Page 9 of The Bookseller and the Alpha
“You okay, Luc?” Billy, beside me, shot me a look of surprise. Had I twitched? Jerked? I hadn’t noticed.
“Just a cramp in my arm,” I lied. I shook my hand, pretending to work out the muscle spasm.
She’s gone, she’s gone,Beast wailed in my head.Go after her.
Shut up,I snarled.Sam will take care of her.
Billy was still eyeing me uncertainly, a frown between his brows.“Maybe we need to take a break.”
“Not yet.” I couldn’t protect her if I didn’t know what had happened.
“Let’s review that discrepancy one more time.” Billy had spotted it just before Sam called for a break. There wassomething wrong in the footage when the cat showed up on the step.
“There,” said Billy, reaching over and pointing to the screen.
I hit pause on the playback, and we both leant forward as we scrutinised the image. “I see it,” I said. It was little more than a momentary distortion of the picture, a ripple of darkness. To see it you had to ignore the cat sitting on the step and focus your eyes to the top of the screen and the view of the dark, deserted alley.
The cat was a distraction.
“Cloaking spell,” Billy murmured into my ear.
“Now we know how they avoided being seen. How did they get in without tripping the wards?”
Billy’s fingers drummed on the desk as he thought. “Don’t take this the wrong way, boss, but are you sure the wards weren’t triggered?”
“I’m absolutely sure. The scent would be different.”
“And Caly said that only she and her sister could disable the wards.”
“So our intruder can avoid being seen and can bypass powerful wards.” My lips tightened. “This is more than a simple burglary.” This job needed planning and patience. And lots of magic. But I would find them. No-one would hurt my mate.
A few minutes later the bell over the door chimed as the door swung open. Sam, his arms full of food bags and a tray of coffee cups, preceded Calypso into the shop. Calypso shut the door behind him, smiling as she said something to Sam.
“Sam.” My barked order cut straight through their conversation, and the grin on Calypso’s face died. “What would you have done if Calypso had been attacked while you were carrying those lunch bags and the coffees?” My voice was hardand Sam blanched. I knew I wasn’t being fair to him, but the thought that Calypso could be in danger sent a stab of anxiety to my chest. “You were her protective detail. You can’t protect her if you are carrying lunch.”
“I could still have done it,” Sam protested. “It wouldn’t even have slowed me down a second.” The kid might be right. He wasfast.
“You might not have a second.”
“She was on the phone… I was just trying to help.”
“Sam,” I growled, my voice deeper than usual. Sam took one look at my face and, eyes wide, tilted his head to one side in submission, offering me his neck. It was the instinctive response of a weaker Shifter to a stronger one. And he’d never done it before. Beast was closer to the surface than I’d realised. I ran my hands through my hair and took a deep breath through my nose. “Shit, sorry. I didn’t mean to go all Alpha on you.”
“It’s okay”, he said. “I sometimes forget you’re an Alpha.”
Me too buddy. I was a Shifter. But I was thirty-eight years old and I had never shifted. And neither had my brother. We have lived in our human form our whole lives. Humans who relied on the strength and stamina of our Shifter halves, without ever letting them out of the prisons we created for them. I knew it made me a jerk, that the relationship between my Shifter half and my human half was completely one-sided; one where I took and took, and he got nothing. But then I would remember that my Shifter half was a vicious, amoral beast, with no conscience, and I stopped feeling guilty. By choice and hard conditioning, we were rational and logical. Clinical, some might say. Strong emotions fed the Beast and I denied myself the privilege.
And most of the time, it wasn’t a problem. I kept him so tightly locked up that I almost forgot his existence. I forgot that he gave me enhanced hearing. Faster than human speed.Increased healing regeneration. I forgot that I wasn’t truly human.
I’d shoved him so far down inside me that it had been a long time since he’d fought me and tried to escape. With dread pooling in my stomach, I knew now that he’d been lurking in the darkness, gathering his power and biding his time. I’d had no idea he was this strong.
But I would be stronger. I wanted Caly and she would be mine. I wouldn’t let him have her.
“Come here,” I said to Sam, softening my tone. Handing the bags of food to Caly and Billy, he shuffled over, his eyes lowered, a defeated tilt to his shoulders. I needed to make this right. “We all make mistakes. I was being an ass, I’m sorry.” His eyes lifted to mine briefly before they dropped again. “I want you to stay with her tonight, until I can get there,” I said. Beast snarled at the thought of another male alone with Caly, but I trusted Sam and I didn’t want her to be alone. I didn’t know why the bookshop had been burgled, but I would take no chances with my mate’s safety. As much as I wanted to be the one by her side, I still had too much work to do for the upcoming Summit. And I needed to get Beast back under control before I saw her again.
Sam’s eyes widened as they flicked from me to Caly, then back to me. “Uh, alright. Sure.” And I didn’t blame him for his surprise. We didn’t do personal protection.
I leaned forward, until my mouth was beside his ear. So softly that even his enhanced Shifter hearing would barely catch it, I whispered, “She’s my mate.” I could see the shock in his dilated pupils. Whether it was because I’d finally shown my Shifter side and I was claiming a mate, or because my mate was human, I didn’t know. It was rare to find a mate and even rarer for the mate to be a human. But there were no rules against it.As I well knew. And even if there were, I wouldn’t care. Caly was going to be mine.
