Mine for Eternity [Council Enforcers] (Siren Publishing Classic)

crawled into bed and curled around her son. As she drifted off to sleep, Tessa thought about Mitch. She had meant to ask him about his choice in pet but never got the chance. He had obviously locked the lion in his room because she hadn’t seen it since she ran out of there naked and screaming, and she hoped it stayed wherever it was.
    Thinking of herself naked reminded her of how Mitch had looked at her. Tessa shivered thinking of how the man’s eyes traced every inch of her body. Too bad she was leaving in the morning. Her last thought was how she wanted to run her fingers through his wild, golden hair to see if it was as soft and silky as it looked.
     
    * * * *
     
    Mitch heard the lock click on the bedroom door and smiled. His mate was something else. Not only was she beautiful with the same ice-blue eyes and black hair her son had, but his mate had inner strength that called to him. He had seen her temper several times so far, mostly when she was protecting her son. She was like a momma bear with her back up, ready to charge at anyone she felt was a threat to Nico. It was a definite turn-on to him and made him want to throw her across the kitchen table and claim her right then and there. His gums and teeth itched just thinking about sinking them into her shoulder and cementing their bond.
    Too bad she didn’t know that she was no longer in charge of protecting Nico. Since Tessa was his mate, that automatically made Nico his cub. Both their protection and safety were now his responsibility. He had a bad feeling Tessa would fight him on that point, but he didn’t care. It was one issue he wouldn’t back down from.
    Mitch headed back downstairs and grabbed Tessa’s bags from the kitchen. He should have felt guilty for going through her things, but he didn’t. His mate was tight lipped about who she was running from, so he was going to find out the answers on his own. He was glad his mate had literally walked right into his life, but she wouldn’t have been on the run if someone wasn’t threatening her, so Mitch needed to find out who it was and eliminate the problem.
    He went through both bags noticing there was nothing but a few sets of dirty clothes between them and a few pictures. He gritted his teeth when he only found twenty-seven dollars, knowing Tessa wouldn’t have made it much farther. There was no way he was letting her leave, so the little bit of cash she had was no longer a problem. Once he had Tessa’s ID, Mitch headed to his office. Working as an enforcer, he had made a lot of contacts. Contacts that owed him a lot of favors. He planned to call in a few of those favors to find out everything he needed to know about his mate. He started first with his contact who worked at the police precinct closest to the address listed on Tessa’s driver’s license. The man was human, but his mate was a shifter who Mitch had saved from a member of her old pack who had become obsessed with her. He thought of his mate as he waited for the other line to pick up. According to her address, she was from a suburb of Chicago. If that was where she had run from, then she was a long way from home. He lived about thirty miles outside of Flagstaff, which meant that she had run halfway across the country.
    “This is Detective Reynolds,” the man announced when the line picked up.
    “Hey, Detective, this is Enforcer Ericson.” Mitch used the enforcer title to let the man know this wasn’t a social call. He knew enforcers were feared. They were the boogeymen that parents told their kids about to keep them in line. No one wanted a visit from an enforcer because, nine times out of ten, it meant instant death. It was a lonely life, but Mitch took his job seriously. He did it to protect his race, to keep their secret from getting out. They were judge, jury, and executioners all in one. The gasp of breath and quiver he could hear in the detective’s voice proved his point. Evidently the man’s wife had clued him in on the shifter world.
    “How can I help you, sir?”
    “I need some information on a Tessa Palmer. Her last known address is in that area.” He could hear the detective typing as he spoke.
    “I have a Tessa Palmer, age twenty-three, listed as missing along with her son, Nico Palmer, age two,” the detective read.
    “Does it say how long she has been missing or who reported her?”
    “Yes, it looks like she has been missing a little over two weeks. It was reported by her employer when she didn’t