Page 15 of Captive Mate
He sounded completely in control, which surprised me more than a little. I’d expected a meltdown when Ian delivered his news, but Matthew had paused, closed his eyes for a moment, and then climbed off me and started rapping out orders: to send six of the pack’s best fighters to the territory border near the road, to alert the council, and to have Nate ready to provide magical support. Ian didn’t argue, which surprised me even more; he’d been so adamant about Matthew being out of the driver’s seat.
That left me to awkwardly crawl off the bed after him, until Matthew grabbed me by the arm and hauled me downstairs, clamping an arm around my waist and yanking me onto his lap as I tried to sit next to him at the table.
Ian frowned and ran his hands through his hair. “He said he’s the shaman’s mate. That he’d run away, and he wanted him back, and he was coming to get him. And then he hung up on me.”
“I have a name,” I put in.
“No one gives a shit,” Ian snapped back.
“Yeah, and it’s probably fake anyway.” That was Nate, who didn’t even bother looking up from his phone to speak. He was tapping away at something that I hoped to hell was a plan to turn Parker into a frog, a pillar of salt, or possibly a giant shrieking-in-agony ball of flame.
Parker hadn’t been gentle when he mated me. His borrowed shaman was too powerful for me to fight, and sticking around to try to kill them both before I got away was too risky. If Nate wanted to incinerate him, I was more than game, even if I didn’t get to do it myself.
“Actually, we’ve already done the fake name. He’s Arik.” I risked a glance at Matthew’s face. It was set in hard, emotionless lines and didn’t tell me a fucking thing.
“Right,” Ian scoffed. “I’m sure that name’s real. Matt, what the fuck are we going to do? Holding someone else’s mate’s against every pack law there is. We’ll have to hand him over, and the second we do you’re fucked.”
“We’re not handing him over,” Matthew said with absolute finality.
“That’s not your call,” the female councilor said. Her voice was lighter than I’d expected, but it held authority. I had to swivel my head awkwardly to look at her. “You’ve been temporarily removed as pack leader. Your reinstatement is conditional on your getting back to normal, Matthew. And that won’t happen as long as this…individual is here.”
“We’ve been over this,” Nate said, looking up from his phone. He sounded exhausted, like they’d maybe been over it ten or twenty times. He held up a hand, ticking off points on his fingers as he went on. “Matthew can’t be separated from him or he gets sick and dies. If ‘Arik’ dies, so does Matthew. We can’t get the spell off without the caster’s assistance, so the manacles would need to come off if we want to break the spell. And we can’t trust Arik to take off the spell once the manacles come off, so that’s out too.”
“Which means we’re not handing him over,” Ian put in, sounding so passive-aggressively helpful that I nearly snickered despite everything.
Ian slipped his arm around Nate’s shoulders, a clear sign that his mate spoke for him, too, and the council could stuff it. Gods, what would it be like to have someone have my back the way Ian had Nate’s? Of course, Matthew had set me on his lap and wasn’t letting go, and wasn’t planning to give me to Parker, either. That was worth something.
“Believe me,” Matthew growled, “if I had the choice, I’d throw him out the door stark naked and into his mate’s waiting, probably violent arms this second, and let them make each other’s lives miserable.” Or not. “But that’s not possible. Jennifer, Paul, we need options. Oh, and by the way,” he added, “this asshole isn’t Arik’s mate. He’s lying about that.” Matthew’s arm tightened painfully around my ribs. “So I think it’s time for Arik to tell us why he’s lying, and why he’s here.”
Nate snorted. “Arik, or this alpha? Because I’d love to know why either of them is here and lying.”
“Right now, just why the alpha’s here and what his angle is,” Matthew said.
He’d been drumming the fingers of his free hand on the arm of the chair, but he lifted his hand and took my chin in a firm grip, wrenching my head around so that I had no choice but to look him in the eyes.
I kept my face neutral by force of will, but he was holding me tightly enough to really hurt. I’d have bruises if he didn’t let go soon. There wasn’t a trace of mercy in his expression; he meant it, and given the short timeline before Parker showed up — well, I didn’t have much leeway.
And any goodwill I might’ve bought by telling him about Parker sooner wasn’t on the table anymore.
“Parker tried to mate me,” I said. “He bit me. But shamans have some control over whether a mating bite takes. And needless to say, I fought it off.” Matthew’s eyes glowed, and he was holding me so hard I was fighting not to squirm. “I didn’t want him to, and I hadn’t done anything to him or his pack,” I went on quickly, hoping to pacify him and get him on my side, at least a little bit. Gods, if he ended up siding with Parker I’d be so fucked. “He forced me because he wanted a shaman under his control.”
“How did he force you?” Nate asked. I couldn’t turn my head, but I peered at him out of the corner of my eye. His face was twisted with something like…concern? Sympathy? Whatever it was, it had the corners of his lips turned down and his eyes all soft. What the ever-loving fuck? “I mean, did he have you in chains like these? Or — how?”
“He borrowed a powerful shaman from an allied pack,” I said, my throat tight. “The fucker took me unawares and bound me with magic. And he watched while Parker mated me.”
He’d been jerking off while he watched, too, but that detail was too humiliating to share. Telling them the barest facts of it was bad enough. I didn’t have much shame left, but that had been…a low point.
Matthew’s fingers dug into my jaw, and I yelped in pain as his claws sprouted out, piercing me for a second before he whipped his hand away. I lurched back, rubbing at my chin. Matthew was growling low in his throat, and his eyes had gone completely golden-orange. His canines were extended just past his upper lip.
“We are not handing him over,” Matthew said, and his voice vibrated with an alpha pack leader’s command. “We’re going to meet him at the border and tell him he has no claim. If he insists, we’re going to demand an independent shaman to verify the mating bond, and stall for time until Arik can fill us in on his pack’s strengths, weaknesses, and alliances. Anything to add?”
In spite of the stinging pain in my jaw, and the discomfort of how he was holding me hard enough to make my ribs creak, and the general awfulness of my situation, my cock went half-hard in seconds. I hated alphas. They always walked all over everyone, taking what they wanted and pissing on everything, sometimes literally.
But I’d never wanted to kiss someone so much in my life, alpha or not. Matthew was defending me. Defending.Me. And maybe it was self-serving, but…he wasdefending me. It had to be a trick. It had to be fake, somehow. He’d just said he’d throw me out naked and let Parker take me if he could.
But he wasn’t, and I felt like I’d been rappelling down a mountain and someone had cut my ropes. He was just assuming I’d tell them what they needed to know, acting like we were in this together. I didn’t have a blueprint for this.
The other councilor, Paul, cleared his throat and spoke for the first time, startling me out of my slack-jawed confusion. “We need a witness. It can’t be his word against ours. And any aggression must be on his side, or we’re fucked if a pack mediator gets involved.”
