Chapter 6

Cole

My wolf huffs as I slip back into my seat, spotting Sammy’s hands on my mate once more. The fact that he’s her brother doesn’t help me when she won’t let me near her. Won’t look at me. I want to tear the kid’s head off his damn body, so she has no one to turn to except me.

I know he can feel it as well, but not even my size had him backing down earlier tonight when we first stopped. Telling me to give her time to get used to this, to me.

I don’t need much sleep to get me through the day, but my little mate needs it, especially with her still healing. She hasn’t fallen asleep once. Her brother got in a nap earlier, but her breathing hasn’t changed once—well, not to the point where I know she’s asleep.

We pull back out onto the road, Evan assuring me that he’s good to keep driving for several more hours before he might need a break. It lets me keep an eye on my mate, watch her as she watches the sky as we slip down these highways, heading home.

If we drive straight through, only stopping for gas and meals, we’ll make it in just under two days. I don’t want that to push Mora’s healing back any though, so we’ll take it as slow as she needs.

A little after four, Mora’s breathing evens outs and I glance back, seeing the softness of her expression in sleep. There aren’t any worried or annoyed lines on her face. No pain. Just the comfort of sleep and it eases the band constricting around my heart.

“She’s asleep, don’t make any loud noises and try to keep to roads with less traffic, fewer opportunities for honking horns and stuff,” Sammy says barley above a whisper as he tucks the blanket around her more. “She’ll probably sleep until nine or so, it’d be later if we can keep the sun off her face.”

“Wouldn’t it be better for her to get in a nap and then be up for the day like normal?” Evan asks shooting a glance my way. “Keep a normal schedule up for when we get home?”

“This is her normal anymore,” Sammy states making my brow lift. “Since the attack, she can’t sleep at night. She only did in the hospital because they gave her sedatives. Once she was home, she wouldn’t sleep until three or four when she’s too exhausted to stay awake any longer, then will sleep until eleven or so. She then usually takes a nap from about three to five, before she’s up for the rest of the night.”

“Why?” I ask, my eyes caressing Mora’s sweet beauty in the darkness where she can’t see.

“Nightmares which turned into night terrors. She won’t take the sedatives any longer and she’s scared to sleep at night because of them.”

“She won’t need to be any longer. She’ll see that when we get home,” I muse, letting the fury of what those animals did to her flow through my veins, keeping tiredness far from me as the night fades into morning.

I might have killed both Mark and Tyler, which is satisfying, but now, knowing they helped attack my mate, didn’t care how broken she was, as long as she was alive, makes me wish I’d done more to them than I did. They both got off far too easily for what they put my mate through, and their sister certainly did. If I’d known that she was behind the attack, I’d have broken every single bone in her body before ending her life, rather than leaving her to bleed out on the ground.

Evan takes a side highway when the interstate turns heavy with traffic, and when we stop for gas around eight, I hang up a blanket to keep the light from coming in through the back window to wake her. The gas station is quiet, most people seem to be at their jobs now, letting me stand in the door of the backseat, watching Mora sleep without worrying that someone will disturb us.

Sammy is inside, getting breakfast from a diner with Evan while the tank fills, and I reach out, brushing the hair from Mora’s face, letting the reddish blonde beauty slip through my fingers. It’s softer than anything I’ve ever felt, and it makes hunger bloom deep within me to learn all of Mora’s soft spots.

I lean down, brushing a kiss to her forehead, pulling a little cry from her lips, and I hate that I could ever frighten her. Her fright of me yesterday was bad enough, but this…it’s too much for me to stay silent. “Shh, it’s alright my mate, you’re safe now. No one will ever touch you again, harm you again, I promise.”

Her eyelids move rapidly but she doesn’t wake, and I let out a breath of relief when she settles more, and I tuck the blanket around her, keeping her covered in the slightly cooler morning air. It’s bound to turn hot on our drive home, but there was rain here overnight, making it cooler here than her home.

I finish with the gas and move the car over to the diner’s parking lot, staying in it until Sammy heads out with to-go boxes. I won’t wake Mora to make her come inside with us and I won’t leave her alone in the car. No matter what my body wants, Mora’s needs will come first, especially while she finishes healing. The damage my mate survived tells me she’s stronger than anyone ever suspected. Strong because she was meant to be my mate, to be an alpha’s mate.

I let the kid slip into the car with Mora, then head inside, using the bathroom before checking with Evan to see if they ordered Mora anything to eat.

“Sammy didn’t want it getting cold or going bad, so he grabbed some muffins and donuts to keep for her along with some juice for when she does wake. I checked the maps, there’s a few towns between us and the next interstate about every thirty to forty minutes so whenever she does wake up, there should be somewhere that we can stop easily.”

“Good,” I muse, paying for the food Evan ordered for us as the waitress comes out with it. “I don’t want to overdo it, so no matter what she says, I think it’ll be a good thing to stop somewhere for lunch where she can get some fresh air and sun, maybe a park or something where she can have a short walk but nothing strenuous.”

“I’ll keep an eye out on places we come across. I should be good to drive for a while still, maybe take a nap after lunch and then I’ll be good to go for the rest of the night if we’re not stopping anywhere,” he says, and I nod in agreement as we head to the car.

Evan eats his food quickly, and we drop off the trash after getting the plug-in cooler from the back and set it up to hold the drinks Sammy bought for Mora in the backseat next to her before we head out on the road again. My attention continuously strays to Mora, every little noise from her makes me anxious. To know she’s not hurting, not scared. To see if she’s awake or still asleep. The need to be near her deepens every moment I sit here breathing in her deliciously sweet scent.

If her blood called out to me, her scent screams at me. It’s soft and sweet, like a honey cake with vanilla icing—something I haven’t had since I left my father’s clan. I may have been a wolf, but that was for certain my favorite treat, and my mate reminds me of it entirely. I can’t wait to see if her true taste is just as good.

It’s just after ten-thirty before Mora begins to stir, not fully waking until we pull off at another gas station just before eleven. I hate having to let Sammy take her inside instead of me, but I don’t want her angry or upset. It’s clear she’s not feeling the pull between us yet. I’m sure it’s because of the pain she’s still in from her injuries. They may be healing, but it will take time for all of them to stop causing her issues. Especially the further from me she remains.

My nearness will help her heal just as much as my kiss, or my tongue to an open wound might, but for it to work best, I need to physically be touching her. Her keeping me at arms-length will only make the healing process take longer.

We top up the car while Sammy and Mora are inside, then head back out onto the road when Mora insists she doesn’t want anything heavy to eat just yet. She picks at the muffin but thankfully, drinks all of the milk Sammy picked up before going on to finish the orange juice.

Around two, we stop in a town that shows to have three different parks, one with plenty of benches and walking paths. Mora argues when we pull in that she’s still not hungry, testing my control entirely. I drag in a deep breath while she’s in the restroom, and Sammy makes a few suggestions for food that she’s likely to eat even if she says she won’t.

While Evan heads off to get the food, Sammy gets Mora’s agreement to walk over to the lake that’s less than half a mile down the path. Her hair gleams beneath the sunlight and I fight to keep my hands out of it.

The benches near the lake are all hard metal, and I hate the wince that crosses Mora’s face as she nearly collapses into one. It pains my wolf to see her like this, to know that we could help, erase all of her pain if she just let us claim her, but I know that’s not about to happen today—or any day in the near future if the look in her eyes means anything.

“It looks like there’s a store just down the street,” Sammy states pulling my attention over to him finding him on his phone. “Shouldn’t take me more than ten minutes to get there and back.”

“For what?” Mora asks him, her focus solely on him and my wolf huffs about it once more.

“I can grab you a pillow, so the bench isn’t so hard. It’ll likely take Evan thirty to forty minutes to get the food and get back here and that’s too long for you to sit on just the metal there.”

“Why do you have to go get it?” Mora questions and my jaw tenses with pure and utter frustration knowing she’d prefer to stay in her brother’s presence than be in mine.

“Because I know what kind of pillows you like so it’s easier for me to just get them, plus the walk sounds good. You’ll be safer with Cole with you than alone,” he adds, and Mora’s eyes roll a bit, but she doesn’t argue it further. Sammy gives a little jerk with his head, and I move down the path several feet while grabbing my wallet. “I’ve got money to get whatever my sister needs. The only reason I’m leaving her alone with you at all is because I don’t see you trying anything stupid while in a public spot, and as pathetic as you’ve looked all morning, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt that you really aren’t going to do something to hurt her, or pressure her in the least.”

“She’s my mate, of course I’d never to do something to hurt her,” I growl at him, furious he’d ever think it—that anyone might.

“Your reputation leaves a hell of a lot to desire Cole. Everything we’ve ever heard about you is negative, not to mention, you attacked our pack and nearly killed our dad yesterday,” he returns, and I drag in a deep breath to keep my wolf in check.

“He tried to keep my mate from me. You all did.”

“No, we were keeping my sister from being attacked again. You attacked our pack, your man attacked our mom and when Mora woke up from a nap and saw it happening, realized none of us were around, she went out to help her, even though she was still healing from the attack at her graduation. Your man attacked a human mate, then attacked a human girl—was about to kill her or bite her leg clean off by the time me and my brothers got to them. Then more of your pack showed up while we were trying to get our sister inside—our human sister who each and every one of them should have recognized was human and backed the hell off no matter if we were shifters or not. When you showed, all it seemed like was yet another lunatic from your pack was attempting to attack a human girl.

“If you’d stopped being a wolf for two damn seconds and explained to any of us that Mora was your mate rather than trying to throw us off her and then hover over her growling and snarling like a maniac, then she might not be so worried about being your mate now,” he says, and my wolf howls in pain inside my chest at those words. “She might not be fighting the connection tooth and nail because the sight of you almost killing our dad wouldn’t be in her head. The sight of your wolf coming for her for some unknown reason, being so focused on her after your pack member already attacked her, along with several others being there ready to attack wouldn’t be what she’s seeing when she looks at you. You may not have known she was attacked at her graduation, but you knew she was hurt when you arrived. Had to know that she was hurt before yesterday because of the brace on her leg, but you let your wolf take the lead and terrified her more by coming for her moments after you nearly killed our dad.

“The only dad she’s ever known, the only male not related to her by blood that’s ever protected her, kept her safe. It’s different with my brothers and me. She’s our blood, but Dad…he chose to love and accept her as his, to protect and keep her safe. In a place where she was very much an outsider, that meant the world to Mora, and you almost took it from her. So maybe you should think about that while you’re huffing and puffing in irritation that she won’t just accept you. Give her some time and some space to see that you’re not just some heartless brute that thinks he has every right to take what’s his simply because you say she’s your mate. We might believe it because we saw you heal her leg, but Mora’s human. Despite growing up with shifters, there are plenty of things she’s never seen or felt because of that. So, how about you stop thinking about what you want, and start thinking about how this is affecting her, yeah?” Sammy adds, his eyes glowering at me and if he wasn’t Mora’s brother, and if his words weren’t immensely true, I’d teach him some things about respecting alphas.

“One day when you find your mate, you might understand that rational thinking isn’t in the forefront of your mind, but I get what you’re saying,” I add calming him down some. “Believe me when I say, I will never hurt Mora. She’s my mate and to me, that means everything. Nothing will ever get near enough to hurt her again.”

“Good, because if it does, we’ll all be out for your blood,” Sammy warns, before heading across the bridge over the lake and onto the far pathway that leads to several stores.

I make my way back to Mora, sitting on the other end of the bench after she starts to tense when I originally started to sit next to her. The bench isn’t overly large and with my size, there’s only about a foot of space between us, but even it’s too much for me. For my Mora though, it seems it’s not enough and I hope to hell, this ends soon.

“Mora…”

“What?” she snips, turning her face my way finally, her eyes full of mistrust and I hate it.

“I want to say I’m sorry, for what happened to you yesterday,” I add when her brows lift a bit. “I’m sorry you were attacked at your graduation as well, sorry I didn’t go after Thomas before then so his offspring couldn’t harm you.”

“What would you know about that?” Mora asks, her eyes losing a bit of their intense suspicion but not nearly enough.

“Your father told me you were hurt before your graduation when I questioned what happened to have you in that brace. When I was at the packhouse to instruct those remaining on how things were to be done from there on, I spoke with the healers, they told me the extent of the injuries you sustained. I also learnt who was behind the attack and the others that helped, then handed down punishments for the two still alive in that moment. Thomas it appears, warped his children’s minds and somehow had them believing you had a part in what happened to his mate, or else that was merely an excuse that his daughter came up with to try and turn others against you,” I add, watching her eyes widen in shock. “You will never have to worry about either of them again. The girl who was a lookout for Dana is breathing but owes her life to me, and her mate should she find him will know that quite clearly. She will never be able to produce a child like herself and her mate will not be pleased by it. There were three boys beyond Dana and her brothers that participated in the attack. Two were killed in the fight yesterday, the third forfeited his life when he attempted to claim he did nothing wrong, just held you.”

“I…suspected Dana was behind it, but I didn’t have proof to call her out on it.”

My wolf hums listening to her say more than one or two words to us, even if we hate the meaning and pain behind them. “She’s dead and can never harm you again. None of them can, I promise you that, Mora. Not in real life or in your nightmares. You’re safe. Your sleep is safe. You don’t need to fight it any longer. As long as I have breath in my body, you will be protected at all times, at all costs.”

“I doubt that,” she says, mostly under her breath but I don’t argue it, not right this moment. Fighting with her is the last thing I want.

“Your safety matters most to me. No one in my pack will begin to harm you. I know you may not fully believe that seeing what John did to you and your mother. I assure you that my pack knows not to attack humans, whether they’re mates or not. It’s one rule they must abide by most, followed by accepting all shifters into our pack regardless of type. John was a newer member of the pack, and it is on me that he was able to get near you to harm you, try to harm your mother. No one else will begin to attempt it, I swear. As my mate, you will be protected, no matter what. The rest of my pack abides by those rules unless they want to face my wrath, or face being rejected from the pack.”

“You have more than just wolf shifters in your pack?” Mora questions, and I nod, unable to stop the hint of a smile that hits at her genuine question.

“A couple felen that were living deep in the Alaskan territory on their own before we made the mountains our home, and then several families of bearen. Including a cousin on my father’s side,” I add bringing her attention back up to my face in surprise.

“How do you have bearen cousins? If your father’s a wolf wouldn’t his siblings also be?”

“My father was a bearen. Itan of his clan,” I tell her, watching the surprise in her expression grow deeper. “His true mate died without having any children. My mother’s true mate rejected her because she wasn’t a full blood. My father and mother found one another and while they were different types of shiften, they worked well together. When I was four, my mother died of an illness she should have survived. If she wasn’t rejected by her original mate, she would have. She lived long enough to see that I was a wolf like her rather than a bear like my father, but not long enough to see me start to become who I am today because of his clan. They looked down upon me, even though I was larger than most of them even as a teenager. They rejected me and when my father died when I was seventeen, they forced me out of the clan.

“I started my own pack for two reasons. One, so no other shiften ever felt the rejection I did simply for not being who or what others expected. Two, to avenge my mother, and by extension my father. My mother’s death weakened my father more, leading to his death, which in turn led to my full rejection from the clan. So I know what it feels like to not be fully accepted somewhere, Mora, and you will never find that in our pack,” I assure her, but her eyes remain wary, and I know that only time will show her my words are true.

“Why do you attack so many packs? If you just wanted to avenge your mother and father’s deaths, why go after so many others?” Mora asks and I fight to not smile knowing she won’t like me being amused by the question.

“My pack doesn’t initiate attacks without good reason. Being a newer pack, we were targeted many times, but we came out the victors and yes, I might have relished in those victories. It got me closer to my goal to bring new blood into the pack, especially those that had no desire to follow men like the ones I killed rather than be killed by. When a threat was lobbed against us, we retaliated, but never without a direct threat to us coming first. Sans the one we did against Thomas,” I concede making her brows knit together.

“Thomas was your mother’s true mate, wasn’t he?” Mora asks surprising me that she figured it out when most of my pack still don’t know the real reason we traveled across the country to attack them.

“He was. Because of him, I lost the only two people that’d accepted me, loved me. So once I had the strength, the numbers, I went after the bastard that sent his mate away from him, solely because she wasn’t a full blood. I know the heartbreak losing one’s parent can cause, which is what stayed me yesterday when you cried out for your father. As much as I wanted to destroy everyone that supported and backed that bastard, your heartache stopped me short, and now, I’m more thankful that it did,” I admit, stopping my hand before I reach out to touch her, send her back to that place where she won’t even look at me. “Your father told me and the rest of the pack what Thomas did to his mate when she wanted to leave him. Said he was waiting for you to heal more before leaving them and I believe it. They keep you safe and love you, so I’ll accept them coming to stay with my pack. You’re my mate, which means everything I do is for you, even if that involves killing to keep you safe.”

“We’ll see,” she says as Sammy moves across the bridge back towards us, and I let out a silent sigh. Wishing I’d had more time, but for now, perhaps it’s best to wait until we’re home where we can be alone when I convince her to let me mark her as mine.