“If she doesn’t learn to get past that, she won’t make a good Alpha for whatever pride she one day leads,” said Luke. “It sure as shit won’t be ours.”
“Too right it won’t.” Tate’s phone began to chime. He fished it out of his pocket and saw that the caller was Deke. Tate answered, “Yeah?”
“Stay calm,” said Deke. “Havana’s fine, but … she was shot outside the shelter just now.”
Tate’s entire body went tight as shock slammed into him. His mind went utterly blank, as if unable to fully process what he’d heard. “What?”
“It was a drive-by shooting,” Deke went on. “We got her inside the shelter. There’s a healer here who fixed her up.”
Tate fisted his hand as panic and fury set in. He let out a stream of vicious curses. “Put her on the phone,” he ordered, needing to hear her voice.
“I can’t, man. She’s out.”
Tate tightened his grip on the cell. “You said she was okay.”
“She is, but she took three bullets—one to the stomach, one to the shoulder, and one to the throat. She lost a lot of blood. She’s sleeping it off in Dawn’s office.”
Three bullets. Tate squeezed his eyes shut and abruptly pushed out of his chair, making it skid backwards. “Fuck.” She could have died. Probably would have choked on her own damn blood if a healer hadn’t been so close. It was a minor miracle that she was alive.
“What’s going on?” asked Luke.
Tate didn’t answer. Didn’t want to say aloud what he’d heard. Didn’t know if he could speak the words without losing it.
His cat hissed and clawed at him, wanting him to move, move, move and get to her. And the internal battle that Tate had been waging against the urge to brand her just … ignited. It became a rampant storm inside him that whirled and whirled and whirled. It then abruptly swept outward, smashing his mental shields into nothing. Like that, a primal knowledge hit him so hard it almost made his knees give out.
He took a shuddering breath as several emotions rose up out of nowhere and thundered through him. Satisfaction. Certainty. Pride. Possessiveness. For months, he’d subconsciously prevented that primal knowledge from sinking in. Right then, he didn’t fight it. He let it take hold. Let himself accept it. Havana Ramos was his true mate.
He understood now why he’d felt so driven to mark her. He’d been right in thinking that it hadn’t been about claiming her. No, not even his subconscious would urge him to force a claiming bite on her. It was something else.
He’d involuntarily buried the realization that she was his true mate, keeping it trapped behind a mental wall. But the day she’d told him it was time that they went their own way, that wall had fractured. And the knowledge that she was his had been battering at the wall ever since—driving him to keep her close by whatever means necessary, even if it meant forcing his brand on her.
Not even the joy he felt at accepting the truth could push the anger from his system. His mate had been shot and, worse, he hadn’t been there for her.
“Seriously, Tate, what’s going on?” Luke persisted.
“Drive-by shooting,” Tate told him, his voice guttural, surprised he could speak at all when fury clogged his airways. “Havana was shot.”
“Mother of fuck,” spat Luke.
Tate clenched his hand tighter around his cell. “Tell me you got the bastard who did it, Deke.”
“Wish I could,” replied the enforcer. “We were more worried about getting Havana help. The bullet that hit her throat nicked an artery. The shelter has cameras; they might have caught a decent glimpse of the shooter.”
Nicked an artery.
Tate’s cat hissed out a long breath. Fuck. He stalked out of the room, intent on reaching her. “I’ll be right there. Don’t leave her side, Deke. You watch her every fucking second, you hear me?”
“I hear you. I won’t move from her side,” Deke promised.
Tate rang off and pocketed his phone.
“Hold up, me and Farrell are coming with you,” Luke called out.
Tate said nothing. He didn’t care who came along, providing he reached her fast. Outside, Luke slid into the driver’s seat of the SUV while Farrell rode shotgun. Eager to get to his mate, Tate would have insisted on driving if he was in a fit state to do so. He was close to losing his shit, and having his cat turn into a ball of fury inside him wasn’t helping. So he simply hopped into the rear passenger seat and snapped out, “Drive.”
“I know anger is riding you but lock it down,” said Luke. “She’s fine.”
Tate gritted his teeth, his fists clenched. “She took three bullets.”
“But she survived.”
That wasn’t the fucking point, because … “She took three bullets.” And he hadn’t been there. Hadn’t been able to help her. She could have died.
“And you’ll make sure whoever is responsible pays for that. Take a breath, lock down the anger, and tell your cat to calm his ass down. You have to have a clear head for this, Tate. That’s what she needs from you right now.”
She’d needed a lot of things from Tate, but he’d given her none of them. He’d let her down and, in doing so, hurt her. He wouldn’t do that again.
Drifting in that state that wasn’t quite “awake” yet wasn’t quite “asleep,” Havana frowned when her inner devil nudged her, pushing her to snap out of it. Havana didn’t want to. She was so tired, and her body just felt so heavy. Plus, it was hard to think past the thick fog in her mind.
A muffled cacophony of voices seemed very far away. Still, she could decipher a few of them. Bailey. Aspen. Dawn. Corbin. Tate.
Tate. His rumbly voice pierced right through the fog and caused her system to jumpstart—just his presence could do that.
She mentally scrambled, trying to work out why her devil was in a snit and why she felt so drained.
Her eyes weakly fluttered open. The world was on a tilt. Without lifting her head, she took in the office desk, the black leather chair, the framed pictures on the wall. She knew this room. It was Dawn’s office. And Havana was currently lying on Dawn’s sofa, she realized.
“It had to have been Gideon,” said Aspen, her voice coming from Havana’s left. “I’m not saying he pulled the trigger, I’m just saying he was behind this.”
“Definitely,” agreed Bailey, who seemed to be sitting on Havana’s right. “There’s no one else who’d target her this way.”
“She’s awake,” said Tate.
A pair of jean-clad legs entered Havana’s line of sight. Then Tate crouched in front of her and brushed her hair away from her face. Even though her body had all the enthusiasm of a wilting plant, her pulse nonetheless jumped.
“Hey,” he said, his voice surprisingly soft given that his inky blue eyes were two swirling storms of anger. There was something … different about the way he looked at her. His gaze was more intense than ever before. More piercing. More intimate. But she couldn’t quite reason it out.
“You’re fine,” he went on, lightly dancing his fingertips over her scalp. “Bullets are gone. Your wounds are healed.”