Page 29 of Betrayed Bullied Mate

“I was trying to wake you up,” he murmurs, and I wince, thinking about what I must have looked like to him, writhing around and screaming like that.

“I went down the hallway, and I saw this big glass door slightly open. So I stood outside and listened. There were two voices—one old man, I think, and another that I recognized.”

“What were they saying?”

“The old man said, ‘You haven’t sent the rest of what we agreed on,’ and ‘If I’d known you were going to be this stingy, I wouldn’t have dealt with you in the first place.’ He sounded really mad but also scared, and he was coughing a lot.”

“Did he say any names? Or mention a team name? Anything like that?” Aris is up off the bed now, pacing back and forth in the space between the bed and the wall. He reaches up and puts his hands on his head, and I watch the muscles in his abdomen move with his breathing, which is coming faster and faster.

“No, but—the other voice, the one I think I recognize, he said, ‘You weren’t complaining about the priceless gift I sent you just last week,’ and ‘As soon as you get your people out of my territory,’ and he was laughing.”

“Fuck,” Aris snaps under his breath. He moves to the other side of the room, starting to pull on his clothes. “Keep going. What else did he say?”

“Why? What does it mean?”

“I can’t tell you right now,” Aris says, looking pained, “But you telling me this is more helpful than you know. You could be saving this team right now.”

“The older man, he said, ‘I’m working on that… Apparently, one of my operatives has a convenient hide-out in the area—'” I pause, trying to remember the exact words, “And something about coordinates. He said, ‘I don’t know what they took so long to come through,’ I think.”

“Did anything happen after that?” he asks.

I can feel the rage rolling off Aris, so potent it’s almost like it’s my own emotion. I put the backs of my hands to my cheeks to cool them, trying to calm my own heart, which is starting to beat as fast as his. I clench my jaw, feeling frustration building in my chest.

Thinking of the room at the end of the hall, my body, the screaming, the blood soaking through the sheets, a shudder of terror goes through me. Aris is across the room, muttering under his breath and yanking on his shoes, and luckily, I don’t think he notices my reaction.

I make a quick decision—I’m not going to tell him about that part of the vision. I don’t want him to get sidetracked from his mission if he’s thinking of protecting me. I’ve never been able to stop something that happened in a vision, anyway.

“No, nothing happened after that,” I lie, waiting for him to call me on it, to somehow know that I’m not telling the truth. But if he can feel that I’m scared, it probably just feels like a logical reaction to the situation and wouldn’t tip him off that there’s something else on my mind.

I watch him, scanning his face. He looks worried and furious, chewing on his bottom lip furiously. I want to reach over and smooth it out, help him calm down, but I’m not sure that’s who we are to each other. When Aris glances up at me again, I realize there’s something I didn’t tell him about the vision.

“Okay,” he says.

It’s clear Aris recognizes the building and the man in my vision. I remember the final piece and chew on my bottom lip, not wanting to add fuel to his fire. I stand, going to him and putting a hand on his bicep.

“There’s something else, Aris,” I say when he stands from lacing his boots. His eyebrows shoot up, wrinkling his brow. I want to reach up and smooth it out, but I’m too nervous.

“What else could there possibly be?” he says, almost laughing to himself like it couldn’t possibly get worse. He scrubs a hand through his hair and glances at the door. It’s obvious he’s anxious to get out of here and go to his team.

“The other voice. The one the old man was talking to.”

Aris’s face darkens. In his haste to get dressed and get out of here, he clearly forgot about that part. I swallow, not wanting to tell him, not wanting to see the expression on his face. Though I don’t know Aris’s connection to this building or the people inside, his feeling of betrayal is strong enough that I can infer.

“That other voice… I knew it immediately. Kind of high-pitched. Cruel. Aris… It was Varun.”

Chapter 17 - Aris

“Let’s go!” I holler, slamming my fist into a cabin door until it opens, revealing a sleepy-looking Percy, rubbing his eyes, wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. He blinks at me wearily, then looks past me into the clearing.

“What’s up, Boss? Don’t you know it’s still the middle of the night?”

I growl at him and jerk my head in the direction of the woods.

“Let’s go, Heroux. Help me gather up the rest of the team. We’re going for a little walk.”

Percy immediately drops the joking expression, nodding his head and turning to pull on his clothes.

“Don’t bother with those,” I say, thinking of something at the last second. Percy raises an eyebrow, and his true nature comes leaking back through despite the seriousness of the situation.

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