Page 55 of Meeting Her Mate

“Would you rather be standing here bickering with me? For all we know, something might have already happened to him. That would be such a shame, wouldn’t it?”

Even though he had not touched a single hair on my body, I had never felt so violated before.

As I watched his car drive off into downtown, I sent Maliha a text, asking her to hack into Blair Beckett’s phone and every known profile so that I could make sure he didn’t do anything to Will. That was if he hadn’t done something already.

I was thoroughly rattled as I left the coffee shop. My legs were shivering, and my breath felt shallow. I had to go back to the commune immediately. I needed to see if Will was okay.

Guys like Blair didn’t make empty threats just like that.

Chapter 20: Will

There was so much subtext, and so many things left unsaid that when I saw Alexis for the first time back in her place, it made for an awkward encounter where I could feel neither of us could say what we wanted.

It wasn’t like I was deaf or something. I had been hearing whispers around Grimm Abode all morning. People whispering in each other’s ears, asking if they’d seen Alexis come back, wondering not so subtly why she had come back, and pondering ever so whimsically as to what the implications of her return were.

I chose to ignore that. There would have to be a better way to let the pack know that things between me and my as-of-now still rejected mate were improving. Besides, I was their alpha. I did not owe them any explanation. If anything, I should have grilled them harder in the training exercises in the morning.

Once the whispering and the muttering got worse, I decided on enacting the tough regimen. It was eleven in the morning on a hot day when the sun felt extremely generous in emanating its heat. Everybody was sweating from the heat and the exertion, all hundred-something of them standing on the training grounds, looking up at me.

“For the last exercise of the day, suicides!” I said.

“Hey, Will, that’s not the politically correct term for the exercise anymore,” Vincent said from below.

“Fine. I didn’t know. What’s it called now?” I asked, agitated.

“They’re just called lines,” Vincent said.

“Everyone, give me a hundred lines!” I yelled.

Several people groaned from the crowd, but I wasn’t bothered. If they could whisper and gossip, they could surely do a hundred lines.

And then something happened so suddenly that the entire pack looked up in shock.

Alexis appeared from behind.

“Will?”

Even though I knew her to be a woman of a brave demeanor, I could see that her face had lost all color, and her eyes were red. This was the first time I was seeing her like this.

“What happened to you?” I asked, a bit worried. I could feel all the eyes of the hundreds of pack members boring into my skin.

“I was…I was just coming back from my apartment when I met Blair,” Alexis said. Her voice exhibited signs of both petrification and fear. “He said something about doing something to you, and I thought…I thought…”

“Tell me everything,” I said, taking hold of her arm and beckoning her to follow me. I did not want the entire pack listening to what she had to say. We walked over to her home while she recounted her encounter with Blair.

“And at the end, the way he was being all elusive, it made me think that he had already deployed his whole Wolf’s Bane plan. For the rest of my ride home, and until I saw you, I thought he’d killed you,” Alexis said.

“Alexis,” I said, holding her arms. “As you can see, I am fine. And you are too. You are back home.”

Rather than respond verbally to my consoling, Alexis hugged me tightly, her hair cascading down my chest, and her arms wound around my shoulders.

I hugged her back, gently holding her body in my arms while trying to fathom this spontaneous burst of mutual intimacy.

“I’m sorry,” Alexis said when we finally broke off the hug. “He just got into my head, and given everything we’ve been through, for a moment…”

“Hey,” I said, “It’s all right. You have nothing to apologize for. I would have done the same.”

“Well, you’ve already done the same once,” Alexis said, smiling a bit. It made me feel lighter, watching her break into a smile.