When We Were Mates (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 134

Demetra Pride Covenant.

I know that smell.

It’s not my imagination.

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I know Emris scent the way I know my own heartbeat…the way I know the sound of the kids laughing from three rooms away.

Emris is in these woods.

He found me.

I look at the Lycan… Lake and I don’t even try to hide it. I can’t. It’s written across my whole face in letters too big to cover, and I watch his eyes read every one of them, and I don’t care. I take one step back from him.

And I scream with everything I have.

“EMRIS! EMRIS! EMRIS!”

My throat tears on the third one and I don’t care about that either.

“Lyc!” Eva comes crashing back through the brush, breathlessly. “They are here. Their Deltas and Zetas are everywhere in the woods. We have to go, we have to go now-”

“EMRIS!”

And then like something unlocking in the air between us… I feel the mind–link opens on my fourth yell. It hits me in the chest like a hand pressed flat over my heart, warm and immediate and him. I grab my own dress at the chest because I need something to hold onto.

“Demi?”

“Em.” My voice breaks in the mind link. “Emris. I’m here. I’m in the middle of the tall trees, there are rocks near me, I think I can hear the river. I think….yes, I can hear the river moving to my left. Emris, I’m scared. I’m so scared-”

“I’m coming. You will see me. Keep talking.”

“I’m here. I’m right here. I’m not moving, I’m-”

“How is she able to sniff him?” Lake’s voice snarls across the mind–link like cold water. I blink back to the woods, to the dark, to him standing a few feet away watching me with an expression I can’t fully read. He’s not running. He’s not panicking. He’s asking a question really calmly like the answer to it is more interesting to him than the pack closing in from every direction.

“This section of the woods is full of Ghost Ash,” he says, mostly to Eva, eyes still on me. “The bark releases a sedative compound into the air when the trees are disturbed. It masks scent trails, dulls the tracking instinct.

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Chapter 132

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Makes it nearly impossible to locate your mate through smell alone.” His head tilts. “So how is she doing it?”

“Lyc-”

“Stop it, Eva. I’m not done talking to her!”

And something inside me the part that has been terrified since the moment he blurred in front of me at the club, since he kissed me without my permission, since he wrapped his arm around my waist in the dark and told me I’d never see my family again… that part snaps.

“No. You are done!”

The mind–link pulses warm at the back of my skull. Emris is closer now, much closer and it pours into my spine like steel being poured into a mold. I feel myself solidify with confidence from the inside out. My chin comes up. My shoulders drop back. I am an Alpha’s daughter and my mate is fifty yards away and this man has not broken me yet.

“Wow. Now, where did this confidence come from?”

“And where did you get your audacity!? To think…what, that you could hurt my mate, take me from my children, compel me like I’m nothing and I would just fall at your feet so that I can be Luna…to you? Is that what the women in your life do to climb up the social ladder? Is that who your damn mother is?”

Eva looks at me, shocked.

Lake’s face does something I haven’t seen it do all night.

“Be careful, Demetra Pride-”

“No. You be careful. My father is an Alpha. I could be Luna to any pack I wanted. Any pack in this territory but I would rather die than be Luna to you. Do you hear me? I would rather – who do you think you are? To touch me. To bring me here. To stand there and offer me mercy like you’re doing me a favor-” My breath is coming too fast and my eyes are burning and I cannot tell if I’m more terrified or furious and honestly it doesn’t matter.

“You and everything about this are a nightmare-”

He looks at me differently now. Like I’ve become a different problem than the one he came here to solve.

When he opens his mouth, his canines catch the moonlight…and they are pristine.

He runs his tongue across them.

“Then you’ve chosen.” His voice is very soft. “I was giving you a way out. Yeah, I know you’re an Alpha’s daughter so I thought you were smart enough to take it.” One finger rises slowly and a single claw extends from the tip.

“Now you can meet the same fate with the mate you love so much—”

A sound comes from the left and it’s the leaves bring disturbed.

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Chapter 132

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Lake’s head turns to it with the reflex of a predator and his eyes fix on the dark between the trees with perfect confidence, like whatever is coming is something he has already accounted for and won against in his head.

This is my only second.

I step back with the weight on my toes and immediately Eva moves. She slides behind me like she was waiting for exactly this and her body blocks my exit.

I look back at Lake who is still distracted and I bare my claws.

It hurts. It always hurts cause I am an Omega. I am not necessarily built for battle so my body does not do this easily but I drag them out anyway because my children are somewhere waiting for their mother and pain is a very small price. I swing for Eva’s side and she catches my wrist mid–air, twists, bends it back like I’m nothing.

I bite down on the sound that tries to escape my throat.

Then Riley steps out of the shadow.

I only met her once… an hour ago, maybe less. She moves like smoke. Her arm swings low and fast and I see something leave her fingers. It’s sharp and it moves too quickly to track… then the needles find Eva’s back.

Eva cannot make a sound.

She just… stops. Her grip on my wrist loosens degree by degree until my hand is simply free, and she stands there before her knees buckle.

Riley catches her before she hits the ground. Sets her down gently. Looks up at me with calm eyes and a short nod – go.

And then…all at once, from every direction, from between every tree and behind every shadow, the Covenant Pack’s Zetas emerge from the left. The Deltas from the right. Ahead of me, behind me, above me on the ridge are Slade’s gammas.

Eva is on the ground, choking quietly, and Lake looks at her for exactly one second just long enough to confirm she’s alive and then his eyes come back to me. To the ring of Zetas closing in around me like a wall being built in real time. He stands in the center of it all and does not move. Does not reach for anything. Neither does not run.

“Where’s…where’s Emris?” I’m turning my head left and right, fast, scanning every shadow between every trunk. Riley is pulling me backward. “Where is he? Is he is he here? I felt the mind–link, I felt him—”

“I’m here.”

Emris‘ voice arrives through the bond first and then I see him.

His eyes.

High up, in the crook of a massive ash tree at the edge of the clearing. It slitted like the one I remember years ago. He is also folded into the shadow of the tree like he’s been part of this forest the whole time.

I watch it happen the slight adjustment in Lake’s posture as if he knows Emris is close but just can’t find him.

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Chapter 132

Slade comes forward from the tree line.

“You’re surrounded,” he says. “Surrender.”

Lake doesn’t look at him.

“Where’s the Trybrid?”

Not am I surrounded, how many, what are my options. Just…where’s the Trybrid.

Slade’s eyes cut sideways. “Gammas!”

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The Lion pride Gammas step with shock sticks crackling literal lightning across the trunks and the bracken and the faces of everyone standing in this circle.

Lake looks at the shock sticks.

Then looks away.

“Where is Emris?”

The growl underneath it is different from the one that dropped Eva to her knees. It moves through the ground. I feel it in my feet.

Then his hand goes to his pocket and what comes out fits between two fingers. He raises it to his lips and the moment I recognize the shape of it. It’s a whistle. I gasp so sharp it scrapes my throat.

He knows Emris‘ weakness!

Lake puts it to his lips and blows.

The sound is nothing to my ears but I watch what it does to Emris from thirty feet away and it is awful. I watch him flinch. Watch something in him resist and lose. Watch his hands grip the branch so hard—

And then his eyes go red.

Not the silver–slit of a hybrid tracking prey but Red.

From the top of the tree, he drops straight down and there is no sound. All until he lands a lethal arc of his arm as his claws find Lake’s back.

Anyone who has ever seen Emris fight knows what those claws do on contact but Lake is still standing.

I see the fabric of the Lycan’s shirt part across his back in four clean lines but just as the wound opens, it