by Lola Gabriel
“What is it, Thomas?” he asked, unable to keep the frustration out of his voice. “I’m kind of in a hurry at the moment.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Thomas apologized, “but you told me to let you know whenever Mr. Lancaster asked about you—”
“My father was here?” Raven was immediately wary, and he turned around and quickly scanned the lobby. It was never a good thing when his father tried to find out where he had been or whom he had been with at any given moment, and alarm bells started to ring in Raven’s head. He had been careless enough to let his father discover he even had a room in this hotel for whenever he wanted to just be Raven instead of Raven Lancaster; the last thing he wanted was for the man to be snooping around.
“No, not him himself,” Thomas said. “But he sent some men to ask if you’d brought anyone here lately—”
“You didn’t tell him anything, did you?” Raven questioned. Thomas had always been loyal to him rather than his father, and he hated to think that he might’ve betrayed him.
“No! Of course I didn’t tell anybody anything!” Thomas reassured him, fervently shaking his head. “But I wasn’t at the desk when Mr. Lancaster’s men showed up. Reggie was.”
Raven cursed under his breath. Reggie was one of the people his father had bought off a long time ago, just like he had bought off half of New York’s wolf shifters, and it was just Raven’s luck that it had been him and not Thomas at the reception desk when his men had come to ask about him.
“Wait.” Raven glared at Thomas. “Did Reggie tell them I wasn’t alone that night?”
Thomas paled under his scrutiny. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know.”
Raven whirled and strode to the sliding doors of the hotel. His parents were very particular about the beings he was allowed to interact with in his life. If his father had found out anything about Sadie, she could be in trouble. He needed to talk to his father and find out exactly what he knew.
---
Mr. Lancaster was sitting at the desk in his office when Raven threw the doors open and walked inside without announcing himself. He knew it pissed his father off, but right now, he wasn’t thinking about making him snap, so he couldn’t even enjoy the barely concealed tightening of his jaw, an old tick his father had had for decades now.
“Ah, Raven,” said Mr. Lancaster. “Just who I wanted to see.”
“What were your men doing at the Delmore?” Raven hissed, getting straight to the point.
“Making sure you weren’t embarrassing our family name,” his father answered. “It’s bad enough that you have a hotel room to begin with, but it’s even worse that I can’t force you to get rid of it without causing a scene with the press. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about without my son having a mistress.”
“A mis—” Raven felt like he was having a completely different conversation than his father. Mistress? Who even used that word anymore? “What the hell are you even talking about?! What mistress?!”
“Oh, please,” Mr. Lancaster groaned. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out about your little affair at the Delmore? Do give me more credit than that, Raven.”
“My little—” Raven stopped short.
His father was talking about his night with Sadie. He couldn’t mean anyone else, and if he thought of Sadie as Raven’s ‘mistress’, he had surely investigated her. He must’ve sent half of the men under his command all over the place until they had found her. He would know where she lived, or at the very least, where she was at the moment. Now all Raven had to do was get that information.
“Affair, yes,” Mr. Lancaster repeated. “Oh, I beg your pardon, you ignorant youngsters call it a ‘booty call’, don’t you? Terribly distasteful.”
Raven could nearly feel the blood boiling in his veins. He barely managed to restrain his claws from bursting out of his hands, and he had to tighten them into fists.
“Sadie is not a ‘booty call’,” he snarled through gritted teeth. “She’s not my mistress, she’s my mate.”
The words reverberated through his whole being. He knew it to be the truth as soon as he said it out loud.
His father didn’t share his revelation. On the contrary, what he seemed to share was Raven’s anger, because he glared at his son and tented his fingers in front of him.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he growled. “A stupid shifter girl from a wretched pack in Wyoming is not your mate. She was just another one of your many mistakes and embarrassments—”
Raven slammed his fists against his father’s desk, and he was unable to hold back his fangs from protruding from his mouth. He was two seconds away from shifting right there in his father’s office, from tearing him apart with his own bare hands, but he reminded himself that that wouldn’t be of any help. Raven took a deep breath and huffed it out through his nose, which had started to shift into a snout before it went back to its human form.
Mr. Lancaster only glared at him, completely unaffected, and it only incensed Raven more.
“I have made many mistakes in my life, Father,” Raven said.
“Of course you have.”
“But Sadie wasn’t one of them,” he went on, ignoring his father’s comment. “If anything, she’s the greatest thing to ever happen to me.”
“Whatever you want to call your dalliance,” Mr. Lancaster said, and Raven clenched his clawed fingers around the edge of his desk, “I wouldn’t get too hung up on it if I were you. It’s not like you’ll ever see her again, anyway.”
The alarm bells started ringing again in Raven’s head.
“What did you do?” he demanded. His father was one of the most powerful shifters in the entire world. He was probably the most powerful alpha in recent generations, with enough resources and money and people at his disposal to do whatever the hell he wanted whenever and wherever he wanted, and he was fully aware of it.
Mr. Lancaster’s mouth twisted into a cruel smirk.
“What you always force me to do, Raven,” he said, making Raven’s heart drop to the pit of his stomach. “Clean up after your messes.”
Raven turned to the doors of the office and practically ran out of them, already starting to fully shift. His father had sent his men after Sadie, he was absolutely sure of it. He didn’t know why he had felt that necessary, considering Raven had only been with her one night, and for only a few hours, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that Sadie was in danger, and Raven had to get to her before his father’s men did.
By the time he exited the building, he wasn’t a human anymore, running through the streets of New York on all four legs as fast as they could possibly carry him, as fast as he could push his body to run. There was no time for him to catch a flight to Wyoming. Even if he did, he had no idea of where in Wyoming Sadie was, exactly. He’d have to rely on his wolf instincts and focus on them and trust them to guide him to his mate.
Please don’t let me be too late, he prayed, pushing his legs to go even faster. Please let me get to her in time. Please let me save her. Please don’t let me lose her again.
7
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay for a little while longer?” Ellie asked, slinging her arms through the straps of her backpack. She turned to Sadie at the front door of her house, as though she had changed her mind and wasn’t leaving at all. “I really don’t mind! You wouldn’t even know I’m here! I learned how to hide in tiny spaces when I was a kid to escape from my parents, so I can hide in the smallest space of your house, and none of you will be the wiser.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Sadie said, and she did, truly. Seeing Ellie had done wonders for her, and if she’d been pregnant for longer than two months, she was sure that the child growing in her womb would’ve been kicking nonstop. “But I don’t want to cause you any trouble. You’ve already risked so much skipping one day—”
“Oh, pish posh!” Ellie replied as she waved a hand in a nonchalant gesture. “Honestly, I wanted an excuse to skip school for once in my goddamn life, and
what better excuse than to visit my best friend?” Her expression grew serious, and she held both of Sadie’s arms. “Seriously, though. Are you going to be okay?”
Sadie sighed deeply. Just earlier today, she had told herself she would have to be okay. She would have to be strong, not only for herself, but also for her unborn child. Now, however, she knew she would be okay. How could she not be, when she had the support of her family and a friend like Ellie Hanson? She would tell her parents about her pregnancy soon enough, once she prepared herself to hear questions about the baby’s father and what had happened.
“Yeah,” Sadie responded, completely meaning it. “I’ll be okay. I really don’t want to bother you, but you’ll visit me, won’t you?”
“What kind of question is that?” Ellie grinned at her. “Obviously, yes, I’ll visit you as many times as I can get away with! You barely showed me any of your town. I want to see pretty much all of it, and I know it’s impossible to do it in only one day. So expect me to drop in when you least expect it.”
“Some kind of warning before you just drop in unexpectedly would be kind of nice, actually,” Sadie muttered. While she had loved seeing Ellie, she would’ve also liked to know that her friend was going to show up completely out of the blue.
Ellie frowned and pouted. “Why do you want to take the fun out of it?”
“Because I don’t want to have a heart attack in the near future,” Sadie answered. “Or even in the far-off future, especially under the current circumstances. I’d like to know when I’m expecting visits.”
“Ugh, fine,” Ellie groaned theatrically. “But you’re going to have to answer my texts again and not just leave me on read!”
Sadie pushed a blonde strand of hair behind her ear and ducked her head in embarrassment. Ellie had understood why she had suddenly cut off contact with her, but that didn’t mean Sadie still didn’t feel a little guilty about it.
“Hey, hey.” Ellie rubbed Sadie’s arms. “Don’t think that being three hours away will keep me away for long,” she said. “I expect to be a huge part of my godchild’s life!”
“Excuse me, when did I say you’d be their godmother?” Sadie asked, frowning in confusion. A smile broke through her expression, and Ellie grinned right back at her.
“You haven’t yet,” Ellie said, “but I know you will at some point. Hopefully before they’re born! Or when they’re born, if you’d prefer that instead. I’m not picky.”
Then she pulled Sadie into her arms and hugged her tightly, and Sadie was taken back to the night of their girls’ night out, when she’d told Ellie she was going to leave with a stranger she’d just met and her friend’s response had been to embrace her as tightly as she was doing now and tell her how proud of her she was.
“You take care, okay?” Ellie said when she broke their hug.
“You too,” Sadie replied. “And let me know when you get back to New York.”
“Will do,” Ellie assured her. She turned around and began to walk away, and when she was almost gone from sight, she looked over her shoulder and waved goodbye at Sadie, who waved back at her and watched as she grew smaller and smaller in the distance until she couldn’t see her friend anymore.
Sadie walked back inside her house and closed the door behind her.
“She seems nice.”
She whirled on her feet, startled at the sound of a voice she didn’t know. There was a man sitting on her couch, right where she and Ellie had been sitting a few hours ago. He had cropped hair and wore a black suit, and when he stood up, Sadie found herself growling at him, deep in her throat. Whoever he was, he most likely wasn’t friendly.
“Pity that that was the last time she’ll ever see you,” the man intoned flatly.
“Who are you?” Sadie snarled, feeling her fangs and claws starting to come out. “What do you want?”
“Nothing, personally,” he answered in the same monotone voice. “Mr. Lancaster, on the other hand, wants you and your bastard gone. Can’t have a creature from such an ordinary pack taint his bloodline.”
Lancaster. Raven.
Sadie tried to slow down her suddenly racing thoughts. Had Raven sent this man to…what, kill her? How had he even known where she was? How had he found out about her baby?
“You can tell Mr. Lancaster,” Sadie growled, the name tasting like poison on her tongue, “that he can rest easy. I want nothing to do with him, nor do I want anything from him.”
That’s not true, a part of her said. Sadie told it to shove it. Raven had sent someone to get rid of her! Why was she still hoping for some stupid reconciliation that was obviously never going to happen? It wasn’t like they’d even broken up or been together in the first place.
“I’m afraid your word is not enough,” the man replied, and fur started to protrude from his face. “Again, nothing personal.”
In an instant, he had shifted into a brown wolf standing on all fours in the middle of Sadie’s living room, saliva dripping from its snarling snout. In the blink of an eye, it was lunging at Sadie, and she barely had time to dodge before it slammed against the door and cracked it down the middle. Sadie attempted to shift into her own wolf form so that she wouldn’t be at such a disadvantage, but her body was responding more slowly than it usually did—a side-effect of her pregnancy that she cursed under her breath as she jumped out of the way of another attack.
The wolf was faster than it appeared to be. It leapt immediately after landing, and Sadie didn’t have time to dodge it. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her stomach, bracing herself for her imminent death.
Something crashed through the door, and the sound was followed by a piercing howl that made Sadie’s blood freeze in her veins. She opened her eyes and stared in shock at a new wolf with pitch-black fur fighting with the brown wolf, keeping it away from her. As soon as her gaze rested on the black wolf, Sadie immediately knew who it was.
Raven. Her soul recognized him, even though she had never seen him in this form, and his seemed to hear hers calling him, because he turned his head to look at her, his brown eyes boring into her own.
The brown wolf tried to attack him, but Raven was faster and managed to pin it down to the ground, sinking his teeth into the side of its neck. The brown wolf howled in pain again, desperately kicking its hind legs in an attempt to free itself.
“You will go tell my father,” Raven hissed, “that my mate is off-limits.”
Mate. Mate.
That was what Raven had just called her.
It seemed so obvious now: why Sadie had felt like they had met before, despite the fact that they hadn’t; why she had wanted to feel his body pressed to hers, why she had wanted to merge them into one being; why she had felt as though her heart had broken when she’d left Hotel Delmore and her night with Raven behind. They were mates.
Her mate had come back for her.
Raven released the brown wolf, and the shifter ran out of Sadie’s house through the broken door, vanishing from sight as quickly as he had appeared in the first place. When the wolf was gone, Raven shifted back into his human form, his tattered clothes clinging to him as he turned to meet Sadie.
Relief and happiness like Sadie had never known overcame his features. He grinned widely at her with that gorgeous mouth that Sadie had wanted to kiss since the very first moment she had seen it, and it was a miracle that she kept herself from doing it now. His entire body sang with them, radiating such warmth and adoration that she blushed in response.
Raven crossed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms, and Sadie’s body immediately followed suit, her own arms wrapping around him and pushing herself up into him, pressing them as close as they could be to each other. God, how she had missed him, and by the looks of it, she hadn’t been the only one.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” she whispered, as if she were in a dream. For a moment, she thought she was. But Raven was solid against her, and he pushed his mouth against the top of her head and kissed her
hair, her temple.
“I can’t believe I found you,” he whispered back, his arms growing tighter around her.
“I thought—I thought that you just—your note—”
“Was to let you know I had to go, but I was going to come back,” Raven interjected, and Sadie buried her face into his chest and suddenly felt unbelievably stupid, having completely misunderstood the written words Raven had left for her. She had tried so hard to convince herself that her feelings hadn’t been mutual, causing them both so much suffering, breaking both of their hearts because she had decided to walk away before she had to endure any more pain. “I was always going to come back to you, Sadie.”
“I’m sorry,” Sadie mumbled, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I was so stupid—”
“You weren’t,” Raven said, caressing her hair. “You don’t need to apologize. It’s okay. What matters is that we’re together.” He embraced her more tightly, like he couldn’t bear the thought of ever being away from her again, but he didn’t say anything about…
Sadie recalled what the man had said. The Mr. Lancaster he had mentioned must’ve been Raven’s father, so it was safe to assume that Raven didn’t know. He had just rushed to Wyoming to save his mate because he had known she was in danger without care for anything else.
“So,” Sadie said, wiping at her eyes before the tear could fall, “I’m guessing your father isn’t happy about having a grandchild from a small-town pack, is he?”
Raven instantly pulled away from her, but only enough to look into her eyes, his own wide in shock.
“Wh—grandchild?” He looked down at her belly, making Sadie laugh, looked up at her, looked down at her belly, and then back up at her. His mouth started to curl into another smile. “Are you—”
“Pregnant with our child, yes,” Sadie confirmed, and now it was her body singing with happiness and relief. She hadn’t allowed herself to think of the child growing in her womb as anything other than hers, so sure that Raven would never be a part of the picture, but he had returned for her. For them.