Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

Tucker

"Your mate is a fairy," Justice mutters the moment Lake steps into my room.

No one spoke as she left the table. No one said a word until she was securely behind doors.

"Half fairy," I tell him. Her mother was human. I glance around the table until I meet Abel's gaze. "Her mother's mate was Callum Wildthorn."

"You're joking." Abel looks as shocked as I felt when she told me her last name.

"Nope." Slowly, I return my gaze to Justice, then to Corbin's. "Lake doesn't know much about shifters. She barely wants to recognize what mates are. She knows she's in danger and doesn't know how it is. I think Callum and his brothers kept it all from her. It was their way of protecting her."

"Someone want to explain to the rest of the class why you two got that look about this Callum Wildthorn shifter?" Corbin asks, letting Karsyn go. He leans forward and braces his elbows on the table, fingers laced together.

Abel and I share a look. Though he's a crossbreed tiger, he knows of the Wildthorns. Anyone with tiger's blood in them knows the name. Like I'd told Lake, the Wildthorns were pretty much royalty for those of our kind. But unlike Abel, I knew them because of those within my streak.

"It's time." Abel shrugs, knowing that the secret he's kept from everyone is going to be out. The reason behind him being a crossbreed.

"Right." I nod. "You best tell this part."

"Everyone at the table knows I'm a crossbreed. I'm a leopard and I'm a tiger. You all know my mother. She's a leopard. My dad was a tiger." He stops to glance around the table. "He was a Wildthorn tiger. Ran from his streak when he refused to reject my mother. Callum Wildthorn is a cousin. I didn't know them. My dad cut off all contact with them. But when I was fifteen, he'd been killed by a rival of the Wildthorn family."

"No one knows this about Abel because if the wrong person finds out, it could cause trouble," I explain.

"You should've told us," Justice mutters.

"I get why he didn't," Karsyn speaks up, her soft voice breaking through the tension in the room. She seems to have this effect whenever she talks. "Abel was protecting those who took him in as family."

"We're getting off track again," Corbin remarks, sounding annoyed. "I don't give a shit who is who. Don't do it again, that's all I'm gonna say about the matter. What I wanna know right now is about the threat we could be facing. If she doesn't know who, then how the fuck do we find out?"

"Corbin," Karsyn utters softly.

My Prez looks over his shoulder as the rest of us all look at her. "Syn, we gotta know."

"I know," she agrees.

"What are we missing?" Dane demands.

"The Moon Goddess came to me about Tucker needing to find his mate before it's too late."

"We know that part," Dane states, interrupting Karsyn. If it were any other of us, we'd be getting our heads ripped off by Corbin. When it comes to Dane, Karsyn's just as protective of him as he is of her. Granted, neither of them knew each other until he and his dad found her at a little cabin. She wanted to be able to have the big brother experience, and Corbin allows it to an extent.

From the looks of Prez's face, Dane's getting close to that extent with the way he's interrupting his sister.

"I was getting to the rest of it, Dane," Karsyn states, speaking up for herself and not letting her brother get away with his interruption.

Dane's lucky as hell from the glare his sister gives him that she doesn't use her powers against him. Then again, she's an earth witch and refuses to do anything that isn't about healing or helping us protect our own.

Hell, the woman had gotten involved in club business and ended up helping us with the very damn barrier that is gone now.

"Well, come on and get to it." Dane smirks. It seems he's enjoying pushing her.

"Jerk," Karsyn mutters and straightens in her seat, hand on her hand sitting protectively over her rounded stomach. "The part of the message she told me to keep to myself until the time was right is, and I quote, ‘The danger is coming. It will come for her and will not stop without a fight. To save her, her tiger must earn her trust and bring forth the gifts within her. The tiger must prove she will never be alone again. With him, she'll have him. It's the only way. Until then, she'll always be alone. She'll end in the hands of the Drakon King, and all will be lost.' "

That's a hell of a thing to listen to.

"Did you just say the Drakon King?" Abel asks, straightening in his chair, nostrils flaring, eyes flashing gold, and stripes appearing. The tiger in him is making an appearance as it's never done in the years I've known him.

Abel can shift into either form, leopard or tiger. The only downfall for him is he can't half-shift, not without killing one part of him, and if he does that, he'll become a soulless shifter. Or that's what's said about those who are crossbreeds.

"Yes," Karsyn says, nodding and sinking into her seat. Her face going slightly pale, paler than she already is. "The Drakon King is who's after Lake. Not just because she's half Fae, but because her mother was a human that was able to breed with anything, including shifter, Fae, vampire, dragon, the list goes on."

"He thinks because the mother could, she can as well?" Justice asks before I can.

"Exactly. Without her mate," Karsyn pauses, shakes her head, sadness overshadowing her features, "her true mate, mating her, securing it for her, then anyone can take her and make her their mate, stealing her away from you."

"You're telling me Lake is a nymph?"

The question is out of my mouth before I even understand everything she's just said.

"Lake isn't a nymph, but her mother was the daughter of a nymph and human," Karsyn explains.

"Makes sense," Dane mutters. "It would explain the scent that was on her. It was intoxicating."

I shoot him a glare and growl.

"Brother, she's yours, but I'm speaking the truth. The scent isn't just sugary sweet. The longer she sat here, the more intense it became."

"He's right," Justice remarks.

"It's the combination of her having the blood of both Fae and nymph running through her veins," Zavier speaks up for the first time.

"I didn't catch the scent, and I was sitting right across from her," Corbin states, brows drawn together.

"Because you're mated," Karsyn states, reaching out to place a hand on his arm.

Corbin looks back at her, and she gives him a small smile. "Go ahead and finish whatever it is in that head you're singing that ‘lalala' bullshit to shield from me."

Karsyn's smile grows wider before she turns to me, the smile disappearing marginally. "One thing to know, and it's to stay this way until the time is right, Callum Wildthorn and his brothers are still alive. They were taken by the Drakon King. To get them back, you need Lake as much as she needs you."

I look to Abel as I drop in my chair. This news is reeling. And she can't now yet . . . why?

"If she knows ahead of time, she'll give herself willingly. We can't let that happen," Karsyn remarks without me having to ask her to explain.

"I can't hide this from her," I state to the room. "Lake has a right to know this. All of it."

"You just have to hold off until she's mated to you," Karsyn explains.

"I can't do that." The urge to see her, set eyes on her once more, builds inside me more than it always was. I stand and look to Corbin. "You get me when I say this. She's my mate. If I'm ever to gain her trust, to have her accept me, I won't lie to her."

Corbin stares at me for a moment before nodding. "She's your mate. You do what you gotta do. We've got your back."

Nodding, I leave them all at the table, ignoring the conversation they continue having, and head to my room.

At the door, I take a breath and prepare myself for setting eyes on her again. It might have only been twenty minutes, thirty tops, since I saw her last, but it feels longer.

My tiger doesn't like what we've found out. The very fact she could easily be stolen away from us, enrages the beast.

Turning the knob, I shove the door open, step inside, and come to a halt at the sight I'm seeing.

Unbelievable.