Danger Zone

Authors Note: Here is the final chapter, I struggled tying it all up in a little bow for your pleasure. I have learned my lesson, next time I decide to post a story, I will make sure I have finished the story before I start posting as nothing is worse than being left in the lurch while you wait for the author to get their act together. Thanks for reading my story. Enjoy!

*****

Ian growled low in his throat as his cell buzzed angrily across his bedside table. He picked it up and answered with a grunt, unable to be polite at whoever called him in the middle of the night.

"You're as bad as Damon."

Ian jerked up in bed but couldn't get a word in before Peter continued his tirade.

"No I take that back, you're worse than Damon. At least she never loved Damon."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Ian growled harshly. "Is Emma okay?"

"You tell me."

Ian swung his legs off the side of the bed and sat upright, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "What did she tell you?"

"Nothing Ian. She told me nothing but her body language spoke volumes. She fucking

flinched

when I tried to hug her. Did the same thing with Greg and Adam. Can you tell me why someone who has supposedly recovered from her abusive past and is

allegedly

happily mated to one of my closest allies, flinched at the idea of being touched by other people?"

Ian sighed and stood up, the moonlight reflecting off his body as he started to pace the room. "My relationship with

my

mate is none of your concern."

"Funny, she said the same thing."

"Great then stay out of our business."

"As long as you explain why Alice, Betty and one of your guards constantly throw their bodies around to prevent any other males from touching her. Please tell me you are secure enough in your relationship that if she came home smelling like another male, mated may I add, that you don't think she'd cheat on you."

"She was gone for a year Peter."

"And you think in her year away that she magically went from a sexually abused woman to a slut that looks for comfort in any man's bed?"

"I wasn't with her in that year, how would I know?"

A heavy silence fell over the phone line. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that so that I don't tear out your throat the next time I see you." Peter growled darkly over the line.

Ian groaned "That came out wrong."

"Sure as hell did." Peter snarled.

Ian growled back at the threat in his friend's voice. "Look Peter, we're fine. I'm fine, Emma's fine, our relationship is fine."

"Ah I see." Peter paused "So you're fine with the fact that your mate is passing her heat here in agony because she says you're not ready to have children."

"She WHAT?!?" Ian exploded.

"Oh you didn't know?" Peter asked innocently "She came into heat yesterday but refuses to go home to the only man that can scratch her itch because she doesn't think your relationship could handle it."

"She told you that?" Ian asked in disbelief.

"No of course not. I may have...overheard her friends talking about her situation."

"You were spying on them?"

"They were the ones who had a private conversation in a public hallway."

Ian growled louder "She better not be finding relief in any of your pack members."

"Don't be an idiot." Peter snapped "You know that mated females in heat can only attract the attention of their mate during their heat cycle and their mate is the only one who can satisfy their hunger."

"Shit, you're right."

"Always." Peter replied smugly.

Ian's lips twitched "May I remind you that this conversation is taking place at 2:30 in the morning and I'm not exactly firing on all cylinders?" Ian straightened "Speaking of which,

why

is this conversation taking place at some godforsaken hour in the morning instead of a reasonable hour of the day."

"Because if Emma knew I was telling you this, she would castrate me and feed me my balls then Jane would get mad and hurt her because she likes my balls where they are and then you would get mad and hurt Jane and then I would have to kill you."

Ian shook his head as he struggled to follow the convoluted line of logic "Forget I asked. Why would Emma be so mad if I found out?"

"She

really

does not want you to know how that she is heat."

Ian grunted.

"So when should I expect you?"

Ian glanced at the clock and grimaced. "Probably this afternoon if I can get everything sorted in time."

"Excellent. Look forward to see you then." Peter responded brightly.

Ian paused in his pacing and hissed "You manipulative bastard. You wanted me to come."

"I can't stand to see such sadness and loneliness in her eyes. You need to fix that."

Ian snorted and heard a loud thud in the background. "Listen you self centered asshole, she knows she fucked up but she's home now, focus on that. Forget about last year or you two are going to tear each other apart." Peter swore softly. "Fuck you made me spill my scotch."

"Look you nosy overprotective old hen, you may have been the one who saved her from hell but that in no way makes you her father. She's

my

mate, a member of

my

pack and

my

alpha female so her wellbeing, both physically and mentally is

my

concern. Not yours!"

"Then fucking do your job!" Peter screamed before hanging up.

Ian swore fluently as he spun and threw his phone at the wall, causing it to shatter and fall to the floor. He stood in the middle of the room, heaving as he fought to control his temper. As his breathing normalized he strode into his closet, quickly packing as he called mentally for his second in command.

"TERRY!"

Terry Maser jerked awake and fell out of his bed into an unholy heap, his ears ringing at the defining call. His mate Jasmine snored softly on, her naked body revealed by Terry pulling the covers off with him. Terry sat up, disgruntled at being woken up in the middle of the night when Jas clearly was not disturbed. Suddenly Jasmine moaned, her hands coming up to cover her ears as Ian's summons reverberated through her skull. She cracked open one eye to see her mate kneeling on the ground wrapped in the covers, holding his head.

"We're coming."

She grumbled back to her brother. "You sadistic bastard." She mumbled as she crawled out of bed, patting her mate on the head as she passed him to go to the bathroom.

Emma shivered under the frigid spray of the shower head. She had hoped the icy water would soothe the burning itch that rippled across her skin but it wasn't working.

Last night she had picked up and put down her phone multiple times, fighting the urge to call Ian. She even tried to relieve the ache with a monumental masturbation session but it only made the slow burn turn into a full-fledged inferno. Needless to say, she hadn't slept a wink last night and she was hungry, tired and beyond cranky, not a good situation for someone who had to maintain control of her inner beast, or demon as was the case today.

Her wolf nudged persistently against her willpower, vying for dominance to shift and run home to her mate. Her eyes faded slowly from her normal bright teal to the pale icy blue of her wolfs'. Emma braced her hands on the tile in front of her, breathing heavily, wincing when her claws scraped shrilly along the porcelain. She cursed loudly at her loss of control, roughly turning off the shower and stepping out.

She took a brief glance at the towels that hung on the rods in front of her and opted to air dry. At this point, those normally super soft towels would feel like super coarse sandpaper on her skin. Stepping out into her bedroom, her wolf howled mournfully when she caught a whiff of her mate's scent from her pyjamas. As estranged of a relationship they may have, Emma was not above stealing her mate's shirts in order to keep a piece of him with her at all times.

Emma dressed slowly, cringing with every abrasive pass of her clothing. She tried to distract herself from the sensations by recalling the conversation she had with Doc last night.

"You know, if I knew you were going to run away again, I wouldn't have warned you that you were going into heat." Doc grunted as she finished checking Emma's vitals.

"I'm not running away, I'm just giving us space so we can decide logically when we want to have children instead of letting our hormones rule our fate."

"Whatever makes you sleep at night." Doc barked a laugh.

"Look I'm just glad I don't have some mutant strain of the flu. I thought werewolves don't get sick."

"They don't. They go into heat."

"You've already told me that."

"Well if you ask me, you two need a little hormone therapy."

"That's the last thing we need. The only thing we're capable of doing together is having sex. Hormones are not our problem. We're our own problem."

"Can't fix that by avoiding each other. Having a baby would help you two get your priorities straight."

"Or it could tear us apart. We're not in the right frame of mind to have a family together and I refuse to raise my child in a hostile environment." Emma's chest rumbled as her wolf added her two cents "This conversation is over."

Doc held her hands up, tilted her head and took a step back "Ok have it your way but don't expect me to stand by and watch you suffer."

"I'm not asking you to."

"You never have to B." Doc said sadly.

Emma's shoulders slumped and she hastily wiped the tears from her eyes. She was glad her friends were not here to see her suffer but going through her heat alone was beyond any hell she endured during captivity because she had she golden solution within her grasp, or more specifically, within her jeans pocket.

Within the next second, Emma straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath and put on a happy face. She refused to let a

man

ruin a happy weekend dedicated to Lily's pregnancy and future happiness. She could do this.

She exited her suite and immediately caught the welcoming scent of a fresh pot of coffee. She blindly followed her nose to the mess hall and quickly made up a breakfast plate while lovingly cradling a mug of black coffee to her chest. After locating her friends and their mates sitting at a table on the left side of the room, she took her seat and dove into her meal. The sound of her friend's conversation burbled over her as she ate and partook in her first cup of coffee. They didn't try to involve her in their conversation because they knew she was not fit for civilization until the coffee had kicked in.

She was so engrossed in her coffee that she didn't notice at first the hush that fell over the room. She peered up from her cup and gaped with the rest of the room at the two people entering. She was jolted out of her shock with the high-pitched girly squeal emitted from her left as Alice launched herself across the room to hug her sister. She stood with the rest of the table to join in the reunion as Lena and Alex were ushered into the room and back to their table.

Emma was quick to escape the circle of hugs after the first brush of skin made her feel like she was being stung by a swarm of wasps and the next felt like someone had poured hydrochloric acid over her arm. She wasn't sure whether the contact was from a man or a woman but she was decidedly uncomfortable with physical contact right now. Unless it was her mate. Then she was all for full body skin-on-skin, or better yet skin-

in

-skin contact. If only he wasn't a possessive, controlling, edict-issuing, stubborn, grudge-holding alpha douchebag who was unable to remove his head from his ass.

She cringed when Lena emerged from the group to pull her into a back-cracking hug but when the contact elicited no ill side-effects, she relaxed into the embrace, happy to see her friend again. Her mind whirled as she contemplated the fact that she couldn't touch her own species while in heat but other species were fine.

"Your blood smells funny." Lena said as she took a step back and wrinkled her nose.

Alex wrapped his arms around Lena from behind and pulled her into his chest. "We've had this conversation before Lena, her blood smells off to us because she's a werewolf."

Lena shook her head "It's not that. Her blood normally smells like dirt but it smells acrid, like rotting flesh or something."

Emma wrapped her arms around her torso and took a step back "Gee. Thanks."

Emma snarled when Alex suddenly appeared at her side and grabbed her wrist, pulling it up to sniff at her radial pulse point. "I hate when you do that. Can't you move at a semi-normal speed?"

Alexei gave her a smug grin before announcing "You are in heat."

"Really? That's great!" Lena exclaimed and then with a sly look and a raised brow said "I'm surprised Ian let you out of the bedroom."

"Errrrr..." Emma blushed and ducked her head.

"Yes Emma," Alice asked in a sotto voice "Where

is

Ian?"

"At home." Emma replied meekly.

Alexei raised an eyebrow "He let you travel to another pack while in heat?"

"He doesn't know I'm in heat."

The vampire couple stood in stunned silence before Lena screeched "EMMA!!"

Emma held her hands up defensively "Whatever you're about to say has already been said by everyone here.

Multiple times

. I am not having a baby with Ian until I know our relationship is stable enough to survive the addition of another person in our life. My baby deserves to be raised in a loving environment with parents that can be their role model for love." She said with a stubborn tilt of her chin.

"Do you really believe lying to your mate is the right way to establish a loving relationship?"

"No but it was the best thing I could come up with at the time."

Lena sighed "Emma..."

"Can we just leave it for now? It's done, there's no going back now." Emma pleaded.

Lena eyed Emma critically before conceding with a terse "Fine."

Later that afternoon, a pack of wolves were spotted in the woods playing a juvenile game of freeze tag. Everyone who spotted the group gave a mental eye-roll at the sight of the two alpha females and some of their betas frozen in spot trying not to tilt over as they balanced with their paws up in the air and laughing when one of them fell into a mud puddle or a stream but they didn't deign to interrupt their fun. The crowd gave way as they group returned to the main house to change, some of the braver members of the pack cracked jokes at their muddy state and offered to spray them down with a hose in deference to Jane's normally anal retentive obsession with keeping the floors clean of muddy footprints.

Laughing softly at Jane's semi-menacing growl as she reached for her pile of clothes, Emma spotted Adam and Greg coming down the hall and perked up at the opportunity. Briefly forgetting her unclothed state, she reached behind her to latch onto the wrists of Lena and Alex and drag them down the hall, calling out to Adam and Greg. She wanted to show them that vampires

do

exist.

So insistent on proving her point, she didn't notice the resistance of the people she held onto or the shocked and somewhat fearful looks on the men in front of her, but she did notice the low growled

"Mine."

that set her lower half alight. Jerking around to face the front door and inadvertently letting go of her captives who quickly made their escape, she spotted the hulking half-shifted form of her mate standing in the doorway.

Ian watched as Emma's expression to his arrival morphed from joy and surprise to horror and dismay. Emma shook her head and the blood drained from her face as she started to mumble denials. Her body trembled as she started to slowly back away down the hallway. Reading her intention, Ian lunged forward to halt her retreat but Emma was fast enough to run away and barricade herself in her room.

Ian suppressed his desire to charge down his wayward mate and slowly approached the closed door. He could feel her panic and distress radiating through the door and hear soft sobbing and the brush of her skin against the door as she slid to the floor with her back pressed up against it.

"Emma?"

"Go away Ian, you don't really want this." Emma choked out between sobbing breaths.

"Don't want what?"

Emma let out a barking laugh "Don't lie to me, I know you can smell it. You're just reacting to my hormones."

Ian sighed and slid down the wall opposite the door, putting his head in his hands. "No, I'm not Emma. I can't smell you."

A small fist banged against the heavy oak door. "LIAR!"

"I knew we'd have this discussion so I pre-empted your argument by rubbing tiger balm under my nose. My sense of smell is gone."

Emma snorted. "Like you'd make yourself vulnerable by removing one of your senses."

"It's true. Take a whiff."

"I don't need to, I can smell that stench through the door but that doesn't mean you were actually crazy enough to rub tiger balm under your nose. With our heightened senses, that would be like taking a blowtorch to your nostrils. You probably just rubbed it on your leg or something."

"Okay, let's try this another way. Can you smell me Emma?"

"Of course I can" Emma scoffed "I already told you I can smell the tiger balm."

"But can you smell me? My natural scent." Ian persisted.

There was a brief pause. "No." Emma conceded quietly.

"So if you can't smell me and you don't have the tiger balm on your body, why do you think I can smell you?"

Ian grinned when he heard Emma blow a raspberry and mutter "Point taken."

Emma hesitantly opened the door and poked her head out. "You really rubbed tiger balm on yourself?"

"Yep."

"You idiot." She growled, opening the door further. Ian took a long languid look up her body from the tips of her tapping toes, past the luscious naked curves of her torso, to the pointy arch of her eyebrow and gave her his most charming smile.

"Arghhh!" Emma stomped her foot and slammed the door again "I can't even look at you without wanting to climb you like Mount Everest. Stupid hormones!"

"Well you are certainly welcome to summit on me." Ian grinned.

"IAN!" Emma made a sound between exasperation and laughter.

Ian took a look down the hallway. "As much as I'm sure our pack enjoys witnessing the soap opera that is our love life, do you think we could take this conversation into your room?" When Emma hesitated he added a sweet sounding "Please?"

The door swung open. Ian could hear Emma scurry away from the door to put as much distance as possible between them. Unfolding himself from the floor, Ian leisurely crossed the hall and entered the room, closing the door softly behind him. Emma was perched in the doorway of the balcony, clearly preparing her escape route.

"I think we need to make a pact."

"A pact?"

Ian nodded. "Before we bring a child into the world."

Emma's jaw dropped and her colour rose. She took a step into the room, looking for a projectile to launch at his head. Spotting the bedside lamp, she threw it with all her might, shattering it against the door as Ian easily sidestepped it. She reached for the glass of water next. "Having a baby is not a fucking business deal." She screeched. Running out of ammo, she threw the bedside table. "Asshole!"

She screamed again, this time in frustration, as Ian breached her defenses, pinning her arms to her sides with an unbreakable hold and lifted her off the ground, wrapping another hand to restrain her kicking legs. Bones crunched as she started to shift.

Ian shook her hard, stopping the shift. "Dear god woman, will you listen to me before you rip my face off?!?"

Emma snarled and bared her teeth in his face, snapping at his nose.