TO DEFY HIS MATE: RAFE
Author note: The story of Rafe and Adri’s relationship spans over thirteen years. This book opens on the two chapters from the short story TO DEFY HIS MATE and the final chapter of HIS MATE BY ALLEGIANCE as prologues. If you’ve already read them, you can skip ahead to Chapter One.
“Damn,sweetheart. If you can’t lose without breaking both your legs, you have no business in the cage,” Rafe growled, taking in the broken and bloodied form lying on the concrete floor of a back room of tonight’s illegal venue.
Every instinct in him was screaming to scoop up the young jaguar shifter into his arms. The fighter was compact and sleekly muscular. Exquisitely beautiful despite the bruises and grazes on his otherwise smooth dark skin. His head and face were bothshaved but with just enough stubble to abrade Rafe in the best way once he was healed enough to invite to play.
“It’s not as if I have a ch—” The jaguar’s words cut off as the emerald green of his gaze flicked behind Rafe to where the manager had just appeared in the doorway.
Was the jaguar here against his will? The Lunetti Pack might be the shifter equivalent of the mafia, but they had no patience for slavery of any kind. Nothing was more sacred than freedom to a shifter. He’d have to have a quiet word with his Alpha, Marco, when he was done here before the transitory fighting ring left the shifter sector of New Trinity for Cruor Coven territory. The vampire coven trafficked in flesh and blood and wouldn’t give a fuck if a shifter was being held against his will.
“Who said he lost? Just patch him up, Doc,” the manager, Garth, snapped.
Garth was a dick. The only reason Rafe had even answered his call was because he’d never let someone die in his arms again if he could help it. It was just as well, too, because the second he’d caught the scent of this jaguar, he’d known the young shifter washis. Rafe’s wolf was practically howling inside his chest to claim him, but the guy looked barely legal, so his wolf was just going to have to fucking wait.
“There’s nothing here that won’t heal on its own with a decent meal and a good night’s sleep,” Rafe said, pretending an ambivalence he wasn’t feeling to try and puzzle out why he’d been called.
Shifter healing was excellent. His services as a doctor had been much less in demand since the last shifter war ended decades earlier and the agreement between the three crime families ofNew Trinity was established. Most of his time was spent in his free clinic dealing with witches who couldn’t afford treatment from their own kind and the supernatural street kids and homeless whose biggest health issue was lack of food.
“I need Crusher back out in the ring within the hour. Make it happen,” Garth said. A moment later, his presence was gone. The vampire was swift and silent enough that Rafe had to rely on scent and instinct to sense he’d left.
Rafe drew in a deep breath to keep his fury from shining through as his eyes stayed locked on the beautiful wrecked body lying before him. Everything in him rebelled at the thought of healing the young man only to send him out to be broken again, but there was no way Rafe would leave him suffering a moment longer.
“Sorry you have to waste your power on me,” the jaguar mumbled, turning his head away.
“It’s never a waste to ease someone’s pain,” Rafe said, reaching out to take the jaguar’s hand in his and ignoring the look of surprise he received for his words.
He had to push another wave of anger down as his thumb brushed over cracked and bruised knuckles. Reaching deep inside for the well of healing power inside him, he pushed it down through their connection and into the young man lying on the floor, letting it flow like moonlight into every broken bone and swollen tissue.
The jaguar’s quickly stifled cry as his fractured shins started knitting back together was a knife to his gut, and he cast around for something, anything, he could say to distract the man from the pain.
“So,Crusher? Really?” Rafe asked, surprised and delighted when a delicate flush spread up the jaguar’s neck to his cheeks. The young man was a good four inches shorter than him, not a hulking brute like his fighting name would suggest.
“Yes, really. When I shift, there’s no one with a stronger bite,” he said, but he didn’t sound all that proud about it.
“What’s your real name, sweetheart?” Rafe asked, only half paying attention as he continued the delicate and exhausting work of making sure his healing magic made it to every bit of damage. He couldn’t send the jaguar back into the ring with a weakness.
“Don’t call me that. I’m not some soft little thing looking for a fucking Daddy,” he snarled.
Surprise had Rafe freezing his progress before he forced his focus back on what he was doing. “Who said anything about a Daddy?”
“You’re sitting right next to me. I can smell your arousal. I can see the pity and the saviour complex in your eyes, old man. You wouldn’t be the first one to try.”
Rafe’s jaw clenched tight with rage at the thought of someone trying to take what was his, and it was only decades of professionalism that stopped him from hauling his patient onto his lap. The reminder of their age difference didn’t help. He knew he didn’t look old despite the grey streaks in his hair that matched the silver in his wolf’s fur. Shifters were immortal unless killed, and they didn’t age past their thirties.
The petulant words were a stark reminder that his jaguar was too young to commit to what Rafe wanted from him, as was the jaguar’s apparent lack of awareness of the potential mating bondbetween them. Cat shifters were naturally independent and never felt the draw to mate as strongly, so the obliviousness was probably genuine. Either way, it wasn’t the right time for them, no matter how much Rafe ached with need. His wolf growled inside his head in protest.
“If you don’t want me to call you sweetheart, give me something else to call you. And how old are you? Are you even old enough to fight?”
The jaguar scoffed. “It’s not like the fights are legal, anyway. There aren’t any rules. I’m twenty, and I’ve been fighting for years. If I’m old enough to drink and fuck, I’m old enough to fight.”
Fucking hell. Rafe had more than four decades on this guy. Intellectually, he knew it wasn’t much in the scheme of things. In shifter terms, Rafe was still in his youth, but despite the immature attitude the jaguar was displaying, there was something in the deep green of his eyes that spoke to a worldliness based on harsh life experience. He’d clearly never had a chance to be young and innocent. Rafe’s need to claim was tempered by an even deeper need to take him home and let him discover life outside of this violence. To let him run with the young wolves on their pack lands and study at the local university.
“If you’re here against your will, I can help you out. Well, the pack can help you out. I’m more a lover than a fighter,” Rafe said.
“I don’t need you to save me.”
Rafe shrugged and pretended a nonchalance he didn’t feel. He wasn’t going to get anywhere by bullying the jaguar likeeveryone else in his life likely did. He needed to play the long game.
