Page 31 of Brick

“Leo, Dove, Linus. Maybe Joey? Stewart, can you call up team members to replace those of us who’ll be going?”

“You got it. Good luck.” He turned away and lifted his phone from the desk.

“Thanks. Both of you.”

“I’ll meet you at the house after I round up the others,” Solan said.

Brick rushed from the security office. Jade met him at the kitchen door, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Nothing, baby,” he said, hugging her tightly. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

“Can’t I just hide? Do I have to see him in person? What if he tries to hurt you to get to me?”

“He could come into the pack and hurt innocents trying to get to you. Adam’s right, we have to do this according to pack protocols.” He smoothed the hair from her face and kissed her gently on the forehead. “It’ll be okay. No one is going to take you from me.”

“We’re not mated yet.”

“You’re still mine and I’m still yours. We’re not going to rush into mating each other because he wants to show up and flex his muscles. And he seems like the kind of male who wouldn’t care if we were mated fully or not. He believes you’re property to be traded, not a person. You can’t reason with those kinds of people.”

“Fucker,” Alli said. She cracked her knuckles. “Please let me come along and bust heads if we need to.”

“Yes, please,” Brick said. “Do you have your sword handy?”

“You know it. It’s in the trunk of my car.”

Ten minutes later, the team of wolves going to the meet up were in Adam’s office along with Jade and Alli, who’d already fitted herself with a sheath for her sword that would allow her to keep it safely tucked against her back.

“Dane Malrick is the alpha of a small pack in North Dakota. He’s cousins with Alpha Holloway, who is Jade’s former alpha. Holloway arranged a mating between Dane and Jade, but she was able to escape her pack before that came to fruition. I’ve done some research, and while there’s not a lot on him or his pack, I found some articles about territory battles and humans getting caught in the crossfire. Malrick doesn’t seem to care if people get hurt so long as he gets what he wants. Half his pack came from him taking over another pack and killing the highranked males and their families. He’s dangerous, and while he’s agreed to meet in a neutral place, he definitely believes that I’ll be handing over Jade to him.”

Jade shivered next to Brick and he took her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“Did he say how he knew where she was?” Brick asked.

Adam nodded. “I asked how he figured out she was here and he said that Holloway took a pack female’s computer and discovered she’d bought a bus ticket to Northern Ohio. There’s only our pack here, so it made sense that Jade would have come to another pack and asked for sanctuary.”

“Did he say if Evelyn is okay?” Jade asked.

“He didn’t, I’m sorry.”

Adam rose from behind the desk. “We’re meeting him in about forty-five minutes in the parking lot of a closed drive-in movie theater in Millbourne. I’ll make it clear that Jade is under my protection and that she’s free to make her own choices about who she mates. Jade, you’ll very clearly state that you and Brick are mates and you don’t want to be with Malrick.”

The room was quiet in the moments that followed.

Alli cleared her throat. “Why does it sound like that may not be the end of it?”

“Because there’s no way to know how he’ll handle it,” Adam said. “If he was willing to walk away from this arranged mating, he wouldn’t have come here. I asked him why he sent people into our territory today to spy, and he said he didn’t know what I was talking about, that his people had staked out the major roads around our town but had not entered the territory even once. I believe him, which means the binocular cover you found had to have come from someone Foley sent.”

That was just what the pack needed, two damn problems.

“First things first,” Adam said. “We’ll deal with Malrick, and if he doesn’t want to take no for an answer, then we’ll make surehe does with fang and claw. Alli, Brick is going to trust you to have Jade’s back so he can fight if he needs to.”

“You got it,” she said.

“Good. Then let’s get on the way.”

Brick and Jade sat in the office when everyone else had filed out. She leaned into him, trembling. “What’s going to happen?” she whispered.

“The only thing I know for sure is that I’m going to be bringing you back here, okay?” He pushed her gently away from him so he could look at her. He wanted her to see the truth in his eyes. “Jade, I’m crazy about you. It’s only been a couple of days, but I feel like I’ve known you forever. If this Malrick guy thinks he can come and take you from me, he’s gravely mistaken. I won’t let that happen. Trust me to keep you safe.”

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