Chapter One
Bennett
June
The light from an incoming call brought my attention back to where I’d tossed my phone on the concrete floor of my garage while I changed a set of tires on a car.
I was behind schedule, but Wyatt almost never called me in the middle of the day.
I grabbed the phone and swiped the screen to answer, balancing it between my shoulder and my cheek so I could keep working.
My only employee, Calvin, had called out again—something he did way too frequently and if I had anyone else knocking on my door looking for work as a mechanic, I’d have fired him a long time ago.
Unfortunately, there weren’t exactly a bunch of people lining up for jobs in Mirror Lake.
It was a small town with a small population, and almost everyone here was already working hard at one job or another.
Plus, Calvin ran the detailing side of the shop while I focused on actual repairs, and his work was profitable, despite his frequent absences.
“Hey, Wyatt. What’s up?” I asked.
“I’m so sorry, Bennett,” Wyatt said softly. “This is the last call I wanted to make today, but Felix is in the hospital.”
“What?” I asked, dropping the torque wrench. It clattered to the cement as I shot to my feet, fear pulsing through my veins.
“Felix was in a car accident,” he said gently, sounding less like the town sheriff who was required to make this call and more like the best friend he’d been to me for years.
“No,” I said, gripping the phone tightly and slamming it against my thigh as I closed my eyes. I blew out a sharp breath through my nose and put the phone back to my ear, running a hand through my chin-length brown hair and sprinting for my truck in the parking lot. “What the fuck happened?”
I cradled the phone between my shoulder and cheek again as I shoved one hand into the pocket of my jeans for the keys and yanked the door open with the other.
Wyatt’s lack of response made my blood pressure spike again.
“Why the fuck aren’t you answering me, Wyatt?” I asked.
“His car was found in a pull-off on the side of the road near the town sign headed to Crescent River. Someone hit his car and we received an anonymous 911 call. It looked like a hit and run.”
“What was he doing on the side of the road?” I turned the key in the ignition. The newly installed engine in my fifteen-year-old truck roared to life and my phone connected to the Bluetooth speaker I’d added a few years ago.
“He appeared to be getting high. I found him with a needle in his arm, and I could smell the heroin from a hundred yards away.”
My heart must have stopped because my vision went black and I nearly drove off the road as I pulled out of the garage parking lot. “That’s impossible.”
“I saw it myself, Bennett.”
“He wouldn’t.” I slammed on the accelerator.
“Well, he did.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. You’re positive he was high? Was anyone with him?” I whipped around a corner, pulse pounding as I barely registered the other cars on Main Street.
“He was alone.”
“Did you check his car for prints? Maybe someone else was with him and left.”
“There was no need for an investigation of anything except the hit and run.”
“There is obviously a need, Wyatt!” I yelled into the phone as I swerved around a pothole and booked it through a yellow light. “My fucking mate was found with a needle in his arm after three years of sobriety.”
“Felix isn’t your mate,” Wyatt said calmly.
“Fuck you! You know he is.”
“Listen, Ben. You’re mad at the wrong person here.”
“Check his car for prints,” I demanded.
“All of our resources are looking into the hit and run right now. I don’t think putting our efforts into what could very well be a relapse is the best place to start.”
“Yes, it is! I’m telling you, he wasn’t using, Wyatt.
Please.” I gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to take a deep breath and lower my voice.
“I know he wasn’t. You think I’d miss the smell of heroin on him while we’re fucking?
Or when I’m holding him in my arms every damn night?
You think I wouldn’t notice fresh track marks? ”
Wyatt sighed. “I hear you, okay? I’ll see what I can do. I’ll be at the hospital when you get here.”
My rear wheels spun as I slid into the hospital parking lot and killed the ignition in the first parking spot I found. “I’m already here.”
“Shit, Bennett. How many traffic laws did you just break?”
“All of them. Now do your damn job and find out what happened to Felix.”
“Part of my job includes upholding traffic laws,” Wyatt said with a sigh. “I’ll call Donovan and ask him to do a thorough search of the car to see if there are any signs that someone else was with him. I’m in the hospital lobby now, I’ll wait for you to come inside.”
“Is Felix going to be okay?” I asked, nearly choking on the lump in my throat as I stared at the large, brick hospital building, afraid to go in and see for myself.
“I honestly don’t know,” Wyatt said. “Let’s just get you to him and go from there.”
I hung up the phone and dropped my forehead against the steering wheel, trying to remember how Felix had looked when I’d left for work this morning.
He’d been sprawled out naked in bed, the black sheet only covering his ass, leaving the toned muscles of his back and legs on display.
It had taken everything in me to go to work and leave him there, but that had become our routine.
Felix worked at my sister Ally’s bar in the afternoon and evening, and I worked days at my garage.
The difference in our schedules usually meant I was out of bed earlier than he was while he caught up on his sleep from the night before.
I’d kissed his forehead, smiled at the little whimper that had escaped him as he’d reached for me and pulled me back for one more lingering kiss before he’d rolled over and mumbled a promise to bring me lunch.
Was he on his way to me when this happened?
He couldn’t have been if he was out by the town line.
Wyatt could say Felix wasn’t my mate all he wanted, but I’d known from the minute I’d laid eyes on Felix that he was made for me.
That was usually the way it worked with alphas.
We just knew. Not everyone ended up with their true mate, lots of people mated with someone they loved and never looked back, Wyatt's parents included. I could only imagine that decision was because they’d never felt their fate smack them in the face the way mine had.
Felix Kipling had been mine to love and protect since day one, and I’d have spent my whole life waiting for him to be ready to acknowledge that if it was what he needed.
A single lifetime with him would never be enough.
My truck door opened and I turned toward the movement. Wyatt stood there, holding out a hand for me. His long, blonde hair was pulled into a bun at the nape of his neck with two loose pieces framing his face.
“Come on, man. Let’s get you inside,” he said. His tall, broad frame, covered in an open leather jacket and jeans, left no room to argue.
We may have both been alphas, but there was no denying which of us would win in a brawl and I felt the bone-deep instinct to submit to his request.
“I can’t lose him, Wyatt,” I said as tears pooled in my eyes. “What if he dies without knowing how much I love him?”
Wyatt clapped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Felix knows how much you love him. I have no doubt about that. You wear it on your face every day, Ben. You’d burn down the world for him. He knows that.”
I let Wyatt pull me from the truck and walked with him to the main entrance of the hospital, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand. “He was supposed to work tonight.”
“I already texted Ally. She’s closing the bar and making sure Oakley knows. I told her to wait to come until I call her with an update.”
“He’d hate that she’s losing a night of business for him,” I said.
“Maybe, but you know how Als is,” Wyatt said with a fond smile that gave away just how much he loved my younger sister. Ally was two years younger than us but that hadn’t mattered to Wyatt in the slightest.
We’d met in homeroom on his first day of junior year after he’d moved here from the city.
I’d invited him to the lake where Ally and I always went after school with our youngest sister, Oakley, until it got too cold in the fall.
Lake days in the Northeast were numbered, and we soaked up every single one.
Wyatt had taken one look at Ally that afternoon and whipped his head around to face me.
“I like you so far, Bennett, but your sister is my fate. Is that going to be a problem for our new friendship?” he’d said.
I’d been so stricken by his completely serious tone that I’d just laughed and said, “Of course not.” It wasn’t until the day I met Felix that I finally understood how he could have been so certain.
Finding your true mate felt like being punched in the chest, and despite not having any air left in your lungs, wanting nothing more than to be punched again.
Wyatt and Ally had been officially bonded for five years now, and while their situation was unusual—two alphas rarely mated with each other—there was no doubt that they’d both fallen head over heels in love from the beginning, just like Felix and me.
Wyatt waved at the receptionist behind the desk of the hospital entrance and walked right past her.
I followed him.
It was one of the perks of being the sheriff in a small town. Everyone knew him. Everyone respected him. And people rarely questioned what he was doing because they trusted him completely.
We walked down the hall, around a corner, and Wyatt stopped dead in his tracks outside a pair of wooden doors with a dark blue sign that said “ICU” in white lettering hanging above them.
“Fuck,” I said, my stomach rolling as the seriousness of those letters pressed down on my chest.
“Do you need a minute before we go in?” Wyatt asked.
“No. I need to see him. I need to be there for him now,” I said, every alpha instinct to protect outweighing my fear.