the agent sitting on the couch. “Veronica,” he says, clearly not wanting to leave him alone with me, “would you be willing to grab my phone?”

I nod and go for the phone, then brew another mug of coffee for the agent while Percy talks to Aris in hushed tones on the other end of the room. When I return, I make the agent hand over his badge so I can examine it for myself.

Weirdly, I can hear every word Percy says while on the phone with Aris, even though he’s whispering and has his mouth covered with his hand.

When Percy finally hangs up the call and returns to the living room, Agent Rafael Diaz has made his way through almost all of our coffee supply. I’ve cut him off, taking the mug away, genuinely terrified that he might overdose on caffeine and stop his heart in Percy’s living room.

Of course, I know how to administer CPR, but that doesn’t mean I want to administer CPR to this man. Or being.

My mind is full of questions I want to ask him, but they’re all piled on top of one another, making it too difficult to pull one out and force it through my lips. Instead, I just stare at him, and he stares down at the carpet.

“Well,” Percy says, breaking us out of the silence that had started to become kind of comforting, “Aris is calling an emergency meeting, right now.”

“I know,” Rafael and I say at the same time.

Chapter 20 - Percy

“You know,” Maisie says, walking into the pack center meeting room, a sleep mask still pushed up onto her forehead. “Even a minor disruption to the eight-hour sleeping window can cause significant problems.”

We all stare back at her from around the table—everyone has congregated for the meeting, according to Aris’s summons. All the team members are here—me, Ado, Byron, Bigby, and Aris—as well as others in the Rosecreek pack. Olivia and Rosa sit together at the end of the table, chatting. Linnea is seated sleepily next to an empty chair that I assume is meant for Aris. Rafael sits uncomfortably next to Veronica, leaning all the way toward me, clearly still bothered by the guy.

The room around is uneasy for several reasons—first, because it's so late, most of the light that would typically come from the windows is gone, casting the room in darkness and fluorescent lighting. Second, Linnea has clearly been going hard with the Halloween decorations, having decked out the room in fake cobwebs, dancing skeletons, and even a poster of a werewolf, howling at the moon.

When we first walked in, Veronica had let out a loud laugh, leaning over to me and whispering, “Is that offensive to you?”

“Maisie,” Byron says now, speaking for the entire group, “what the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that it’s always this group constantly interrupting my sleep! How am I supposed to operate during the day if you’re constantly calling meetings in the middle of the night?”

“My apologies,” Aris says, slipping into the room behind her, his massive form dwarfing her smaller one. “I will be sure to consider your sleeping schedule before I call another meeting.”

“Oh, Gods,” Maisie says, closing her eyes, “I’m sorry, Aris, I didn’t realize—”

“It’s fine,” he laughs, not stopping his progress toward the front of the room, “go ahead and take a seat, then.”

Maisie quietly sits at the table, her face flaming red. When Rosa gestures to her forehead, Maisie reaches up. When her fingers graze the pink, silk sleeping mask on her head, she goes even red, tearing off her head so fast it musses up her hair.

“Alright,” Aris says, when he rounds to the front of the room. “This is an emergency, so we’ve called this meeting. Everything, this is Agent Rafael Diaz, and he’s come to us with some important information about the current vampire threat.”

“Ah, yes, sure, I can speak,” Rafael says, glancing around nervously as Aris sits down. It seems like speaking to everyone is the last thing he wants to do, but he slowly rises to his feet, clearing his throat and bracing his hands on the table, speaking to nobody in particular as he starts, his eyes focused on the center of the table. “I am a special agent at the Carpio Agency, which was brought together as a replacement for the agency that we all once worked at together.”

“Who was your commander?” Aris asks, raising an eyebrow, and Rafael lets out a sigh. I can almost feel him remembering my line of questioning earlier, but it’s a fair question. It’s easy to say you worked somewhere, hard to pull a commander’s name out of your ass unless you’ve really prepared to lie.

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