The Wolf's Mate Book 1: Jason & Cadence (11 page)

For her lunch break, she sat on the hood of
her car after getting a cinnamon bagel and an iced coffee from the
mini-mart down the street, and groused about her current situation.
She couldn't have been more furious at Jason, but also more broken.
He just had no clue how much he hurt her, and he'd been hurting her
for a long time.

"Go away, Michael."

He approached her slowly with his hands up,
like she was going to shoot him and the way she was feeling right
then, if she had access to a gun she might have considered it.
"Listen, about Jason."

"I said 'go away'."

"I heard you, darlin', but you need to hear
me out."

She popped the last part of the bagel that
she hadn't really even tasted into her mouth and hopped off the
hood. "You know what sucks? I've known both packs since before I
can remember. Jason and I used to be really close, even closer than
you and me, and now I can barely stand to be in the same room with
him when he has a tantrum. I must be some kind of idiot for coming
to work here. Chris was right." She wadded up the napkin and
grabbed the empty iced coffee cup.

"What exactly did Chris say?" His voice
tipped angrily.

"He said I was too good for this place. I
didn't think so, originally, I mean it's important to me that the
garage stays open and everything, but I can't help but feel like
I'm some kind of horrible burden to everyone in the Tressel pack.
That's the funny thing about my life lately. Everything I thought I
knew is just disappearing."

"Is this about Jake's pack?" His tone was
accusatory.

As she put her hand on the door to go back
into the garage, she turned, just for a moment and glared at him.
“I am not a fucking trophy to be won!”

He looked confused. “What the hell are you
talking about?”

“Jason has been treating me like the
red-headed stepchild of the town since I was like 11. Now that
Jake’s pack is opening up to me, warming up to me, suddenly
everything is shifting and changing before my eyes. It’s…pathetic.”
Opening the door, she let it slam shut behind her, effectively
ending the conversation.

She went back to the small closet-like office
to clean up the glass, and it was already cleaned up. Shrugging to
herself, she went back to work, trying to dig Jason and his
business out of the hole.

For the remainder of the week, Jason barely
made an appearance to her but she spoke to Chris every night after
work. On Friday, the checks for payroll were cut and she skipped
her own check and paid for her own gas. She didn't need the money
yet, and she'd been wrong in her original calculations that the
business was okay. When he finished his one project, he'd be flush
again, but right now he wasn't. Truth was, she had taken a handful
of accounting classes, but wasn't an accountant, so she wasn't as
clever with finances as someone with more training.

Michael took Jason's check so she didn't have
to see him. Everyone had been acting strangely towards her, and she
was once again feeling like she didn't belong. Chris stopped by her
house after he got off work and she made dinner for them. She was
feeling out of sorts, and he was smart enough, or knew her well
enough, to let her be quiet and unhappy and just hang out. He drove
her to the bar, which was nice, and invited her to sing with them
again.

"Chris?" She looked out the window of the
truck as the darkness sped by. "Why haven't you ever picked a mate?
Every girl in the Garra pack would love to have you."

He took in a slow breath and let it out on a
sigh. "I guess the simplest explanation is that I'm not interested
in any of them. I don't think any of the wolves in the pack right
now are future alpha material. It takes a special woman to lead a
whole pack, to be alpha."

"When your dad steps down, if you're not
mated, then they'll be throwing themselves at you."

He laughed. "Hopefully I'll have convinced
some unsuspecting woman to be mine by then."

She unclicked her seatbelt when he turned off
the engine. "You're a very sweet guy, Chris. I'm glad that I've
gotten to know you better."

"Me, too, sweetheart. I'm just sorry that you
haven't had a good week. Offer still stands," he held his hand out
to her as she got out of the truck and she took it, "to come work
for me at the credit union. Or you could always be my love
slave."

It was her turn to laugh. "Does that come
with dental?"

While she filled drink orders, she mused over
Chris and his thinly veiled flirting, and liked it. He was so
different from Jason. Last week, she couldn't picture him as
anything more than what he had always been, just a friend. But now,
with Jason being so blatantly horrible when he wasn't hiding in the
back of the shop, and Jake's pack being so outwardly accepting of
her, she couldn't help but indulge in her fond feelings for Chris.
He was sexy as hell, funny and smart, and he was going to be alpha.
The only thing that he didn't have going for him, was that he
wasn't Jason. And damned her betraying heart, but when she turned
her thoughts to Chris, Jason clouded her mind.

Chris' band was up on stage and they called
her up, and she went at Jake's urging, singing a handful of songs
and enjoying herself. She was very aware of Jason in his normal
booth, angrily drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Sweaty from
the stage lights and slightly breathless, she hopped off the stage
and walked through the crowd to get back to work when she heard a
very familiar voice say a very familiar and tiresome insult.

Lindy said, "What a fucking mutt." The girls
with her, all from Jason's pack, laughed like it was the funniest
thing they had ever heard, even though she'd been hearing it since
kindergarten. Bitches.

Acting like she hadn't heard, Cadence went
behind the counter and Jake happened to have his back turned to
her, and she took the opportunity to grab the ball bat stashed
underneath and hop over the counter. She heard three different men
- Jake, Chris, and Jason – say almost simultaneously, "Oh
shit!”

Slamming the bat down in the middle of the
table so that the wood split with the force and their drinks
spilled, she grabbed that bitch Lindy by her hair and snatched her
off her seat. "I am so fucking tired," Cadence said, dragging her
behind her through the bar as both Chris and Jason scrambled
towards her, "of hearing that snarky little mouth of yours with
your mutt-this and mutt-that." Cadence tossed her against the wall
by the exit where she crumbled to the floor in a heap, kicked the
door open, grabbed her by her neck and shoved her through.

Lindy stumbled on her hooker heels on the
gravel and spun on her, snarling. Cadence pointed the bat at her.
"You need to keep your fucking mouth shut, or I'm going to shut it
permanently."

"You're not pack, you can't touch me."

"Fuck pack, this is personal."

The crowd spilled around them from the bar to
the back parking lot, and Jake came around to her view. "Cadence,
don't do this. She's not worth it."

"I think I've put up with more than enough
bullshit from the Tressel pack." She darted a glance to Jason who
looked almost proud of her. Chris grinned at her in encouragement,
a few paces away from Jake.

Lindy righted herself finally, and said,
"You're so tough with that ball bat."

She chucked it at Jake, who caught it deftly,
and Cadence took a menacing step towards her, glad she was wearing
leather pants instead of a skirt like her. "Think it through; you
don't want to tangle with me." Cadence said in a low voice, dialing
into the part of her that had been waiting to hurt Lindy for
years.

Lindy launched herself at Cadence, but her
aim was off because of her heels, so she sidestepped and smashed
her fist into Lindy's back, sending her to the ground. Lindy was
fast and strong, but she was no fighter, and Cadence was able to
get her into a headlock without any trouble and force her to
submit. Which she did. Readily. Cadence shoved her away and she
whimpered, sporting scrapes on her palms and knees from when she
went down, and a long scratch on her jaw from where she had hit the
concrete. Cadence cracked her knuckles. "Don't ever call me a mutt
again."

She brushed her hands together and turned to
Jake, "I need a drink."

Everyone left pitiful Lindy on the ground. It
had hardly been worth the effort, but Cadence was not in the mood
to take any more crap from anyone else in the Tressel pack. Chris
and the band went back up to play after Chris kissed her cheek and
tugged a lock of hair, whispering that he was proud of her, and
Jake told her he was going to take the table out of her paycheck
which she said she expected.

After a while, Jason approached the bar and
asked if he could talk to her. She stepped into the back with him,
expecting him to be mad. "I’m really proud of you, Cadence. I've
been waiting for you to put her down; she annoys the hell out of
me." He laughed nervously.

"Glad I could entertain you." She
smirked.

"Listen, about this week. I, I'm sorry. I
know you're helping me out, but it's hard for me to admit that I
was hurting the business because I didn't know what I was doing. I
would never forgive myself if I let the business go under."

"I won't let that happen, Jason."

He sighed and rubbed his temple. "Michael
told me that you said you feel like I’ve mistreated you since you
were 11. Is that true?"

"Kind of. I think that was when I started to
really feel like I didn't belong. You just have no idea what it's
like for me with one foot in each world. I wish that things were
simple, like I could just be pack or just be human, but neither is
really home for me. It's getting old, chasing a tail I don't have
and trying to please people that don't want me around."

"The pack, my pack, the reason they act like
that is because you're single, you're a threat."

"Yeah, Chris told me that. But Jake's pack
doesn't treat me like that, and," she sighed, "it's just nice to
have things be simple. I know you don't like Chris, but he's easy
to be around. He doesn't make me feel inadequate." She glanced at
her watch. "I should get back. Thanks for not blowing your stack."
She kissed his cheek quickly and walked back out to the bar.

Chris drove her home and kissed her at the
door, and she fell asleep thinking about how strange her life was
turning out.

Chapter 6

A lot bothered Jason as he went home Friday
night. Cadence had been angry at work the whole week, clearly his
fault of course, but he hadn't been able to tell her on Tuesday
that he was embarrassed about everything, how he'd nearly ruined
his family's business. The revelation from Michael had hit him like
a ton of bricks, because of course when she was 11 he had turned
his back on her. He hadn't realized until that moment how
vulnerable she must have felt even though he had watched her more
closely from that point on than he had even before. He was
practically a stalker until she went to college, shifting and
keeping watch on her house at night, even sleeping out in the
woods, just to be near her. Her safety was the most important thing
to him and until she confided in Michael, he hadn't realized how
much she had missed him, how much she valued him. Once again he was
angry that he'd not handled things right back then.

He'd been so proud of her for kicking Lindy's
ass, and she'd done it like a true alpha. She had put her down,
made her submit, and then threatened her to try it again. She'd
been graceful and incredible, and there wasn't a female in either
pack that was going to insult her anytime soon. Of course, if she
actually became alpha she'd probably have to do it again, just for
good measure, but that was part of being alpha. And she would be a
great alpha.

The weekend passed incredibly slowly. He went
into the shop on Saturday; desperately trying to finish the bike to
bring the money in that he had known was more than needed. He went
into the office, telling himself that he needed to check over the
books and see what she had done, but he really wanted to smell her
scent in the small room. Sitting in the more than comfortable
chair, it was like her scent called to him. He closed his eyes and
took a deep breath, tasting and scenting the air for her, the scent
of her combined perfume and skin like an aphrodisiac. The flowers
were gone, thankfully, he hadn't been able to look into the office
without wanting to hunt Chris down and tear his throat out. As he
flipped on the computer and waited for it to boot up, he opened the
desk drawer to find a pen and found the card that came with her
flowers. He frowned as he read it, because he didn't know what it
meant, but clearly it was something that she and Chris had done
together, maybe when they were kids? What bothered him more was
that Chris had signed the card "love".

She'd done an amazing job on the finances in
the short time she'd been buried in them, and then he realized with
shock what she'd done. She hadn't paid herself. Granted, her
paycheck should only have been about $300, but she'd blanked
herself out of the books for the week, drawing a big fat zero for
her salary but paying him and everyone else full, even catching up
on some past overtime he hadn't been able to pay. Stalking to the
front to check credit card receipts, he saw her scribbled signature
on her charge for a full tank of gas on Friday.

"Need something, Jason?" Fritz asked, coming
in from pumping a tank of gas.

Shoving the receipt back into the cash drawer
he grunted at the young wolf and walked out. She wasn't home and
she wasn't at the restaurant. He caught her scent and saw her when
he drove by the park. She was lying down on a picnic tabletop, one
knee up, talking to Chris who was sitting on top of the table next
to her. How had Chris gotten his claws into her so fast? Originally
he thought that Chris was merely a small annoyance, but he was flat
out trying to turn her to him. Two weeks into his sentence and he
felt like he was fast losing what little ground he had.