Chapter Eleven
After tumbling into bed with Bram and losing count of how many times he drove her out of her mind with passion, she was unable to sleep. She should’ve been exhausted. She was exhausted. But she couldn’t turn off her brain to rest, despite being in Bram’s arms.
The day had been one large clusterfuck. She could’ve been abducted. Bram could’ve been seriously hurt or worse.
She rolled to her side to look at him while he slept.
Sexy, sexy male.
Her heart ached with how close she came to nearly losing everything.
Bram was a tough male and a strong fighter, but they’d been outnumbered. She trusted Bram with her life, but at the same time she didn’t want anything to happen to him. He was the sort of male to put his own life on the line for his mate.
“I don’t ever want to lose you,” she whispered, touching his stubbled jaw.
Slipping from his arms without waking him, she picked up his phone from the nightstand and carried it out into the family room, shutting the bedroom door behind her.
He’d given her the code to unlock his phone. When she’d entered it, she opened the phone app and dialed her mom’s number.
It was late, but her mom was something of a night owl and the South Carolina nest always had parties that went long into the morning hours.
The call went unanswered.
Thea tried again.
And then a third time, finally sending a text.
It’s me, Mom. We need to talk.
She paced in the family room. Her whole body was one live wire, her nerves frayed and her eagle ruffling her feathers in her mind.
A few minutes passed when the phone finally buzzed.
“Mom?”
“No.” Her father’s gruff voice made Thea’s stomach bottom out.
She swallowed hard and then cleared her throat.
“Dad, I need to know what’s going on. Why would you send males to kidnap me?”
“I did no such thing.”
“A handful of males showed up at my apartment and tried to take me to South Carolina. They said they were acting on orders from their alpha.”
“You should have come when you were summoned, Thea.”
“I’m not a wayward child!” She realized her voice was getting high with emotion and she didn’t want to start bawling, so she pulled the phone from her ear and took in a few measured breaths. Returning it to her ear, she spoke as calmly as she could. “When I refused to come with them, they attacked us. I could have been seriously hurt.”
“You were summoned. You should have obeyed.”
“I’m mated, Dad. I’m wearing his mark and my eagle is content. You should be happy for me, not sending assholes to kidnap me.”
There was a small stretch of silence. She could picture her dad, gray showing at his temples, green eyes that matched hers flashing.
“Did you think we didn’t know you moved away from the nest?” he asked.
In her rush to get to the crux of the matter with her father, she failed to ask the one question that had been foremost on her mind: if they’d been tracking her all along, why hadn’t they told her?
“I did what was right for me,” she said, finally.
“You made a poor choice. On several fronts.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head even though he couldn’t see her. “I made no such bad choice. I left the nest because it was stifling. I don’t want to be under the alpha’s thumb, I don’t want to be forced into a mating because you’ve decided I’m too old to be single. I want to live my life how I want to live it, period.”
“Plans were made for you.” His voice was calm, but it was too calm, which told her he was pissed but trying not to show it.
“I could give a damn about your plans,” she said, unable to control the rising of her voice. Her eyes burned with tears, but none fell.
Her father cleared his throat. “You are not in control, Thea. You’re out of control and you always have been. Hear me well, daughter: you have twenty-four hours to get to South Carolina or there will be severe consequences.”
“Ordering me to South Carolina won’t change the fact I’m mated, and it also doesn’t change the fact that you’re not in charge of my life, I am!”
“I don’t recognize your mating and neither does our alpha. You’re beholden to him, and you will do what you’re told, one way or the other. If you value the life of the male you claim as yours—for now—you’ll bring yourself to South Carolina. If we have to come and get you, you won’t like how that happens.”
Before she could reply, and she wasn’t even sure what she’d say anyway, the call disconnected and there was only silence on the other end.
Her heart was pounding, her eagle letting out a distress call that echoed in her mind.
She sat on the couch and put her head in her hands, the phone pressing against her forehead.
The couch dipped as Bram joined her, pulling her against him.
She didn’t want to cry, but she couldn’t help it.
The tears fell and her mouth went salty.
“I heard sweetheart,” he murmured, extracting his phone from her grip and setting it down. She turned into him and cried, holding herself to him as closely as he held her.
His skin was warm and his hold was strong, but she didn’t feel safe. She felt like everything that had been set right in her life when she met him was suddenly crumbling around her.
“We’re in trouble,” she said in between hard sobs that made her chest hurt.
“It’ll be okay,” he said, kissing her temple.
How could he be so sure?
* * *
Bram called his dad, who was surely asleep at one a.m., but still answered on the second ring.
“Everything okay?”
Bram smiled despite the severity of the issues at bay. His dad believed that phone calls that came after midnight never had good news attached to them. As alpha, he was always prepared for the worst, ready to jump to action at a moment’s notice when seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
“No. Not even a little bit. Can I bring Thea over? Her dad just threatened her, and we’ve got a deadline.”
“You bet.”
Bram ended the call with a hurried thanks.
“Sweetheart, let’s get dressed.”
He rose to his feet, but Thea didn’t move, frozen in a side-lean that looked like she was about to fall over onto the couch. She was in shock, and that was understandable. He couldn’t imagine how it felt to be threatened by a parent and to be so utterly disregarded.
“Thea.” He put his wolf into his voice, making it a little deeper.
She blinked a few times and looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. “What?”
“My parents are waiting for us. Let’s get ready.”
“I don’t want to bother them, it’s so late.”
“Baby, we’ve got a day before your family and nest show up here with bad intentions. The last thing my parents are going to be worried about is getting woken up. They’d be mad if we waited.”
She nodded but still didn’t move.
He bent and picked up her hands, giving them a squeeze. “Let’s go.”
With a gentle tug, he pulled her upright and led her to the bedroom. She seemed to come back to herself when he flicked on the overhead light and moved into action to get dressed.
They were on the way to his parents’ house in less than ten minutes. Thea had been quiet and he’d been too keyed up to talk. His wolf was pacing in his mind, furious that she was emotionally hurt by her parents.
How the hell hard would it have been for them to just accept that she was mated? What parent didn’t want their child to find love?
Well, he certainly wasn’t going to just let them take Thea. She was his and he was going to fight fang and claw to keep her safe and keep her with him forever.