Lost & Found (A Lost Ones Novel Book 1)

by Khristine Stain

  Koda looked so defeated, Iya reached out and used her gift to sooth him.

  Right away though, Koda broke free of her touch. It wasn’t his mates.

  “I can help.”

  Koda shrugged. He didn’t want to artificially feel better. He wanted the disasters to stop coming. No, what he wanted was for his mate to get up and tell him everything was going to be ok. He wanted her to look at him like she had been doing since she let him inside. He couldn’t shake the hate and betrayal that had a hold on her face the last time she was human.

  “It’s not cheating Koda. Dae won’t be mad at you for feeling better.”

  Koda shrugged again. He knew Iya was trying to help but nothing would be right until Dae broke free from the betrayal she felt.

  Iya’s phone was getting damned annoying.

  Raj got up first, his limbs jerking as they broke free from whatever Iya did to them. He glared at Iya. “That was not nice, Iya.”

  “Well maybe I’m not a nice person.”

  “But you are a nice person.” Raj moved his body around trying to get rid of the tingling. That Zap was worse than the others but at least he wasn’t smoking.

  “Next time don’t get between me and other wolves. I had it under control.”

  Rain started to break free from his paralysis. Raj growled at Iya. Now he understood why Dae and Iya were inseparable. Deep down, Iya was just as insane as Dae was. She actually expected Raj to not get between Iya and another wolf? Iya had to be delusional.

  “Do ya’ll have clear heads now, or are you all going to go testosterone crazy again?”

  Rain spoke first or growled first. “Lady, you shock my brother like that again and you will see testosterone crazy.” He stood tall and glared at her.

  Koda did a double take at Rain’s words. Raj moved into a fighting stance to kill Rain while Iya’s phone chimed again.

  Iya glared at Rain until she realized what he said. “Raj, don’t. Next time I’ll Zap you still for hours.” Iya warned. Raj hesitated, focusing on what Iya said and Rain’s statement.

  Then they all looked at Rain, who finally noticed his slip of the gigantic foot in his mouth. “Shut up. I’m still dealing with Zappy Zapperstein’s torture methods. I don’t know what I said.”

  In the silence that followed Rain’s statement, Iya’s phone chimed again. Iya had had it with cell phones! She was about to dive into the pile of debris that once was a coffee table in order to break her cell phone into little non chiming pieces when there was a knock at the door. Iya paused noticing the looks the three wolves passed to each other. Crap, this didn’t look good at all.

  The Alpha couldn’t be here already!

  Raj was the first one at the door. “What?” he growled.

  Iya was a close second and thank God for that because it was Marcus.

  “What are you doing here?” Iya demanded, pissed at Raj’s ridiculous behavior . All male wolves were insane. Iya eyed Raj and somehow he knew to move away from the door. He stayed close, but he let her handle what needed to be handled. Iya was thankful she didn’t have to Zap him in front of a human –wait what was she thinking? That earlier conversation really had Iya muddled up. Since when did Iya start thinking in terms of humans and non-humans? She was a human.

  Marcus looked shocked at Iya’s flare of temper but quickly responded. “You haven’t been answering my calls.”

  “You stood me up and disappeared off the face of the earth. Did you really think I would return your calls?”

  “I’m sorry but this is important.”

  “You know what, it’s not.”

  Marcus couldn’t understand the Iya before him. She was angry. Sarcastic. Marcus had never seen Iya angry before. Ever. If Marcus didn’t clearly see Iya standing before him, he would have sworn it was Dae.

  Iya was going to slam the door in Marcus’s face before he blurted out “They paid me!” Iya froze at the chill that crept up her spine.

  “Who paid you?” Iya asked, already knowing what the next words out of his mouth were going to be.

  “These guys. I needed cash bad because–”

  “Marcus, I am having a bad day. I don’t care why. Tell. Me. Who. Paid. You.”

  “I don’t know. They approached me at the beginning of the year about information on you and Dae. Well, really Dae.” Marcus felt like a meal with the way that tall guys behind Iya were glaring at him. He couldn’t even look Iya in the eye.

  Iya felt like her stomach was diving past the earth’s mantle into its core.

  “Who?” Iya repeated.

  “There were different guys, sometimes two of them. Then a new two, then a single guy.”

  Iya felt the wolves converging on her. “Anyone moves and I Zap! Continue please.” Iya said through clenched teeth.

  Marcus looked at the angry guys confused at what Iya was talking about but then he recognized the last one. Marcus pointed him out to Iya. “Him. He was the last guy who paid me for any information I could get on you two.”

  Iya felt like her whole body was an active live wire. She turned to see Rain wearing a confused guilty face as Raj, Koda and herself stared Rain down. Marcus pointed at Rain. Marcus pointed at Rain. Marcus POINTED AT RAIN!!

  The door was slamming shut as Iya screeched, “You’re in with the Cursed!!!” and Zapped the crap out of Rain from the doorway. Iya had never projected this gift before but it was good to know she could and that it worked on the wolves.

  Iya stilled as Koda and Raj got fuzzy looking. They sort of blurred out and then they were wolves. Big growling wolves. They were both black and the only distinguishable marking between then was that Raj had a single white paw. The wolves pounced on the frozen Rain. Iya Zapped Raj and Koda with a static shock and saw their big wolf bodies convulse before becoming still.

  “God damn you wolves!”

  Dae had been working through the letters meaning in her head for hours. She remembered each question and answer from each page. It explained a lot. Somehow her brain hadn’t pieced together the information in the right pattern before. Now she was able to think clearly instead of over reacting and accusing Koda of only wanting her for a breed wolf. Whatever the hell that was. She probably made it up.

  Dae still felt betrayed that he hadn’t told her any of it.

  But really, would she have listened? No. Would she have believed him? No. Dae knew she would have run away from maybe the only good thing to come out of this shit storm.

  Well, there was still a 20/80 chance that Dae didn’t hate Raj…

  But Dae missed Koda terribly, even though he was in the other room. She felt like a half of a cup of milk. Half wasn’t right. Oreos can’t even reach the milk to dunk in a half cup unless it was a coffee mug… and then that’s barely any milk. She wanted some milk and Oreos, that would be good now– Wow it was really hard to think as a wolf.

  Dae wanted to feel whole and the only time she felt like that was when he was with her. Dae noticed she felt all of his emotions as if they were her own as well. It was alarming. Dae had just started dealing with her own emotions.

  And now he hurt because she hurt. And she hurt because he hurt. It was a terrible cycle of pain that kept her still, feigning sleep so she could try to understand why the pain kept getting worse. His pain, her pain, it was their pain and it compounded on itself like interest on a Money Market account.

  She couldn’t even differentiate between her own emotional pain, Koda’s emotional pain and his physical pain.

  Koda had whispered in her animal ear so many things… he said he needed her to be ok. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. He said nothing else mattered if she didn’t get better. Dae recalled hearing him say those same things before in her sleep after she went after her stalkers. And he said he loved her.

  The pain reacted like an avalanche, burying her alive underneath the weight. She had to make his pain better but she couldn’t until she forgave him. That was hard. Dae had never forgiven anybody anything… she a
nd Iya fought but that was over little stuff like the remote. Even then it took Dae forever to let it go. She tried to think of him withholding things from her as a fight over the remote…

  She couldn’t. Having this body freaked her out. She couldn’t deal with things the same way. Dae didn’t know how to accept that the crazy part of her –or at least the part of her she assumed was crazy– was her wolf. And her wolf talking to her wasn’t so abnormal. Her urges weren’t so abnormal. There were other people like her going through the same things. That freaked her out the most. If Dae wasn’t this abnormal insane person, then who was she? Dae didn’t know anymore. She felt like a jumbled mess.

  Koda’s mate.

  Yeah, that was soo helpful wolf soul, thanks for the help. At least now Dae could say that she had all the information before her.

  Dae had listened to the events play out from her spot on the floor. It was all too much, too crazy to understand. Iya was some kind of angel baby –whatever the hell that meant.

  Rain had told the Alpha –who Dae could only guess was some big bad wolf no pun intended– that she was a Cursed feral wolf. Dae sort of understood the whole good wolf evil wolf concept.

  Rain then took up for Koda when they got ‘Zapped’ by Iya –Dae didn’t try to pretend to know what the hell that meant. Marcus was a spy for the Cursed who also worked for Rain. Dae was pretty sure she understood that. She didn’t like Rain at all. It even made sense to Dae that Marcus was in with the bad guy’s. So Rain was working with the Cursed and apparently those were the guys after her.

  Dae couldn’t process all this crap together. It was too much crap. It wasn’t possible for all this bad to happen at once. Right?

  Who are you trying to kid?

  Dae felt the need to go somewhere. She had to run. She had a few dilemmas though. Dae had to open the window to get out without going past the scene outside Iya’s bedroom. And how was she supposed to do that without hands? Opposable thumbs were fundamental in escape plans. And legs? They were too.

  This wolf thing was bullshit!

  Before Dae could growl, her body started to feel tight. Her legs started feeling fuzzy and it spread across her whole body in a second or two. Dae blinked and she was crouched on the floor naked.

  Sonofabitch! She didn’t even get clothes when she went back and forth? That was just stupid! Who the hell thought that crap up!

  Dae heard the growling and then Iya screeched, “God damn you wolves!”

  Iya had taken her God’s name in vain! The next sounds were hard to make out. Dae had never heard that kind of object fall like that before. Dae was more than curious to find out what happened but fought it. She scented the air and all she could make out was Iya was pissed and the other wolves were irritated. Dae didn’t have to guess with Koda. Koda was in pain but this pain was different than the other pain…

  All that pain was slicing through her chest like a knife. And Dae had a lot of experience in that area.

  She had been feeling Koda’s anger mixed with his pain. Dae listened for sounds but heard nothing, only someone throwing them self into the sofa. It had to be Iya.

  As quiet as possible, which was very quiet Dae was pleased to realize, she grabbed whatever was first in Iya’s duffle. Hmm. It was a t-shirt that said ‘Sexy Momma’ and some short tights. Short tights were her and Iya’s typical house clothes when it was hot. Dae debated looking for something else but she knew she didn’t have much time before Koda figured out what she was doing.

  Maybe hybrids were clumsier than regular wolf people…boy did that sound ridiculous. She was just happy she didn’t have to say it out loud. Ok, ‘Sexy Momma’ it was. Dae promised to buy Iya a new pair of short tights since Dae had to go commando.

  Thank the Gods Iya always wore underwear. Dae slipped on Iya’s only pair of tennis shoes –her roomy was crazy about heels. Like you could run far in heels? Really?

  Dae was at the window and slipping out in a matter of minutes. Dae sat on the sill for a second, thinking on how she was going to get down without breaking her ankles… Well if a Cursed can jump from the rooftop of a warehouse to the ground without any damage, why couldn’t she do it from the fourth floor? There was only one way to find out.

  Dae landed on her toes with barely a sound. Dae straightened and realized she felt great. No bones broken or pain.

  Dae had to admit that this was kind of awesome.

  It wasn’t so bad… being this hybrid wolf.

  Koda felt Dae’s change in emotions. Dae wasn’t angry any more. She was still sad, but not as sad. That was a victory in Koda’s book. Then his mate became excited.

  Koda had lain on the floor in wolf form contemplating his revenge on Rain and on Iya. She was not going to shock him all the damn time. Now he knew what dogs felt like when they wore those bark-no-more collars. His limbs had begun twitching and his jaw had unclenched enough for him to stretch it out. He got up on all fours and Raj did the same. He turned around before he shifted human.

  Modest he was not but his mate would not appreciate another woman getting an eyeful, even if it was Iya. He grabbed a pillow and raced to his room for some shorts. Angry homicidal shifts where damn inconvenient at times. The clothes he was wearing were just rags around his living room now.

  He grabbed a spare set of shorts and tossed it out of the room for Raj.

  Raj stood in all his naked glory in front of a speechless Iya. The night Dae decided to go AWOL Iya had not taken a look. There were so many things going on… Iya swallowed in hopes that she could stop eyeing every single portion of exposed flesh on Raj.

  That was as unlikely as Iya shifting into a tiger hawk.

  Raj was pissed. “Are you going crazy? You shocked me again!?”

  “You’re shocking the heck out of me right now.” Iya replied nearly salivating.

  Raj finally noticed she was ogling him as he stood naked and smiled, his anger at being shock evaporating to make room for lust. “You do know that Christmas is a long time to wait–”

  Koda’s howl shot Raj into action. He was over the sofa Iya sat on before Iya could process what that inhuman sound was. Once she realized it was Koda, she ran to the room with the two once again mobile wolves.

  “Dae? Is she ok?” Iya questioned nervously to the wolf formerly known as Koda.

  But it was Raj who responded since he was still human.

  “It’s Dae… She’s gone.”

  Twenty-nine

  Dae ran. She didn’t know why, all she knew was it felt great. Her muscles flexed as she pushed herself in no real direction whatsoever. She ran through and around Reinter Preserve. She like to come here because it was lush and green. Trees, bushes, brooks; Reinter had it all. It was open to the public so it had hiking paths all over and many people liked to come here in the warmer months. It was dark out; not really a good time for a barely clothed woman to be running around but it felt so good that Dae couldn’t stop.

  She ran to campus, around the dorms and various buildings where she went to class.

  Dae discovered it didn’t matter how far away from Koda she got, she still felt him deep down inside, where she always thought she was alone. And he was feeling so many emotions: anger, sadness, pain and loneliness. It hurt Dae to think that she was the cause of his emotional turmoil. She didn’t want to cause him (anymore) pain.

  But her head wasn’t right and the running made her feel calmer.

  She pushed Koda’s emotions down deep so she could focus on what she was feeling. It may have been the most selfish thing she ever did, but if she didn’t, she probably would keep running. And she didn’t want to. She wanted to make Koda happy, not sad.

  But would she have wanted to make Koda happy if they weren’t ‘mates’? She couldn’t say. Did it matter? That was the question that almost made her eyes leak.

  Did it matter that the reason she felt things for him was because they were biologically predestined half’s of the whole? And if that was true, did it make what she felt artificial? Dae
was too scared to even try answering those questions.

  Sooner than should have been possible, Dae found herself at the Roadhouse. She wasn’t quite sure why she ended up there. Maybe because it was her favorite place outside of Iya and her apartment or maybe she wanted to go back to that night.

  Something else was bothering her but she wasn’t sure what. Dae had felt a ‘pull’ north all through her run. Dae didn’t recall ever feeling a ‘pull’ when she walked off but it was possible she didn’t notice it before. Things were so different now; even the night sky was new to her or maybe she was new to the night sky.

  When she entered the bar, it seemed like all heads turned her way. That irritated her; Dae didn’t like being the center of attention. She saw some of the regulars give her a strange look as if they were confused on what exactly she was doing there. She couldn’t stop the growl that escaped as her lip curled.

  Johnny Broken-fly, a nick name she gave a kid her age who looked like he was a younger version of Raphael without the coordination skills required to zipper his pants, hissed at her. Like a damn cat.

  “Shut up boy.” Raphael came around the bar and eyed Dae. “I see you escaped.”

  Dae’s eyes narrowed. What did Raphael mean by that? She was about to ask him as he continued, “From the big dumb beast.”

  Oh. Dae smirked. Wait… “How did you know who I was with?”

  “I didn’t think he would be letting you go any time soon.” Raphael said with a shrug.

  That statement confused Dae even more than the previous one did.

  Raphael noticed. “Come on. You aren’t exactly dressed to be standing in the doorway like this, getting all the male’s all excited. That beast of yours would kill them all if he saw them eyeing your lack of wardrobe.” He chastised.

  Dae realized she was wearing a shirt with no bra that had the word ‘sexy’ across her chest and short tights. Now she understood the looks. Dae didn’t care much about what she wore but she did refrain from wearing shirts with ‘sexy’ anywhere on it. Dae preferred to wear shirts that said other things like ‘Kindness is contagious, get the fuck away from me’ or ‘I’m part of the problem’. Her ‘You can’t have manslaughter without the laughter’ shirt had been banned from campus. Dae still didn’t know why.