Page 4 of Beyond the Grasslands

The other guards in the pack turned and walked out of the room as well, rather than follow the order that had been given to lock Kyla in a room until she could come to her senses. It seemed that having been rejected by her mate took the wind out of her sales though.

“May I leave and go back home?” She asked me in a meek voice that was unusual for her.

“If they’ll have you.”

Her eyes came up to meet mine and while there was a flash of anger in them, I could also see the devastation there. It was one thing for her to put off telling her mate who he was to her until she could see if I could be convinced. It was another entirely for her mate to tell her that she wasn’t worthy of him and he might seek out another mate instead.

That was beyond her choice.

After Kyla left, I called the pack doctor and my brother to the throne room. Once they both arrived, I got the doctor to go down and see Nika immediately. Then, I turned to my brother. “I need your mate to do something for me.”

Avery scoffed. “Good luck with that.”

“I need her to see to Nika’s needs.”

“Nika?” Avery questioned as I winced. My brother had been unaware of my trip to go retrieve my mate. Once another Alpha called me up to bestow his condolences on me losing my mate to Thorin Greywolf, I got the date of their ceremony out of him and took off.

“She’s downstairs in the cells.” An inadvertent wince graced my face as my brother looked on in horror.

“The cells? Your mate is downstairs in the cells right now?” Avery turned as if he was about to go down there to verify, but I grabbed hold of his arm.

“I need your mate to take Nika the things she needs to get cleaned up and food and water. It has to be your mate because she respected Nika enough to stand up for her before.”

“Have you already lost your mind?” Avery yelled at me. “How is she here?”

“I took her before she could be mated to Thorin Greywolf,” I admitted. “She was still knocked out when I got her back here and I didn’t want to take a chance of her leaving before I could explain things to her.”

“You knocked out Nika Mayweather, stole her from her mating ceremony, and then locked her in the cells meant for criminals?”

My brother’s shock over my actions made my gut clench. It hadn’t been the best plan, but it was one of desperation. Surely, everyone would have to understand that.

“It was the only way.” The admission came from me in a whisper that my brother again scoffed at.

“You don’t know when to quit, do you?” Avery paced back and forth a few times before he stopped right in front of me. “You have brought war to our doorstep. You realize that, don’tyou? He will come for her. No Alpha in their right minds lets their Luna go without a fight.”

“Why is it so bad that I refused to let her go then?”

“Because you already threw her away, asshole! She won’t accept you now, no matter what you do, and throwing her in the cells won’t endear her to you either. How in the hell did you convince her to come here?” He huffed and then shook his head, as if the circumstances surrounding how Nika got here finally sank in. “You said she was knocked out. What the hell did you do?”

“A woman in Thorin’s pack hit Nika over the head and knocked her out. I took my mate and then drugged her to keep her from harming herself for the duration of our trip. She woke up in the cells earlier today.”

“You-” Avery cut himself off and stood there quietly as if he had shut down. I could tell by the glazed, faraway look in his eyes that he had simply opened a mind link, presumably to his mate. “Tessa is taking supplies to the cells. You have today to make things right, Aiden. If you do not manage to stave off a war with the Grasslands Pack, then you will have to deal with the war you created within your own pack as well. Make things right and step aside quietly, or the first challenge you face will be issued by me.”

I leftthe throne room and went back down to the cells. As I made my way down the doctor stopped me. “She will be fine, but would heal better if the poor thing was allowed to shift.”

I shook my head. “That can’t happen right now.”

“She’ll have a scar on the back of her head. The wound has gone too long without treatment for me to close it with stitches.It has to heal on its own now. If she was allowed to shift, it might lessen the amount of scarring.”

“No. She can’t be removed from the cells yet. It’s for her own good.”

“Then I am afraid she will have quite a scar on her neck and the back of her head. It will impact her hairline and cause a balding line. It may be able to be covered by hair from further up on her head, so long as she keeps it long. It would also help if she was allowed to clean herself up. Having filthy hair sitting on the wound is not helping the matter. In fact, it is slowing her healing down because her body is fighting off infection rather than working to heal the wound as it should.”

“Supplies are on the way, so she can clean up.”

“This is not the way to treat a Luna,” Doctor Palmer added. He had come to our pack five years ago in search of someone who wasn’t found, and my father had convinced him to stick around.

“I will fix it.”

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