The Society Series Box Set 2

by Mason Sabre

  Trevor’s face was a wash of fury when he laid eyes on Cade. His pupils blazed the blue heat of wolf and alpha. Other wolves crowded the hallway, falling into line with their leader, but only Aaron came in to join them—the beta–the only one allowed.

  Outside, cars lined the street, blocking it. He’d brought the whole fucking pack with him. It said more about Trevor’s fear than it did for unity. Maybe they stood with him, but the fact he needed them to take down his own son, spoke of weakness.

  Gemma’s breath brushed the back of Cade’s neck and he kept his arm back, and kept her in place so that she couldn’t do anything stupid—like try to face his father. This was his place, and it was a long time coming.

  “I knew you would be here,” Trevor drawled, his words dripping with hatred. “I fucking knew it the moment Natalie called me to ask if I had seen you.” Trevor took a step closer and Cade stepped back, pushing Gemma with him. She had her hand pressed at the dip of his back, her fingers splayed. Just that touch alone gave comfort and clarity to his wolf. It grounded him.

  “It’s not what you think.”

  Aaron was beside Trevor now. He had a box in his hands—a jewellery box; it was leather bound and encased, but even under all of that, the heat and the power of the silver emanated from it.

  “You have defied me. You have defied your pack and your position.”

  “No …” Gemma said, but Cade pushed her back again, gripping her arm to keep her from coming forward and putting herself in harm’s way.

  “I have done nothing wrong,” Cade said, meeting his father’s eyes. “You are wrong.”

  The corner of Trevor’s lip twitched as he stared at Cade. But Cade was used to the expression. Used to his father’s hatred for him. He’d never been good enough … never been enough because he had his own mind.

  “Really? Then why did you not return home? Your mate is there, concerned for you … I wonder what she would say if she knew?”

  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”

  Trevor shook his head. It didn’t matter to him and he wasn’t listening. What Trevor said was the law–fact, and god forbid anyone would try to prove otherwise.

  Aaron moved deeper into the room, coming around the side, but Cade moved, shielding Gemma … she was his mate, not Natalie. They might have been different animals, but she was his in every sense of the word. His wolf flared under his skin, ready to come out and slash them into the next world if they dared to try anything.

  Trevor nodded to one man at the door. Cade’s wolf slammed to the surface. “No …”

  Men poured into the room. Run, Cade wanted to scream at Gemma, but his heart was a drumbeat in his throat and they would never make it out, even if he tried to hold them off. No … he had to stand, and fight and he would. He’d fight till his last breath, taking as many down with him as he had to. They’d not take Gemma. He pushed her all the way back to the wall, pressing her there, making his own body a barrier.

  Hands gripped his arms, pulling at him and blind rage rose inside his body like lava, spilling out. He raised a fist to an unknown face, bringing his knuckles against the man’s cheek. It was no good. More hands grabbed him, coming at him from every direction. A snarl tore from him, warning them … telling them that this was not happening.

  A scream. Piercing. It came from behind him and he turned to grab Gemma … to protect her. His hands caught the air, and he missed her by inches as Gemma was yanked from him and dragged to the other side of the room.

  They pulled his arms at either side and pressed his legs apart. He panted with it. His wolf rose and threatened to come out on them all, but he couldn’t shift. Couldn’t put him and Gemma in that moment of vulnerability. His teeth shifted, though, huge canines coming down from his top gums. Claws peeked out from beneath the skin on his fingers and he let out a growl so feral that the men who held him, paused for a second.

  “Don’t you dare fucking touch—”

  Trevor’s hand smashed into Cade’s face, knocking the words from his mouth, along with blood and spittle. His head snapped to the side, and Cade thrashed, wrenching his arms and legs, but the wolves held on, digging fingers and claws painfully into his skin. Rivulets of blood ran along his arms, his thighs. He could smell it, warm and coppery in the air.

  Gemma screamed, shattering the darkness of Cade’s mind, and making him stop. Wolves held her, pulling her back from him, pulling her toward his father. Trevor walked to her and buried his hands in her hair, pulling her head toward him. The heat in Cade’s veins threatened to send him over the edge … if they hurt her.

  “Let her go.” He spat out blood and pulled again, growling his frustration out at the wolves who held him. Tears flushed her eyes, but they weren’t tears of weakness. No, he knew Gemma. They were her strength. The way she cried when she got mad. Her pupils became darkened pits framed only by a small ring of green. She was bordering on feral.

  “I can do whatever I want with her,” Trevor said, and he ran a knuckle down her cheek … down her neck and dangerously close to the valley of her breasts. Taunting him.

  “You get the fuck off her.” Cade growled and pulled every ounce of his wolf into him to face the threat to his mate. He bucked and thrashed, twisting himself with everything he had. The wolf’s claws dug into him, but he ripped his arm from their grasp, howling fiercely as their claws tore flesh and skin from him, but he was alpha material … he was the son of the leader and they would not hold him.

  He got one arm free and swung his fist around to slam it into the face of the shorter wolf who held him. The wolf, Ash, fell backward, tripping almost to the window. His back hit the glass, shattering it, but not falling through. Cade swung the other way, taking out the man, Blake, on the other side. He slashed across Blake’s arm with extended claws, getting himself free for just a moment. Blake howled as blood gushed from the wound. His half-severed arm hung at his side.

  Cade lunged for his father, seeing only the enemy now, no longer his blood … his pack. He would never bow to him again. Trevor pushed Gemma aside and pushed her back like she was nothing to him, then just as quickly, he ran over and rammed a fist into Cade’s face. The momentum of Cade’s own movement made the impact harder. The bones in his cheek shattered and blinding agony coursed under his skin.

  More wolves piled into the room and somewhere in amongst all the commotion, they grabbed him and held him back … harder this time. Trevor ran to him, his fist raised. He hit Cade in the jaw, in the gut, right in the face.

  Cade let out a savage growl, snarling at his father … disrespecting the position he held as the alpha of the pack. “Fuck you,” he spat, straining against those who held him again. His vision was a veil of red fury. The man in front of him was no longer his father. He growled again and pulled, almost howling to get himself free. “Let her go.”

  Trevor took a step away, wiping blood from his knuckles on his handkerchief. “One more move like that, and I will give her to the wolves to do as they please. Perhaps they can see what all the fuss is about. Why you keep risking your life.”

  “If they touch her …”

  Trevor laughed. “Then you’ll do nothing.”

  “I’ll kill you,” he snarled out. “I’ll rip you apart, piece by fucking piece. I don’t care if you are my father.”

  Trevor came closer and grabbed Cade’s swollen jaw, tilting his head so that their eyes met. “Do you challenge me, boy?”

  Cade glared at him, his breaths came in sharp puffs. He said nothing.

  “No. I didn’t think so.”

  “Malcolm will kill you.”

  Trevor roared with mocking laughter. “Do you think I am afraid of him? Do you think I can't take on the great and powerful Malcolm Davies? He is soft and weak. One day his seat will be mine.”

  “I fucking—”

  Without warning, Trevor punched Cade in the gut again and knocked the last breath from him. He went to buckle at the waist, but hands held him tightly in place … an impossible wa
ll. He gasped for air, heaving to get it into his lungs. His father had winded him, but Aaron came from the side and snapped a silver collar around Cade’s neck.

  Gemma screamed.

  Agony ripped through Cade’s neck sending the world into an explosion of red. Fire wrapped itself around his throat and his heartbeat throbbed in his head. He tried to blink … tried to see beyond the wall of pain his brother had given to him.

  Gemma was fighting against the wolves who held her. She screamed for them to let her go. Her face had part shifted, her teeth were down, and her eyes held the ovals of her tiger. Trevor slammed a fist into the side of her head and Cade fought … he fought the silver and the men. He fought himself and the need in his head for his wolf to shut down as every bit of shifter energy seeped from his veins.

  “I’ll kill you,” he ground out again.

  “You will face the Council,” Trevor said. Silver bindings snapped into place over Cade’s wrists, sending lava through his skin and making him growl out from the pain of it all. He ground his jaw, refusing to give into it, but the wolves pulled his arms, pulled them tight and around his back.

  Someone kicked the back of his knees and he fell.

  Trevor crouched, bringing his face level. “First, you will face me.”

  Chapter 14

  Gemma

  Gemma pressed herself against the door of the car and found it locked, but she refused to sit anywhere close to Aaron. She didn’t want to touch him, be near him, and she refused to accept that he was part of Cade’s family. Not after what he had done. He didn’t deserve the name, brother. Brother meant protector … like a second father. Stephen had set the bar high when it came to the protection of his siblings, but then Aaron was like his father. She couldn’t believe it, though. He had stood there and willingly participated in the agony that Trevor had put Cade through.

  Cade’s pain-filled growls echoed in her mind and seared themselves as scars to her heart. She would remember those to her last dying breath.

  Even now, as she pulled against the shackles that held her in place, she couldn’t give herself over to the pain of the silver laced through the metal. Not when Cade had taken so much more. Her face throbbed where Trevor had struck her; her cheek had ballooned out, but tomorrow it would heal. She wasn’t sure she could say the same for her heart.

  She tried to swallow, but glass lined her throat … so sharp that the shards of it travelled down to her heart and wedged their piercing tips there, making her bleed.

  Cade was in the car in front of the one they held her in. She couldn’t see him. Couldn’t go to him, but she could feel him. She could feel him in her head … her warm place … her safe spot. Her wolf. Except, it wasn’t safe, and this was exactly what she had feared and why she had denied him all this time. Every moment they tried to snatch together. Every time her resolve shook, and she had dared to take a slice of what she so desperately craved, something like this had happened. She had lost Connor … lost Stephen. She couldn’t lose Cade too. Her heart couldn’t bear it.

  She pressed her face against the cold glass; her eyes didn’t focus on anything. Her heart was too broken to even think with any kind of rational thought. The blood … there had been so much blood. By the time his father had finished with him, Cade’s face had been a mask of red and black. She closed her eyes, trying to close out the memories of it all, but all that did was give them more power and create them in such a vivid quality she could smell the coppery scent of his blood and Trevor’s acrid scented anger.

  He had fought, though. Her wolf … her Cade. He had fought for her, for them and for everything he believed in.

  The woman side of her wanted to run away and hide. She wanted to go back and keep away from him and tell him they couldn’t do this, but her tiger side, the fearless, craving, dominant side of her soul, wanted him. How fucking insane would it be for her now to run away again. After all he had done. He had stood there and taken every beating his father had given him because he believed. He believed in them … in her. She owed it to Cade to give him that back. To stand by him no matter what the world rained down on their heads. But she was afraid.

  When the car Cade was in suddenly banked right and then turned down a side road, Gemma leant forward. The car she was in carried on ahead. “They aren’t taking him to my father?”

  She could feel Aaron’s gaze on her. “You know this could have all been avoided, right?” he said, his voice thick and deep, and so much like his father’s.

  “Yes.” She nodded and shot him a glare that was so filled with hatred, she hoped the fucker would choke on it. “If your father would just listen …”

  “No.” He leant in closer to her and rested a hand on her thigh, forgetting she was tiger and not wolf. There were no skin privileges between the species.

  “Do not touch me,” she said, staring down at his hand and waiting for him to move it. He did after a minute passed. Placing it in his own lap.

  “Cade belongs to Natalie. You must accept that, Gemma. It was okay when you were kids, but now … you’ve both got to play in the real world.”

  Gemma scoffed. “Because Cade doesn’t belong to himself? That’s the problem. All your fucking rules. We weren’t even doing anything wrong, but none of you would listen.” They weren’t, and she was thankful that Cade had said he didn’t want to hurt Natalie. It bit her and made her ache for him, but she understood him. Understood Cade’s need to do right by people. Cade was everything his brother and father weren’t. He was a man—a man that was so filled with honour and the right thing it was almost his weakness. But she loved him for that, too. And like he had said, Natalie had done nothing wrong—nothing that would make her deserve the hurt. She was as much the victim as they were, maybe more so. She didn’t know the game she had been pulled into and the lives she was being wedged between. The blame for this lay solely at Trevor’s feet.

  “Maybe you weren’t this time,” Aaron said as he leant back into his seat. The leather creaked as he moved. It was a wonder he wanted to get the leather tarnished with her blood and sweat. The other cars with them had all veered off with Cade. Aaron was clearly confident enough he hadn’t needed to restrain her. He was a fool. She was the same level of pack as he was. She wielded the same power, but he was like Trevor and viewed all women as the weaker sex. They were idiots. The only reason she remained in the car was because she understood that her co-operation would stand better for Cade’s fate. Trevor was not done with him, though. She knew that deep in her aching heart. Trevor wanted a slice of Cade’s flesh because his ego was bruised.

  “Where are they taking Cade?” she dared to ask.

  “Home. Back to his mate so she can tend to him.”

  Gemma scowled at Aaron. He was trying to get a rise out of her. At least with Natalie, he wasn’t being beaten.

  “You know she is with child, right? That she is carrying Cade’s heir.”

  His words sliced through her like a well wielded sword, and she bit back the sob in her throat. She’d not give that to Aaron. Instead, she turned back to the window, while her entire being tore in two and bled everywhere. A cold shiver shot down her back as she tried to reign in her emotions. She held them fast and said nothing.

  Aaron was smirking, but Gemma kept her jaw tight and a firm lid on the raging feelings inside. She fought them, fought against her own eyes trying to gloss over.

  “Only two days,” Aaron carried on, his voice almost sing-song happy. “She was in oestrus.”

  Oestrus … that one word might as well have been another knife in her chest. Natalie was fertile.

  “We’ll know in a couple of weeks, but your Cade did her enough times we’re all pretty confident he scored a home goal.”

  Gemma said nothing. She had tried to deny what her mind and heart told her. She had known the moment Natalie had answered his phone. Cade always kept it on the table next to his bed. For Natalie to have picked it up, she had to have been in the room, too. But she’d not asked Cade to confi
rm it. Not directly. It was too much for her heart and tiger to hear … the confirmation.

  “So, you should do the right thing and let him go.”

  “Why don’t you do the right thing and let him go?” she spat back, her emotions hanging on every word. She regretted it. Regretted letting him get to her. He gave her a satisfied smile, and she wished she could smack him the way his father had done to Cade.

  “It’s time to move on, Gemma. Time to let go. Species aren’t meant to mix. Get on with your life, let him get on with his. It isn’t like you could ever bear his children.”

  His last sentence hurt her more than he knew. She had tried. Tried and failed and left a gaping hole in her heart and Cade’s. She went back to staring out of the window, to watching endless drones of people going about their lives while hers was in tatters around her feet. Her eyes unfocused and she sent a message through her mind to Cade. Please be okay. Maybe he would hear her. Maybe he would reach out for her. She didn’t have his power, but she could feel when he was there.

  The lane that led to her parent’s home came into view not long after and Gemma let out a long shuddering sigh. It was show time. The car drove along the bumpy road—a road that once signalled she was home and safe, that she was with her pride, but today … every bump rattled her to the core as if her very bones jarred against each other. Right then, she could think of nothing worse than being home.

  The main door to the house opened when the car pulled along the cobbled driveway. Her father stepped out, glasses resting low on his nose and a disapproving look across his features. It was an expression she was used to. The one Stephen used to get all the time. He never spoke of it, but she knew Stephen never felt like he was good enough. That was why he was so strong … why he stayed with her. She was his safe place.

  When the car pulled to a stop, Aaron got out first and then walked around to Gemma’s side. He reached in, grabbed her with one hand, and as Gemma tried to wrench herself from his grasp, the asshole dug his fingers in and pulled her out. He marched her to her father like a defiant child being brought home at night, and then unfastened the cuffs around her wrists, taking no care as the skin came away where the silver had made contact.