My mate is hurt

Orion’s POV

I had been feeling agitated since I woke up, my mood dampened and hazy as irritation crawled at the back of my mind, but this was different from the usual restlessness while my animalistic side was pacing in the background. I resisted the urge to groan, feeling a headache creeping in from behind my eyes, and I pressed the heel of my palm against my forehead briefly before dropping my hand back to the desk.

Fuck! I’d never felt this before.

“Alpha!” I was jolted out of my thoughts and cleared my throat, my hands clasped on the desk as I blinked, looking at the elders watching me — six of them arranged along the opposite side of the long oak table. Although there was fear in their eyes, they did not want to piss me off because I was constantly in a foul mood, and I knew the reason.

Any small thing was putting me off.

I rubbed my scruffy beard lightly, drawing in a slow breath, and asked in a gruff voice, “What do you want?” I nearly barked but stopped the growl.

I also knew what they wanted.

“We said you’ve passed the mating age,” Elder Sam cleared his throat, squaring himself up as the speaker for the remaining people at the table, all of whom looked like they were deeply grateful it wasn’t them talking, “maybe you should consider taking Josephine.”

A foul taste lingered on my tongue at the words, my nostrils flared in disgust as my gaze wandered to Josephine, who was sitting at the far end of the table looking bashful and flushed, and then to her father, Elder Ethan, beside the other elders in the room, looking uneasy as if I’d snap at any minute, and I shook my head.

I knew without a mate there was a real probability of me getting crazier than this, my bear getting further and further out of the control I had always prided myself on.

I clenched my jaw tight, steepling my fingers under my chin, “I’m not taking others,” I said, looking hard at Josephine. Any thoughts she had needed to vanish because I would never take her; my bear didn’t even feel anything for her. I pinched the bridge of my nose when I saw my second in command, Rook, gesturing at me calmly, and I sighed.

“Let’s wait till the end of the year,” I muttered, dissatisfied.

It wasn’t their concern if I didn’t have a mate, and for them to want to give me a replacement left a bitter taste in my stomach. Fuck them! I was yet to understand why elders were still needed in the clan. It wasn’t the six hundredth century anymore, and half of what they did was meddle in things that weren’t their business and call it tradition.

Elder Sam continued to push, because this man had a particular talent for finding the exact edge of my patience and standing on it, “You said so last year, Alpha. We can’t have an unstable alph—”

A piercing, guttural sound rumbled out of my chest at the sheer audacity, which made the windows rattle.

“Are you telling me I’m unstable?” I questioned in a low, threatening voice. The air in the room thickened with my dominance as the elders craned their necks in submission, and my molars ground together as my claws pressed against the inside of my fingers, wanting to come out. My bear found it deeply offensive that these people were sitting here suggesting it had no control over itself.

Should I just kill him? My bear thought, and giving permission was on the tip of my tongue.

Elder Sam bowed his head hurriedly along with the others, “No—”

I cut him off; hearing that wheezing, trembling voice would really make me lose control. “Then this mustn’t be talked about anymore.” I pushed the chair back with a loud screech as I stood, and they flinched.

Good, they should know their place, because just because they were elders didn’t mean they had the right to sit at my table and question whether I had control over myself. We hadn’t even gotten to the actual business that needed discussing today, and these crafty people had used the entire meeting to get on my nerves instead.

I rolled my eyes at their hypocritical behaviour as I walked toward the door, because it was that or lose my temper entirely, and I had become something close to a walking killing machine lately with the state my bear was in, and if they really pushed me past this point then heads would roll and there would be blood on the ground and I would feel nothing about it.

“I will not take Josephine.” I bit out, and Josephine flinched, her eyes flashing hurt before she masked it, but I continued anyway, “I will not take anyone chosen for me. If I am not blessed with a true mate, then so be it,” and I walked out with anger radiating off me in waves that the people in the hallway visibly felt, because they all stepped back as I passed.

I went to the garage, running my hand along the bike as I considered taking it out on the road, but I stopped with my hand on the handlebar and stood there for a moment. I thought my animal side needed a touch of nature. To calm down.

I fully understood the elders about mates, but the thought of having another person repelled me. And I could also see the politics between the elders were disgusting; they wanted me to take Josephine, the daughter of Elder Ethan, to have control over me.

Bear mates are their weakness and strength.

The first drop of rain hit my arm and I looked at the darkened sky, and my mood dulled. It wasn’t yet the rainy season but it had been raining cats and dogs for a week now. I turned to head back inside and a jolting sizzle prickled across my skin like electricity — alerting me that someone was on my territory.

I let out a loud growl at the sheer audacity and I felt the familiar cracking of bones starting at my jaw and moving through my hands and legs, my body restructuring itself. When I was fully on my paws, standing at nine feet, I pounced toward the woods.

I moved fast through the woods, the wet ground hitting my paws as I ran faster, my bear taking the reins of control, wanting to get at something or someone.

The rain continued to pour down, sounds of footsteps surrounded me as I smacked a tree down, anger kept crashing into me, uncontrollable, the kind of anger that was more intense than when I killed the previous alpha.

Damn!

By the time I reached the hill, I saw a woman rolling on the wet ground and everything in me stilled, my bear, which had been agitated since morning, going completely blank, blinking before a whine threatened to escape as I hurried my pace to catch her.

As her body hit the ground, she had a smile on her face and the air whooshed out of my lungs.

It rooted me to the spot as flashlights pointed at me; I saw men in suits, close to her. They were already moving toward her and that was the last thing I registered before my vision went red and I charged at them, killing them. All.

By the time the last man’s body dropped with a loud thud, I stood there, chest heaving, blood on my claws as I shifted back, and my eyes snapped to her immediately.

She was already out cold, her body battered, dirty, dried blood on her skin, her blond hair splayed on the dirt. My jaw clenched at the cuts and bruises on her body. I fell to my knees beside her, slid my arms under her carefully while my heart hammered harder.

Finally, my mate in my arms.

I ran back to the clan gently so as not to jostle her, and I shouldered through the door of my house and barked orders before I was fully inside, “Roland!” and when no answer came immediately I called again, “Roland!”

Liam walked out of a side door, naked, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand, his face still heavy with sleep as he blinked at me with the droopy expression of someone pulled out of a deep sleep, and the nakedness was nothing between us as it was nothing among any bear shifter.

“What brother?” he said, and then his eyes dropped from my face to the unconscious woman in my arms and came back up to my face as his eyes widened.

I looked down at the pale, battered woman against my chest, my chest tightening with fierce protectiveness. “Get me Roland.” I didn’t give him a second look as I headed to my room. “My mate is hurt.”