Read Alaric's Perfect Mate (Saber Chronicles Book One) Online

Authors: R.E. Butler

Tags: #sabertooth tiger, #tiger shifter, #tiger pride

Alaric's Perfect Mate (Saber Chronicles Book One) (3 page)

BOOK: Alaric's Perfect Mate (Saber Chronicles Book One)
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“We’re guarding her under her brother’s
authority,” Lance said, his eyes flashing to the amber of his
beast. “He’s the master vampire of the city.”

Lia turned to face Aubrey. She scented the
air and shook her head. “You’re human, but your brother is a
vampire?”

Aubrey nodded. “His name is Caleb.”

Lia took the heels from Aubrey’s hand and
looked at the broken heel. “I’m sorry about that. My cat is very
protective of my family.”

“It’s okay. They’re just shoes. My favorite
ones, mind you, but shoes all the same.”

“I have some you can borrow. Maybe these can
be repaired. Come and sit down, and I’ll tell you anything you want
to know.”

“I want to know everything,” Aubrey said as
she sat in the front row and Lia joined her.

“Good.”

 

* * * * *

 

Aubrey was vaguely aware of Jonathon using a
microphone to welcome everyone to the NWFA fights and the
introduction of the first fighters, but she was entirely focused on
what Lia said. Sabers couldn’t be with just anyone. They were
unable to conceive children unless they were with their truemates,
and they weren’t able to find their truemates until they began to
have mating dreams.

“You’re saying that Alaric has been having
sex dreams about me for the last year?” She was both embarrassed
and aroused. Just how detailed were the dreams? “I didn’t.”

Lia shrugged. “It’s the way of our kind. The
dreams are only for the saber and help us to know when we’re close
to our mates. The nearer we are to him or her, the more vivid and
frequent the dreams become. We were in California when the dreams
began for him, and he had maybe one every few weeks. We went to
Nevada, and the frequency didn’t increase. It’s hard for our people
to move from state to state, so we joined with Jonathon who was
coming east on his tour. We’ve been here for a few days, and the
dreams have been every night so we knew you were here
somewhere.”

“That’s weird and cool at the same time,”
Aubrey said.

“Are you upset?” Lia asked.

“Why would I be upset?”

She shrugged and looked out toward the arena
where fighters were kicking each other’s asses and the crowd was
roaring its approval. “Humans sometimes don’t understand
supes.”

Leaning back in the plush seat, Aubrey said,
“My brother is the master of the city, and my best friend is a
wolf. Plus, there’s Heckle and Jeckle back there, who are my
friends. I’m the manager of the city’s supernatural hotel. So yeah,
I’m used to weird. It just feels strange to be talking to you about
your brother, who you believe is my truemate, without actually
talking to him first.”

“If he sees you again, he won’t be able to
fight,” Gabe said from where he stood looking down at the
arena.

“What do you mean?” Aubrey asked.

“His beast is going to be thinking about only
two things – fucking you and protecting you. It’s why Alpha Black
rushed you from the room. Every shifter in that room knew exactly
what that roar meant,” he said.

She mulled over Gabe’s words.

“It’s Alaric’s fight,” Lia said.

Aubrey couldn’t stop herself from standing
and moving to the half-wall of the suite to watch. They were
several stories up, but she felt as though she was right there on
the dirt. She didn’t have to be told which guy was Alaric; she felt
a strange connection to the biggest of the two men. He was tall and
broad, with short, dark hair. He stared up at her, and she felt a
connection bloom between them. Her heart clenched tightly, and she
turned, determined to go down to the dirt and see him.

Lia put her hand on Aubrey’s arm and stopped
her. “You have to let him fight. When he’s finished for the night,
I’ll take you to him.”

Aubrey chewed on her bottom lip.
“Promise?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She relaxed but only fractionally and
didn’t take her seat; instead, she watched intently. As Alaric and
the other guy fought, she mulled over what Lia had told her. Mate.
The word was foreign to her but also felt completely right. Humans
didn’t have mates – they found someone they thought was cute, went
on a few dates, and maybe got married. Mates, as she understood it,
were something far deeper than a human couple experienced.

Alaric and the fighter tumbled and howled
together, but Alaric was clearly a better fighter. Stronger.
Faster. Alaric put the other fighter in what looked like a painful
headlock, and the fighter tapped out. Alaric stood slowly and
stared at Aubrey, and everything inside her quieted as he pointed
at her and roared. The sound was deep, full of possession and
desire, and it filled her with an answering passion that she
couldn’t explain.

That man was her mate. She didn’t fully
understand what it meant, but she didn’t care. The only thing she
knew for sure was that Alaric was hers, and that’s all that
mattered.

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

Alaric’s body ached, but not from the many
bruises and scratches that marred his skin. The ache was bone-deep
and came from the mating connection. He paced in a small training
room, waiting for Lia to bring his mate to him. He wanted to shift
and hunt down the petite brunette, but he knew if he stormed out of
the room as a saber, Jonathon would have a fit. Not that he cared,
actually, because Jonathon wasn’t his alpha, but the humans would
freak out. Humans seemed to only like shifters in an abstract
sense, when they were still human and not threatening looking.

Galen and Slade watched him warily as they
stood blocking the doors. He wasn’t going to attack his brothers,
but his beast didn’t mind that they were concerned he might. There
was a sharp knock on the door, and Alaric scented the air, growling
in annoyance when it was only Jonathon on the other side and not
his mate.

Galen opened the door, and Jonathon and Krel
stepped inside.

“How are you feeling?” Jonathon asked.
Neither male drew close to him, and that was just fine with him and
his beast.

He grunted, unable to articulate the need
that was clawing at him from the inside.

“He’ll be a lot fucking better when the girl
gets here. Where is she?” Slade asked.

“She’s coming. Lia was arguing with her
guards about their need to stay away.”

Galen shook his head. “He needs to see her
soon, or we’re going to have a pissed off saber in this room, and
I, for one, am not interested in being a chew toy today.”

Jonathon looked at Alaric and said nothing
for a long moment.

Alaric stopped pacing and faced the wolf.
“What?”

“When you’ve mated with your female, we need
to talk about your oath.”

Alaric gnashed his teeth, annoyance filling
him.

“It would be better if you left,” Slade said.
“Now is definitely not the time.”

Jonathon sniffed, looking like a fussy
stuffed suit and not like an alpha wolf, and nodded at Krel, who
extracted three envelopes from his interior jacket pocket. “Well
done tonight,” Krel said, smiling tightly. “The humans were very
pleased.”

Slade growled sharply, and Krel gasped,
stepping back. Even though the male had been Jonathon’s assistant
for many years, he still seemed worried that a were would kill him
at some point.

Galen opened the door. “We’ll be in touch
before the fights next week.”

“See that you are,” Jonathon said.

The door shut, and Slade said, “What’s his
angle?”

“He’s probably bummed that Alaric found his
mate at the first fight here and will quit. We only swore an oath
to fight for him until we found our mates. He has three sabers
fighting now, but it shouldn’t be an issue for us to go down to
two. There’s no way in hell Alaric would want his mate around all
these unmated males.”

Alaric agreed. Among the millions of thoughts
zinging around his brain, the top was his desire to get his mate
away from this place.

His beast snarled suddenly, and he knew his
mate was close. He could feel a pull to her, and the beast clawed
to go to her. Galen and Slade threw themselves at him, pinning his
arms to the far wall as the doors opened and Lia stepped through,
followed by his mate.

He growled, snapping his teeth at his
brothers. As the eldest, he was bigger and stronger than they were,
but the two together were keeping him back.

“Fucking calm down. You’re going to scare
her,” Galen cautioned, gritting his teeth as he let loose of his
beast to enhance his strength.

Alaric didn’t want to scare his mate, but he
couldn’t get a handle on his beast, who wanted to be with her.

“It’s okay. I’m not afraid,” his mate said,
her voice a soothing balm to his beast.

For about two seconds. She moved closer, away
from Lia, and her scent hit him full force. Sweet like cream and
honey. He roared, the sound spilling from the depths of his
soul.

She blinked and chewed on her bottom lip,
uncertainty on her face as she looked at his brothers and then at
Lia. His sister, thankfully, smiled and said, “This is Aubrey
Night, sister of the master vampire of Belle Terra. Aubrey, this is
my brother, Alaric Carmichael.”

“You can let him go,” Aubrey said.

He saw his brothers hesitate, so he growled
and they slowly released their hold on him. In a heartbeat, he had
scooped his mate up in his arms and rushed her as far from his
brothers as he could, pushing her gently into the corner of the
room and baring his teeth at them.

“Out.”

“Are you okay, Aubrey? We can stay,” Lia
said.

Her hands touched his bare back, and the
beast receded, thoughts of mating with her filling his mind and
pushing away the anger at the unmated males. Even if they were his
brothers, they were too close to his sweet-smelling mate who wasn’t
wearing his marks and saturated in his scent.

“I’m perfectly fine. If you’d be nice enough
to tell my guards that I’m okay and to head on home in the limo. We
can figure things out later.”

The trio left, and when the door shut, he
spun and caged his mate in the corner with his hands on either side
of her, his palms flattening on the wall. She said she was fine,
but he was still struggling with his beast not to shred her dress
and mate her. He didn’t want to scare her. He only ever wanted her
to be happy with him.

Her hands were trembling as she cupped his
face. She swallowed audibly and licked her lips. “Damn, you’re
sexy,” she whispered. Then she gasped as her cheeks turned scarlet.
“Okay, wow, that was embarrassing.”

He leaned forward and brushed his lips over
hers. “Mine.”

She wrapped her hands around the back of his
neck and linked her fingers. Her lower body tilted in invitation as
her lips parted. Following the line of her jaw, he kissed his way
to her neck, opening his mouth over the throbbing pulse in her
neck. He felt it flutter under his tongue, and he bit down lightly,
just enough to leave a slight mark. Her nails dug into the back of
his neck, and he crowded closer, licking the mark he’d made and
savoring the taste of her skin on his tongue.

Their bodies touched and their lips met and
parted, their tongues sliding together as if they’d been kissing
for years and not this first, precious time. His beast roared in
pleasure as her sweet taste crested his tongue. He worried his
passion would be too great for her, so he refused to let go of his
grip on the walls, even as his claws lengthened and imbedded into
the sheetrock.

Their tongues danced, sliding and tasting. He
could have kissed her forever, even as he wanted so much more from
her.

She wrenched from the kiss, her panting
breaths filling the air. “Not here.”

“I wouldn’t think of mating with you here,”
he said, his voice a barely contained growl.

Smirking, she dropped a hand to his crotch
and squeezed lightly. “This says otherwise.”

He snarled. “It’s not nice to tease
sabers.”

She leaned back and stared up at him. “Why do
I feel so connected to you?”

“Because we’re truemates.”

“I’m human.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Her beautiful brown eyes were flecked with
gold, and he felt the connection deepen. “Damn, you’re beautiful.”
He extracted his claws and willed his beast to settle. Taking a
deep breath, he stepped back, catching her around the waist and
drawing her close. “I don’t have a place to take you. I’m sharing
an RV with my two brothers and sister. It’s not exactly a five-star
hotel.”

“I live at the Belle Terra Supernatural
Hotel.”

“You live there?”

“My brother owns it, and I’m the
manager.”

His gums tingled as the thought of mating her
filled his mind. He could be noble and offer to woo her, like human
males did with their females, but he didn’t want to give her the
chance to leave. She was his, and he wasn’t about to let her out of
his sight.

“We’ll take our SUV.”

“Your family can come.”

His brow rose, and she laughed. “No, I mean
there are plenty of empty rooms in the hotel. I’m sure they’d like
to get into their own rooms and relax, especially your brothers
after the fight? I’ll call my assistant and she can set it up and
meet them.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall. “It’s
after midnight. Won’t she be asleep?”

“Nah, she’s a night owl. Well, not literally
because she’s a wolf, but she stays up late reading romance novels
with sexy, shirtless guys on the covers.”

“She and Lia would get along great.”

He linked his fingers with hers and pushed
the door open. His family was waiting down the hall, and he said,
“My mate is letting you stay at the supe hotel in town. Get your
shit and get in the SUV. We’re leaving in ten.”

His family scrambled ahead of him, their
excited voices blending together as they talked about not having to
listen to Galen’s growling snores or share the tiny bathroom with
Lia.

BOOK: Alaric's Perfect Mate (Saber Chronicles Book One)
5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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