Page 84 of Their Mate
“When I have to,” I replied, not giving her any more details.
“Nessa, with me. Bring her.”
They moved quickly, putting me between them. We passed through a second door that sealed behind us with a quiet sigh and climbed a tight staircase carved into the rock, boots ringing on metal treads. We strode past a mess hall cut into the cliff with half a dozen recruits in knit caps inhaling porridge and pretending not to stare.
The next door took a palm and a code and a look from the guard that assessed me like I was nothing more than the usual cargo. Inside, the corridor opened into a room that had tables crowded with radios and battered laptops.
At the far end of the war room, a man stood over a long wooden table littered with maps and marked-up field reports. His posture was all squared shoulders and brutal control, his hair clipped close to the scalp, eyes cold and hard to read. He wore a patched field jacket with a single strip of white tape on the shoulder, no rank insignia. The name in block letters across his chest read: DANE.
“Commander,” my escort said. “Captain Sera Moore.”
Dane’s gaze flicked to me in an instant. “Captain,” he said, his voice even and unhurried. “You’ve crossed a dangerous stretch of water to get here. I trust you didn’t do it for the view.”
Before I could answer, someone else stepped out from behind a radio console. He was taller than I remembered, but the same quick, calculating eyes that had been by my side through much of my youth. “Sera!”
I blinked. “Elias?”
Elias Kade. Fifteen years older than me, the man who’d trained me through my teenage years, who’d taught me everything there was to know about survival. His entire family had been torn apart by wolf shifters outside Liverpool when he was twenty.
“You look like hell,” Elias said, stepping close enough that I caught the faint smell of gun oil. “Where have you been?”
“Out there,” I gestured with my chin. “Ireland. Seeing things you won’t believe.”
Dane’s mouth twitched with the ghost of a smile that never made it to his eyes. “Then let’s hear it. Both of you. My office.”
He led us through a narrow passage carved into the rock. We ended up in a smaller room with four chairs, a battered desk, and a kettle on a hot plate. Dane closed the door, took his seat behind the desk, and gestured to me.
“Talk,” he ordered.
I told them all about Dublin, everything I knew about the Elder Lycan, the tunnels, traps, and bombs, the herding tactics, and the personality of the monster. I shared what I’d learned from his video diary entries. I told him everything except that I was mated to a pack of five wolf shifters.
“He’s building an army, even if it’s short-lived. Enough to destabilize what’s left of us. If we don’t move now, we’ll be overrun and killed,” I said.
Elias listened in silence, arms crossed, eyes flicking between me and Dane. Dane didn’t interrupt me, but his gaze never left my face.
When I finished, Elias spoke first. “You left something out.”
My pulse kicked. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve been gone long enough for the rumors to reach here,” he said evenly. “Our scouts saw you in the company of wolves.”
My mouth went dry. “I’ve had contact with them. I needed to get through their territory.”
Dane leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing. “Contact. Just contact? That’s not what I hear.”
Elias’s voice stayed calm, but there was a stern, cold edge under it. “You’re mated, Sera.”
I didn’t move. “That’s not relevant to this?—”
“It’s relevant to everything,” Dane cut in, his tone sharp enough to draw blood. “You know what they are. What they do. Wolves can wear a human face. They can talk, laugh, touch, but underneath it’s all the same rot.”
“They’re not—” I stopped myself. The truth wouldn’t help here. Not with men who saw wolves the way soldiers in old war films saw the enemy: irreversibly, irredeemably, and irrevocably dangerous.
Elias’s eyes stayed on me, searching my face. “Tell me the rest of it, Sera. Every detail. If you want me to trust you in the field, I need to know you’re still one of us.”
I didn’t tell them. Not about the bond. Not about the way the pack had started to feel like they had each stolen a piece of my heart. I gave them the sanitized version: cooperation, nothing deeper.
When I finished, Dane drummed his fingers once against the desk. “We’ll act on your intel. The Elder Lycan is a prioritytarget. But you…” His gaze hardened. “You’ve already chosen a different side. You just haven’t admitted it to us yet.”
