Chapter Three
Blake
I thought we lost her when Gray pulled that stupid fucking stunt and marked her.
“All because you couldn’t wait,” I groused. Thick shadows roiled beneath my skin, and my beast agreed, ready to tear free of my chest and rip into him.
It had been years since Gray and I fought, really fought. He was stronger than me, and faster too, if only by the slightest margin. But in his distracted state, I could take him.
We were both distracted with her . She would be the thing that ruined us.
“Has the bleeding stopped?” I paced at the foot of the bed, unwilling to settle beside Lottie for fear of tearing her newly healed wound open.
Gray marked her, so it was also his right to heal her. Panthers usually traveled and mated alone but we were a special package deal. We had never expected to find our one , either of us, yet here she was.
“It’s stopped.” Gray slid a hand behind Lottie’s head where I placed a towel so she wasn’t lying in the pool of blood that nearly ended her life. “She’s all right.”
“You don’t know that until she’s awake.” I was as close to ripping out the hair I had left as I’d ever come. “How could you be so stupid? Careless?” I shouted the words, uncaring if our neighbors heard us.
Hell, if— when —she got better, they’d all hear worse things than our fighting.
“I didn't hit an artery if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said tersely. “Whatever was in her system acted like an anticoagulant. Blood thinner.” He glanced up at me. “Though that’s not the correct term, but it will do for these purposes.”
I ignored the rest of his explanation. I was out for blood and he was who I needed. “She said she hadn’t taken anything.”
“Then like with you, she was ... assisted.”
“No one gave me anything,” I objected before the penny dropped. “Wait. You think someone tried to date-rape me?”
“Essentially.” Gray stopped fussing long enough to look up at me. “Or someone who wants shifters to come into the open in a very, very bad way. What were you doing when I pulled you off that stripper again?”
I stared at him. “I don’t remember. Anything. Where ... fuck !” I shouted at the ceiling. The neighbors would hate us after this. We’d be lucky not to receive an eviction notice. Again.
Gray nodded as though he expected the outcome.
“It was the same for her. Did you see Lottie struggle to find her own name? Hers was a massive dose, or maybe on her being a human, it hit harder. I don’t know.
She has a mark, here.” He pushed her hair aside to show a small reddish dot on the back of her neck where her hair would have concealed it and otherwise grit and dirt.
“The hell?” I reached out and pulled back, scared I’d damage her more.
Gray nodded. “That she just happened to be our mate could have turned into something ugly. What if we were shifters without a code? There are plenty of those around. She was naked, outside a nightclub, had no sense of herself...” He shrugged, though the unease that swept through me at his explanation lingered in his eyes.
I knew he hated she’d been in that situation and we hadn't been there to help her, even though we hadn’t known her then. That he hadn’t been there. I knew, because I felt exactly the same way.
“She was bait,” I whispered, repeating Gray’s words from the alley that hadn’t made sense then but clicked over now. My throat clogged with bile. I forced the stomach acid back to it space as I looked down at her. Hell be damned .
I climbed onto the bed on her other side, my jeans brushing her legs as I settled beside her, running my fingers along the mark Gray left on her.
Purple edged the bruise so deep it was almost black in spots.
She’d bear his mark forever, a shadow roiling beneath her skin.
A part of his beast slept inside her that would respond to him in a way no one else ever would.
She’d understand him like no one else ever could. Including me.
My heart ached. “I want that,” I whispered, tears pricking my eyes. I blinked them away as he lifted her still form in his arms and passed her to me. I took her with a reverence I never knew I possessed.
“She’s ours, Blake. Mark her. Feel her soul melding with yours.” He rubbed his own neck and I knew the damage he did to her revisited on him ten times over, only the mark she left on him would remain invisible.
“No,” I snapped, cradling her close. “I’ll mark her when she asks me, and not a moment before.”
Gray met my eyes. “And if she never asks?”
Panic gripped my stomach, and I bent over like I’d been stabbed, still clutching her to my chest. “Then I’ll live without it,” I answered him, the lie bitter on the back of my tongue like acid still resided there.
Gray offered me a smile I hated.
“No,” he said softly. “You won’t.”
****
I made our girl coffee and hoped she preferred that over tea, or else I needed to go shopping in a hurry.
Her story ripped me up from the inside out.
The dick who threw her out—who she left—deserved death.
Flaying. I made up fresh tortures as I collected food for her on a tray.
I had no idea what else she liked so I made her a bit of everything.
Tiny sandwiches with the crusts cut off, a bowl of fruit salad, nuts rubbed in curry powder, even miniature quiches I cooked myself in the oven I knew Gray had never used.
He watched me potter with the final results of my labors from his place standing sentinel at the end of the bed like he had for the past hour, while she began to stir, drinking his whiskey and saying nothing.
Guilt hit him hard. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but he fucked up anyway.
Pride sucked especially when he put himself on the tallest pedestal in the room.
Me? I was used to fucking up. I’d been doing it all my life. Figured I still had a fair few rounds to go, too. But that didn’t mean I would stop trying to get it right in between times. Like now, with Lottie.
I slid the bamboo tray over her lap as she stirred on the pillow pyramid I made for her, trying to elevate her so she wouldn't accidentally open the wound and bleed out on us when we weren’t looking. Never had I realized how fucking fragile humans were until one became my mate.
I didn’t know the first thing about humans except that they ate a lot of crap, stayed inside their houses instead of enjoying the wilds, and collected shit they didn’t need.
Shifters tended to be a more outdoorsy bunch on the whole.
Our lifestyle ranged toward the more minimalistic end of the extreme.
How Lottie would fit into that, I wasn’t sure.
She’d been on the streets for a bit. That much was clear.
Her body sank into the puffy bed that wasn’t ours to start with like someone wiped all the stress from the tight lines of her too-thin body.
Every muscle and tendon in me strained at the thought that my mate wasn’t looked after.
I needed to care for her, make sure she was all right.
But also ... I couldn’t let her go. Even if she begged with that pretty mouth. Not just yet.
From the look in Gray’s eyes that matched his name and his mood to perfection, he understood that need just fine.
Still, he pushed back onto his haunches kneeling beside the bed, though his eyes never left her.
His fingertips either. Those trailed along her slim form where I tucked her possessively into my arms and glared at him.
The first for marking her without her permission, the latter for leaving her.
“I need to speak to them. Explain this,” he said softly. Even his beast, usually so close to the surface, sank back deep inside him, quiet with her around.
She's ours.
I know .
I held his gaze as we communicated with glances alone. It had been the same with us since our fathers left us alone on a camping trip when we were kids and never came back. And when we went home...
Shaking myself out of the memory, I offered Gray a sharp nod.
“I’ve got her. Don’t be long.” Or I might steal her away.
I didn’t say that last, didn’t dare voice the desire that lay so deep within me and yet so close to the surface.
I knew we shared her, that she called to both of us.
Truth be told, she’d be safer between both of us than she ever would be with either of us alone. Our history proved that.
“I’ll be back soon. Don’t go anywhere.” Gray’s gaze lingered on her when his touch dropped away. “We need answers.”
“So will she.”
His mouth tightened, but he didn’t answer me as he shifted, the force of the change throwing his face into a monstrous twist I could have interpreted as aggression had I been anyone else but his best friend, and the shifter who shared his mate. His lover.
Had I been anyone else.
Damn good thing I wasn’t. I didn’t watch Gray leave, already lost in stroking Lottie’s soft hair back from her face over the slope of her marred skin.
Even though it wasn’t my mark and my saliva would do little to ease the ache, I licked her wound anyway, enjoying the way her breathing settled and how she moaned a little in her sleep.
Hell, with only the two of us in the room, I could pretend it was my name she whispered as I breathed in her scent and wished it was my mark she wore. Because I sure as fuck wouldn’t place mine on her until she begged me.
And she will beg.