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“We hadn’t heard from him after your father and Duke visited him,” her mother said. “I wonder if that set him off?”
Demi straightened a little and wiped at the moisture under her eyes. “I was thinking that myself. But it shouldn’t matter. He has no right to force my hand like this. Not to mention that I’ve found my heart-matches.”
“I wonder if someone’s been watching you,” Rhaider said.
She looked at him in confusion. “Wouldn’t I know if I was being followed?”
“Not if they were very good at keeping out of sight,” Rafe said. “I had a similar thought. If Benecio has someone following you, then he knows that you found us at the bar and brought us to your home. While Duke and your father might have pissed him off, it seems like too much of a coincidence that after we meet, he sent you an ultimatum.”
“What should I do, Dad?” she asked. She knew there was protocol within prides for dealing with issues like this, and she wasn’t nearly as well versed in pride law as her father was.
“I’m not certain, honey,” he replied. “Let’s hear what Duke has to say.”
There was a knock at the front door. “It’s probably Duke,” Rhaider said. “I’ll go let him in. And I’m going to have Maverick and Rebel come here too so they’ll know what’s going on.”
When he returned a few moments later, Duke was with him, as well as Titus and Reign, one of the town’s police officers, and Byron, Duke’s father, who had been alpha before him.
“Well, this is a hell of a thing,” Duke said as he took the letter from her dad and read it. He passed the letter to the others, who remarked with similar disbelief.
They all sat around the table, Demi and her mom bringing out drinks for everyone. Demi was upset, but she was trying not to cry. She didn’t like crying in front of people because her face got all blotchy and she could never really talk coherently while she was upset. She stood behind her mates, putting her hands on their shoulders as they discussed the protocol for dealing with an out-of-control alpha and the threat of war.
Byron rubbed his chin. “So, there are actually old pride laws that give an alpha latitude when it comes to choosing his alpha female. A male could choose a female from his own pride or another and skip the match-maker or waiting for his heart-match. But there’s nothing in the laws that say a female is unable to refuse to become his mate. And there’s certainly no standing laws that make it acceptable for an alpha to bring war to another pride because he’s spurned by a female.”
“Not to mention that she’s fully mated now,” Duke said. “Even if there was something in the old laws about an alpha choosing whoever he wanted whether she wanted it or not, a mating can’t be undone simply because someone says so.”
It was hard to break a mating. It could be done, but it was a difficult process. Shifters by and large looked at matings as if they were permanent, unlike humans who could divorce relatively easily.
She listened to the group talk and her mind spun as she thought about what Benecio was trying to do. At the heart of things, he was looking for his alpha female. He’d decided—erroneously—that she was his mate, but that didn’t change the simple fact of what he was attempting.
To find his mate.
Suddenly, everything was very clear to her.
“What if we talked to Abbie?”
Chapter Twelve
An hour later, their entire group was inside match-maker Abbie’s house. The older female served sweet tea and set out a platter of slices of her famous 7 Up cake. Demi was nervous about talking to Abbie because she very much wanted this to work.
Hell, ithadto work.
The alternative was the two prides clashing in battle, and no one wanted that. Except maybe Benecio. The asshole.
“So,” Abbie said, sitting in a rocking chair and looking around at everyone. “I understand you need my services, but I’m not sure exactly what’s going on. So, start at the beginning and I’ll see what I can do.”
Everyone in the room looked Demi’s way and she took a deep breath to try to calm her flying pulse before she launched into the story.
“Now he’s threatening to bring war to the pride,” Demi said, when she finished the tale.
Abbie blinked a few times and leaned back, the chair creaking as it rocked. “What would you like me to do?”
“Match him,” Demi said.
“He’s not in my book. He hasn’t asked me to match him,” Abbie said, her brows drawing down.
“I know that,” Demi said. “But what you do is a kind of magic, right? Couldn’t you meet him and match someone in the book to him? Does every single person that you match have to be in the book?”
Abbie pursed her lips and then let out a soft growling sigh. “What you’re asking is really out of the purview of my talents.”
