Gage raised his eyes briefly, seeing both Draco and Talon switch their stance awkwardly. Rylee sounded more exhausted than shocked, but maybe that was just what Gage was telling himself.
“But I assure you that since this one didn’t tell you about his status as one,” Elder Ramos said, pointing lazily at Gage. “That he also didn’t tell you about the process of mate claiming.”
There was a fat silence, the only sound the lick of the fire snapping. Gage lifted his head slightly, watching tears stream down Rylee’s face as she shook her head.
He deserved everything he got. No one could ever make that incredible woman feel that way. If anyone ever did, he knew he would be the first to destroy them.
“The council states that each shifter must claim their mate in a sacred ritual,” Elder Ramos continued. “If the shifter does not claim his mate, it leaves them open and vulnerable to having another shifter claim them. Do you follow?”
Elder Ramos had shuffled over to where Rylee and the boys were standing. Gage had separated himself, standing away and nearly backing into the corner. He wanted the darkness of the shadows to swallow him whole.
“Yes,” Rylee responded.
“But our situation here has become vastly more complicated,” Elder Ramos said with a laugh. “You see, a child is involved now. A shifter child. Since Gage here hasn’t claimed you, he hasn’t claimed the child. That leaves the council with a few unfortunate options.”
Rylee was listening intently, remaining silent, letting her tears stream down her face freely. Gage knew that his friends didn’t know how to help him. He had dug his own grave.
“So, those options read as follows: One,” Elder Ramos held up one finger in front of Rylee, “we will find a shifter who is willing to claim you and the child. Or two, we will separate you from your child and leave it to be cared for with shifter parents.”
Gage watched painfully as Rylee’s hand went to her stomach. Her maternal instinct had kicked in before the baby was even discovered, something he knew was throbbing like an open wound in her heart.
He heard Rylee swallow, then take a step forward to the elder. Talon touched her forearm, but she ripped it away. She sniffed away her tears and then stood straight and tall. Gage could not have been any more in love with her than at that moment.
“What happens to Gage?” she said.
Elder Ramos smiled. His teeth were gleaming white like chiclets ran along the inside of his ancient mouth.
“Gage will have to participate in something that is another ritual of ours,” Elder Ramos said, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “We take your man, and he fights a shifter, and the shifter, if they defeat him, has the right to claim you.”
Gage felt like his whole body had been scorched. He hated what was happening but knew that it was all his doing. Just like during the war, he had no one else to blame but himself.
Rylee sniffed again, her eyes moving to Gage’s. He looked at her, trying to tell her how much she loved her just with a look, but knowing at the same time, he didn’t deserve her.
“Defeat him?” Rylee murmured, still looking at Gage.
Elder Ramos placed a hand on Rylee’s shoulder. The act made Gage wince, but he knew that the elder wasn’t going to do anything. It was his fated mate impulse to protect her, whether his mind knew she deserved something better or not.
But Talon, Draco, and Leo stepped forward anyway. Elder Ramos raised a hand in the air, and they all froze, still as statues.
“She needs to know,” the elder whispered.
They remained in their spots, as did Gage feeling more and more like a cowardly, tragic man.
The elder’s eyes shifted back to Rylee. One could only see the pupils in the dim of the room, but Gage knew just by his tone, as well as his scent, that he was enjoying delivering such life-altering news.
“Gage, your beloved,” he said slowly, “he has to die for the council's decision to come to fruition. He made his decision about you a long time ago.”
Gage felt his body turn to jelly and melt away from the present moment. All of a sudden, he was back in Afghanistan, the day that changed his life.
The flashbacks were potent and vividly detailed. He tasted the eggs he had for breakfast that morning. The sting of the sun on his skin. The taste of the blood in his mouth as the bomb blew off half of his lower jaw. The agony of having not warned his comrades about a possible mine nearby. The regret was genuinely palpable, burning like oil inside his body.
Gage wanted to cry out, the same way he wanted to cry out that day. He had awoken in a medical tent, his face feeling like he had been pushed inside of a stove. They told him as he lay there, half alive yet half dead, that the men he had led were killed. All of the men that he had laughed with that morning died because of him. There wasn’t any proper answer to something like that. No therapy could ever undo that level of sorrow.
It had been his fault then, and it was his fault standing in front of Elder Ramos and his fated mate. She looked at him, no more tears able to be shed, disappointment and fury sending arrows through his chest. He deserved everything, all of her angry words, all of her regret, and most of all, to die in the ring.
TWENTY-TWO
RYLEE