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Mickey nodded along with me, but his serious facial expression didn’t change. “Oh I know that. It’s just the threats have started pouring in right away. Some of them look a lot more serious than others. I’m worried that Spike wasn’t prepared for this.”
I scanned my eyes over the messages even though I didn’t really want to see them at all. I wasn’t big on the Internet and social media. Truth be told, I found the whole thing like a very toxic playground, and the last place I needed to be in. I thought that Mickey felt the same way about things as I did, but I guess this job had changed things. Now he needed to be at the helm of everything, whether he wanted to be or not.
I sighed heavily. This was going to change a lot of things, wasn’t it? I wasn’t the only one about to be really affected by this. All of us were.
“I don’t think we need to take online threats too seriously,” I finally declared as I handed the phone back to Mickey. “When celebrities are involved, this sort of thing is to be expected. I know it sucks, and it will never be something that I understand, but some people spend their whole lives sending death threats to these people for actually no reason. That isn’t going to change now, is it? It’s just something that we have to deal with all while it’s happening here. But we can’t take it too seriously…”
“You think we should just ignore this?” Mickey snapped. This was enough to make Liam spin around in his seat to join in on the conversation. Although Arya and Sarah remained on his screen. “I don’t want to ignore anything that could be a problem…”
“Maybe we should take it to Spike when he arrives and see what he thinks?” Liam offered.
I guess we were all going to have different opinions on how to handle things, because the reason we all worked together so well was because of our different backgrounds in the armed forces. Liam was the field medic and Mickey was the intelligence and communication officer. We all looked at things differently, but I was leaning more towards Liam’s idea this time. I really wasn’t convinced that we needed to take this online stuff so seriously, but I also didn’t want to make the official decision to ignore it just in case.
“Spike should be here soon anyway,” I said. “So we can see what he says.”
Mickey ran his eyes over the messages again, frowning as he did. I wished I knew what to say to make him chill out a bit. It was going to be fine, I was sure of it.
“Oh, it looks like they are going back to filming,” I noted as I spotted Sarah and Arya moving off-screen. “Should I go for another walkabout? Check on things again?”
“Actually, I think I might do that,” Mickey replied. “Liam, can you stay here and keep on the cameras? And Brock, maybe you can shift and have a runaround?”
I couldn’t get annoyed with him putting me in that position, even if it meant I couldn’t get another look at Arya. My wolf nose was the best out of the group, so if anyone was going to pick something up, it would be me. I nodded sharply in agreement.
“Of course, and if I notice anything that seems untoward, I will come back here.”
Mickey really was holding on to this like it was something to panic about. He didn’t look like he trusted me and Liam enough to deal with this. And not because he couldn’t trust us––of course he could, he knew that. We had been through far too much together to not solely rely on one another. We put our lives in one another’s hands all the time while in the military. But because he didn’t think that we were taking it seriously enough.
Well, I might not have been too worried about the threats because I wasn’t convinced that anything would truly happen, but I would show Mickey that I would take it seriously for him. Because if he was stressed out, then I would help out.
“I will scour the area all around, not just the building but the land as well,” I promised him. “And sniff out what I can.”
Thankfully Liam seemed to pick up on what I was doing and he joined in too. “Oh yeah, for sure, and I will keep checking out different camera angles and making sure that I keep an eye on everything happening. Then as soon as Spike arrives, we can talk this through.”
Mickey smiled gratefully, but I could still see the stress rolling out from his shoulders. We were going to have to keep an eye on him through all of this. Sure, he could cope in war zones, but this was something that was alien to all of us.
I was going to have to keep my fated mate news to myself. Thank goodness. I wasn’t quite ready to share it anyway, but now I couldn’t because we had other complications to deal with. I left the headquarters room more mixed up than before.
I found a private spot where I could strip down and hide my clothing so no one noticed and moved my clothes, before I allowed my animal to shine free. I began to shift into my wolf form, shaking off all the stress I had as a human to become my most basic, instinctive self.
It felt like I was stretching out my body every time I shifted. It was like a part of me had been coiled up for way too long and needed to be set free. This was a time when I could really focus on what was important to me, because everything else would simply dissipate immediately. Today was no different. As the fur sprouted from me and my whole body changed, I was refreshed and renewed. But today, there was a brand new contentedness to my wolf form. I knew that I had discovered my one true love and that shone free in my warm, wolf heart.
I could run faster, hear better, see further…or at least it felt that way. Maybe it was just the sense of joy surging through my veins, making sure I felt everything much more intensely. It could have even been the fact that I had someone I really needed to protect now. I doubted that Arya would be the target of any sinister plot since she wasn’t famous, but being Sarah’s personal assistant had to bring some danger with it. If Mickey was right, then I needed to take this on board. Because I couldn’t lose Arya over this––not when I hadn’t had the chance to get to know her yet.
As I padded around the building, making sure that I covered all of the surrounding area as much as I could, I wondered how I could get some much needed alone time with Arya. I was pretty sure from the intense way that she looked at me too, she could feel something incredible surging between us the whole time, and I was sure that she was going to want to explore it too, but it was still a little unnerving to imagine asking her out on a date.
What if she rejected me, not necessarily because she didn’t want to go on a date with me, but because she knew that she wasn’t going to be in town for long, so the idea of exploring something that could be real terrified her. Because no one wanted a broken heart, did they? I understand that much…
If I lost her in that way, it would kill me. Somehow, in some way, I was going to have to make sure that didn’t happen. I would have to make sure that she experienced how worthwhile exploring these feelings would be. Because there was no truer love than fated mates. That was what my mother had always taught me, and that woman had never been wrong in her life.
5
ARYA
“Wehaveto get some photos done for social media,” Sarah cried out in a bit of a panic as she stumbled back into the makeup chair. “Quick, before they change my look. I love this one and I want the world to see it. Maybe we could even do one of your cool videos as well.”
I grabbed my cell phone quickly and started doing what she needed of me. Luckily Sarah was a consummate professional so I didn’t have to worry about her looking good. Her poses were perfection and the little video we filmed was a lot of fun. Her fans were going to love it.
I adored doing the social media stuff for the loving fans––it was the trolls that got to me. I was the barrier between the horrible people who were just on the Internet to cause trouble, which meant I needed to absorb it all. Sure, none of it was about me, which was a plus, but that didn’t mean I didn’t feel the depth of depravity that people would go to. I wasn’t sure if it was just to try and capture Sarah’s attention––because negative attention was better than no attention at all––or if it was how people really felt. Either way, it was sickening.
