Chapter 63

Chapter 63

Imogen

After having a marathon sex session with my fated mates, the next morning should've been lovely. Sore, but in that wonderful, well used way. Instead, I was awoken by the frantic buzz of someone's phone.

Asher's phone.

"Yes." His tone was clipped as he answered the call. "You have him? He did?" A long pause. "And you didn't kill him? No, you have my gratitude." I stared at his back, wondering what the fuck kind of mate I had if he could talk about murder so coolly. "Don't bring him here. He can't get within ten feet of this place. I'll meet you at the forest out near Mount Crawford. Not many campers out there at this time of year. Let me know when you're about an hour away." I rose up and off the bed, unable to feign sleeping while he had this conversation. Those blue eyes rolled around to meet mine. "Thanks again."

"What was?—?"

"Phil's been found," he told me in a quiet voice, but even that was enough to wake the others. Kyle groaned and then raked his hand across his face, but Lucas' eyes flicked open instantly.

"He's been found?" Luc rolled into a seated position, slapping around on the bedside table for his glasses before staring at the two of us.

"Who's been found?" Kyle looked almost comical, blinking owlishly and looking around the room for clues. He found them in our sombre mood. I was instantly dragged closer to him, hugged to his chest like a teddy bear.

Except he was the bear.

And so was Asher. I remembered his polar bear perfectly, those ice-blue eyes marking him as a shifter rather than as a natural bear, but I felt like I saw a shadow of that massive beast lurking behind him then. The same intense gaze that would've been used as he tracked seals across an ice floe was directed at us now.

"Phil Jackson," he replied finally. "He's been found, so we need to go into lockdown."

He punched a number into his phone and put through a call.

"Urse? Meet me in the conference room. We need to go into lockdown. Yeah, he's been found. See you there in five."

Asher jerked on his clothes like they personally offended him, which was the only outward sign of what he was feeling. I rose up off the bed, going to place a hand on his arm. He stilled, staring at me midway through zipping up his jeans, then shook his head.

"Stay here… please." The last bit was dragged out of him it felt. Asher wanted to bark orders, command each one of us to do what he wanted, I felt that in my bones, but he held that impulse back for us. "Stay with the rest of our sleuth. Stay safe."

But what about him?

I pulled someone's t-shirt over my head and then my yoga pants, following him out the door and down the hall, my legs forced to move fast to keep up.

"Asher? Asher!"

"So he's been sighted?" Ursula bit every word off, looking up when I came floundering in through the door after Asher, Lucas and Kyle joining us seconds later. "You want a lockdown protocol put in place."

"He can't find this place." Asher's control was shredding as he paced back and forth. "And if he does, he can't get in. Cancel the food and laundry orders for today. Tell all the staff they are either staying home or staying here for the duration. I should…" One glance my way, then his lips thinned. "I should be able to remove the problem quickly and efficiently."

"No, Asher…"

This was a dream. No, a nightmare, and I was stumbling towards him but not getting any closer.

"I'll take fur, that way it'll look like an animal attack and then… And then…"

"And then what?" I snapped, stepping forward, because he thought I didn't see it. If eyes were the windows to the soul, the fierceness of his radiated from his, but that wasn't all. There was a pain there, an unending scream of one that he was always trying to keep down but couldn't right now. "Then what?" I asked again, much more softly.

He didn't want to tell me, I could see that, but I moved closer anyway. My hand went to his cheek and his eyes closed for just a second, turning to press a kiss to my palm.

"Then I make sure you're safe." His eyes flicked back open and stared into mine. "That's what has to happen."

"And what about you?"

I didn't really know what I was doing, the psychic link we'd established just… there. Maybe I should've spent longer with the ladies of the bear community getting schooled on this, but I dove in–to his mind, his heart.

The first thing I saw was a beautiful green pine forest, a dense hush punctuated only by this. His ponderous steps and Phil's much more frantic ones. I admit seeing the prick stumbling, then doing his best to run away from us was a gratifying sight. To be the one that inspired fear, not the one running scared was a pleasure I'd never experienced.

But such things came at a price.

The view of the forest fractured, there and gone again, replaced by a thin scream. Ursula's I realised. I don't know how I knew, but I did. There was darkness and blood, so much blood.

And pain.

The forest, blood, the forest, blood, my view of both scenes flickered back and forth until I was shoved out of Asher's mind, but not before I saw this. A young boy, no, a young man, with blood on his hands, an anguished expression on his face. That faded as I stood before the man he had become.

"I have to, Imogen." Asher's cool fractured then. "This must happen. A man with needs like his, focussed on you, he can't be allowed to exist."

"Ash—"

Ursula tried to speak, but he cut her off with a jerk of his hand.

"You… have to be safe." His hands shook as they rose slowly, letting me pull away if I wanted to, but instead I stepped into his grip. Asher's thumbs brushed against my cheeks. "You have to be. Imogen, you're my heart. You must be because my chest aches every time I'm around you, and sometimes I'm not sure if my heart is gonna take another beat, not until you look at me." His touch was so gentle, the same hands that had dripped with blood before. "I love you, my mate, and I would do literally anything to keep you safe."

"At what cost." I mumbled that into his palm, then met his eyes. "At what cost, Asher?"

"I will pay any price."

My hands gripped his wrists, not letting him pull free.

"Maybe I don't want that. Maybe that's not what I need. Maybe loving me is keeping you safe because that's what I want." I looked past him to where Ursula stood, because she was the only one who had any kind of prior knowledge about this stuff. She nodded slowly. "Maybe it's not me or you, but us."

He sucked in a breath, ready to argue, but that was when Ursula broke in.

"You know she's right." She stepped forward, arms firmly crossed. "What you did… You freed me, but then you went to the bears and got therapy and shit and I went to the group home."

"You know that's not what I wanted," Asher growled, turning to face her. "I asked Gail, begged her, to find you."

"And she tried, but people weren't keen on placing us together after that." Ursula tried to smile to settle him. "Look, if Phil broke in here and was waving a gun around, then it's him against us, and that's one thing." The air in the room seemed to thicken by the second, all three bear shifters growling in response to that. "But going out to a forest to execute someone? That's a whole other thing. Ash." She moved closer to him, bending down to meet his downcast gaze. "That's not you."

"If you think that, you don't know me as well as you think you do."

Her snort helped dissipate the tension in the room.

"Oh, I know you plenty. Enough to know that you won't be satisfied if anyone else takes control of lockdown." His head twitched, ready to deny what she was saying, but as it sank in, he stopped. "Especially as we can't alert the clients to what's happening."

It wasn't his sister but me that he stared at, Asher's arm going around my waist and hauling me closer. The feel of him, his scent, and the tightness of his grip helped shove the slivers of memory I'd seen away, replacing the past with the present. My arms went around him, holding tight, tighter than I needed to.

"Let's just keep everyone safe here. Please, Asher."

I felt his sigh when it came, vibrating all the way through me before I dared to look up.

"Anything for you." His hand brushed my hair out of my face. "Even this, my mate. But, now I need to make a call to the foxes."