Ch. 99: Mate?

CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
Evan~
My Beta blood meant I was built for all kinds of things. Taking a beating. Giving a beating. Protecting the pack from physical threats. But I don’t think it was built for whatever this was that Jake was throwing at me. Not that I would tell him how badly this all hurt. His fists were fire, and I could feel burn after burn on my arms and torso. His body was fire. No other way to describe it. He was rock solid, living hellfire. My knuckles were badly burned and crusted. Blood coming through cracks in my skin. But if I used my training, and didn’t show pain on my face, he wouldn’t notice. I couldn’t let him notice, but not yet. Not until he worked some of this out on me.
The first few hits I got in hurt me the most, but after some time my nerves seemed to fry and I couldn’t feel much of anything when I hit him. I was surprised that the fire coming off him didn’t burn through his clothing, or my own. But you couldn’t exactly see the fire either. You could just feel it in the heat all around, and of course through the burned skin on my body. Jake hit me again, this time his fist coming into contact with my shoulder in a sweet right cross with a form I would have admired if I didn’t have to concentrate so hard on not reacting to his blow cracking at an already burned part of my skin. I could feel the skin that had started to heal cracking open from the contact, and blinding pain that made it hard to see shot through me. I slid back a few feet from the force of his hit. But I never lost my footing and after a quick shake of my head I refocused.
I would take a thousand hits like that to help my Alpha, my best friend. He needed me right now, maybe more than ever. To keep his beast inside him just a bit longer. I couldn’t lose him. Wouldn’t lose him.
I have to think the Goddess knew that about me when thinking of her grand plan. That I would be here no matter what to ensure Jake survived this.
“We’ve located Tiffany and are returning to the packhouse,” my dad linked the leadership team.
After a few more minutes, Jake seemed to literally simmer down. The burns didn’t burn so bad. His hits didn’t come as hard. Aamon seemed to temporarily settle back in.
That was until my dad came around the corner with Tiffany.
That’s when sht went to hell.
Jake went to lunge at them, I pushed my arm out as fast as I could to stop him, my eyes snapped to Tiffany’s and that’s when her delicious honey scent hit me.
Xavier screamed MATE so loud in my mind that I flinched.
My arm lost its force. Jake pushed through me. Tiffany whispered ‘mate.’
My dad looked at me and back at Tiffany, before jumping in front of Jake who was hurtling toward her.
Nick came at us all screaming something I couldn’t hear.
Tiffany’s eyes broke contact and she started to shield her face from Jake’s attack.
Xavier pushed forward and screamed MATE again, making my body react.
I was somehow over next to Tiffany shielding her. My dad was getting beat to a pulp.
I ran at Jake. Aamon pushed through and roared at me. I made contact with him even as he dodged my hit. He lost his footing and his head smacked the gravel path. He shot back up and railed at me, as hard and as full of fire as before.
And then Nick was yelling again, and Ally pushed through him to run right between us with one hand on her charm necklace thing, and one hand up at Jake.
“CALM DOWN!” Ally yelled in an unreal voice.
The command seemed to echo and reverberate through my very bones.
Jake seemed to suck a breath in and he blinked his eyes like crazy before his breathing changed. His shoulders relaxed, and he cleared his throat as he shook his head.
Ally lowered her outstretched hand ever so slowly, and Nick walked closer to her from the outer ring of chaos. His eyes flickering between Ally and Jake, his movements tense.
He put his hand on her now totally lowered hand and he was trying to pull her back out of there but she stood firm.
“I’m okay,” Jake finally breathed out, his eyes closed.
I looked back at Tiffany again, still cowering but peaking out between her fingers.
‘That makes one of us,’ I thought to Xavier.

Nick~
I thought my heart was going to drop when Ally came out of nowhere and headed straight to the chaos. I could feel my every breath, every hair on my skin, when she held her hand up in the middle of Evan and my Alpha.
Whatever loyalty I had to Jake was a millisecond from being thrown out the window, and then she yelled her command. Her amulet and eyes glowing, her voice echoing with command.
My breath left my body and everything seemed to happen in slow motion. I felt like I was moving through mud, rushing to her without alarming Jake, inching closer to stop him in case it didn’t work.
But it did. I swallowed when I registered that he had listened to her. I finally felt to rejoin time when I reached her at last and grasped her hand. Every instinct was telling me to move her out of harm’s way, but my gentle tug did nothing. She just squeezed my hand and stayed right where she was. She stood her ground. My brave, incredible mate. I could only watch her with some stupid expression of awe on my face as Jake came to.
“I can’t,” I heard Evan say ever so softly after a few beats.
I turned to look at him, a few feet from Tiffany who was cowering behind Evan’s father, visibly trembling.
“Can’t what?” I asked a little too loudly, receiving a little elbow in my side from Ally.
“They’re mates,” Ally said quietly.
Everyone stiffened. Evan’s father had a hand on Tiffany’s shoulder, Evan a few feet from Ally and I, looking dead on at her. She shook even more at his words.
“Ev- man-” I started to say.
He whirled on me, “You know what she's done,” he breathed. “I could never - not with anyone who would put our-” he caught himself, “an innocent in danger. The Goddess made a mistake.”
No one said a word. Even Jake, who I saw out of the corner of my eyes, bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet.
And that’s when he said the words. He rejected her.
Evan, my giant tree of a friend, sank to his knees as he did so. Ally went to move forward but it was my turn to silently communicate. It needed to be me who helped him. I went behind him and put a hand on his shoulder, applying a firm squeeze and holding it. Telling him without words that I was here for him. He looked up at me and I nodded.
He needed me to help.
“Accept it,” I said to Tiffany who had also fallen to her knees, gasping in pain and holding on to her chest.
She looked at me for an instant and cried her eyes out, shaking her head ‘no.’ But Evan put a hand on mine and I knew he needed me to push.
“Now Omega,” our Beta growled out, upset at everything going on in front of him.
“I- can’t” Tiffany said.
“You will,” Jake said with Aamon in echo.
She cried louder and after a moment she gasped in between her cries, “I- accept,” she gasped for breath again and then rushed it out - “your rejection.”
Evan’s face was wet with tears as he sank to sit on his folded legs and mumbled out in an airy whisper, “Take her away.”
And they did.
Her wails seemed to get louder as they dragged her further away. Everything moved quickly then, even as Evan stayed still.
I finally noticed my mom there as everyone else filtered out. And she clearly noticed me. And Ally. And our hands that still held onto each other.
“Anything you’d like to share, Nicky?” she asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Goddess help me.