A Curse of Fate (Shifter City Fated Mates #1)

Chapter 37

Chapter

Thirty-Seven

FINLEY

M y early morning skate cleared my mind, and I was no longer on the verge of shifting into my bear and rampaging through the city like a Japanese anime monster.

After my shower, I changed into sweats, knowing I’d be back here in a few hours for our Summit-opening game. When I grabbed my phone, I blinked at the twenty-five missed calls and as many messages. Swiping my screen, I pulled up Kellan’s message thread.

Kel: Fuck! Someone attacked and tried to kidnap our omega. Get home, bro.

There was a twinge in my chest, and a red tinge descended over my vision. Our omega. I might not want her, and I might not like her, but to my bear, no one fucking touched what should be ours.

I didn’t even bother with the rest of the messages, dialing Kellan’s number as I stormed to my car. He answered on the second ring. “What the fuck happened?” I growled, my bear rumbling just below the surface and almost forcing the change.

“She’s okay,” Kellan said in a rush, and I slowed, taking a few deep breaths. If she was okay, then there was no need to get riled up. The normal day-to-day life of that chick was none of my business, even if I did still peel out of the parking lot too fast for my truck.

“I’ll tell you everything when you get home, but just know that she’s alive and unharmed. Hunter has her because his wolf was going psycho. I don’t know what would have happened if she’d been badly hurt.”

“What did she do to cause this? She tried to run, didn’t she?” We both knew she’d fucked up somehow. It was her modus operandi after all.

Kellan fell silent and it was clear I’d gone too far during his crisis of almost losing her. “I’m on my way,” I added in the heavy air. “See you soon.”

He hung up without a word, and I had to reel my animosity in if I didn’t want to lose my pack over this fucking omega. When I reached the family compound, the gate was a tangled mess off to the side of the guardhouse. Which was empty.

My speed picked up as I raced down the street, only to slam on the brakes when Kenzo hauled ass from his house and waved me down. I opened my window to my brother’s concerned expression. “Is she okay?”

Apparently, I was the last to know about this attack, but at least I had the answers to that particular question. “Yeah, Kellan said she’s fine. I don’t know any details about the attack, I was just heading to the house for an update.”

Kenzo rubbed a hand over his face and through his dark hair. “We all heard the crash and fighting, but by the time anyone made it into the street, Hunter was racing her into the house. For a second, I thought the worst…”

He cared about how this would affect me, but there was no need. As if losing an omega, I didn’t even have, would break me more than I already was. “I’m assuming the council and enforcer squads will be here soon.” It was standard procedure during an attack.

“Pretty sure they’re already at your house. A bunch of cars raced past before, and I wasn’t sure if I should get my girls somewhere safe or not. Why the fuck didn’t you answer your phone?”

I hadn’t even looked to see who else I’d missed calls from. “I was on the ice. I didn’t know any of this until I checked my phone after, and I came right here.”

He sucked in a deep breath, and then another, until his calmer spirit returned. “Okay, well, get to your house and find out what happened. You can update me later at the game.”

I slapped a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Thanks for caring.”

Kenzo shook his head like I was an idiot. “Brother, you’re family. If you break, I break. And I’m not ready for that, so I need to make sure you remain whole.”

My smile was brief and forced. “Pretty sure that ship has already sailed, but I admire your positivity.”

He bestowed one of his all-knowing grins on me. “You’ll see the truth one day. You might have been broken in the past, but you’re kintsugi. Repaired with gold . You know that. You just have to accept the truth of who you are now, my friend.”

The Japanese art of repairing their items with gold and proclaiming them better than the original had long fascinated me. Probably because in those brief moments when Kenzo called me kintsugi, I almost believed him. Or at least I wanted to believe him.

My brother returned to his house and mates, leaving me to head for home. Half a dozen cars were already parked out the front of our house, and I pulled into my normal spot in the garage, before striding up to the first floor with my gym bag slung over my shoulder.

Everyone was out back by the pool, standing in a large, noisy group of shifters. Fuck . It’d take us months to get their scents out of here.

My pack stood a little apart, with Kellan and Hunter on either side of the omega, who was pale and all but expressionless, staring into space, while a dozen or more men argued around her.

Slade was there as well, to the left of Hunter, with five members of his flight squad at his back. None of them touched him because they valued their lives, but clearly this was being taken quite seriously.

Ditching my bag, I strolled over to stand beside Kellan, my appearance interrupting the argument. A lot of the council members were here, including Warrick, Soren, Butler, Gerlason, and even Sissily Buttern.

She was the most dominant female in Golden Claw, and a giant pain in the ass.

For too many years she’d been trying to get her claws into Hunter, in the misguided belief that as the strongest alpha female she needed to command the strongest alpha males. She wanted our pack right or wrong, despite already having two alphas bonded to her.

If I’d had to place money on who was responsible for the attack on the omega, it’d be squarely on Sissily. Emmeline was the final piece to our quintet, and if we bonded, the power she’d command would be a direct challenge to Sissily’s perceived spot as the top dog.

“Now that Fin has arrived, we’ll go over everything again.” Hunter’s voice was a snap of command that shut everyone up.

Half the shifters lowered their eyes to the second-most dominant one in the room, while the dragon just smirked.

Not for the first time I was glad to be scent matched into such a strong pack. The four of us were enough, we didn’t even need the omega.

I settled in beside Kellan, who avoided looking my way. It bothered me that he was still pissed, but I would make it up to him later. For now, I focused on Hunter as he detailed the series of events from the attack.

“Emme was woken just before five by a call from Beta Jones Shaw, one of our security guards. He told her that Chelsea had left a bag at the guard’s hut for her, and since Emme had been expecting books from the omega, she thought nothing of it. We were in the gym, so she hurried down in the hopes of getting back before we finished. It was our guards who called her, and she trusted that they wouldn’t hurt her. The fact that a traitor came into our employment will be dealt with swiftly, but for now we need to figure out who else was involved.”

Emmeline just stood there, her body tense even as her face remained expressionless. I didn’t know anything about the omega, but I’d seen trauma in the mirror before, and it was clear that while Hunter relived her attack, she had retreated into herself.

“Another of our guards, Beta Harry Stilson is dead,” Hunter continued, and I felt a pang at the loss of life from such a young shifter. No matter what else happened here, he was the one who deserved justice and retribution. The omega was fucking fine. “His death will not go unpunished,” Hunter echoed my thoughts, “even if it takes us months to track every last one of them down.”

Kellan nodded. “Yep. We only made it in time to save Emme because he called us after he was ordered away.”

With that statement Emmeline gasped, her face crumpling as she rubbed her hand over her eyes. I hadn’t noticed until now, but her hair hung in wet strands around her face, and she was dressed in ratty old sweats. “Harry saved my life,” she choked out in a soft voice. She was generally filled with sass and attitude, but today she appeared dull and transparent. “Jones was one more hit from crashing through the door, and I wasn’t strong enough to fight him off. I hit him as hard as I could with a tree branch, and he was only down for seconds.”

The council started to shout questions, but Slade’s rumble silenced them all in an instant. “My team will investigate any shifter who was in the area at the time of the attack,” he said. “We have many new alphas and shifters here for the Summit, which will make it difficult to trace those out of place. Everyone is out of place.”

Warrick started to pace close to where we stood. “Clearly whoever is behind this attack wanted to take advantage of the confusion of the Summit.” A snarl ripped from his chest that made it sound as if he was taking this quite personally. The fucking alpha she chose over us . “I promised to keep Emme safe, and I’ll be patrolling the streets with my squad for the next week to ensure nothing like this happens again.”

Emmeline shot him a grateful smile, and it pissed me right off that she offered such a kindness to an alpha that wasn’t even hers. She’d fallen right into their pack like they were her scent matches, while simultaneously rejecting us. There was a reason I believed her to be toxic to our pack dynamic, and she had proven it time and time again.

Hunter wrapped his arm around the omega, and I was surprised when she let herself rest against him. Their scents were intertwined, and upon closer inspection I could see faint remnants of bites and hickeys across her tanned throat.

Kellan had warned me that our entitled alpha had laid his claim after her attack. If his wolf went wild, he wouldn’t be sated until she was safe in his arms. No doubt Emmeline took advantage of that situation, lapping up whatever Hunter offered, while walking away with no promises for a future.

They weren’t bonded, that much was clear. She wore only superficial marks, which would fade soon enough.

“Is there a reason you haven’t bonded her into your pack yet?” Sissily piped up, her voice dripping in condescension. “You’d save us all a lot of trouble if you kept your omega safe, and not a free wolf wandering around for all to scent.”

If she bonded into our pack, our scents would mix and she’d wear our bites to warn all other shifters that she was off limits. We’d also be able to feel her through the bond and know when she was in trouble. Not that Emmeline gave a single fuck.

Kellan’s voice grew uncharacteristically hard. “The fact that she’s living in our house should be warning enough, and it needs to be known that we will destroy any shifter who touches our mate.”

I hated the threads of sorrow in his voice. I needed Kellan’s upbeat nature to keep me from drowning in my past, which was another reason to wish the omega had never ventured into our lives.

Almost everyone ignored Sissily, choosing instead to discuss their next course of action. I forced myself to breathe through my annoyance, hoping this wouldn’t impact today’s game. That had to go ahead, kicking off the season, and returning us to our normal routines.

“We will bring Harry’s body to his family,” Alpha Geralson said, his voice breaking. “He was a good kid, and I will be promising them that this will not go unpunished.”

The scent of chocolate and honey grew stronger and deeper as Emmeline’s sadness seeped through the room, and while technically she didn’t do anything wrong, I wasn’t about to cut her any slack. She might not have tried to run, but she should have let one of us know she was heading out on her own. She’d been warned of the dangers of being an unmated omega.

I wasn’t about victim blaming, but it was hard not to argue that some fault rested with her. She was an omega and knew the dangers. Knew and ignored.

At some point Emme would be forced to choose her future, but it’d be too late for me.

I’d never bond her into the quintet.

Fucking never.