Matefinder (2 page)

“My name is Max and I have been Kai’s
second in command for forty-six years.” His voice could cut paper. I swallowed.
Forty-six years? He didn’t look a day over twenty-five, neither did Kai. Kai
put his hand on Max’s shoulder.

“Yes you have, and a great second you
have been. I know this is a bit of a shock to all of us, to have a newly
changed
female so high up in the pack. As you know, nothing will feel settled with you
about Aurora until we know how dominant she is. Your wolf will wonder if you
could take her in a fight and I can’t have that. Not in my pack. Max, Aurora.
Continue.”

 I was already sweating because the
last two stare downs had been very difficult. I felt like looking down multiple
times but I didn’t. Not before they did. But with Max I was scared. What would
this mean? If I was more dominant than him would I become the second in command
of some new pack I knew nothing about? Some life I  didn’t ask for? Maybe I
should just look down halfway through so I didn’t have to deal with this.

‘If you do that, his wolf will always
wonder where you stand, and a fight will break out eventually.’
Kai. In my head. Great. I stepped
forward. I had to be brave or at least try to be. I looked Max in the eyes. I
didn’t blink. I barely breathed. After about thirty seconds he started panting
and I began to feel weak in the knees. I felt the strongest urge to bow my head
in submission. I pushed the urge back. I
was
strong.

I had been through a lot in my short
twenty-two years on this planet, enough to give me a thick skin. I’d been
through things that still gave me nightmares. Things no person should ever have
to endure. I didn’t know what this meant for my future; didn’t know what being
a werewolf meant for what I had planned for my life but it was better than
being dead, and if Kai hadn’t saved me, I would be. If being this high up in
the pack was where I was meant to be, then I would be. I stared. He stared.
Sweat broke out on my forehead and his as well. He  bit his lip and with a
grunt he dropped his eyes, bowing his head down low.

I took a step back, startled. I wiped
my forehead and tried to catch my breath. Max looked at Kai and something
unspoken seemed to pass between them. Anger was coming off of Max in waves. Kai
nodded slightly and Max scowled at me and then took off running into the woods.
He shed his shirt and slowly changed into his wolf form, his body was
contorting and cracking. I sucked in a breath at the sight. I turned to see Kai
open his arms wide.

“Brothers and sisters, I welcome
Aurora into my pack as my second in command.”

There was murmuring among the wolves.
‘
Pack,’
they told me, as they looked me up and down. Kai’s warm body
pushed up against me as he whispered in my ear. “You have their inner wolves’
respect. Any one of them would die in a fight for you, but now you need to get
their human side’s respect. That’s a whole other ballgame as you Americans like
to say.” His breath against my neck made my stomach drop, but his words flushed
cold water through my veins.

“Let’s eat! Steaks are on the grill
out back,” Kai announced and motioned for us to move to the back of the house. My
inner wolf was pleased with our new place in the pack. I was scared shitless.

 “Wow, second,” Emma squeaked behind
me. I turned to her voice and she cast her eyes down slightly towards my nose.
I wondered if I would ever get used to having to think before I made eye
contact with someone.

Now that I had time to look around, I
realized we were in a heavily wooded area on Mt. Hood. There were cabins
dotting the property. But Kai’s was by far the biggest. There were no fences,
just open space.

“Yeah, who knew?” I shrugged, not
sure of what to say. We walked together around to the back of the house towards
the smell of cooking food. I was still in shock over making second in the pack.

She smiled and grabbed my hand. “Come
on, I’ll introduce you to my mate.”

That word again. Kai had said some of
the men here were wondering if I was their mate.

“Your mate…” I left the sentence
open.

“Yeah, Devon. We just had our mating
ceremony a few months ago. You missed it.”

“So that’s like a wedding?” I inquired.
I glanced around. The backyard had a large green space with four large rectangle
tables and a few grills that were smoking. I wondered if they had any veggie
burgers.  Yeah, right.

“Kind of like a wedding, except mates
are extremely rare and once a werewolf mates, they mate for life. And instead
of exchanging rings, like I’ve seen humans do on TV, you exchange blood.”

My eyes must have bulged out of my
head.

“Not like drinking blood! Just a
little nip, a marking.” She pulled up her long shirt sleeve to reveal a teeth
bite mark on her wrist. “It’s infused with magic. Devon and I are mated for
life and now we can have children.” She smiled.

“Talking about me, I hope?” A tall
guy with sandy blonde hair and blue eyes came up behind us.

Emma blushed. “Aurora, this is Devon.
My mate and husband.”

Devon grasped my hand and bowed
slightly. “A pleasure. Welcome to the pack. We are all really excited to have
you. Most of us anyway.” He gestured to Sadie and a few other guys that sat at
one of the tables, scowling. Emma smacked him and he kissed her cheek before
heading over to tend to one of the grills. I remembered Devon being towards the
middle of the pack.

“So it’s not a problem that you’re
submissive and Devon’s…”

“Dominant?” Emma threw the word out
there. “It’s actually the best combination for mates. Two wolves that are too
close within pack rank could either be very powerful together or have
underlying tension. If you have two highly dominant wolves and danger comes, who
protects who? If the less dominant tries to protect the more dominant, it’s
like saying they can’t protect themselves. It could start a fight. With Devon
and I, we know our place. If something ever happened and he was hurt, I would
protect him with my last breath, but generally, I let him take the lead.” She
smiled. “Enough Wolf 101, let’s mingle. We have plenty of time to talk in the
coming centuries. Did I forget to tell you? Unless killed, werewolves pretty
much live forever.” She walked towards the crowd.

Okay. I was immortal. No big deal.
Holy crap!

 A young Indian boy that was the
spitting image of Kai set a large bloody steak in front of me. “For you, my
lady.” He grinned. He looked about sixteen but who knew what his real age was.
I covered my nose; the smell of meat made me nauseous.

“Thank you, but actually I’m a
vegetarian.”

The boy’s face fell. Werewolves must
have good hearing because every voice stopped and you could see all heads turn
towards me. The boy began laughing, a deep throaty laugh. “My brother’s new
second in command. A vegetarian?”

I smirked back at him. “Yes. Key words,
second in command.” Power radiated out of my voice. I hadn’t meant to be like
that. The boy immediately stopped laughing, dropped his gaze and everyone went
back to talking. Kai came over with a plate of corn on the cob and mashed
potatoes and set it in front of me. He ruffled his brother’s hair.

“That will teach you to mess with a
dominant vegetarian,” he joked.

His brother sulked, then turned to
me. “I’m Akash. Welcome to the pack.”

I smiled at him. “Thank you. I will
try to remember all of these names but remind me if I can’t, and thanks for
bringing me the steak. It was very sweet of you.”

Akash blushed from head to toe… and
was that a low growl I heard from Kai? Akash looked at his brother grinning
then ran off to get his food.

“What part of India are you from?” I
asked Kai.

“Are you assuming because I have dark
skin I’m from India?” His face was blank.

“Oh. I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what
to say.

He grinned. “I’m joking. I’m from
Delhi and so is Akash.”

I wanted to smack him but thought
better of it. “I’ve been to Delhi. Amazing food. Wonderful people.”  It was then
his turn to look shocked with nothing to say. Five o’clock shadow dotted his
strong jaw and I couldn’t help but think again of how attractive he was.

                “You have been to Delhi?” he challenged.

“Yep. Six months volunteering. I set
up a domestic violence shelter there. God, I miss the food.” My mind wandered
to my history with domestic violence. Snippets from my childhood rushed through
my mind. I looked up and Kai’s jaw was clenched and his eyes turned from black
to golden yellow. I jerked my head back in fear but he recovered and forced a
smile.

“That’s nice of you to do that kind
of work.” His voice was raw. Had he picked up on my thoughts, my very private
thoughts? Anger took hold of me. I grabbed my plate and stood.

“I think I’m going to mingle, then
you and I need to talk about my old life and what to do with it.” My voice was
clipped and I stalked off. Two words came through our bond and into my head.
‘I’m
sorry.’

I shook off the conversation and sat
down with Emma and Devon. I spent the next two hours talking and getting to
know the other wolves. I found that I could immediately tell which ones were
submissive and which ones were more dominant. My inner wolf could sense it. I
fell into easy conversations, letting my inner wolf instinctually guide me.
This was my
pack
, my new family. I felt more protective over the more
submissive wolves. One thing was for sure; Sadie was shooting me daggers all night.
I would have to ask Emma about that later. I was in the middle of telling Luke,
a mid pack wolf, about my favorite hiking spot on Mt. Hood, when Kai placed his
hand on my shoulder.

“We need to talk,” he whispered. I
glanced at him, and nodded.

“Luke.” He nodded.

Luke smiled. “Kai.”

We walked towards the house together
and I passed Sadie with her straight black hair and muscular body. She was very
pretty. I had fair milky skin and pale blonde hair. I felt plain compared to
her exotic beauty. ‘
You look like an angel,’
Kai told me inside my head
as we reached the door to his home.

I blushed but recovered quickly.
“Okay, first thing on the agenda, you need to get out of my head.”

He led me to his office without
another word and closed the door. His office was nicely decorated with modern
masculine colors, dark blue and grey. I sat on the brown leather couch and Kai
sat on the edge of the large wooden desk. He towered over me.

“I will teach you how to keep me from
reading your every thought. But I will
never
fully be out of your head.
What’s the next thing on your agenda?” He smiled.

Okay, he was willing to teach me to
keep my thoughts to myself.  That was a start.

“I need to call my mother.”

Kai sighed. “It’s best that after a
wolf goes through the
change
, that they fake their death. I took your
car off of the road and hid it under some fallen trees. One call to the police
saying I found it while jogging would do the trick. Your blood… is all over it.
They will think animals took your body.”

My mind was reeling. “I’m not faking
my death!” I stood. “I am all my mother has.” I let images of my childhood
filter through our bond, of my mother being beaten trying to keep
him
from hitting me. Then I stopped. “She’s all I have, too.”

Kai closed the distance between us in
a second. Kai’s jaw clenched. ‘
Who hurt you?’  
he asked.

“Don’t,” I told him fiercely and
tried to side step him. He moved in front of me.

‘
Let me in
,’ he pleaded and
for once looked vulnerable. He stared into my eyes.

 ‘
No.’
I pushed back into his
mind. I stared back, not looking down like I should. Showing him that he
couldn’t force me; he didn’t own me. Alpha or not, I had a say and I could take
care of myself. He stared back unwavering. ‘
Challenge,’
my inner wolf
said. Shit, what was I doing? My forehead broke out in sweat. That’s when he
kissed me.

He leaned in slowly, keeping his eyes
locked on mine. When I felt his breath on my lips I closed my eyes in
submission and he grabbed the back of my hair and slowly tilted my neck back.
He pressed his lips onto mine, ‘
I win
,’ he taunted playfully in my mind.
A shock went through my system when our lips touched. He kissed me deeply for a
few more seconds and then pulled away. I felt like I had been waiting to kiss
him since I first saw him.  He looked as stunned as I felt. Before I had time
to think of something to say, the hairs on the back of my neck stood. ‘
Foreign
Wolf,’
my inner wolf said
.
 I smelled something off, something bad.

“Shit,” he swore and bolted outside.

I ran after him and noticed the other
wolves began to perk up and some of them shifted into their wolf forms. Kai
stood on one of the picnic tables.

He closed his eyes and took a deep
breath in through his nose.

“Portland Pack just crossed our
border; seven wolves about twenty miles away.” He growled and looked at me.

“Where were you born?” he barked.

I jerked back at the power in his
voice. “Portland,” I answered.

A rumble went through the pack and
one of the wolves that had shifted, howled. My body had chills. “What’s wrong?”

“When someone is
changed
, the
Alpha of that pack who
changed
them becomes that person’s pack. That’s
why you’re mine. But there is an old magic law that states that the Alpha from
the pack of the
changed
human’s birthplace can fight to claim him or her
if they can reach that person in twenty-four hours. It’s been sixteen hours
since I
changed
you.”

My breath came out in rasps. “So the
Alpha from the Portland pack is coming to claim me?”

Kai’s eyes blazed yellow. “No.” There
was power behind that one single word. “He’s coming to try. I was hoping you
were born in Michigan or some place a bit farther away.”

Emma stood next to me. “If it was a
submissive male, he wouldn’t even try.”

Females are rare. She had told me. ‘
Foreign
Wolf.’
My pack sense was tingling. They were on OUR territory and there was
nothing we could do because of the rules. I could feel the irritation coming
off of Kai.

As Kai barked orders to the other
wolves to take up positions at the perimeter, I leaned into Emma.

“I think it might be a good time for
you to tell me about killing a werewolf 101,” I whispered.

Emma swallowed. “Two ways. Extreme
blood loss or silver poisoning. Our power to heal is in our blood. If you
decapitate or tear into a wolf enough, they will die before they can
regenerate.”

I nodded. “Okay, so keep my head on.
Don’t touch silver. Got it.”

Emma looked at me, shocked. “YOU
don’t fight the Portland Alpha, Kai does.”

“Oh.”

 “You’re the prize,” Emma told me.  “And
there’s something you should know about
changed
wolves. The Portland
Alpha is a
changed
Wolf, he wasn’t born that way and so he has a…
gift
.
He is immune to Silver.”

“A gift.” I let that sink in. “So all
changed
wolves have a gift?”

Emma nodded. “You will, too. Once you
shift for the first time it will begin to manifest. The lycanthrope virus binds
to the human DNA and then it activates.”

“Okay, so Kai has to fight another
Alpha who only has one way of being killed, because of his gift.”

“Yes, he can only be killed by blood
loss. But Kai is a
changed
wolf too.” Emma’s eyes gleamed with pride.

“Aurora!” Kai barked. I ran to his
side. He gently took my hand and pulled me to the side yard where we could talk
in private.

“I will fight for you because you’re
mine
.
But I pride myself on doing things differently in my pack. I won’t keep you
here against your will. I know you haven’t had time to learn what being a werewolf
is all about and when I saw you lying in the road on the verge of death, I knew
I had to at least try to give you life. Females that survive the
change
are rare and Dane will try to take you at all costs. If you think you would
like the chance to switch packs, tell me now.”