For Fox's Sake (#3, Completed)

1. 3 years earlier

JAMES

3 years earlier

I fucked up.

The realisation hit me like a brick wall, robbing me of my breath as I sat in the back of the car, her head resting in my lap.

It has been hours since we left London and headed back to Scotland, leaving the others behind to deal with the mess after our rescue mission. But that was their problem- we got Natalia out. I made sure of that, and that's all I cared about right now.

Connor and Callum kept yapping as we drove, but I wasn't paying attention. Not when the itchy sensation on my lower abs revealed what I had least expected to find there- the mating text. Written across my skin were the words that my mate was going to say around me so that I could recognise her.

Except, I was pretty damn sure who my mate was because there was only one person whom I had touched in the hours before the mating text appeared. The only one that everything inside me was being pulled towards ever since I laid my eyes on her in that dungeon.

Natalia Macalister.

The innocent girl who awoke a savage desire to protect her at all costs.

Seeing her there, unconscious and naked on the floor, with only a thin blanket to cover her, shattered something inside me. The urge to take her away from the hellhole where she had been kept after she was kidnapped was strong, impossible to deny. I didn't think twice about it at the time but the way my fox and I reacted, neither of us willing to let anyone else carry her, even her own brother- yeah, I should have figured it out back then already.

And now I was fucked. So very fucked.

Because when I took that deal all those years ago, I never expected that someone like her could be my mate.

She was a wolf shifter, for crying out loud. How was it even possible that the Moon Goddess had put us together? Practically a little girl, on top of that, barely turned nineteen while I was eleven years her senior.

There must be some sort of mistake.

Was it, though? Especially after the guys were just discussing how Riley, Natalia's brother Rafe, and the Fire Dragon's Beta Aiden were mates. A human, a wolf and a dragon. A mixed triad, both unheard of in our world, where shifters mated only within their own kinds and usually in pairs.

In my mind, I listed every possible reason that I could think of why Natalia couldn't be my mate, but those were all excuses, really.

I knew the truth.

I had heard the rumours–the daughter of the Windcrest Alpha, an omega wolf with a pure, gentle soul. One that her father had spent years trying to extinguish because for him it was an embarrassment, a weakness in the great Macalister clan.

The very thought of Angus Macalister trying to harm her ignited an inferno of fury inside me. I was ‌going to kill him if he even as much as saddened her ever again.

Yet, the reality was that I was no different. My dark, twisted soul–or whatever was left of it– was no match for Natalia's innocence, and I was only going to destroy it further, just like her father had been trying.

Innocence.

I should have known that there was a catch. I should have thought about it better.

But back then I was a cocky teenager, convinced that I was going to outsmart a yako. I didn't even doubt my chances, because my very nature was to be deceptive. Cunning and deceitful was the definition of fox shifters. Tricksters to our very core. Putting one over on a fox demon when they thought they had me cornered was a no-brainer– a decision that I never expected I would regret.