“Are you sure about this?” Acksel asked with a scowl. “You could trust one of our pack males to take you through the heat without coming inside you.”
She returned his scowl with one of her own. “It’s so easy for you to make that statement, Acksel. You think because you’re honorable that all the males in the pack are, too. It’s my body and I should be able to handle my heat the way I want to.”
She had kind of hoped that her dad wouldn’t tell Acksel about her plans until after she was gone, but that hadn’t happened. Now she was staring across the kitchen table at her angry older brother. After her father came to her defense again, Acksel seemed to calm down.
“I’ll let it go this time, Eveny. But only once.”
She opened her mouth to tell him that he couldn’t control when she had a baby or chose a mate and to go fuck himself with a long pole, but she thought better of it. If she pissed Acksel off, he might use his authority as alpha to force her to mate with a male of his choosing this time around. She had a feeling that he’d pick one of his buddies. Mack or Greg. Or Vince.
She shivered inwardly. None of those Neanderthals would make a good mate for her. They’d expect her to take care of them and pop out babies. She’d be metaphorically chained between the kitchen and the bedroom, never free to do what she wanted or make her own choices again.
It strengthened her resolve to speak to Luke after the heat. He was perfect for her. He would love her and let her be a partner in their marriage. And she’d be happy to pop out a bunch of his babies. Little boys and girls with his sapphire blue eyes and dark blond hair.
Her heart warmed. She should have told him months ago that she loved him as more than a friend and let the chips fall where they might. Now she was out of time.
After helping with the dishes, she said goodbye to her dad and brother and went up to her apartment to finish packing. She’d already done the main suitcase. She didn’t anticipate needing many clothes, so she had mostly packed her thin, lightweight pajama sets and her bubble bath so she could soak away some of the aches. After making the decision to go through the heat alone, she’d sought the advice of some of her father’s female friends who had been through many heats, and they had told her that hot baths would help, but that nothing made the heat go away earlier than seven days except getting pregnant.
She’d been shopping online earlier in the week and had a large package delivered by overnight mail, which had arrived yesterday. From an adult novelty website, she ordered several vibrators and other toys, and had picked up a supply of batteries.
Putting her suitcase by the door, she picked up her cell and contemplated calling Luke, but then she decided to just stop by the bar and say goodbye on the way out of town. She would tell him she was going on vacation and that she wanted to talk to him when she got back.
Feeling like she had things settled, and excited to see him after almost a week apart, she picked up a cooler and carried it to the freezer. She loaded it with frozen steaks and emptied all the ice from the bin and several freezer packs into it before closing the lid. She wouldn’t want to cook, but her body would crave meat, and it would be easier to toss a steak onto a pan on the stove than worry about trying to make a complete meal. The refrigerator at the cabin would need a few hours before it was cold enough to keep the meat fresh, so using the cooler for the first day was the best idea.
She put the cooler by the front door, went into her bedroom, and picked up the box of sex toys and batteries and carried it out of the room, with her favorite pillow on top.
She heard a single knock and the front door swung open. She froze as she saw Luke standing there in the doorway, the morning sunlight accentuating the golden hue of his skin. He was a weight-lifter and boxed in his spare time, and the sun seemed to caress his broad shoulders and highlight the tautness of the t-shirt that stretched across his chest. Her mouth watered as she let her eyes roam quickly down his body before her eyes snapped up to meet his.
Luke was here.
And she wasn’t ready to talk to him.
Well, her body was. But her brain had stalled out.
What the hell was she going to say?
Chapter 4
Luke opened the door to Eveny’s apartment after knocking once. He frowned when he saw a small suitcase just off to the side, along with a cooler.
“Oh!” Eveny came from the hall carrying a box and a pillow, stopping short when she saw him. She stared at him as if she had never really seen him before. Her eyes flitted up and down his body before meeting his again.
“What’s going on, Ev?” he asked, shutting the door and leaning against it. Unhappiness settled over him.
She sank her top teeth into her bottom lip and shifted from foot to foot. “I’m going away for a while.”
Surprise shook him. “You’re leaving town without saying goodbye?”
Shaking her head, she said, “No, I was going to stop by your place and say goodbye.”
“Where are you going?”
“Away,” she said, her voice tinged with guilt.
His suspicions were confirmed. “It’s your heat, right? You’re going into heat.”
Her mouth dropped open and her head cocked to the side. “How did you know?”
“I’m not stupid, Ev. I’ve grown up in the same town with a wolf pack. I don’t know everything, but I do know some things. At some point, every female disappears.” He didn’t want to say it, but it tumbled from his lips before he could stop it. “And they almost always come back with a mate.”
Her eyes widened. He wanted to be mad at her for thinking he was an idiot, but he wasn’t. He was just incredibly sad.
He closed the distance between them and took the box from her hands, putting it on the counter. The lid was closed and it felt heavy, but he didn’t know what it contained.
He put his hands on her shoulders as his heart pounded in his chest. “Are you done with me, Ev? Are we not friends anymore?”
She reared back like he’d struck her and tears sprang into her eyes. “No, Luke, never!” Her bottom lip trembled and she stood still for only a moment and then threw herself into his arms.
“I’m going through my heat alone, Luke. My dad is letting me stay in the family cabin for the duration.”
He inhaled the sweet scent of her coconut body wash and his body tightened. He tried to clear his thoughts, but all he wanted to do was push her to the floor and fuck her brains out. Make her promise never to leave. “The one in the woods outside of town?”
“Yeah.” She looked up at him, her hands twisting in the back of his shirt.
He looked down into her beautiful face and her soft, gray eyes. “Why didn’t you say anything before today?”
She swallowed hard. “I wanted to tell you all week. But Jerry kept me busier than usual, Acksel wanted to have breakfast every day before work, and you were working longer hours at the bar. I couldn’t tell you about my heat over texts. I was afraid if I told you by text that you’d want to talk in person, and I wasn’t ready to answer your questions.”
He brushed the hair away from her face and kissed her forehead. “You’re still not,” he guessed. Eveny had a particular way of doing things, and if someone tried to rush her, she would get flustered and angry.
She shook her head and a tear escaped from the corner of her eye. He brushed it with his thumb. “You can tell me anything, Ev, you know that, right?”
She nodded and he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. She sighed deeply and hugged her arms around his waist.
“When I get back, can we talk?”
“We can talk now, sweetheart.”
“I don’t have time,” she whispered, her voice cracking with emotion. “I’m such an idiot.”
“Never,” he promised, running his hands up and down her back. Something was changing between them right now. They’d hugged before. Kissed, even. Comforted each other in many different ways. But this – holding her in his arms while she struggled with
her emotions – seemed intimate in an entirely different way.
He settled his cheek on the top of her head and held her. “I’m here, Ev. I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me otherwise.”
A shiver wracked her body and she took in a shaky breath. Looking up at him with tears pooling in her eyes, she said, “You’re my best friend, Luke. I don’t want you to go anywhere.”
“Then I won’t,” he promised. And he’d keep that promise. Until she told him to take a hike, he’d stand by her side through anything.
“I’ll be gone a week,” she said, hugging him a little tighter and then stepping away. Wiping under her eyes with shaking fingers, she gave him a watery smile. “I’ll come find you and we’ll talk. Okay? I’ll tell you everything, I swear.”
“If you need me, you can call me anytime and I’ll come up to the cabin.”
“I know you will.” She paused with her hand on the front door. “I love you, Luke. You know that, right?”
His heart pounded with joy. He kissed her on the lips. “I know you do, Ev. I love you, too.”
He helped her carry her things to her car and when she was packed up, they said goodbye and he followed her in his truck as they pulled away from her dad’s house. He followed her through town and then turned towards the bar as she headed north. As he drew closer to the bar, he considered turning around and following her up to the cabin, but if she wanted him there, then she would have asked him. Right?
The truth was he didn’t have any idea what she was going to go through with her heat. Maybe just getting out of town was all she needed. He climbed the stairs to his apartment two at a time and decided to call his grandma. He made it a point to check in with her at least once a week. The spry old girl was always out with her friends, playing Mah Jong or doing yoga. She even brought her friends in to the bar once a month to have drinks.
“Are you making me any grandbabies yet?” she asked when he said hello.
He chuckled. She had been asking him that question at least once a week for the last several years. If things were actually changing between him and Eveny, then maybe it wasn’t all that far off. The thought of Eveny’s belly stretched out with his child made him feel practically giddy. A little girl with her brown hair, gray eyes, and tender heart.
“I’m working on it, Grams.”
“Oh? Anyone I know?”
His grandma liked to gossip, but she would keep anything he said between them because, as she liked to say, ‘you don’t gossip about family’. “I think Eveny and I might be starting something.”
There was a significant pause and he felt unhappiness settle into his gut. “What’s wrong?”
She hummed in her throat. “My friend Vera is a wolf and she’s friends with Eveny’s father. She told me last night while we were playing Mah Jong that Eveny was disappearing for her heat-cycle so she didn’t have to take a mate. Dade’s not too happy about it, but he’d walk on hot coals for his daughter.”
“Ev told me as much.”
“Do you know what the heat-cycle is?”
“No.”
“Well, from what Vera told me, every she-wolf goes into heat during the fall of her twenty-fifth year and every fall after unless she’s pregnant or nursing. The heat makes the she-wolves crazy for relations, and if a she-wolf is with a male wolf during her heat, she’ll most likely become pregnant and they’ll become mates.”
His brain stalled out. “I didn’t know that, Grams.”
“Of course you didn’t, honey, we’re humans. Wolves keep to their own kind. Vera said that it’s nearly impossible for a female to go through the heat on her own, but that Eveny’s father was going to let her try to tough it out this year. Next year, though, if she hasn’t chosen a mate to go through the heat with, her brother is going to pick one for her. And you know what that will mean.”
He did know. If Acksel chose a male for Eveny, then Luke would lose her forever.
“She seems certain she can get through the heat, Grams. She said she wants to talk when she gets back.”
He could hear her smile in her voice. “I’m glad, Luke. You’re a good man and you’ve been waiting for that girl for a long time.”
He wasn’t working at the bar that night, so he headed out to food shop, then picked up a sandwich from the deli and caught up on his favorite police drama. Eveny texted him before she arrived at the cabin and told him that the cell reception was spotty and that he shouldn’t worry if he didn’t hear from her. She signed off with an XOXO, and he grinned. Something was definitely changing between them.
He worked the following night and his mind drifted to Eveny again and again. He hadn’t slept well the night before. Every time he closed his eyes, he wondered what she was doing in the cabin by herself and he wished he was there with her. He wondered why she had chosen to go alone instead of asking him to come with her.
Someone snapped their fingers in front of his face and he snapped back from his thoughts to see Teddy leaning across the bar. Just then the front door opened and Eveny’s brother, Acksel, strode in ahead of a group of pack members.
“Hey, Teddy. What can I do for you?”
“You can head home for the night.”
He glanced at his watch. “I’ve still got three hours on my shift.”
“Pack meeting,” Teddy said, jerking his head towards the back of the bar where the wolves were gathering. A steady stream of men were now walking through the bar, and the sound of tables being moved around filled the room. The pack that ran in Wilde Creek had about one hundred members, and all were accountable to Acksel as alpha. It seemed like the alpha was a mixture of king and boss and father all rolled into one.
“Sure,” Luke nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Teddy wasn’t pack either, but he had a long-standing relationship with them, and Acksel always did pack business in the bar. Except for what Eveny called council meetings, which he held at his own home. When Luke took over the bar, he’d have to have a conversation with Acksel about the pack. He would be a fool to say anything to make Acksel take his pack away from the bar, and he wanted to make sure that Acksel knew that the wolves were always welcome.
And of course, in his perfect world, Eveny wouldn’t be doing office work part-time with the construction crew, but working with him at the bar. In the back, of course, where he could keep her away from prying eyes. If it really was his perfect world, she wouldn’t be working at all; she’d be too busy trying to catch up on sleep from their active sex life.
He left the bar and went into the back office and clocked out, heading out the back door. To the left of the back door was a set of metal steps that went up to the two-bedroom attic apartment that he’d lived in since he was twenty-one. He opened the door and walked in, shutting and locking it behind him. The ceiling fan swirled overhead. He left it on constantly because it tended to get really warm in the attic during the daytime when the sun shone, even in the winter.
He’d skipped dinner during the evening rush, and he rummaged in the refrigerator and made himself a sandwich. Turning on the TV, he flipped stations long enough to realize that there wasn’t anything worthwhile to watch, and turned it off. It was then that he heard the rumble of engines as cars left the parking lot. A familiar voice drifted up through the open window, and he crept to the window so he could listen without being seen. He didn’t make a habit of eavesdropping, but something about the hushed conversation stirred his curiosity. Especially once he heard Eveny’s name.
* * * * *
Acksel sat in the center of the corner booth at Poke’s and waited while his top-ranked men filed into the bar, moved tables and chairs around, and prepared for the meeting. Once a week he got together with the highest-ranked males and discussed pack business. He watched with a snarl on his lips as the human that his sister was friends with exited the bar. Luke was dangerous. Dangerous to their pack’s way of life. Dangerous to Eveny.
The seventeen males settled quickly and Teddy, the bar owner, dropped
off pitchers of draft beer and enough mugs for everyone, then scuttled away into the back office after making sure that the bar was empty of humans and the front door was locked.
Acksel had only been alpha for a few years, but he kept a tight leash on his people. If anyone got out of line, he knocked them on their ass. He’d clawed his way to the top leaving a trail of broken bones, concussions, and blood in his wake, and he would do anything to keep his seat of power.
Even if it meant taking away his sister’s choices from her.
His wolf growled in protest in his mind but he muzzled the beast and ignored the ache in his heart. Eveny couldn’t see the forest for the trees. She thought she could bide her time and wait out the heat this cycle, but she didn’t see how restless the males were becoming in the pack. If his father hadn’t intervened, he would have forced her to take a male this heat.
His thoughts drifted to the human, Luke, again, and his fangs elongated in rage. Eveny might think she was being secretive, but Acksel could read her like a book. She’d been in love with that fucking human since she was a kid and her protests of “I’m not ready to take a mate” were just her trying to plan a way to take the human as her mate. Which Acksel could not allow. He’d been worried that she might try to ask him to come along with her to the cabin, so he’d spoken to Teddy and asked him to keep Luke busy at the bar. And then he’d gone to Eveny’s boss, Jerry, and had him saddle her with lots of busywork and extra hours. Adding in Acksel’s let’s hang out breakfasts all week, he knew that she hadn’t had time to have a real conversation with Luke. But that wouldn’t last forever.
As his only sister, she held a place of reverence in the pack. Her mate would be his brother in the pack and brother-in-law in the human world. If she chose a human as her mate, then she was turning her back not only on the pack but on him and his father. Her taking a human as a mate would be seen as a weakness on Acksel’s part to ensure that his family line remained pure. His alpha status could be called into question. He’d have to answer challenges and fight to prove his worth as alpha. He’d do it, but he didn’t want to have to. He wanted Eveny to toe the line and do what was expected of her. Namely, to take a worthy male as a mate, not some pathetic human.
Mate of Her Heart Page 3
