“What made him choose to fight?” Ellie asked.
Aric heard the tremor in her voice. She cared for his friend, but he didn’t know how much. Ellie was private. Even when he’d made it known to his sister that he wanted Jordan, she’d refused to let him near her friend. She was so protective of Jordan he often wondered why. She said Jordan wasn’t someone he could just use for one season of mating heat and let go. He’d been forced to admit to her that he wanted more than that before she agreed to even discuss her friend with him.
“Some of the enforcers turned violent against the women,” Nathan answered.
Ellie gasped.
Aric nodded. “They wanted them to be forced to mate with them. Caleb brought it up to Rocco. What surprised him most was that the old man agreed with the enforcers.”
Ellie stood. Her pale features had turned even ashier. She headed for the outdoors. Their house was surrounded by a large dense forest and Aric knew where she was going. He stood and followed behind his sister.
He found her sitting on the two-person swing a few hundred feet away.
“Are you okay?” He sat next to her.
She turned to face him. He was taken aback by the agony he saw in her eyes. “Do you know if he’s okay?”
He pulled her into his side and held her. “I do. He’s fine.”
He knew she could hear the words he didn’t say. For now. Caleb was going up against a large number of people. The fight could spill into their territory, but until it did, they needed to stay out of it. Caleb needed to prove he was the Alpha his pack needed.
“How did it go last night?” Ellie asked after a few minutes.
“It was good. We didn’t find any human intruders.”
She turned. Sad lines deepened on the sides of her mouth. “That’s not what I meant.”
Their deal. That’s what she’d been referring to. In order for her help, he’d offered to let her know how things went with Jordan.
“I marked her.”
Her blue eyes went wide. She flung her arms around his neck. “I’m so happy for you, Aric.” She sighed into his neck. “Jordan is perfect.”
He cleared his throat. “I already know that.”
Ellie pulled back, her smile dimmed as she stared at him. “What went wrong?”
“She left me.”
“I don’t understand. You said you marked her. She’s yours.”
“I still needed to do a perimeter check after and asked her to wait for me, but she left before I returned.”
Ellie bit her lip. “Have you called her?”
He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck. “Hell yes! I’ve called her. I went by her house. Hell, I even went by the school.”
She grinned. “Aric?”
“What?”
“It’s Saturday.” She smiled at him as if he were an idiot.
“So?”
“We don’t have school on Saturdays.”
“I know that, but I had to check. I needed to know where she went.”
She hugged him again. And he let her. His baby sister was giving him some of the comfort he needed. For a future Alpha, he felt mighty insecure when it came to his mate. Jordan could run him around in so many circles he didn’t know if he was coming or going.
“Don’t worry big brother. You’ll have your mate soon.” She winked. “I have a plan.”
Thank God for his sister. He had no idea what else to do. He’d been attracted to Jordan the moment he saw her. The first whiff of her scent and his wolf had been in agreement. She was theirs. But Jordan had been young, too young. And he knew she wasn’t from his world. She didn’t know what it was to be mated to his kind. There was no divorce. There was no other person. There was just the two of them. Working through everything, together. So he’d been waiting and hoping that with time she’d want to be with him.
“I’m sorry about Caleb, Ellie.”
She shook her head. “It’s alright. I’m sure all will be fine.”
She lied to him. Or maybe she lied to herself. Aric didn’t have the heart to tell her that things were a lot more complicated than they seemed. He and his brother and father had their enforcers on alert. The fight in Caleb’s pack was going to be dirty. And it was only a matter of time before it touched their grounds.
“Aric?”
“Yes, little pup?”
She smiled at his pet name for her. “You need to understand that you’re going to have to work on getting Jordan to open her heart and let you in now. She is a little rough around the edges since we were in high school. Kids tended to be awful to her back then.”
Rage bubbled in his veins. “What do you mean? How were they awful?”
Ellie shrugged. “You know boys. She’s curvy. They called her names. But she always fought back. Not necessarily with her fists, but she could cut a person down with a few words. It was her defense mechanism.”