Betrayed Forced Mate (Rosecreek Special Ops Wolves #4)

“Byron,” I say, at the same time, Rafael jerks away from me, and I realize we were closer than I thought. From his vantage point, it would look like we were doing more than just examining an image on the computer.

“Hey, man—” Rafael says, his hands up as he backs away. “I was just—”

“Olivia?” Byron says, his gaze coming to me, his eyes glassy, his face red. “You know I don’t like other people in here.”

I glance between him and his computer, then take a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” I say, putting a hand on the armrest of the chair as I twist to look at him. “I was looking at the footage from the night I was cursed, and I thought Rafael could help me with something. I thought—I thought he might know more about this.”

Byron looks torn between his anger and his confusion, but he inches forward, easing his laptop bag from his shoulder, his eyes shifting to the screen.

I can feel his negative emotions drift away as he looks at what I’m pointing to.

“How did I miss this?” he asks, his voice breathy. “I’ve watched this video a million times.”

“Me too!” I say, grabbing his arm, my fingers curling around his bicep. I watch his eyes track the movement, pausing there momentarily, his breath coming out fast, but I can’t focus. For the first time since the blood-bonding, something else has actually managed to take some of my focus and attention off of Byron, even if just for a second. “This part of his arm looks completely different!”

“Right,” Rafael says, and the two of us jump. I’d completely forgotten he was here. He clears his throat, stepping back toward the screen, his hands still partially in the air, like he’s afraid Byron could change his mind and turn on him, after all. “As I was saying, this is a shifter—a shapeshifter. Typically, these types of shifters are more supernatural than genetic in nature, though not a lot is known about them. They like to fly under the radar, for obvious reasons.”

“Sick,” Byron mutters, leaning closer, getting his nose even closer to the screen. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

“Shapeshifters are incredibly rare,” Rafael says. “Because rather than just having one other form, like we do, they have several others, and can learn them through time. It requires a certain level of control and creativity. It explains how one could make a mistake like this.”

“So, what does it mean?” Byron asks, drawing back from the screen. “Does that get us any closer to discovering who this is?”

“Like I said, it’s nearly impossible to know a shapeshifter’s true form, because they change so often and very intentionally keep their identities hidden. But this explains why the “mayor” would be so willing to kidnap you in front of everyone, Olivia—it’s not the mayor, at all.”

“But the mayor isn’t the one who cursed me,” I say, shaking my head. “There was someone else with him. That’s the guy who said it.”

“From this mistake,” Rafael says, leaning closer and hovering his finger just over the monitor. I suck in a breath, glad he knows better than to touch Byron’s UHD screens. “We can deduce that he—she—they—were shifted into a woman just before this. Did you see a woman with this coloring, this bracelet?”

I close my eyes, thinking back, then gasp when I remember it—bumping into the woman serving champagne, nearly making her knock over her champagne. She was gorgeous—I remember thinking she was too pretty to be a server—and she’d stopped to give an older gentleman a glass.

“Yes,” I breathe, opening my eyes and looking between them excitedly, “she was a server. I remember she talked to an older man. Gave him a glass of champagne.”

“Do you remember anything about him?” Byron asks, his eyes meeting mine, and that familiar twinge in my chest pulls. I swallow and close my eyes again, desperately trying to pull the image to mind.

An older guy, short, thick, bushy mustache. Dressed like a professor with these round, thick glasses. I see his pudgy hand reaching for the glass on the tray, and remember I’d felt slightly alarmed that he might knock them over and make that poor server spill, after all.

“He was old,” I say, “short.”

“You know,” Rafael says, clearing his throat, “it’s common to communicate with language, through the pack or…mating bond. But there have been reports of people using bonds to convey images, memories, even.”

“So what?”

“So—” he says, clearing his throat again and glancing between the two of us. “Depending on how…strong your bond is, Olivia, you might be able to project the image of this man into Byron’s head. Give him something to work with more than old and short.”

I feel my entire face flame with mortification. Everyone knows, can tell, that we’re mates. Even Rafael is aware of the fact that we have a mating bond—Byron just doesn’t want me.

“I can try,” I say, finally, my voice just above a whisper. I avert my eyes from Rafael and drop them to the floor, not wanting to meet Byron’s, either. “But I don’t think our bond is that strong.”

Byron reaches out, putting a hand on my knee, and it’s like he’s opened an electrical current directly into my body. I breathe, think about him, think about the man at the party, imagine him, then try to project it outwards.

“Do you see it?” I ask.

Byron is quiet for a moment, then says, “No, sorry. Keep trying.”

“Establish the connection first,” Rafael says, his voice low. “Then move onto the image.”