Rafa
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Rafa stood outside the theatre with half a rose-flavored cupcake in his hand and his heart in shattered pieces in his chest.
Go back inside, roared his lion. Chase down your mate and make her listen.
No, replied Rafa for what felt like the millionth time. She’s been hurt before by a man who chased her down and tried to make her listen. I won’t do that to her.
His lion wasn’t listening. He roared again, louder and more frantically than ever. Pursue her! Explain it to her! Don’t let her get away!
The roar was silent and inside his head, but it still made Rafa’s ears ring. But it only strengthened his resolve to give his mate space to make her own decisions. Having his lion demand his attention and refuse to listen to what he was saying gave him just the smallest taste of what it would feel like to Grace if he strode back in and demanded that she hear him out, like it or not.
I have to watch for danger, Rafa said. I can’t if you keep roaring at me. I need to protect my mate, remember?
With a final muttered growl of Chase her, chase her, his lion subsided.
Rafa’s head ached. His chest hurt like he’d been stabbed in the heart. He wished an assassin would show up. A shoot-out would make a wonderful break from having to stand there and think about how he’d ruined his own life.
Instead, Destiny’s car pulled up. It wasn’t the distraction he’d hoped for, but it would do. He’d called her on the basis that Grace would probably prefer a woman, Fiona was either at the opera or already busy investigating My Fair Lady, and Catalina preferred to work in a team with her mate and Shane was the single most intimidating member of Protection, Inc.
Destiny walked up, her many braids whipping around her face in the chilly winter wind. “Brr. What’s up, Rafa?”
He was beyond tempted to leave out the reason why his client had kicked his ass to the curb. But even apart from the likelihood of Destiny hearing the story straight from the horse’s mouth once the rehearsal ended, Rafa was done with lying. Even lies of omission, like that one. Even little white lies, like the bed full of identical twins. One lie of omission, another of misdirection, a little white lie or two, and here he was, shivering outside with an icy cold void where his heart used to be instead of warm inside with his beautiful mate.
“I screwed up, Destiny,” he admitted. And he told her the entire story.
When he finished, she looked at him with both frustration and sympathy. “Good Lord, Rafa. You said you were ‘never romantically involved’ with your ex-wife? Yeah, I believe you that you weren’t, but you can’t say that when you haven’t even mentioned that you have an ex-wife!”
“I know,” he said glumly. “Don’t rub it in, okay? I know. Hey, did you come from the office? Was anyone else there?”
Destiny raised her eyebrows. “Why, are you planning to avoid the team for the rest of your life?”
“Just for the rest of today,” he admitted. “Come on, Destiny. Is it safe for me to go back?”
“Yeah, no one’s around. Hey.” She unexpectedly threw her arm around his shoulders, standing on tiptoe to do it. “It’ll be all right. She’s your mate. Everyone says mates have an infinite ability to work things out.”
“I hope so.” He didn’t believe it for a second.
Destiny smacked him across the back of the head.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“For being an idiot,” she said cheerfully. “And sounding like Eeyore just now. Go on, slink on back to the office. Then go home. And don’t try to drown your sorrows. I bet your mate asks me for your phone number and calls you as soon as she’s done with work, and you don’t want to be dead drunk when you pick up the phone.”
The thought of drowning his sorrows had indeed crossed his mind, and he was grateful to Destiny for warning him. But he was hardly going to say so. “I weigh over two hundred pounds. And I’m a shifter. It’d take enough whiskey to fill a swimming pool to get me dead drunk.”
Destiny chuckled. Then she glanced down at his hand. “Hey, what’s that pink thing you’re holding?”
“Believe it or not, it’s half a rose-flavored cupcake.” Rafa tossed it to her. She caught it automatically. “Enjoy. Maybe.”
Her laugh echoed in his ears as he walked away.
The drive back to the Protection, Inc. offices felt like it took forever, though it was only half an hour or so. He hoped nobody had showed up in the time between when Destiny had left and he’d arrived. He’d vowed to stop lying, and the last thing he wanted was to have to repeat the story of what a thoughtless idiot he’d been and how he’d gotten his mate so pissed off that she never wanted to see him again. In fact, if he saw anyone’s cars in the underground parking garage, he’d turn around and go home.
There were no cars in the garage. Relieved, he parked and took the elevator up to the lobby. He’d just return his gun to the weapons room and go home.
Rafa stepped into the lobby, and was confronted with his entire team. Their mates too.
He froze in the doorway, too shocked and horrified to move, let alone speak. Then he took a second look. It wasn’t quite the entire team. Fiona wasn’t there; he supposed she was still at the opera. Neither, of course, was Destiny. But everyone else was, including Nick and Raluca.
In other words, all the mated pairs were there. They stood or sat next to each other, shoulder to shoulder or with their hands clasped or toying with each other’s hair. Just what he needed, a visual representation of the love he’d thrown away.
“You ambushed me,” Rafa said indignantly. “Where are your cars?”
“Parked around the block,” said Shane. “Destiny said you’d probably turn around and leave if you saw them.”
“You got that right.” Glumly, Rafa went to the sofa and sat down. “Fine. Lay it on me. Tell me what an idiot I was.”
There was a brief silence, and then Hal said in his rumbling voice, “Buddy, you got the wrong end of the stick. Destiny didn’t call us in to chew you out. She called us in to cheer you up.”
Rafa blinked. “She did?”
Everyone nodded.
“But she told you what I did?” Rafa felt like he’d gotten drunk after all.
“She told us everything,” Lucas said in his lightly accented voice. “The entire story. She set up a group call so we’d all hear at the same time. That’s how we were able to get here so quickly.”
Rafa looked at Nick. “You came to cheer me up?”
“Yeah, I did.” Nick shrugged. “Hey, I’m the one who fucked it up for you with my big mouth, the least I could do was come and say I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t fuck it up for me,” Rafa muttered. “I did that all by myself.”
“Well, we’ve all been there,” Hal said. “Every single one of us. That’s why Destiny called us, so we could tell you that this isn’t the end of everything.”
“None of you ever screwed up like I did,” Rafa said. “I didn’t tell my mate I’d been married.”
Lucas twisted the golden wedding ring on his finger. “I didn’t tell my mate I was about to get engaged in an arranged marriage to a woman I didn’t love.”
Journey squeezed his hand. “To be fair, we’d only just met. If we’d gotten ten more minutes alone, you would have.”
Lucas didn’t argue.
Mine was worse, Rafa thought. Lucas had delayed revealing crucial information by accident, not on purpose.
Very quietly, Shane said, “I didn’t tell my mate I used to be an assassin.”
Catalina jumped in. “You mean, that you’d been forced to be an assassin! That doesn’t count.”
Mine is still worse, Rafa thought. He knew that though Shane had worried that Catalina would reject him if she knew about his past, she had never once blamed him for it.
Hal’s deep voice filled the room. “I drove a car with my mate in the passenger seat for three hours without telling her I’d been shot, quietly bleeding beneath my overcoat, until I nearly got us both killed by passing out at the wheel.”
“Okay, that’s actually worse than what I did,” Rafa admitted.
“I can top that,” said Nick. “I made my mate eat a bacon-wrapped hot dog from a place that’s famous for having a giant bacon-wrapped hot dog on the roof and serving the worst fucking bacon-wrapped hot dogs in all of creation.”
Rafa would not have imagined that he could ever laugh again after his mate rejected him. But that did it. And once he’d laughed, he was able to see the point his team had been making. “Okay. You win. If Raluca forgave you for Big Bacon, maybe Grace will forgive me for not telling her about Paris.”
“Ellie was furious with me over not telling her I’d been shot,” Hal said. “She ripped me a new one. And it was well-deserved. But she forgave me too.”
“Only because you never did it again,” Ellie remarked.
“I’m not lying to Grace again,” Rafa said. “If she calls me, I’m telling her about shifters first thing. Well, maybe not over the phone. I feel like that’ll go better if I have a chance to demonstrate.”
“Yeah, definitely wait till you can demonstrate,” said Ellie. “When Hal told me I thought he was delirious.”
“Do not despair,” said Raluca. “Mates are not so easy to lose. Nick and I had moments when we were enraged with each other. I almost flung him from a speeding car. And yet here we are.”
“I got so mad at her, I made her sit in a car with me listening to the worst music on the fucking planet. Which is why she nearly tossed me out of it.” Nick traced one of her silver dragonmarks with a finger. “But here we are.”
Hope bloomed in Rafa’s heart. Maybe they were right. “Hey... If it does work out, will you all promise not to haze her? The joke’s getting old.”
“You can introduce your mate to me without fear,” Raluca assured him.
“You’re not the one I’m worried about.” Rafa looked at Nick. “What about you?”
“Bring her in,” Nick said with a shrug. “I won’t bite.”
“Hal?”
Hal evaded Rafa’s gaze. “No promises. I’ll play it by ear.”
Ellie stared at her mate. “What? But you never get in on the hazing.”
“Actually...” Catalina began, then cut herself off. “Oops.”
Ellie’s jaw dropped. “What? Hal hazed you? You never told me—neither of you ever told me!”
A three-way flurry of explanations and indignant questioning broke out. Rafa left them to it. “Shane?”
Shane’s ice-blue eyes didn’t blink. “I’m with Hal. No promises. I’ll play it by ear.”
“Oh, come on, guys!” Rafa burst out. “This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to introduce you to my mate when I know for a fact that you’re going to try to scare her off?”
A sudden silence fell. As Rafa replayed his words in his mind, he realized that his team’s mission had succeeded. The only reason he was worrying about his team hazing his mate was that he now thought he would introduce her to them.
We have not lost our mate forever, his lion rumbled. Soon we will be together again.
“You win,” Rafa said. “Thanks for coming out. I’m going home now. I have to wait for a phone call.”