“This is Regina,” he said. “She owns the store I shopped at. Where are Greg and Thornton?”
“Oh, you know them. They already took off, racing each other. We could only get three rented out under one name, so I hope you don’t mind sharing with me?”
“‘Course not,” he replied truthfully and turned back to thank Regina. “You were so great today,” he said. “Thanks a lot. I mean it.”
Regina just smiled at him, a bit of wistfulness in her eyes. “Just remember not to forget about me over here. A visit every now and again would be wonderful.”
“I won’t forget,” he promised. She smiled again and headed back to her store while Trisha hopped down from the cart to help him pack everything he had “bought.” As they did so, he told her about the old woman’s kindness and watched as she looked both shocked and pleased. For once, he had done everything perfectly. Maybe this move was going to turn things around for him.
Trisha said, “I’m so glad that—”
But she never finished her sentence. At least, if she did, Ash never heard it because in that moment, something that felt like a freight truck slammed into him and sent him careening towards the ground.
His whole body tensed up and he immediately started to shapeshift right there in public.
Suddenly, rough hands grabbed him and shook him around like a rag doll as they dragged him back up to his feet. “Don’t shift, dammit!” an angry voice snarled.
It’s that Linden guy!
Ash opened his eyes and found himself staring straight into the man’s eyes. Linden reeled away and dropped him, and Ash fell back onto his ass, his thoughts dizzy and his nostrils full of the scent of the other male.
Something clicked. Their eyes had met. A sudden surge of knowing, of a deep and impossible instantaneous connection, came over both alpha and omega. Warmth washed over them in stark contrast to the chilled air, and Ash felt something awaken inside him. His soul seemed to twist around and shiver, making room for something else inside his chest. His heart skipped a beat, and from the way Linden grabbed at his chest, he felt it, too.
The wolf inside Ash wagged its tail and ached to howl. Ash clamped his jaws down on the cry to keep it from shooting up from his lungs, but the urge was almost too much to resist.
Somehow, he knew.
It was everything that everyone had ever said it would be. A knowing, an instinct, an undeniable feeling.
Linden was the man who was meant to be his mate.
From the horror in the alpha’s gaze, he knew it, too.
Neither of them said anything, hardly aware of the fact that Trisha was becoming increasingly more and more concerned by their sudden silence.
Then, the spell was broken as Linden spun around on his heel and went back the way he’d come as fast as he could.
Trish knelt down in front of Ash, waving her hand before his face. “Hey! Hey! Who was that guy? Are you okay?”
I’m anything but okay, he thought, too stunned to speak. He swallowed hard, uselessly. The whole world seemed to have grown brighter since the last time he saw it, the colors so much brighter instead of hazed over with white mist and shadows like it had been. This was what it was like, then. He hadn’t been able to imagine…
“The nerve of that guy, just knocking into you and then walking away without making sure you weren’t hurt! Geez!”
An instinctive growl rose up on his lips, to reprimand Trish not to talk about his mate that way, but he caught the words just at the right time so they didn’t come and give away the dreadful secret he now carried.
“Sure,” was all he managed, pushing himself up to his feet. Hunching up his shoulders, he reached out to start packing up the bags again.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Trisha asked softly, bringing her head very close to his. “I smelled him. He was a wolf. Are you…”
Ash glanced at her, and he saw himself reflected in her eyes. His pupils were dilated. His expression was haggard and his lips were quirked into a fierce grimace.
“Oh!” she gasped. “You…I mean, he…I mean…now? You’re sure?”
Ash turned his face away from her, starting to sweat with the stress of all the things his thoughts were doing to him. “Isn’t that what everyone always says? Even you said it. That I would know it when I felt it. I… There’s no other way to describe what I just felt, Trish.”
“This is good! Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” he muttered.
“I know you said you didn’t want to be mated, but—”
“Trish, I don’t know. I don’t even know who he was. I saw him earlier but we didn’t make eye contact until just now, and…” He quieted a little. “This is all too much, too soon. You know what I mean? I can worry about all that later. Right now…um… Don’t we have something to do right now?”
“Of course,” Trisha said quickly, backing her face away from his. He thanked his lucky stars that females were so understanding, and they quietly got back to work. The cart ride back to the house was short, but deathly quiet.
Back home, the chaos was almost a relief. Ash sank into it like he was collapsing onto a bed. From the moment they arrived home, there was so much to do that he almost immediately didn’t have any time to think and he needed that. There were supplies to put away, and then their possessions began to arrive. There were meals to cook, and children to watch, and furniture to move, supplies to divide up, and rooms to designate. The chaos didn’t cease and only thickened as the day went on and on and on.
Ash threw himself into it, not letting himself stop to think for even a single second. He didn’t want to dwell on what was haunting him in the back of his mind, so he did everything he could to prevent it from happening.
Unfortunately, he could only do that for so long.
Hours later, after dinner was done and dishes were washed, the pups put to bed, the busy air of the day faded down to peace. The house was a disaster of strewn supplies and half-empty boxes, but there was nothing else that could be done until morning.
Ash sat at the kitchen table with his parents and a handful of the other adults who hadn’t gone to get ready for bed yet, nursing a glass of milk and chasing a cookie around in circles with one forefinger. The others were drinking, and the smell of alcohol made his nose wrinkle up.
“You look a little concerned about something,” Bridgett finally spoke up. Her eyes were bright and worried as she regarded her son. “Did something happen today?”
Ash didn’t look up. Every fiber of his being said to deny it, to politely blow off their worry, but he knew that he shouldn’t. These were his parents. These people were his family. His affairs were theirs. That was how a pack worked.
“I think…”
Everyone leaned in closer, as one.
He took a deep breath and then took the plunge. “I think I might have found my mate.”
For a moment, there was nothing but stunned silence. Then, one of the other shifters raised her beer. “Finally!” she said loudly. “I thought it would never happen! A toast!”
A few of the others joined in, but most of them were still watching Ash.
“You don’t look very happy about it, son,” Matthew said. “And you said you think. Have you found them or not?”
“I bet she’s going to be a wonderful addition to our family,” Bridgett piped up encouragingly. “It’s a little unusual for a female to be an alpha, but I’m sure that…”
Ash winced. He couldn’t bear to let his mother go on thinking that he’d run into some nice, strong girl. It wasn’t right to get her hopes up and tease her like that, so he swallowed down his pride as best as he could and said, “It was a guy. His name is Linden Smothers. I… I just ran into him. He’s a fisherman. A crab fisherman. I literally don’t know anything else about him.”
Silence fell as that information sank in. And now Matthew had a dark look in his eyes, shaking his head. “A fisherman? Those men are dangerous sorts. Are you sure that’s what you felt?”
“I…”
Bridgett looked distraught. “Another man? Not a woman?”
“I just told you that!” Ash blurted out. “And everyone always told me I would know when it happened, and it happened! It was like I felt his…his soul, when our eyes met. And then he immediately went away.”
Matthew chuckled darkly. “Well, it sounds like he found his mate, dear,” he said to Bridgett, who bit her lip and nodded reluctantly. Everyone else nodded too, because they had also felt the same sensations as what the young omega described.
Ash pushed away from the table. “I think I’m going to go to bed,” he muttered.
“Good night,” they chorused.
He was nearly gone from the room when his father called him back. “Ash!”
He didn’t turn around. “What?”
“Congratulations. And don’t worry. Everything will be fine, I’m sure.”
Ash didn’t even bother trying to smile. He just left the kitchen and went to the room that he was going to be sharing with his siblings and a few cousins, for now. Curling up at their edge, pressing close for warmth, he had a hard time falling asleep. He couldn’t get Linden’s face out of his mind. Rough and wind-scraped, with short black hair and those brown eyes that had seemed bigger than the sea.
Ugh, he thought, and put one furry leg over his eyes to try and force himself to sleep. It was no use thinking about it. Things would start happening out of his control. He didn’t need to torture himself with thoughts of the future like that.
Still, it was a very long time before he was asleep.
Chapter 3
I can’t believe that just happened.
Linden reeled away from the odd boy, all other thoughts dead in the water when their eyes met. That tightness in his chest and the way that the whole world suddenly seemed to open up around him… He’d heard the stories and knew them to be true just from the way others always said or reported the same thing. Love at first sight.
But, bah! It hadn’t happened to him. He was almost thirty now. It was an old fishing tale that any sailor who didn’t find his true love by thirty was doomed to forever wander the seas, since there was no one on dry land waiting for them to return to. Not only that, but most wolves were mated long before that age. He was an old maid.
Apparently not, he thought again, stumbling his way back through the crowd. That fussy old bat had gotten his order wrong, gotten him the wrong kind of rope, but all of that hardly seemed important now. What was important was that the unforeseen, the unmentionable, had happened.
Linden was a salty sea dog, the saltiest of them all with a tongue that could scrape wounds as deep as bullet holes, piercing his enemies straight through whatever armor they might think protected them. But now, the tables had turned. It was he who had been pierced. He was bleeding from his soul, leaving a trail that connected him to that omega pup…and he couldn’t understand a single bit of it.
For one, he hadn’t ever seen that boy before.
For another…This was just…simply…madness. It was nigh impossible! Linden wasn’t meant to be tied down to the shore by some stupid anchor.
Maybe I was wrong, he thought, bewildered. But, how could that be? He’d been all over the world in his youth before deciding to settle down here, on the edge of the world itself. He had seen and done so many things and witnessed oddities that even other shapeshifters would attempt to call his bluff on. He had whale-watched in stormy ocean waters and been close enough to a brewing hurricane to reach out and touch its swirling tangles. He had glimpsed mermaids and mermen, though those souls were said to be extinct now. There was not a strange brew in the world that he hadn’t tried before, and no strange offer of sex that he had ever backed away from.
It was impossible that in all those places, he should never find a mate…and yet here, the blandest and most boring of them all had made an impression. Not only was that impossible, it was downright unfair.
Shaking his head, Linden headed away from the crowd of folks who were all either getting lunch or entertaining themselves with a bout of midday shopping. He needed to clear his thoughts, and there was only one place to do that.
The next crab season was coming very quickly. October was the most popular fall month for the season, and if he wanted to make any money at all, he had to be out there amongst the better and bigger ships to lay down his pots before they could take the prime grounds. He had been scouting out areas for weeks in advance, often going diving in the dangerously cold waters to see if there were any crabs moving through the area. He had to try and predict where they would stop, and lay down his pots there when the time came for it.
Until then, until the payoff, it was all just guess work, preparation, and waiting.
And now more than ever, he hated that waiting game. Still, there was no place he would rather be right now than out on his ship. The sea was an unpredictable mistress, but she made a whole hell of a lot more sense than some…some curse that others would call fate, or destiny, or love.
I don’t want any part of that, Linden thought, grabbing at his phone. He punched in a number quickly and then held the device up close to his ear as he continued to navigate through the town.
“Captain,” a gruff voice greeted him.
Linden could picture almost perfectly the wolf that answered the phone. A beta male, who was beneath only an alpha in terms of dominance, Skip was his second-in-command on the ship.
Well, that wasn’t really true. He only had three deckhands these days. He himself was often right out there on the boat with them, which meant he wasn’t much of a captain, and they weren’t very inferior to him. All three of his deckhands were betas, bachelor males who had lost their mates due to various circumstances.
Once a shifter loses their mate, the pain is nearly heartbreaking and they can never find another. Their only love, like his, was the sea.
Really, they were more brothers than anything else.
“Hey, Linden? You there? This an ass-dial?”
Linden pulled back to himself just as he left the crowd. “I’m here, Skip. Sorry. Got lost in thought there for a moment.”
“You?” Skip laughed. “You ain’t gotten lost in thought your entire life!”
Linden grunted. “Seems like that’s just one of a few things that have changed, today.”
Skip grunted back. “You sound like somethin’ bad happened. Is it the lady?”
“No, the ship is fine. In fact, I was thinking about taking her out. Anyone coming with me?”
“Just a minute.” Skip covered the phone with one enormous hand and spoke in a muffled tone to the other two betas, who had been listening in the background. A few more murmurs passed between them, and Skip removed his hand. “Not today, boss. We’re gonna be on that ship enough pretty soon.”
Linden grunted again. He’d expected as much, honestly. “Suit yourselves, then. Traitors. I’m docking your pay.”
“Heh wow, are you promising we’re gonna turn a profit this time?” Skip laughed, but the sound was laced with just as much bitterness as Linden felt when he heard the words. “I’m just yanking your chain, Captain. You know we’re in this for the long haul no matter what.”
“I do know that,” Linden sighed. “Alright. Don’t wreck the place too much and I’ll be home tonight.”
“Sure. Hey, you really do sound real low right now, Linden. You want me to see what I can do about gettin’ us some medicine?”
Medicine referred to booze. It was the only cure for literally any ailment in the world.
“Make it extra strong.”
“Can do. Be safe.”
“I’ll be however I want,” Linden fired back heatedly, which was the same way they ended all conversations, and hung up the phone. Shoving it back into his pocket, he did wish that he would have some company but manning the boat himself just might be the sort of heavy exercise he needed to relax and clear his mind.
Yeah, as if that was actually going to be possible.
Linden arrived at the docks, surveying the vast array of boats for a moment and shaking his head at their varied beauty. Big and small, squat and narrow, shiny or weathered… He loved them all.
He walked all the way down the long series of docks and half-bridges, exchanging a rough greeting here and there with other fishermen and sailors. On land, they could coexist more or less peacefully but if he encountered these same people out in the waters…
Well, they should be glad that his ship didn’t have a cannon.
The first and largest docks were occupied by the bigger vessels that brought in the most money, with the farthest sides being home to the hobbyists, or those who should probably consider another career option. It was in that sector that the Storming Lady was waiting, bobbing gently up and down in the waters. She just barely met all the regulations required to be an official company fishing vessel, although those regulations grew tighter and tighter every year.
Linden stood before her, looking up at the vessel. He had her custom built ages ago, back when there was still some money to his name; as a result, she did not have a conventional means of boarding. There weren’t any regulations about that, so he had always gotten away with it.
Now, casting his gaze around, he didn’t see anyone nearby who would give him much of a problem if they saw what he was about to do.
Taking a deep breath, Linden transformed. In the blink of an eye, he was no longer a man, but a massive arctic wolf with patchy white fur that was in the middle of growing out a thick winter coat.
Growling softly to himself, he gathered his legs bunched beneath his body, and then sprang up.
He hit the side of the boat with his body, his paws latching onto the lip. Scrabbling with his hind legs, he managed to boost himself up and over to stand on the deck.
“That could have been more graceful,” he muttered to himself as he changed back. His cheeks burned a little as he imagined failing like that in front of his crew.
Putting his clumsy leap to the back of his mind, blaming it on a combination of hunger and distraction, Linden quickly went around the boat and checked on all his equipment. Everything was in working order as always, from his crank, to the crane system that helped lift the impossibly-heavy crab pots, to the holding-vessel that stored crabs in a tank with a constant influx of fresh seawater—the flowing current helped keep them alive, as they were considered devoid of value when dead.
Love at Sea Page 3
