Pack of Her Own, page 15
Wren’s eyebrow raised when she saw what I was wearing, and I shrugged. Misty had never been into the same music as me. She stuck with Top 40 pop and refused to even consider going to the concert with me where I bought the shirt. It wasn’t the first time I realized just how much she didn’t really want to be with me.
It was almost two in the afternoon when we walked in, getting a smile and wave from the woman behind the counter. It wasn’t Meg—which made sense when I thought about it. Wren introduced her as Alisha, and the woman seemed very quick to shake my hand with a welcoming smile. The moment we were settled in one of the booths in the far corner, she disappeared into the back for a quick second, then came back out with another woman and an older man.
Wren groaned and waved them back to the kitchen. I hid my smile behind the menu, pulling my phone out and putting it on the table.
“Kids,” she murmured low enough I probably wasn’t supposed to hear it.
“Aww,” I gushed, “they just want to see you happy.” The flush that invaded Wren’s cheeks was worth the ribbing, even as she used the same tactic with the menu to hide her face.
“They’re just excited.” She paused like she was looking for the right words. “I’ve had partners, once in a while, but I’ve never really had a date, I suppose.”
“Really?”
“My secret makes it hard to date, casually or seriously, unless they’re hip to my world. You know?”
“Oh, yeah, I get that entirely.” More than she probably realized. Valid fears and all that. I grinned at her. “Wait, so is this a date?”
She flushed even more, and I couldn’t help but chuckle, the sound coming out low and wanting.
Wren cleared her throat. “So, see anything you want?” She blanched when she realized what she’d said.
“Oh, definitely.” I let my eyes roam over her. Hey, I didn’t want to disappoint her.
“Brat. I meant on the menu.”
I shook my head. “Well, your picture isn’t on here.” I pouted. “If it were, then maybe I’d be able to decide easier.”
I’d never have spoken to Misty this way, especially not in public. She hated displays of affection that she didn’t initiate. She hated innuendo. And most of all, she refused to acknowledge who I was in public. If I was having a bad day with passing, then I was only her friend.
As the memories slid to the forefront of my mind Wren’s eyes caught mine with a soft look. “Hey,” she said, “come back to the present.”
I shook my head to clear the bad memories and focused on the woman in front of me. I gave her a small smile. “Thank you.”
“Of course.” She put down her menu. “I know what it’s like to live with memories you don’t want to remember.”
I nodded and started looking at the menu, trying to keep the fuzzy little feeling of joy in my stomach from running rampant. How different things were with Wren—and in the best of ways. Three days ago, I’d have never considered having anyone like her in my life. Now? I didn’t know how I’d live without her.
As if the universe knew I was happy for a change, my phone started buzzing and singing a cheery pop song that made my body go numb. I stared at the caller ID, at the five letters that made me want to throw the damned thing in the nearest large body of water.
Wren looked from the phone to me, biting her lower lip as she frowned. “Natalie?”
I shook my head. “I should take this.” I grabbed the phone and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
“What did you want to eat?” she asked as I headed for the door. I turned and tried to give her a stunning smile that she had to see right through.
“You pick,” I said, “I trust you.”
I answered the call the moment I was out the door. “Hello?”
“Hey, baby.” Misty’s voice was almost nauseatingly sweet over the line. “I feel like we haven’t talked in months!”
“Because we haven’t. Because you broke up with me and kicked me out.”
“Oh, come on, Natty, you know I didn’t mean anything by it!” My grip on the phone tightened as she whined. “I wanted to try something new! Something different, you know what I mean? Like, we’d been together for years. It was time for something new.”
“So, you had to tear me down to do that? Throw me out so I’m homeless?”
She scoffed. “Well, I wasn’t about to bring girls home with you moping on the couch all the time. I mean, come on, I have a heart.”
I laughed. “Really? Where the hell do you hide it? It’s not in your damned chest.”
She sounded like she was going to argue, but suddenly stopped. Instead, I heard her take a deep breath and I couldn’t hide my surprise.
“Misty?”
“I deserved that,” she said. She sounded apologetic. “Maybe I didn’t do things the right way. And I miss you, Natty. We were always so close, thick as thieves, and now I don’t even know how to function without you.”
I opened my mouth to tell her off, but what came out was, “You don’t?” Goddess, I sounded pathetic.
“Of course not, baby! You were my compass rose! The one person I could count on to guide my way through life! I can’t do this all without you.”
My heart started pounding in my chest. Was she saying what I thought she was saying?
“Misty…” I clutched the phone tighter, barely able to catch my breath.
“I need you, Natty. I need to see you. I need to come to you.”
“I’m not in the city.”
“I know, I talked to Rory. She said you were on vacation.” She let out a weird scoffing laugh that was so familiar. “I can’t believe you took a vacation without me, baby. I would’ve been beside you in a second if I’d known.”
“It was kind of spur of the moment, you know?”
“All I know, baby, is that we’re so damned good together.” Her voice lulled its way into my brain, and I remembered the nights of passion, the nights where I trembled for her touch, and she made me beg for it all. The days that were wonderful and complete and amazing. The way she took me in after what my parents did. Years of good memories. “And besides, we both know that you can’t take care of yourself, right? I mean, how long has it been since you shaved? Is your five o’clock shadow showing yet? You know I take care of you, Natty. You know I’m the one you have to thank for being the gorgeous woman you are.”
She was right. That’s exactly who she was. I couldn’t have done all of this without her—couldn’t do all of this without her. She was right. I never should’ve come here.
But Wren.
That quiet, rational part of my brain that often got ignored pointed at the memories of last night. Wren had saved me. Of course, if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t have been in that situation, but that was thinking far too much into it. And I hadn’t quite worked out all my feelings about all I’d learned in Terabend. Could I be a part of all of this? Did Wren want me to be?
But Wren had accepted me. Fully. Entirely. Misty had kicked me to the curb the second she wanted something different.
“I will always take care of you, Natalie.” Misty’s voice had gotten low and sultry. “No one else will do it like I do, you know that, baby.”
I stood in the parking lot, frozen, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do.
“Just tell me where you are, dear. I’ll take care of the rest.”
I shook my head and tried to think clearly. “Um, Rory is letting me borrow her family’s cabin for a little while, you know, to put myself back together.”
I could almost hear her smile over the line. “Perfect, baby. Some alone time in the middle of nowhere is just what we need.”
I started to shake. “No. I don’t want you to come here. I don’t want to see you.”
“Natty! You don’t mean that! I know you don’t. You can’t do this without me! I’m the only person who ever supported you. I’m the only one who’s ever loved you for what you are!”
I clutched my free arm around my stomach, shaking and trying not to sound like I was crying into the phone. “But—”
“But nothing!” The scorn in her voice slammed into my chest like an anvil. “Stop blubbering and stuttering and get over yourself! No one else will ever want you and you know it!”
My knees wobbled and I almost fell when suddenly there was a strong arm supporting me. Wren’s hand found my hip and kept me upright while her other hand took the phone from me.
“Who is this?” she growled.
I could hear Misty’s outrage. “Who the hell are you?”
“I’m Wren,” my protector snarled into the phone. I leaned into her, trying to draw in some of her strength. “Natalie is my beautiful date for the day, and your phone call is interrupting. So, we’re going to let you go now.”
I stared at her, the rage making her body vibrate at odds with the smile she flashed me.
“What?” Misty screamed. “That fucking bitch is cheating on me? No one cheats on me! No one!”
“Oh, sorry, they’re delivering our food. We’re going to have to let you go.”
Misty started to scream something else, but Wren hung up the call before I could make it out. I stared at the phone in her hand as she held it out to me. I didn’t want to look her in the eyes. I didn’t want to see the pity or annoyance that she had to be feeling. The sad little trans woman who can’t say no to the toxic relationship. The one who needed a big strong werewolf to stand up to her ex. I took my phone and started to turn away, entirely prepared to walk my way back to the cabin so I could take the truck and leave.
A strong hand on my arm stopped me. “Nat.” Wren pulled me in close and wrapped her strong arms around me tight. “It’s okay, darling. I’ve got you.”
Wrapped in those soft arms, there was nothing I could do but start bawling. She held me, rocking back and forth as I cried out all the fear, the frustration, the need, and the disgust that I even considered going back to Misty for a second there. She held me until there were no more tears, and I was only heaving in massive gulps of air as I keened into the empty air. It almost felt like my own version of the lonely howl I remembered hearing those first couple of nights at the cabin. I wondered, if Wren were in wolf form, whether she’d join me in my cry.
“I’ve got you, Natalie,” Wren whispered over and over again. “I’ve got you.”
And for the first time in a very long time, I believed it.
Chapter Twenty-four
Wren
It was a good thing I only spoke to Misty on Natalie’s phone that one time. If I’d caught her scent from meeting her in person, I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t do something drastic. When we returned to our lunch, my darling woman spilled her guts, telling me everything that happened between her and her psycho ex-girlfriend.
The worst part of it was that she’d probably never have become the person she was now without knowing Misty. The girl was Nat’s only support during her teenage years, and that evolved into a dangerous codependency that threatened to destroy them both.
But now Natalie had me, and I had my mate.
I shuddered at the thought. I couldn’t even fathom yet what it really meant. I only sensed how intense my wolf’s feelings for Nat were. But when I was given a moment to think, I couldn’t help but remember that she was human. Could I really mate with a human?
Growing up in my pack, I knew that to mate was supposed to be for life. In the Cardinals, they tended to assign wolves to each other, dictating the dominant and submissive bullshit that was so ingrained into our culture. The dominant wolves, wolves higher in the hierarchy and closer to the Alpha, were gifted with promises of wolves they considered submissive, the ones who didn’t care, or weren’t high in their standing in the pack. These were the wolves that weren’t active about fighting their way up a brutal and flawed system. I watched the way the so-called dominants treated the submissives and knew I couldn’t be a part of that world, that way of life. It was one of the many reasons I wanted to be a lone wolf, with no one and nothing to answer to. And no one expecting me to abuse them on a regular basis.
My Alpha had promised me to someone else, back in my old pack. This was before I was old enough to even understand what this meant, and before I grew into my nature as an Alpha. I’d been promised to the pack enforcer, Craig Reid. Once I became Alpha, I was out of his reach, and he had been hounding me ever since. No one could force me to mate, now that I was an Alpha.
Maybe other packs were different. I had to hope they were, but I didn’t have a lot of experience. To me, a mated pair were supposed to be something special, something more than just one wolf having complete control over another. We were only given a single mate in our lifetime, and that person would complete us. That was the lore anyway. Sounded like a crock of shit for most of my life.
And then Natalie happened.
I needed more information. I needed to learn so much that I never had the chance to. Hikaru seemed to know a lot, but I needed to hear it from a wolf’s mouth, not a vampire’s.
These were the thoughts on my mind three days after our date at the diner. Misty hadn’t called again, and Natalie seemed to be recovering well from everything that had gone down. Heather had almost finished cleaning up Meg’s home—penance for being part of the group that attacked her in the first place, and Zeke and some of his family had almost finished fixing up Rory’s cabin.
I almost didn’t want to tell Nat that she could go back to the cabin. My bed was much more comfortable with her in it. Any room we were in together was more comfortable for me. From the moment we met, whenever we were apart, there was this feeling in my gut, pulling me in her direction as if she were a part of me that I was missing. I couldn’t even describe it if someone asked. All I could say was that she completed me.
“Wait, what did you say?”
Natalie looked at me and cocked her head. We were sitting in my tiny office in the back of the diner, chatting as I filled out paperwork and tried to put together a supply order. I was trying not to be distracted by my thoughts—or the beautiful woman sitting on the other side of my desk.
“I was talking about the person I met in the woods by the cabin,” she said. She smiled at me. “Were you not listening?”
I shook my head. “I was, and I wasn’t.” I put my pen aside with a sigh. “The paperwork has never been something I enjoyed about all this.”
“Yeah, but isn’t it nice to own your own place? No bosses to tell you what to do, and a flexible schedule, including making sure you have time to run off some steam from time to time.” She raised her eyebrows and I laughed. I resisted the urge to throw a pencil at her.
“Har-har,” I said. “Now tell me about this person. Do I have to be worried?”
She burst out in laughter. “No! Of course not. It was just a surprise. I mean, I was totally lost, and then suddenly there was this…person. And I mean, yeah, they were dressed for hiking and all that, but it didn’t suit them.”
“No?”
“No way. Everything looked totally out of place on them. It’s like they should’ve been wearing a power suit and bossing people around in one of those shiny conference rooms in a skyscraper with windows that look over the city and all that.”
I smiled. “You’ve thought about this a lot.”
“What can I say? The clothing makes the person.”
We had a good laugh together, something so comforting I never wanted to let it go.
“So did you get their name?”
“Yeah. It was, um, Vadi? I think. Sounded exotic.”
I froze. “Did you say Vadi?”
“Yeah, that’s what they said. I told them I was lost, and they showed me the way back to the cabin.”
Vadi. Natalie had already met Vadi. It had been two years of living here before I got to meet them, and I thought that was a short time. They weren’t seen often in town, but all of us supernaturals knew that it was thanks to them that we had Terabend as a sort of sanctuary. Sure, I controlled this county as the Alpha werewolf, but that didn’t put me anywhere near Vadi.
But that gave me an idea. I couldn’t go to Vadi about werewolf business—what the hell would they care, as long as their territory was kept safe? But outside of the county was another pack, with a leader who controlled the surrounding area outside of Terabend and Greyland County. Kendra Harper was the Alpha of a much larger area. She had knowledge. She’d been around a long time. If I played my cards right, maybe I could get some answers and advice.
“Hey,” Natalie said, “where’d you go?”
“What?”
“In your mind, where did you go?”
I shook my head. “There’s a lot on my mind.”
She nodded, then glanced to the office door. She closed it, cutting off the noise of the kitchen, then came back to the desk. I raised an eyebrow, willing to see where this was going.
“I have a question,” she said quietly, “about the whole rawr thing.” She made a motion with her hand like a fanged maw chomping down on something. I stared at her, then glanced at the door. Private enough, I hoped.
“Go for it.”
She hesitated. “Wren, what does mate mean for a werewolf?”
That word from those lips. There was nothing that sounded better.
I clutched at my desk as my wolf tried to push her way to the forefront. Fur rippled over my bare arms for only a second before I regained control. Nat scrambled back away from the desk. She looked so afraid.
I had to fix it. I never wanted her to be afraid ever again. Especially not of me.
“Where did you hear that word?” I asked. I made my voice as soft as I could make it.
