Noah's POV
Tyler texted me this morning telling me that my mate finally showed back up to school. I guess she wasn't missing after all. Tyler's just being dramatic as always. I canceled a meeting I had to drive to his school to reject my mate. Well, not really a meeting, honestly, I was meeting up with a girl I met in the bar last Friday for round two of what we did on my birthday. And I didn't cancel it. I just pushed it back an hour. She's a werewolf, so she's more than willing to please an alpha if he says he has to change the time.
I met Tyler in the parking lot after his school let out for the day. I was waiting for him by his car. He didn't seem too happy to see me, but I can't blame him. I'm here to hurt his friend. She isn't one of us, so it shouldn't hurt her too badly. Tyler might hate me for a few days, but he'll get over it soon. I'm his alpha, and he is my gamma, a loyal pack member, so it won't take him too long to forgive me. But if you think about it, I'm doing this for her own protection. She's a human, weak, unfit to live in our world. She has a family and people she cares about, and people who care about her, so pulling her into a world of war and death wouldn't be good for her. It might hurt her now, but she will be able to stay safe with her family. Yeah, this will be good for her.
"No. No way. I'm not letting you reject her here." He argues with me.
"Then why did I come all the way out here?" I say, crossing my arms.
"Let me give her a ride home. You can do it there where she can have some privacy and not be humiliated in front of her entire class." He argues, throwing his bag in the backseat of the car.
"Why would I want to ride with her home to do it there? That's just a waste of my time."
"Because she's your mate. You shouldn't want to hurt her at all, so at least let her have dignity in this." He argues. "She gets humiliated enough around here." He sighs.
"What?" I ask. Is someone humiliating my mate?
"Blake! Over here." Tyler yells behind me. Then I smell a fantastic smell, lilacs, and sunshine (I know that she can't actually smell like sunshine. She smells like the feeling I get when I'm running thru a field on a warm sunny day. Happiness. She smells like happiness.) My mate is near. I turn around to see her walking up to us. She isn't dressed like she was in the club. She has on a thick hoodie and jean jacket with jeans even though it's hot outside. It's at least 80 degrees out; how is she not burning up in that. Out here in the sun, she is even prettier. Her tan skin. Her shoulder-length brown hair. But not a mud brown... more of a chestnut. And she has big, pretty blue eyes that sparkle in the sun. Stop that. I'm going to reject her. I can't be thinking of her like that.
"I'm doing it now," I tell Tyler.
"No, you aren't. She lives nearby; it's only a short ride." He growls out.
"Fine," I growl.
"Hey, Tyler." She says to him, walking up to us, making me want to growl, but I don't want to alarm her, so I try to hide my anger. "Did you want something? I have to get home." She asks, blinking her big blue eyes at him. My wolf really doesn't like her talking to other guys.
"Let me give you a ride," Tyler says to her.
"I'm good. Thanks." She shrugs
"I insist." Tyler smiles, trying to talk her into it.
"No. I'm good, thanks. See you later." I say, turning away, but I grab her wrist
"Wait," I say as I feel the sparks from touching my mate, making me forget everything else. She pulls her hand out of mine.
"Please don't touch me." She whispers, taking a step back cradling her arm. I didn't grab her that hard. There is no way I hurt her again. I made sure I was being gentle when I touched her..... wait. Tyler said she hates being touched. It scares her.
Tyler grabs my shoulder and pulls me back some, stepping between Blake and me, saying, "He didn't mean to."
"Bye." She mumbles and starts walking away again. Tyler hurries around her to stop her but is extra careful not to touch her.
"Please, Tyler. I'm late." She sighs.
"Then let me give you a ride." Tyler smiles. Blake takes a second to think about it before she takes a deep breath.
"Ok."
"Great!" He smiles before walking back to his car with her following behind him. Tyler opens the passenger side door for her, and she gets in. Tyler gets in the driver's seat, and I take the back seat behind my mate. I want to smell as much of her scent as I can while I can. I can't deny the fact that she smells amazing... I guess that will change after I reject her. Tyler starts the car and pulls out of the parking space. But stops before pulling out of the parking lot and looks at my mate.
"What?" She asks with a bit of a laugh.
"Where do you live?" Tyler asks.
"You don't remember?"
"I remember you made me drop you off at a house that wasn't yours in the middle of the night," Tyler says.
"What?" I asked before I even realized I was talking. Why would she lie about where she lives?
"I didn't-" she starts, but I can already tell she is lying.
"Yeah, you did, and don't even try to deny it. I went to that house to check on you yesterday. An old couple lives there. Not you." Tyler says, looking at Blake with a pointed look.
"You mean Mema and Pop Pop? Yeah, they live with us," She says with a smile, but she is still lying.
"No, you don't live with them. It didn't smell like you." Tyler says. He and I locked eyes for a second to see if she noticed his slip-up.
"I could. You don't know," Blake says, crossing her arm over her chest.
"What are their names then?" Tyler asks, crossing his arms.
"Paula and Micha-" she lies.
"Wrong. His name was Charles." Tyler says with a victory smile, causing Blake to scoff.
"It didn't smell like me?" Blake says with a confused look causing me and Tyler to look at each other again.
"That's not the point." Tyler brushes her off, "Look. I don't care that you lied about where you live. I just need to know how to drop you off at your real house. And don't give me a fake address again. I'm not driving away until you are inside the house." He says with a smirk.
"Fine. Take a right." She sighs, crossing her arms again.
"See, that wasn't so hard." He smiles and takes a right.
"But Tyler, please don't pull in the driveway." She says, looking very serious now. Weird. "Jeff gets home right after school and gets mad when someone is in his spot." I can't tell if that's a lie or not.
"Who's Jeff?" I growl out.
"My stepbrother. Who are you?" My mate answers, then turn to me with her eyebrows knitted together. She looks so cute that way. Stop that. I'm rejecting her. I can't think like that. I text the she-wolf I'm supposed to be hooking up with later to see if she can just wait for me in my bedroom when I get back. After I don't answer, she just turns back to the road giving Tyler directions.
She doesn't live very far from the school, she easily could have walked, but stupid Tyler wants to be a gentleman. Whatever dude. She's my mate. Tyler pulls up in front of a house and stops the car. She gathers her things then opens the door getting out of the car. I get out to do this with some privacy, even if Tyler can see and hear the whole thing. Let's hope she takes it well. I stand behind her and watch her bend over, back into the car to talk to Tyler for a second. She's got a great ass.
"Thanks for the ride. I appreciate it." She says to Tyler before standing back up and turning to me.
"Bye." She glares at me. I check out my mate one last time. It's too bad. She is hot. It's now or never.
"I, Alpha Noah Decker, reject you as my mate." He says with a smile.
"Ok," she shrugs and rolls her eyes before walking towards her house. I know she is a human and can't feel the bond much yet, but I'd thought she'd at least feel something. I mean, I did the rejecting, and I feel bad. I hop in the front seat of the car and close the door. My wolf is howling at me. I watch my mate as she walks up the stairs leading to the front door. She turns back and waves to us as her front door opens. A man that looks to be in his 50s steps out and grabs her by her jacket. It must be her father.
"There you are. You're late." The man yells as he pulls her into the slamming the door behind them. "Who told you that you could go to school today?" The man continues to yell. Thanks to werewolf hearing, Tyler and I can both hear him as if he were right here in the car with us.
"I hadn't gone in a week." I hear my mate
"Upstairs. Now!" The man yells. I turn to Tyler.
"Who the fuck was that?" I growl.
"Her dad, I guess." Tyler shrugs.
"I don't like how he just grabbed her like that," I say; neither of us takes our eyes off the house.
"I don't know. There's a lot I find odd about that situation." Tyler says.
"Like what?" I ask, turning to face him.
"For starters, how he grabbed her and the look on her face when he did, the unwillingness to tell me where she lives, she missed four days of school, and he is mad about that, how scared she was to go to the club,... things her brother said..... just a lot." Tyler sighs at the end.
"I think we should stay and listen for a minute... make sure everything is ok," I say, looking back to the house.
"I agree." He says. Both of us open our doors and get out. I close mine and lean against the car with my arms crossed, looking at the house. Tyler appears next to me and does the same.
"OPEN THIS DOOR!" We hear the man yell again.
"Let's walk around the house, see if maybe a window is open for us to hear better or if we can find what room she is in," I state. Tyler nods. He takes off for the right side of the house, and I head down to the left.
I am halfway down the left side of the house when I see her in a window. She is walking out of a room without a window, maybe a closet or bathroom, and holding something in her hand. There are no neighbors on this side of the house. Just woods, so I back up some to get a better view of what's going on since she is on the second floor.
She starts going thru her school bag when the guy from the porch and another guy bust down her door and starts walking towards her. In a flash, Tyler is standing next to me. I take my eyes off her for a second to talk to Tyler.
"Is this the only vantage point?" I ask
"Seems so."
"Ok, this will have to do then," I say, looking back at my mate. She is on the bed now, and they are pinning her down. What did I miss? Another guy bursts thru the door
"Stop! Stop!" I hear my mate yell as a third guy walks into the room. What is going on? The new guy starts taking off her pants while she squirms around. This can't be what I think it is. Three guys?
"Tyler, what am I looking at?" I ask with fear for my mate evident in my voice.
"I don't know," he says; fear for his friend is also evident in his voice.
We watch as the guys pull her other clothes off her, keeping her pinned to the bed on her stomach. She tries to get out of their hold, but it's two grown men versus one girl. The guy that was on the porch puts one arm ins handcuffs that are attached to her bed.
"Tyler?" I growl
She struggles and screams as he puts her other arm in handcuffs.
"Tyler!" I growl again.
"Why do they have her naked?" He asks; neither of us can take our eyes off what is happening. This can't be what I think it is. The other two guys force her legs into restraints at the foot of the bed. She is screaming and crying.
"Fuck this." Tyler runs off towards the front door of the house. The men seem to hear him because two of them work to set her bedroom door back up while the other one grabs a syringe and stabs it in my mate's back. She screams and tries to pull away from it but can't, and then her whole body goes limp.
What the fuck did they give her!?
I run inside and up the stairs. Tyler is already in the room punching one of the men with the other two trying to get him. I run and throw the one that took off her pants against the wall knocking him out. A fourth man runs in.
"What's-"I don't even let him finish before I knock him out too. Tyler and I look at each other then around the room. Everyone is either passed out or too hurt to move. Good. I run over to my mate and yank the handcuffs off her hands while Tyler works on the ones at her feet. Once she is free, I grab her and carry her out of the house to the car. Tyler isn't far behind me. I climb into the backseat holding my mate in my arms while Tyler dives into the driver's seat, turning on the car and speeding away.
"What the fuck was that?" He yells, looking in the rearview mirror at her.
"I don't know," I say, looking at my mate and gently tapping her face trying to get her to wake up. She is lying across the backseat only in her underwear with her head in my lap.
"What did they give her?" I ask him.
"I don't know." He says, looking back at the road running a red light.
Within a few minutes, Tyler is pulling up in front of a hospital in the city. It's one of the many hospitals in the city, but many pack members are doctors at this hospital, and thankfully it was the closest one too. Tyler pulls the car up in front of the front doors, and I hop out, holding Blake in my arms.
"Help me! She needs help!" I say as I walk thru the doors. It doesn't take long for a team of doctors and nurses are surrounding me. Someone pulls a bed on wheels up to me, and I set her on it.
"What happened?" A doctor asks me
"I think she was almost gang-raped," I whisper, not wanting to believe the words I'm saying.
"Her arms look broken," a nurse says to the doctor.
"Anything else? She has some minor bruising. How long has she been unresponsive?" The doctor asks, shining light in her eyes.
"A while now. They gave her something. Knocked her out." I answer as best I can.
"Something? What kind of something?" He asks.
"I don't know. They injected it into her back." I say, causing the nurses and doctors to roll her over onto her side. "Right here." I point out the small hole in her back that's bleeding. Someone takes a cotton swab and bandages that part of her back.
"Her wrist is bleeding." Another nurse says, causing me to look at her wrist that I didn't even realize she was bleeding there.
"Run toxicology on her. See what's in her system." the doctor starts barking orders as they wheel her down the hall. I follow, and Tyler appears next to me.
"Is she going to be ok?" He asks as we follow the doctor wheeling her down the hall.
"We'll do everything we can," he says.
"But is she going to be ok?" Tyler repeats his question. The doctor stops and turns to us, causing us to stop walking, but the nurses keep wheeling her away.
"I'm going to be honest with you. I don't know." He says, turning to walk away.
"What the fuck, Tyler!" I yell as I punch the wall next to me.
"If you hadn't insisted that you give her a ride and I did not reject her until she is at home, we wouldn't be here right now!" I yell at Tyler.
"We wouldn't, but that doesn't mean that none of that would have happened! If we weren't there, who knows what they would have done to her!" He yells back at me. I know he's right, but I don't want to think about that. Tyler sighs and leans against the wall.
"We should have killed them," he says.
"Yeah." I agree. Tyler sighs and slides down the wall to the floor, running his hands thru his hair in frustration while I pace the hall.
"I guess now we know why she doesn't like being touched." He says more to himself than to me. I look at him, horrified.
"You think they've done this before?" I ask.
"They had the syringe and handcuffs ready to go." He says, putting his face in his hands.
"They weren't even talking to each other as they were doing it. It's like they all knew. Like they planned it or had done it before....... like them talking would take away from hearing her screams," he says with tears starting to form in his eyes.
"What the fuck, Tyler!" I yell.
"Think about it," he sighs. He's right.
"I can't believe I missed it. All the signs were right in front of me, and I missed it." He says, his voice starting to crack.
"How were you supposed to know?" I defend my friend, my voice cracking too.
"Because I'm her friend!" He yells. "I'm supposed to look out for her. She's supposed to be able to tell me when she needs help. She didn't tell me that she needed help." He buries his face in his hands.
"I'm supposed to be that person too! She's my mate, and I just tossed her aside like she was nothing. I was supposed to save her from this." I whisper to myself. Horrified
What did I do?