Jason's Mate

by Abigail Raines

  So I don’t know a lot of things about human ways but I do know about smoking. I saw it a lot on television (when I got a chance to watch television) and sometimes the guys would come back from town with cigarettes. I don’t remember who taught me how to smoke when I was about fifteen but somebody did. I didn’t make it a regular habit but I like it. I have no idea why. I’m pretty sure it makes me stupid to like something that does no good, costs money, and eventually kills you. But it feels good, especially after a long day and especially after a drink. So after I get off work, I take some of my cash and buy a pack and a lighter and I stand out on the parking lot behind Casey’s and smoke. It feels particularly good in the crisp cold air and I drained the last remaining finger of cheap whiskey from a bottle before tossing it. I feel good having worked and the whiskey’s taken the edge off. It makes the cigarette go right to my head and I stand there leaning, feeling not too bad. Not bad compared to how I’ve been feeling the last few years anyway.

  “Hey, lone wolf.” The voice is soft and female and the very sound of it makes something in my blood buzz in a way I can’t explain but I ignore that. I’m staring up at the stars and now I turn my head and slowly see her. The woman is young, but she looks solid, like somebody who can take care of herself. I can tell that even though she’s wearing a heavy coat as her breath steams in the air. She opens her coat a little and pulls on the collar of her black t-shirt like she’s actually too warm. “Can I bum a smoke?”

  Her eyes have been on my pack of cigarettes but now she raises her gaze and looks at me and my breath catches a little. My lips purse around my smoke and I blink at her. She’s got the biggest brown eyes I’ve ever seen and they’re beautiful. She’s beautiful if, sad looking. She looks tough too. I wouldn’t mess with her. I would have before, when I was an asshole. I would have done it just to see what would happen even if I knew she didn’t like it. Not now.

  “Yeah.” I take out two smokes and offer them. “I got two.”

  “So what’s your name, lone wolf?” The girl, the woman, leans back against the wall next to me and lights her cigarette and I can see the streetlights reflecting in her eyes, making them glimmer. Her lips are shiny. Her face is round and sort of deceptively soft because her pretty eyes are hard. She’s confusing.

  “Jason,” I say, feeling stupid. I grimace and look away. It’s fine, I tell myself. There will always be beautiful women. Just stay away from them. I have every intention of doing that. No one should be around me, honestly. She’s probably somebody’s mate anyway. I don’t see a mark but she’s wearing a scarf so who knows?

  “I’m Carrie,” she says, with a nod. She’s looking at me almost like she knows me and I feel a wave of familiarity I can’t explain. It doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never met this woman before. “You work at Casey’s?”

  I tip my head, squinting at her. Strands of her hair come loose from her ponytail and blow around her pretty face as her breath steams. She has a pouty mouth. I’ll bet she’s a good kisser. I don’t think I am. If I’d seen her at Casey’s today, I definitely would have remembered. “How’d you know I work at Casey’s?”

  “There’s nothing to do here and nobody has cable,” Carrie quips, smirking up at me. “New guy shows up, everybody talks. Especially if he’s a lone wolf. So why are you a lone wolf?”

  I raise an eyebrow and look away, leaning back against my wall. It’s my wall, I decide. I don’t want to make enemies but I don’t need to make friends and there’s nothing more dangerous than a beautiful woman when you’re new in town. “None of your business,” I mutter.

  Carrie laughs at that. She actually throws her head back and everything. “I should’ve made a bet. Lone wolves never want to say what it is they did.” She smiles to herself but looks so tired suddenly and she rubs her eyes. She sticks her spare cigarette behind her ear, the other between her lips. “Well, goodnight, lone wolf. Pleasant dreams.”

  I watch her saunter off. She is wearing a sinfully tight pair of jeans and boots. She’s tall, just a couple inches shorter than me. It’s hard not to wonder what’s under that coat. I watch the spiral of her cigarette smoke drift off her head as she walks away.

  The next day at work passes pretty much like the first. I even run into Carrie again. She flirts and I don’t know what to do about it. I’ve never flirted with a woman in my entire life. I had a few flings with girls at Hardwidge but there wasn’t much romance to it. I wanted a mate, or anyway I thought I did, and they wanted somebody to protect them from the other assholes in the pack. It never worked out well. There was some sex, not all of it sucked. I don’t know how good I was. I’m literally not sure. Doesn’t make me want to jump in bed with anyone. As far as I can remember, I’ve been pretty goddamn selfish in general and that includes in bed.

  “Why don’t you tell me what you did to be a lone wolf?” Carrie says. She’s practically batting her eyes. I can’t make heads or tails of this woman. She looks so tough but she’s flirting. I feel like that shouldn’t make sense.

  “Told ya, it’s none of your business.” She’s found me leaning on the wall again and she’s leaning there too. She’s got a big bruise on her cheek that’s making me want to start asking questions. I wonder if somebody backhands her on the regular. I wonder if she’s with somebody who’s just like I used to be? “Why do you keep asking me?”

  She walked right up to me and gave me two cigarettes as payback. Then she started leaning and smoking like we’re friends and we do this all the time. It’s the damnedest thing. I’ve also seen her wave and smile to two people walking by. I’ll bet everyone knows her. Everyone seems to like her too.

  “I keep askin’ ya,” she says, turning to face me sideways, “because you blush when I ask you and it’s cute.” She takes a drag and raises her eyes to gaze into mine. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and I feel trapped, like I’m sinking right in.

  Ever since my first day at the Mulligan I’ve felt an aching sense of loneliness that I’ve known was of my own making. It’s so dark and so deep that I like to try to convince myself that if I make up for all my sins, it will go away. This girl I’ve smoked with twice is looking at me, and I feel it ease just slightly. It’s like suddenly being able to bend a spoon with your mind (I saw something about that on a TV once). It takes my breath away for one brief second.

  It also scares the shit out of me and I’m not sure why, except I hurt people. That’s what I do and what I’ve always done. I don’t want to hurt this girl who I don’t even know.

  “I’m not cute,” I snap at her. “Why don’t you stay away from me?”

  Carrie laughs at that too. “Too small a town to stay away from anybody, buddy. I’m just teasing.” She nudges me and I get this hint of warmth to her. She’s tough, but she’s nice. I guess. I didn’t know that was actually possible. “I don’t expect you to tell me, I’m not really asking. Look, everyone here’s got some kinda shit they don’t want to talk about.” She shrugs, smiling sadly. “You don’t have to worry about that. I’m just fucking with you.”

  “Uh...oh.” I feel my cheeks burning and I see her amusement written across her face as I clear my throat. “Fine then. Sorry. I guess.”

  “You’re not used to people fucking with you,” Carrie says.

  “Not...like that?” I shrug. We fucked with each other at Hardwidge all the time but it usually meant you went to hunt for your dinner and somebody took off with it and then you beat the shit out of each other. Honestly, I was usually the one taking the food and then beating the weaker wolf into submission. This joking around stuff though, I don’t really know how to pull that off.

  “I get it.” Carrie nods at me, taking a long drag of her smoke. “You’re brooding. That’s good. Every town needs a hot guy who broods.” She tosses me a little salute. “Thanks for your service.”

  She’s funny, this girl. I don’t entirely get it. But she’s definitely funny.

  “HEY!” A male voice booms from out of the dark around us and then so
me big guy I’ve never seen before approaches from around the corner of the building, half falling down. I feel Carrie tense up next to me and it immediately makes me tense up too. I don’t know Carrie much but if some shit is about to go down, I’m loyal to her over this big guy stumbling toward us, looking wasted. His eyes are red and he’s pointing at Carrie. “Hey, big dog bitch! Queen of The Ring! Hey! I wanna fight!”

  Carrie looks totally unsurprised by this behaviour which is weird, because I have no clue what’s happening.

  “Go home, Steve,” Carrie says calmly.

  “Nah, nah!” Steve is about to fall over but now he shakes out his arms and trills his lips. “I’m gonna fight you! Let’s shift! Wolf to wolf! Queen of The Ring! C’mon!”

  “I said to go home,” Carrie says, practically hissing. She gets up in his face and he only looks pleased by it.

  I don’t know what this is about. It’s actually a fight I would have stepped into before, if only because I liked a good fight. But I’m trying to keep my head down and I’d rather not have to take anybody on, even if it’s just some stupid drunk I could take in a sec-

  Pow.

  I was kind of expecting somebody to shift since we’re all shifters here, but instead Carrie abruptly punches the drunk right in the face, and so hard that it makes me hiss in reflexive sympathy. Steve gets knocked right to the ground, in fact she punches him so hard he spins on his heel as he hits the ground. It’s pretty impressive.

  “Goddamn,” I mutter, taking a drag.

  “I said to go home,” Carrie says flatly.

  “Yeah, alright,” Steve mutters. It takes him a couple minutes to get to his feet, and he has to pull up his pants as they fall down. It’s pretty pathetic.

  Carrie doesn’t say a word as Steve trudges off, completely humiliated. Carrie spins around and glares at me. “You got somethin’ to say?”

  She might be tough as nails but the streetlights are making her eyes glitter and her cheeks are rosy in the crisp, cold air. She’s absurdly beautiful.

  “Nope,” I mumble.

  “Good.” She stubs her cigarette out on the ground and tosses me a nod. “See ya later.”

  I kind of wish she’d hit on me again just so she’d stand close and let me take a long look at her red mouth. But that kind of entanglement is the last thing I need and even more so, the last thing she needs.

  “See ya,” I mutter under my breath.

  I stand there in the alley for a long time, trying to get that woman out of my head. I never succeed, and eventually I just walk on home.

  Chapter Five: Carrie

  That new guy in town is really getting under my skin in the worst way. It’s bad enough that he’s hot as hell in that “seen some shit” way but beyond a kind of primal attraction that I haven’t felt in ages, something’s drawing me to him that I can’t even explain. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was my mate. God, I hope not. I’ve never really wanted a mate. I haven’t known many happy couples. When you’re a little girl pup, they make you think that just because the fates pair you, you’re gonna be happy together. Sorry, pal. You might be meant for each other but if you give up on trying to be a decent human being no magic is strong enough to make your mate love you. I’ve seen plenty of proof of that around Grayling.

  There’s something dark about Jason too. He’s obviously a man with a certain kind of past who doesn’t want to talk about it. Makes me wonder. It should also make me want to stay the hell away. I got enough problems without bringing some mysterious Mr. Sexy into things. But I don’t seem to be very good at staying away. I think it’s the way he gets all weird and almost flustered when I flirt like he’s terrified of women or something. It’s cute in a really stupid way. It makes me want to keep trying.

  I was having an okay time too just standing there smoking with him in that alley before Steve came along. Being the star fighter at The Ring might be making me some money to take home but it also means that every asshole in Grayling wants to challenge me to a fight, especially when they’re wasted. It’s annoying as hell. It’s as if I’m supposed to be grateful that men are lining up to punch me in the face because I happen to fight professionally. What the hell is that? Dickwads.

  I’m thinking about all this as I head into the gym the next day after work. Same shit, different day. Except today I’m extra pissed off when I see Ray back at the gym, at work with the free weights. I narrow my eyes at him and march up to him, crossing my arms.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Ray?”

  Ray looks up at me, all innocence and bruises. He looks like shit. If he didn’t break his nose, he came damn close in that fight. I saw what his wolf looked like when they carted him off and it was ugly. I know shifters heal fast and he’s very young. I know that he was pretty quick in the cage and not quite as terrible a fighter as I thought he’d be. But I also know that he thinks he’s invincible and that this place is going to chew him up and spit him out. It might even kill him and I don’t want to be there when they cart that body away.

  “Hey, Carrie!” Ray says. “Did you see me fight? Wasn’t bad, right?

  “You got creamed,” I tell him. He did get creamed. I’m not just saying that. He showed promise, sure. But a few more fights like that in too short a time and he’ll be toast.

  “Well, that’s why I gotta train more!” Ray says. He’s such a pup. It makes my heart ache. “Could you help me? One of Remmy’s guys said you could train me? Maybe I could do a little better in the next fight?”

  Ray has dark hair and dark eyes but they’re big and wide and they’re imploring me. I take a breath and sit on the weight bench next to him. “Ray… You’re smart. I remember you when you were a kid. You did pretty good in school. What’re you doing in here? Even if you’re not going to college, you can’t get a job somewhere else?”

  Ray snorts at that. “Where? It’s this or the docks for the money I’d need. They wouldn’t take me at the docks.”

  “What do you need so much money for?”

  “Medical bills,” Ray mutters. He looks all forlorn. I’ve stumbled on something and I can already see it coming. Shit. “Mom got hurt. Hunter got her in the woods. She got away, but she’s fucked up...”

  “Shit…” I shift back and rub my eyes but it only pisses me off more.

  The thing about our noble alpha, Remmy, is that he’s rich. He’s rich because of The Ring. He’s rich enough to at least help out with half the town’s hospital bills if they needed it. That’s what a decent alpha would do. A decent alpha would help the pack help itself and, by the way, a decent alpha would do something about the hunters going after us in the woods.

  But we don’t have a decent alpha. We have Remmy, who only exploits us for what he can get. And nobody has the balls to challenge him.

  “This is all I got, Carrie,” Ray says. “So can you help me?”

  “Yeah,” I say, heaving a sigh. “Yeah, I’ll train you. Sure, kid.”

  For the next couple hours, I get started teaching Ray everything I’ve learned so far about fighting at The Ring. I show him what exercises to do to make himself stronger and then we shift and I show him some moves. It’s just the two of us in the gym and that’s a relief. I don’t need the other fighters I compete with seeing all my moves. I try to keep those a little bit under wraps for the most part.

  Just as I’m winding down our training session I hear a ruckus out by the cage. Remmy has shown up. All his little toadies are fawning over him, laughing and probably telling him what a great guy he is just because they’re so afraid of getting on his bad side.

  “Carrie!” Remmy’s voice thunders and echoes in The Ring and I grimace. He always wants to talk to me when he comes down here and I’m training. It’s one of the many shitty parts about being his best fighter. “Where’s my star!”

  I also hate it because when I train, I’m not wearing a lot of clothing and what I’m wearing is tight. I know he really gets off on that. Right now I’m wearing leggings and what amo
unts to a sports bra and I’m sweaty. He’s gonna ogle the hell out of me like usual.

  But he’s the boss and he’s the alpha. Ray and I exchange grim expressions and I stand up from where I was showing him a weight move on the floor and grab a towel to wipe down as I head out to talk to him.

  Remmy is, I don’t know, average looking, I guess. He’s tall and he’s well built. He’s really deceptive to gage as a fighter because he’s not hugely muscular, he’s just pretty fit and broad. But I’ve seen him wipe the floor with guys I thought would easily take him. He’s older, somewhere in his late forties and he’s handsome enough though there’s something dark in his eyes and he’s got drawn and angular features. There’s always been something about him that just looks a little evil even before you’ve met him. But he has bright blue eyes that pull you in and almost compel you. He’s charismatic, which can be frightening. It’s not hard at all to see why he’s the alpha. He can walk into any room anywhere and quickly dominate.

  “Carrie!” He spreads his arms. I hate how happy he is to see me. I watch his gaze shoot straight for my chest. “You look beautiful.” He raises his fists, throwing pretend punches. “All tough and sweaty! Gorgeous!”

  I nod stiffly. “Thanks, Remmy.”

  “C’mere, c’mere…” He grabs my hand and yanks me forward and I let him because I have to. He pecks a kiss to my lips and wraps an arm around my bare waist. “Gorgeous, gorgeous. You training Ray today?”

  “Yeah…” I feel like a snake is wrapped around my waist. “Though he could use some more tips. Being the new kid and all. Got pretty beat up in his first fight. I hope he’s not up for a while.”

  “Okay.” He looks serious at that and I don’t like the look of it. “Let’s see a demonstration.”

  “Demonstration?”

  “That’s right,” Remmy says. “Let’s see you two go at it. Don’t hold back.”