by Kari Gregg
How dearly Jamie wanted to go to Kenneth did. His head spun at the man’s scent, the snarl of his voice kicking Jamie’s heart to beat faster. Jamie’s cock, mostly ignored since Ian’s death, suddenly perked and began to harden in his shorts. As though some sixth sense prodded Kenneth to recognize Jamie’s burst of arousal, the alpha turned to stare, sucking Jamie into his thrall. Jamie’s stomach knotted. The cacophony surrounding him faded to black.
Jamie saw nothing except Kenneth.
Knew nothing except Kenneth.
“No,” he whispered through numb lips, so softly none should’ve noticed him in the bustle, but Jamie knew Kenneth had heard by the furrowing of his brow. “No,” he said again, stronger this time.
He couldn’t. Not yet. He wasn’t ready.
Even Kenneth’s flinch could not smother the shout of denial that next flew from Jamie’s lips, but despite his awkward retreat, regardless of his tortured shout, Jamie felt it as readily as the alpha must sense it too. Jamie would not be given a single day more to brace for what must happen because in the few crazy moments he exited his Da’s den, in the madness of that yard, Jamie’s body ripened. As gone and ephemeral to him as the lover he’d lost to a mountain cat, the world that had been dead to him exploded with a fury of color, sounds, and smells that staggered Jamie. He stumbled, but he would not—could not—tear his stare away from his future mate.
Kenneth’s eyes narrowed. The hands at his sides fisted.
Yes, the alpha knew his mate had finally awoken. The flair of relief and triumph in his gaze taunted Jamie. Seduced him.
Overwhelmed, Jamie withdrew into base instinct and despite his wolf’s glad recognition of the mate it craved, Jamie’s instincts also demanded a speedy retreat, one his former pack obstructed. Screaming, he crouched in the yard, desperate gaze darting to find a way through the throng that would cost him least in accidental touches.
“For the love of the Goddess, clear out. Let him go, before you break him,” Kenneth yelled.
Jamie hadn’t the patience to wait for the pack to obey. He leapt forward, shrieking as he brushed against Ian’s aunt in his hurry. The agony of physically touching the ones who had hurt him nigh unbearable, he pushed through the crowd toward the woods.
To the mountains.
He had to reach Ian. Nothing else mattered. Little else made sense.
He sprang forward. Rushing into the tree line, he ignored the despairing cries he left behind him, Kenneth’s furious snarls, and the calls asking for the forgiveness Jamie’s tenuous control could not afford. He ran. Heart pumping, shaking, he sprinted toward the rocky crags that homed and centralized his grief, which was at least familiar to him. Caught up in his pain, Jamie didn’t notice the shift from man to wolf. He initially ran on two legs, but when he dropped down to continue on four, his beast’s fur already pushing through his skin, he didn’t, couldn’t, stop. The snapping of his bones and reforming of his muscle could not delay him. The brief hurt of his body reshaping from one form to the other rewarded him with a slap of clarity sorely lacking in him until that point, though, enough to prompt him to look over his shoulder to ascertain if any of the pack followed him.
Sorrowful and yet exultant at once, the sonorous howl of an alpha chased Jamie up the shards of rock of the pass to Bitter Creek soon enough.
Kenneth.
He would come for Jamie. Human or wolf, Jamie knew that as certainly as he felt the jagged rock under his paws, as sure as the thundering of his pulse racing in his ears, and the beast in Jamie rejoiced even while the human pieces of him, shattered and bleeding, whirled in the awakened chaos of his body’s ripening.
Fury filled him.
Grief.
He ran, passing the crag upon which his beloved had breathed his last. His bewildered pain prodding him, Jamie ignored the clamor of warning that began to resound inside his head and ran. Let Bitter Creek kill him for breaching their borders if they must. Jamie had to get away. Had to. Because if he didn’t escape the crush of conflicting emotions rising inside him, the insanity robbed from him in the early days of mourning Ian’s loss would claim him again.
He must run. And run and run.
The scrape of another’s claws in the rocky slope behind him was both comfort and dire threat. Jamie didn’t dare look again, not in the most dangerously unstable jumble of granite, where a single unwary step could snap a leg in hidden crevices or unsteady sliding sheets of rock could fell him. Helplessly, hopelessly, Jamie raced forward. Let Kenneth hunt him. Let him try. He wouldn’t find Jamie easy prey and, in truth, his heaving chest swelled with pride at the chase. The scrabble to mate had been missing when Jamie had joined with Ian, both of them too greedy for each other to struggle much. After they were together, Jamie hadn’t felt that lack, but now? He craved the thrill of his mate hunting him with a startling, giddy delight alongside the emotional turmoil. Too strong to be denied, Jamie’s excitement struck deep.
Summiting the peak of the rocky pass, Jamie streaked down the crumbling slope of the other side, to ground he didn’t know as well. Bitter Creek lands. Neither Jamie nor Ian had trod this far into forbidden territory, but with his future mate hot on his tail, Jamie shot down the mountain with as much speed as he could safely muster. Part desperation, part furious challenge, he speared farther into the other pack’s territory and defied any to stop him. Especially Kenneth. If the next alpha wanted his mate, Jamie meant to make him earn it and that Kenneth had been paying for the right to tie Jamie for two years already was beside the point.
The chase mattered, nothing else, and Jamie didn’t care that the first thing he and this mate had done together was this frantic run as their beasts played a dangerous game of predator and prey.
For the first time in two hollow, empty years, Jamie’s broken heart sang.
Worry drove Kenneth’s pace the last mile of Jamie’s sprint into Bitter Creek’s land. Not because potential repercussions from the other pack for crossing their border alarmed him. Upon reaching his mate two years ago, Kenneth had met with Bitter Creek’s alpha to strike a bargain guaranteeing Jamie’s safety when—not if—the grieving shifter encroached on Bitter Creek territory. The neighboring pack hadn’t dickered, as saddened by the tragedy as Jamie’s home pack…and more than a little outraged at how Burnt Fork had fumbled the troublesome prophecy for Jamie to start with. No, Bitter Creek’s shifters wouldn’t even muss Jamie’s fur.
Kenneth had no such treaty with the pack beyond Bitter Creek, though, and the unhinged wolf running ahead had swerved perilously close to the pack closest to the human city twice. Strategic maneuvering to direct Jamie deeper into Bitter Creek land had guided the race from danger both times, but Kenneth had no assurances the gambit would be successful a third, not if his wily mate was determined. Kenneth would defend his mate if attacked on a hostile pack’s lands and years of canvasing the continent had made Kenneth a competent fighter. Few could stand against him. The real risk was an attack on Jamie while Kenneth was otherwise occupied in battle. Kenneth’s mate was a teacher, a mentor of the young. As mentally strong as Jamie had proven himself to be before and after Ian’s death, any fool could see his nature was that of a nurturer. He was no warrior. The odds of Kenneth’s mate surviving a sustained physical challenge were scant.
Even that didn’t stir Kenneth’s alarm as much as Jamie’s frayed and fraying state of mind. Facing his father, the rest of the pack swooping in to force a reconciliation, and his body ripening to mate? Any one of those events would’ve pushed hard at Jamie’s equilibrium, but all three? At once?
If his mate had taught Kenneth anything, it was that toughness would only carry someone so far and losing Jamie to his wolf, the chance that Jamie might never regain the emotional steadiness to retake his human skin again, petrified Kenneth.
He would not lose his mate. Not now.
Not ever.
Relief swamped him, his vision graying and his taxed body shaking, when Jamie finally sank to the dirt, his flanks rising and
falling in ragged pants. Jamie’s tongue lolled. The rapid thump of his heartbeat filled Kenneth’s ears, reassuring him that his mate still lived. Jamie growled low and breathless when Kenneth approached, but he didn’t have the energy to fight.
Nor to shift.
Would he retreat permanently into his beast? Or return to him? Kenneth must wait for that answer, but his mate had already taught him plenty about waiting.
Shifters from Bitter Creek approached while Kenneth reclaimed his human form. Their presence registered only vaguely in Kenneth’s mind as he crouched over his distraught mate.
“Is he all right?” one of the neighboring pack asked from a wary distance.
“No.” Kenneth scooped Jamie’s dead weight from the dirt, grunting as he lifted his beloved against his chest. He pivoted, turning back toward his own pack’s lands. “He isn’t okay.” Securing his grip on his exhausted mate, he plodded toward home, his resolve stiffening his spine. “But he will be.”
Jamie woke in a bed, a real one. He’d slept these past seasons on piled furs in front of his hearth instead of the bed he’d shared with Ian because the memories had been too painful for him, but before he managed to pry his eyelids open, he knew he wasn’t home. Neither Ian nor he had been skilled at making furniture. Their bed had creaked, the ropes under the feather mattress protesting at every restless twitch. Comfortably and blessedly silent, this bed had been built solidly, properly. The smells were different too. Acrid dyes Jamie made and used for bone carving and leatherworking perfumed his living space, a subtle but at times pungent mix of black walnut, crushed blackberries, and whatever else he’d foraged. This den smelled of lavender, sage, and wood smoke. Different, but good. As achy as he was from the mad sprint through the pack’s land and on to Bitter Creek, he’d stay in the bed forever if he could, luxuriating in the soft brush of the wool blanket against his skin.
Pity he was as dry as dust.
Marshaling his bravery, Jamie opened his eyes and spied a ceramic pitcher next to a platter with a wood bowl atop it on a bedside table. His nose told him the bowl hid cooked venison, but the promise of the pitcher goaded him to sit up and reach for the cup. He chugged the first serving he poured of cool water, the husk of his body replenishing. After that, he drank more slowly and assessed his surroundings.
Definitely not his den.
Kenneth’s. Had to be.
The cabin was no different than the dens of most pack families barring the lack of a ladder leading to an upper loft which secured parents extra privacy and provided more living space. The stone hearth, used for both cooking and heating, was the same though, as well as the wooden trapdoor in the corner that Jamie knew lead to the den’s root cellar.
What made this den different was the books. Jamie had never seen this many of them in one place, including the collection in his father’s den. While Ian and he had saved for as many as they could, sacrificing to scrape together the exorbitant fees exacted by traders for hauling heavy books from the cities, even the shelves of reference books and novels his father boasted didn’t compare to this excess. An entire wall of the den had been converted to library space. A whole wall. Someone had invested a great deal of time carrying fieldstone inside for support columns and lashing together skinny branches no bigger than Jamie’s forearm to form each shelf. He gaped at the line of shelving units and dozens if not hundreds of books.
Jamie was a reader. He and Ian had whiled away many a desolate winter reading aloud to one another, mostly journals that aided Jamie in teaching the whelps shifter craft, but a few treasured classics too. He’d never seen anything like this, though, not even as the son of a pack alpha.
His fingers itched to trace the spines, perhaps touch the pages and wallow in the crisp book smell, but he resisted.
Because he belatedly also spotted one of the human computers on a side table.
Few wolves had one of those. Why should they? Bustling in their crowded cities full of the products they manufactured, humans had need of such items. Computers, indeed, were required to run human factories and distribute their goods. Jamie’s father had told him once that humans used the machines to organize raw materials wolves traded and communicated with kin via computers too because humans didn’t remain in their home packs, the poor creatures. Wolves had no such needs. Most wolves stayed in the pack into which they were born. Even he and Ian had never seriously considered leaving Burnt Fork to build a life elsewhere. They hunted wild game for food, but also for the skins traded with humans, not to mention the byproducts such as bone knife grips and the beads humans loved. Wolves also collected herbs to make medicines for humans and dried the rest to season food. Had he possessed one of the valuable and rare solar panels to power a computer, Jamie didn’t need human technology to locate and forage mint, rosemary or thyme. Life with Ian had taught Jamie to do without the luxuries fueled by human electricity that pack families invariable accrued. Refrigeration. Lighting. Water pumps that didn’t require muscle and a handle to operate. One of the pack kids had even described a device that fit into his father’s palm that functioned as a telephone but also a camera, a radio, the Internet—whatever that was---and could be fit into a box projector to show movies on the wall of their den for the whole family’s entertainment.
Not that Jamie believed it. Humans were devious creatures, but they weren’t as smart as they liked to believe. If wily humans had created such a miraculous device, Jamie was dead positive they charged a fortune for it because the only thing humans excelled at more than ingenuity was greed.
The kids called him old-school and swore Jamie would feel differently if he would bend enough to let the pack provide him with one of the new human gizmos in exchange for his trade goods, but why? Jamie had never merited distribution of one of the pack’s solar panels, not while he made his den Between, and even he knew human crap required energy the panels provided. Technology? What did he care about technology? He liked human inventions not one bit, judging the gizmos causing more problems than they resolved. He refused to allow the kids to bring a single device to his den. No, not one. They were there to learn shifter craft, not to shove wires into their ears to drown out necessary lessons with human music.
No, Jamie wanted no part of human invention. He eyeballed the computer with disgust and wondered if he had time to bash the shit out of it with firewood from the box in the corner before Kenneth returned.
He startled when the screen door creaked as it swung open. Ending Jamie’s bloodthirsty urge for electronic destruction, Kenneth marched inside, a crude wooden crate Jamie recognized from his own den clutched in Kenneth’s grasp. While Jamie froze, his heart rabbiting in his chest, Kenneth set the box on a table whose legs didn’t rock at the burden. “You’re awake.” Kenneth reached into the crate and withdrew fabric bunched in his fist. “Retook your human skin while you slept off your run too. Good, good.” He tossed the clump of cloth at Jamie, the material unfurling as it plopped onto the mattress and bedding to reveal Jamie’s extra shirt and a pair of shorts that should’ve been cut into rags after Ian had spotted a jagged rip, but since Jamie refused to squander his increasingly sparse resources on clothes, Jamie wore the same ragged shorts years later.
Jamie couldn’t bring himself to reach for the clothing, no matter how tattered. He rejected the gesture as readily as he shied from the man offering it to him, but Jamie was also a realist. No matter how fiercely his stomach roiled, he knew what had to be done, what would be done. He’d ripened, hadn’t he? Jamie’s wolfen nature had decided on Kenneth and though Jamie could try to resist his wolf’s desire to mate, the prophecy declared he wouldn’t. Not for long, anyway. His father’s impending death proved that. Whether he liked it or not, he and Kenneth would mate and ultimately, after a lifetime of defiance, Jamie was too tired to keep struggling against destiny, the fickle bitch. Might as well get it over with. “I won’t stop you,” he finally said.
When he glanced dispiritedly at Kenneth, the pack’s next alpha arched an eyebrow
at him in query.
“Mating me,” Jamie explained, struggling against the urge to clench his fingers in the bedding. “I won’t fight it.”
Kenneth’s eyebrows crept above his hair line. “You’re dehydrated and your body needs protein.” He retrieved other items from the crate: a threadbare towel, Jamie’s comb, a cake of soap and his straight razor. “You’ll feel better once you eat. Then, if you like, a shower.” He tipped his head up. “Pack kids told me you make do with bathing in the creek, but I installed a cistern on the roof to provide plenty of hot water,” he said, voice husky, cajoling.
Bristling, Jamie sat up straight, pride stiffening his spine. “My den has indoor plumbing.” The collection system Ian and Jamie had built didn’t produce enough water for bathing, though, not in the dry season. Jamie twisted the bed sheet in his fingers. “I said you could tie with me. Did you not hear me?”
“Yes.” His mouth quirked. “Any man worthy of mating you would heed the words you don’t speak more than the ones you do.” When Jamie’s belly chose that moment to yowl in hungry protest, Kenneth smiled, a genuine grin with lush pink lips and a hint of teeth that caught Jamie’s breath. As awkward as this was, as unwelcome, his smile lit Jamie up like nothing else had, not for a long time. “Go ahead. Eat.” Kenneth nodded to the waiting feast. “You never take proper care of yourself around the anniversary of his death, but current events exacerbated your anxiety and grief. Your body needs fuel.”
Jamie’s body had also betrayed him by ripening for Kenneth, a fact neither one of them could justifiably deny, not while both their pulses hummed and Jamie’s heartbeat sought to sync with the mate his wolf, if not Jamie himself, craved. He slumped his shoulders. “I want to get it done. Over.”
Kenneth tipped back his head and laughed, though the sound lacked any genuine joy or mirth. “I imagine you do.” Still chuckling, he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Your dinner’s getting cold.”
