by Leigh Kelsey
“I think I’ve had enough of your insight for one day,” I muttered, twisting the doorknob and hauling the stained-glass door open. I sprinted down the steps and onto the pavement, my breathing quick and short. Panic gripped me so quickly and strongly that a pain spiked in my chest. I couldn’t get a single breath and my head was starting to feel fuzzy and strange.
Arms folded around me, hands rubbing my back, and then Gray’s voice in my ear said, “You’re okay. Fuck her, Lyra. She doesn’t know anything.”
“She’s—she’s—coven elder,” I wheezed, the tightness in my chest getting worse. I couldn’t inhale even a trickle of air. My head fell against his chest, dizzy.
“Shh,” he said calmly. “You’re alright. You’re safe, there’s nothing to be scared of.” I wanted to shoot back that I wasn’t scared but that was a lie. I was terrified, unsettled to my core at what Claudette just told me. “Close your eyes,” he said, and he was so calm and assured that I did. “Ignore everything except what I’m saying, forget that bitch. Listen. Can you feel me breathing?”
He inhaled slowly, then breathed out. I nodded, squeezing my eyes shut and so embarrassed that I was freaking out.
“Mirror my breathing,” Gray said, rubbing my back. “Come on, you’ve got this. You’re safe now, nothing bad’s gonna happen. As if we’d let anything happen to you. Cas’d beat anything that tried to hurt you black and blue.”
I nodded, following his breathing and ignoring the way my own hitched and shook. A little more than a trickle of air inflated my lungs, and my shoulders dropped as the rest of me relaxed. My next breath came steadier, the next easier, and with Gray’s calm instructions and his hand rubbing my back, I found my way out of the panic.
“Better?” he asked, pulling back to look at me.
I nodded, averting my eyes. Mortified. “Where’d you learn to do that?” I grumbled.
“My mum has anxiety attacks,” he replied, pushing a lock of black hair from my face. “I’ve had them before, too.”
“Oh.”
“Let’s get out of here.” He slung an arm around my waist, and I looked at Jack and Cas, hovering nearby and looking apprehensive. Great. I’d terrified my mates for the second time in less than twelve hours. It was going well.
“I’m sorry,” I said miserably.
“Shut up,” Jack said, so seriously that I laughed. “I mean it. You shouldn’t be apologising.”
“No,” Cas agreed. “We should not bring you here.”
I shrugged. “Can we just … not talk about it?”
Cas leant down to kiss my cheek. “Talk about what?”
I smiled, not having the energy to make it into a grin. “Are we going to the Moonlight?” To be fair, the pub should have been open already, but with everything going on … low takings were the least of our problems. But the normal routine of pulling pints would help settle me—I needed it right now.
Cas nodded. Jack looked relieved.
“Come on,” Gray said, pulling me along the pavement. “We look like delinquents, loitering here.”
LYRA
“So,” I said as we walked past the amusements on the river, the smells of candy floss, battered cod, and saltwater in the air. “We still have no idea what’s going on inside me.”
I gave a passing glance to Old Jacqui’s tent, wondering if the old goat would have any answers for me, but the sign in front said she was out for lunch. Which was a blatant lie. Jacqui had died in the 1800s and was as dead as a gravestone; she didn’t eat lunch. She was probably conning some poor tourist out of their jewellery. She had a weakness for jet and opals.
“We’ll find answers,” Jack replied with a confidence I couldn’t echo. He probably thought he’d find the answer in one of his big, stuffy books or on the History Channel. It wouldn’t surprise me if he did.
I just nodded, watching the activity of Whitby around me. I thought I caught a glimpse of movement to our left, a white blur, but when I looked there was nothing there. I was seeing things. God knows I’d had enough stress in the past few days to give me delusions. I leaned closer to Gray and his arm tightened around my shoulders as he pressed a quick kiss to the side of my head.
“Thank you,” I said quietly. “For earlier, with the breathing.”
The corner of his mouth turned up, his hazel eyes gentle. “No problem. It’s my job to look after you.” His smile turned into a full-out grin. “My mate.”
“Not that you’re smug about it.” I snorted. Warmth spread through my chest.
“Cas,” Jack said suddenly, the tone of his voice making my head snap up and my nostrils flare.
“Gray, take Lyra to the Moonlight,” Cas ordered in the cold voice that made my skin prickle with danger. I threw my gaze over the restaurant we were just passing, the sweep of Bridge Street over the river, and the gaggle of tourists crowding around a souvenir stall. My senses prickled as I spotted a man moving quickly across the bridge under the shadow of seagulls, his hair so blonde it caught the light like a beacon. Supernatural, my instincts told me. Not a wolf, but his eyes were locked on our little group as we paused.
I unsheathed the knife I’d brought out with me today, a double-edged silver dagger with a clear gem that probably wasn’t diamond embedded in the handle. I’d paid a tenner for it but she was my new baby, and she was hardly used and well taken care of. I’d sharpened her this morning, so I knew the blade would cut easily through skin and cartilage.
“Gray! Lyra!” Cas barked, turning to face the blond man as he began to run at us.
“No way am I leaving you to fight that guy,” I snapped. “No way in hell, Casimir.”
His eyes flashed but he didn’t turn away from the man running at us. He was a mere few meters away now and I didn’t know what he was going to do. We were in public—a souvenir seller and tourists were a few feet away for God’s sake! It wasn’t like we could murder this guy and drag him off the way I’d done at the abbey.
“Cas?” I asked. “Should we be doing this here?”
“No,” he replied—and then the guy was on him.
Cas ducked as the blond threw a punch, and my blood boiled. I opened my mouth and snarled, my wolf fully behind the sound. How dare this bastard attack my mate! I lurched forward, knife in hard, not caring a bit about the tourist witnesses, but a weight slammed into me from behind and I went flying.
I cried out as the knife slid from my fingers, skidded across the tarmac, and I landed hard on my hands and knees, the impact shooting up my wrists. Before I could even begin to react, a weight fell on me, pressing my chin into the cool, hard ground. Stones bit into my skin and I flinched at the sting of abrasions, for a second so stunned that I was flattened to the ground to even remember to fight. Gray snarled loudly but the sound tapered into a whimper that cut through my shock-sluggish blood with icy fear. No. Not my Gray. Not any of my mates.
“Get—the fuck off me—” I growled, bucking and fighting to get the weight off my back. The bastard was fucking pinning me, and it was agony, tearing and howling at my chest, to hear the blonde fighting Cas and Jack. And Gray … silent.
My parents’ murders flashed behind my eyes, the memory replaced with a vision of Gray being killed with that same Wolf-Bone Sword. While I was forced to the ground, unable to fight. It was that day I lost my mum and dad all over again. I’ve lost him, I’ve lost him like I lost my mum and my dad and my pack—
I couldn’t breathe. I tasted blood in the back of my throat.
The asshole holding me to the ground pushed my face harder into the tarmac and fury roared through me at the helpless position. I wasn’t a damsel. I was a wolf.
In a second, rage burned through the panic, pushed it aside so I could scrape a breath into my lungs. The air tasted of iron and brine and freshly made doughnuts from down the road.
I wanted to shift, the way Claudette thought I could. I wanted whatever magic was inside me to explode and incinerate my attacker. But nothing happened, no matter how hard I pulled at my inner wolf. Because
I was restrained? Scared? I grew weak from resisting, my wrists pulsing where I’d fallen on them and my breathing short.
I was terrified, but it was a different sort of fear to the panic I’d felt leaving the Coven House. Now I was scared for my life, and worse—scared what this man would do to me. Hurt me? Abduct me the way the wolves had tried to before?
And my mates—my mates. I was going to lose them. They’d be hurt, killed, and I couldn’t—
No. I wouldn’t accept that. Never again would I lay in the dirt while the people I loved were killed. I wasn’t small and powerless anymore.
“Get off her!” Jack’s ragged shout, breaking over the steady lap of the river and the grunts on the bridge, told me he was alive at least, but my heart thumped to hear him so scared. It strengthened me.
I sagged, letting the asshole holding me down think I’d given up. When he heaved me up and banded his arms around my chest to restrain me, I stepped hard on his instep, brought my elbow to his stomach as hard as I could, and when he grunted and staggered back, I spun, reared my leg back, and kneed him in the balls as hard as I could.
He went down with a howl, and I got my first look at my attacker. Long, wavy brown hair, a flat, squashed kind of face, and eyes currently gleaming with pain. I kicked him in the nuts again for good measure and retrieved my knife from the ground.
“Gray,” I breathed, dropping beside him. He was curled up on the pavement, bright red blood spattered across the ground. Not a life-threatening pool of blood but still, the sight of it sent me wild. “Gray. Gray, look at me. Open your eyes.” I cupped his face, stroking his cheek and urging him to wake up. His eyes opened blearily, bright hazel-green dullened by pain, and he groaned. I was going to murder whoever these bastards were. His eyes flared wide with panic and I turned just in time for a third attacker—a tall, skinny woman with a red ponytail—to grab a fistful of my hair.
“Bitch,” I spat, bringing my dagger up in a smooth arc as close to her hand as possible. I shaved off the ends of my hair but it wasn’t a great loss compared to my mate crumpled up on the floor. “Who the fuck are you people?”
Silent and stoic like a soldier, she lashed out at me with a fist and I ducked, avoiding the blow but leaning right into another. She hit me in the ribs hard enough to stop my breathing and I grunted out a curse. She reared her fist back to strike again—briefly, I wondered why she wasn’t trying to kill me, just roughing me up—but a blur of white flew through the air and connected with her body, knocking her away from me.
I gaped, wheezing and wincing at the pain crackling through my ribs. A dog had locked onto the woman I mentally thought of as Scarlet Bitch, its jaws gnashing down on her leg hard enough that I heard teeth and bone grate. She howled with fury, trying to hit at the dog, but it twisted its teeth in her thigh and she screamed, falling to the ground.
Gray, I pleaded, reaching for him with our telepathic link. Gray, talk to me. Please. I need you, I need to hear you, please—
The dog—my dog, my night-time visitor—rose onto his hind legs and a flash of silver light wrapped around him. I blinked, blinked again, but nope, I wasn’t seeing things. Where my canine friend had stood, now there was a man. Unearthly beautiful, tall and willowy and dressed in deep green leathers. He looked like fucking Legolas, and I half expected him to make a bow and arrow appear from the ether but instead he just started towards me, his elegant face taut with concern and his eyes black and soulful. The same damn eyes. He had the same eyes as the white dog, and I couldn’t deny it. The man and the dog—they were the same person.
I’m alive, Gray’s voice came distantly, as if through cotton wool, and my face crumpled. I covered it with both hands, tears sliding down my face. I’m fine, darling wolf, he said. I’m okay. Bastard just knocked me out. Lyra. His voice softened. It’s alright, you don’t need to be scared for me.
I growled, the sound echoing both through my mind and my throat. My emotions felt utterly shredded.
“Are you alright?” the shifter asked, his voice as beautiful as his looks. I shoved the last of the tears away, dropped my hands to glare at him. I was a werewolf—shifting wasn’t alien to me—but I’d stroked him, let him cuddle up with me on my bench. And he’d been a man all that time? An elegant, strikingly hot man?
I swallowed, narrowing my eyes at him and stepping subtly left so I covered Gray who was struggling valiantly to get up despite whatever injury had dropped him. “You’re a dog. You’re meant to be a dog—and you’re—what?”
“A shifter,” he answered, looking ashamed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to deceive you. But these people will do worse. I’m here to help.”
And with that he ran for the bridge where Jack and Cas had just about managed to get the blond attacker under control. With my dog’s help—no, that just sounded weird, I couldn’t think of him like that. With the stranger’s help, they got him down and knocked him out on the bridge’s pavement. People craned their necks as they drove down Bridge Street, no doubt going to be posting about us on Facebook when they got home. By now I was sure the tourists had called the police; they’d fled the second a fight broke out. The souvenir guy had even packed up his stall and rolled it away.
“Gray,” I breathed, helping him prop himself up against the wall of the restaurant behind us. “Are you alright?” My instincts were wild, vibrating inside me like an earthquake about to go off. I kissed his cheek, his forehead, his eyelids as they drifted shut. “Tell me you’re alright. Where are you hurt?”
“Stop mothering me,” he grumbled even as he squeezed my hip. I nearly fucking collapsed as comfort lanced through me at that touch. “I’ll live. Go check on the others.”
I wanted to argue but I needed to see Jack and Cas. I needed to, the bond physically pulling me to them. If I didn’t go to them, I’d be torn apart inside, ripped into shreds. I was already shaking, my hands a blur. I needed to touch them, to know they were okay.
Holding onto Gray, I leant close and kissed him. It was the gentlest kiss I’d ever had. I didn’t want to hurt him but I needed to feel him, his lips against mine, his heart slamming into his ribcage. His thumb skimmed my cheek as I drew back, and for the longest moment he just looked at me as I gazed back at him. I felt my shaking stop as I accepted he wasn’t dying on me.
“I’m alright,” he said finally, dropping his hand. Promise.
I nodded, gave Gray a last, searching look. He was steadier, even if he was pale and his ego had taken a beating. I turned to leave and—faltered. My heart racing faster, I scanned the ground where I’d left the brown-haired guy, and where Scarlett Bitch had fallen, screaming, after the dog took a bite out of her leg. Gone. Both of them.
“Lyra,” Jack called, and I turned, my breaths short. They’d gone, escaped, we’d lost them. And how long would it be before they came for us again? I met my mate’s eyes and, panicking as I was, there was no force in this world that could stop the need to be in his arms.
I bolted across the road towards where Jack and Cas had trussed up the blond asshole with Cas’s belt. I kept running until I fell into Jack’s arms, hugging him tight. He held me close enough to bruise, to make me a permanent addition to his body, his hands trembling against my back. The sound of his heartbeat under my ear relaxed me a fraction, and as Cas came over and demanded to know if I was okay, his thick voice curling around me, I calmed even more. The lava in my veins slowed and turned back to blood, and the energy stilled until I felt weak and empty.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled. I wasn’t. My ribs ached like hell and I hurt where my wrists had absorbed the impact of my fall, and that was nothing compared to the remnants of panic for my mates’ lives. But I wasn’t about to worry Cas any more by telling him that. “Are you okay?” I squeezed Jack, pulling back to look at him. “Jack? Cas? Seriously. Are you? I need to know. I need to hear it.”
“Shh,” Cas breathed, running a hand over my head and down my hair. “We’re fine, Lyra. You can calm, now. We’re okay.”
Like those were the magic words, my instincts released me and I sagged.
“So,” I said after a long moment. “Do we address the canine in the room?”
The man in question cleared his throat awkwardly. “I have a lot to explain to you.”
“Yeah,” I said, turning to glare at him. “Like how you managed to trick our shields into letting you near the cottage.”
His black eyes flickered with confusion. Either he was a really good actor or he had no fucking clue what I was on about.
“So you didn’t tamper with them, damage them at all?” I exhaled, relieved. “Good. But how did you get through?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t know there were protections on your house. Although … it explains why these three waited until you ventured into the open to attack you. It makes more sense strategically to corner you in your house.”
I opened my mouth to tell my pack that our attackers had escaped, but Gray spoke before I could.
“Okay, psychopath,” he sniped, limping over to us. I stretched out my arm until he took my hand, a gnarly part in my heart soothing. A quiet, rapid conversation took place between us, this one without words, without telepathy. His hazel eyes asked if I was okay, I nodded that I was, and the soft glance he gave me next assured me everything would be okay. But out loud he only asked, “Who the fuck is this guy?”
“Um,” I replied, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “He’s sort of a dog I befriended. Also a shifter. Who can pass the spell around the cottage.”
“Well shit,” Gray exhaled, which about summed up my day, my week, and my whole life. I had to assume with wolves coming after me, the red pulse throwing my scent nationwide, and what Claudette had said about my species, it would sum up my future as well.
Well, shit indeed.
END
I hope you enjoyed Mated! Lyra’s story continues in Empowered, which is out now!
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