by Aspen Grey
“Stay here,” I growled as I stepped back into the bedroom and opened the French doors that led out onto the balcony that overlooked the back yard.
“Baby!” Jude cried out, snatching my hand to prevent me from going. “Don’t! Please!”
“Don’t worry, baby,” I told him, kissing him on the forehead. “I’m coming back. Do you know how I know that?”
“How?” His voice was soft, quivering.
“Because. Unlike Viggo, I have something in my life worth fighting for.”
“What’s that?” Jude asked, tears welling up in his eyes. I brushed a piece of hair from his face and kissed him.
“Love.”
And with that, I turned to the window, leapt off the balcony, and shifted.
Epilogue
Jude
One month later…
A lot had happened in the last month. A lot had changed. I had changed. I knew my life would never be the same.
When you go through something so catastrophic, it either breaks you or it makes you stronger. I hadn’t broken—not completely—but like a tree branch in the middle of winter, covered in ice and snow, bowing towards the ground, I almost had.
Thankfully, I’d had my son, Rob, by my side through it all. Of course at his age he wasn’t able to really do anything, but just having him with me was better than being alone. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t had him.
I had nightmares for a full week after Alexei jumped out the window of our bedroom where Viggo was waiting for him. I’d wake up with a start and look at the empty space in the bed beside me and cry, doing my best to keep quiet enough that I wouldn’t wake up my son. Every day was a struggle and I couldn’t bear thinking about him growing up without his father by his side.
But then I’d gotten the call. It was Clarice. My heart hadn’t known what to do with itself when I first heard her voice. I thought I might either explode or pass the fuck out. I couldn’t even say hello. I just answered.
“Jude?” she’d asked. “Jude, is that you?”
I couldn’t respond. After a long silence, she seemed to understand and continued.
“Jude. It’s good news. Alexei is going to make it.”
To say I broke down crying would have been an understatement beyond any that had ever been made. I actually dropped the phone to the floor as I held my head in my hands and let the tears pour from my eyes.
I almost lost you, I thought. Almost.
“Wh-when will he—?”
“We can bring him home tomorrow,” Clarice replied. “And Jude? Hang in there. The worst part is over.”
“Thank you, Clarice,” I sobbed. “I owe you everything.”
I hung up and lay there for an hour, curled up in the fetal position before I was able to move again.
He was going to make it.
That was the only thing I could think about.
He’d gone out the window to fight Viggo, and I’d had to watch in horror as the two tore each other to pieces, doing my best to not scream and wake up my child. Alexei had come out victorious, but just barely. Viggo had torn him up bad, and if I hadn’t called Clarice in the middle of it all, I don’t think he would have made it. In fact, I know he wouldn’t have.
We’d rushed out there with towels and bandages to do triage while the rest of her pack came with her to help us get him down the mountain and into the truck. We sped him back to their home where Clarice had a full medical room. She’d stitched him up, filled him with fluids, given him drugs while I watched in horror and tried to keep it together for Rob, who had no idea what was going on.
There was nothing more I could do after that. Alexei wasn’t waking up, and for a couple of days I hadn’t left their living room. They’d been nice enough to let me and Rob stay with them, but Rob just wasn’t comfortable in unfamiliar surroundings and was having trouble sleeping, so I had to take him home. And from then on it had just been a waiting game.
I went up to visit as much as I could, but I had to take care of Rob and I didn’t want him to see his father that way, even if he wasn’t completely aware enough to understand what was going on. Finally, after a week when the call from Clarice had come in, I felt more relieved than I’d ever thought I could feel about anything.
I’d seen my life crashing down around me. Neither Alexei nor I had fathers and I didn’t want my son to grow up with just one, and I couldn’t even think about ever finding another man to replace him. He was irreplaceable. So, as I lay there in bed watching him dry himself off from his before-bed shower, it was simply a reminder that I was the luckiest omega on Earth.
“What are you looking at?” Alexei grinned as he sauntered into the bedroom. His wounds had faded into scars that had him looking more rugged and sexy than ever, like a triumphant Spartan warrior returning home with his shield and not on it.
“You think I’m looking at you?” I teased. “Wow, what an ego on you!”
“Confidence isn’t arrogance,” he replied as he dropped his towel to the floor and exposed himself before me. My mouth began to water but I did everything I could not to let him see me eyeing that monster between his legs. I liked pretending he didn’t have complete power over me with that body of his.
“Is he asleep?” he asked, indicating to Rob’s corner of the room where he was lying in his crib.
I nodded, giving him that look that always worked on him. His eyes lit up as he crawled onto the bed towards me, that big dick of his hanging down like it meant business.
“Good,” he replied as he kissed me. I opened my mouth for his hungry tongue and sucked it gently as he used two fingers to tug down my boxers. I arched my back up off the bed and pressed my dick against his strong abs, feeling the blood beginning to pump it to its full size.
I reached out and felt that he was already hard.
Oooh, baby, I thought.
I’d always heard tales from the humans about sex lives drying up after marriage or things getting stale, but that obviously didn’t apply to Alexei and me. Things were hotter than ever and I didn’t see that changing.
Alexei grabbed my hips and spun me over and pressed his body against mine. I lost myself in his scent as he leaned close and whispered in my ear.
“Are you ready for it, baby?” he asked.
“Always,” I replied. “I’m always ready for you.”
The End
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Chapter One
Blue
“Don’t look like that,” my father said as the truck bumped and groaned over yet another pothole or frost heave, causing my head to slam into the ceiling. It had happened so many times I’d stopped keeping count, but one thing was for sure; my head was sore. “You’ll like it here. It’ll be a nice change from the city.”
I looked out the window at the gray sky and the voluminous clouds in the distance, puffed up and swollen like wet purple wool. It would only be an hour or so before they were dumping rain over us.
“Yeah, a nice change from year-round sunshine,” I said sarcastically. My dad just frowned, knowing better than to get into an argument with me.
We were moving from Los Angeles to a town called Sleepy Hills, Colorado, after my parents’ divorce. I hadn’t seen it coming, and maybe that was why it hurt so much. If only I’d had a little bit of a warning, maybe then I could have prepared myself and not fallen into the black pit of anger and despair that I’d been in for the last month. But then again, maybe not. A divorce was a divorce, and le
arning that your parents weren’t going to be together for the rest of their lives was a tough thing to come to terms with.
I didn’t know the real reason, of course, but I had a suspicion that my father, Terrence, had been cheated on by my other father, Louis. I’d heard him try to apologize for something several times, and saw the look of complete betrayal in Terrence’s eyes. He’d become a changed man, no longer cracking jokes and loving life like he used to, and just keeping his head down, forcing smiles and repeating old jokes I’d heard a thousand times. Even though I was terrified of moving and was personally devastated by the divorce, seeing him like that broke my heart.
The truck bounced again and my dad slowed as he looked down at his phone. We hadn’t been to the house yet, and the GPS had been spotty out here in the middle of nowhere.
“Are we close?” I asked hopefully.
“It looks like it’s saying it was back there,” he motioned behind us. “But that can’t be right.”
“Let me see,” I asked him, taking the phone from him. But he was right; the little red dot signaling our destination was behind the little car icon showing our position.
“Ah! There it is!”
I looked up as dad hit the gas, pointing to a small house barely visible behind a thick line of trees on the property line. As we passed them and I got a better view of the place, my heart sank.
Don’t be a downer, Blue, I told myself as dad pulled into the dirt driveway that was spotted with puddles. It’s not bad, it’s just…different.
Different didn’t even begin to describe it, though. Our place in Los Angeles had been a wonderful apartment in Santa Monica, two blocks from the ocean, with an incredible view and a private entrance. We didn’t have a yard really, but the beach was a five-minute walk so who really cared?
Our new home was a simple cape with faded paint and a set of front steps being held up by a stack of red bricks that looked as though they’d come from the chimney which had fallen into disrepair. It also needed a coat of paint—badly.
I thought I’d been hiding my thoughts and keeping them from creeping into my expression, but I guess I was wrong.
“Come on, Blue. It’s not that bad,” my father said as he pulled up and parked. I could hear in his voice just how much he was trying for me. He didn’t want to be here either, but he was doing his best to keep it together on my behalf.
“No, it’s not!” I said quickly. I forced a smile, but must have done a good job as it seemed to work on him. The sad look on his face vanished and he gave me a loving pat on the knee.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s take a look inside.”
Dad opened his door and I got out and followed him to the front steps and stood back while he went up them, expecting them to collapse at any moment. Fortunately, they held strong and dad retrieved the key from his pocket and opened the front door.
He’d bought the place sight unseen, which was a huge risk, but the owners had been adamant about selling it quickly and had let it go for a really good price, which was good, as the divorce hadn’t finalized yet and we were short on cash—really short.
The door swung open to reveal the inside, and to my surprise, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I had expected.
“How about that?” he said with a smile, raising his arms like a presenter. There was a living room to the right, and while small, it had a bay window and a yellow couch that looked to be in pretty good shape. There was a tiny study on the left, and a hallway that led to the kitchen in the back.
We took the stairs to the second floor and found the bathroom and two bedrooms on opposite sides of the house. Dad pointed to the larger of the two. “That one’s yours.”
“Oh, no, dad,” I protested. “You take the big one.”
“No, no,” he refused. “The old man doesn’t need that much space. You go ahead.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as shootin’,” he smiled. “Besides, you still have one more year of school left. I’m sure you’ll need space for your projects and all that.”
“Thanks, dad,” I said, giving him a hug. “You’re the best.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon unloading the truck, being forced inside when those rain clouds indeed made their way overhead and dropped an ocean of rain on our heads. Dad ordered a pizza from a local restaurant and we watched Netflix on the couch using my iPad, as we still didn’t have a television yet.
“Dad, I’m nervous about tomorrow,” I confessed. The divorce had come at the most inopportune time (as if there was an opportune time for your parents to split up) as it was my senior year of high school and I’d been torn away from everyone I’d ever known and brought here where I knew no one.
“I know, bud,” he replied. “But I wouldn’t worry. You’re a friendly guy. You’ll fit right in.”
“Do you think there are many shifters here? Because if I have to spend a whole school year turning down human guys—”
“I’m sure you’ll sniff out some,” he smiled. “We are up in the woods after all.”
I grimaced. “Yeah, and they’re probably all smelly, grimy lumberjacks living off the land with no clue how to dress and horrible taste in fashion and music and—”
“Whoa, there!” my dad exclaimed as though he were calming a horse. “Easy there, wolfie! Let’s not start with the doomsday scenarios just yet. See how your first day goes and who you run into. I don’t know what you’ll find, but I can guarantee you one thing.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“It won’t be anywhere near as bad as you say,” he replied. “In fact, this move might just be the best thing that ever happens to us—to you.”
I doubt it, I thought. But that’s not what I said.
“Yeah, dad. I hope so.”
Chapter Two
Blue
The next day went by pretty fast. Dad dropped me off, said goodbye and went off to his job at the lumber mill. I felt as though I was a soldier heading into hostile territory, but I kept my head up, found my locker, got my books from the office, made it through all of my classes and even managed to answer a few questions in calculus, which I was great at despite hating math with a passion. Dad had been right about school itself not being that bad, but he’d been wrong about one thing, the most important thing:
There were no shifters.
I was the only one—a lone wolf so to speak, thrust into a new environment completely on my own. I sat by myself at lunch and no one made an attempt to get to know me. This wasn’t like those movies where the new kid is instantly welcomed by a group of outsiders who tells them everything there is to know about the school. As I stepped out of the front doors of the school and into the cold September drizzle, far away from the sun of Southern California, I felt more alone than I’d ever felt before.
“You guys want to go to the quarry?” a good-looking senior guy asked a group of girls standing close by.
“It’s too cold for swimming,” one of them replied.
“He’s just trying to get us in our bathing suits!”
“Aw, you read my mind,” he laughed. “My parents are out of town. How about a party at my place?”
“Hell, yes,” one of the girls replied. “I can get my drink on and my dance on!”
I turned slightly towards them, trying to make myself noticeable and hoping they were friendly enough to new kids that I might get an invitation too. But it was like they looked right past me, as though they could somehow tell that I was a shifter and did not belong with them.
“Cool, I’ll see you guys around eight,” the guy said as he hopped down the steps and waved to his friends. They hopped in a black Camaro and sped away laughing. My heart sank.
How was I supposed to make friends when I felt so out of place? How was I supposed to date or find a serious boyfriend? Shifters and humans didn’t coexist—the humans didn’t even know we existed, so to get together with one was impossible. I could never be bred by a human, never know the love of a human, never revea
l my true self to a human.
“I’m doomed,” I said to myself as I texted my dad.
Where r u?
I looked around but didn’t see his truck. A few seconds later I got a reply.
Running late. Be there in fifteen.
“Ugh,” I groaned, locking my phone. Fifteen minutes? I could shift into my wolf form and run back home in five. I was even contemplating it for a moment—I could stash my bag in my locker and hide my clothes somewhere out back so I didn’t destroy them when I shifted—but before I could do something that rash, I heard the sound of an engine and a window rolling down behind me. Before I even heard the voice, I smelled him.
A shifter!
“You look lost,” the voice called. My heart leapt as I spun around to see an alpha leaning out of the driver’s side window of a lifted black pickup. He was handsome, obviously older, with brown eyes and brown hair that he’d cut into a faux-hawk. It was a little douchey, but then again, so was his truck and sleeveless t-shirt he was wearing. That was his look and I was okay with that.
“Just...a little,” I managed to reply. “I’m new here.”
“I can see that,” he smiled. His scent was strange, like that sweet-smelling smoke you get at a bonfire—not quite seductive, but definitely alpha. “Get in. I’ll give you a ride.”
My instincts told me to be wary. I was in a new town, knew no one, and my dad was only fifteen minutes away. But then again, he was the only shifter I’d run into all day, and if the town was so sparsely populated by our kind, what were the chances he was some kind of a bad guy?
But still, I hesitated.
“Relax, sweet pea,” he smirked, almost condescendingly. “I’m not going to drug, kidnap and rape you or anything.”
I burst out laughing. His joke instantly relieved all of the tension, and I shrugged. “All right. As long as you don’t do that! What’s your name?”
