Billionaire Bear’s Human Mate by Alicia Banks
Chapter 24
Shane
“Dammit, Vivica!”
That was the first thing that Shane thought when he realized that she was gone again. It was rather funny to him, how quickly she could run away from him. They had a decent night, not like the one before, but that was because of the argument he had with his dad. His father was pushing Shane to get back into the clan, and Shane had to believe that it was something underhanded that he was wanted for.
When he’d gotten back to the bedroom, he hadn’t been in the mood. Vivica had been, but he was so frustrated that he had forced himself to lay down and go to sleep. He couldn’t deal with all of it, but now, Shane woke up alone in the bed. He didn’t know where Vivica was and he wanted to think that she was somewhere in the house, but he knew she wasn’t. He couldn’t feel her presence anymore and that saddened him more than he wanted to admit. It was hard for Shane to see all of it happening. He was trying his best to stay calm, but that felt impossible. It all felt impossible.
Maria was close by and must have heard Shane, because she popped her head into the room and asked him if he needed anything.
“Maria, no, thanks, I’m good.”
“You don’t look ‘good’, Mr. Shane.”
Shane sighed. He wasn’t good at all.
“You didn’t happen to see Vivica take off last night, did you?”
Maria shook her head and said that she hadn’t. “No, but I saw your father leave out of here late last night, and he looked like he was in a hurry.”
“Is he here now?”
She agreed that he wasn’t, and Shane didn’t want to go there, but his mind went there. It had to. Was his father to blame for Vivica’s disappearance, or was he just grasping at straws because he hated the idea of it being because of him? Again. He had put a lot on her after all.
“Tell me that you saw them together?”
“I didn’t see them together, Shane, but I did hear talking in the kitchen.”
“What did it sound like?”
Maria shrugged and wanted to know what was going on. Shane assured her that it was nothing that she had to worry about, but he couldn’t say the same for himself. It was not at all what he’d wanted, and the more Shane thought about it, the more he was convinced that his father had betrayed him again. Shane had to wonder how many more times he could take it. How many more times was he going to be able to handle his father going against him? It was too much. This time he had gone too far. This time, he was messing with Shane’s mate and his child. There was no way that he was going to be able to let his dad walk away unscathed from that.
“If you see her or she comes back here for any reason, I want you to call me, okay, Maria?”
Maria agreed, even though she didn’t know what was going on. She’d worked for Shane for a long time, but Shane never asked such things of her, or he hadn’t in the past. It was always the way of things. He was always trying to keep her calm. She’d seen a few too many things but had never said a word. Shane knew that he could trust her, even if that wasn’t something he could say about many people, ninety-nine percent of people really.
He left the house, after checking it top to bottom. The inner gut feeling told him that Vivica was not in the house and that she was with his dad. He had no idea why they were together though and there was a bit of relief to see that they’d taken a car and he hadn’t dragged her off in the woods to shift. Shane didn’t know what to think. He knew that his father didn’t like humans, didn’t like him with a human, but surely, he wasn’t stupid enough to do something that he was going to regret, was he?
Shane knew that his dad made bad decisions all the time. He didn’t trust him to make one with the woman he was mated to, the woman carrying his grandchild. Shane shifted into his true form and waited a moment for his body to catch up. He started to smell all of the extra scents that swirled around him, and it took only a few seconds to pick up Vivica. She had been dragged into the vehicle that was no longer there and Shane could smell it like it still was. He was doing his best to figure out what to do next, but there didn’t seem to be an easy solution. All he knew to do was to focus on what he could control. He would find them and then he would take care of his dad, maybe for good. Shane didn’t like to think about that, but as he realized where his father was going with his mate, he decided that he couldn’t take anything off the table. It looked like his dad wasn’t.
***
Once Shane got back to his old clan, he started to get jittery. Something was going to happen; he could feel it in every bit of him and Shane wanted to know what it was. He was sure that it was more than just his dad taking Vivica. He’d done it for a reason, and it wasn’t because he didn’t like Vivica because she was a human. There had to be a reason, something more. Shane had thought that since he’d met Vivica. It wasn’t just coincidence. The universe didn’t deal in those very often. Shane had met her for a reason, and he was sure that it couldn’t end like that. Fate wouldn’t have brought them together, made them fall in love, made a baby, just to end it so soon, would it?
He wasn’t greeted like he had been before. Instead of waves of greetings, he got scowls and shifting faces and eyes. Shane didn’t want to be there. He would have rather been anywhere else but there, but that was where Vivica was. She had been taken and his father had brought her there. What the Montauks wanted with Vivica, he had no idea. Shane just knew that she was there, and he worried that she was going to be exchanged for blackmail or something of that nature. Shane would have said before that he wasn’t about to negotiate, but that didn’t mean that he was above it. Not when it came to Vivica. He knew before he walked into the mess, that he was willing to give pretty much anything. Getting Vivica and their child back safely was all that Shane was worried about.
Someone stopped him before he went in, and he asked to speak to who was in charge. The last time he was there he had talked to his cousin. His cousin wasn’t as happy to see him as before.
“You come here again, after leaving us the way you did last time?”
Shane knew that he was talking about the refusal to give up all of his money, just so that they could spend it all like they had his mother’s fortune. Shane gritted his teeth. He was going to have to be nice to get his way and that had never been an easy thing for him. It was especially hard when Vivica was on the line. He was going to have to shut his mouth, so that Vivica would be safe. Shane already wanted to smash the guy’s face in, so just the thought of him taking Vivica away was too much to be borne.
“You know why I am here, Scott, so let’s not pretend like you have no idea. You know what I’m doing here. I want her back. If you give her back without much of a fuss, then I won’t hold it against you.”
Scott laughed. “You seem to think that you have all the cards, Shane. You might have had the upper hand a bit before, but not anymore. You are going to give us everything that we want, which is everything, and we aren’t going to have to do anything for it. It’s a way better deal, if I do say so myself.”
Shane gritted his teeth and said that he wanted Vivica back right then. Instead of getting what he wanted though, Shane was told that Vivica and his child were somewhere safe.
“How do you know about the baby?”
Shane and Vivica hadn’t said anything about it, and Shane didn’t know what any of it had to do with why she was taken. She was taken as a bargaining chip, that much was for certain. Was there some other reason at play that he didn’t know about?
“That baby is part of our clan. You and your father were tainted, and it ruined the blood, but this one will be pure and part of us. It will do great things as a ‘special human’, and I think that such a powerful child should be with us. Vivica wants a family and protection. I can give all that to her. If you really love her, you should let her go.”
Shane didn’t want to hear that. “Let me see her, Scott, or you will see how very tainted my blood is and what I am capable of because of it.”
His eyes were set on the man coming toward him from the side. He was doing his best to keep it all together, but his mind was on Vivica.
“You’re going to make me kill more people than I want to. Let me have her and I will be on my way. I don’t care about you or the clan, or my father. You’re all dead to me.”
Shane meant it too. Scott chuckled. “Come on, Shane, we’re family. You can’t harm your own clan.”
“Like I said, you’re all dead to me and I don’t think of you as my family. You are the enemy.”
