by Jana Leigh
Quin stood staring at the setting sun and sighed loudly, wishing he could shift and run through the mountainside. He planned a retreat for next week for him and his Enforcers high in the Rockies. Then they could truly be free to shift. Most of the time they had to be careful not to let a human see them, they needed to remain a secret for the sake of everyone. In the past few months, it had been harder and harder to hide their presence in the city. They had to deal with the Rogues and more often than not, they fought in wolf form.
“Alpha, your father is on the phone. He wants to know if you have made any progress with the Rogues in the area,” Devon, his Beta called from the door that led to the roof.
“Yeah, I’m coming.” Quin sighed and went to speak to his father.
In the past few weeks, a group of Rogue wolves decided they wanted to try to take over the area. Quin and his Enforcers had been busy trying to clean up their mess. His Pack was currently around fifty members. All of them living in the three blocks the Pack owned in Denver. They had seven apartment buildings that held all the members. In addition, they owned about 1000 acres in the mountains with a dozen or more cabins, so they could run when they wanted.
Quin prided himself on making sure all of his Pack members were happy and had jobs. They were one of the most successful Packs in the States and were gaining members every month. Soon they were going to have to expand. Quin made a note to have his personal assistant start looking at buying another city block. Many of the families that could have joined his Pack were waiting until he found his mate, which would make the Pack more stable. He wanted more than anything to find a woman that would lead by his side, but so far, he had not found anyone who called to his wolf.
His mother explained to him long ago that his wolf would be the one to recognize his mate. He knew the restlessness was because of not having found her yet. His mother and father assured him that when the time came, he would find the one meant strictly for him.
Quin went into his office and answered the phone that was blinking at him, “Hello Father.”
“Son, what progress have you made with the Rogues?” A gruff voice responded to him. His father, never a man for long discussions, was always quick and to the point. When he was growing up, his mother was the one who dispensed the hugs. His father, though Quin knew he loved him, was more serious. His father also believed the Alpha of every Pack had a greater responsibility than even to his own family. This is where they differed. When Quin finally found his mate, he was going to make sure she knew exactly how important she was to him. His children would know the same love his mother had shown him.
“We had a skirmish last night in a suburb, but so far we can’t seem to find their lair. I hope they will show themselves soon. We have heard their Alpha is a wolf named Roark, but we haven’t been able to find him,” Quin said turning in his chair so he could watch the last of the sun setting.
“You may have to send out more patrols. I heard from Roan in Northern Ireland, and his Alpha in the States is having problems too. He has lost three females and one Enforcer in the last week. You need to watch the Pack,” his father warned.
“I know what is at stake here, father. I will talk to my Beta and the Enforcers. We are planning a retreat next week, but I do not want to leave the Pack unguarded. We may have to postpone, at least while this mess remains. They will understand, even if they are itching to run,” Quin said.
“I agree. Do you need any more people? I could send your brother and a few others to help,” his father asked.
Quin sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He was the Alpha of this Pack. He loved his father, but he was still set in the old ways.
“Let me talk it over with the others, I will let you know. I may have to have some more help if they try to take one of our females,” Quin replied.
They spoke for a few more minutes, and then Quin hung up the phone, hoping he would be able to give his father a better report the next time he spoke to him. He didn’t want his brothers to come here unless the need arose for that particular action. They were all working on settling their own Packs. All except for his youngest brother Adrian, who was just concluding his training. He hoped to offer the young wolf a place in his Pack. It had been too long since he had seen his family, and he wanted to have that connection again.
He had no clue what the Rogue wolves were trying to do. Taking female wolves was an act of war, soon he would have no choice but to hunt and kill the Rogues if they could not get them under control.
He could hear loud voices in the outer office and sighed again. What else could happen today? It had been a long day already, and he wanted to have a nice quiet dinner and go to bed.
Just before he reached the door, it burst open and his Beta fell in the room. Devon was larger than most of his wolves, so he nearly took up the entire space when he sprawled on the floor. Being the Beta of the Pack, Devon was the strongest wolf. Quin never wanted to find out who would win if they fought for Alpha, he suspected it would be a close fight.
“Get your ass out of my way,” he heard a female growl come from just outside the room.
Quin laughed when Devon jumped up and looked at him with red cheeks. “She caught me off guard.”
“Right, we’ll go with that, if it’s how you want to spin it.” Quin agreed and poked his head out of his office to see who had thrown his Beta through the door. It must have been a large female wolf to do this kind of damage.
He laughed even harder when he saw the small sprite before him. A small blonde woman stood there tapping her foot with impatience. Wow, she was beautiful. Long flowing hair pulled back into a high ponytail and voluptuous curves, the woman stood a good foot below him. It made him feel like he was a giant. Quin grinned and looked at the woman with more interest. He wondered why she was here. He knew every member of his Pack, and she definitely did not belong.
“Listen buster, I have been sitting out here for the last two hours, waiting patiently for the head dog to come and meet with me. I no longer have the time, or the inclination to sit here. Tell your overly important man when he makes an appointment; he should have the courtesy to show up.” The woman fumed, turned on her heel, and stomped to the elevators.
Quin laughed again until the breeze from her turn caught his nose. She smelled like rose petals and fresh mountain air. His wolf immediately responded and began howling, pushing him to follow her. Holy shit, she was his mate, and she was a human!
Devon growled when his Alpha walked by him, as if in a trance. “Alpha let me handle her. The human doesn’t know her place.”
“Huh?” he said, still moving in the direction the woman had gone.
“She had an appointment with you to talk about renting space in the bottom floor of the building we just bought. I told her we were not ready to make any decisions, but she said she had a lease already with the previous owners and she wanted us to honor the contract. She wants to open a bookstore. I tried to explain that you were busy, but she said she called and made an appointment with Shelly. I explained Shelly was out on emergency leave and hadn’t put her in the book, but she refused to reschedule and said she would wait,” Devon said obviously frustrated. “I will send her a letter stating we will not be honoring the contract. After the last meeting, we decided to make more apartments for the Pack. We have only one more apartment before we run out of them and there are new people inquiring every week. Then I may teach her what happens when she pulls a wolf’s tail.”
“NO!” Quin yelled and looked at his friend. “I think she is my mate.”
“What? A human?” Devon asked incredulously following his friend's gaze and watched the doors to the elevator close. “I will get her.”
“No, I will. Do you have her information?” Quin said intensely. He found his mate and he was not going to waste time waiting for someone to bring her back, least of all his Beta that she had thrown on his ass.
Devon nodded and went to the desk and pulled a sheet of paper from the top. “Her name
is Cami Reynolds. She lives only a few blocks down. According to her contract, she has already paid a substantial deposit.”
Quin nodded and went back to his office to gather his things. “I will be gone until I can convince her to return with me. Please make sure everyone knows not to disturb me.”
Devon grinned and nodded. He was a little jealous of his friend and Alpha for finding his mate. He was the first of the seven who came over from France to find their mates. There had been some concern the last few years that they would never find the one meant for them, leaving a Pack without females had been a hard decision. Many of the Enforcers had to seek out humans who could handle their sexual nature.
Quin ran to the elevator and punched the buttons impatiently. “No interruptions,” he said over his shoulder.
Devon grinned as his friend rushed after his mate. He wondered if he would feel the same way if it were his mate. Devon was a large man; he hoped his female was not as small as Quin’s was, he would be too afraid to touch her.
Quin raced out of the building following the intoxicating scent of his mate. She lived only a few blocks according to the paperwork, but in the other direction than he smelled. Damn it, he wanted to see her in private. It would have been so much easier if she had gone home. It looked as if he was going to have to come up with another plan or wait. Since patience at this point wasn’t an option, he followed his mate.
***
Cami fumed as she walked out of the office building. The man was an asshole to say the least. All he had to do was sit and listen to her. She would have explained why this was so important to her. The money she used for the lease had been a gamble for her. She could’ve found somewhere less expensive and in a shitty location, but she loved the storefront from the moment she saw the ‘For Lease’ sign. The company who first owned the building sold her on it when they explained how much foot traffic this street had. Then they sold the building out from underneath her, without even informing her if her lease would be honored or not. The money she would lose would seriously put a dent in the start-up cost of her dream.
Cami frowned, and put her head down trying to think of a way she could make the stupid man listen. What she needed was a plan, one that included avoiding bloodshed preferably, but she was not picky. Growing up on the streets when her mother kicked her out after her stepfather decided she had matured enough to draw interest, Cami was used to taking care of herself. She had scrimped and saved for the last few years to make her dream a reality. She’d also taken self-defense classes, and wasn’t above using violence to get her store.
Working three jobs to get her degree in English had been the first step in her goal to own a bookstore. Granted, it took her six years, but she smiled when she thought about the pride that she felt when she had accepted her diploma. The next step had been risky. She needed a start-up fund for a bookstore. For years, she worked and established herself as a teacher and librarian. She did not make enough money for her to save much, but she saved every cent she could. Cami did not have enough money to make the down payment, so she did what she had to do in order to make more money.
Phone sex was a growing industry and one where she would not have to actually meet with the low-life who used the service. She had done extensive research before finding a company who did not expect their employees to make house calls on the side. Cami wasn’t stupid. She worked for several years saving the money she made from the sex service, and she’d had almost enough, when she had answered the phone one night and recognized her school Principal’s voice. She had quit that night and showered for three hours, scrubbing the scum she felt attached to her skin. The next morning when her boss smiled at her in a sick knowing smile, she quit on the spot and showered again for another three hours. Her dream then put on hold once again.
Despondent over having to find another job to fulfill her dream, Cami volunteered at a shelter, and ended up befriending a homeless man. Barry had stolen her heart the first night. The man came into the shelter where she was working on a cold and snowy night. She was drawn to the little man who had only a jacket and a backpack full of belongings.
Barry and Cami had struck up a conversation and she became enchanted with him. A veteran down on his luck, Barry entertained her with stories of his misspent youth in Denver. He just needed someone to talk to, someone to connect with. Cami had been lonely as well and they ended up speaking until the shelter closed.
Night after night, Barry came back to the shelter to talk with her. Soon, she was taking him to dinner on her off nights and bringing him back to her apartment to spend the night in the spare bedroom. Never once did she think he would hurt her.
For three years, the man lived with her off and on, spending holidays with her and becoming her family. When he died last year from pneumonia, she had been devastated. Preparing for the funeral, which she attended on her own, she received a visit from an attorney. Barry had named her the sole beneficiary in his will. She had been shocked to realize that he had been a lonely man who sought her company after wandering into the shelter by accident.
It had not been a lot of money but it was enough for her to start her bookstore and buy the loft she currently lived in. When she saw the building only a few blocks from her loft with the lease sign in the window, she had been excited. For once, everything was going her way. That was until she opened the mail yesterday. The pleasant letter told her the lease she had signed, transferred to the new owners and was currently under review, until they decided what they were going to do with the space. That had pissed her off.
Cami walked into the local grocery and went to the frozen section. Lately she had been so busy making plans for her store and finishing at the local library, she had barely had enough time to eat let alone make dinner. So she’d been forced to buy frozen dinners until she could make the time to shop.
Looking at her choices, she frowned. Pasta again did not sound good, however her choices we limited. Cami wished she had planned better. Maybe she would just go out to dinner and screw the whole thing.
“If you stare hard enough, maybe it will jump into your hand.” She heard a deep, sexy voice say behind her. “How about I take you out for dinner as an apology?”
Cami turned and looked into the deepest blue eyes she’d ever seen. Whoa, she thought, and grinned at the man. She took in the rest of the facial features and stopped when it fully hit her who she was staring at—the man from the office, the one who came from the closed office door. The one she had been waiting to see.
“Did you follow me?” she asked, shocked the man had gone to that much trouble. Especially considering how she had screamed and ranted when her frustration took over.
The man’s eyes glittered with humor, and his eyes seemed to change colors, making them a deeper blue. “Uh, would it make you say, yes, if I told you I wandered into the store, saw you standing in front of the frozen food section, and decided to hit on you?”
“No, it would make me call the manager and have you arrested for harassment. It would be better than being arrested for stalking, if you followed me,” she said frowning at the man, as if he would really be hitting on her. Cami knew from experience she was not the type of woman that men randomly hit on. A man this gorgeous would never look at her twice, let alone see her standing in the store and want to hit on her. Did the guy think she was stupid?
The man threw back his head and laughed and Cami raised her head in surprise. “You are a breath of fresh air. Most people don’t speak their minds around me. I can hardly wait to hear what you will say next.”
“Well, then this will be a new experience. Not only am I going to speak my mind, I am going to turn you down,” she huffed and walked to the front of the store.
Quin followed the woman across the parking lot and Cami stomped her foot in frustration. “Listen buddy, I have a new appointment with you next week. I will see you then. Now, I am going to walk away and you are going to stop following me or we are going to have a big problem.”
“I just want dinner, what harm would that do? We could talk about the lease over dinner. Kill two birds with one stone. Then it won’t waste your time having to fret over this for a week,” he reasoned and Cami closed her eyes knowing she was going to agree.
She sighed and tapped her foot with impatience. “Fine, let’s go,” she ordered, waiting to follow.
“Wow, bossy little thing aren’t you?” Quin chuckled and took her arm pulling her alongside him. The next block held a restaurant that belonged to one of the Pack members. A quaint little bistro that had the best Italian food you have ever tasted. Silently, he walked to the door to the restaurant, never letting go of her arm. She felt as if she was a lamb being led to the slaughterhouse.
“Hang on,” she gasped trying to catch her breath. He pulled her at a pretty good clip, since she was shorter and did not have long legs to keep up with the tall man; she was forced to practically jog to keep up.
“Ready?” he said, amused as he watched the woman straighten her clothes and pat her hair. She looked like a miniature doll. His own little beautiful plaything, he just had to convince her of it.
Quin entered the restaurant when she sighed and nodded to him. When they came to the hostess stand, Quin looked around the room searching for his friends and owners. They always worked the seating area when they were in, which was most of the time. One of the good things about being the Pack Alpha, he never had to wait long for a table. He was also linked to his entire Pack and could communicate with them through a Pack link when they were close enough together. Only the Alpha could hear all the people in the Pack. Other wolves could only hear their mates and children.
