RANGER

by Samantha Leal

  “I don’t think that’s good enough for me,” Val said, butterflies throwing themselves around in her stomach as he passed; he smelled fresh, like the outdoors. The longer she looked at him the harder it was for her to tell him what she had decided. The idea of never seeing him again almost made her panic. Maybe she was starting to like him more than she had thought.

  “Well, you’re probably not going to think anything is good enough for you,” Gabe said with a casual shrug. “But I’m bound by my pack to protect you, and if I don’t, that’s my dishonor. You kind of have nothing to do with it.”

  “I know…that’s my problem,” Val said flatly. “That’s why…”

  “See you, Gretchen!” Gabe shouted over Val’s head to the woman who had been in the front of the store. The bell rang as she left, giving Gabriel a small wave, and then they were alone in the store.

  “That’s why I want to leave.”

  Gabe froze, his dark eyes narrowing.

  “What do you mean, you want to leave?”

  Val’s voice froze in her throat. She had made the decision on a whim, a frustrated, angry whim, and now that she was forced to say the words out loud, the truth of that felt heavy in her heart. And yet, it was the only way to rid Gabe of these shackles.

  “I’m going to quit school. I can’t afford it anyway. And if I’m not in school, there’s no reason for me to stay here. So I’m going to leave. Maybe go out to the coast and live by the ocean…”

  Gabe’s eyes flashed, and Valerie found herself captive in his gaze, his strong hands gripping her shoulders passionately as his face contorted with an emotion she had never seen him display before.

  “You don’t have to do that. I don’t need you to leave. I just need you to be okay.”

  Gabe searched her eyes and Val’s heart drummed heavily in her chest. She was overwhelmed by the intensity of his handsome features; the sincerity of his deep brown eyes.

  And suddenly, their lips met and Val’s body was shocked into an awareness unlike anything she had ever experienced before. She closed her eyes, furious at herself for her forwardness. She had kissed him, not the other way around, and they were both electrified by the power of it.

  Finally, Gabe pulled away and dropped his hands from her shoulders. He pinched the bridge of his nose and refused to look at Val, and her stomach sank. She had made a huge mistake.

  “Could you please leave now?” Gabriel asked, his voice low and dark and menacing. “The store, not Stonybrooke.”

  Val was too stunned to speak and turned around on her heel. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. What was she supposed to do now? The idea of leaving was unconscionable. She was drawn to him despite herself. Not only did she find it impossible to reconcile the idea of being with a shifter who felt obligated to take care of her, but he was old enough to be her father. Or at least a much older, very handsome uncle or mentor of some sort.

  She closed her eyes and tried to shake the thoughts away. Maybe it was stupid to leave school so close to finishing the semester. She would see it through until she received her credits, at the very least. Maybe then she would know what the best move to make would be. And until then, she would just have to do her best to avoid Gabe entirely. Even if she had to quit her job at the record store, it would be easier than dealing with his stupid claim for the rest of her life.

  9.

  The wolf inside Gabe was thrilled by the kiss and couldn’t stop obsessing over it, but Gabe himself was furious. He felt physically sick. The only woman whose lips had been on his had died. The last person he had kissed, before Val, had had her impression on his lips erased by some human he had gotten himself stupidly entangled with.

  Gabe closed the store early and went immediately home. What had that girl been thinking, ambushing him like that? Just because he had claimed her didn’t mean they had to act like a couple or something, did it? She was saying one thing; that she wanted to leave and stop being a burden on his life, then the next minute, her lips were on his and she was trying to push the importance of his wife right out of his life. But she would never replace Molly. Never.

  The more Gabe thought about it, the more furious he became, until he was passing by his house and on his way downtown. He parked outside the Council’s building, his chest tight and his heart angry. The wolf was warning him against going inside; it was against his nature to refuse the role he had accepted within the pack, even if he was unhappy about being tethered to a young woman who, despite being very attractive and sweet, neither wanted his help nor respected his devotion to his late wife. He just couldn’t let that go on any longer.

  “Gabriel, what do you need?”

  “Leon, I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

  Leon was alone behind the check-in desk, but glanced behind him and gave a mysterious nod to someone Gabe couldn’t see.

  “All right, Gabriel. Right this way.”

  Leon stood from the desk and began walking, leading Gabe to a small conference room off to the side. It was opposite the room where Gabe and Molly had been married in so long ago. The memory made his stomach churn. Why had things gone so horribly wrong? There was no way he could continue on the path he was on; not with an unpredictable young girl who made him angry and confused about everything.

  “So tell me, Gabriel, what is it that brings you here today?”

  “I need to take back my claim. I can’t live like this anymore. The whole thing was just a huge mistake.”

  The wolf inside whimpered, angry at him for turning his back on the pack, but Gabe set his jaw, determined to take care of this problem once and for all. It would be better for both of them. If he didn’t believe that, he wouldn’t be there, begging the Elders to give him his life back.

  “Are you sure that’s what you want, Gabriel?” Leon asked.

  Leon was a brick wall; impossible to see through. Whether he was angry, disappointed, or impartial, Gabe couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he would do anything to be rid of the young menace that was turning his world upside down. That kiss had left him breathless; made the wolf eager for more. The lack of control he’d nearly succumbed to had been powerful and terrifying. He hadn’t felt that way before; not any time in his entire life. His relationship with Molly had always been gentle; give and take. They had always known what to expect from each other. They had known each other like the back of their own hands.

  It was nothing like what he was experiencing with Valerie. There was nothing predictable about the way the wolf prompted him to act around her. And there was even less predictability about the way she seemed compelled to act around him. Gabe was used to being in total control. But that wasn’t the way he felt when it came to Val. And that freaked him out more than anything.

  “All right, Gabriel, you’re going to have to understand something about your claim on this girl.”

  Gabe sighed heavily. Behind Leon’s stony exterior had been lurking a lecture. What had he been thinking, coming to an Elder about his problems?

  “If you can understand it any better than I do, then I guess I would be pretty grateful about that,” Gabriel said with a sigh.

  There was nothing easy about his situation with this girl. He felt like he was betraying his late wife; worse, betraying his own feelings. He was entirely devoted to her, and of all people for the wolf to decide to move on with, he refused to let it be such a young, innocent woman. She had her whole life ahead of her and she didn’t seem to understand a single thing about shifter culture. There was no way they would be able to make this work.

  “When Stonybrooke was first founded, the land was wild and untamed. The shifters who settled here had done so after much deliberation. There was a myth from back then that underneath the hollow where the constellation of Mishgen’s snout points on the eve of the winter solstice, there lies a portal. It was discovered by the two lovers, Ashjn and Loshadel. The same two who, upon being thrown to Earth, searched a decade to find each other once again.”

  “
That’s just a myth, Leon,” Gabe mumbled. “Don’t tell that shit to me like I’m six years old or something. I’m asking you for help here, not a fairy tale.”

  “Just because there are no documents confirming the ancients and their impression on the world doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a myth, Gabriel. Now hush and let me finish telling you the story.”

  Gabe pursed his lips and folded his hands together, resigning himself to listening to the rest of Leon’s story. It all sounded like make believe to him, but Leon was an Elder. He was telling him the story for a reason. It would probably help him figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with the damn kid he’d claimed.

  “Anyway, the couple were convinced the portal would take them back to the world from which they had fallen. It is rumored that for every group of shifters that were lost from the world of shifters, a portal was opened on the planet they ended up on. And so, together they crossed through the portal.”

  “And…?”

  Leon smiled.

  “The portals are dangerous. But once they stumbled upon the portal, its magic did just as they hoped. They returned back to their own world. It worked. They returned to the planet they had been lost from. Only, everything was different than they remembered. There was something strange about it.”

  Gabe sighed.

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me this about the portals, or the people. All I want to know is if I can abandon my claim on the human. Neither of us are happy with it.”

  “That’s the thing,” Leon said, shaking his head. “The couple I’m talking about were bonded for life. There’s a feeling; a sense that the wolf and the wolf alone can understand. There is only one true mate for you in this world, and once that claim is made, that’s the one that counts the most, whether it feels abrupt or not. So, you see, there is nothing you can do to unregister something like that. Even if it’s stricken from the records, it isn’t just going to disappear from your life.”

  Gabe shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know why it has to be so damn complicated…”

  “The couple that went through the portal knew something was wrong once they reached their world. Things were different than they remembered. It was impossible for them to be happy there; it was just a feeling they both had. They spent the next three years searching together to come back to Earth. Eventually, they made friends with powerful warlocks on their planet. By the time they returned to Earth, their love had withstood trial after trial. But Ashjn’s claim never wavered. They worked their hardest together, and ended up meeting their goals, no matter how impossible they seemed. They returned to Earth. They protected Stonybrooke. They marked it as a sacred space. And soon, our community was born. Against all odds, the claim provided them with a strength neither would ever have on their own.”

  “All right, all right.”

  Leon smiled knowingly at Gabe and nodded.

  “All right, Gabriel. I’ve told you all I have to say about it,” Leon said, standing up from his chair and bowing graciously to Gabe. “I can’t take back your claim once it’s been filed, and even if I did, the wolf knows better than any single one of us what it meant to do. It will guide you.”

  Gabe left the conference room feeling even more frustrated than he had been when he’d gone inside. Leon was giving his wolf a little bit too much credit as far as he could tell. It had been a stupid mistake by a wild beast that he didn’t have a handle on, and he wasn’t going to forgive himself for it. He was going to stay loyal to his wife, no matter what the Council had to say about it. That was final.

  10.

  After a long talk with an academic adviser, Val was feeling good. She had been working hard to accumulate the credits she needed to graduate, and doing exceptionally well in her courses. It was always encouraging to be complemented on her academic gifts. It wasn’t the kind of thing most of her foster families had ever paid attention to. But her academic advisers always had good things to say, and she was beginning to feel refreshed. She was on the right track, doing the right thing for herself. All she had to do was stick with it just a little while longer.

  “There she is,” Ren’s voice said suddenly from behind her. Val froze; it had been a while since the group of boys had approached her, and she had been feeling pretty good about that. Things had almost started feeling normal.

  “Leave me alone,” Val said quietly.

  “Or what? That old guy from the fitness store is going to come after us?” Ren sneered.

  “I wouldn’t put it past him,” Val said, sighing as she tried to disengage from the conversation and head to her last class.

  “Well, that’s not what we heard. We heard he was at the council begging to get out of his deal with you,” Ren said, an unkind smile spreading across his smug face.

  Valerie’s heart sank at the news, but why should it? She knew he had only claimed her in a moment of passion, hoping to protect her. It had nothing to do with her or a genuine desire on Gabe’s part to claim her. There was no reason he would want to stay bound to his claim, no matter how stubborn he was about making sure she played by the rules of his pack.

  “That’s his business, not yours,” Val said darkly, doing her best not to let the way the news affected her come out in her voice.

  The boys cackled, but they didn’t push the subject and she was able to go to her class without any other incidents. She worked hard, renewed by the talk she had had with her academic adviser to finish her classes and continue to thrive with them. She wasn’t a quitter. She had worked too hard to get where she needed to be. Life was what she and she alone made it. Whether Gabe felt obligated to help her or not, she was the one she had to remain accountable to. She would do what was best for her own life.

  “You look happy,” Randall said when she walked into the record store that evening. “Did you resolve things with that alpha of yours?”

  “What alpha?” Val asked, puzzled.

  “You know…the sexy guy who claimed you,” Randall said with a soft laugh. “I’m jealous, you know. Not everyone gets a mate so easily.”

  “He is not my mate,” Val said, prickling. Still, the thought of being matched with Gabe sent a warm thrill coursing through her body. For some reason, she wasn’t totally disgusted by the presumption, even though he clearly wanted nothing to do with her. Randall was right, after all. Gabe was sexy.

  “Well, even if you don’t think he’s your mate, you two have a connection now. And that’s something to be proud of.”

  Val shrugged it off and headed to the back of the store to get started on shelving the newest shipment of records.

  “Shit! Val! I need a favor!” Randall called.

  “What’s the matter?” she called back, hurrying to the front of the store, where Randall was staring down at his phone.

  “Family emergency. Can you take over? I’m going to have to leave. But you’d have to stay all night if you do. Otherwise, we’re going to have to close the store.”

  Val took a deep breath as she considered the weight of the request. She needed the pay from the record store that day; she had to make the payment on her loans next week. She would bring home a lot more from spending the night at the record store than she would make by going to the gas station.

  She sighed. She would have to blow off her job at the gas station, which meant she could potentially lose it. But losing the job at the record store would be even worse. If she stayed, maybe she would eventually earn more hours and she would be able to quit her position at the gas station entirely.

  Randall was looking at her now, his face panicked and sad, and Valerie nodded.

  “Sure, Randall. I’ll stay.”

  “Thank you! You’re incredible. I owe you one. You remember how to lock up, right? The key is in this drawer.” Randall showed her the key and then got up hurriedly. “I won’t forget this.”

  “Just take care of yourself, Randall,” Valerie said, smiling at him. The man was so sweet. He had gone out on a limb to trust h
er enough, a stranger, and a human no less, to give her the job. Of course, she would do whatever she could for him.

  She regretted agreeing to it as soon as Randall left, though. The store was eerie without Randall’s sweet, familiar presence, and Val did her best not to pay attention to the strong feeling of foreboding she felt whenever she looked out the window and saw that night was beginning to fall. She had never been in this area past dark before, and knowing that the shifters were no longer respecting Gabe’s claim was really starting to make her nervous.

  The fight that Gabe and Ren and his lackeys had before seemed very serious, and she didn’t like the idea of anybody feeling as if they were entitled to her. That was exactly how the men at her school seemed to act, and if they had anything against Gabe or against her, they weren’t going to hesitate to strike back. She had a bad feeling about all of it. It was a dark presentiment that only grew more acute as the night wore on.

  At about midnight, Val got out the keys and locked the store up, trying to ignore the creeping sensation of danger that was tingling up and down her spine. It wasn’t like her to scare so easily, but for some reason, as soon as she turned off the inside lights and turned toward the bus shelter to head home, a wave of nausea overpowered her.

  She acknowledged it immediately and crossed the road as quickly as she could, huddling in the bus shelter, keeping an eye on the store. For some reason, she couldn’t take her eyes away, and what she saw made her stomach sink. A small group, about three men in total, had gathered outside the record store. They were peering into the windows, each of them dark, large, and menacing. What they were doing there, she had no idea, but all she knew was that something was wrong.

  A loud crash suddenly echoed through the silence of the night, and Val let out a small shout, running absently toward the source of the commotion. The men were all laughing, and suddenly, she was standing in the middle of the group, blocking the doorway with her small body.