by Grey, Aspen
But the other beta had decided it was time to join in, and leapt at my boyfriend and snatched his back paw with his teeth, catching him before he could reach us. With a whip of his head, he sent Roberto slamming down against the ground. His yelp set my heart on fire and I dove towards them, not even bothering to aim my attack.
I slammed into them, our bodies and limbs colliding and twisting in a pile as we turned over and over and over again, bashing painfully against the ground, teeth gnashing, looking for a piece of flesh to hold onto.
The terrible scents of the invaders was like a net of swamp water clinging to my fur, and I hacked and coughed as my back hit the ground and I scrambled to get my paws under me.
Roberto yelped and I kicked out hard, my back feet finding the beta’s face and snapping it back. He squealed and squirmed, doing his best to get away, but that was when Jedrik joined in. He raced forward, limping in obvious pain, and threw his jaws around the beta’s neck. With one quick, fierce tug, he tore the flesh from the bone and spilled blood onto the pavement.
We’re doing it! I thought as I readied myself again and turned back to the alpha and omega, who were now outnumbered.
The omega wasn’t having any of the battle, and was stepping back slowly from the fight, causing the alpha to twitch nervously as he eyed the three of us. I inched forward, Roberto at my side, but I heard heavy breathing behind me and looked back to see Jedrik’s body heaving with blood pouring out of him. He looked on the verge of collapse. I knew that if he continued to fight, he would die.
Snarling, I threw myself forward, gnashing my teeth at the two retreating attackers. Roberto did the same, thrashing wildly, putting on as much of a hostile display as two omegas possibly could. But somehow—it worked.
The alpha backed up into the omega, causing them to stumble. I swung out with a claw, not really trying to hit anything, just doing my best to drive them back. The alpha’s eyes flickered from me to Roberto, to Jedrik and back again. Then finally, he backed up, spun around and ran away into the darkness, joined by the omega who’d simply stood there watching the entire battle.
Relief washed over me, but as I turned around and saw Jedrik’s feet collapse out from under him, panic hit me like an ice cold hammer to the chest. I shifted back to human form and raced over to him.
“Roberto, help!” I cried out, clasping a hand over the wound on Jedrik’s haunch, which was bleeding heavily, so heavily it didn’t seem possible that he still had any more blood in him.
“What the Hell was that!?” Roberto cried out, racing to my side and clamping a hand over mine to help stop the bleeding.
“Call Wendell!” I shouted at him, nodding towards the house.
Roberto shifted back into his panther form and dashed back into the house.
“It’s going to be okay, Jedrik,” I whispered, as my new beautiful fated mate struggled for breath. “Don’t worry. You’re going to be okay.”
Chapter Thirteen
Jedrik
My mind felt like a dark pool of jellied eels swimming around with tiny mouths nibbling at the inside of my skull. Dull pains flared in my left side and right cheek, and I was vaguely aware of something sticking me on the inside of my elbow. I tried to open my eyes, but the lids were like curtains of cement and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t budge them.
Then—a voice.
“He’s awake!”
“Are you sure?”
Who is that?...The answer was at the edge of my mind but not quite there to be grasped.
“Yes, look!” The first voice cried out. “Jedrik! Jedrik, baby!”
Who—who are you?
I tried to speak, but my lips were even heavier and impossible to move. But then, a scent swept into my nostrils and my soul awoke with recognition.
Perry and Roberto! My fated mates!
Again I struggled to lift my eyelids, but sleep weighed down upon me like a giant’s hand. The eels in my mind nibbled away at my consciousness and I felt myself slipping away again, back into whatever void I’d visited—away from them…away from my mates…
I’ll be back…I thought as their voices faded into the background of my mind. At least…I hope I will….
* * *
Light flickered against my eyelids like a candle blowing in the breeze. My forehead twitched. I felt my skin tingle against the heat of the light—the sun, I realized as I felt my body awaken.
More pain in the left side and the same stinging from my right cheek. But they were less than before, when I’d tried to wake up earlier. I felt the same prick on my inner arm and fought to open my eyes. This time my eyelids obeyed me and lifted, revealing the dying light of the Pacific Ocean through the plate-glass windows of my apartment.
“P-Perry!” I called out, my breath heavy and raspy in my chest and a horrible taste in my mouth. “Roberto!”
“I’m here!” A hand clasped mine, and I looked up to see Roberto standing above me, a comforting look on his gorgeous face, his deep brown eyes like a familiar embrace to a stranger in a lost land. “Just relax. You’re okay. You’re okay now.”
“What—what happened?” I asked. My mind was like a puzzle that had been scrambled and thrown against the wall. Pieces of information lay scattered here and there. Images. Sounds.
Teeth. Snarls. Growls. Snapping. A flash of pain in my mind. A claw slashing my face.
I reached my hand to my cheek but another hand grasped my wrist to stop me.
“Careful.” It was Perry’s this time. His scent soothed me as it washed over me. “You’re wounded. Wendell stitched you up. Don’t touch them. Not yet.”
“Wendell?” I groaned, trying to push myself into a seated position. I was lying on the couch—I knew that much.
“Help him,” Roberto said and my two mates took me by the arm and pulled me up. One of them propped my back up with a cushion. I sat there a moment, opening and closing my eyes, doing my best to get ahold of the moment, seeing my loving mates looking at me with concern. Then, from my left, another man emerged, the most stereotypical-looking hippy I’d ever seen in my life. He held out a glass of hideous-looking green liquid and nodded.
“Drink this,” he told me. “It looks sick and tastes sicker, but it’s good for you.”
I must have grimaced, as he smiled and nodded to my mates.
“Come on, boys,” he urged them. “Tell him he needs to drink it.”
“You do, baby,” Perry told me. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Wendell put you on an IV, but you need to get something in your system. You’ve been out for two days.”
“Two days?” I groaned, reaching out and taking the glass. My fingers felt weak, and the strange hippy kept his grip tight, making sure I didn’t drop it. I felt like an invalid as he helped bring the glass to my mouth, and used too much of my strength to shake him away.
“I can do it,” I told him, raising the glass to my lips. It smelled as bad as it looked, but Perry nicely clamped his fingers over my nose as I started to drink.
“I know,” Wendell chuckled as the taste hit my tongue. “It’s nasty, but it’s good for you. Get it down.”
Rather than have to suffer the ordeal twice, I kept drinking until the entire glass was empty. I must have been empty, as I could feel the cool concoction as it made its way through my throat and down into my belly.
“Here,” Roberto said, holding out a glass of water. “Wash it down.”
Wendell took the glass and I took the water from Roberto and drank eagerly, already feeling my strength beginning to return to me.
“Tell us what happened,” Perry said, taking a seat beside me on the couch. The warmth from his body was comforting, and as I searched my mind, I realized I was able to remember what had happened.
“Sasha,” I said grimly, the name like poison in my mouth. “It was Sasha.”
“Sasha?” Roberto asked. “Who—?”
“My ex,” I grumbled as the painful memories that I’d tried for so long to forget came back to me. It wasn’t
something I liked thinking about, and did my best not to. After meeting Perry and Roberto, I’d figured that chapter of my life was finally behind me forever. Apparently not.
“The omega,” Perry said. “That was him, right?”
I nodded, taking another sip of the water to fight the horrible taste from Wendell’s green drink.
“Son of a bitch,” Roberto growled. “So—he’s like a stalker or something?”
“I guess now he is,” I replied. “Before he was just a controlling, emotionally manipulative crazy person. But I never thought he’d follow me…”
“He saw you with us and he lost it,” Perry said. He was speculating, of course, but was probably right.
“Following me…” I said, shaking my head. “That’s a new low, even for him.”
I was furious—raging even, but my body betrayed me and I felt the urge to sleep begin to overpower me. As I lay my head back, I felt Perry slide another pillow behind me and Roberto’s hands on my chest. I looked to my arm to see the IV needle sticking out of my skin, and saw Wendell eyeing me from the end of the couch and knew I was in good hands. But despite all that, I felt terrible about what had happened.
“Are either of you hurt?” I asked, terrified of the answer.
“Nothing serious,” Perry replied. “You worry about you right now. We’re fine.”
Sasha, I thought as I surrendered again to sleep. You son of a bitch.
Chapter Fourteen
Roberto
“This isn’t going to work,” Perry said for the seventh time as we sat outside of the coffee shop watching Sasha sipping his latte.
“Would you stop?” I snipped back. I was growing annoyed as Perry’s constant negativity was beginning to wear on me and make me think that we really were wasting our time.
For the last four days while Jedrik rested, we’d been tailing Sasha, looking for any information we could get on him that would help get him out of our life. Maybe he had a secret we could blackmail him with, or was wrapped up in organized crime or something, or was cheating on his current boyfriend and we could use that information to keep him away from us. There had to be something!
But so far, all Sasha had been doing was driving to La Jolla and parking his car in a parking garage, wandering around with his phone taking photos, then heading to the coffee shop and drinking coffee all afternoon. After that, he went back to his crappy apartment in Mission Beach and that was that. It was so mundane it was almost unbelievable.
“What?” Perry snapped back. “What are we going to find? Seriously? He’s, like, the most boring guy I’ve ever run into. Unless he’s like a split personality and randomly turns into the psychopath we saw outside of our apartment the other night, I don’t see how this is going to get us anywhere.”
“We have to do something,” I scolded him. “I mean—do you just want to wait around until he comes back with more guys? What will we do then?”
Perry grumbled and slouched down in his seat. “I just want to go home and be with Jedrik.”
I sighed and took his hand. “So do I,” I agreed. “But he’s recovering and needs his rest. And we need to do our part in this relationship too.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Perry snapped. “Do you know how terrified I was back there—fighting like that? I’m not supposed to be doing stuff like that, but I did!”
“We both did,” I corrected him. “We both fought alongside him and now we have to do more. We have to make sure we are all safe, and right now he needs to recover. He’s almost there.”
Perry opened his mouth to speak, but inside the coffee shop, Sasha got to his feet—and quickly.
“Here we go,” I said, sitting up and turning on the car. “He’s heading out.”
“Yeah, probably to go home and watch Netflix all night,” Perry groaned. I swatted him on the knee like a mother scolding their child, and gave him a look. I saw he felt bad about being such a stick in the mud, and sat up with a renewed vigor.
“Okay, okay,” he said, his eyes on the prick omega as he crossed the street to his station wagon. “Okay, let’s follow him. Maybe tonight’s our night?”
“Maybe,” I smiled, pulling away from the curb and slowly following behind Sasha as he made his way up the block.
He took a familiar route and I felt my optimism begin to wane as we followed him towards what I imagined would be his apartment again, but instead of taking his normal right turn, he hung a left and went up a road we’d never been up before.
“What’s this?” I heard Perry whisper, his enthusiasm rising. The evening sun was setting, and the purple glow came over the city as Sasha pulled up in front of an old decrepit building that looked like it hadn’t seen life in years. A large sign saying “BEWARE OF THE DOG” hung from the chain link fence and looked fresh, as though it had been bought from the store last week.
Sasha didn’t park out front. Instead, he turned off his headlights and pulled his car down a dark, overgrown driveway with no sign or lighting and disappeared into the shadows.
“Okay, we’re onto something,” I said as I parked down the block and quickly turned off the car. “Where are the pheromone blockers?”
“Here,” Perry said, snatching the small bottle from the center console and spraying himself down. Instantly, his scent vanished. He handed the bottle to me and I did the same.
“Okay, are you ready?” I asked him. I could see him shaking slightly and saw the nervousness in his eyes, but he nodded. As quietly as possible, we opened our doors and stepped out into the falling night, our scents temporarily masked, moving like silent ninjas as we stalked towards the old warehouse. I was sure this was the right thing to do. We had to help Roberto. But as I stepped into the shadows of the shady lot, I couldn’t help but think, this is a bad, bad idea.
Chapter Fifteen
Jedrik
“Not another, doc,” I joked as Wendell approached with another one of his green drinks in hand.
“Oh, yes,” he smiled like the evil doctor he was.
“Oh, no,” I replied.
“Oh, yes,” he chuckled, handing it to me. “You’re getting better, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, it’s been four days,” I told him. “Of course I am.”
“It’s not the days. It’s the drink.”
Begrudgingly, I took the glass from him and raised it to my lips. The heinous mixture was getting less and less disgusting every time I drank it, but it still was nothing I’d ever wish on my worst enemy—even Sasha.
Son of a bitch, I thought as I gulped down Wendell’s potion and handed him the glass. I still couldn’t believe he’d actually stalked me and showed up at my apartment. It had been obvious he hadn’t wanted to talk either. He’d been shifted when he arrived, along with his goons, who had immediately attacked.
I guess jealousy had finally gotten hold of him, and seeing me with Roberto and Perry had sent him over the edge. He’d been “violent” a few times in our relationship, but I never thought he’d actually do something like that, and that’s what had allowed them to get the drop on me. Under normal circumstances I could have taken those scrubs. The alphas were barely alphas and the beta was an absolute chump. Of course Sasha wouldn’t do his own fighting either, but I’d thought he would have actually wanted to talk. Instead, he sicced his goons on me.
“Hey, where are Roberto and Perry?” I asked Wendell, who gave me a shifty look before turning away.
“I imagine they’re just running errands,” he replied, but I could tell by the tone of his voice that he was lying.
“Wendell,” I said sternly, swinging my feet to the floor. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know, Jedrik,” he replied as he moved to the kitchen and began washing out the glass. “And that’s the truth.”
He wasn’t lying—I could tell that much. But he wasn’t telling me the whole truth either. He was keeping something from me. So, I got up off the couch and walked over to him. The pain in my left side was considerably bett
er, reduced to simply an ache like a sore muscle, and the pain in my face was completely gone. There would be scarring though, that much was inevitable, but my mates assured me it would look sexy, so I didn’t mind.
“Wendell,” I said again, lower and more firm. “You’re hiding something from me. What is it?”
Wendell kept his eyes on the sink as he washed the glass with a sponge and set it aside. I said nothing and let the uncomfortable silence hang in the room while he thought about what he should say. But when he finally raised his eyes to mine, I let him know with no uncertainty that he only had one option: spill the beans.
“They’re…out,” he finally said. I raised my eyebrows.
“Out?”
“They’re...looking for Sasha.”
“Fuck,” I growled. “What do you mean, looking for Sasha?’ Like—they want to kick his ass?”
“I think they probably would,” Wendell chuckled. “But, no. They want to try to get something on him.”
“Get something?” I asked, leaning against the counter and rubbing my leg gently. “Like blackmail?”
“Something like that,” Wendell replied, eyeing me with a glance that let me know he understood what I was feeling. I was concerned, of course—beyond concerned. If the boys had gone out looking for Sasha, that meant they could end up running into however many other goons he had with him, and that meant alphas—which meant trouble.
“Shit, Wendell,” I groaned. “How could you let that happen?”
“Those boys don’t take well to the word no,” he replied. “That’s something you should know about them. They want to help you. I couldn’t really keep them from doing what they wanted to do.”