Page 1 of The Reluctant Mate (Shifters of the Three Rivers #5)
Chapter one
Prologue - Derek
T he nightmare had changed in recent months. No longer just a vague memory of Harris dying in my arms; now, the sound of the bullets whizzing past my head and Harris’s shouted warning before he lunged toward me, shielding me from the worst of the blast haunted my dreams. It smelled so real: the dust and oil, the dry sand, the adrenaline and fear leaking from my men, the metallic blood as it seeped from Harris’s body.
Harris. My best friend. Human, yes, but my brother, all the same. He’d signed up at the same time as I had, and we’d gone through basic training together. He was the person who’d snuck me out of the med tent, despite a sprained wrist, so I wouldn’t miss my shot at the obstacle course record I’d been chasing all year, the one I’d pulled out of a freezing lake during survival training, while he cracked jokes through trembling lips the entire time to keep my mind off how fucking cold I was as I hauled his half-frozen ass to shore. He’d been the first to congratulate me when I was promoted to Captain and the last to leave the bar we celebrated in that night. He was my brother-in-arms, and I would have done anything for him.
I’d stopped trying to wake myself up; there was no point. No matter what I did, I was stuck reliving this memory until it had all played out. I looked down at his body, the blood pumping out of him, the knowledge that he would be dead in seconds hitting me just like it did the first time.
Tonight, though, something was different. The blood pooling around Harris’s body moved like oil on water, thick and goopy, creeping outward in spiraling patterns that made my eyes hurt to follow. The copper stench was overwhelming, mixed with cordite and something else—rot and decay that shouldn’t be there yet. His eyes snapped open with a wet sound, milky gray turned to burning amber, and when he smiled, his teeth were stained crimson, dripping black ichor that hissed where it hit the ground.
What fresh hell is this?
My muscles locked as photographs appeared on the blood-soaked ground around his body. Sofia. Dozens of images of her. At the Bottley Bar and Coffee shop, serving customers with her bright smile; locking up the bar late at night, keys clutched in her hand. Sofia in the Three Rivers market, the sunlight making her hair flame like a beacon, unaware of the lens capturing her every move, close-ups of her laughing with Wally and Mai. These were the photos my brother Mason and I had found pinned to a cabin wall when we’d been tracking the remnants of Tristan’s Pack. Hundreds of photos of her, my mate.
“You can’t protect her,” Harris’s voice came out wet and gurgling, “just like you couldn’t protect me. Just like you couldn’t protect any of them.”
More photos appeared, overlapping the ones of Sofia. Dead soldiers from our unit. Men who’d trusted me to have their backs. Men who’d died because I’d been too slow to catch Victor Kane, the rogue operative we’d been tracking. Too slow to protect my best friend.
“No,” I growled, trying to move, to gather the photos, to do something. But my muscles were frozen in place.
Harris’s head turned at an impossible angle. “You’ll fail her too. And this time, the blood won’t be mine.”
The photos began to dissolve, red seeping through them until Sofia’s images drowned in crimson. Inside, my wolf threw back his head and howled as darkness consumed everything, the sound of Harris’s laughter echoing in the void—
I jolted upright, sheets tangling around my legs like restraints.
“Fuck!”
Sweat had soaked through everything—my sheets, my hair—the dampness making my skin prickle in the pre-dawn chill. The bedroom air felt too thick, too close, carrying the echoes of cordite and blood that weren’t really there.
I checked my phone: 3:17 a.m.
“Fuck!” I repeated, fighting the urge to Shift, to run to Sofia’s house, to circle her property until sunrise, to tear apart anything that dared come close.
“Status report,” I muttered, falling back on military protocol to center myself. “Location: Three Rivers territory. Time: zero-three-seventeen. Mission: protect Sofia.”
The nightmare had felt so real. I could still smell Harris’s blood, still hear his voice. My stomach lurched, and I swallowed down the bile that rose into my throat.
No. I wasn’t going to be sick. Not again.
It had taken four months after I left the army for me to stop vomiting when I woke from the nightmares every night. I wouldn’t go back to that. I couldn’t. Sofia needed me to be strong, not broken.
My hands shook as I reached for my laptop. I clenched them, taking a few deep breaths to still the trembling, then grabbed my computer.
I pulled up the security feed I’d installed around Sofia’s apartment building the night Mason and I got back from the cabin in the woods. The security feed showed everything still, quiet. I pulled up the feed I’d watched before going to bed, the one of her arriving home in the early hours, dressed in her work clothes, her copper hair spilling over one shoulder. My wolf growled in my head. He saw what I saw; she was working too hard. She was tired all the time. She needed someone to look out for her. I’d been trying for months to be that person, but she refused to let me in.
At least for now, she was safe. Protected. My fingers itched to touch the screen, to somehow reach through it and brush that one wayward curl from her face. Harris’s words echoed in my head: “You can’t protect her.”
My wolf snarled.
We’ll protect her. We’ll protect our mate.
Yes , I agreed. We would die before letting anyone hurt her.
This time would be different. It had to be.