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Chapter Thirteen
“Damn it, Ivo…” Ivo flinched slightly when Miguel Ruiz, Alpha extraordinaire, slammed his fist into the side of the cave wall. In the distance, closer to the mouth, the hushed conversations seemed to die out. Miguel shook his head and held his bloodied fist to his chest, glaring. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t, clearly,” he fired back; voice tinged with more attitude than was warranted on his part. He just couldn’t help it. Not when he spoke to Miguel.
All things considered, finding his fated mate should have changed the way he interacted with the clan’s Alpha. After all, much of the tension between them stemmed from Miguel bringing Clarissa Dodge into the fold, sweeping her and their son into the clan without missing a beat.
Ivo just hadn’t understood at the time what it meant to finally connect with one’s fated mate. He couldn’t comprehend how the man just knew—how he could bring this stranger into their lives like she had always been there. But that was how Ivo felt about Alani now.
Even with all that they had in common now, he couldn’t stop the surge of anger he felt just looking at Miguel. Somehow the Alpha personified all of Ivo’s problems, all his frustrations over these last few months, and just looking at his face made Ivo wanted to clock him square in the jaw.
Which would be totally unwarranted, of course. But it would feel fucking fantastic.
Miguel always got the jump on him when they scuffled, even as teens, and Ivo was the tallest of the pair. Miguel was just beefier—fatter, Ivo had commented once when they were younger. Back then, they’d just laughed it off. Today, it might lead to real blows again.
“How could you tell another clan about our home?” Miguel demanded. “Don’t you know the kind of danger that brings? The bighorn rams are new to the area. I’ve been watching them for a little while, but they seemed to have kept their distance. But now?” Heat rushed to Ivo’s cheeks as Miguel scowled. “Now what? Ivo, you’ve practically brought them to our front door and showed them where we keep the spare key.”
“I know,” he said, turning away with a soft growl. “Don’t you think I know that? I came straight here and called you when I realized what I’d done.” His voice dropped, a sinking feeling settling in the pit of his stomach. “I just wasn’t thinking…”
Couldn’t Miguel see how difficult this was for him? Ivo was the last person in the clan to publicly own up to his mistakes, and yet he’d done it now. He had summoned the entire clan to their sacred cave to tell them about his mistake, his fuck up. Hat in hand, he came clean to them.
As nervous murmurs had rumbled through the clan, Miguel had grabbed Ivo’s arm and dragged him deeper into the cave for this wonderful heart-to-heart—or scolding, depending on how you looked at it.
“Ivo, I have a family now—”
“You’ve always had a family,” he snapped, fixing Miguel with a scowl of his own. “You have both of your parents who love you, and your sister. Don’t give me that bullshit that just because your fated mate walked back into your life, suddenly you have a family. Don’t.”
As someone who hadn’t had a real family for a long, long time, Ivo just couldn’t let him continue with that train of thought. Miguel had a family. He had a huge family—all the clan looked to him as a brother, father, uncle… whatever.
Ivo had always been the weird pale outcast, the blondish guy in a sea of brown hair. The clan might have taken him in, but he hadn’t felt truly accepted, not even when he was Alpha.
Miguel studied him for a long moment in silence, some of the anger leeching from his features, and then sighed. “Ivo, you have a family too.”
“I don’t think—”
“And today you’ve put them in danger,” Miguel continued, his tone hardening, “and you know that. You wouldn’t have come here immediately to tell us if you didn’t. You did the right thing, Ivo… I mean, after doing the wrong thing, I guess.”
Both men’s lips twitched as if trying out a smile, but Ivo turned away first and started pacing back and forth in the half-darkness. Around them, torches blazed, embedded in the cave walls from the mouth straight down into the blackest pit, which Ursalina, the clan sorceress, had enchanted so that they would never die, no matter how the elements battered against them.
“So what are we going to do?” Ivo asked after a lengthy pause, feeling Miguel’s eyes fixed to his back.
“I don’t know,” the Alpha remarked, which caused Ivo to turn back, eyebrows up in surprise. Miguel shrugged. “We’ll have to figure something out. We have a vulnerable population these days… More cubs and women and elderly than we do strong fighters.”
“Bears are stronger than rams,” Ivo insisted. “I tussled with a group of eight before and came out not too much worse for wear. I think we’ll be fine.”
Miguel too had started to pace, matching Ivo’s strides in length and speed. “But we have to prepare as if we won’t be. From what I’ve gathered, they outnumber us, particularly in adult males.”
That was true. Ivo hadn’t considered that before, which only made the sinking feeling inside him grow heavier.
“But we don’t know for sure they’ll attack, right? Maybe they just want to keep tabs on us, like we were doing with them.”
“From your story, it seems like the ram was just trying to get information out of you,” Miguel said as his pace slowed. “People always think herbivore-related shifters are gentle and sweet… like a big herd of cows. From what I’ve seen, and what memories the elders have, bighorn sheep are territorial and dangerous. They’ll want to eliminate any potential threats. We are a potential threat.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Ivo muttered. He scratched at the back of his head, unsure how to contribute to the conversation anymore. He wasn’t used to speaking civilly with Miguel these days.
“And now we have miners and rams to worry about,” Miguel continued, more to himself it seemed than to Ivo. “Maybe I should send Clarissa and Lucas somewhere, just until we’re sure things are safe…”
Ivo watched the Alpha move back and forth, face screwed with concern. How would he feel if Alani was in danger? Devastated—and then enraged. Ivo would rip apart anyone who dared to lay a hand on her in a way that was meant to harm her. He would move mountains for his fated mate; the sole person in this world he truly felt a connection with, the kind you felt deep within your soul.
