There was a pause, and she could hear a voice in the background.
Then Tomlinson came back to the phone. “Sorry, there’s been a robbery, gotta go. I’ll call you back,” he said.
“Hold on,” she said, but he was already gone.
She hoped he didn’t need her help, because she wasn’t going to be sheriff much longer.
And she had no idea what she was going to do for work now, but she clearly couldn’t carry on as sheriff. Not that she’d ever wanted the job in the first place. But to fail like this… Roman, who was already mated, had seduced her on purpose to get her to stop trying to arrest him. The thought was like a stab to the heart.
She’d let her new pack down and made an utter fool of herself.
“What did he want?” Erika asked.
“I don’t know—he got interrupted and said he’d call me back. Hopefully he doesn’t need my help with anything, because I don’t know how long it’s going to take for the pack to find a new sheriff.”
“Months. Don’t feel bad,” Erika said. “Nobody else was able to arrest Roman either. And for the record, I don’t think you should quit.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I feel really bad right now.”
“Sorry,” Chelsea said without thinking.
“Why are you sorry? It’s not your fault. Roman manipulated you, and Leland never even told me that Roman had a mate, and he knew Roman was flirting with you. Dickwad.”
Chelsea closed her eyes for a brief moment and concentrated hard on banishing her bad mood. She was still taking her medication, but when her emotions were too strong, they broke through. Within a few seconds, the meditation techniques were working and she’d tamped down on it.
She opened her eyes.
“The mayor’s coming now. Wow, he brought quite a crowd with him,” Erika said. There were around twenty pack members headed up the steps towards her office, arguing with each other and gesturing wildly. “I bet they’re going to beg you to stay.”
“They look pretty mad.” Chelsea was taken aback. “They’ve got to understand that I can’t keep a job I’m not suited for.”
“They've got nothing to be mad about,” Erika said indignantly. “They tricked you into taking this job in the first place.”
The front door banged open and Mayor Winkleman, Louise, Barbara, Lorena, Susan, Rosie, Esther and Mr. Castleberry, along with more than a dozen other shifters from the pack, barreled in.
“Calm down, everybody!” the mayor yelled at them in tones of distress.
Chelsea glanced at the crowd in confusion. Why so many? And why were they all so excited? “Mr. Mayor, I apologize, but I really do need to hand in my resignation, effective immediately,” Chelsea said uneasily.
“You think?” Mr. Castleberry snarled at her.
So they’d heard she was quitting? She was surprised by the venom in his voice, and by the way they were looking at her. With disgust and wariness.
An odd sensation prickled on the back of her neck.
“What exactly crawled up your ass?” Erika snapped at him.
He looked down his nose at her. “My daughter is right. You are crude and extremely unladylike.”
“So the fuck what? Being a lady’s overrated.” Erika shrugged. “I’m myself, which is good enough for me.”
“No wonder no wolf wants to mate you.” His nose wrinkled back.
“That’s it!” Louise barked abruptly, and everyone turned to stare at her in surprise. “Do not speak to my niece like that,” she said heatedly. “Since Chelsea has come to town, she’s happier than she ever was before, and she deserves to be. Forget trying to make her into someone’s perfect idea of how a girl should be. She’s a wonderful daughter to my brother, she’s a hard worker, and she’s got a good heart. Someday she will find a wolf who appreciates her for what she is.”
“A bulldog in a dress?” Castleberry looked Erika up and down in contempt.
“Cecil Castleberry?” Louise smacked him across the face with her purse, so hard that he yelped in surprise and pain. “Blow it out your ass.”
The entire crowd gasped and fell silent. They all turned to stare at Chelsea to see what she would do.
She gave a brisk round of applause.
“Hear, hear,” she said. “And no, I can’t arrest Miss Louise for assault, because I just resigned from my job.”
“If you hadn’t, we’d have run you out of town,” Castleberry sneered at her. “That new girl, Holly, contacted the mayor’s office this morning to file a complaint,” he said to the crowd of shifters. “She said that Chelsea has been having an affair with her mate.”
Several of the pack members made involuntary retching noises and clutched at their stomachs.
“She did not have an affair with anybody’s mate!” Rosie said, stepping forward. “If Roman was mated, she didn’t know about it. Nobody in town knew about it. He’s the one who takes the blame there!”
The room was dividing up. Half the pack was moving to one side, with Rosie and Louise and Erika, glaring at Mr. Castleberry. Barbara was snapping pictures. Erika was looking around with her fists clenched, deciding who she wanted to punch.
The rest of the pack was crowding arouhnd Cecil Castleberry, but they were starting to look doubtful. He saw that he was losing his audience.
“Anyway! That’s not all Holly had to say! She also did some research and found out some interesting things about Chelsea,” he continued haughtily, rubbing his injured cheek. “Things you didn’t tell us,” he added, addressing Chelsea directly. “Like the fact that your mother went feral and you’re a psychic.”
There was a collective gasp from the crowd.
Chelsea felt the blood draining from her face.
It was true. Her mother had gone feral.
Her mother had been psychic, but she’d been the opposite of Chelsea; she didn’t broadcast her emotions. Instead, she’d been bombarded by other people’s emotions all the time. Eventually it had driven her mad.
Her father hadn’t been able to handle having a crazy mate, and he’d run out on his family when they were young.
Chelsea’s mother had turned feral right in the middle of a grocery store and attacked several shoppers, gravely injuring them. She’d been taken out by a police officer’s silver bullets. Chelsea had been three at the time. She’d spent the rest of her childhood and teenage years in foster care; nobody had wanted to adopt a child with her history, and her powers, which most people didn’t understand.
“So,” Esther said indignantly, “You’ve been reading our minds all this time? And I even made you a dog bed!”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Erika interrupted, looking annoyed.
“You could have told me Susan’s campaign strategy,” Lorena added, looking wounded. “And who’s going to vote for me. I mean, I brought you coffee cake.”
“I have not been reading anyone’s mind!” Chelsea cried. “I’m not even capable of mind-reading, not that I’d do it if I could. I’m classified as being a member of the psychic family, but I’m not a mind-reader. I’m a type of empath. A reverse empath. I don’t sense other people’s emotions; I broadcast my own. Other people tend to feel some of what I’m feeling. But I take medication to control it.”
“I don’t believe you,” Mr. Castleberry said, his expression wary. “Are you reading my mind right now?” He clapped his hands over his ears and began backing up. “You are, aren’t you? Stop it!”
“Why? What do you have to hide?” Erika called. “I’ve heard rumors that you were misusing chamber funds. Is that true?”
“Lies! All lies! Stop it!” Mr. Castleberry shrieked, backing all the way up to the door. He flung the door open and turned and ran. Outside, he tripped, scrambled to his feet and then got back up and kept running.
“I will leave tonight,” Chelsea said, standing up abruptly.
“But we don’t want you go!” Rosie protested, and there was a chorus of agreement from half the pack. “Even if you don�
�t want to be sheriff. We like you. You should stay.”
“She’s a mind-reader!” one of the crowd members yelled. “She can’t stay here!”
“She doesn’t read minds, and we all turn into animals and howl at the moon, so we’re not exactly the ones to point fingers at anyone who’s different,” Barbara said.
“We shouldn’t make any hasty decisions.” Mayor Winkelman was trying to be heard above the din. He looked distressed. This was not a man who enjoyed conflict.
Chelsea had brought conflict to the pack.
She pushed back her chair and stood.
Tears burned Chelsea’s eyes. She should have told everyone up front—but she’d been afraid of exactly this reaction. She’d thought that moving to another state and a brand new pack would be a way of leaving the past behind. She’d been wrong.
“There’s no decision to be made. I’ll be gone by tonight,” she said. Before she started crying and blasting everyone with negative vibes, she turned and hurried out the back door, with Pepper indignantly trotting at her heels, wheezing and farting in protest.
Chapter Nineteen
A beautiful sunset, a crackling fire, the pack gathered around the fire pit after hard day’s work…usually these were the things that made Roman smile.
Today he just felt sick.
He’d tried texting and calling Chelsea, and she was ignoring him. She must hate him right now.
Holly sat on the opposite side of the fire pit, drinking a beer. She’d tried to sit next to Roman, and he’d gotten up and walked away, which had earned him shouted threats about calling the council.
The pack members were avoiding looking at her or speaking to her. Benjamin was walking around clearing up the campsite, picking up fallen branches and sweeping away leaves with a grim intensity. Cleaning and organizing was how he coped with stress.
They could all sense the bad changes that were headed their way; a visit from the council would doom their pack. Roman could agree to be mated for life to a woman he clearly loathed, or the pack could disband.
And now Marcus was stomping up to the group, with an ugly look on his face. Roman tensed, in case Marcus actually tried to assault Holly. He couldn’t allow that, no matter what his feelings about her were.
But apparently Marcus wasn’t planning a physical assault. He had something far more deadly in mind.
“Bad news for you, princess,” Marcus growled at Holly.
“Watch how you speak to the Alpha’s mate,” Holly said icily. “You will treat me with respect.”
“The Alpha’s mate, sure, I’ll respect her, because it’s going to be Chelsea,” Marcus said.
Her eyes blazed with rage and she sucked in an angry breath. Before she could reply, he continued, “I made some calls today. I did some research on what happens when a shifter challenges a claim of Mate-Marking. It’s very, very rare, but sometimes it happens. We can expect a visit from a forensic odontologist real soon. He’ll be checking the bite mark on your neck.”
She clapped her hand over her Mate Mark.
“A furry sick what?” she squeaked, setting her beer down with her free hand.
“A. forensic. Odontologist. Basically a dentist who does criminal investigations. He’ll take a mold of the bite mark on your neck. Compare it to Roman’s teeth. And then we’ll get to the truth of the matter.”
Roman watched Holly’s face with interest. She looked horrified.
“That’s not even legal. That’s ridiculous. It doesn’t mean anything,” she said, her hand still hiding the mark on her neck.
“Oh, it sure does. It’s acceptable in court, and it’s backed up by science. Now, faking a Mate Mark claim—that is a very serious criminal offense. We all know that Roman didn’t Mate-Mark you. We all know that you like to lie and manipulate.” He glanced over at Zeke. “So you manipulated some poor sucker into Mate-Marking you when Roman was blackout drunk. Thought you could trap Roman that way.”
Holly burst into tears of rage, leaping to her feet.
Roman felt as if a thousand-ton weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He hadn’t Mate-Marked her.
“You can’t let him do this to me!” she screamed at Roman. “I’m your mate! You were meant for me! You’re mine!”
“You’re crazy, and I loathe the sight of you,” Roman snarled. “You hurt the woman I love. The woman I’m going to Mate-Mark, if she’ll have me. Get in your car and get out of here before I do something I’ll regret.”
The rest of the pack let out a huge cheer; Roman could see the looks of relief on their faces.
Holly left, screaming and swearing revenge. She was crying so hard that black rivers of mascara ran down her face and dripped off her chin, splashing on her shirt.
She drove off in a spray of gravel, tires screeching.
Leland slowly walked up to Roman.
“Don’t,” Roman growled, holding up his hand as Leland started to speak. “This is one of the rare occasions when I accept you questioning my leadership. If I had Mate-Marked a woman and abandoned her, then I would not deserve the title of Alpha.”
“I should have known better,” Leland said. “For that, I apologize. Want me to go scrub the porta-potties?”
“Some other time. Right now I’m in more of a mood to celebrate than punish. I’ve got to admit, she had me worried.” Roman shook his head.
Then he glanced over at Marcus, who was headed out of the circle. Probably back to his tent.
“Hey, you can cancel that call to the forensic whatever the hell.”
“Oh, I didn’t really call one,” Marcus shrugged. “Why draw official attention to our pack? But they’re real—I would have called one in before I saw you mated to that she-beast.”
“Aw, Marcus, I didn’t know you cared.”
That earned him a dirty look.
“I don’t,” Marcus growled at him. “But this is the only pack I can handle, and there’s no way I could stay here with that lying hellhound as your mate. Now go apologize to Chelsea before it’s too late.” And he headed back for his trailer in the woods.
* * * * *
“Am I making a mistake?” Chelsea asked Pepper, who lay curled up on the front seat, looking forlorn.
She was sitting in her car, parked in front of her house. What had been her house.
Everything she owned was packed up in her suitcases and plastic bins. It was depressing how little time it had taken to pack up her entire life and stuff it into the back seat of her VW bug. So much for putting down roots.
Pepper let out a groan.
“But what can I do? I should have told them, Pepper. Now I’ve got the whole pack fighting with each other, and I’m an idiot for actually thinking Roman cared about me, and oh for God’s sake be quiet,” she finished up by glaring at her phone, which was chirping with a text message notification. Roman had tried to call and text her a dozen times in the last hour.
It was a text message from Chief Tomlinson. “Meet me in one hour by the old Big Bob Dairy on Route 37,” the text said. “Please come alone. There’s something shady going on, and I need your help.”
Chelsea looked at the text message and tried to consider what to do next. She’d done research on the town of Juniper after she’d agreed to be sheriff, wanting to get to know the entire area. The dairy was closed—it had gone out of business years ago. So he wanted to meet her where there was no chance anyone could see them.
Well, she might as well tell him in person that she was quitting. And whatever he told her, maybe she could figure out who to pass the information along to.
I’ll be there, she texted him back.
As she texted, a car pulled up behind hers, and Erika climbed out and walked up to the driver’s side of her car.
Chelsea rolled the window down.
“I really don’t think you should leave,” Erika said to her. “The pack is starting to come around. Loretta’s been talking to them about psychics—she’s got an empath on her father’s side of the family. Now
that she’s explained it to them, I’d say three quarters of the pack have come around.”
“But a bunch of them still don’t want me here, so my staying here will just cause dissension in the pack,” Chelsea protested. Still, she felt touched that Lorena had taken the time to argue her case. And that Erika had come to talk to her. Nobody had ever tried to get her to stay before.
Erika shrugged. “So? There’s always dissension in the pack. When do you ever get one hundred percent of everybody agreeing with each other?”
Chelsea had to admit that was true. Still. “I wouldn’t have a job. Or anywhere to live.”
“You could stay with my family,” Erika said. “And you could probably do some odd job stuff around the garage for the time being. We really want you to stay. It’s not just me talking—the pack sent me because they know I’m your friend and they figured you’d listen to me.”
Chelsea felt her resolve start to weaken. The Silver Peak pack might be one big, squabbling family, but they wanted her to be part of that family. They’d gotten to know her, and now they knew everything, and they wanted her to stay.
“Of course, there’s El Jerko,” she said. “Him and his”—nausea gurgled in her stomach— “mate. I’d have to see them around town until he decides it’s time for the pack to move on.”
“The hell with him, and his pack,” Erika said. “We’ll just give them the cold shoulder. They’ll be leaving soon enough anyway.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Chelsea said. “I’ll stay if you promise not to give up on Leland. Listen, we have absolutely no reason to think that the pack knew about this,” she pointed out quickly as Erika started to argue. “Leland is a great guy. He’s handsome, he’s sexy and he clearly likes you. Also he can burp the alphabet—I forgot to tell you about that.”
“He can?” Erika cried.
“True story. I heard him when they were holding me prisoner one of the times I tried to arrest He Who Shall Not Be Named. A guy like that doesn’t come along every day.”
“That is very true. I mean, I can burp ’til ten, but that’s as high as I go. Wow.”
Mate Marked: Shifters of Silver Peak Page 11
