Page 35 of Captive Mate
Well. Sort of different. It wasn’t like I was going to start baring my soul or anything.
I sighed. “Look, Colin. You’ve been spending a little time with Parker Taft, yeah?” He nodded, looking grim. “So you know a little bit about our history?”
“I know he thinks you’re his mate even though you obviously aren’t and don’t want to be. And I know he wants to ‘violate both your holes until you can’t scream anymore.’ And there was a lot more where that came from, but I tried to tune it out. So yeah. I may not know the details, but I know enough.” Colin sounded as grim as he looked. “And in case you were wondering, if you want to — what were you going to do to me? Light him on fire or flay his skin or some shit like that? I won’t be stopping you.”
Had Colin had some personal experience with an alpha like Parker? Not likely, not when he was an alpha too and a member of a fairly prosperous pack. But someone he knew? Either way, his tone was uncompromising and sincere in a way I couldn’t doubt.
My tension eased, just a tiny bit. Gods, but it said a lot about how fucked-up the world was, or how fucked-up the part of it I’d known had been, that an alpha shifter actually condemning another alpha for rape seemed like a stroke of luck, rather than the standard it ought to have been.
“So you get it,” I said, my voice a little too hoarse. My throat felt thick, and I swallowed hard to clear it. “That’s why I’m here. I don’t want you and the Armitages to kill each other, and I think it’s fucking stupid, but I’m not really on their side any more than I’m on yours.” Lie. My heart skipped a beat. “But I want Parker dead. And if you can help me make that happen, I’ll help you end this fight however you think it needs to be ended.” I drew a deep breath. “And I think the first step in that is to call Matthew Armitage and warn him what’s about to happen.”
Colin snorted and shook his head. “Right. Yeah. You and me, I bet we’re really high up on his list of people to trust when they call with shit like that. And if you are working with him, then me calling him is part of your plan.” He stopped and frowned. “Although I’m having trouble seeing how calling him is a trick.”
“Because it’s not,” I said, pressing the advantage while I had it.
The moon was sinking behind the treetops, and the night wasn’t getting any younger. I couldn’t smell the rain yet, but I could feel the clouds rushing in from the east, teasing the edges of my magic with their pregnant shadows. It was going to be an ugly, bloody, muddy morning if we didn’t do somethingsoon.
“Colin. Sam brought what happened to him on himself,” I said, praying he’d listen, agree, and gloss over the passive-voice construction that left out my having done it to Sam directly. “The Armitages didn’t attack him. Matthew was trying to make peace, you know that. Why was he so fucking dead-set on taking over the Armitage territory in the first place, anyway? There’s nothing there. And the pack’s hardly worth absorbing. There’s no point in this pack war. Your father has to see that.”
“He doesn’t see anything right now,” Colin said bluntly, shoving his now unclawed hands into his pockets. That was a good sign. If he didn’t see me as an immediate threat, maybe we were getting somewhere. “Sam had this fucked-up plan. He was stupid enough to listen to that maniac Hawthorne.” I nodded emphatically. We were on the same page there. “And Hawthorne convinced him and my dad that the way to get a leg up in the new supernatural organization that was coming was to take over any other local packs. Become one of the big players in California.”
New supernatural organization that was coming? The hair on the back of my neck lifted until it felt like it ought to be waving above my head.
What. The. Fuck. I hadn’t heard anything about that while I was with the Kimball pack — and that had obviously been on purpose, because I’d been around for a lot of their planning. And now Hawthorne was dead, and whatever he’d known, whatever he’d been plotting, had died with him.
Whathadhe been doing for those missing two years? The answer hadn’t concerned me much before, but it had suddenly become a much, much more urgent question.
New supernatural organization. Oh, my fucking gods. That’d been tried a few times over the decades, and always ended in rivers of blood and no organization at all. Not something a lone shaman like me wanted to be in the middle of. I cleared my throat, trying for something less insane than screaming demands for details.Fly casual, Chewie. “Has Bill heard from them? The, uh, organization? Since Sam died?”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure my dad was so eager to tell whoever Hawthorne was working with that he died, for real this time. And I’m also not sure even Sam knew exactly who Hawthorne was working with, actually. That asshole really played his cards close to his vest, you know?”
Yeah. I knew. And it suddenly hit me that whatever plans Hawthorne had for Nate, they were probably bigger, and a lot worse, than whatever petty power-draining I’d thought it was going to be.
Not that petty power-draining was all that petty when it was you getting drained. An unexpected pulse of hurt went through me. How could Nate do that to me, when he’d had it done to him? My jab aboutlike father, like sonhad been just that — poking him where I thought it’d hurt. But really thinking about it…how could he? I wasn’t that awful. That hateful. Was I?
“Fuck it,” I said. Much as I wanted to pin Colin down and dissect his brain until more information came out, I didn’t have the time and he probably didn’t know much more in any case. “That’s for later. Right now, we have other problems. If you can’t talk Bill out of pursuing this fucking stupid-ass crusade of his, we have to find another way. You can’t possibly want more of your pack to die for nothing.”
“Of course I don’t. I’m just not sure what we can do.” He sighed heavily. “You really think Matthew’d listen?”
No. “Yes. He has to.”
Wordlessly, Colin pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped at it for a second, and then handed it to me, Matthew’s contact information already on the screen.
All I had to do was press send. I felt like I’d been frozen in place, caught in some weird magic of Dor’s. Matthew Armitage, right there on the screen. Like he was just a person, someone you could call on the phone, and not — whatever he’d become to me. It felt like he ought to be unreachable. Distant. In another universe.
I touched the button and held the phone up to my ear.
One ring. Then two. I started to exhale. Maybe he wouldn’t answer. I could send a text.
“Yeah. Colin?” Guarded. Defensive. Matthew’s voice, gruff and deep. The rest of my breath rushed out of me in a whoosh.
“It’s not Colin. I’m — I’m calling from his phone.” No shit, Sherlock. I licked my bone-dry lips and started to sweat as Matthew said nothing. “Hello? It’s Arik.”
“Yeah. I got that.” His voice had gone down another octave. “I guess I don’t need to ask where the fuck you are. Should I ask what the fuck you’re doing, or just assume you’re going for round two of attacking my pack? Different Kimball, different day, same bullshit?”
That hurt, piercing me deep in a place I’d thought I’d walled off years ago.
“Different Kimball,” I managed to say. “Different day. And similar bullshit. But this time you have advance warning. And I’m not involved in creating it.”
