Chapter 17
Tybalt
Sometimes I thought fate was a fucking myth. Today? I was starting to believe in it.
If my asshole family hadn’t sold me, if that alpha hadn’t messed me up so badly that my own mate rejected me, if Giant hadn’t found me living on the streets, half starved to death, and brought me to the Knights, I wouldn’t be strolling down this hallway right now, smiling my goddamn head off.
Plus, when we’d got cleaned up and I asked if our girl wanted to help us hunt down those vile fucking vermin who abducted and auctioned her, not only did she immediately agree, she gave us three names of the auction staff who put her on the block.
She was so strong, so defiant, and I was damned proud of her.
Watching her give her nightmares and trauma the middle finger made me braver, injected enough courage into me that I crossed the clubhouse and aimed for the kitchen.
I had to do this now, before I lost my nerve.
Then I’d go find Cobra and we could hunt down those three motherfuckers and make them pay.
Especially the—as she described him—weaselly fucker who stole her off the street.
His description matched someone we’d been looking for for a long, long time, when an alpha tried to abduct Winner’s mate, Mercedes.
We’d enjoy hunting and torturing that dickhead.
Not as much as I’d enjoy killing the men who stripped and scrubbed my girl before taking photos of her from every angle, presumably to post a fucking listing, like she was an item to sell.
I was going to hang those men up with Lance Brown in my basement, maybe break out my blowtorch especially for them.
I ripped myself out of the violent rage with a shake of my head, getting my shit under control as I leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen and knocked on the wood to announce myself.
Sweetie’s eyes narrowed when he saw who it was, wariness writing itself across his body.
“Hey,” I said.
He grunted, but that was pretty normal.
“So,” I began, hoping he’d make this easy on me and not particularly surprised when he returned to the sweetcorn-looking salad thing he was making, not speaking a word. “I’m not gonna apologise for breaking your nose. You deserved that shit.”
His grunt could have been argumentative or agreement; it was hard to tell. I stared at the ceiling, waiting for divine intervention from that fate I suddenly believed in.
I sighed. Heavily. “I may have… taken out some shit on you, that you didn’t entirely deserve.
” Silence. Great. I resisted the urge to pull at my hair.
I might not give a shit if it was someone else, but Sweetie and I had always been tight.
I’d always thought he was a decent guy, and he seemed to see something decent in me, too.
I didn’t like this weird tension every time we were in the same room.
He squirted mayonnaise from a squeeze bottle, being extra loud about it.
Jesus, this was a nightmare. This was why I didn’t talk about my feelings unless Prodigy was fucking them out of me; I was just plain bad at it.
But Miraya had been brave, had raked up her trauma to help us hunt those motherfuckers, so I glared at the ceiling and said, “It brought up my own mate rejecting me, and I projected all that rage onto you. It took me a long time to calm the fuck down and see that the situations were nothing alike. You’re nothing like that bitch who rejected me. ”
Spiteful, sneering fucking asshole, that’s what she was. I hoped she was dead in a ditch somewhere, unloved and unwanted, while I had two mates of my own, mates I’d chosen for myself.
Without a word, Sweetie opened the fridge, removed two bottles of beer and used the chipped opener Justice hammered into the side of a cupboard when we kept losing bottle openers on a weekly basis. Sweetie held a beer out to me as a peace offering and I took it, a little wary.
“You gonna break my nose? Make us even?”
He rolled his eyes, leaning back against the counter and taking a long drink. “And ruin that pretty face? Would the president still want you if your face was all crooked?”
“Oh, fuck you. And yes, actually. It wouldn’t be the first time someone pummelled my face.”
“You could try provoking people less,” he suggested dryly, his beard twitching with a smirk when I gave him the middle finger.
I took a drink, reading the atmosphere in the room. Not as delicate and charged as it had been lately, more like it used to be. “Do you accept my very gracious apology?”
“You never actually said the words I’m sorry,” he pointed out.
“They were implied.”
Sweetie snorted. “Yeah, sure. Consider your shitty apology accepted. If you’ll accept mine.”
“But you never actually said the words,” I parroted.
“Oh, fuck you.”
“If you want to, you’ll have to join the queue,” I retorted, my smirk not quite sharp enough, bleeding into a genuine smile. “Yeah, fine, apology accepted.”
He grunted, which I took to mean good.
“But if you upset my girl,” I warned, “I’ll put another bump in your nose before you can even blink, and break your cheekbone while I’m at it.”
His eyes darkened to match mine, a protectiveness and lethal violence that could only be radiated by an alpha with someone to protect, someone to love.
“Likewise,” he said in a rumbling growl.
“You hurt ChaCha, you fucking dick. You were supposed to be her friend, then you looked at her like she was a pariah. Like she’d done anything wrong, when her only crime was me loving her. ”
I sighed. Heavily. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, the growl leaving his voice. “Best of luck earning her forgiveness.”
“She’s going to gut me.”
“Probably,” Sweetie agreed, taking a swig of beer. “She might let you keep your organs, though.”
“Probably asking a little too much,” I disagreed, making him laugh. And whatever remnants of animosity we’d held onto dissolved.
“Take care of her, yeah?” Sweetie said when his laughter faded. He swallowed, not quite looking at me. I knew we weren’t talking about ChaCha anymore.
I hadn’t considered, even once, what it might do to an alpha—a good alpha—to reject their fated mate.
To push away someone their soul, body, and instincts were screaming belonged to them.
I hadn’t considered it might hurt. I honestly thought he’d rejected her and that was that, no struggle, no pain, nothing like what Miraya went through.
Mostly because thinking about it led to me thinking about my rejection, and I shied away from that at all costs.
But I knew Sweetie; he was a good guy and he gave a shit about making the world a better place. Of course he’d be affected.
“Yeah,” I said after a while. “We will.”
His eyebrows rose. “So it’s true? I thought it was just gossip.”
I grinned. “And you just love gossip don’t you, Sweets?”
“Changed my mind,” he muttered. “I’m killing you.”
“I’ve seen you, twitching the curtains, pressing your ear to the wall when people are arguing, taking a little too long to clear a table when people start bickering.”
He grabbed a spatula and threw it at my head. I caught it out of the air and laughed. “Thanks, I’m keeping this.”
“You’re fucking not,” he growled, stomping after me as I rolled around the doorframe and into the hallway. “Give that back you prick.”
“Well, if you insist.” I said and flung the thing back at him. “See you around, Sweets.”
“Stop fucking calling me that,” he yelled as I strolled away, a weight lifted from my shoulders.
The next one was tricky. I chose a public space—the garden, with most of our Knights and their families gathered around the barbecue or the bouncy castle Warning’s mate, Everly, had insisted on.
Far be it from me to question her judgement because the moment it was inflated, Giant clambered onto it and jumped like a little kid, his mate Astrid immediately following, and tugging her younger sister along for the ride.
I smirked as I watched the three of them bounce like five year olds at a birthday party. Cute bastards.
I scanned the garden, searching for a head of violent purple hair or brown curls. It had been two hours since I last saw Miraya, and I was going through withdrawals. I wanted her scent in my nose and her warm body pressed right up to mine.
It was ChaCha I spotted first, hanging around the old beer keg full of ice and bottles of booze, Vienna and Jessia laughing at something on Vienna’s phone.
“Ladies,” I greeted, sauntering over. I might have taunted Sweetie about being a gossip, but here I was dying to know what had made them laugh. “Looking at something interesting?”
“I found a stray cat in the shed, and I’m keeping him,” Jessia told me, her eyes bright when she looked up at me, lacking the ocean of shadows that had filled them for weeks upon weeks. “Look at his squashed little face.”
I peered at her phone and snorted at the photo of a grey cat. “He looks like he got into a fight with Wizard’s van and lost. Is his face supposed to be like that?”
“He’s a pedigree breed, you uncultured swine,” ChaCha snapped, arms crossed over her chest and a glare on her face that had frightened lesser men. (It frightened me, I just didn’t want to admit it.)
“Quite a tame insult, really,” I remarked. “I’m flattered.”
“Vicious little pig,” she hissed, her chin cocked out. “Sad pile of lettuce.”
“Hey, now, that one hurts my feelings.”
Her smile sharpened. “Good. You saggy-balled shrimp.”
My bark of laughter was impossible to contain. “Nice. I brought a peace offering.” I took the pen-knife from my pocket, the casing purple and leopard print. Her eyebrows raised. “Shut up, I stole it from an alpha prick a few months ago.”
“And kept it,” she pointed out. Now they were all snickering at me, but it was hard to scowl when I knew what these women had been through, and how hard they’d fought to find the peace and freedom that allowed them to take the piss out of me.
“Fine, if you don’t want it.” I pulled my hand back, and ChaCha predictably snatched the knife from my grip.
“I reserve the right to stab you with this anytime.”
“Understandable,” I agreed. “And I’m sorry, ChaCha. I was a dick to you, but I never thought any differently of you. I was just… a tiny bit defensive.”
Look at me, saying the words I’m sorry. Prodigy would be proud as fuck.
Her eyebrow rose. “Sure. A tiny bit.”
“And just slightly protective of Miraya.”
“You slept outside her room on multiple occasions,” Vienna input with a little smile.
“Aw, not you, too. Are you all ganging up on me now?”
“Yep,” Jessia agreed with a smile. “But it’s cute. And she seems really nice, even if she gives off Lynn and ChaCha vibes.”
“Hey,” ChaCha complained, brandishing her new knife. “Don’t make me stab you, bitch.”
Vienna gave me a look, as if to say look what you’ve done but ChaCha was clearly happy with the peace offering, so I smirked and made my goodbyes. Time to find my girl. It had been far too long since I’d held her.