Page 34 of His Impossible Elf Mate
“Sounds good,” I said aloud. “Where’s Roan?”
“I heard him on the phone with Hiroshi. Kade tried calling him first but texted me when he couldn’t get him.”
“Is there—?”
“Nothing’s wrong with the babies,” Dakota assured me. “Roan was just listening to Hiroshi tell him some work stuff. Probably nothing interesting, but they talk all the time.”
“Gag,” Chase joked. “I’m happy for Roan, you know. After all the shit he went through.”
“Some of the pack are still wary of him,” Dakota said, shaking his head sadly. “That kid literally risked his life for the pack and they treat him like a pariah.”
Axel!“Axel!” Dalton cried, racing for the door.
“Woah! Where’s the fire?” I halted the beta, my assistant, by grasping him by his narrow shoulders. The raccoon shifter was shorter than me, with medium brown hair and hazel eyes.
“You’re needed since Blake isn’t back yet! There’s a meeting at the science center!”
He shook under my hold. I still hadn’t let go, understanding without needing to be told that Dalton was at risk of coming apart under my hands. He was terrified, yet also hopeful.
Then he said the words that would change all of our futures.
“Hiroshi has figured out why we had the beta sickness.”
They appeared to be waiting for me to start. I ducked into the room, giving a nod to Hiroshi to start the presentation.
I stayed standing, taking note of all who were in the room and the council members on a video screen.
The original elves, Hakeem, Teagan, Ívarr and Teárlach were all sitting around a large table with Aldrin and James.
Hiroshi looked shaken. He was nervous as he cued up the documents he wanted to show us. His hands shook and his voice wavered.
“Someone had already found the gene. They just hadn’t been able to compare it with other samples, or discarded it as unimportant.” Hiroshi put something onto the whiteboard behind him. It meant nothing to me, but I tried to make sense of it all so I could attempt to explain it to my brother later. Blake was hating missing this, but the demons and the investment they were making was too important.
Not that the beta sickness wasn’t important, but what Hiroshi had to say could keep for an hour or two while Toth signed some contracts. I just knew Blake was feeling sick at missing out.
I tried to pay attention as there was a back and forth over who had left the note Hiroshi had found. A tingleof awareness flitted over my skin. I didn’t think there had been a note. The Luna had given Hiroshi a nudge. She was sick of waiting for us to find it, or maybe he was finding it just as he should.
Hiroshi shrugged it off, getting back to the matter at hand. “As you can see, the alpha and omega do not have this gene. It gets interesting when I do this.” He went into detail, comparing the two sets of genes the betas who had been sick for a month had. Then added he thought the mating bite was the point of activation but admitted he couldn’t be sure of it and it would need more testing.
Eventually, I had to take a seat. There was just so much for me to take in. No one had acknowledged it, but I was one of the betas they were discussing. Chase had only been sick for two weeks, so it was likely he had a malformed gene. I had a fully formed gene. I didn’t know which designation I had, just which one I hoped for.
They went around in circles about keeping the information quiet for a little longer. The implications this would have for shifter kind. The elves wondered why they had been drawn here to help us discover this.
There was so much we didn’t know. Was it only an alpha bite that worked? Could betas bite each other? Was there another way to trigger the change?
Then we had to consider if all the betas would want to change. It was a lot to think about. Completely life changing. Not just for them, for their packs, since thiswas a shifter wide problem, or blessing, depending on how you looked at it.
Either way, we were potentially going to have a new batch of omegas and alphas. People who would have to adjust to the influx of shifter hormones that would dictate their actions until they could get a handle on them.
Babies. We could have a lot of babies in the near future.
Raging alphas. Would more of them be like Asher? Jealous and irrational?
All of this had to be done so carefully. We couldn’t just drop the bomb on them and let them figure it out. They had to be guided through this.
Blake would want to tell them soon. Prepare them mentally so no more accidental changes happened, if that was possible. What had happened to Tate and Asher could have been a fluke.
I knew, if I had the gene I wanted, then I would want to go through with changing. The goddess had given me this gift, I had to take it. I believed most would want to do the same, regardless of the consequences.
