Page 11 of The Brooding Alpha's Mate
The omega whispered, “Gun.”
And as they were shutting the door, I shouted, “Dean has a gun,” hoping to buy some more time. And as we drove off, Iwitnessed the police circling him. So maybe we would be lucky there.
By some miracle, everyone in the ambulance was a shifter.
“He needs a healer, not a hospital,” I said.
“And who are you to him?”
I wanted to punch the guy in the face until he added, “Because there are tons of signs of abuse here. And if you tell me that you’re who he came with, we’re going straight to the human hospital, and you can fight me on it.”
Good.
Let him protect the omega.
My omega.
And then I said out loud for the very first time, “He’s mine. Fate sent him to me. I don’t know anything about him, though. I just met him now.”
And that was enough for the crew, and we turned toward the healer’s house.
It was a couple hours later, when he had been checked out by everybody that needed to and we were settled in at the healer’s, that I was finally able to get some alone time with him.
“Hey, I know you don’t really want to talk about this, but I kind of need to know who that guy was. Like everything about him.”
And he told me, in detail, everything that had happened to him.
I couldn’t help the tears building in my eyes.
And the guilt. Guilt for not finding him earlier, preventing this from ever happening to him. Guilt from not killing Dean already. And guilt for not being able to save his friend too.
But guilt wasn’t going to get us anywhere. The only thing that was, was protecting him and keeping him alive until we could figure all this shit out. And there was a whole lot to figure out.
My bear wanted to take him home, feed him a lot, pamper him, and love him. But I’d heard about guys like Dean from the team. It was scary how many of them there were. And if he waited around, he was going to hunt him down.
And to make matters worse, he’d heard my name. We were interviewed by the cops at the same time. It would be nothing for him to find me. It would be nothing for him to find me there, either. But at least here, protections were in place.
According to the scanner in the ambulance, he’d been detained. That bought us some time. I wasn’t sure how much.
“Listen, the healer’s coming in. He needs to look you over again, and I need to go and talk to the guys.”
He froze. “What guys?”
“My cousin and the people he works with. They protect people, and I just need some advice from them. You need to heal. I promise I’ll be back.”
“Can I go with you?” The plea in his voice nearly broke me.
“No. This is the safest place you can be right now. Healers are protected. No one can come on this land. And it doesn’t matter how much they’re willing to break other laws, but this one, they won’t.”
I had to hold onto that belief. It wasn’t out of the goodness of their heart. All shifters knew that the second they broke this law, no healer in the country would see them. And being a shifter, that was a death sentence.
I borrowed the healer’s car and drove to the warehouse, sending out a group text ahead of me saying I needed to meet everybody there, and it was an emergency.
When I reached the conference room,therewere carafes of coffee, and everyone sitting around looking like they’d come straight from bed. Which they probably had.
“I need to talk to you guys. I went back to get my phone—”
“Oh good. Was it still there?” my cousin asked.
