Chapter 6

(Chase’s POV)

“Dammit!” I looked up and down the street, but she had already disappeared. I could try to chase after her, but I didn’t even see what direction she went in. I headed back inside and took the stairs two at a time. I needed to find out where she lived and I needed to get to her. 

I walked into the bedroom to see Jensen still sitting on the floor. I winced at the sight of the bruises, and his already swollen eye. Now that I wasn’t under the fog of a possessive jerk, I felt bad. I went to help him up when the image of him naked in bed with my mate flashed through my mind, and I growled without realising.

“Whoa!” Jensen said, pulling his hand back. He glared at me and I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. It wasn’t helping. I was on edge. Not only seeing them together infuriated me.But now my mate was running around the goddess damn city unprotected.

“Listen Chase, I didn’t know. You know that…” He trailed off as I growled at him. He needed to drop the subject until I could think clearly. He might be my best friend, but I still couldn’t get that image of them together out of my head, and I wouldn’t hesitate to rip him apart right now. He pulled himself to his feet and then backed away, his hands in the air. “Put some fucking clothes on,” I growled at him, my alpha tone accidentally coming through. He nodded and grabbed some jeans from the floor, wincing in pain, before limping into the bathroom.

“And hurry up, because we need to get back home,” I called through the door.

“Yes, sir,” I heard back through the door. That hurt for a moment. I had never pulled rank on him, but I guess I had just kicked the shit out of him. I sighed as I noticed something on the nightstand light up. I went over and saw it was a mobile phone. And someone called Jeremy was ringing. I was deliberating whether to answer or not when the call rang off. I could tell from the screensaver that the phone didn’t belong to Jensen. It was a picture of my mate with a younger blond girl, a friend maybe? I shrugged and pocketed the phone. Maybe I could get Ivy to hack it, or whatever my kid sister did with her computers. 

Jensen came limping out of the bathroom, thankfully fully dressed. He nodded at me and I nodded back. I knew I would need to apologise for being a dick, but now wasn’t the time.

“Okay, we need to go pick up my mate and then head back home,” I said. “My dad sent me to pick you up due to some emergency with an ally,” Jensen nodded.

“Sure, just one thing, well two actually,” he said, and I raised my eyebrows, waiting for him to continue.

“First off, how do you plan to find her? And should you find her, I highly doubt she will come back willingly.”

“What do you mean, how am I going to find her? You know her address, right?” I asked, and he shook his head.

“Nope, she never told me,” he said. Dammit! What the hell was I going to do? I guess that I could only go home and have security, put a search on her and see if Ivy could get some information from her phone.

“Right,” I said defeatedly, “Let’s get home and then we can sort this crap out from there.” Jensen nodded and we set off. The pack territory was around a twenty minute drive once you go out of the city, so it wouldn’t take us too long to get there. Jensen hesitated as I headed to my car that was parked on the street.

“Erm Chase?” he asked, and I looked over. “I don’t think I’m in any state to drive right now.” Fuck! I am such a dick. He was right, one eye was swollen shut, and he was still limping. I shook my head.

“We’ll get a pair of omegas to pick up your car later,” I said, and he nodded before heading to my car with me. We got set off and luckily traffic was good and we made it back to the territory gates in good time, which was good because the tension in the car was awful.

We waited in silence as security opened the gates and then I drove down the long drive into the territory. We were lucky to have such a big pack territory. We even had some commercial businesses here. Most packs had to attach to a town of sorts so that they could get daily supplies, but we were one of the few packs that were self-sufficient. I turned at the waterfall and headed towards the pack house. The pack house and the two boarding houses were separated from the rest of the territory by a river that ran through our land. A lot of the pack activity happened there, but the family homes and the commercial side were in the main part of the territory or the next valley. And we were lucky that our whole ground was nestled within a couple of valleys, making it a lot easier to protect our borders. 

I crossed the river at the main bridge and turned past the main park and up to the pack house. The two boarding houses were for single pack members, one for civilian members and one for the pack warriors. There was a third boarding house off territory, which was for when we held special events like the mating balls. My father encouraged socialisation, and we had our fair share of events, mostly with the intent of me finding my mate in time, but also so our pack members had a chance to meet other packs and potentially find their mates too.

I smiled at myself as I pulled up to the pack house that stood at the head of the park. I guess I wouldn’t need to be so keen to attend these events now that I had found my mate. I jumped out of the car and looked around at all the activity, pack members going about their business, happy that I would soon be able to introduce them to their future Luna. I knew my dad was keen to retire from his position as Alpha and pass on the title to me. And I was keen to take the position and be the best Alpha that I was able to for my people. 

Jensen made it round the car, and I offered him an arm for support. He raised his eyebrows at me in question and I grimaced.

“I’m gonna head to my room first,” he said, and walked past me into the house. The pack house housed the ranked families. I shared the top floor with my parents and my sister Ivy and then the second floor was split between Beta Alrik, his mate Bridgit and Jensen, and our Gamma Seth and his family. Then the first floor housed the main offices and the ground floor was where the grand hall was, as well as a few common rooms for pack members to hang out in.

I watched as Jensen limped his way up the stairs and sighed. I couldn’t believe how much of a mess this was. I had heard so much about the girl that Jensen had been seeing at the club in the city. About how much he liked her and how he even wanted her to be his chosen mate. If I had just gone with him once, then this could have been a lot less messy. I sighed. There was nothing that I could do about it now. 

I headed into the house and nodded at a few of the pack members that I passed and headed upstairs to the first floor. I walked down to my father’s office and knocked before walking in. Everyone looked up from their seats as I headed towards the bar at the far end and poured myself a whisky and grabbed a can of coke from the mini fridge. I turned around to see the room looking at me.

“Nice to see you finally arrived, son,” my dad said from behind his desk. I nodded and poured the coke into the glass before putting the empty can in the trash and walking over to one of the empty seats. Other than my dad, Beta Alrik, Gamma Seth, and his son Zack were in the room, as well as Everett Stanton, our pack Commander, in charge of the warriors and the elite warriors. It must have been serious if everyone had been called in. 

“Sorry about the delay,” I said with a smile. “Things got a little complex when I went to get Jensen.” My father looked up from the documents that he was reading.

“Complex? How?” I couldn’t stop the grin on my face.

“I found my mate,” I said proudly, and everyone looked at me in shock.

“Your mate?” my father repeated a grin appearing on his face. He stood up to refill his glass.

“Congratulations, man.” Alrik got up and came over and patted me on the back. “Can’t wait to meet her. Where is she from?” I grimaced slightly.

“Erm, I met her in the city,” I said, and they all looked confused.

“But You went to pick up Jen,” Alrik said, “When did you have time to go shopping for your mate? And by the way, where is that son of mine?”

Just then, as if on cue, there was a knock and the study door opened and closed and Jensen limped into the room and nodded to my dad who still stood at the bar.

“I’ll take one of them.” I saw eyes around the room widen and Alrik jumped up, fury on his face.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Alrik looked at his son in alarm. Jensen nodded to me as he sat in the seat next to me.

“This douchebag kicked the shit outta me.” He avoided looking at me directly and I really was going to apologise when the image of him and my mate flashed in my head again and I instinctively tensed up and growled at him. 

His head snapped up, and he jumped up, and then winced at the pain.

“Hey, man.” He held his hands up in defence. “I already told you, I had no clue. How was I supposed to have guessed that she would turn out to be your mate?” 

“Wait, you were with his mate?” Alrik exclaimed. “I thought you were going to meet with that girl…” He trailed off at a glare from Jensen and realisation dawned on his face, and he turned to stare at me.

“Wait! Kaeleigh? She’s your mate?” Zack blurted out. “Aw man, you’re fucked.” and started laughing. Kaeleigh, that was her name, of course. I remembered Jensen and Zack talking about her. It’s crazy that they were talking about the person I had spent so much of my time looking for. My father walked over to Jensen and handed him a glass. 

“I made it a double,” he said as Jensen took it from him and settled back into the chair next to me. I looked at Zack, who was still chuckling to himself. 

“What do you mean by fucked?” And both Jensen and Zack grinned.

“Kaeleigh is erm..” Jensen started.

“That girl is feisty. She’s gonna chew you up and spit you out.” Zack said and started laughing again.

“She squares up against Adelaide all the time in the bar,” Jensen said. “They hate each other.”

“And I have seen her kick guys twice her size out without batting an eyelash,” Zack said.

I sat and listened with pride as they told tales about my mate. It seemed that she was certainly amazing Luna material.

“Well, where is the girl?” Seth asked, “When do we get to meet her?” and I looked down.

“I don’t know,” I said and Jensen laughed.

“She kicked him in the balls and ran off,” he said, and Zack burst out laughing again. I glared at Jensen, and he shrugged. I guess I deserved that. I turned to my dad, and he nodded.

“Don’t worry son, we’ll find her,” he said, “But first I need to talk about something else as equally serious, if not more so,”