Mistakenly Mated (2 page)

“I…I was just curious. I don’t understand what happened.”

“You weren’t invited. Unmated females are never invited.”

Kerry slowly found her nerve. “You’re an unmated female and you were there. I didn’t mean any harm. I’m not exactly fucking happy about this either.”

The statuesque blonde had glacial blue eyes like icy daggers ready to strike. She turned her anger onto the man, Caleb, who stood just down the fence from them.

“Why Caleb? I was right there. Why?”

Caleb stuck out his jaw, tired of being yelled at.

“Honestly, she just smelled better. Warm.” He licked his lips, looking at Kerry. “Wet and inviting.”

The blonde growled, grabbing the edges of Kerry’s blanket and pulling it open so she could see her naked body. Kerry was shorter, slightly more round and curvy, with larger breasts and wider hips.

“She’s fat!”

“Hey,” said Kerry, pulling the blanket tight to cover herself.

Caleb stalked closer to them, letting a growl roll over his tongue. The blonde took a step backwards after hearing him make that sound at her.

“She’s my mate, Avrilyne. Be polite.”

“I should have been your mate,” she whined. The edges of her eyes watered. Avrilyne covered her face with her hands to cry.

Kerry noticed everyone was watching the three of them. An older woman—who looked very much like Avrilyne and must have been her mother—led her away to sit in a saloon car parked on the nearby street. A man in his early fifties approached and Kerry recognized him as, not only the town mayor, but the head of pack affairs.

“Young lady,” he said, addressing her. “You need to understand the severity of what’s gone on here. You were someplace you were not supposed to be. You spoiled a mating between two prominent families.”

“Yes, sir but I don’t understand what happened. I was just watching. I didn’t do anything.”

“Your scent drew Caleb away. When you ran, Caleb followed. Intentional or not, you led him away where no one could stop you from coupling. If I believed you planned this, I would bring down severe punishment on both you and your family.”

Kerry looked stricken.

“Oh no, sir. I promise you I didn’t plan it. I have or I did have a boyfriend.”

He grunted in acknowledgment.

“A norm? Well you’re going to have to give that up. You have a mate now. This was supposed to be a black-silver marriage.”

Werewolves were divided into cast by the color of their fur in wolf form. Black was top so Kerry knew Caleb was someone of great prominence. Next came silver and then brown. The marriages were decided by which color was in decline that year. If a black and silver wolf mated you got black cubs. Black and brown you got silver cubs. Silver and Brown you got brown cubs. The man rubbed his temples, trying to find an upside.

“Are you at least silver yourself?”

Kerry shook her head and the man sighed.

“That’s going to unbalance things for a generation, maybe two. You brown wolves just can’t seem to learn your place. Why couldn’t you wait for your own ceremony? You’re of age so it wouldn’t be long.”

“I wasn’t supposed to have one,” admitted Kerry sheepishly.

“What? What are you babbling about, girl?”

Kerry braced herself like she was about to receive a blow.

“My parents were mated out-of-ceremony, sir. They’re both brown but I’m not.”

The older man’s eyes widened and he gaped.

“What? What are you saying?”

“She’s saying…” said Caleb, placing his hands on her shoulders reassuringly, “she’s a white wolf.”

“This is a disaster,” he cried, stomping off to break the bad news to the spectators out of ear shot.

When two black, two silver, or two brown mated out-of-ceremony, meaning the couple mated for love instead of breeding, they ran the risk of producing a white wolf child. Nine times out of ten, they just got a child the same as themselves which wasn’t welcome but forgivable. A white wolf child of such unions was banned from mating into the group because the white wolves are cursed creatures in their lore. White wolves more often than not married humans, having norm babies because there was no one alive anymore who knew what you got if a white mixed with the other colors, only that it was very undesirable.

The man in the well-cut suit who yelled at Caleb a lot earlier was having palpitations, so the crowd focused on him.

Kerry turned and faced Caleb. “You saw what color I am when I shifted. Why did you keep chasing?”

“Honestly?” He said with a wicked grin, “I was too busy thinking about this.”

Caleb ran his hand down her belly, between her thighs and then pushed two fingers inside her. Kerry shuddered.

“I wasn’t lying when I said you smelled better. Sweeter.” He flexed his fingers inside her, making her fall against him for support as her knees threatened to buckle. “Even now, I can smell it. Your body is more responsive and wetter. It wants me more.” Kerry moaned as his fingers teased her. “It was more inviting than the acrid, cold smell Avrilyne gave off. I wanted to bury myself in your warmth so I did.”

A battered Chevy that Kerry knew well screeched to a halt on the street. She pushed Caleb’s hand away forcefully as a man and woman got out. The woman was short and stout with a halo of the same red gold hair as Kerry. The man was whip thin, with mousey brown hair and a pissed look on his face. The woman bustled over to Kerry, taking her face in her palms.

“Oh, my baby. Are you alright? I bought you a change of clothes. Are you hurt? Scratches? Bites? Bruises? Mrs. Abbanathy has invoked the gossip chain already. Leanne called me.” Leanne was the mother of Kerry’s best friend Susan. Kerry peeled the hands back from her face. Caleb smiled at his mate indulgently and ran his gaze up and down his mate.

“Momma, I’m fine. Thanks for the clothes.” Kerry took the offered plastic bag and was happy to pull on a new pair of shorts and a fresh T-shirt.

Kerry’s father walked right up to Caleb and slugged him in the jaw.

“I don’t care who you are, no body deflowers my baby,” he growled angrily. Caleb smelled the motor oil on the man’s hand as it connected with his face. He felt the pain rocket through the bone, his head spun. The world seemed to rush around his ears like buzzing insects as he wobbled, lost his balance, and fell to the ground. He tasted dirt. His first reaction was amazement. No one ever hit him like that before. Caleb looked up and at Kerry’s father and flexed his jaw.

Kerry grabbed hold of her father. “Daddy, stop that!”

Her father wrapped his arms around her, stroking her hair.

“Nobody touches you, pumpkin. We’re taking you home, right now.”

Her mother flanked her on the other side so she had no choice but to let them lead her to the car. Everyone around her, when she dared to dart looks up at them from under her lashes, looked shocked, a few looked angry, and one or two looked disgusted. Kerry kept her eyes down until her mother ushered her into the back seat and the door shut behind her. Two more clangs let her know her parents had gotten in the front. . Kerry swallowed hard and taking a deep breath, looked back through the car window to see Caleb slowly getting back to his feet.

“Kerry Ann Bradley,” her mother called from the front seat, “what were you doing at a mating dance? You were not invited; even your father and I don’t get invited to those anymore.”

Kerry crossed her arms over her chest defensively like a petulant child rather than the twenty-three-year-old woman she was.

“I was curious Momma. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Paulie’s got his next month and Susan the month after that.”

Her mother’s face softened.

“Baby, what have I told you about prying into other people’s business? They don’t like it. You’ve gone and upset a lot of people tonight. When Daddy and I got word of what had happened, we thought they might kill you.”

“Is that why you took me away so fast?”

“They’re going to have to get through me if they want to touch a hair on your hide,” mumbled her father from behind the wheel.

“You were supposed to come straight home from Dick’s. Why can’t you ever just do what you’re supposed to?”

Kerry mashed her butt into the seat, settling into a bad mood and glaring at her mother from the back seat. “If anyone in this family did what they were supposed to, I wouldn’t have been born.”

Her parents exchanged a look. They had defied pack law, ignored what their families wanted and gone with their hearts. Both brown wolves, it hadn’t mattered all that much in the scheme of things till this night when their white wolf daughter became mated.

“That brute thought he could just have my baby,” her father growled angrily, warping the steering wheel a little as he gripped it too tight. Her momma rolled her eyes.

“Daddy is stuck in protective father mode right now, honey. When he calms down he’ll remember how overpowering the mating dance can be for a young wolf and that you and Dick,” she said, her lips quirking, “were well acquainted before this.”

Kerry blushed. Her daddy caught her with Dick only the summer before, after that “that goddamn norm boy” had all his visits supervised. So, when they wanted to have sex, Kerry went to Dick’s apartment across town. That far away her daddy could neither hear it, smell it, or walk in on it—which by far made him a much calmer person.

Kerry turned to look out the back window with an emptiness in the pit of her belly. She placed her hand against it.

“Oh, sugar pie, you miss him already?”

“No,” she said drawing her hand back sharply. “I hardly know the guy.”

“Don’t make a difference, honey. He’s your mate so you’re going to crave him with a bone deep ache for the rest of your lives.”

“Unless I go back and kill the son of a bitch right now!”

“Daddy!” Kerry scolded him.

He looked at her in the rear view mirror. She gave him her serious face.

“Can I just wail on him till he cries ‘uncle’?”

“No. Stop blaming him, Daddy,” she said, burying her face in her hands. “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have been there. Momma was right, I should have come straight home and not been there where he could smell me and pick me instead.”

“Pick you instead? You mean they’d already trotted out some girl for him and he chased you down instead?”

“Yeah—some tall, gorgeous, blonde who called me fat. He said I smelled better. Is that because I’m white?”

Her mother looked at her and then looked at her father. Kerry could tell that they didn’t know.

“Don’t think about it anymore. We’re almost home. We’ll get you in the shower and then off to bed. Sort it all out in the morning.”

Chapter Three

Despite her mother’s reassurances Kerry didn’t sleep well. She slept but she had a half-dream, half-nightmare. She was back there at the fence with Caleb, his body a blur of speed as he thrust in and out of her, making her moan. On the other side, through the fence she saw Dick, shocked and appalled at her wanton behavior. He kept asking her why she had done this to him? She woke in a cold sweat only to go back to sleep and have the same dream over and over again.

So, Kerry yawned her way through the first hour of her shift, standing behind the cashier’s counter of the small bookshop, Bart’s Books, where she worked. It was a Sunday so foot traffic was minimal. Her boss, Bart of Bart’s Books, was out back boxing up online orders to ship at the post office on Monday.

Kerry was all alone in the front of the shop after an hour and half of being open and feeling more awake. She pulled out a small book her mother gave her that morning over breakfast entitled,
What to Expect When You’re Mated
. Her grandmother gave it to her mother and now her mother was giving it to Kerry, assuring her that it was very informative.

Resting her arms on the counter, she opened to the first page past the index.
Chapter One–The Mating Dance.

The mating dance was first established in early Christian times as a way to be certain of breeding lineages. A space is chosen and warded off so that no human interlopers wander into it accidentally. A huge bonfire is lit in the center of the space as most of the procedure is conducted naked to keep the participants warm. The unmated male is seated next to the fire while mated couples dance and then copulate around him; this changes the atmosphere which the male absorbs. An unmated female merely watching the dancing can send her into heat so that her body is prepared to accept a mate. When the man is ready, he will rise and his chosen mate will be displayed before him so he may take her as his. This will be witnessed by the mated couples, mated members of their families, and community. Unmated siblings or friends are not invited to attend in case the ceremony affects them.*

There was an asterisk so Kerry dropped her eyes to the relevant footnote.

*A case in Kentucky states than an unmated sibling attended her brothers mating and went into heat at the same time. The ceremony ended with the sibling mated instead of with the intended. However this being Kentucky, no one seemed to mind.

Poor Kentuckians. Riston, Georgia wasn’t exactly the capital of sophistication either but still Kerry smirked. At least her people had a sense of humor about things. It was followed by a list of unsuitable attendees, this included those who were clan shamed, unmated friends and siblings, humans and white wolves—unmated or mated. Then there were several diagrams showing how best to lay out the space, a list of appropriate musical choices, and polite topics of conversation for before, during, and after the ceremony. For instance it was perfectly all right to comment on another wolf’s mate’s breasts during the ceremony when he couldn’t hear you but remarking on them after was considered tactless and perverted. Kerry skipped forward to the next chapter.
Chapter Two–Understanding Your Physical Feeling Against Your Emotional.