Filed to story: Mated to the Alpha and His Beta Novel Free >>???
“Sure. Let’s get you home.”
I was going to have to let my mates know what had happened to our daughter. What she had become.
Together, we’d have to figure out how it had happened…and more importantly, why.
Lanie–
“Lanie…”Zane’s voice met me through the mind link, but it sounded like it was coming from very far away.
I’d been concentrating so hard on figuring out Braden’s emotions and also his thoughts about why he didn’t want me to share them with Malachi, that my own mate’s link to me was stretched thin to the point of breaking. I shook my head, sta ggering back a few steps.
“What’s wrong?” Charlotte asked at once, her voice thick with concern. She put a hand on my arm.
Greyson joined her on faint or anything like that my other side. I realized they were both ready to catch me if I fell over. I didn’t feel faint or anything like that, but I appreciated that they were there for me in case I did.
“You okay?” Braden asked evenly as his eyes met mine.
Was he trying to send me something? The way his couldn’t read him, though.
yes narrowed told me that maybe he was. I still “I’m fine. But Zane is calling for me. Can you all give me a minute so I can find out what he needs?”
“I’ll get you some water and a snack, Greyson offered.
Malachi snorted. “You need to build up your stamina granddaughter.”
I waved him off, something I knew would make him gnash his teeth. I wasn’t trying to get on my grandfather’s nerves or be disrespectful, but I also knew he wasn’t going to come after me for it. That was the privilege of being his blood.
“Zane?”
“Lanie, love…can you come home?”
I looked around this small training room and wrinkled my nose at how I could suddenly smell the overpowering stink of my own body odor. Charlotte pressed an opened bottle of water into my hand,while Greyson handed me an unwrapped protein bar.
hear.
Malachi and Braden were in the room’s other corner, heads bent together, murmuring words I couldn’t “I’m kind of in the middle of something, honey. Is something wrong?” I took a long drink. My thirst and hunger both roared to full life, and I eagerly gobbled the protein bar.
“Nothing’s wrong. But you should come home. It’s about Stella. I don’t want you to worry,” Zane thought quickly, as though he knew I’d hear that and instantly get nervous. “But this is something that would be better to share with you face to face. And you should be prepared that she looks a little different.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Where are Mason and Xander?”
“Still at the tech center, as far as I know. I haven’t reached out to them yet, but I will. I wanted to get in touch with you first. Are you still training with Malachi?”
“Yes.”
I looked over at my grandfather, who was still talking to Braden. The younger vampire looked a little upset, an emotion I could feel only faintly now that I wasn’t concentrating on him as hard. Out loud, I said, “I need to get home.”
Malachi turned with his hands on his hips. “Lanie, really. Your libidinous mate can wait his turn, can’t he? This is important. You don’t need to be at his beck and call.”
With a frown, tossed my empty water bottle in a trash can by the door. “That’s pretty rude of you to assume that my mate was only reaching out to me for something like that. I’m not at his beck and call.
I’m in a partnership with all three of my mates, which means when they need me for something, I’ll do my best to give it to them. Maybe that’s something you could learn, too.”
“Ouch,” Charlotte murmured with a twist of her lips and a sideways look at my grandfather.
Malachi’s eyes blazed crimson as his lips skinned back over his curving fangs. “How very dare you!”
Braden put his hand on his lover’s arm. “Malachi.
Don’t.” Malachi shook him off and crossed the room to me in the blink of an eye. His fingers gripped into my upper arms hard enough to make me wince. He pushed his face close to mine so I could see the swirling red spirals in his eyes.
“All of this is for your own protection,” he hissed. “Do you think I gain joy from pushing you? Do you think this is how I’d like to spend my hours?”
I didn’t flinch. By the moon, he was a drama queen.
“Grandfather, please. It’s something about my child.
I’m sure you understand why that’s more important than any of this right now.”
Instantly, he stepped away from me. The red in his eyes faded. “You should have said so in the first place.”
“I shouldn’t have had to,” I told him. “I’m a grownup, and I have a life and responsibilities that you’ve never had. You fathered a child, Malachi, but you’ve never raised one. If my mate needs me to come home because our child needs me for something, for anything, then nothing else matters to me more than that.”
“Go,” he said. “But you should know, granddaughter, that until you understand your gifts and can use them, you’ll never be able to fully protect your children.”
Xander–
A few minutes ago, Zane had called out to me through our mate bond link, but although I’d replied within a few seconds, he hadn’t replied. Then he’d gone silent.
That was kind of weird, but I figured maybe he’d had something to tell me that could wait, or else he was busy and would reach out again in a few minutes.
Right now, I had to figure out what in the void was going on with all these missing files.
“Is anything else not where you’d expect it to be?” I asked as I leaned over Jordy’s shoulder to look at his computer monitor. Scrolling lines of green text flowed along a black background. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
“The entire Brightsky system is all tied into our central hub here. It’s backed up regularly, which means that even though I can’t find that list on my hard drive, it should be accessible through one of the backups.”
Jordy’s fingers flew over the keys as he brought up a list of folders and files in multiple hard drives, external drives, and even some from a cloud server.
With every file he opened that didn’t contain the backup he was looking for, he sounded more and more frustrated when he replied.
“Nothing else is missing. Only the files pertaining to the resident list for Standard. And not all of them are gone, either. Only the ones from the past year.” Jordy muttered a curse and sat back in his chair hard enought to spin it around.
His brother pulled up a seat and started typing on his own keyboard, but he was having the same issues.
With a frustrated sigh, he also spun around and tossed his hands in the air. “I got nothing.”
“Any other backups you might be forgetting about?” asked them both. Jordy shook his head. “Me and Franco are the ones who set up this entire system. There isn’t a backup available that we don’t know about. I’ve even checked the secret servers that nobody else has access to.”
“And the files aren’t there, either? F uck,” I muttered.
“They might’ve been excluded from a backup to that server,” Franco said. “I’d bet my life that nobody could get into them, but they could’ve rewritten the commands to send a backup there. That’s the only thing I can think of that makes sense.”
“None of it makes sense,” his brother said in a defeated voice. He looked up at me. “Sorry. This is extremely embarrassing.”
“Could be worse,” Franco said. “The resident list isn’t really that big of a deal. We can probably pull one together in an hour or so from other sources.”
“Yeah. Do that for me, please. And can you get me a list of anyone who might have admin access to these files?”
“It’s a short list,” Franco said. “You’re looking at two of the people on it. The other one is Malachi, and the leadership council has a temporary access code they can use with permission.”
It wasn’t about the resident list but the fact that someone in Brightsky had thought that it was important enough to destroy…and that they’d done it long enough in advance that it definitely seemed deliberate.
“Xander!”
Zane’s voice filtered into my mind through the link again, and I paused to answer him.
“I’m in the middle of something,” I thought to him.
I knew I sounded a little irritated, but I didn’t want him to keep calling for me without being there when I answered. His voice was sharp. “I know, but this is important.
Are you with Mason? He’s not answering me.”
“I’m here,” Mason thought to us both in the next second. “Sorry, I’m caught up in something, too. What do you need, Zane?”
“Hold on for a second,” I thought to them both and turned back to the tech twins. “I’ve got my Beta trying to connect with me. I’ll be right back.”
The twin in red kept furiously typing away. His brother was doing the same at his own terminal. I took a few steps away and turned my back so I could concentrate better on what my Beta was saying.
“Whatever’s going on, put a hold on it for later. You both need to come home right now. I’ve already connected with Lanie, and she’s on her way, “Zane thought. “For some reason, she wasn’t hearing me through our bond.”
That probably explained why he’d called out for me but then went silent.
Mason’s voice rose through our link. “I’ll finish up and be there as soon as I can. Xander, meet me by the elevators?”
“Yeah. Be there in five,” I thought.
Zane’s voice reached us both again. “If either one of you can get in touch with Gabriela…she should be here, too.”
“I’m going to have to come back,” I said to the twins, “But you have my number. Call me or text as soon as you get those lists together.”
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?