Taken by my mate; Second Chance

AMBROSE

We’ve just finished our run, deciding not to shift this morning to stretch our human legs in the forest while the girls walk inside. I know Nova prefers the walks outside, but she loves support Daley more. She can’t wait for the baby and she’s almost more excited than the actual parents to be. My heart breaks knowing that I can never give her such joy but she insists she’s just as happy to be an aunt.

We’re nearly back when a wolven I’ve never seen before starts walking out to us and it is Covyn who greets him. Apparently he is the alpha from the disgraced pack.

“You’re early,” Covyn nearly growls, after the introductions are complete, but managed to conceal it with his uneven breathing from our run.

The man chuckles. “Yes I know. I do apologize for arriving unannounced but we ran into some people in town and made friends. We had planned to stay in town longer, but with the revelation that we had a thorn in common we thought arriving early would better fit our plans.”

“What do you mean?” Covyn does growl now but it only seems to intrigue him.

I know better than to talk out of turn where alphas are concerned, but still a knot of worry begins to form in my stomach. Before he can answer Ellion’s phone is ringing and he answers it, meaning it can only be Daley.

“Darling…”

“Are any of you in Mr. Durem’s room!?” She remands.

“No…” he returns slowly. “Why, are you locked out?”

“Someone’s in there!” She hollers. “They grabbed Nova and locked us out.”

I hear her clearly but my disbelief in her words is thick. We all look up to the exterior patio and see Nova with strange men around her, holding her up on the other side of the glass. Her face is red in the shape of hand prints and there’s a trail of blood running from her nose.

In a second I have the disgrace of an alpha by the throat. “You have them release my mate or I’ll relieve you of your head.”

“Not so fast,” he garbles out around my grip and my eyes move back to Nova to see them press a blade to her throat.

It’s Covyn who comes between us and grabs my wrist. “Calm down, we need to handle this rationally. Clearly there is something they want.”

“Too true,” the alpha huffs once I’ve let him go and I look over to see the knife pulled away from Nova. “Though I wonder if you’re willing to part with what we want.”

Covyn throws his hands up. “And what is it you want?” He demands but he seems more inclined to let me throttle him now and the only thing stopping me is the look in Nova’s eyes.

“Come, we’ll talk once we have a better view,” the alpha, who’s name I really should have listen to, gestures for us to go towards the balcony and we start off.

From the side of the house we see Daley and Sequoia, in her human form, running towards us. Daley moved in to calm herself with Ellion’s scent when she notices the stranger and growls. Sequoia moved in between me and Covyn, glaring at the man just as ferociously but remaining silent.

‘It’s Sal and some of his men,’ she tells us through her mental speaking ability. ‘I caught his scent a second before they slammed the door. I won’t fail her again, I’ve called in the big guns.’

I look to my best friends but none of them seem to know what she means either. We climb the stairs and I hear Daley whimper at the same time I feel pain in my arm and look up to see a blade cutting my girl.

A hand moves to her ear but I’m already growling out, “You fucks hurt her and I swear to Goddess you’ll live long enough to regret it.“

Nova smiles as I growl and I realize there’s a piece in her ear so she can hear us now.

‘It’s going to be okay Tewpie,’ she assures me through her own mental link.

“What is it you want?” Covyn snarls, looking at the scene through the window, like the rest of, with disdain.

A hand moves to the back of Nova’s head and they hit her head against the window suddenly.

“Fucker!” She yells, growling in her own way and through my anger I’m proud. “You kill me and you either die or starve to death in this room!”

“She’s-not-wrong!” My words come out clipped as I try to resist the shift that wants to take over.

Emrys is screaming in my head ‘my mate, my mate, my mate’ over and over. I feel like he is thrashing against the walls in my mind, demanding I unleash him on the men who dare to touch her. A large part of me is so angry that I consider it, but Emrys wouldn’t be able to slow down and think. Without a way into that room, we were cut off from her.

The disgraced alpha chuckled. “Humans, their life spans are so short and yet they live so recklessly,-“ he covers his bluetooth briefly as he says, “-and really I don’t expect them to live past today.”

“What do you want?” It’s Ellion’s turn to ask as the rest of us wrestle with inner animals and their desire for blood.

“Well, I am out some of my best fighters, and a new trophy…” the growling from everyone suffocates anything else he dares to say so he waits for us to be quiet. “While nothing will quite amount to aphoenix, I’d accept her familiar as trade.”

“What’s a familiar?” Daley snaps.

He just chuckles again. “My men were idiots. They figured out what they had but had no clue how to handle it. That she didn’t kill them all immediately means she’s lost her magic, so naturally she’d have a familiar.”

He speaks so confidently and Iknowhe’s from a family of sport hunters. A sliver of disgust worms its way through my gut and I work to shove it away. That one of our kind could hunt other creatures for pleasure at all is disgusting, but he doesn’t look ashamed at all. His lips under his moustache curl and he rubs his buzzed head while he takes in our varying degrees of hate filled expressions.

“What’s in it for them?” I gesture to the humans through the window.

He laughs. “They mostly just wanted revenge,” he replied with a shrug. “Apparently she busted up the one guys face pretty bad, and he was in the middle of an important business deal at the time. He didn’t return and the deal fell through. He lost a lot of face getting beaten up by a girl….”

It was my turn to laugh now. “She didn’t hit him. It was ME, and apparently I didn’t hit him hard enough because he still thinks it’s okay to lay hands on mine.”

I saw Sal’s eyes flare with anger and he wrapped his nasty hand around her face, digging his nails into her cheeks. “Then this is even better. You can watch me mess up your girl the way you messed up my deal!”

He moves around to punch her in the stomach and I pound on the glass with my claws bared. “I will cut you into pieces with my bare hands!”

Sal was laughing but he couldn’t see Nova’s face and she was pissed. She lunged against the me who held her and head-butt him in the nose. I could hear the *crack* through the phone that the disgraced alpha held out on our side. Nova was chuckling even as the red welt formed in the centre of her forehead.

“You’re such a fucking idiot Sal. You would have ruined that deal yourself one way or another. That guy was thrilled and you left to try making a power play with me. Really this whole thing isyourfault. If you hadn’t tried to prostitute me out and almostkilledme I wouldn’t be here, his men would be alive, and you wouldn’t have made a deal with the devil.”

“What?”

I’m not sure how many of us gasped that one word but my eyes never left Nova’s and I caught her eyes glowing. Her lips curved into a smile like the one she wore when she talked about what she did to the man who killed her mother.

He grabbed her face again and forced her to look at him but she was already eyeing him wildly. “What do you know of that?”

“I can sense the deals my family makes, and you weren’t supposed to touch me, ever again.” Nova grins. “I hope you didn’t barter anything you’ll miss.”

Sal went pale at the same time Nova’s face clenched in pain. She closed her eyes and rubbed her shoulder to her ear to knock the earbud loose. The men holding her arms were now holding her up as she tried to regain her feet, and I was banging on the glass again.

“Nnooo…” Sal whimpered and he looked up into the sky as a shadow blacked out the sun overhead.