Chapter 34
I roused to a familiar purr and found Peanut Butter on the pillow beside my head, half wrapped around my face, and a solid body behind me with an arm wrapped around my waist. I tensed, heart racing as I tried to remember how I’d gotten there.
The body behind me moved and I jolted up out of bed, half falling off the side and reaching for my nightstand where I had pepper spray; but Angel sat up, hands in the air, gaze on me, waiting. The night came back in a rush. Cassidy, the beating, and Angel.
Peanut Butter chirped at me. He slunk down off my pillow and stretched before arching his back to meet my pets. I sucked in air, surprised that I didn’t hurt. “Uh… I don’t hurt?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I pushed a little too much healing into you,” Angel said. “I was a little freaked out by the scent of internal bleeding.”
I glanced at the clock; it was after two in the morning. Fuck. What about Ivan? Did someone call Grandpa to let him know I was okay? Was I okay? Bound to a shifter. Mates. That was a lot, and I didn’t know if I understood it.
“You’ll want to take it easy for the next few days. Let your wrist and ribs finish healing,” Angel said.
“I…” had a thousand questions but no idea where to start. What happened if our variant blood mixed? Was I going to become a shifter too? I glanced at my armband. Same color. Help with healing was a perk. A hot mate, another perk.
I headed toward the living room, found Ivan asleep on the couch and the remains of food in the fridge—the dinner Angel had intended to bring. The stuff from the small den had been packed up into open plastic bins, desk moved out to make space for Ivan. I needed to order him a bed.
“Ivan packed that up,” Angel whispered. “Sylas helped him move the desk out. I think it kept his mind off worry about you, as he came in to check on you every half an hour until he finally fell asleep. I think the twins are still downstairs in their car, taking turns keeping watch.”
Keeping watch for what? Zombies? The cops to come find me?
Angel followed me around the apartment, careful to keep his distance, but also close enough that I wondered if he thought I’d pass out again.
The nightlight from the bathroom illuminated the apartment.
Had it always been that bright? But at least there were no signs of other visitors, shadow people or otherwise.
“Someone should call Grandpa,” I whispered as I returned to the bedroom, though I was uncertain I could crawl back into bed as if nothing had happened.
“Ivan talked to him. He was about to borrow someone named Sandy’s car and drive over, but Ivan convinced him you’d call tomorrow to check in,” Angel said. He hovered. “Can I touch you? It will help soothe your anxiety.”
“How? Why?” Fuck, he was my mate. Not the Australian sort either, but like in romance novels.
Bound. Did that mean he could read my mind?
Would he know about all the terrible things I’d encountered in my past?
And I’d raised something. He hated that, didn’t he?
This was so bad, and still I wanted it like I’d never wanted anything before.
He gently brushed my hair out of my eyes, fingertips caressing my cheek in the barest of touches. The calm that came flowed through me like a breeze, taking the edge off my panic. “Okay, that’s nice.”
Angel held open his arms, inviting me to take the step forward for a hug. I sucked in air and stared at him, wanting it bad, but also afraid. Mate bond. It sounded like something mythical, and yet, like everything I’d ever wanted. “You don’t like SVs.”
“I like you.”
“But I raised something…” How did that work? Did it go back into the ground without me? What if there were zombies wandering around the city?
“The team is handling that.”
“I raised zombies?” I stared at him with wide eyes, the panic rising again, though he still stood in front of me with his arms out, waiting for me to accept his comfort.
I stepped into his embrace and let his arms wrap around me.
He burrowed his face into my neck, scenting me.
The terror seeped away, not gone completely, but manageable; as if letting him in gave me an ally to control not only my power, but the overwhelm of my emotions due to the chaos of change.
“It’s okay,” Angel said. “You’re safe. Ivan is safe. Peanut Butter is here.” He hugged me, carefully, not restricting. “Whatever happens next we can face together, if you’ll let me.”
“Sorry,” I whispered.
“Nothing to be sorry about.”
“What about this mate bond thing?”
“It helped you heal.”
Which was amazing, but what did it mean for him? Was he stuck with me? “Are you mad about that? Am I making you do that or something?”
“No, never. I’m angry at the cops for hurting you, but not at you. Right now, I think there is more of my magic running through you than yours. You were pretty wiped and might need a few days to recharge.”
“I shouldn’t have complied.” All I had thought about was protecting Ivan.
“That could have gone a lot worse. Maybe, next time they try to pull you over, call me first and get to somewhere with people?”
“Yeah. I mean, I know that. I don’t usually freeze like that. I was thinking about Ivan. Didn’t know Cassidy was there until they switched places.”
Angel’s hold on me tightened for a half second, then relaxed. “Did you recognize the first cop? Ivan says there were two, maybe more that didn’t get out of the cars behind you, but he didn’t know either of them.”
“I didn’t recognize the first one. But he didn’t follow protocol. I’ve never been a traffic cop but I know the law and how it’s supposed to work.” I shivered. “He had his gun unclipped, hand on it. Taser on the other side. Fuck, I should have known better. It’s not like it’s the first time.”
Angel said nothing for a few minutes, his touch soothing as his magic warmed me from the inside out. “I don’t want to scare you, Jude. Will you talk to me? Answer questions, instead of shutting down?”
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I admitted.
“Is wanting you safe too much to ask?” He sighed, but pulled me closer to him, his hug enveloping me in a warmth I couldn’t ever recall feeling in my life.
It took a few minutes, but the tension vanished and left me feeling like jelly in his arms. We crawled back into bed, him spooning me as he tugged the blankets up.
“This magic mate thing is intense.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” Angel asked.
“You could probably do anything to me right now and I wouldn’t protest.” I realized he wore sweats even though his chest was bare, and someone had put me in a pair of pajamas with shorts and a t-shirt top. “Did you clean me up and dress me?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for the PJs.”
“I want you to feel safe, Jude.”
“You’re not real,” I said, sleepily.
“I am.”
Peanut Butter curled up beside me, stretching his head back to lick my jaw and purr. “Too good to be real.”
He snorted. “We’ll work on that. We all have flaws. Are you going to fall back to sleep or let me ask you some questions?”
I sighed. “Ask. I dunno if I will answer…”
“Cassidy. The two of you dated?”
“Fucked. Not dated. Cassidy’s deep in the closet.”
Angel said nothing, just held me and breathed for a few minutes.
“To be fair, his personality was already in there, so it was a tight fit,” I mumbled into the pillow as I semi-dozed.
“Did you care about him?” Angel finally asked.
“Um, well, I liked him at first. But it became clear pretty fast that I was just a warm hole for him. I avoided him for a long time, but sometimes it was easy.” I sighed. “Everyone gets lonely.”
“Did he ever hit you before?”
“No. He never really took part in the teasing that some of the other officers were into. Not until I got marked. Right before I was transferred, he made it sound like I was doing dead bodies or something. But I hadn’t been anywhere with him in more than six months.
Maybe a year?” I thought about that for a few minutes.
“He flirted after Grandma died. Tried to convince me to go to the bar and drink. I knew drinking wasn’t what he had in mind, and I wasn’t interested. ”
He stewed on that for a while. Was it strange that I found his body heat soothing? I couldn’t recall the last time I’d actually slept in the same bed as someone. It was one of the things I’d learned to avoid in my teens. Sex happened, and then I got the hell out. It was safer that way.
“Will you someday tell me who hurt you?” he asked after a long while.
“The list is long.”
He tucked his nose to the back of my neck, the soothing touch of his variance and mine making me shiver, and my cock wake up. I swallowed back a sound.
Neither of us moved. I closed my eyes, surprised by the mental surrender, as rarely had I ever been able to sleep around strangers.
But we were supposed to be mates or something now.
I didn’t think for one minute he couldn’t take from me anything he wanted.
Instead, he held me tight, keeping his hips away from mine, a careful distance.
“Rest,” Angel whispered. “You’re safe. Ivan is asleep in the living room. The team is taking care of whatever your magic did to try to protect you. Your guy, Peanut Butter there, is keeping an eye on you.”
I snorted without opening my eyes, even as Peanut Butter licked my jaw. I could see how nice it would be to have strong arms around me like this more often. “You said there is more to this mate thing?”
“Yeah, but we have time. Sleep. You need it. You’re still healing.”
I hummed, sleep tugging at me. “I should probably tell you that something creepy was in my apartment. Since I’m falling asleep… if you see something weird, it’s not me. Some sort of shadow or something.” Had it been real? It felt like a lifetime ago, not within the span of twenty-four hours.
He was silent so long I began to doze, and I only vaguely heard, “I wondered why all the lights were on. And Ivan didn’t say anything either.”