Page 70 of The Return
“Good to hear from you, Alpha. How’s Corey?”
“He’s okay. I assume you know what happened?”
“Of course. And how is Kinsey?”
“The doctor says he’ll be all right.”
“I’m glad to hear that. We’re sure he and Matt will be very happy together.”
She knew about the wedding? “How’d you know?” I asked.
“Very few things happen that we don’t know about,” she replied. “Plus, as soon as we heard about the coffee shop, we sent a team to back you up. They’re in the woods around the pack house. I can promise you that no one will be getting close to you. Also, we have a crew studying the property and doing designs to present to you in order to rebuild it. Jonas was right. Your shop is the hub of activity for your pack. We’d like to ask you about expanding on that, perhaps make it part of the pack house at some point.”
I lifted my brows at Jonas, and he shook his head. “How sure are you that these guys you’ve got here are okay? I want to be certain Corey is protected.”
“Commander Naughton has been in charge of our guardsman since before you were born.” Her voice was even, as if she wasn’t offended in the least we were questioning her. “He’s proven himself time and again. Thirty years ago, he rescued two people trapped in a car after an accident. He was dragging them away from their vehicle, when another struck him. He lost an arm, but his first question was whether he got the people out safely, which he had. What more do you need to know?”
“What about the men under him?”
“All handpicked by him. They’re his elites.”
Jonas tilted his head and shrugged. I nodded. It would do no good to get paranoid.
“Corey?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I swear to you, we will keep you safe.”
“So you agree with Jonas that someone is after me?”
“We’ve discussed it, and yes, we feel this attack against you is personal.” She hesitated for a moment. “We’d like to ask you to think about moving Corey to a secure location.”
“No.”
“Jonas, be reasonable. He needs to be protected.”
“He needs to be here for his pack. There’s turmoil now because people are hearing that someone attacked us. We need to calm the people, let them know we’re taking the threat seriously.”
“Why do you need Corey for that?”
“Uh, because they’re my pack too,” I insisted. “I am the Alpha Mate here, and I won’t be run off like a whipped puppy. No offense.”
“We can’t allow this,” Delray said. “Corey is the first and only human true mate. He’s precious and means so much to every pack. When it was announced, the excitement among the wolves grew, because those seeking their true mates realized that it wasn’t only a small pool of canus shifters, but that the field was open more than anyone knew.”
I had never really thought about mates beyond me and Jonas. I also never considered being some kind of symbol to people. My people. Even if I wasn’t a shifter, this was my family. They’d taken a scared boy who had to leave behind everything he knew and move to Harken’s Corners when his life was uprooted, and they made it all okay.
“Where is this secure location?” I asked, unable to contain the sigh that slid from me.
“No one beyond the Council would know. Not even your mate would be told.”
Jonas bristled. “What? Hold on one goddamn minute—”
“It isn’t that we don’t trust you, Jonas,” Delray rushed out. “Far from it. You are one of the Alphas we hold as our future. Someone versed in things like….” She blew out a breath. “Like how to make calls on the computer. You’re a child of the twenty-first century. While many of the older Alphas are rigid and inflexible, you’re willing to learn, to adapt, and to grow. Your mate is a huge part of that, and we can’t afford to lose him. Corey, I know this is selfish, and I’m okay with how that sounds. You were right. For our packs to prosper, we all need to change with the times. I signed up for computer courses and am slowly learning that technology isn’t to be feared.”
“That’s good, I guess.”
She chuckled. “It is. I realize I snapped when we first met, but it was more because I was being called out on the carpet. The problem? It was rightly so. The reason we can’t tell Jonas is that in order to maximize security, no one beyond the Council and Corey would know. He would be locked in his room. Not even the bodyguards would be aware of who he was.”
