Fated Shifter Mates

by Jade Alters

  “You think?”

  She chuckled at that. “I'm sorry. I wish this was easier to explain. Ridge was raised in a world where things were done much differently than we consider “normal”.

  “Where?” I asked, “In the wild?”

  Suddenly the smile was no longer on Chelsea's face. I wasn't looking at Ridge but I could see him out of the corner of my eye and I saw him shift in his seat.

  A few seconds passed and she finally said, “Well to be honest, yes.” I looked at him then. He was looking at me with those intense hazel eyes of his, but he didn't speak.

  It was Chelsea who went on and I realized suddenly that she was as crazy as he was, and I was stupid for not taking off again when I had the chance. “Ridge is a wolf-shifter, we all are.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Most lay people think of us as werewolves. It's not quite the same thing...”

  “Stop,” I said, putting my palms up. “Please stop. This is your excuse for this man kidnapping me? You're werewolves?”

  “Shifters,” Chase said.

  “Hush Chase,” Chelsea snapped at him.

  “This is crazy.”

  “I agree that it sounds crazy. I didn't believe it myself at first...”

  “So, you're not a werewolf?” I couldn't even believe I was having this conversation. My head felt like it was going to explode.

  “Yes, I'm a wolf-shifter too, but I wasn't always. I met my mates after they had been changed and...”

  “Wait, whoa, this just gets crazier. Did you say “mates”?

  “Yes. I have four mates.”

  I couldn't help it at that point. I started laughing like a crazy person. When I finally stopped I looked at Ridge and said, “Man, can I pick them.”

  “Cheyenne...” he started.

  “No. I told Chelsea I'd hear her out. I don't want to hear anything else from you. Chelsea, I heard you out. Can I go now?”

  “Well, there's the matter of what you're going to tell people. A lot of people are looking for you and probably very worried. They're going to want to know what happened to you. The police were called in from Bali today because it's been 48 hours...”

  “What do you want me to tell them?” I asked. These people were genuinely crazy. At that point I would have promised them anything just to get the hell out of there.

  “Maybe that you were drunk and you wandered too far from the club, and got lost?” I could tell by the look on her face that she realized how lame that story sounded. But it didn't matter, as soon as I was out of here, I was telling the police everything, before these crazy people hurt somebody.

  “Sure, okay. Can I go now?”

  “One more thing,” Chelsea said. “We're not bad people. We're not violent people. We just want to live our lives, raise our families and get along the way everyone else does. Ridge is learning new ways to live. Being human was a much smaller part of his life than being wolf was. In the wild if a wolf finds his mate, he just takes her. Ridge knows what he did was wrong though, and he won't bother you again, isn't that right, Ridge?”

  We both looked at him. His eyes were on me. I hated that I still felt a tingle in my belly when he looked at me. I stifled a shudder and finally Chelsea repeated his name and he said, “Yes. Right.” He didn't sound convincing, but again, he wouldn't be running around free after I spoke to the police.

  “Fine. Can I go now?”

  “Chase?” I didn't even realize Chase left the room. I looked around when she called him and for a few seconds, I thought I was losing my own mind. A big, beautiful gray wolf sauntered into the room from the kitchen. I was sure my face must have been as white as a ghost and my jaw was dragging the floor. Chelsea was looking at me and she said, “He won't hurt you, but I wanted to be sure before you went home and told your story, that you knew what you were dealing with.”

  Suddenly I felt rage again. She was threatening me. “How dare you? You send Chase out of the room and he sends in your pet wolf so not only do you believe I'll buy into your threats but I'm an idiot as well...”

  Chelsea was standing up as I was going off.

  I saw her look at the wolf and then suddenly the strangest thing began to happen to her face. The bones seemed to be stretching and her muscles were rippling.

  I watched it like a train wreck, unable to turn away as white hair began to sprout all over her body. The whole process only took seconds, but I felt like I'd witnessed it in slow motion. Suddenly a white wolf, smaller than the gray one was standing where Chelsea had been. I turned my head toward the gray wolf and that was when the scream escaped my throat.

  Ridge

  I thought Cheyenne was going to faint dead away. I wouldn't have blamed her, having to look at Chase naked. He was whiter than Chelsea's fur.

  If I didn't know better, I would think he hadn't seen the sun in years. Go figure, my mate would get to see him naked first.

  At least he's no competition.

  He cupped his hands in front of his penis and said, “I'm sorry, Cheyenne, I'll put some clothes on.” Cheyenne's breaths were fast and deep and her eyes were as wide as saucers. I'm not sure she even heard Chase since she was staring at Chelsea.

  Chelsea gave her a minute or two to look her over and then she shifted back into herself. I automatically took the afghan off the couch and handed it to her. Chelsea is beautiful, but she doesn't belong to me and I shouldn't be looking at her like that. She wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and told Cheyenne,

  “I'm sorry to frighten you, but there's no other way to prove that we're not crazy...we're wolves. Are you okay?”

  Cheyenne looked like she didn't know if she should scream again, run, or cry. Instead, she nodded dumbly and after a few more seconds she said, “I won't tell anyone, I promise. Please, just let me go home.”

  Chelsea nodded. “I'm sorry for all we've put you through. We'll take you home right now.”

  I was surprised that Chelsea was going to let me anywhere near Cheyenne, so I wasn't surprised when I stood up and she said, “You can run home with Chase. I'll take her.”

  I wanted to argue.

  I desperately wanted a chance to be close to Cheyenne again so that I could see if that spark was still as strong as it was.

  But I knew I'd only be getting myself into deeper trouble. I just nodded at Chelsea and tried to look at Cheyenne, but she wouldn't look at me still. I left her there with Chelsea and went into the kitchen where Chase had gone. I wasn't sure what would happen from here on out, but I was sure that if they forced me to stay away from her, they might have to put me in a cage to make sure I complied.

  Ridge

  “I've never been into humans,” the old wolf said as he stuffed another handful of chips in his mouth.

  They'd picked up the old wolf around the same time they found Chase.

  He never told me exactly how old he was, but if I had to guess I'd put him around eighty. We were on a stake out, on a Friday night.

  For the past three weeks, I hated Friday nights. I longed to see Cheyenne again and thinking about those nights at the club, just sitting and talking to her and gazing into her beautiful eyes was killing me. Before I even realized what I was doing, I started to talk about her...and I even told my partner for the night, an old guy named Granite, that I'd lost my mind, drugged and kidnapped her. The rest of the pack didn't know about all that. The alphas had kept it all between us and I was grateful. As the days passed, I felt guiltier about what I had done.

  It was the way of my ancestors, but times had changed and I knew I had to grow and change along with them.

  “So all these extra shifts you've been doing, and those toilets I saw you fixing on the compound...all that was your punishment for what you did?”

  “Yeah. Extra shifts, less pay, dirty jobs and the threat of being expelled if anything like this ever happens again.” It was infuriating to be told what to do like a child, but these were orders that I was afraid I couldn't afford to defy.

  Bei
ng a lone wolf is about as risky as things can get for one of us. We need our pack to sustain our lives and continue to hide our identities from the humans that would come at us with the figurative pitch forks and torches.

  But sadly, if I thought there was any chance I'd still end up with Cheyenne I might take the risk. I hated to give up, but she had been so incredibly freaked out that day three weeks ago when Chelsea took her home that I was sure she'd run screaming in the other direction if we ever came face to face. I suppose the good news was that she had made up a story about where she was those two days and as far as we could tell, she hadn't told a soul about us.

  “I never really knew a human, before Chelsea, Clay, Will, Titan and Manny,” I told him, trying to think of something that would keep me from talking about her...and how badly I wanted her, still.

  “I've known plenty of them,” Granite said. “There was this one hooker down in Memphis...human as they come, but this chick was into wolves. She used to give us a fifty percent discount if we'd agree to change for her before we left at the end of the night. I guess everybody has their preferences, and their fetishes.”

  I chuckled and said, “So Granite, why don't you have a mate?”

  “I had mine, son. My Racine and I were together for fifty years before our pack was discovered and we were forced out of Memphis. We lived for a while in the Black Hills, but the winters were hell and the pack was slowly dying off. Moved from there to Arkansas back in '95, but got caught up in a war between two packs and lost a bunch more of our younger people. Racine got sick there, got a bad case of Lyme disease. Normally, our immune systems can fight off just about anything, but my sweet Racine was already up there for years and all the travels had caused her to lose a lot of weight...her poor body just couldn't handle all of it. I lost her on the way to California. By the time we got to Mexico it was only me and one of the pups left of the pack. We stowed away on a boat and ended up in Australia for a while.”

  I didn't question what he was doing with the hooker in Memphis if he had, his “Racine,” not out loud anyways.

  “You have a pup?”

  He looked sad as he said,“I did. You know Australia doesn't have any wolves, indigenous ones, anyways. So the dingoes weren't too happy to see us. The problem with the dingoes are how sneaky they are. The son of a bitches attacked us in our sleep, 8 of them. The boy was amazing. He fought off at least five of them on his own. When all was said and done, there were six dead dingoes and the other two ran off and didn't come back. We were both pretty torn up, but I've always healed quickly and I guess I just assumed the boy would too. He seemed to be healing, but one of his wounds got infected and within days, he was gone. After that I was just lost, wandering the world with no purpose...and then the Pack found me. I tell you boy, you don't ever want to go off alone. It's a harsh world we live in.”

  I nodded.

  I knew he was right, but at the same time I spent so much of my time feeling all alone. All I ever wanted was a family, besides my pack, a mate and some pups of my own. My thoughts were interrupted by the motion of the door we'd been watching all day. It was finally swinging open. We were hired by an insurance company that thought there was something fishy about a payout they'd recently made to a widow on the island.

  The police had done an investigation when the man's car went off the side of a cliff and ended in a fiery crash. His body was burned beyond recognition and he was declared dead. The insurance wrote a hefty check to the widow, and then almost immediately hired us.

  According to Clay, they think the man faked his own death. We had been watching his widow for two weeks. She sure didn't seem to be grieving at all.

  She was busy all the time...spending all that money on having her home redecorated, buying a new car and a lot of trips to the mainland to shop for designer clothes and jewelry.

  But, we hadn't seen any sign of her husband, or any man in her life...at first. Then one day when I was watching the house, the man who tended to the lawns and gardens arrived.

  The problem was that he wasn't the same man we had photos of, the same man who had been doing it all along.

  He was heavier, and older and when I pulled up the photo of McAvoy on my phone and started to compare the two. The caretaker had a thinner nose than McAvoy, different color hair and eyes and a scar on his cheek...but I would still swear it was the same man. I ran that by the alphas and after careful scrutiny of the photos, they all agreed. It was a good day, I think I gained back some respect that I'd lost.

  They didn't want to grab him up right away however. They wanted to watch him, and the wife for a while longer and see what kind of case we could build against them, a tight one, that their money wouldn't help them out of. So tonight, Chelsea and Grayson were watching her, and Granite and I, him.

  We had found out he was staying in a warehouse down near the docks that was owned by his ex-partner, but so far, he went straight to the warehouse after his days at the mansion and never left until the next day when he headed back over and pretended to be a landscaper. At least not until tonight.

  “Give me the binoculars, someone's moving over there.” Granite handed the binoculars to me and I trained them on the figure coming out of the warehouse door. It was McAvoy, in a trench coat. I watched him put a padlock on the warehouse door, and I wondered not for the first time, what he was hiding in there.

  Before he left, he took a look around him like he was making sure he was alone and then head toward a golf cart that sat near the front of the small parking lot. “He's getting in the golf cart. You think we should approach on foot or follow him?”

  “I say follow him for a bit,” Granite said. “Let's see what he's up to.”

  I picked up my phone and text Clay that he was on the move and we were following, handed the binoculars back to Granite and waited for the golf cart to pull out on the narrow frontage road before starting the car. I let him get a good lead and then I began to follow after him.

  He drove along the frontage road for a while until he came to a small gravel path that there was no way I'd be able to take the Jeep down. I parked it and as I was getting out, I heard Granite open his door. “Why don't you stay here?”

  “I'm old, boy, not dead.” I wasn't going to argue with him. I tucked my gun into my jeans and started up the path when suddenly, I smelled a wolf. I looked behind me and there was Granite, an old brown wolf, trotting up behind me. I shook my head and kept going. There were situations that called for shifting but I thought this one called more for carrying a gun. I guess a sharp mouthful of teeth and twenty or so razor claws couldn't hurt as back-up no matter what we encountered out here in the dark.

  The taillights on the golf cart had disappeared into the dark countryside but I could see what looked like a storage or guard shack up ahead. I listened closely to the night and stepped lightly on the gravel so as not to make too much noise as we approached. I could see Granite sniffing the air and I knew that although my senses were enhanced even in human form, they were nowhere near as strong as they were when I shifted. I was glad that Granite had, especially as we got closer and I was sure that I could smell more than one human. I looked down at Granite and held up two fingers.

  The old wolf picked up his front paw and scratched at the ground. “One, two, three, four.” Shit. I slid my phone out of my pocket and trying to hide the light from it underneath my jacket, I sent Clay a text.

  “Followed subject from warehouse approximately four miles to another dwelling. Smell multiple humans. Should we go in, or abort?”

  I got down on one knee next to Granite to make my shadow less noticeable in case anyone stepped out, and I waited. A few seconds went by and I got a message from Clay that said,

  “On our way. Don't go in until we get there. If subject or anyone else comes out, follow but don't approach.”

  The hair on the back of my neck was standing up. Something about this was off, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

  We were careful, but ther
e was always the possibility that he'd made us, following him. If they came out now, Granite and I were not only outnumbered, but there was no place to really hide. I looked at the back of the little house and motioned to the wolf. He followed me up to the cabin, him stepping lightly and me practically crawling.

  Once there, we crouched close to the edge where we could still see any movement from either side, and again, waited. It seemed like an eternity before I smelled Clay and Manny coming up the path behind me.

  If not for their smell however, I wouldn't have ever known they were there. When they reached me and Granite Clay said, “Any movement?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “Do we know if there's an exit on the other side?” Manny asked, sniffing the air.

  “No. We stayed put like we were told,” I told him. “I can still smell them though.”

  “Something's off,” Manny said, “About the smell.”

  I sniffed the air again, and so did Clay. I could still smell humans. Clay frowned and for a second and I was second guessing my own senses, but then he said, “I smell them. What's off about it?”

  I was relieved that he smelled them too, and I wasn't dead wrong. I wanted to gain their respect back, and I was on my way to doing that. I still wasn't sure what to do about my feelings for Cheyenne, but at least I could throw myself into work, and do a great job.

  “I smell death,” Manny said. “Human death.”

  I closed my eyes and smelled the air. I can always pick up decomposition, it's the worst smell in the world. I was disappointed in myself because I still simply smelled humans. I guess they could be dead, but the bodies had to be fresh.

  The other strange thing was that there was no smell of blood in the air. In the case of dead humans, shot or stabbed or even in a car accident...it was usually strong.