“Come on, they sounded good. I would rather have a female’s hands in my hair then a male’s and as for being a chef, that would have been a marvelous idea if she could cook worth a damn. A home-cooked meal anytime we wanted? Who wouldn’t want that?” Dimitri told him.
“And when she decided she should be a waitress at the diner? Or what about the time she decided she would make a talented painter because she loves beautiful things? The time she decided she wanted to be a welder? Or maybe you are thinking about the time she decided she would take up being a mechanic? No, wait, I have it. The time she thought she would take up woodworking. Were any of those ideas good ideas?”
Gammon watched the two men wince as he spoke. Willow was the most outspoken and outgoing female in their pack. She got along with everyone and had from the day they found her being berated by a male in one of the southern packs and offered her a place in their pack. But talented in the things she wanted to do, she was not. She had shuffled around the pack trying to find her place for twenty years. She had been desperate at first to find her niche and fit in, but the ideas she came up with did not fit her abilities. Gammon wasn’t sure what her talents were other than being friendly to everyone and getting people to talk to her, but he also wasn’t worried about it. Not because he didn’t care, but because he was confident she would find her place, eventually. She offered more to the pack than she realized, but Gammon could not convince her of her worth. Probably because she failed at so many things. Gammon had taken her to his bed a time or two over the last couple of decades and found her easy to confide in. He knew some of the other males confided in her and the females adored her.
“She wants you to let her go to college to be a head shrinker--.” Nikita started to say. His grunt of pain as an elbow slammed into his ribs stopped the rest of his comment. He glared at Dimitri and brought his fist back, but before he could return the favor Gammon grabbed his forearm.
“Did she tell you that?” Gammon asked.
“No. She specifically said that head shrinker was rude and she would make sure we suffered for weeks if she ever heard us using that description again.” Dimitri answered.
“The key being if she heard. Look around. Do you see her?” Nikita asked.
“Stop! Did she say she wanted to go to college? What does this have to do with making a trip south?”
“She didn’t exactly tell us she wanted to go to college. She knows it is out of the question until we can figure out what happened to the other females we should have and why so few are born. She let it slip to Keller that she wanted to learn how to help others get past trauma and heal. She thinks things will get worse as time goes on. Already males fight for the females in ways they didn’t in our youth. Males steal females from other packs.”
“We did that to some extent in our youth.” Gammon interrupted Nikita to point out.
“Yes, but to some extent and all the fucking time are two different things. Every time we go south, we find fewer females, more fighting inside other packs, more rogues, more problems. Already we have had to deal with females and males traumatized by the slow destruction of our race. They talk to her and she helps them. How much more help could she give if she had some sort of formal training. Maybe not going to college, but the textbooks they use could help.”
“I don’t disagree with her. Things are getting worse. Our males don’t have mates. It isn’t safe to take our females to find mates. Our race is fucking dying. What does she think she can do about that?”
“I don’t want a mate.” Dimitri muttered.
“Yeah, me neither.” Nikita agreed before turning back toward Gammon. “Look, we talked about securing our territory better than what we have now. Too many males mean eventually they will come looking for us here. What if we go ahead with building a tiny village just outside our territory and bring in people, professors, to teach her and a couple of others? Private tutoring. Hell, with the oil deals you got we have enough money to do all the things we have talked about. A private airstrip and a motel at the edge of the property with a rotating security force on the road. Instead of the Council coming here, they would have to go to the motel and be escorted to the heart of the territory. We could consider letting males fly up and stay in the motel to find mates for our females.”
“You have this idea planned out?”
“Hell man, that’s what you pay us the big money for isn’t it? Take care of things before bringing them to you.”
“I don’t pay you shit for taking care of pack problems.” Gammon told them as he headed toward the moose he had downed.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need you to double that pay if this pans out and we really have found the one job Willow would be good at.” Dimitri laughed as he reached for one leg. Gammon was strong, but he wasn’t —bring a moose home by himself— strong. Well, he could probably manage it by dragging the thing the entire way, but it would exhaust him. The three men working together could get the moose home in less time.
“It could work. But what does this have to do with me going south this time? She won’t be trained before I leave. Hell, the tiny village will take time to build, then we still must find people to live there. You know my thoughts on our people living outside my territory. And you know my opinion of humans, so we are still at the same impasse as before.”
“Yeah, we don’t have that angle figured out yet.” Dimitri’s lip curled in disgust.
“Get Jamison started on some lumber with his sawmill and order in some nails, and a few windows, whatever else we need. Don’t raid our supplies to build this shit. And get our inventory back up. If we can find more females, we will need more housing.” Gammon held up a hand as he staggered to a stop, dropping his section of the moose. The two Beta’s groaned as they dropped the moose and collapsed to the ground.
“We are either getting too old for this shit or that moose has been eating lead.” Nikita managed to say.
“Yeah, cause carrying it uphill the last ten minutes had nothing to do with the weight.”
Gammon stretched out on the ground by his Beta’s and crossed his arms behind his head. Watching the clouds pass overhead, he told his men his thoughts about the potential village.
“Not married couples, not single people. I don’t want the village to grow. Young mothers, single, with a child. Preferable ones with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. Maybe ones who have been traumatized by men and don’t want another one.”
“You want to fill the village with victims? Young women who have been abused? You realize the only males they will see will be ours and they can’t know what we are so they will be terrified. No young woman will go for that plan. Hell, Gammon, you won’t be able to get them to even come out to look at the place, much less move out here.” Dimitri told him.
“They will come. The desperate will reach for any hand offered if the need is great enough. Women who are trying to hide from an abusive man would take a place far from that man if they believed they would find safety. The world has never been safe for a woman alone, and every year the safety erodes more and more. Willow is, I think, the key to getting those females to come. A home to call their own, money for a future, with the bills paid for by the pack.”
“They won’t come to a wilderness with no future for their children.” Nikita said.
Gammon shrugged. “Make it worth their time. A place of safety, with a contract for a certain amount of time and a bonus for every year they go past the time. Build a village with enough things they don’t go insane from the remoteness. Find those human females who come from a harsh environment to begin with so they can survive our winters.”
“And when those children grow up and want to marry? What then?” Dimitri asked.
“I will give them the money to leave and start a fresh life somewhere else. I will force no one to stay or go, but there will be no families started in the village. Human males have always been violent and uncaring of their females. We will offer safety and a future to those who want it.”<
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“What kind of future are we offering? A future with no family, no husband. They can’t marry our males. I don’t like it.” Nikita said.
“Then think of another plan. One that doesn’t put humans at our gates. One where our females can learn in safety beyond what we can teach. Find males who want to go to university for the benefit of our females and not because of something they want to learn. Then they can come home to teach our females. Find a solution if you don’t like mine.”
“Hell, Gammon, not liking it and not doing it are two different things. We don’t want humans at the gates either. Humans have no tolerance for our kind, and eventually those children will grow up to be adults. Someone will eventually figure out what goes on inside our land and then what?”
“Kill them and start over.”
“Yeah, that could work. So, what were you hoping to accomplish by going south this time? Keep in mind Willow wants you to bring her back a mate or take her with you to find her one. And since you can’t exactly know who could be her true-mate, taking her and a couple of others with you, along with more of our males, might be your only option. You can’t just drag a bunch of males back for our females to check out. It is getting harder to make people go missing with the advances in technology.”
“You have a list of the females who absolutely demand a true-mate?”
“Yes. We have fourteen females who want the chance to true-mate.” Nikita answered.
“Fourteen? I thought more would want the chance. I won’t take that many at one time. I want three males for every female I take south and no more than four females on this trip. Send the females to me and together we will decide who goes and who waits until another time.”
“Most of the others either aren’t worried about it yet or they and their wolves like choosing who shares their bed before moving on to the next bed. Callie hinted at the fact she would not be averse to sharing the bed of her Alpha on a steady basis.” Dimitri’s lips twitched as he delivered that bit of information.
Gammon snarled as he turned his head to look at his Beta. “That bitch will never share my bed again. I told her that. I wish the Alpha power worked when it came to her fixation of me. That is the one Willow needs to fix.”
“Willow has tried. Turns out you can help someone with emotional and mental trauma, but you can’t fix crazy.”
“Well, she needs to get over her notion she only needs to keep pestering me for me to love her. I won’t take much more. You realize she tried to claim we would be true-mates if I gave her a chance?”
“Ouch. No, you didn’t say anything about that. We will try to keep her away. Maybe you could find her a mate from another pack.”
“Or a bear to cuddle with.” Nikita laughed as he gave voice to something the female had asked for a few years before.
Gammon shook his head as he rose to his feet. “Come on, let’s get this moose back. I need to make arrangements and meet with the females.”
***
Gammon rubbed his chest. His wolf had been clawing at him for days, but he didn’t have time to let him out to run. The number of rogues running around the country had taken him and his men by surprise. If he had realized how bad the situation had gotten in the southern packs, he would have brought more men. Another week and they would head back home. Two months was longer than he normally spent outside his territory, but the trip hadn’t been a waste of time. Willow had found a mate. Two of the others had also found mates, and he had lucked out with two worthy males to add to his pack on top of the three males now mated to his females. They would spend one more week traveling around letting Jessica’s wolf search for her mate. After that he would take the three males he kept with him and Jessica and head home.
He had sent Willow and the other two females back home days ago with their nine guards plus their mates and the two honorable males he had claimed. Many of the males they had found weren’t forming packs as they should. Several packs of rogue males with no females to bring stability to the pack had sprung up. They had crossed two boundaries where he could feel the Alpha’s oath bond to the Council. In both cases, he and his had quickly retreated. His females had not felt a mate in those two packs.
Exhausted from traveling, tired of driving, tired of having to watch his back constantly. And tired, so fucking tired of staying in motels. Finding mates for his females had proved trickier than times past. All five of the males he had added to his pack this trip were not even part of a pack. All lone wolves looking for a place to belong. Three true mates in one trip though, that made the entire trip worth it even if it took part of Canada and seven states to find those three.
He pulled into the motel and looked in the mirror at the others. “We will stay here for the night. Jessica, you sure you have kept your wolf close to the surface? No pull at all?”
Jessica looked up from the floorboard at her Alpha and shrugged. “I have tried. Keeping her just below the surface is hard. But you said she will know even if I am not paying attention if our mate is close enough. She is calm, so I guess no mate yet. I love you guys, but this is boring. Driving around with nothing to do but look out the window. I am ready to go home.”
Bradford looked up from his book and told her. “We are all bored, tired and beyond frustrated. Where are all the females? We haven’t crossed paths with one unmated female this entire trip.
“Johnny, go get us a room.”
“Wait, Gammon, can Johnny see if they have two connecting rooms? I wouldn’t mind having more than one bathroom and a bit of space from the four of you.” Jessica said.
“No. One room. With what I have seen on this trip, I won’t risk being in a separate room from you. I know it sucks; it can’t suck for you as much as it sucks for me though. When we get inside, you can shift. Your wolf won’t mind being around us and she won’t worry about space.”
“Never mind. She has gotten bitchy about wanting to run lately. Better if I keep her inside for now.”
“All right. Caleb, I will leave you, Johnny and Bradford here to guard Jessica. Once we get settled in, I will head out and try to find someplace close by with enough privacy we can let our wolves run for an hour or so. My wolf isn’t doing my chest any favors the last few days either.”
***
Gammon rotated his head, trying to ease the tension before working his shoulders forward and back. He closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath before exhaling loudly. Centering himself, he focused inward again.
What did you say?
Mate.
No. We have no mate. Mate for what? Whose mate?
Mate close.
Whose mate? What in the hell are you talking about? We have no mate. We lost our mate. No mate.
Get mate.
We can’t get another mate. It doesn’t work that way. We can only have one. We can take a mate, but she wouldn’t be a true mate. Is that what you want? A mate?
Mate. Get mate. Close.
Gammon withdrew his focus from the other and tried to center himself again. Shaking his head, he felt the claws rip at him. His wolf had clearly gone insane, and he was days from his territory. Worry flooded his mind as he tried to imagine how he would get his people back home safely. He wondered if this was what going rogue felt like. Would he endanger Jessica if he went back to the motel? What about the males he had guarding her? Would he kill them to get her?
His hand trembled as the realization struck him. He could never return to his pack. He could not take a rogue wolf home, not even if that wolf were his. Did rogues know their wolves were not right before they themselves struck against others? Was the wolf the cause of the rogues?
Her not mate. Stupid. Mate other. Mate close. Feel mate. FEEL.
The flood of emotion and internal screams of his wolf broke through the barrier he had up.
Stop it! You won’t win this. We lost our mate centuries ago. We don’t get a second chance and we will not take someone because you are lonely. I am strong and you will not win. You will not go rogue
on us. We will not go rogue. I forbid it. Do you hear me? I forbid it. We are too strong for this to beat us. We have been through hell and if you put us there this time, we will come out the other side stronger than ever.
Feel mate. Our mate. Feel.
Gammon felt shaky and unsure of himself. He reached for a nearby tree and braced himself against it. As he slid his body to the ground, he struggled to stay in control. He hadn’t felt so lost in centuries. His teeth clenched together, forehead on his knees, arms wrapped around his shins with his hands tightly gripped, he again focused inward.
His wolf pranced. He could feel the excitement. His wolf could feel one specific female. His wolf had a direction, a destination. That only happened with true-mates. But everyone knew you were only gifted one true-mate in your life. His breath was coming in heaving gasps as he struggled to understand.
Get mate.
You will lead us? Not since he was a child had he felt so uncertain and so hesitant about something his wolf wanted. The feelings from his wolf mimicked a true-mating, but he had no way of knowing if the feeling was the trickery of a wolf going rogue. But his wolf was the other half of who he was. If he were going rogue would he question his wolf? What thoughts went through the mind of a rogue?
We go?
This time when his wolf spoke, he paid attention. The wolf inside was not like talking to someone in the non-shifted form. The language was like that of a child. Emotions had to be understood, and the shifter had to focus on the thoughts of the wolf. Gammon had a laser focus on his wolf when he realized the wolf wasn’t trying to shift, wasn’t demanded he shift. His wolf was, if not content, at least prepared to let him stay in his body and be led to the female. He still didn’t understand how it could be possible to have a second true-mate. But, he thought to himself, no one had ever had two Beta’s either. Not in his memory or Jutoh’s memory. He would give his wolf a chance, but he wouldn’t get his hopes up. No one could replace his love. She had been his heart and she would always hold it. He had nothing to offer another female besides an occasional night in his bed or a romp through the woods with his wolf.
Blood of the Wolf (Safe Haven Wolves Short Stories Book 1) Page 6
