Page 10 of Mated to the Pride

My life had taken a strange turn over the past few weeks. I could never have seen myself taking this job just a month ago. I certainly couldn’t have guessed I’d be spending my time ducking away from making eye contact withreallyattractive men.

Not least because it was usually in my nature to catch that eye contact and wink.

I caught a few words of their conversation, even as I tried to block it out. They were words you couldn’t help but hear.Explosives.Radicalized. I shuddered, even with my hands under the warm water of the kitchen sink. We all heard those words way too often on news channels today, and now here we were in the midst of some operation or other that faced it down directly. I was more than likely safe in here, but the North boys would be staring it down every single day.

“Jess…?”

I jumped, looking back over my shoulder. “Hi. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Stone, giving me a particularly stomach-melting lopsided grin. “Just… wasn’t sure you should be soaking your hands too much. Gotta keep that bandage on nice and tight until your hand’s had a chance to heal, right?”

“Right,” I said, shaking the water off my hands. “Yes.”

He paused, folding his arms. “So. You’re just going to go straight back to doing that as soon as we leave, aren’t you?”

“No,” I lied. Badly.

“I’ll take it with me,” he warned. “And when that excess weight leads to the failure of the entire mission, this one-” he pointed at Blake, “will be real mad at you.”

I managed a smile, leaning back against the counter. This was the really difficult thing about Stone. He was gorgeous, but he was also so easy to get along with. He didn’t make my stomach flip with intimidation like Blake did.

He just… made it flip another way.

“Fine,” I said. “I’ll leave it. I promise. But I hasten to remind you that this is the whole reason I’m here.”

“Can’t hurt to leave it for 24 hours,” said Blake, standing up from the table. His smile was fainter, but just as sincere. “Alright. Thanks for breakfast.”

Stone was already wolfing down his food, so I took a few steps after Blake instead, feeling compelled by force to ask the question bubbling up inside me. I knew it was stupid. Still, I couldn’t help but say it.

“Blake…? You guys will be careful out there, right?”

His smile softened a fraction, glancing over my shoulder at Stone and then back to me again. “We’ll be fine,” he said. “Careful might not be the right word for this job, but we know when to take the risk and when to pull back. I can promise you that.”

I nodded, suddenly embarrassed. He didn’t seem to think I was an idiot as he nodded back and walked away, but I felt like one.

After all, what kind of domestic assistant cared so much about her employers after mere days that sheneededto ask them to take care of themselves outside, as if they weren’t professionals? As if they hadn’t done this before a thousand times, without me there to warn them?

Preston

In truth, I started feeling under the weather after the first couple of days at the cabin. I kept it to myself at first. Most of the time, these kind of head colds just disappeared on their own, and I knew how important this operation was. To duck out because I felt a little stuffed up would be useless cowardice.

When I woke up on the eighth day, however, it was a different story entirely.

My entire head was spinning. I couldn’t stand up from the bed without losing my balance a little, and I knew for damn sure I couldn’t close one eye and stay upright — let alone look through a sight on a weapon. I’d be no use to Hale like this, or to anyone.

I wasn’t planning on taking time out. I figured Stone would have something to patch me up with. Unfortunately, my partner had other ideas. Hale took one look at me and steered me back to bed by the shoulders.

“Nope,” he said. “No way. Sleep.”

“You can’t go out by yourself.”

“I’ll recon for Blake and Stone on their shift. Don’t worry about what I’m going to do. You just… get your head back down onto the pillow. You look like death.”

To tell the truth, I felt like it. To some degree, I was grateful to sink back down into the sheets — but before I fell asleep again, the dominant emotion was guilt. I wasn’t here to lie down and languish in the cabin. I was here to perform a task for our government, and in support of the rest of my pack. I was here to keep my country safe. I was…

I was asleep again within minutes.

When I opened my eyes again, the room wasn’t spinning so badly around me, but I was still disoriented. I had no conception of what time it was. With Hale’s bed empty beside me and the border of light around the curtains fairly dim, I could only assume that he, Blake and Stone were still out working. The cabin was quiet enough.

---