Page 36 of The Protector’s Heart

“Regardless,” Acksel said, “Nila is Malachi’s mate and he wants her free from her past obligations so he can mate her appropriately. Your son never mated her. Their marriage is by human standards alone. As her true mate, Malachi is within his rights to demand her freedom.”

Isaiah straightened slightly and eyed Malachi as he stood behind Acksel. “My son didn’t want to really mate her because he would have been kicked out of the pack. He didn’t want to ruin his life because she was too stupid to remember birth control.”

Malachi tensed, wanting to leap over Acksel and punch Isaiah for the numerous insults to his woman.

“Regardless of your feelings on her humanity, will you assist, or do you accept that my pack member will be doing whatever is necessary to ensure he can mate Nila properly?”

Isaiah’s eyes narrowed. “Do not threaten my son.”

“Release Nila.”

Isaiah threw up his hands with a growl, and then he leveled a calculating gaze at Malachi. “We’ll settle this in the old way. Tomorrow at sunset, you will bring the human here to the park and she will watch you and my son fight for her. The winner keeps her; the loser walks away forever.”

Malachi bared his teeth.

Acksel raised his hand and Malachi bit back the growl in his throat. “I have some ground rules.”

Isaiah snorted. “You would.”

Acksel ignored the barb and said, “The fight is limited to human form. If either shift, they forfeit. When Malachi wins, Damien will sign the divorce papers within a week and you will swear as his alpha that he will never bother her again.”

“If your wolf wins, then I will agree to those terms.” Isaiah said the words, but Malachi didn’t trust him.

With the details set, Malachi and his pack left. Acksel was quiet on the way back to Wilde Creek. Malachi didn’t mind, because he needed the time to think as well. Nila was not going to be happy about this. She was human and hadn’t spent much time around wolves, so she wouldn’t understand this was the way things needed to be so that he could set her free. Her human marriage to Damien was like a tether around her neck. Malachi could mate her, but he couldn’t make her his wife and Jack his son until Damien was legally out of the way.

Malachi stopped in front of Acksel’s house and shifted into park.

Acksel cleared his throat. “You need to mate Nila tonight.”

“Uh, not that I don’t want to, but why tonight?”

Acksel turned in his seat until he was facing Malachi. “Aside from the fact that she’s your mate and you care deeply for her, going to the fight tomorrow night with her already marked will go a long way toward showing that she’s yours to Isaiah’s pack.”

Nodding, Malachi’s mind raced as he thought over how little time there was between now and when they needed to leave tomorrow for the fight. He should be training, and not sexing up his mate, but he couldn’t deny that officially mating her – tonight – was extremely appealing.

“I’d like to take her to the altar and talk for a bit tonight.”

“Of course. You can drop off Jack here before you go, and tomorrow he can stay with Brynn while we’re gone.”

“Thanks, Acksel.”

His alpha smiled at him. “You’re one of my oldest friends, and you’re also a pack member. That means a lot to me. I want you to be happy, and if that means we have to take a posse up to Dorlan so you can kick her ex’s ass, then that’s what we’ll do.”

Acksel got out and Malachi headed back to the clinic. It was almost time for the girls to stop work for the day, so he didn’t have much time to wait before Brynn and Nila were in the SUV and they were heading to the daycare. Acksel had contacted Brynn and told her what was going on, so Malachi only had to explain things to Nila. He waited until he’d made dinner for her and himself and they’d fed Jack together.

An hour after they’d been home, they headed back out and took Jack to Brynn and Acksel’s house, where Mia was also waiting to play with Jack. He noticed that Nila didn’t seem to mind leaving her son with pack members, and it made him happy to know she trusted them, and trusted him as well.

He’d made sure she was dressed warmly. As a shifter, his body ran hotter than a human’s and he didn’t mind the cold as much as she would, and he didn’t want her to be uncomfortable.

The snow from several days earlier had hardened, and it crunched under their boots as they stepped off the back porch and down into the yard. Malachi stopped and Nila did, too. He pointed up. “Wolves have been tied to the moon forever. When the moon rises in the sky, it’s a compulsion that we can’t ignore. We have to shift – hunt and run and commune in our wolf forms. We’re pack by nature. Although there are lone wolves out there, those that have been banished by deed or choice, wolves feel a need to be with other wolves on the full moon.”

He clicked the button on the battery-operated lantern he carried and took her gloved hand in his. The lantern illuminated the area in front of them as he led her toward the woods.

“Wolf packs are traditionally wolf-only. Our laws have always stated that if a member chose to mate a human or another type of shifter, he or she would be banished. Some wolves take the banishment willingly for their mate, believing it’s better to have their mate without the pack than the pack without their mate, but some wolves don’t want to be that noble and stay with the pack, ignoring their mating needs.”

“Why would your laws say that a wolf can’t mate with whoever he or she wants?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. Call it specist or exclusionary or whatever, but my pack was the same way until recently. Acksel’s sister, Eveny, knew that mating with Luke, who is human, would mean she’d be banished from the pack, but she didn’t care. Acksel didn’t mate with Brynn until recently because of the laws, but now he’s changed the laws so that our people can mate with whoever they want.”

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