Air of Seduction (Elemental Enforcers #3)

Chapter 15

Ronan

My chest constricts as I watch the taillights of the SUV carrying Payton away from me. She shouldn’t be leaving. She should be staying with us until we’ve caught the master, and all his followers have been eradicated or contained.

I lock my knees to stop myself from submitting to the urge to run after the vehicle. What if something happens to her while I’m not there to help her? She’s only human and can’t protect herself against supernaturals.

It’s unlikely, as Payton pointed out to me, that a vampire will come after them now that Barry and his two friends are dead. But it’s not impossible.

White hot rage boils up inside me, and I round on Noah. “This is your fucking fault.” I step right up into his face, my eyes less than two inches from his. “If you hadn’t scared Olivia half to death, they wouldn’t be leaving right now. They would be coming back with us to Aidan’s place, where we could have kept an eye on them.”

His face contorts with anger a moment before his hands slam into my chest with enough force I have to take a couple steps back not to fall on my ass. “She’s mine. Mine to protect. And I’ll protect her wherever she’s going.”

I pause as shock reverberates through me. It never even crossed my mind, but it does explain his unusual behavior. “Mine, as in mate?”

His body loses all its tension, and his head tips forward as if in defeat. “Yes. Olivia is my mate. I knew it the moment I heard her voice on the phone.”

Lifting his head, he buries his hands in his tight black curls. His eyes are squeezed shut. “All I want is to hold her and protect her. But I realize that I fucked up, and now she can’t get away from me fast enough.”

The agonized desperation in his voice resonates inside me, but I quickly push it away. I understand his pain because of what happened two centuries ago with Patricia. But Payton isn’t my mate. She can’t be. Even though I can feel the increasing distance between us like a yawning hole in my chest.

“Let’s go.” Aidan stops next to us. “I think we’ve attracted enough attention for tonight. I’m sure the cops are already on their way.”

I glance around and notice a group of people staring at us from across the road. And there are more both up and down the street. Shit.

Aidan and Ingrid start walking up the road, and Noah and I follow. When we get to the large black SUV, one of at least three Aidan owns, we quickly get in and Aidan takes off up the road.

“Get ahold of Maria.” Aidan glances at his mate, Ingrid, in the passenger seat. “And tell her we’ve been spotted. She knows what to do.”

While Ingrid talks to Maria, my mind goes back to Payton. My muscles are still tense with how desperately I want to go after her and beg her to come back with me, where I can keep an eye on her.

But I know she won’t. She won’t leave Olivia by herself, and I doubt ten wild horses could drag Olivia anywhere near Noah.

My brows push together as I turn to look at the water elemental next to me. He’s staring out of the window with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before. Utter devastation.

It suddenly hits me, and a shiver runs down my spine. Three of the elementals have now found their mates, and that only leaves…me.

Markus hasn’t found his mate, either, but he’s not an elemental like the rest of us. He’s something else. I’m not sure even he himself knows what he is.

I pull in a ragged breath. My chest feels tight, and my lungs don’t seem to work properly, leaving me short of breath.

It’s inevitable. I’ll find my mate, as well, if I haven’t already. My chest tightens even more, squeezing the rest of the air out of my lungs.

No. No, no, no. I can’t go through that again. Losing someone precious. Someone unique. A tiny being who might have looked like me but had her mother’s eyes. If she had lived.

∞∞∞

Markus

I stare at Noah.

A mate. Another true mate, and all within days of each other.

My gaze swings to Ronan. But he’s not looking at me. His forearms are resting on his knees, and his gaze is on the floor at his feet.

My expression tightens in a frown. I don’t like the defeated feeling he’s giving off. It’s nothing new by any means, but the way he behaved around Payton, I thought he might finally be on his way to getting over Patricia. But no such luck, it seems.

I’ve only lost one elemental in the last two thousand years since the first one was born, and that was because he took the wrong mate. The fact that they didn’t truly love each other killed them both. And that disaster was the reason we took an oath never to fuck a human and never to mate. The first elemental mate was a human, and I became convinced that her nature was part of the reason why it went wrong.

It seems I’ve been proven wrong about that, though. Erica, Ingrid, and Olivia are all human, and Erica and Ingrid have both turned out to be a blessing for the team. They’ve even adopted some of their mate’s abilities, which was an outcome none of us predicted.

What will happen with Olivia remains to be seen, but it’s vital that she comes to accept Noah as her mate like the other women have. Because I doubt either of them will live for long if she doesn’t.

A true mate is different than a taken mate, something I’ve just fully understood in the last few days. True mates are fated, and the bond starts forming as soon as the two people meet. It might take them a little while to understand what they are to each other, but seldom more than a few days. A taken mate on the other hand is only a mate by choice and becomes one only after the act of mating.

I study the blond man in front of me. He’s adamant that she’s not, but I would be very surprised if Payton doesn’t turn out to be Ronan’s mate. We might have to help him see that, though.

I don’t know why the loss of Patricia struck him so deeply, but it did. And I might have been careless and allowed him too much time to get over her, but that stops now. He can’t deny fate any more than the rest of us. And if I have to be cruel to help him see that, I will.