Page 20 of How I Met My Mate

Chapter Eleven

Cole

The others are still talking in the meeting room, voices rumbling like distant thunder, but none of it reaches me. My wolf is clawing at my insides, frantic, wild, desperate to get to her. Every breath burns because it isn’t filled with her scent. How am I supposed to sit here and pretend to lead and protect the pack when half of me is missing?

The not-knowing is unbearable. Is she safe? Is she scared? The thought of her facing any danger alone hits me like a punch to the chest.

My pulse hammers, my wolf pacing and snarling, and beneath all the fear is something fierce and undeniable: I need her. Not just to protect—though the instinct is crushing—but because she’s already lodged under my skin, already the center of every beat of my heart. And I’m hanging on to my control by threads that are unraveling fast.

“Cole,” my mother says.

I snarl at her. I’ve never done that before. Then I take a quick step back. I just threatened my own mother.

I turn on my heel, ready to rush from the room. She grabs me by the shoulder.

“Cole! She’s back. She just drove through the gates.”

“What?” Everything snaps back into focus.

“She’s back, and-”

I bolt out the door. I am desperate to shift, to let my wolf out, but I won’t because I need to be able to talk to her as a human, and if I’m in wolf form, she won’t understand me.

My mother is running after me, shouting my name. I can’t hear anything, can only focus on running towards the main road. I can hear the screeching of the tires. Why is she driving so fast?

I’d like to think she’s that eager to be with me, but given how things ended between us earlier…

The car reaches us.

My mother reaches me. The council is hot on her heels.

Alexis jumps out of the car. The back door flies open, and Robert slinks out.

“What the hell?” I demand.

“Cole, you’re not listening! I was telling you that Alexis is coming, and the Frostbane pack are hot on her heels!” my mother shouts at me.

Dax is wearing an earbud. I can hear someone talking on it. “They’re at the gate now, demanding entry.”

With my mate next to me, my head is clearing.

“Tell them to wait five minutes,” I growl.

Dax does, and then glares. “They say we’ve got two and then they’re coming over the gate.”

Alexis grabs Robert by the arm and drags him over to me. “Talk,” I order him.

“I was only trying to help!” he hangs his head. “I was trying to make werewolves immune to silver. My grandfather used to tell stories about a ‘ghost ore’ that protects us from silver. It was in an old abandoned mine. You can recognize it because it glows. I went exploring this summer and found it, and I started experimenting with it.”

“Experimenting on shifters?” I glare at him.

“I didn’t know how else to test it,” he mumbles. “I thought…I thought I could help shifters, and also, maybe they’d finally…”

“Respect you? Treat you better?”

He nods miserably.

“So you coated the silverware with real silver and tested it on the customers after feeding them altered food?”