Page 10 of Desire Him

He pecks her on the cheek. “Think nothing of it. Don’t hide from me, you hear? Come to me if you need anything. Anything at all. Even if it seems silly. Okay?”

She nods, turns, and begins walking the path back to her home. He doesn’t know who is running her cafe, but he’s glad she’s getting the time to cope with this. It can’t be easy. Losing a mate . . . He’s never found his fated mate, nor does he care to learn about that sort of happily-ever-after. He’d be good with a woman that loved him, but Viola . . . she had found that fated mate. She had loved him with her deepest heart. And now he’s gone, forever apart.

He clenches his jaw, her hurt his own.

Sighing deeply, he turns back to the alpha’s house, stares at its height, and then heads inside. The fabric shooshes as he hooks his coat on the coat hanger and climbs the steps two at a time. He’s to meet his alpha in his office, so he makes his way there. He passes Logan’s room, the guest room, and hooks a right. Arriving at the door, he knocks.

“Come in,” Logan says from the other side.

The door opens before he can reach for the knob, and Eme greets him with a fake smile. He’s seen her real smile, and that is definitely not it. “You made it back before I thought you would.”

He frowns at both her weird attitude and her words. He had thought he was on time. “How long did you think I’d be gone?”

Eme shrugs, and there’s a bit of coldness in her voice. “A lot longer than a few hours.”

He wonders at the cold shoulder but says nothing. She moves aside so he can step inside, and she moves to stand at her mate’s back, behind the desk.

The office is grand, as big as a bedroom. In the center, his alpha’s desk, made of stained oak, is squatting on a massive blue and white rug. Behind him is a grand bookshelf full of books, their spines displaying fiction and non-fiction, knick-knacks gathered throughout the years from all over the country, and the alpha title, a full display wooden plaque.

Before the desk sits two white, high-back chairs. Wayne takes a seat in one of the chairs as he usually does, mentally preparing himself for this conversation.

Wayne sighs visibly as Logan straightens a stack of papers. “Is that the rogue information?”

“Yeah,” Logan says, placing them on a corner of the desk.

Wayne leans forward and taps the edge of the stack. “Well, I have more to add to it.”

Logan quirks an eyebrow like he usually does when he wants Wayne to carry on. “Oh?”

Wayne nods and leans forward. “I have it on good authority that the rogues are becoming restless.”

Logan’s office chair squeaks as he leans back. But it’s not him who answers. It’s Eme. “What do you know?”

“That the rogues are burning buildings, destroying the city, all that jazz.” Wayne steeples his fingers, resting his elbows on the chair’s armrests. “I saw it myself.”

“Why?” she asks.

“Does it matter?” Wayne splays his fingers. “They’re upping their game, and we have to do something about it before the humans do. The last thing we want is for humans to be afraid of shifters. Our entire way of life would change. We’d all be in danger.”

Logan scrubs at his jaw. “Jesus.” He sighs deeply. “This is worse than I thought it was.”

“Makes you wonder why our young shifters at the university haven't said anything.”

Logan shakes his head slowly. “I imagine they worry that I’ll call them back home.”

“And we should,” Wayne says with a higher-pitched voice. “They’re not safe there.”

Logan holds up a hand. “Which side is being destroyed?” Wayne tells him, but his acknowledgment of it being the shifter side has the opposite effect than he thought it would. “Then they’re safe.”

“But-”

“No.” Logan swipes a hand through the air. “They’re safe for now.”

“But Logan,” Eme interjects, clearly on the same wavelength as Wayne.

“I won’t tear them away from their dreams until this problem becomes a genuine reality.”

Wayne flexes his jaw but says nothing on that front. Instead, Eme says, “Who told you this, anyway?”