Chapter 25
Jace
“Have a good night!” I called to my last customer, a regular.
He stumbled out the door. I knew he lived in the small apartment complex down the road and that he’d drive home.
I’d also been careful to serve him no more than he could handle.
I didn’t want to deal with a passed-out dude on the sidewalk.
The cops would bring that shit back to me, for sure.
I grabbed up a full bag of trash and walked it out the back door, slinging it over the top of the dumpster. As I was about to shut the back door, I heard a muffled cry. It was definitely female and in distress.
I stopped and listened, tuning in to my preternatural hearing. The sound came from way back in the alley, nearly behind the building. I crept forward and after a few more seconds, heard more.
The stench of fear hit me hard, though. “Leave me the fuck alone.” The voice was feminine, small, and absolutely terrified. Even if I couldn’t smell it, I heard it loud and clear.
“Did you think you could run away from me forever? I will always find you, bitch. Who do you think you are, taking my daughter away from me? Did you think I’d just let that go?”
“No, but you can’t do this. I have a restraining order against you.” She cried out, and that was all I could take.
I rushed down the alley. I couldn’t stand by and let this guy hurt this poor woman. I burst out and found them around the back of the building, just outside the rear entrance for the small nightclub next door. They must’ve exited from there.
I shoved the guy away and turned to the woman, and as soon as I touched her, a searing pain shot across my arm.
“Shit,” I whispered. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before.
The pain was both intense and manageable.
I looked down at my arm to see faint lines of a tattoo begin to appear. Son of a bitch.
“Get your hands off of her!” the guy yelled. He was clearly drunk and belligerent. As he came at me again, swinging at me wildly, I easily ducked him.
Shit. I hated dealing with cops, but if anybody needed to be arrested, it was this douchebag. I shoved him hard, so he went down on his butt. “Stay there, asshole!”
I kept my phone in my back pocket and pulled it out to call the police. I kept my arm around the shaking woman and finally got a good look at her. She looked familiar. “Here,” I said. “I called the Bluewater PD. Tell them what’s going on.”
She nodded and took the phone I’d held out to her. “Thank you.”
The drunk tried to get up again, but I snarled at him. He stayed on the ground.
The good news was that she didn’t try to protect her apparent abuser. She told the cops everything. “My ex-boyfriend found me. I’ve been hiding from him. I’ve got a restraining order against him, and he just tried to hurt me.”
She rattled off where we were and handed me back my phone.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I nodded absently, looking at her, then my arm.
The cops got there quickly, one of them being my buddy, Ian, who was another dragon in our clan.
I gave my statement, as did the woman, who I learned was Briana Wallace, age thirty, one daughter, a local teacher.
She didn’t know how the asshole found her and was terrified that he’d find her daughter, who was safe at the house of her friend, Skylar.
That explained why she looked so familiar. She always came in with Skye and their tattooed friend. Her other friend, the one with all the piercings, she was more my speed. This woman, Briana, would’ve been the last person I expected to be my fated mate. And a human, too…Come on.
I was raised by a single mother. Dragons didn’t often have broken families, but they did exist, and I came from one.
I knew too easily what this woman was feeling.
It was one of the reasons I’d chosen not to take on a mate.
I didn’t want to end up being like my asshole father.
But it didn’t stop me from wrapping an arm around the shaking woman as she cried and gave her statement.
Ian asked her what she was doing out so late.
“I had a girls’ night out with my friend Kaylee. ”
Kaylee, that was the name of the other friend.
“I was headed to my car after getting some coffee from the diner. I hadn’t drunk anything, but I was really tired, so I wanted a little caffeine for the drive home.
Kaylee went home with her current boyfriend and I found my ex waiting at my car.
I ran from him, which was stupid because he cornered me back here. ”
Ian closed his notebook. “Okay, you don’t have any visible injuries, but you can file a private suit against him for breaking the restraining order. We’ll take him in for a drunk and disorderly for tonight. You can pick up your report tomorrow.”
He gave me a sympathetic look and glanced at my arm. When he saw the tattoo there, his eyes widened, and he turned to Bri again. “Do you have someone you can stay with?”
She nodded. “My best friend has two houses. She’ll let me stay at her spare.”
She meant Skye and Anthony’s beach house; I was sure. She stepped away as Ian left and sucked in a deep breath.
“Thank you so much for stepping in and helping me,” she said. “I don’t know what he would’ve done.” She picked up her purse from the ground. “I’ve gotta go get my daughter and leave. I guess we can’t stay in one place for too long.”
My arm burned hotter. Son of a bitch! Skye and Anthony opened the damn floodgates with dragon and human mating in our clan and now I couldn’t stand the thought of this woman leaving alone.
But she was a human. How was this possible?
I mean, I knew it was possible, but the likelihood of it happening to two of us in one clan was unheard of.
“Are you leaving?” I asked. “Like, leaving town?”
She gave me big eyes that made me want to rip the drunk’s head from his shoulders. “I don’t see what choice I have.”
Motherfucker. I tried so hard to mind my own damn business, but this time I couldn’t. This slip of a woman, this teacher was my fated mate. And I couldn’t let her leave Bluewater.
What in the fuck was I going to do now?