At First Sight: A Timber Wolves Companion

At First Sight :

A Timber Wolves Companion

A short story collection by

Tammy Blackwell

Published in the United States

Copyright © 2013

All rights held by the author.

Just in case the boys turning into wild animals under the light of the full moon didn’t make it obvious, this is a work of fiction. All characters and events exist only in the mind of the writer. Any resemblance to real life is a figment of your imagination.

Cover Design: Victoria Faye (www.victoriafaye.com)

The Timber Wolves Trilogy:

Destiny Binds

Time Mends

Fate Succumbs

At First Sight is intended to be read after Fate Succumbs, the final book in the Timber Wolves trilogy, and therefore contains spoilers. Consider yourself warned.

At First Sight was originally released in weekly installments on www.misstammywrites.com in December 2012.

Liam

I don’t know why I’m writing this. I thought the point of being Alpha Male is that you don’t have to answer to anyone, especially not some old lady who can’t go five steps without needing to rest. I only agreed because I know no one will ever read this. Like anyone cares how Scout and I met. Yeah, that stuff about how we Challenged Alphas Stefan and Sarvarna and completely restructured the Shifter and Seer hierarchy is interesting. This? Not so much.

(Scout, who insists on reading over my shoulder as I type, tells me this isn’t the way to start a story and is having a mini-meltdown over spoilers. I would like to point out that: 1. this is an official report; and 2. I’ll start listening to Scout’s opinions on how to craft a story when she writes a best-selling novel.)

It was July when my brother Alex and I arrived in Lake County. Our plan had been to stay in Nashville for a while. It was just an hour south of where the Hagan Pack’s Den was, which left us close enough to evaluate them and eventually make contact, but also afforded us the cover of the city. Shifter Survival Lesson: When you’re trying to hide from other Shifters, go to a city. Sure, it’s a pain in the ass to deal with all the noises and smells on a regular basis, but the things that annoy you the most are the things that will conceal your location. The people, the cars, the buildings, and the general city-ness of big cities make it nearly impossible for a Shifter to follow your trail.

So, Nashville was our intended destination, but we never made it. While driving down I-24, the transmission fell out of the crappy Ford we bought up in South Dakota.

As far as happy coincidences went, Timber, Kentucky, seemed to be chock-full of them. There wasn’t any traffic when the car died, so I was able to maneuver to the shoulder without any troubles. I barely had the hood popped when a farmer with a trailer stopped and asked if I could use a lift. While I waited for the mechanic to declare the car dead, Alex struck up a conversation with another guy who was hanging around the shop. I normally hated it when Alex started talking to strangers, there is a reason the term “stranger danger” exists, but the guy started talking about his roofing business and how he just had to fire two of his best workers for getting into a knock-down-drag-out fight while on the job. By the time we left, I had a job lined up for the following day and the promise of a loaner car from the mechanic. Alex said it was destiny. I said it was life in a small Kentucky town. Either way, we decided to stay.

Our first two weeks in Timber were filled with the typical I-just-moved-to-town non-stop business. We stayed in a rundown motel until we found an equally rundown trailer to rent. Then life really got fun. Utilities had to be turned on. Vehicles had to be purchased. Alex had to be registered for school. By the time I got my first paycheck, I was exhausted and broke. Luckily, the roofing gig paid pretty well. To celebrate having a bit of money again, Alex talked me into taking him to the tourist-trap area of town. Neither of us were particularly interested in paddle boats or water slides, but everyone we talked to said there was one of those burger/dairy shacks that couldn’t be missed. Since Alex and I were both partial to greasy food topped off with gallon-sized milkshakes, we thought it was worth checking out.

After five minutes at The Strip, I was ready to leave. People were everywhere. Screaming kids. Exhausted parents. Preening teenagers. Crooked old men shuffled along behind walkers while babies toddled behind strollers. It was almost as depressing as the headache it was giving me.

One of the easiest ways to determine the level of a Shifter’s dominance is to watch how they react to large crowds. The sharper your canine senses, the harder it is to deal with the overload. I had grown accustomed to all the noises and smells when I lived in a city, but we had been in the country for the better part of a month. I was having trouble distinguishing a single voice from the crowd, and the smells were so overwhelming I couldn’t even think about eating. Alex was almost as twitchy as I was, but he insisted on staying. He claimed a need for human interaction, but immediately sat down on a bench and opened a book. It didn’t look like human interaction to me, but if it was what he wanted to do, we would do it. Alex rarely asked for anything, so when he did, I usually tried to make it happen.

Even if that “anything” was to endure complete and total torture so he could read a freaking book in the middle of a crowded recreation area.

While Alex read, I worked on pulling out individual scents. It was one of the earliest exercises my father taught me. Even before my first Change, I was able to tease out the smells of different types of trees when standing in the middle of a forest. As a challenge to myself, I closed my eyes and narrowed down the scent of a single person. Then, once I had their scent, I would try to mentally picture what the person looked like. Once I had a fairly clear image in my head, I would open my eyes to see how close I was. Usually I got the age and gender correct, but that was about as far as it went. Still, it was something to occupy my time and keep me from getting completely overwhelmed by everything going on around me.

I had just correctly identified a little girl - I even got the pigtails right - when a familiar yet unwelcome smell hit me.

For some Shifters, unless it’s near a full moon, it’s hard to identify another of our kind by smell alone, but that’s not to say we don’t all know each other pretty much on sight. No matter our level of dominance, each of us is a very intuitive animal. Even if we don’t have any concrete evidence to go on, we know if the person standing across from us is a Shifter or not. The stronger your dominance, the more likely you are to catch the animal scent resting just below the human scent. And if you’re dominant enough, you can smell the difference between a coyote and wolf, even if the Shifter is standing across the street, surrounded by a crowd.

I had never met a Hagan before, but I knew instantly he was one. If the grass-green eyes hadn’t given it away, then the smug arrogance would have. Even before becoming the Alpha, studying the various Packs of our world was a priority for me. I knew the Hagans were notorious for their hand-me-down eye color and the fact they were the one of the cockiest Packs in the United States, which was saying something. Shifters, by nature, are fairly cocky.

None of the other kids surrounding the pup seemed to be part of the Pack, but I concentrated on their scents just to make sure. I filtered through the entire cluster without picking up on anything. Then I turned my attention to the two people standing on the fringes of the group, although I felt confident neither of them were Shifters. The guy was more big and lumbering than sleek and cunning like a coyote, and the girl was… well, a girl.

This is probably where you expect me to say I saw her and instantly felt a connection. If I was writing a story like Scout seems to think I should, then I would, but this is a report, not a Disney movie. The truth of the matter is, she did grab my attention. It’s pretty much impossible to ignore Scout. When you see a girl in real life who looks just like the dragon chick from
Game of Thrones
, you notice. You stare. You try to figure out if she’s for real or not, because it shouldn’t be possible for a girl to look like that. You get so distracted by the pure white of her hair and the ice chips posing as irises it takes you a long time to look at the rest of her and notice if her face is pretty or if her body has the right curves to it. I didn’t make it to her face or curves that first day. Once I moved past the distraction of her hair and eyes, I was sidetracked by something far more important - her scent.

I spent years wandering across the United States, making contact with different Shifters who might be convinced to attempt an overthrow of the Alpha Pack. During that time, I encountered a lot of Shifters in various stages of their life. Like with humans, it’s possible to determine a lot about a Shifter simply from their scent. Some of the differences were subtle - like the more pronounced musk of a Dominant - but others were pretty obvious. For example, a Shifter who hasn’t completed his first Change smells completely different than one who has. It’s like how a baby has a unique baby smell instead of B.O. And female Shifters smell completely different than male Shifters. I had only met two by that point, but their smell was softer and more appealing than any of the guys I’d met. Even though both of them were older than my mother, I found myself drawn to them. Alex said it had something to do with pheromones and nature’s drive to procreate.

Scout didn’t have that immediate, intense pull of a Changed female Shifter, but there was something enticing there. Like a pup, her scent was muted, more so than any other pre-Change Shifter. In fact, it was so faint I almost convinced myself it wasn’t really there at all. I was close to believing it was all in my head when she looked up and her eyes caught mine.

Dominance is one of those things that is incredibly simple to define, yet so complicated a simple definition will never suffice. Everyone who has ever been associated with a Pack can tell you that a Dominant is a stronger Shifter. Dominants can hold their wolf or coyote form longer, they retain their canine senses further into the moon cycle, and they win any Challenges thrown their way. But there is more to it than that. It’s also the way others react to them. Even humans who have no concept of dominance tend to treat Shifters who have it with more respect, or they’re properly leery of them. It’s in the way a Dominant moves and talks, as if they expect the world to bend to their will. And it’s in the power they radiate. For most Shifters, that power is only a theoretical thing. They know it’s there. They might even notice the hairs on the back of their necks rising when they’re near a Dominant, but it’s not a tangible thing for them. For me it is. I can feel it, see it, and taste it. Sometimes I think I can even hear it whispering to me, telling me how powerful it is. Even the most submissive of Shifters has some amount of power they radiate. Jase was giving off a fairly strong signature, especially for a coyote, but the Dominance I saw in Scout’s eyes was more than ten times stronger than his.

The moment was cut short by her brother. He grabber her shoulder, and acting on the dominance play that had building between the two of us, she took a swing at his face. Jase caught her hand in what would appear to the casual observer as little effort, but I knew better. She hadn’t been kidding with that punch. It was hard and fast. Too fast.

Shifter fast.

“Did you see that?” I asked Alex.

He didn’t look up from his book. “Mmmhmmm…”

“I think she’s a Shifter.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh.” After the second it took for that information to sink in, his head snapped up. “
What?
”

I started to repeat myself but didn’t. I don’t know what it was that made me stop. Really, I don’t, so it’s not going to do anyone (meaning Scout, who is still reading over my shoulder) any good to keep asking me. I just know that I couldn’t seem to form the words again, so instead I said, “I think he’s a Shifter. That guy over there.” But of course, Jase was already gone.

Alex stuck a gum wrapper in the book to mark his spot, and then laid it on the bench. His eyes scanned the crowd quickly yet thoroughly. My brother may have been a head-in-the-clouds kind of guy about some things, but when it came to Shifter business he was serious and astute. “In line over there? The one in the blue Hollister shirt?”

“That’s him.” He was in a crowd, facing away from us, leaving only the back of his head and shoulders visible. Scout was with him, I could tell he was talking to her by his posture, but her body was hidden by the masses waiting for their heart attack on a stick.

“Clear out or approach?”

The smart thing to do would have been to clear out. We needed more information on the Hagans before we made contact, if we decided to do so at all, but Scout had intrigued me. Even though I knew it was a bad idea, I said, “Let’s wait for a minute and see what happens.”

Alex didn’t question me; he rarely did. He just nodded and kept his eyes on Jase. I wanted to tell him how proud our dad would have been of him, but the words got stuck in my throat just like they always did. We never spoke about our parents. It was too hard, although some days I thought not talking about them was even harder.

I expected Jase to head back to his friends after he and Scout got their food, but instead they headed the opposite direction. They only made it a few steps before the building blocked them completely from sight.

“Should we follow?” Alex asked, already picking up his book from the bench.

We could have both gone after them. Even though it was just the two of us, Alex and I were still a pack and always operated as one. Taking a pack mate with you when you approach a potential enemy is a standard practice. At the very least, you keep one nearby as backup. Instead, I said, “I think we’ll spook him if we go in together. Why don’t you head back to the car so he doesn’t pick up on your scent? I’ll get a closer look, and then we’ll head home.”

Again, Alex complied without hesitation. His willingness to follow my lead was due in equal parts to my Dominance and his God-given personality. There were times when I resented him for it, like when I was in a particularly bad mood and looking for a fight. Alex never took the bait. Sure, he might bicker with me on occasion or spar when I asked him to, but he never had a knock-down-drag-out with me. My wolf saw it as weakness. My human part, however, heard our mother’s voice.
“A Dominant wolf with compassion who isn’t afraid to follow someone else’s lead
,” she would say to our father, a look of pride on her face.
“The world is a better place with him in it.”
And I knew she was right. While I saw the world in black and white, Alex saw the entire rainbow, and cared about each and every color. Without him and his multi-hued world, I would have become nothing more than the pre-programmed soldier many people thought I was. Still, at that moment, I wanted him to be different. I wanted him to be more like a normal Dominant and challenge me on my order to just walk away. There was no reason for me to go after them on my own, and in fact it was an exceedingly stupid idea. I needed someone to force me into doing the right thing since I couldn’t seem to do it on my own.