Beaufort Creek Shifters (10 book series)
The Bear’s Arranged Mate Chapter 13

Jermaine

Twenty missed calls.

That was how many times Elva had called me in the past hour.

The first few tries were to be expected. I hadn't anticipated her to sleep in so long, but I'd known she would see those texts eventually. I'd known she would respond.

I just hadn't anticipated that it would be like this.

The way my phone rattled on the desk was as aggravating as her scent still clinging to the pillows of my bed. It was everywhere-cream and citrus. It clung to the air. It stuck to the walls. Hell, it had pretty much taken residence inside my nose at this point. Spraying bleach did nothing but make my sinuses ache. I was exhausted from cleaning my house of her presence-and equally exhausted from discovering how hard it was to scrub her from my life.

Angry vibrations invaded my thoughts. I lifted my phone from the nightstand and chucked it across the room. I wasn't in the mood for her text messages. She had distracted me enough these past few weeks.

And that distraction had cost me a security breach.

I scraped the back of my neck while trying to focus on the monitors in front of me. I'd thought an afternoon would encourage her to chill out, but it had done nothing except imbue her with strength. She had doubled down on guilting me. The accusations were getting pretty wild at this point.

Then again, what else had I expected from Elva? She was a tiger shifter, a reckless party girl, a woman totally insatiable when it came to carnal pleasures. Giving her everything hadn't protected her from harm. We still got attacked. At least this way, it wouldn't happen again.

Liar.

I was protecting her. I was trying to make sure she didn't get caught in the crossfire.

Liar, liar.

I squeezed my eyes shut and dug my fingers into my curls, seeking purchase, seeking something to keep me from falling off the edge. This was just another mess. Elva would keep calling and texting until I answered. She would get what she wanted. Which was an explanation.

I'd tried to give her the right reasons. I wasn't sure I could protect her properly, so I'd told her that much. Everything else about us not connecting was just filler content. If I could paint it up to being a bad match, then maybe she would let it go. We were nothing more than fuck buddies at this point. What were we losing exactly?

Everything.

It had been on my mind the whole time. Kissing her meant risking everything-and that was exactly what had happened.

I did more than kiss her.l glanced at the screen, trying to shake myself out of my funk. I did so much more than I should have.

I clicked through a few screens. I checked the footage from last week. I scrolled through the files that Tanner had uploaded. During our last breach, he'd noticed that some of the footage had been missing. It was like someone had physically erased the copies from the hard drive.

But they hadn't erased it from the cloud.

Once the video footage was converted to a watchable file, a copy of it got uploaded to a secure cloud network that only Blake could access inside his mansion. We made sure to take enough precautions to keep people from being able to find that footage. Thankfully, no one else knew about it.

That gave us an advantage.

One of the files caught my eye. It was marked as urgent. I double-clicked it and sat back, studying the grainy footage on the screen. That was odd, too. Most of our video files were high definition. But it appeared that the transference of the file had tampered with the quality.

I would have to talk to Tanner about that.

The video played uninterrupted for several minutes. I squinted at the screen, scratched my chin, and then rewound the footage. About an hour later, I was frozen by my anger, fused to the chair in a way that had never happened in my life. What I saw on the screen baffled me.

Someone had physically walked up to the security booth and gotten inside. They knew the code. They knew just when to access the structure between shifts. They used the three minutes that they had to hack into our network and broadcast our footage to an undetermined location.

Minutes. It had taken minutes for this to happen.

Which meant that we didn't just have a breach. We had an entire mole in our unit.

And I would have to find out who it was.

My breath caught as I sat back and stared blankly at the screen. Tanner was my first suspect. I hated to think of him in those terms, but I had to be unbiased about it. He was the one to supply this footage. That meant he was the one who could have altered the images to be grainy. He could have very well given out a code for the door and then distracted me long enough to get someone inside.

A distraction, I thought as my spine straightened abruptly. Like the way Elva has been distracting me.

That wasn't possible. To have two infiltrators in the Beaufort Creek Pack would be outlandish. Veronica had switched to our side, so I didn't entirely suspect her hand in this-but was it really so impossible to imagine? Maybe she had convinced Elva to do something. Or maybe Elva had been planning it all along.

During the attack last night, she hadn't been the focal point of the assault. The wolves had been more concerned with me. I could see that now that I wasn't in the middle of the situation. They had favored me-they'd nearly ignored her. Probably because they were working together.

And why hadn't they followed us back to the ranch? It would have been easy enough. We could have led them right to my door.

I could have led them right to my door.

I smacked my forehead. "I'm so dense."

This footage wasn't right. I knew I had to show someone, but I couldn't determine who. The best person to contact would have to be my alpha. He was the least likely to be on the side of the Gilberts.

And if he was the mole, then that meant our end, didn't it?

I sighed while unplugging the flash drive from the computer. This wouldn't have gone under my radar if I had just been on top of things. Elva had been the perfect distraction. Whether that was on purpose or not was irrelevant at this point. I had to get to my alpha and get a plan going before something happened.

Before it was too late.

Everything around me seemed to spin together. Cream and citrus clung to my nostrils. It was impossible to tell scents apart with Elva invading my mind every few minutes. My body seemed to be going through withdrawals without her physical presence. Which didn't even make sense.

She wasn't my mate. She would never be my mate. The only explanation for my reaction was purely the fact that I was addicted to her.

I had been subject to such things in the past. Granted, I hadn't spent much time on the dating market, but I had been susceptible to my feelings. And they were just that-feelings. They could be sorted out and dissolved with the right amount of work. Maybe I was the one who needed to go to therapy.

I shook away the thoughts that bothered me most. They attempted to stick around, but I wouldn't allow it, tucking the drive into my pocket so I could take it to Blake. Unless he had already seen the footage. But if he had, why wouldn't he have contacted me? One of the alarms for the perimeter beeped. I bowed toward the computer, diving into my work as I should have done weeks ago. There were multiple parts of me that were disappointed in my own alpha for making this happen. If he hadn't been blinded by the need to protect his pack, then maybe he would have seen something like this coming.

Desperation did that to people, to good people. We were so focused on making things the way we wanted that we couldn't see the forest for the trees.

Damn it, I hated it when I slapped myself in the face with logic. I wanted Elva to be right for me so badly that I couldn't see how wrong she was. I had been right from the very beginning. She and I were never meant to be together.

It was possible for my alpha to be wrong. I just didn't like the idea of that.

Because if he could be wrong, then our entire pack could fall apart.

And that wasn't an idea I wanted to entertain.

The alarm beeped again. I checked the perimeter cameras, noticing that Neil and Tanner were making their rounds. It was nothing more than a few kids activating the sensors.

I sat back. That was odd. The sensors shouldn't have been activated during the day. That was only something we did after hours in the evening.

Something fishy was going on. And I had a feeling it wasn't because we were seated so close to the ocean.

One more sweep through the cameras told me that everything was under control for now. I stood from the chair, locked the computer, and then went to the door, preparing to grab the mace from the locked cabinet. A fist landed on the window of the door. It made me jump back.

"Announce yourself!" I shouted. "Step back from the door!"

Elva came into view.

I nearly lunged through the window. She had some nerve showing up here after I'd told her to stay away from me. And since I didn't quite have the mole figured out, I didn't want her to distract me all over again.

That was probably her whole plan.

"I said, step back," I growled as I yanked the door open.

She crossed her arms. "You also told me to announce myself."

"And yet you can't do either one, can you?"

"I can't when you've just told me to do two things."

I scoffed. "El, you know that's literally bullshit."

"You're the one who decided to dump me via text. You're the one who's digging up a bunch of bullshit. I'm worth a phone call, you know."

"I don't have time for this."

I loaded the mace into my utility belt and locked the security door. After double-checking that everything was in place, I slid past Elva and started walking the safe route back to the mansion.

I got Tanner on the radio. "Gummy bear to silver fox, the bird is leaving the nest."

"Copy. Over."

Elva trotted up next to me. "Gummy bear?"

"Don't start, El. I have a job to do."

"And what's that?"

"I have to protect this pack. I can't take any chances."

It was true-and even though I had just given Tanner my intentions, I still had a protocol to follow. Besides, if we did have a mole, then doing anything out of the ordinary would draw attention. Like resisting a fight with Elva.

I glanced at her, noticing the red around her eyes and the puffiness of her cheeks. She was definitely in rough shape.

But that wasn't my problem anymore.

"You have some nerve," she spat, "kicking me to the curb like that."

"Yet you're here chasing me. Go figure."

She sneered. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you have no idea how to love yourself, so you keep chasing things that just aren't for you."

"You're such a prick, Jermaine."

I stopped dead in my tracks. "Am I wrong? How would you know? You refuse to go therapy and you won't hear a damn criticism from anyone around you unless it's to your benefit. But what you don't realize, Elva, is that this is for your benefit." "That doesn't even make sense."

"I can't protect you. I could never protect you. I tried and I failed. That means the mate bond ritual didn't work, okay? It's over. We're not mates."

She blinked away tears. I left her in the dust, picking up the pace to get to my alpha. He had to see this footage. He needed to understand that our livelihoods were in danger. And while I was trying to save the pack, Elva was trying to drag me into her drama. If she wasn't so obsessed with herself, then maybe she could help me out.

"Don't walk away from me, Jermaine," she said as she ran after me. "You can't just treat me like trash because you're the alpha's best friend!"

I spun around on my heel. "Just because I'm Blake's best friend doesn't mean I get special treatment."

"But you do, Jermaine. You get treated like a prince while the rest of us have to be content living on the outskirts."

"That's not even true."

She puffed up. In the sheen of moisture collecting around the rims of her eyes, I noticed the land had changed. It wasn't the bright evergreen on the cusp of winter. It wasn't the crisp autumn sun glimmering above. It was something else, something darker. Something massive.

And it was heading right toward us.