At First Sight: A Timber Wolves Companion (2 page)

I took my time following Jase and Scout down to the lake. Even though her smell was less defined than Jase’s, it was Scout’s scent I was able to track. When I caught up with them, Jase was sprawled on his back in the grass. Scout sat near his head, her back propped against a giant log people obviously used as a bench during lakeside bonfires. This far away from the crowds, their scents were easier to evaluate. Jase was definitely a coyote and even more Dominant than I originally guessed. If I didn’t know that the Hagan Pack Leader was a guy around thirty, I would have assumed it was Jase. However, he didn’t hold my attention for long.

With every lungful of air, I drew in more of Scout’s scent. On the first breath, I confirmed my suspicions. On the second, I caught something so familiar it made my chest hurt. On the third, I was hit with a memory so strong I almost fell to my knees.

“Oak?”

“Close,” Christopher said, peeling the blindfold off Nicole’s eyes. “Maple.”

“No, that’s an oak leaf.” Her face was all scrunched up in concentration. Dad always told her not to make those kinds of faces or it would end up frozen like that. To prove the truth of his threat, he used me as an example.

“No, it’s a maple leaf.”

“No…” She looked around until she found me. “Tell him he’s wrong.”

I reached down and plucked her off the chair. For a four year old she was tiny, and for a thirteen year old I was huge. It made throwing her around like a rag doll all too easy. “No can do, ‘Cole girl. That is a maple leaf.”

“Then I just messed up the leaves, not the smells. I’m a good Shifter, right?”

“The best,” I said, and meant it. There was no one better than Nicole.

“Even better than Christopher?”

“A submissive coyote pup is a better Shifter than he is.” We were, after all, brothers. Insults were expected. “Just take a whiff,” I said. “Does he smell like a Dominant to you?”

Nicole closed her eyes, drew air noisily into her nose, and pulled her shoulders up, which was what constituted as taking a deep breath to her. “I don’t know. He smells pretty strong to me.”

“That’s just because he forgot to put on deodorant today.”

“What about me?” she asked. “How do I smell?”

I stuck my nose into the crook of her neck. She giggled as I took a few quick breaths right against her skin. “You smell like ice cream, lollipops, and a little girl who is going to grow up to be the strongest, most amazing female Shifter in the history of all time.”

For the record, Scout did not smell like lollipops.

Even though I had been standing there for a few minutes, I hadn’t really been listening to Jase and Scout’s conversation. My hearing is just as enhanced as my sense of smell, but I’ve spent a lot less time developing it and rarely rely on it. Words lie all the time, but smells never do. It wasn’t until I heard an unmistakably feminine voice say, “The guy with a staring problem,” that I started registering what they were saying.

Jase looked my way, took one deep breath, and started heading towards me with purpose.

I should have been thinking about how he had to be more dominant than I thought in order to scent me from so far away. Or how stupid he was for approaching me knowing I was far more dominant. Instead, my brain was stuck on the way Scout referred to me as “the guy with a staring problem”. It annoyed me. She had stared back, so if I had a problem, then she did too.

“You’re trespassing.” Jase’s voice brought me back to the more pressing issue of the moment.

I peeled myself slowly off the tree and rose up to my full height. Even if we were mere humans, the six inches of height I had on him should have made him pause. When you threw in the fact that I was a wolf to his coyote, and without a doubt the most dominant Shifter he had ever encountered, he really should have been baring his neck to me in submission. Instead, he had the nerve to meet my eyes and say, “This is Hagan Pack Territory. You have all of five minutes to haul your ass back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”

My father always stressed the importance of being respectful and well-mannered in all situations in life, and most especially in Shifter affairs. He said a touch of politeness not only proved we were more than the animals residing in each of us, but it could prevent unnecessary bloodshed. Unfortunately, of all the lessons my father tried to impart on me during our all too brief time together, this was the one I struggled with the most. Especially when faced with a pompous coyote who didn’t know his place. So, instead of introducing myself and asking for a chance to speak with his Pack Leader, I laughed.

“That’s not the way this is going to work, pup.”

His face blazed red with anger. “I know the rules. This is our territory. You either fight me now or leave.”

Didn’t the idiot know better than to Challenge a Dominant wolf? “I’m not leaving.”

“Then we fight.” He tried to sound tough, but I caught the tremor in his voice. I was about to advise him to rethink that statement when she appeared as if out of nowhere.

“Like Hades you will.” I thought the effect of her hair would be less pronounced up close, but the opposite was true. The way the sun hit it made it look like her head was draped in light instead of hair. Likewise, her eyes were even paler than I originally thought. They had virtually no color to them at all, and at the moment, they were narrowed on her brother. “Did you wake up on the stupid side of the bed this morning?”

I was relieved to discover that at least one of them had some sense. Jase, on the other hand, was still Challenging me with his eyes. “Go away, Scout. This is none of your business.”

But he was wrong. This was her business. Up close, there was no denying the faint hint of Shifter in her scent. My pulse quickened.

“I’m not leaving until you do,” she told him.

“I think you should go, Scout.” Her scent was too appealing. If she didn’t go, I might do something stupid.

Then, she looked at me, and it was too late.

“No, thank you,” she said in a condescending tone. It should have annoyed or angered me instead of filling me with some sort of strange male satisfaction, but the smell of her was doing crazy things to my head. I couldn’t stop myself from stepping squarely into her personal space and leaning in. Her body trembled as I inhaled twice, pulling her undiluted scent into my nose.

No, she didn’t smell of lollipops, but there was something else there. Something powerful.

“What is she?” I asked before I thought better of it.

Jase just blinked at me. The fear coming off of him was palatable. Scout, however, didn’t seem to have the same sense of self preservation.

“What she is, is offended and quickly becoming angry.”

Jesus, if she ever Changed there would be no holding her back. Even as a human there was a ridiculous amount of dominance coming off of her. And if she
did
Change…

“Leave my sister out of it,” Jase said, finally breaking out of his trance.

“Do they know about her?” If the Alphas found her, she was dead. She would never have a chance to Change and unleash that dominance on the world.

Jase didn’t say anything, but his fear spiked again. That was good. He needed to be afraid of the Alpha Pack.

“I’m staying.” There was no way I could leave now. Not with her here. Not with what she could mean to our world. Not after everything I had been working towards for the past five years. There would be issues with the Hagan Pack, issues I normally tried to avoid, but this had to be done. That didn’t mean, however, I couldn’t try to ensure those problems were minimized.

“I’ll take out anyone who crosses me.”
So, please, don’t cross me.
Then, so I didn’t show my hand too soon, I added, “Even her.”

Although, harming Scout was the exact opposite of what I intended to do. I stayed in Timber to protect her. I know she thinks she has never needed protection - that it was everyone’s misguided attempts at protecting her that caused everything that came after that day to happen - but it’s why I stayed in Timber. It’s why I couldn’t leave, even when I knew it was the smart thing to do. It’s why I made the choices I did. Maybe she didn’t need protecting, and there is no doubt I did a horrible job of it, but I tried. And if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing, because for me, who she is, who she was able to become, was worth it.

Alex

I have been in love with the same girl since I was eight years old. I stumbled across her in a dream, her white-blond hair shining in the sun as her pale blue eyes sparkled with laughter. I looked and looked for her in the waking world but only succeeded in chasing false hope.

So, of course I was too busy thinking about the latest version of Halo to notice her sitting in my math class.

“Harper, is there something you would like to share with the rest of the class?” I almost gagged from the smell of stale coffee and fresh arthritis cream as Mr. Beck stood by my desk. Liam would have told me to breathe through my mouth, but I didn’t want the atoms carrying those smells anywhere near my tongue. It was bad enough they were stuck up my nose.

“It’s Scout,” said a girl’s voice behind me. “My name, I mean. It’s Scout. You can call me Scout, please.”

Mr. Beck sneered. “I think we are a little old to be going by nicknames in class.”

“Then you can call me Miss Donovan,” she replied, her voice shaking with rage.

Man, this girl was ballsy. My new math teacher might have been as old and outdated as a landline phone, but what he lacked in youthful vigor he more than made up for by being a demon sent from the special hell reserved for high school bullies. Within a week of the full moon I can bench press 300 pounds, but I wasn’t about to mess with this guy. I glanced over my shoulder to give this Harper “Scout” Donovan a nod of approval.

My heart kicked in my chest at the sight of her face, which was mostly obscured by the white-blond hair spilling over it.

Stay cool, Cole. Lots of girls have white-blonde hair. Do
not
freak out like you did with that girl in Terre Haute. Not only was it embarrassing, but you don’t want to walk around with another busted lip until the full moon.

But no matter what I said to myself, no matter how much I tried to make my inner-voice sound like Liam, I couldn't stop myself from hoping.

Look up,
I urged her.
Come on, Scout. Look up.

Scout. God. What a cool name. I loved that name.

The guy sitting between us noticed me turned around in my seat and lifted his head. From the set of his jaw, I could tell he thought I had some sort of problem with him, which I hadn’t until he blocked my view. Finally, just when I was going to have to either rip his out throat or turn back around, she lifted her chin and…

Holy shit.

Pale blue eyes, lit with recognition, met mine. It was her. After all this time, I’d finally found her.

Thank God for crappy transmissions.

Color touched her cheeks, which made me aware of the way my face was heating up. Luckily, she ducked her head back down before she noticed.

“Didn’t your mama ever tell you that staring is rude?” The guy sitting between us leaned as far forward as the desk would allow. “Don’t be a jerk.”

It was hard to override my instinct, which was to rearrange this guy’s face for getting between us, but I somehow talked myself into turning around. This wasn’t the time or place. I may have forgotten for a minute or two, but we were still in the middle of Calculus. Causing a scene with thirty-something witnesses would be the exact opposite of discreet and unassuming, both of which are fundamentals for survival when your last name is Cole.

I told myself I would keep my eyes forward until the end of class. That lasted about thirty seconds. Over the next excruciatingly long twenty-three minutes, I glanced back about forty-six times. Every time she was looking down at her desk, fastidiously taking notes. Even though I was disappointed that she wouldn’t look up, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at the sight of her bent over her desk working. It was something I’d seen a million times in my dreams - Scout is a bit of a nerd - but seeing it in real life was different. It was like getting an ice cream cone after only ever having eaten frozen yogurt.

When the bell rang at the end of class, it sounded like Soviet missiles were about to land on our heads thanks to Lake County High’s ancient PA system. I was out of my seat so quickly the other students’ human eyes probably didn’t even catch the movement. It was a screw-up, a fairly big one, but I was too excited to care. I bounced on the balls of my feet, waiting.

Finally, she got up. She was still looking down, so she didn’t even see me standing there until she was practically stepping on my feet. She was so close I could feel the heat coming off her. She lifted her head, and her eyes met mine. I opened my mouth, and…

Nothing. I couldn’t form words. She was there in front of me, and I had no idea what to say. What did I say in all those fantasies I had? I know I had to have said
something
before we got to the making out part. What was it?

“Excuse me,” she ground out from between clenched teeth, and I stepped back out of surprise. Scout took the opportunity to slide around me and out the door.

She was running from me? What the hell? Never in any of my fantasies had she run from me. She actually looked scared, like I was some crazy unknown stalker…

Which is probably exactly what I looked like. Actually, once I thought about it, “crazy unknown stalker” was a pretty accurate description. What else would you call a guy who secretly watched you for years and obsessively thought about you every day?

The way I saw it, I had two options. One, I could get all broody and morose over the fact she didn’t know who I was and hadn’t been searching for me her whole life like I had been searching for her. It was the easier of the two choices, since it’s what I felt like doing, but no one likes a brooder. I know. I live with Liam Woe-Is-Me Cole on a full-time basis. So, I would have to go with the second option, which was to do this the old fashioned way. Talk to her. Charm her. Give her a chance to know me, and once she did, make her fall in love with me.

I could do that, right? It couldn’t be that hard, could it? We were destined to be together.

Filled with resolve, I snuck a peek at the school map hidden in my Calculus book and headed to my next class. On the way, I tugged out my phone and punched in a message to Liam.

“I found Scout!”

His reply came back not fifteen seconds later.
“Stay away from the Hagans.”

Of course. I find the love of my life, and my brother is more concerned about Shifter stuff. Like I didn’t already know to stay away from the local pack.

My next class was some sort of hippie-dippie class about Shakespeare. If it had been up to me, I would’ve been in something like Wood Shop, trying to learn an actual useful skill, but when you register for classes the day before the new semester starts, you don’t get a lot of say in what you take.

The theater was on the other side of the school, which meant I had to hike across the upper level of what was possibly the world’s nicest and most expensive high school gymnasium. On the floor, a group of guys I pegged as the basketball team, thanks to the collection of State Basketball Championship shirts they all sported, goofed off. I slowed my pace as I watched them. One of the guys, the shortest on the team, slid around the other players with ease before jumping up to slam the ball through the net, hanging on to the rim for a second before pouncing back down to the ground.

Shifter!
My instincts screamed, but I promptly dismissed the idea. The Hagan Pack that Liam was obsessing over lived near the army base close to the Tennessee border, which was almost an hour’s drive further south. Liam and I would eventually be seeking them out, but it was still too early. We needed to do a lot more recon before deciding whether they were Alpha loyalists. Until then, we were staying in Timber and keeping a low profile. Obviously, my brain had made the Shifter leap thanks to Liam’s text and the guy’s almost unnatural talent.

I glanced over my shoulder one last time. The showoff was once again dribbling around his teammates, changing direction so quickly it was hard to keep up with the movement.

Almost
unnatural talent? It looked a whole lot more like supernatural talent. I took a deep breath, but couldn’t discern anything over the smell of sweat, rubber, and stale popcorn.

Could there be another Pack we didn’t know about? Did the Hagans move their den? Was there another family of outcasts running around Kentucky?

On a normal day, at a normal school in a normal class, I would have gone through every possible scenario at least a hundred times so I would have something intelligent to say when I called Liam at lunch. But this wasn’t a normal day at a normal school in a normal class. This was my first day at Scout’s school, and this class was already one of my favorites since she was sitting in the front row.

“His last name is Cole,” she was saying as I slid into the seat behind her. I tried not to grin like an idiot over the fact that she was talking about me, but failed miserably. “I don’t remember what his first name is though. Some really generic ‘A’ name. Alan? Andrew?”

“Alex,” I added helpfully. She turned around, and I was once again struck momentarily speechless at the sight of her. “Should I call you Scout or Miss Donovan?” I asked, recovering quickly, but not cunningly.

“Scout will be fine.”

“I’m Talley,” said the girl I hadn’t even really noticed, lost deep in Scout Land as I was. Her friend had deep blue eyes and hair so dark it almost looked blue. She was like a curvier version of Wonder Woman. The smile she gave me was both apologetic and friendly as she stretched out a hand. When my hand touched hers, a tingle shot up my arm.

Seer
.

And now my imagination was really running away with me. First I thought I saw a Shifter on the basketball court, and now I was turning Scout’s friend into a Seer. Liam was making me paranoid.

“Nice to meet you, Talley,” And, just because I wanted to see how Scout would react, I said, “Cool name. Very non-generic.”

The best thing about a girl with snow white skin? You don’t have to be paying attention to see her blush. But when you are, it’s like every pore gets pink at its own pace. I had seen the dream version of Scout’s blush a million times, but seeing it in person was a new and wonderful experience. Another ice cream treat, this time with a cherry on top. I could have stared at her for the rest of the class. Heck, my day was pretty free. I wondered if the teachers would object to me staying right there in front of her for the next few hours.

“Thanks,” I heard Talley reply. I tried to look at her to be polite, but I couldn’t talk my eyeballs into it. “My mom went into labor with me at O’Talley’s restaurant. It was the only thing her post-childbirth drug addled mind could come with when they asked her for a name.”

Something about O’Talley’s restaurant set off little alarms in my head, but I was too busy coming up with something to say to Scout to pay attention.

“Cool. And how does one become a Scout? Are you like a super cookie salesman?”

Scout narrowed her eyes. “It’s because my name is Harper Lee.”

Oh, sweet Jesus. She was named after an author and nicknamed after a literary character. Could she be any more perfect? “Why not Boo?” I asked, knowing it would annoy her. For some reason, I liked annoying Scout. Maybe it was because she always blushed when I did.

I was waiting for her undoubtedly snarky reply when I was distracted by the over-powering smell of perfume. A girl folded herself into the seat next to me, her smile a million miles wide. “Hi, you must be new here,” she said. “I’m Ashley.”

Ashley was very pretty in that very normal high school girl way. Her eyes were big and surrounded by long, make-up encased lashes; her flawless skin had a healthy end-of-summer glow; her hair was perfectly dyed and styled to look like something out of a magazine or country music video; and her boobs were... well, noticeable. Very noticeable. Like I could almost see nipple noticeable.

“Well, Ashley, it’s nice to meet you,” I said, trying desperately hard to not stare at the boobs that seemed to be getting closer and closer to me with every breath she took. “I’m Alex Cole.”

I glanced up to share a knowing look with Scout - because despite her not knowing me yet, I knew her well enough to know she would find Ashley’s growing breasts as disturbing as I did - but she had already turned back around. I was disappointed, and a little annoyed with Ashley for letting Scout get away from me, but I tried to be polite as Ashley quizzed me on my past. It was one of the tricks I learned long ago. If you’re sullen and don’t give out many details about your parents or where you went to school last, people become intrigued. And intrigued people get nosey. I couldn’t let people get nosey, so I made every effort to seem like a guy who would tell you anything. When you’re that guy, people take whatever you say as fact and leave the rest alone. I’ve tried to explain this concept to Liam, but he prefers intimidating people to actually talking to them. For the most part, it was a process that worked exceedingly well for him.

For a class about a dead guy obsessed with poetry, the next hour flew by. The teacher was one of those energetic artsy types who spoke in exclamation points and wild hand gestures. Her outfit was so ridiculous it was cool, and she was young and pretty enough to make you forget she was a teacher. If I could have concentrated on her for more than thirty seconds at a time, I probably would’ve found more virtues to name, but my attention was very much elsewhere.

Having Scout sitting in front of me instead of behind me was a fresh new torture. I got to watch her for an entire hour. I matched every memory I had of her with the real girl, surprised to find the dreams hadn’t exaggerated anything. Her hair really was that silvery white color that seemed to glow, and her skin reminded me of a set of white satin sheets my mother had when I was little. She chewed on the inside of her lip like it was gum. Every once in awhile her teeth would freeze, and then she would turn her head just slightly to the right and peek over her shoulder. At me.

Two points to Team Cole.

Less than ten minutes before Shakespeare was over, the phone in my pocket vibrated. Thirty seconds later, it vibrated again. Liam waited an entire minute and a half before texting me a third time.