Edric's POV:
Jolie comes sauntering into the room, carrying an instrument tray laden with antiseptics, gauze, and bandages. She’s busy training to take over from Doctor Lewiston one day, and honestly my father couldn’t be prouder. If my mother were still alive, she’d be bursting out of her skin with joy.
Since she came from a rich family, she always wanted Jolie to be more than ‘just’ a Beta’s mate. “Doc sent me to dress your wounds,” she tells Maya and put down the tray. “My name is Jolie, I’m this one’s sister— “she jabs a finger in my direction -- “and Luca’s mate.”
“Hello.” Maya gives her a small, joyless smile, but relaxes visibly, the tension draining from her face.
She is clearly much more comfortable around females. My sister looks at me, and I wait for the mind-link, because it’s so very obvious that she has a hundred questions, but she doesn’t do it. “I suppose asking you to leave would be pointless?”
“Yes.” I’m going nowhere. My wolf will tear me apart – figuratively speaking of course.
Jolie shrugs and starts cleaning Maya’s head wound. She’s tougher than she looks. She doesn’t even flinch when my sisters starts to clean the blood out of her hair. “Head wounds bleed a lot,” Jolie babbles, a sure sign that she’s nervous. “Even the superficial ones. Luckily Doc didn’t need to shave all your hair to put in the stitches – we can easily cover this little spot here.”
I decide to mind-link Jolie, because her babbling’s just too much. “What’s wrong with you?”
She stops cleaning Maya’s wound and looks at me. “This is her, isn’t it? The one everyone’s looking for.”
“I think so, but her eyes...they’re wrong.”
“Dad says she’s your mate. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“The Fates are fucking twisted. The hell that will rain down on our pack because of her…I don’t suppose you will reject her and wait for your second chance mate?”
“I don’t have a second chance mate.” And even if I do, I don’t think I can reject Maya. The bond is already forming; just the thought of rejecting her makes my heart ache.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” and then, because I can’t help myself, “you will respect her as the Luna of our pack. She is the one the Goddess chose for me.”
I break our mind-link. Jolie tries to re-establish it, but I block her. I don’t want to talk about my mate. Don’t want to think about the destiny the Mood Goddess chose for her. For me. Us.
Maya stares at me, a small frown furrowing her brow – she has no idea what just happened between Jolie and me. If she doesn’t know what a pack house is, does she know what a mind-link is? By the look on her face, I don’t think she does.
Jolie finishes her work in silence. “You can give her something to eat,” she tells me. “By the looks of her she needs it. Not too much though. You don’t want to make her sick.”
“Can you talk to me, and not about me?” Maya snaps.
A small smile plucks at Jolie’s lips. “I’m sorry…you are so quiet, I didn’t think…make sure he feeds you, okay, you need your strength. You have to spend the night here. Doc wants to look in on you later.”
“Thanks,” I say automatically, unable to take my eyes of Maya.
My sister gives me a knowing look, gathers her supplies, and heads to the door. “I’ll get you some food,” I say and get up, but she grabs my wrist, holding me back. She is strong for one so small and weak. To say that she surprises me is a vast understatement. I sit right back down, like an obedient little pup. “What?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
But she won’t answer me. No. She can’t answer me, because she doesn’t even know. She’s been on her own so long, that she can’t even verbalise her feelings anymore. “Okay,” I say at last. “I’ll get someone else to fetch us some food. I’m hungry too.”
I’m lying, but I instinctively know she won’t eat if I just sit here watching her. Nor will she ever admit to me that she’s hungry. I get up again, but like a frightened child, she won’t let go of my wrist. “I’m not going far,” I promise, “I’m just gonna stick my head out the door.”
Her hand relaxes from around my wrist, and I quickly go to the door, hoping against hope that someone’s in the clinic. The Fates aren’t always that cruel. A young wolf with a wheelie bucket and mob is busy washing the floor. When he sees me, he drops the mop and stares at me with fear and wonder on his face before he realises that he’s making eye contact and droping his gaze. Most of the wolves never have to deal with me directly. All they know about the Alpha is that you have to fear and respect him. “Kid, run to the kitchen and get some food, will you?” I ask as nicely as I can.
“What kind of food, Alpha?” he asks, his voice quivering slightly.
Yeah, that’s a question. “Whatever’s left over from supper.”
The kid jumps to attention, and sprints off in the direction of the kitchen. Chuckling, I close the door behind me. He will learn, as all of them do, that I’m not the monster they think I am. Pups tell each other a lot of horror stories about pack leadership. It’s not surprising. In other packs, the Alphas are often brutal. Over the years, we have taken in a lot of rogues that escaped abusive Alphas – it’s one of the reasons our pack is so big – and wolves can be awful gossips. Pups hear the stories and think I’m the same way.
“See?” I say as I take up position next to Maya again.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered through dry lips. “I don’t mean to be a burden. I’m not usually this clingy. It's just…unfamiliar. I’m not used to…any of this.”
“It scares you? Being here?”
Wordlessly, she nods, looking mortified. Admitting weakness isn’t something she does easily, I’m guessing.
“That’s all right--” I smooth tangled hair from her face --“what’s the point of having a mate, if he can’t be there for you, right? You have nothing to fear from me…or anyone else while you’re here. No one will dare lay a hand on you.”
She stares at me with swollen, bloodshot eyes, but still doesn’t speak. Goddess, what is it with those eyes? It’s unsettling. I’ve seen more expression in the eyes of psychopaths.
“What happened to you?” I ask, very gently.
Maya turns on her back, grimacing but not complaining. She pushes her hands in the bed, and tries to sit up, shrugging me off her when I want to help. Apparently, it’s okay for me to be here, but not okay to help her. I don’t know what to do, how to help her. This is not how I imagined it would be after meeting my mate. I had fanciful ideas, like all wolves I guess, but fantasy and reality are very often not the same thing.
“Where’s my backpack?” she asks. This answering a question with a question thing is gonna get old really quick.
“Where you dropped it. Do you need it?”
“Yes,” she whispers. “It’s all I have.”
“I’ll send someone to get it, don’t worry.”
It seems silly to me, but what do I know about the life she had led up until now? If it means that much to her, I’ll go get her damn backpack myself and lay it by her feet. The life of a rogue is hard enough, harder for a female. It must have been nearly unbearable for her.
We are social animals, we need a pack – without one we invariably go one of two ways: Either we become more beast than man, or we simply lie down and die. I have a feeling my mate’s close to the latter.
The Goddess told me just enough to know that from the moment we meet, our destinies will be inextricably woven together, and that things will get a lot worse before they get better. But she didn’t tell me what horrors my mate would suffer before I found her. Maybe it’s time to go to the temple and seek out The Goddess’s guidance again, even though I know she rarely answers in a satisfactory way.
A young werewolf, maybe about sixteen, came by with a tray full of food. I ate very little, because these days I’m never hungry anymore. Edric tried to get me to eat more, but I managed maybe half a plate, if that. Later, Doc came by, handing me two pills, which I took without even thinking about it. Usually, I’d question anything and everything werewolves did, but for some reason I trusted these wolves. Especially Edric, even though he has given me absolutely no reason to trust him…but then, he didn’t give me any reason to mistrust him. I don’t really know what happened. I fell asleep an hour later, and when I woke up, I wasn’t in human form anymore. My wolf took control while I slept. I didn’t even know she could do that. Shifting hurts – not as much as it did the first time, but I still feel it every time. You’d think I’d have woken up when I shifted, but I didn’t. I slept through the whole thing. I look at Edric through my wolf’s eyes. He’s sittin
Edric's POV: I put clean clothes, a new toothbrush, and hairbrush in the bathroom, watching Maya’s silhouette play against the shower curtain, catching a faint whiff of her blood mixing with the water. It takes all my self-control to keep my wolf at bay – he wants to jump into the shower and take her, something I will never allow. ~ Mate, ~ he pants. * No, * I say sternly, and quietly slip from the bathroom. For a moment I consider going back down to the clinic to look for her contact lenses, but decide against it. As much as I want to hide her true identity from the rest of the pack I can’t do it. It would be unconscionable. They deserve to know what and who she is – it will affect them as much as it will affect me. For the first time in four decades, our pack may have to go to war. I didn’t exactly relish the idea, but such is the way with destinies – they’re never what we want them to be, are they? I stare off into the distance, re
I am sure Edric came back some time during the early morning hours, but he’s not here when I wake up. I can smell his scent lingering in the air, and I find clean clothes hanging in the bathroom. A dress. I pull a disgusted face at the outfit. I haven’t worn a dress since my sixteenth birthday party, almost five years ago if I have my dates right, and the thought of wearing the frilly, flowery monstrosity fill me with a strange kind of anxiety. I used to love getting dolled up in pretty dresses. My mother helping me to do my hair and make-up, always smiling proudly when we were done, telling me how beautiful I looked. My little sister sitting on the bed, watching me with big, awestruck eyes, saying, “One day, I want to be just like you, Maya.” Thinking about my mother makes me angry, and the memory of my sister fills me with sadness and longing. She’ll be about twelve now – I wonder if she still thinks about me. If she remembers me at all, and still wants to be like
Edric's POV: Our pack members start arriving one after the other, all of them in wolf form. Most live on the mountain property, and running is just easier than driving. Besides, no wolf I know will pass up the opportunity to shift and let their wolf run free. Well, except for the one by my side. The wolves that live in the town in the shadow of the mountain will be the last to arrive; they usually drive part of the way and shift when they’re away from human eyes. About ninety percent of the town’s population are werewolves and the humans are blissfully unaware of this fact. Maya’s nervous, her body coiled like a too tight spring, ready to let go and run off at any moment. As our pack members disappear into the woods to shift back to human form, she moves closer to me. Without even thinking about it, I put my arm around her, and to my surprise, she leans into me, resting her head against my shoulder. The feeling of bliss I experience w
Ignoring my broken toes, I hobble deeper into the woods with Edric by my side, my heart nearly banging out of my chest. Why did I agree to shift? Of course, my wolf is elated – I don’t blame her, she rarely gets a chance to be herself, but I’m already regretting my decision. Who knows what she’ll do when I’m forced to the background and she takes control? When we can’t hear the laughter and talking of the gathered pack anymore, Edric stops and turns to me. “What do you usually do when you shift? Do you take clothes with you, or go back to the place where you shifted before you turn back to human?” “Huh?” He chuckles softly. “Most of us will carry clothes with us – so we don’t walk around naked when we shift back to human form. We’ll shift back when we get to…where we’re going, so I think you should bring your clothes with.” “How?” I’m starting to realise that not only do I know nothing about being part of a pack or werewolf society, I also kno
Edric's POV: I smell the rogue minutes after turning my back on Maya. I don’t know how to communicate to her that the asshole is watching us. This is not a rogue looking for refuge, as so many of our other ex-rogues tended to do; this one is dangerous. He’s the very kind of wolf she keeps running into – one that’s more beast than man. Very casually, as if I don’t know he’s there, I pull my t-shirt over my head and start moving backwards to Maya. I don’t want to scare her, but we haven’t marked each other yet, so we don’t share a connection. I can’t mind-link her. The moment I let her know what’s going on, I shift and turn, relieved to see that she followed my advice. Her magnificent wolf shimmers in the sunlight, and this really sends the rogue over the edge of what little reason he has left. He comes crashing through the forest like a deranged animal, which I guess he kind of is, forgetting about me and going straight for Maya. He’ll
I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I attacked the rogue. But when he was on top of Edric, trying to get at his throat, I lost all control. For just a moment, my wolf took over and she didn’t think twice. I regained control just in time, just before she could rip into that poor man’s throat. ~ Poor man? ~ my wolf asks angrily. ~ He tried to kill our mate. Rape us. ~ * He can’t help it. He’s crazy…feral. * Then Edric tells me to leave, and she really doesn’t like that suggestion one bit. It takes all my willpower to drag her away. I don’t want to leave him either. He shouldn’t have to deal with the feral wolf – he came for me after all, so I should the one that takes care of him. I want to listen to my wolf, want to give in to her demands – but I can tell by the look on Edric’s face that he really needs me to go. There aren’t many options that I can see. They can’t let him go, and they can’t keep him here. All that’s left is killing him, and I know wha
Edric's POV: Despite feeling like absolute dog shit about killing the rogue, I can’t help but laugh with joy when Maya throws herself into my arms. I didn’t expect it, but it doesn’t matter – having her in my arms eases some of the pain I feel about what I had to do. I hug her closely, feeling her bony little body shift and flow under mine. I’m slightly concerned about how thin she is, but I’ll make sure she eats from now on, fatten her up a bit. She slips out of my arms, but doesn’t step away. She looks up at me, her eyes soft, sympathetic, and oh Goddess, filled with so much understanding – like she knows exactly how I feel. She cups my cheek, sending sparks of electricity through my body. Does that ever go away? I’ll have to ask Luca. “Thank you,” she says. “For what?” I ask, genuinely confused. “For putting yourself between me and that guy…you know what he would have done if you weren’t--” “I know,” I interrupt quickly. I