Page 20 of Her Eternal Mate

“Ah, there’s that spark that I’ve been missing in my life. I missed you, Will,” Blair said sardonically from the comm.

“Why are you sending these soldiers? Haven’t you had enough? Or would you rather I tracked you down and killed you like I killed Ralph and Maurice?” I snarled.

“Not to mention your own brother…tsk…tsk,” Blair said. “How terrible is that.”

“Don’t preach morality to me,” I said. “You’re hardly one to talk.”

“Oh, I’m afraid that this is all about morality to me. You see, Will, the day you killed my father, I swore an oath. I promised myself that I’d kill you no matter what it took. Granted, this is an extreme measure, but I’m afraid that I have to take it. You’re proving very difficult to kill. If past experience is any indication, I guess it would take an army to kill you again. Oh, right, I did kill you the first time, didn’t I? Well, this time around, I’ll nail the fucking coffin myself to make sure you can’t get out,” Blair said.

“Big words from a man hiding behind shadows. Why don’t you come out and face me yourself?” I asked.

“And let you do to me what you did to Griswold? No thanks. I’ll stay a safe distance away and let my cronies take care of you. I don’t need to kill you myself. I just need you and your pack of rabid dogs to die. And soon, I’ll finally be able to complete my father’s work. After this, there are going to be no more wolves left howling in the night,” Blair said. “It was good to catch up with you. Hopefully, the next time we meet, it’ll be me looking upon your beheaded head on a silver platter.”

“We’ll see whose head is on a platter,” I said. “Now that you’ve threatened my pack know that I will do whatever’s in my power to end you and your army of drugged-up mercenaries.”

“Blah, blah, talk is cheap. Show me you mean it. Why don’t you try to find me? I’ll be impressed if you do,” Blair said, then hung up.

“Oh, I will,” I said to myself, looking at the crates of weapons that the soldiers had left behind. I opened them up and saw, to my surprise, that they were filled with grenades and those special guns that the soldiers used.

That was their first mistake. They would regret losing these weapons.

Chapter 9

Alexis

It wasn’t a comfortable ride as Vince drove the car to the apartment building where Maliha lived. My escorts included the two wolves from the pack who had helped us, Morgan and John, making that battered-up Mitsubishi Lancer a very confined space with no room to breathe. As for Maliha, she was knocked out cold in the back of the car with her head in my lap. I could not wait to get out.

While the car took us to the flats, I tried to come up with a speech that I’d deliver to Maliha the moment she woke up. She had been through a lot and had seen just as much, not to mention watching her friend shift from a wolf right before her eyes. Things like that stayed with a person for the rest of her life. Knowing what I knew about my best friend, I understood that she would not take this sort of thing lightly. First, she would be mad at me for keeping such a big secret from her all this time. This would make her feel as if she was betrayed, kept out of the loop, and untrusted. Secondly, she’d fail to see how this didn’t link with some conspiracies out there. This would make her go crazy.

She’d end up thinking in tangents such as “If werewolves are real, then vampires are real, and if vampires and werewolves are real, then the Big Foot is real, and the aliens are real…” and so forth. She’d have to be admitted to the trauma ward in a mental hospital. There had to be some way I could break the news to her without compromising her mental health.

“Alexis, we’re there,” Vincent said. It was very rare that he called me by my first name. He was always calling me Lexie or Alex or something like that. This must mean that he was in a very grave mood.

“What’s up with you?” I asked as I got out of the car. Morgan and John helped me get Maliha out of the car. Morgan held her in his arms. She was still unconscious.

“Just this realization that we’re never going to be out of danger,” Vincent said. “I’m tired of all of this. Aren’t you? Isn’t it about damn time that we had some peace? First, the vampires, now the soldiers. And have you seen what the soldiers have done? Just a single one of them was able to break down one of our strongest walls as if it was made of play dough. Aren’t you a little bit scared?”

“Being scared is not one of my strongest suits. I’ve learned the hard way that being scared is just a synonym for being unprepared. I was always telling everyone that we should not let our guard down because there was something yet still out there. And there was. These soldiers. At least now the entire pack knows. What we can do instead of being scared is to look to Will for his leadership and arm ourselves so that when the soldiers come—and they will come, mark my words—we’ll be able to hold our own against them,” I said. It was odd that I was feeling this resolute after my brush with those soldiers.

Deep in the sea, there was a certain type of fish that thrived under pressure. They dwelled deep below the surface, never seeing any light and never coming in contact with the reefs and the shallower part of the sea. All they ever did was thrive under pressure. When they were forcefully taken out of that pressurized zone, they died because their bodies had adapted to such brute force being pushed down on them at all times.

Perhaps I was like those fish. Whenever there was no stress or pressure around me, I felt like my life was spiraling out of control. I’d get symptoms that would resemble PTSD or some other mental malady. But now, when such pressure was being applied, I felt normal. As if this was supposed to happen and I was just supposed to deal with it.

It was a disturbing thought but one that had crossed my mind many times. What if I was not suited to peacetime? What if my domain was the domain of war, battles, and uncertainty? If that was indeed the case, then I’d have to say goodbye to that distant utopian life that I’d thought I’d one day have with Will. A life where we’d have a family, a house, some boring white-collar job that he’d go to, and me being the traditional housewife.

Maybe that would never be my fate.

“You best hurry up. She’s waking up, and she’ll be wanting some answers quick,” Morgan said, nudging his head at Maliha, who was shaking in his arms and wincing in her state of unconsciousness.

I lifted her in my arms and took her inside the building. By the time we reached her floor, Maliha had woken up and was acting hysterically.

“Let me go! I don’t trust you! Who are you?” she yelled as I dragged her against her will into her apartment.

“Would you calm down, for fuck’s sake? I’m trying to help you,” I said and sat her down on her sofa.

“You!” Maliha lifted her finger blamefully. “You’re a bad friend. A liar.”

“A bad friend, a liar who just saved your life,” I said. It was not beneath me to play the hero card, and in this case, I did have to so that she’d realize that I wasn’t her enemy and that she was alive because of me.

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