Mate's come first - 4. I'm leaving the coven!!

Mica threw things into his suitcase and listened to the ringtone on his phone. He'd hit the speaker and flung it on the bed so he could get packed as quickly as possible.

"Mica, what's happening. Did you find out what was going on with Owen?"

"Oh, I found out what was going on all right," Mica growled. Owen had gone over every part of his time at the coven school. By the end, Mica had had to pay for an entirely new table. The scorch marks and chips were too bad to be covered up. He retold everything to Gray and was pleased to hear the string of swear words coming through the tinny speaker.

"How did we never get the letters?" Gray asked the question that had been circling Mica's head. "More to the point, why did we not hear any rumours about this? If this has been going on for as long as he says, we should have heard something."

Unfortunately, Mica thought Gray wouldn't like the option he'd come up with. "I don't know why we haven't heard any rumours, but I think I have an idea for the letters. They must have been intercepted before reaching us." He ignored the grunted 'obviously' from Gray. He wanted to lay it all out as he'd done in his head and see if Gray came to the same conclusion. "That didn't narrow it down much for me at first. I suggested to Owen that his parents' servants may not have sent the letters. He agreed, but said he'd posted the last few himself. He even hand-delivered the last to the office personally. He left them with the security in the reception. The first ones could have been lost in the post, but it seems very unlikely that many letters could go missing. The post people are all shift workers and so the same person doesn't deliver to our office often enough to have interfered. That leaves Cravin. The post is delivered to him, and he passes it on to us."

"But why would he mess with the post? As far as I know Cravin doesn't have anything to do with the school. Also, how would he know who the letters were from? I assume he typed them. People these days rarely handwrite anything anymore. So, there would be no handwriting to identify."

"I did ask Owen if there were any identifying things about his letters that would have told someone who the sender was."

Gray heaved out a sigh. "Let me guess, he put a return address on them."

"Got it in one."

"But that doesn't answer the why, or why didn't Owen email us?"

Mica paused in his packing to scrub his hands over his face. "I did a check on him before I called you. I wanted to be sure before I accused him. Cravin's mother, Marie, is the sister of Ian Woodrow’s mother—he is the main bully, if you remember. It seems Cravin has been covering for his cousin and trying to keep him out of trouble. Also, he does have access to our email accounts as well, remember? We gave him access when we got sick of wading through all the spam. I don't know why he is helping Ian or how else he may be doing it. But I will be asking as soon as I get home."

"Is there no way we can get Owen to return here? We could get all this sorted out."

Mica growled. "Would you want to return to a place where you spent most of your time being ridiculed and beaten? I am only returning home to confront Cravin and anyone who has hurt my mate, and then I am putting in for a transfer to Teonards."

"You're leaving the coven?" Gray sounded distraught. Mica didn't understand why it was such a surprise; everyone knew that mates trump everything. "Please, can you at least bring him to meet me? I would like the opportunity to apologise for how he has been treated and to meet the man who has captured my best friend."

Mica snorted. "You also will try and talk him into staying with me at the coven."

Gray grunted but Mica could picture the shrug he couldn't see. "Maybe. You can't blame me. You became my second twenty years ago when Dad stood down. I know you've been looking for your mate for decades, but the coven would really suffer without you."

Mica took a deep breath in and then blew it out. He didn't want to leave the coven he'd grown up in, but he also didn't want his mate to have to live somewhere with bad memories and the possibility of him bumping into someone who would demean him.

"All I will promise is to talk to him. Maybe I can get him to come with me to see my maybe soon-to-be-former living space. If he says no, I will not pressure him."

"No, no I wouldn't want you to. Send me what you've found on Cravin, and I'll see if I can find more."

"Fine. I'll see you tomorrow."

Mica hung up after Gray said his goodbyes and congratulations one more time. He was not looking forward to trying to talk to his mate about returning to the place he most hated.

This could go very badly.

He heaved a sigh and picked up his phone again.

"What's wrong?" Mica had to chuckle at Owen's greeting.

"Why does something have to be wrong for me to call you? You are my mate, remember?"

"You said you were going to call tomorrow when you got back to the coven. If you're ringing now then you've most likely spoken to Leader Grayson, and he has asked you to talk to me. So, what is wrong? Is he refusing to let you leave the coven? Mr. Mosely's lawyer can deal with that if you need her to."

Mica chuckled again. "You are partially right and very smart. I have talked to Gray. He isn't going to refuse to allow me to leave. He can't; mates come first in all paranormal law. He did, however, ask me to talk to you. He wants to meet you. You know he and I have been friends since school, as I told you earlier. He is my best friend and wants to meet my mate. He is asking that you come with me and meet him. I will get him to meet us at my place, and you won't see anyone else. I will warn you that he is very upset at what you told me about your treatment at the coven, and he will definitely want to ask you for more information."

Mica spoke fast because he didn't want Owen to interrupt and refuse outright before he got out everything he wanted to say to persuade him to agree.

Owen was silent for so long Mica was ready to rescind his request and go back to their original arrangement of Mica going alone and coming back to Owen in three days. "Okay."

The one word was almost too quiet so Mica nearly missed it. As soon as he was sure of what he had heard, Mica jumped to attention.

"What? You'll come?"

"Yes, I'll come. But I want it understood I don't want to see anyone—except Leader Grayson."

"Yes, all received and understood." Owen chuckled as Mica had intended.

"Well, you'd better fill me in on anything I need to know about your best friend, who also happens to be a coven leader. I don't want to stick my foot in my mouth when I meet him. You didn't tell me that much earlier except you were friends and met in school."

Mica sniggered and started his tale.

"Well, as you said, we met in school. I was two years below him and was having trouble with a couple of older boys who thought I was too poor to attend their school, and that I was acting too big for my britches." Mica heard an indrawn breath at the admission he'd had trouble at school and then a muffled laugh at the old saying. "Yes, even in my day there were jerks who thought they had the right to pick on anyone they chose. I had good control of my lightning already, but we were too near to some school equipment for me to use it, and so they got a few good hits in before a very loud voice told them to stop or else. It turned out the son of the then-current leader of the coven didn't like bullies, and he was also very powerful even then. Both boys found themselves pinned to the wall by magic and unable to move. The headmaster was called—it was Mr. Yenkins back then—and they were both sent home to their parents. Turned out their parents were just as elitist as the boys, and they were told they were no longer welcome in the coven.

"When I was twenty, Gray's dad stepped down and Gray became leader. He made me his second, and no one dared to mess with the poor boy ever again. Of course, we always have lots of things to deal with. We deal with all complaints personally. That is why after talking to you, we think we have an idea who intercepted your letters to Gray. I'll be having words with the person when we get to the coven after we've spoken to Gray. If I don't like the answers then the person may or may not have a coven to call home by the end of it."

"You do know that is the sweetest thing anyone has said to me ever. No one has ever offered to stand up for me."

Mica growled. "You deserve to live the life you want, and you deserved to be taught how to use your magic properly. You shouldn't have had to learn on your own through trial and error. You can bet I will be talking to your ex-teachers and those bullies. I mean they are four years older than you; they were meant to be mentoring the younger generation. They were not there to make any of the students feel less or to make anyone's life harder. As for the teacher, he should have followed on from the teacher you had who figured out what your magic was powered by. What did you say her name was?"

"Miss Dooli. She said she would fill my next teacher in so my training would be continued as she'd been doing. Then when Mr. Ceeman arrived, he told me he didn't have time to dedicate to a student who couldn't be bothered to do magic the right way. As I told you earlier, it was his way or no way. You know what I chose."

Mica made a noise of agreement as he tried to shove his clothes into his bag. The stupid things had fit when he left home.

"When can you be ready to leave? I was going to set out at sunrise and get to the coven in time for lunch. But if we want to talk to Gray and still have time for me to confront the jerks, then maybe we should leave tonight and I'll drive through. We can be there in time for breakfast and can talk to Gray before he leaves for the office."

"I can be ready when you are. Pick me up at the shop. I live over the top in Mr. Mosely's spare room."

Mica agreed and they hung up so he could make sure he had everything.