Shit

"Fuck!" Damon roared, losing control completely as he spun on the spot, a deep, full Alpha snarl ripping from him as he slammed his fists down on the counter, a crack running through the entire length of the Carrara marble slab, making everyone else cringe and step back from the enraged Alpha. Everyone but Clary.

Clary couldn't move a muscle, her control over herself slowly fraying thread by thread as her eyes slammed closed. Her hands balled up into tight fists, her fingernails cutting into her palms as her magic ripped through her body. She felt it push out of her, barely erecting a barrier around herself to protect them all in time before she let it consume her. She screamed out the years of pain and loneliness, all of her anger, bitterness, and sadness.

Damon whipped around when he heard the sound—the furious, desolate scream that ripped from his Omega. The sound was like a thousand razorblades being scraped over his soul. It cut through his own pain, anger, and frustration; his Omega should never have to make that sound. He took half a step forward before he saw the bubble of magic his mate was encased in; he couldn't get to her. The thought had him freezing in his tracks. His omega, his mate that he couldn't have, couldn't be touched. He couldn't take her in his arms, comfort her, and tell her it would be okay. He couldn't fight what was hurting his mate; how can you fight yourself?

Clary stared at her best friend as he dragged his hands through his hair. She could see the internal struggle he was going through. She watched him take a step forward, then one back, over and over again. It had taken her a moment to realize what was happening; it wasn't until the omega had run through the doorway that she understood his bizarre reaction upon entering the store. It had slowly dawned on her why he had been acting so odd. He had found his mate, a mixed-blood omega wolf who is half wolf like them and half fairy. The same mixed blood who are the leader and around two hundred years old (fairies are immortals'). Her best friend is a mixed-blood Omega, something that rarely happens to a royal-blood Alpha Wolf.

She had never understood his desperation to find his mate; all they do is cause heartbreak and destroy each other. She had seen the damage firsthand. He hid it from the rest of the people, but she was his best friend; she knew how long he had waited for this, and she knew he had already given up hope. She watched his every move, clutching the two blades she had pulled out when he had lost them. She saw it then—the exact moment he clammed up and shut down. She didn't know whether to be relieved or to shake some sense into him. She hated it when he closed himself off like that, but he would have to put a stop to this before it went any further. It was all for the best, she thought.

"Stop!" Damon said, watching his mother... The half-fairy-wolf omega continues to rage inside her shield. He couldn't think like that; he couldn't have his mate, and thinking of the omega as such wouldn't help things. "Miss Clary, stop," he booted out, trying to push the Alpha into his tone. He hated himself fiercely, feeling his gut twist for doing it, but the woman was going to hurt somebody if she continued, maybe even herself. The thought caught his breath before he shut it down.

Being addressed as Miss Clary washed over Clary like a bucket of icy water being dumped over her head. The tone her Alpha had used was cutting into her. Not because of the power behind it, and there was power behind that command for sure; it was the coldness, the icy tone he had used. She reigned her magic in, shoving it down in an instant, dropping the shield as she stared at her mate.

"Miss Clary?" Clary asked, her tone just as cold and sterile as the Royal Alpha Wolf. "Really? Miss clary? That's how you are going to play this?" She asked as she stared at the man in disbelief.

"Miss Clary, we are here to discuss our differences and try to come up with some sort of solution for the problems that have arisen between our two peoples," Damon said, not daring to make eye contact. He forced himself to look around the store, noticing the two people that had followed his Omega—the Omega—from behind the curtain for the first time. A beautiful woman had stepped into the room, and a man was partially hidden in the doorway behind her.

Sebestian would normally have stepped forward and shaken hands with all parties when meeting with a delegation from either royal creatures or mixed-blood creatures, but that would have meant having to step around the Omega, and at that moment he didn't trust himself to take a step closer to the woman.

Clary watched her Alpha retreat, walking back towards the woman he had entered the store with. She couldn't believe the words that came from his Alpha's mouth; had he seriously just said that? She took a moment to study the Alpha, her gaze sweeping up and down the man's body. She finally took in the wings that covered her exposed arms. How had she not noticed? Her eyes swept Damon's entire body, seeing the black utilitarian cargo pants, tightly laced boots, and the tight-fitting black t-shirt. She saw the weapons in the double-thigh holster and hanging from the back of his belt. The guy looked as if he were about to raid a drug den. Her eyes snapped back up when he caught the way his mate scrubbed his hands through his hair, almost yanking it out. He beautiful!

"Oh? We need to discuss the differences between our people, do we?" Clary snapped out as she stared at the man—the beautiful man that she wanted to touch. She wanted it badly—to stalk forward and wrap herself up in her Alpha. Her breath caught in her chest at the thought. "You don't think we should talk about...?"

"There is nothing to talk about," Damon interrupted coldly, wrapping his heart up in a sheet of iron as his stomach dropped through the floor. Saying the words made him feel sick; he couldn't even meet the omega eye. "It can't happen; you must know that it is forbidden," Damon said, staring at a spot off to the right of that beautiful face that he longed to gaze at.

"Those are your rules, not mine," Clary said. She saw the shake of her Alpha's body, the only outward sign that the situation was having any effect on him at all. She watched as the Alpha turned away. "Your royal organization makes those rules, not the mixed ones," she said angrily. Right then, she didn't give a fuck about some outdated rules—not after all these years, not when she had finally found her mate, her mate who couldn't even look her in the eye.

"We all need to follow a law," Damon said in a monotone. He had always followed that ethos; rules were there for a reason; the Royal's or the Originals blood and the Mixed do not mix anymore. He had never thought he would hate saying those words. Right now, he hated the words with a fierce passion; he wished he had never heard the stupid sentence. He walked back to the Moni side, stealing himself to turn back to the three people behind him. "I am Damon, the head Alpha of the Nigaland Station, and this is Moni, my second in command," he said, introducing them to the two people that had accompanied his mat, the Omega. He noticed that the woman looked like a fairy, maybe a family member. And he was pretty sure the man standing in the darkened hallway, avoiding the sunlight that was pouring through the window, was a mixed vampire.

Clary stared at his Alpha; was he seriously going to try and brush her off like that? The law? The fucking law!? She glanced back at Adira when she felt her hand grip her shoulder. She hadn't realized she had taken a step forward until she started to pull back. She glared at the two Alphas across the room. Her mate, acting as if he didn't feel the pull, didn't hear the voice screaming in his head, screaming at him to get closer to his mate, to reach out and lose himself in the one person meant for him. She knew without a doubt that if that was what was happening to her, it sure as hell was happening to her Alpha. It was like a physical ache in her stomach—the need to be touched.

"I am Adira, Clary's sister; this is my mate, Jordon," Adira said, gripping the back of her sister's shirt as she tried to take another step towards the Alpha. She felt as if her own heart were being torn out when she felt a shudder run through her body. Her wonderful, caring, and amazing sister had finally found her mate, only for it to be ripped from her so cruelly. It wasn't fair! She deserved this; she deserved love, a family, and a future; she deserved everything. She couldn't even imagine what it would have been like not to be able to touch Jordan when they had first met. She reached back and gripped her mate's hand with her free hand as she felt the lump rise up in her throat.

"Is there somewhere we can go to discuss our business?" Damon asked, keeping his gaze on the woman. He couldn't bear to look at the omega; he didn't trust himself not to break his resolve if he looked into those beautiful eyes. His stomach tightened at the thought. They really were the most breathtaking pair of eyes he had ever seen. He locked the muscles in his neck as he felt his head start to turn in the fairy direction.

"No, there isn't anywhere we can go to discuss our 'business'" Clary said incredulously. "We need to talk about this, Damon," she said, realizing it was the first time she had spoken her mates' names aloud. She shook her sister's hand off as she started to pace back and forth restlessly, her eyes darting back to her mate with every turn of her heel. She needed to get to her mate, to look into those gorgeous brown eyes and see reassurance there, to see acceptance.

Damon turned away, slamming his eyes closed at the shudder that ran through his body when his name fell from the woman's lips. He felt his heart constrict at the sound of it. He replayed the word over and over again in his head, hating himself for it. It was like torture—a torture he couldn't stop inflicting on himself. He flinched when he felt Moni take his hand before gripping it tightly, desperately using her hand as an anchor to try and steady himself in the swirling mess that was running through his head.