Taken by my mate
Chapter eleven

Covyn

Sally closed the door and Evadiene sighed. “Got to make this quick. Will you hold Sequoia?” She asked me and the desperate plea in her eyes had me taking the cat before I could think about it.

She then darted back into her apartment and I was shocked by everything I saw. It was absolutely trashed. It had clearly been a safe haven before, the cupboards decorated with fancy decals that were now torn off and their contents mostly emptied onto the floor. Her couch had been slashed, along with her curtains, and, following her through the house, it looked like they had torn up every article of clothing and pair of shoes that they could replace. I wouldn’t have been surprised to replace a hobo fire in the bathroom with the state of things, but she breezed through the mess, picking up things, like this was old hat.

“They’ll check in on me,” she seemed to be reminding herself. “So nothing they’d miss, nothing they can track.”

She went into a hall closet and grabbed trash bags and darted room from room talking to herself as I stood, with the cat, in absolute shock compared to her calm.

“I didn’t think they would have given a shit about any of my photos.” She mumbled, looking through a pile of torn pictures and broken frames. “Of course they’re backed up, fuck but they’ll probably miss my laptop…” she picked it up and smashed it over the table causing the screen to snap off along with half of the keys. She took it over to the fridge, running a large mechanic’s dish magnet over it thoroughly. “If I can’t have my data, no one can.

“Can’t bring luggage, they fucked up all my clothes… what can I take? Fuck, ass holes!”

She ran her hands through her short hair, brushing it back from her face, picked up a hair clip off the floor, realized it was broken, and searched for an uncut hair tie. She plucked through several piles of them before replaceing one they apparently missed. Grumbling with the black tie, she wrapped her hair up out of her face and started picking more things up.

“I have half a mind to leave them a message on my fucking mirror for this shit!” She barked, grabbing a couple more trash bags before returning to her bedroom.

She pulled a bin out from under her bed, emptying the small amount of undamaged clothes from it into one of the bags. Then, moving through other areas of the house she grabbed a couple more things before dropping the bags in front of me. Plucking the cat from my arms, both me and the cat equally grateful to be separated, she motioned to go.

I collected her things and we returned to my truck. I dropped her things into the back seat and she climbed in on the passengers side.

“You drive,” she commanded. “I’ll get some anti-nausea pills at the gas station.”

“Evadiene…..” I tried but she interrupted me.

“Please, can we talk later. I just want to get out of here.”

Her voice was so desperate and small compared to the girl that was belting Panic at the Disco on the way in that I just nodded. I filled my tank at a gas station about half an hour in the wrong direction, as she requested, and she dumped her bag on my tailgate while I did. She plucked certain items out of the pile and stuffed it into her pocket before returning the trash to her bag and tossing the backpack into the trash.

I watched her remove her SIM card, break it between her fingers and toss it out of the car.

“Evadiene…”

“It’s fine.. I’m fine. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to disappear for a while,” she murmured but I heard the hitch in her breath and felt the tightening in her chest.

“You don’t need to be okay about this, and I can feel that you’re not,” I told her, holding my own chest.

She seemed almost relieved that I knew and as I held my arms out she crossed the gap between us and wrapped her arms tightly around me. I heard Evadiene softly start sobbing into my chest and I held her tighter.

When we started driving she started telling me everything she knew and had gathered from her short time in her apartment and from the missed calls and messages. I was white knuckling it from my anger at what they had done, but the nausea meds she had taken made her drowsy and when we hit the forested part of our drive she unbuckled her seatbelt and laid in my lap to sleep.

Her face turned into my stomach, and her arms wrapped around my back under my shirt, calmed us both. Sequoia seemed to approve, sleeping nestled between Evadiene’s stomach and the back of the seat while she purred.

I draped my arm over her, thinking about how this wasn’t the day I had planned in my mind. With our late breakfast, I wanted to take her for lunch, spend a few hours in town and arrange to have her car brought to the pack property, but now…

My truck hit the gravel path and she stirred in my lap.

“Are we back?” She asked quickly.

“Yes beautiful, we’re back.” I replied, gently petting her hair

“Were we followed?”

The question was like ice. “No love, we were not followed.”

She sat up and nodded to herself, Sequoia crawling into her lap like she knew she was sad. Out the window I saw members of my pack running alongside my vehicle, and knew they were be passing it along that we were back.

I didn’t bother going to the garage, I didn’t want to make her walk that far, but didn’t expect Ellion and Spencer to meet us out front.

I tried to catch their eyes first, convey that this wasn’t the time for jokes, but their eyes went to Evadiene first

“So did you return of your own free will or did he carry you back ass up… that’s not a cat!” Spencer jumped back as Sequoia jumped out of the car.

She hissed at Spencer and, after regarding them both, turned to Evadiene. “We’ll see,” she said softly and the cat jumped up and into her arms to lay around her neck again.

“Hold on, what’s wrong, what happened?” Ellion asked, walking toward Evadiene and holding her shoulders to see her face, but caught my eye before I could growl and backed up.

Evadiene just shook her head and looked hopefully to me as I joined her.

“The son didn’t take over, the brother did, and he wanted someone to blame.” I started, holding her tightly. “They torched her car, and found her address on some mail in the glovebox. They found her apartment and trashed it, destroyed basically everything inside. They tried to bug her bag they found left in the club to follow her. Apparently it’s all over the east side that they’re looking for her, all of her friends were blowing up her phone warning her to jump ship.”

Evadiene brought her cat into her arms. “I’m going to take Sequoia to the tree line and see if she wants to pee there before we go inside,” she whispered, her voice sounding more pained after crying then when she was choked.

I nodded, squeezing her hip before letting her go. “You won’t wander off?”

She shook her head. “There’s a literal price on my head, where else would I go?”

I watched her walk away, feeling defeated and caged, but when she was far enough I turned back to my betas. “I want the men who did this to her found and killed.”

——

Evadiene

A small part of me knew I was being misleading. I had lots of friends and places to go, but no one had ever cared about me quite like Covyn.

I had felt the energy that surrounded his land, and it wanted me to know I was safe. I trusted in that feeling, but Covyn hadn’t understood why I was really upset. That apartment was just things, just stuff, but Sequoia had never been home before during something like this. I sat against a tree, beckoning for her to come over and sit in my lap.

“I was so worried about you Sequoia. I am so, so sorry. No one has ever traced me back to anywhere you were before.” I stroked her fur, flicking off the bundles of fluff that came off on my hand. “I know, you’re tough and smart, and no one should be able to hurt you, but when I saw that door… it was too close girl. I will never let anyone get that close to you again, and if they do, you have my permission to tear their throats out, I’ll deal with the aftermath.”

She purred menacingly against my hand, my little menace.

The mark on my shoulder still ached, even this close to Covyn where I could still see him. “What am I supposed to do about this?” I asked her. “I can’t stay here, with my mate,-“ I shook my head. “I can’t take that risk.”

She continued to purr for me, trying to calm me down, and despite everything, for her, I did relax.

Covyn was waiting for me outside, and I could practically see his tail moving in excitement. He stood as I approached and opened his arm for me.

I was going to snub him, but I had no reason to be mean. We had just spent over seven straight hours together, under more stress than building ikea furniture, without lunch, and he had been nothing but calm, caring and supportive.

I let his warmth surround me and give me that delightful tingling sensation, feeling the words rumble from his chest as he spoke.

“You look like you’re feeling better, are you?” He asked sincerely and my laugh took him aback.

“Don’t you already know how I’m feeling?” I asked, poking him in the chest.

“Kinda but..” he rubbed his head with his hand. “I want to hear you say it.”

I nodded. “A little, I just need to accept that this is how things are right now. I’ve been living in the city for some time, I was actually planning on leaving soon. I had been house hunting farther North, and there was a farm I had my eyes on.”

——

Covyn

She giggled. “The price was getting lower due to a quail problem making it difficult to get seeds passed infancy, but Sequoia would have enjoyed that challenge.”

Her cat purred against her, almost like she had been dreaming of the opportunity.

“When were you going to move?” I asked worriedly.

How close had I been to missing her entirely.

“The end of the year,” she replied casually.

I led her into the house. “At the risk of sounding selfish, I’m glad I found you first.” I admitted and she accepted this as fact, not leaning towards either side emotionally.

It had been a shitty last 24 hours for her, and I couldn’t blame her for not being thrilled that her plans to move had changed, even if I was. She didn’t know me anymore than I knew her, and was being thrown into a world she knew nothing about, more or less forced to live in a giant house full of large men. The thought made me angry, that any of the men might even look her way made me want to lock her in the bedroom.

I pushed the intrusive thought away. “What would you like to do?”

She yawned. “Sit by the fire and read until I fall back asleep,” she admitted. “Maybe a bath.”

I smiled. “Done. Do you want to go to the library first, or did you replace a book at home?”

“You have a library?” She beamed. “There, absolutely there.”

We walked side by side, my arm wrapped around her waist. She read my movements so well it was almost as if she knew where the library was, approaching the open doors with more excitement then most at its sheer size. She scoop Sequoia to lay around her shoulders again, the poor cat looking utterly terrified at all the large people walking back and forth, and entered the room heading straight for an isle off to the side.

I watched her touch her fingers over the books randomly, more excitement growing the farther down the row she got until she apparently stumbled upon a title that peaked her attention. She pulled it off, and then grabbed two more from around it on other shelves and turned back to me.

“I love libraries,” she grinned, turning to go back the way we had come.

I hurried off behind her, and signed my name on the card, then waited for her to write out the book titles and codes for the librarian to file. She barely looked where we were going on the way back to our room, nose already deep into whatever book she had grabbed. Finally back in the room she migrated right over to one of the large chairs, and I started the fire for her.

She took a short break from her book to show Sequoia where the bathroom was. Apparently she had taken the time to toilet train the cat, for which I was exceedingly grateful. She warned me that if I closed the lid she would use the bathtub, and then asked if the next time I left the room I could bring her back some sort of meat and a dish of water.

I had a stack of papers to review, and left her there for a short time while I went to my office to gather my things. I stopped at the kitchen gathering a whole bowl of shredded chicken and a dish to fill with water. If this cat was to live here, and was so important to Evadiene, then I would make sure she liked me.

When I returned to the room she had fallen asleep, but Sequoia rushed to the bathroom when she heard the metal dish hit the tile. She eyed me carefully like somehow she knew my plan, but ate the meat regardless and I saw her leave the room a while later looking fatter than before. By this point I had moved Evadiene into the bed, tucking her in under the blankets, and the cat jumped up onto the bed to nestle against her stomach.

As if it was instinct or habit, Evadiene moved her hand to pull Sequoia to her, and then rest her hand on the cats stomach protectively. I still didn’t like cats, but I was starting to understand why Evadiene had tried to leave for her. I had the distinct feeling that these two were inseparable whenever possible, and now that she didn’t need to leave her to go to work they would go everywhere together.