Denied Mate by Roxie Ray
Cal
Rain hammered on the windows of Ma’s hospital room like it wanted to break the glass. She was asleep and resting comfortably, but the bruises along her neck and collarbone, the shiner across her cheekbone, made my stomach turn. So I kept my gaze on her hands—strong, beautiful hands. They’d fought off her attacker just long enough for me to arrive and scare him off.
And they’d slapped against the kitchen wall fifteen years earlier when she’d yelled at my dad, the sound ricocheting through my room on the other side. Dad had shouted back, and I turned up my music, drowning them out as best I could. I lay on my bed and flicked through the ‘zine Liv and I were working on, about life in Bridgehaven. I did the writing, and she did the illustrations, practice for our big dreams of writing graphic novels together. Her comics were so good, and I’d paused on a sketch she’d drawn of us. My heart thumped at how flattering the picture of me was. I dragged my thumb over her self-portrait, with her long blonde hair falling around her shoulders and the perfect swoop of the cleft of her chin. It had been raining hard, wind shook my windows so loudly I barely noticed when there was a thump at the front door. But another voice broke through my haze.
I’d frowned and strained to listen to the clipped vowels and a baritone rumble.
Music down and ear pressed against the door, I’d clearly heard Liv’s dad. “It’s for the good of the pack.”
“Please don’t take him!” Ma had been crying, her voice strained and pleading. “Jeff, please, you don’t have to take him anywhere.”
I eased my door open slowly enough to poke my head out without anyone noticing and saw the back of the alpha. He motioned for Dad to get up from the table.
Mom’s eyes had flashed with panic. “Please! He’s your best friend! For God’s sake!”
“You have to understand.” Jeff spoke in a low rumble that calmed the whole room. “It’s not David’s place to interfere.”
“It’s okay, Christine.” Dad stood slowly and nodded to Ma. “It’s all right. We’re just going for a walk.”
Something foreign nipped deep under my skin, intuition shouting at me—it wasn’t okay, and it wasn’t all right. Something terrible was happening, and I felt sick not knowing what it was.
Jeff swept his arm toward the door, inviting my father to leave first.
Dad hesitated only to take my mom’s strong, kind hands and looked deep into her eyes. “I’ll be back before you know it. I promise.”
It was the last time I’d seen my dad.
His body was never found, but the news was he’d jumped off the cliff at the edge of town and was dragged into the depths of the rocky ocean. Suicide. Ashamed for what he’d done to the alpha, his best friend. Took his own life rather than face the consequences of excommunication.
Others said it was a drunken misstep—he was a regular at the Hook and Dime, a bar not far from the cliffs, and it wasn’t unusual for him to run up there under a bright moon. The Hook and Dime was owned by wolves, so they served shit strong enough for shifters. It was plausible. Technically. Maybe he’d lost sight of the road in the downpour.
No one talked about why he was taken from my house just before sunset. Details of what he’d done to the pack alpha never came out, either. All Ma and I knew was he’d gone against Jeff, but we never knew why. Or about what. If he had, it would have been for good reason. He had strong morals, and Jeff was his best friend.
Nothing was ever confirmed about his death because his body was never found. And no body found meant no insurance money. Mom scraped together what she could to keep us in our nice house, saying we should do our best to continue in the community even after it was made clear we had no place in the pack. I’d thought Liv would be there for me, but after I snapped at her, she acted like we’d never met. I didn’t realize we were only friends until I had a bad day. Mom’s friends did the same. We were pushed to our limits, financially and emotionally, until we snapped and moved to the outskirts.
Typical Bridgehaven behavior. Once you were on the out, you were practically dead. In my darkest moments, I’d wished I was. My heart had broken twice over—I’d lost my dad and my best friend—and I wasn’t sure it’d ever recover. Without a mate, maybe I wouldn’t need to recover. No one to give it to. The only thing holding the last few pieces together was my ma.
And now she was barely alive. Googling what the doctors had said—trauma to the thorax—was a mistake. I grimaced at the results, turned my phone face down on my thigh, and breathed through my nose.
Liv would do what she’d promised and get us some help. She had to. I was out of options if she didn’t.
God, she’d looked so good in pajamas and barefoot on the plush carpet of her crazy rich apartment. The place suited her, more than the mansion she’d grown up in, but it was still way too big for my tastes. But it smelled like her. It smelled like citrus and the ocean shore, something fresh and clean. Warm, like it had been dressed in sunshine.
My phone buzzed and I quickly turned it over, hoping to see a text from Liv.
Danny: All good?
I sighed, momentarily disappointed. No, there was no need for that. I had more people in my corner than just the rich girl I’d grown up with; people I’d chosen. People who’d been there for me over the past several years.
Cal: Not great. You know anyone with a weird hexagon scar on their shoulder? Attacker was marked.
Danny: Nah. I’ll ask the lone wolves for you tho’.
“Knock, knock.” A nurse appeared in the doorway, her tight hourglass figure silhouetted by the bright light in the corridor. “Are you Mr. Meyers?”
“Yeah. Who’s asking?” Habitual smarminess. Oops. It made me smirk.
She stepped closer and adjusted the stethoscope hanging over her full breasts. “The admin office. They’re saying the insurance details you gave aren’t quite right?”
I looked her up and down and wet my lips. I lingered on her full bust; her pulse picked up. She smelled human and I imagined my pheromones were making her nipples hard. Weird—I didn’t get much of a thrill from the thought. I mean, hell, I was stressed. Then again, just being near Liv had made my blood boil hot without her being in a freakin’ nurse’s uniform. It was probably the hospital. It didn’t stink like death, but that didn’t mean it was nice here.
Whatever. I didn’t read into it.
I finally met the nurse’s eyes, dark brown and sultry, and gave her a charming smile. “That’s because they were bullshit. We don’t have insurance.”
She bit her lip and nodded. “Got it. I’ll tell them you’re trying to get through to the company to figure it out, but they have you on hold. Red tape. Bureaucracy. Administration errors. Could take days.”
I let out an appreciative noise.
“Thanks...” I glanced at her name tag. “Jessica.”
She inhaled audibly and then seemed to yank herself out of my trance by turning to tend to my mom. It pulled me out of my animal reaction too, and I sat taller to watch her take Ma’s vitals. After a moment, I decided the woman probably knew what she was doing and relaxed against the chair.
“Well, your mom’s lucky, given her injuries.” She jotted down details on the chart and checked the IV line. “Lucky to have a son brave enough to scare off the guy who did this to her, too.”
I grumbled and slumped back. “Wish I’d chased him.”
She raised her eyebrows and looked right at me. “No, you don’t. If you hadn’t brought her in so quickly, she could have died.”
The weight of it hit me and I closed my eyes with a sigh.
When I opened them again, Jessica was standing close to me, grazing her leg against my knee.
“I’d like to spend some time with the hero all the nurses are talking about…” Her voice dropped into a sultry whisper as she swayed, teasing me by sliding her hands over her pinched-in waist. “Can I give you my number?”
My mind flashed with images of Liv in her pajamas sitting low on her hip; the tiny dip of her lower back as she’d turned away to get a washcloth; her toes curling against the corridor carpet as she handed me the umbrella.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, broke myself back into reality, and winked. “Of course you can.”
