Claimed by Caden Read online

  At that moment, as she was guided into a relatively large bedroom, but one that was definitely in the part of the building that housed the servants, Eloise was a fortunate woman. Because if she didn’t love her son, and if that love wasn’t reciprocated by Caden regardless of the rocky relationship the two of them had, Lia would have mauled her. An out-an-out catfight that would have demonstrated just how deep Lia’s rough and ready roots ran.

  This, after a shitty day of humiliation after humiliation, was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  Chapter Four

  “Oh God,” Caden groaned as he cradled his head between his hands, wishing like hell that that minor support would be enough to take away the pain banging at his temples.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t working. If anything, the strain in his shoulders made the pain worse.

  “You’re awake!”

  His mother’s voice was welcome but at the same time, a curse. He was glad she was here, but her strident tones pealed through his skull like church bells on a Sunday.

  “Quieter, please! Quieter, Mother.”

  “Sorry, baby,” she whispered, which to Eloise Drummond was at a volume most people spoke. Even that small difference was a blessing—at least, the ice picks carving out his eyes seemed to slow down a little.

  “What happened?” he asked, blinking bleary eyes to look around him. He’d spent enough time here as a kid to recognize he was in Anchor’s clinic. Nowhere else did wards come complete with grills on the door to cage in pissed off, pained shifters. The instant he made the realization, he glowered at his mother. It only exacerbated the ice picks, but hell, he had to deal with her. “Why on Earth did you bring me back to Anchor?” he bit out, his voice a deep croak rather than the furious rumble he’d have preferred.

  “You collapsed in a restaurant, Caden. What did you expect me to do? Just let you lie there for everyone to gawk at? I’m not sure the management would have appreciated the floorshow!”

  “You didn’t have to bring me to Anchor. Why not just take me to a clinic in New York?”

  She sniffed. “You’re my son, and I want the best treatment for you.”

  “The best treatment for me is to be close to my mate,” he snapped. “Instead, you bring me to Anchor where she won’t be allowed admittance!” Even in his dazed state, he was aware of Anchor Clinic’s harsh rules surrounding noncitizens of the town.

  Especially humans. Even if they were mated to one of the descendants of the town’s founding mother like Lia was.

  Eloise’s lips pursed. “It was my decision, and I stand by it. Your health is paramount. You’re a young Lion, Caden. In your prime, for Lea’s sake! Men your age should not be collapsing in the middle of restaurants.”

  “There will be a reason for it,” he dismissed her concern. He knew he was in the peak of health.

  “Of course there is! That’s why I brought you here for tests.”

  He shook his head, then groaned as agony split through his skull. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Mother. I’d know if there was. The reason will be Chloë Gilbert I can guarantee it.”

  “I’ve never understood this animosity you have toward that girl. Her breeding is impeccable, she’s the daughter of our leader, and she’s beautiful!”

  “The very fact I’ve always had this animosity toward her should have been enough reason to stop pushing her onto me at every goddamn turn!”

  “Cubs don’t always recognize what’s best for them.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Neither do parents.”

  “I shall ignore that comment, Caden. I shall put it down to the aftermath of your collapse. But if you think I shall continue to tolerate your rudeness to me, then you’re wrong. It’s that human’s influence. I know it.”

  Her disparaging comment of the woman he had broken all the rules for, was enough to make his Lion bristle. He closed his eyes, settled his head back on the pillow, and just said, “It might be wise if you leave me alone for a little while, Mother. I need to sleep.”

  “Okay, Caden. I’ll be out in the hall.”

  “No, it’s fine. Go home. I don’t need you to be here, and you might as well get some rest.” He tried to speak in modulated tones, trying not to insult her further by telling her he didn’t want to be anywhere near her at the minute.

  With his head still banging, his Lion was at his gnarliest. Stir in his mother and her repeated insults to his mate...an evening spent together would not make a pretty sight.

  He’d tried not to offend her, but he’d failed. He could tell from her stiff voice. “If you think that’s best, Caden, then I’m sure I won’t stay where I’m not wanted.”

  “If you could hold your mouth about my mate, I’d welcome your company. As it is, you’re prodding the beast, and I don’t have my usual control,” he bit out, opening his eyes to glare at her.

  She froze at his tone, then sucked in a breath. He could tell she was seeking calm. Males did not speak to females in this way. Especially not their dams—their mothers. Females were treated with the utmost respect, at all times. They were the leaders. The ones males had to look up to, from whom they sought guidance.

  Eloise had always been lax with him. Something, which was strange in itself. Very prim, and very proper, her position in the Pride was respected, not only for her ancestry, but for her prominent roles on the council and countless charitable committees.

  In every other part of her world, she was strict, demanding full propriety at all times. But never with her son.

  She turned on her heel, choosing silence over a sharp retort, as was her way with him. When she made it to the door, he called out, “Mother?”

  “Yes, cub.”

  It was the nearest she’d come to reprimanding him. “Don’t insult Lia while I’m in here. We both know you’re capable of it...when I get out of here, I want to find her in a guest suite.”

  He knew, full well, that Eloise was capable of storing his wife in one of the smaller guest rooms, when as his mate, she should have been in one of the best suites.

  It wasn’t that his mother was a bitch. Well, she was, but she was a cat. Through and through. She watched, played, tormented, and then watched again. Think cat with a mouse...that was par for the course, even with bigger predators like lions.

  She nodded, stiffly. And her very silence told a tale of its own. He’d been right. Lia had been disrespected. If Eloise had put her in a guest suite, she’d have taken great pleasure in shutting him up.

  As it was, Lia was once again on the receiving end of his mother’s repeated rebuffs.

  His stomach churning with anger, he let Eloise go, rather than say something he’d regret later.

  He kept on wondering how long it would take for her to get accustomed to his choice of mate. A part of him thought it might take a lifetime. The negative side of him thought she would never accept Lia. And then, he had to stop wondering, because not only did it exacerbate the pounding in his head, he realized he didn’t really care what she thought. Lia was his life. It was as simple as that. If Eloise didn’t watch out, she’d soon find out where Caden’s loyalties lied.

  Gently resting his head back on the pillow, he looked around the room and grimaced. Upon awakening, and among other reasons, he’d known he was in the Anchor clinic because of the size of the room. A strange way to recognize one’s location, but then, this clinic was unique.

  Firstly, it was unlike human clinics, because behind the door was the aforementioned grill. A door that could be automatically locked if a patient shifted. To the same degree, the clinic while luxuriously appointed in the public areas was notably barren in the wards.

  When injured, Lions were not pleasant. They raged and fought. The rooms were always basic to accommodate the high probability that the furniture would be destroyed when a patient shifted.

  On top of that, the room was tiny. The bed only just fit.

  Only females merited a decent-sized ward.

  God, the inequality in the Pride reall
y pissed him off. It was one of the reasons he’d always wanted to make a name for himself in the human world. While there was inequality there, even if in their case, it was against women not men, the freedom to be whatever a female wanted to be, wasn’t unimaginable. With strife and struggle, a woman could reach the top. Males here in Anchor could not. Only because his mother had helped him, had he been able to break free and achieve total independence. Without her aid, he’d be stuck here, and would probably have been forced to mate with Chloë a long time ago.

  Considering that was what she wanted now, he had to wonder if she regretted helping him leave Anchor, helping him make a name for himself. He could only imagine that she did. The thought didn’t exactly make him feel warm and cozy inside. He wanted his mother to be proud of him, had always wanted it, but now, he needed her to trust him. To trust his decisions. That she probably never would have faith in him or his right to pick his own mate saddened him.

  There was always that debate. How would the world be if women ruled the world...?

  He knew the answer to that. As crappy as it was when men ruled it.

  He was perfectly placed to answer the question.

  He’d experienced a matriarchal and a patriarchal society, and inequality was inequality. There was no escaping it. No hiding from it. Neither sex was good at dishing out rules that were balanced and unbiased against the other gender.

  In the Pride’s case, males were respected to a degree—probably less than females in human society—but they could have success and be commended for it. Not in a patronizing way, either. Success reflected well on the Pride as a whole. But, at the heart of it, men were good for few things. All the power came from the females.

  His mother ruled the roost at home. Growing up, watching his father under the thumb of his domineering wife, had provided Caden with sufficient research. Enough to know he did not want a marriage like that.

  He wanted to be able to say his piece without his life mate denigrating his decisions or choices, and he wanted her to feel free to argue with him, to shoot his arguments down in flames. In short, he wanted a partnership. Had wanted it the very first time he’d seen and recognized his father’s banked anger when his mother had commented on a decision Christopher had made when he’d fired their gardener one year.

  His mother had railed at him. Told him it was her place to decide upon such a course of action. The gardener had been stealing from them. Sneaking into the house and pinching small tchotchkes from sideboards. There had only been one option, to fire him. Yet Eloise had argued the toss, and basically reprimanded his father for daring to act without her permission.

  It wasn’t that he was against his mother’s iron rule in the house, because that was the way of things. What he was against was the way she had no real respect for her life mate’s wishes, his ego, or his pride.

  They were important parts of everyone’s makeup. Eloise had wishes and dreams of her own, an ego and a huge shield of pride. These weren’t found solely in a man’s character. But she’d never let his father have a voice, and seeing that, at a young age, Caden had known he wanted out. Even though she’d enabled him to live to a different set of standards, gifting him with more freedom than most male cubs received, he’d still wanted to liberate himself from her rule.

  He’d finally made it, didn’t regret his choices at all, but he wished his mother could at least behave with decency toward his chosen partner. A huge request, apparently.

  Technically, a male belonged to his mother’s den until he was mated, when he moved to his life mate’s den. Because Lia wasn’t a shifter, he still had to endure his mother’s rule. If Lia were, he’d have let her defend herself. She was more than capable of it. But as it was, Lia was at a severe disadvantage. She didn’t, couldn’t understand the ways of his world. And because of those ways and his position in society, there was little he could actually do to defend her. To protect her.

  That galled him more than anything. Whenever Eloise insulted her, his stomach burned so badly he knew his mother’s treatment of Lia would give him an ulcer eventually.

  Grunting at the thought, he had a sudden need to talk to his mate. Only she could calm him down when he’d been in an argument with his mother. Caden pressed the call button and waited for a nurse to arrive. As soon as the door opened, he asked, “Can I have the phone, please?”

  Without replying, the woman nodded and retreated from the room. Ten minutes later, he had the portable phone. He knew from experience cell phones weren’t allowed in the wards. Not to protect any electrical equipment, to stop it from being scrambled by a cell phone’s radio waves, it was to control the patient. To make sure no calls were made that the clinic was unaware of.

  The clinic was a busy place. Even though shifters were very healthy, and healed at an advanced rate, there were always injuries where even Mother Nature or Lea, as the Pride called her, needed a helping hand. The clinic was for that. It was also to protect those who weren’t “right.”

  Male and female alike, shifters had a tendency for mental health issues. While they were incredibly strong, physically, there was something wrong with their genetic makeup. There was a high propensity for depression, for psychological issues. They also had an astonishingly high rate of suicides.

  The clinic investigated all that. Cures, treatments, researching the whys and hows. And being here was not the way he’d envisaged spending his Thursday night.

  Nodding his thanks to the nurse before she left the room, knowing that the sense of privacy was a false one as his call would be recorded, he dialed his mother’s home here in Anchor.

  “Consuela? ¿Qué tal?” he asked when the housekeeper picked up the call.

  “Estoy muy bien, gracias, señor Caden,” she answered, sounding pleased to hear from him. “I’m sorry to hear you’re in the clinic though, señor. May you heal quickly.”

  “Thanks, Consuela. Can I speak to my mate, please?”

  “Of course, señor.” There was a hesitation on the end of the line. “She is not happy to be here, señor Caden. She is not happy at all.”

  “No, I’m not happy either, Consuela. I wish she didn’t have to stay there, but you know how the rules work. If I tell her to stay somewhere else, it brings shame to the family.”

  “En su estado, la vergüenza de la familia no es lo que es importante.”

  In her state, the shame on the family isn’t what matters.

  Caden frowned at her switch into Spanish, and could only assume it was because she wasn’t sure if Lia’s being pregnant was a secret or not. He appreciated her attempt to hide it from his mother, who couldn’t speak the language. “I know, Consuela, we won’t stay here for long, that’s a promise. How did you know Lia’s pregnant?”

  “I’ve seen far too many ladies like her not to know. I shall go and fetch her, señor.”

  Frowning at that, he waited for Lia to come to the phone. That Consuela hadn’t put him through to an extension, told him he’d been right earlier to assume Eloise had put his wife in a room not befitting her station.

  Before he could get angry, Lia was on the line. “Caden? Oh God, how are you, baby? Are you alright?”

  He smiled, sinking back into the pillows, something in him settling at her voice, at her concern. At her love. “It’s good to hear your voice,” he told her, his own creaky with emotion.

  She chuckled, but it had a watery sound to it. She’d been crying more and more of late. The notion that it was his baby doing that to her filled him with a peculiar kind of male pride. “You’ve no idea how great it is to hear yours. Your father stopped calling me with updates, and they wouldn’t let me come and sit with you, Caden. I’d be there, right now, if I could. I swear. Don’t let....”

  When she broke off, he knew what she wanted to say but didn’t. “She hasn’t tried to make out you weren’t interested enough to be here, honey,” he told her gently. “Mother is capable of it, God, both of us know that. But I knew you couldn’t be here. I’m so sorry, honey.�
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  “What kind of clinic denies its patients visitors? I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.”

  “Anchor is a weird place. Why the hell do you think I got out of it as soon as I could?”

  “It must have been real rough, Caden,” she told him drily. “Your home is obviously a dump.”

  His lips twitched, but he commented, “Now, now. Wealth doesn’t equate happiness, does it?”

  “No, but it certainly smoothes the way.” He could hear her amusement, and was relieved by it. She knew his family was wealthy, but he’d never brought her to Anchor, not wanting her to be rejected by the town as a whole. Now she’d seen the house, there was no denying that his mother’s name yielded a lot of power in Anchor. “Anyway, none of this matters. Talk to me. How are you? What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t have a clue to be honest, Lia. I was in the restaurant foyer one minute, after that, I can’t remember a damned thing.”

  “You can’t have been there long. To get to Anchor when you did, you must have only just arrived before you fainted.”

  He cleared his throat at that. “I prefer the term collapse.”

  “Fainting’s too feminine a word, is it?” she asked, amused.

  God, it was good to talk to her.

  The one thing that could have been their downfall was the amount of time they spent together. They lived together, worked together, went to bed together. The only time he wasn’t with her, was if he had to attend private meetings. For most of those though, she was with him, taking notes.

  Being without her was something he wasn’t accustomed to.

  Nor did he want to be accustomed to it!

  One thing he couldn’t disagree with though, was her reasoning. His memory was still foggy. He couldn’t remember everything, but he knew Chloë had been there. He also reckoned that she was the reason behind his collapse. Naturally, no one would believe him. Not when she was the Leona’s eldest daughter. Still, his mother was correct. Males in their prime did not just collapse. Not unless they were helped along the way.