Chapter 39: Chapter 39

Misty

My whiskey-loosened mouth spilled out the question. The one that I had held back over these weeks due the the shadows that seemed to creep across his silver eyes whenever his mate was mentioned. My mouth worked as my brain caught up with my words, ready to take the question back.

“If that's what you think you need to know to trust me,” Beck responded. “Ill tell you,” he said with a sigh.

The thing was, after tonight, I was definitely sold on Beck’s trustworthiness as a protector. He wanted to be a part of my daughter’s life. That required going beyond the superficial companionship we had carefully set up with lines of clear boundaries and he had just dared me to cross one and I took the bait.

He leaned back in his seat stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his arms across his chest as he leaned back against the back of his seat. I just waited for him to collect himself and tell the story. We stared at each other a long moment before he nodded.

“Alley and I weren’t a conventional mated pair. She was a feline and I am a bear. As I told you before, we left our community because our families didn’t approve and we made for a fresh start in a new one. I thought things were going well. There weren’t a lot of shifters around and they mostly kept to their own kind. I should have seen the tells but I brushed her anxiety off as the effects of the new environment. The forced smiles and the pretending everything was okay in my mind were easily explainable. I thought we would fall into the blissfulness of new beginnings once we settled.

I met a sleuth in a bar we visited a few towns over, and fell into the brotherhood they offered. Alley encouraged it but when they needed me to leave with them for an extended period to hassle an opposing sleuth she begged me not to go. I brushed it off as just her not wanting to be alone and promised I’d be back before she knew it. Had she told me the secret she kept from me I never would have left. I don’t know why she didn’t, maybe she thought I’d be upset she was keeping it from me or perhaps she herself thought she was overreacting. Over the distance the bond was muted but on the fifth night away as we were engaged with the opposing sleuth, something terrible happened. Our bond shattered as I was locked in a fight with another bear.” He pointed to the scar on his face and tapped his chest where the other ran over the muscles of his chest under his shirt.

“The anguish was so intense that I buckled and the others had to fight him off of me after they finished their own fights. I was so weakened by the loss of Alley that the scars never healed, but I jumped on my bike still bloody and headed straight home. I knew in my soul what I would come home to and yet I was in denial. The door was hanging partially open,” his voice cracked and roughened with emotion. “And Alley was laid out in a pool of her own blood,” he finished swallowing hard.

What secret had taken Alley’s life, I thought aghast.

“It took me weeks to track down the meaning of the message carved out on her skin. One word. ‘Mine.’ A feline male from our previous community had thought Alley would be his and he had been stalking her. That was her secret, the meaning for her anxiety. I should have known my mate better, instead I let my superficial wants supersede the needs of my mate and my selfishness cost me everything. I should have stayed without question and protected the one thing most important to me above all else. When I hunted him down, my claws wrapped around his entrails, he confessed all the things he did to her before, and after she died and I live with that shame and guilt every day. I watched the life drain from his eyes and planned to end my own suffering. But the first bar I came to, wanting to drink myself into oblivion before I went, I watched a man backhand the woman he was with, and I saw red. So from that point on I took that moment as a sign from Alley that she expected me to live with the unending remorse of my actions by saving women in her name. Adelaide called me her guardian angel. That respect truly belongs to Alley. I am just the weapon she chooses to wield in her absence,” he said simply.

I took in his words, studying his eyes as my mind tried to take in the information. I knew being a ‘mate’ was more than human love but I couldn’t fathom the extent of that.

“If you were human, nobody would have given the situation a second thought. While I understand things are more complex for you, I have a hard time demonizing you for information your mate refused to yield,” I told him seriously. Something shifted as he relaxed slightly.

“You are right about that, any shifter female in her right mind would have thrown me out knowing what I allowed to happen,” he said, as if my stance on the matter was incredulous.

“Well, I'm human. I’m sorry for identifying more with your humanity,” I shot back rolling my eyes.

He sighed and shook his head before glancing up at the screen behind me and narrowing his eyes. I turned my chair to view the live footage. The woman was bent over the desk, her skirt ridden up as he forced her legs wider. “I’m going to make my bitch of a mate pay, and it will make the few weeks I had her feel like nothing compared to what I'm going to do to her,” his voice rumbled through the audio. I closed my eyes as he slammed into her.

“Why are you so caught up on her? She’s more trouble then she is worth, she will destroy you,” the woman rasped through the tight hold he now had on her slender neck which he tightened punishingly and she squirmed. His grip tightened.