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Chapter Four
Jack
Iwasn’t sure who I was angrier with, myself or Claire. Angry with myself because I kept allowing myself to be pulled toward her. That pull would always bring me right back to her. Right back to her so I could protect her and, for a little while, pretend she was mine.
Pretend I was just your average alpha warlock doing his utmost to protect his witch.
But I was also angry at Claire. She kept getting pulled into this shit. The fact that people showed up at her door looking for something they weren’t ready to handle wasn’t her fault. Witches and warlocks sometimes had that sort of pull that brought humans right to our doors for things they’d never understand. I knew Claire hated that more than anyone, because it would always remind her of what had happened that night.
But that didn’t mean she had to keep letting these people pull her into the muck any deeper than she already was.
More than anything, though, I wanted to kill the man who had threatened Claire. And done Gods knows what to his mate.
Not mate. Wife. A man couldn’t treat his true mate in any such a way. A mate was to be protected and cherished.
This man had done none of that.
By the time I’d gotten the asshole to the station, I’d only bumped his head a few times, purely by accident. And if I’d pulled a little too hard on his restraints, well, that was hardly my fault, was it?
As I made my way into the station with my catch, the other officers made a wide berth, which told me that my expression had to be thunderous.
I knew there was no way to get my emotions back in order before I made it over to Claire’s. Honestly, I didn’t want to. I wanted to shake her. Perhaps that would cover the incessant need I always felt for her anytime I was around her.
And nothing I could think of would stop the flow of “what ifs” that were clouding my mind. What if I hadn’t felt that pull that always told me she was in trouble? What if I hadn’t made it in time? The bond might have only been the product of whatever drug those assholes had forced into her, but there was no shutting off that tug I got low in my belly whenever Claire needed me. The only solution was to go to her.
When I pulled into the driveway of Claire’s house, I didn’t move. I tried to control my breathing. Tried to stuff the monster in the corners of my mind. The monster that wanted to come out anytime I thought of Claire being hurt.
That godsdamned alpha warlock.
Maybe she wasn’t my real mate, but I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to do my best to protect her. Protect her from others. Protect her from herself.
Finally, the storm inside me had abated to rumbling clouds on the horizon. The threat of destruction was high, but I also knew I couldn’t sit outside Claire’s house in the patrol car for hours. Couldn’t sit here thinking about finding her in that ramshackle cabin and her looking up at me, terrified, but also with something like hope. Looking at me like I was her savior.
She’d been too young. Too damn young for what they tried to do to her. When she looked at me and told me I was her mate — that she was presenting for me — I’d felt all those emotions I’d waited for years to feel. A warlock could shuffle through life for decades, maybe even centuries, before he met the one who was his bond. It was the reason that unscrupulous fuckers like the men who took Claire had tried to force that bond on her.
They’d wanted a mate, and no one had ever presented for them. So they just took it. As if they’d had a right.
There wasn’t a day that went by that I wasn’t glad that Claire had killed those fuckers. The only thing I resented was that I hadn’t been the one to do it.
Striding up to the door, I tried to remind the alpha warlock inside me that Claire wasn’t the one who deserved our ire. Someone had come to Claire for help and Claire, being Claire, had done what she could to help that person. I took a deep breath and knocked on the bruised door. The splintered frame reminded me of Will’s attempt to mow the door down.
All attempts to calm myself flew out the door at the sight of it.
Godsdammit.
Claire opened the door with a sigh, watching me warily. We’d done this same dance many times. Her at a loss for what to do when people like the battered woman had shown up at her door needing help. Me wanting nothing more than to grab Claire, throw her in the car and take her back to my cabin where I could keep her safe forever.
I pushed past Claire. Behind me, I heard thesniktof the door shutting. She sighed once again as she did, and I tried my best not to focus on that sound. Every time she sighed, I felt the sound in my balls. Could imagine what her sighs and pants would sound like as I slid into her, my knot swelling.
Finally, cementing that connection between us and filling her with my seed.
I had to stop thinking about this.
“Where is she?” I asked, looking around the living room for any sign of the woman from earlier. Claire’s little bungalow was cozy. Sweet. Each time I found myself inside her house, I noted all the little changes that had occurred since the last time I’d been inside. She’d apparently taken up cross-stitch recently. The piece she was working on appeared to be spelling “Fuck Around and Find Out.”
With Claire, that was a valid threat.
It was easy to imagine coming home, opening the door, and finding her sitting there, stitching the piece as she looked up at me with a smile. She’d rise to her feet and—
