Chapter 38 Elijah
ELIJAH
The jaguar hacked off the abomination’s head. We wished we could torture the thing for hours. Kill it twenty more times for hurting our mate.
The jaguar ran back to her. We uncoiled and followed.
The wolf held the tiger’s head in his lap as he stroked her pretty fur. “Killer, you did so well. We’re going to stay right here with you while you heal up enough to shift back, and then we can take you to the infirmary.”
Our mate’s belly expanded and contracted in labored breaths.
The bear knelt at our mate’s side. His face was terrible as he rubbed soft hands over the tiger’s ribs and belly. “She’s bleeding everywhere, and her hind leg is broken. Fuck, fuck. Why would she not tell us what she was? We wouldn’t have left her!”
The jaguar fell to his knees at our mate’s back.
He ran a soft, reverent hand through her fur.
“Look at her,” he said in a low voice. “She’s not white, but she’s close enough.
There are more than a handful of shifters who would see her and think she’s the betrayer reborn.
A walking curse.” He looked at the wolf.
“Can you imagine what Dad would do if he knew a powerful female Prime not-quite-white tiger was running around the college?”
“I don’t want to imagine it,” the wolf replied, a growl ripping from his chest. “She told me her mother was murdered. What if she was the same kind of animal? This is why she was hiding her beast. This is why she wants to be a Guardian. She’ll be one of the best fighters they have, and she’d be protected. Just like we always wanted for Elijah.”
Hearing the name of our human half jolted us out of our stupor. We’d been admiring our beautiful mate.
With an angry hiss, we nudged them all out of the way and curled protectively around our tiger.
The jaguar fell on his ass and threw his hands helplessly in the air. “Well, that’s that mystery solved. She wasn’t making Elijah’s beast volatile. He’s not a danger to her, nor is she to him, like we thought. The basilisk just wanted to be with his mate.”
Yes. Our mate. So pretty. So perfect.
The jaguar slapped the ground in anger. “How could we have gotten everything so fucking wrong?”
The bear got to his feet and began to pace. “Our Fated. Moon-blessed. Handpicked for us by the deity. Her. The girl we all wanted but thought we couldn’t have. The hottest, most lethal female we’ve ever met. We are the luckiest bastards.” He let out a humorless laugh. “But we are so fucked.”
The wolf sat next to his brother, misery on his face as he gazed at our tiger. “We made the best decision we could with the facts we had. She has to understand that.”
We nuzzled our mate under her chin, sniffing her fur, tasting her essence. She was jasmine and lavender and tangy copper blood.
“I doubt it,” the bear said, his voice grim. “She’s going to punch each one of us in the dick and tell us to go fuck ourselves.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the wolf snarled. “She’s our Fated. She’s ours, and we’re hers. End of discussion. We’ll figure it all out later. Right now, we just need her to heal.”
We tuned them all out after that. Our mate’s breathing had grown steady, and she was sleeping peacefully. If other monsters came for us—for her—we’d put them down, and then we’d curl around her again, where we belonged.
No one would ever take her from us.
Not unless they wanted to die with our fangs in their throat while we crushed their bones in our embrace.