The Wolf's Mate Book 1: Jason & Cadence (13 page)

Linus laughed. “It’s like lo-jack for mates.
Someone finds your mate and they return them to you untouched.
Dig?”

Her voice was breathy, light. “I dig.”

Jason had a feeling she was itching to touch
her neck. Her whole body was screaming in protest of sitting still.
But she stayed firmly rooted to her seat and listened as the boys
switched topics smoothly and began talking about their exploits.
The seed had been sown. She’d get the connection, he was sure of
it. Neck. Bite. Mate. He willed her to know it, to understand it,
and cross the bridge to him.

As the meal dwindled to a close, he rapped
his knuckles on the table and everyone went silent. “Alright, then,
gentlemen, and Cadence, on to business.”

For the next hour, they talked pack business
in more depth than normal. By the time they were both watching the
men leave on their bikes, she’d had a crash course in pack dealings
and had made some good observations and comments when prompted by
him to speak her mind. She had fit in even more smoothly than he’d
expected and he couldn’t have been happier at this moment. Well, he
could be much, much happier, but this was good for happiness of the
clothes-on variety.

“Want me to help you clean up the
kitchen?”

“Nah. I’m hoping the dish fairy will show up
while I’m sleeping.” She yawned and stretched, making a little
squeaking noise.
Adorable female
.

He looked up at the half moon. “Well, if she
does show up, send her my way, okay?”

“Sure thing, Jas. Thanks. For tonight.”

“For what?”

“For including me. You didn’t have to, but I
appreciate the gesture. You guys were never the problem with me
feeling like I belong here. You know?”

“I was a problem.”

“You are a problem on a good day.” Her biting
sarcasm was gone; her tone was all light teasing and friendship.
He’d broken down part of her armor today, her shielding around
herself that kept her apart from him. If she wouldn’t think he was
nuts, he’d break out in show tunes.

“True. I was miserable for a long time.”

He turned towards her and had every intention
of doing some large romantic gesture, sweeping her off her feet and
kissing her until they were both dizzy from lack of oxygen, but she
blocked the effort with a chaste kiss and a gentle “goodnight” and
shut him out of the house. Still, he had a spring in his step when
he strode to his bike. Thanks to Jake’s little teen wolf problem,
and his sage advice, he’d just closed the distance between himself
and Cadence in a way that Chris would never be able to. Chris might
be able to give her the girls of the pack to go out drinking with,
but he could never bring her to a pack meeting with Jake as alpha,
and what Cadence clearly craved was a home and family. Not just bar
buddies. That, he could most certainly do. And he would. As much as
he’d complained about his parents growing up, and his idiot
brother, Cadence had one hell of a rough upbringing. But that
diamond tough exterior was what he loved, almost as much as the
melty, gooey girl that teared up when King Kong died.

His family would be hers, the pack would take
her in as one of their own, and he’d have what he’d craved since he
first knew they were mates. He just wanted her. All her ups. All
her downs. He wanted her hand in his firmly and her heart forever.
No small order, but it finally felt like things were shifting his
way.

Chapter 7

Waking up with the alarm on Tuesday morning,
Cadence grumbled and hit the snooze and rolled over. She hadn’t
slept well. It wasn’t the teenager that had been sniffing around,
it was everything that happened after that. Something stirred in
her from the pack meeting, and it wasn’t just all that talk about
mate marking. She felt like a part of her had belonged there with
the pack. And not because she was friends with them, but because
they were looking at her like she was one of them.

All night, her mind had been working in
overdrive, sorting through the past and trying to mesh up jumbled
images and fuzzy memories. She’d get her head wrapped around
something and another piece would come unraveled. Where’s that
20/20 hindsight she'd heard so much about?

When the snooze went off for the fourth time,
and she hadn’t managed to do anything but become more annoyed at
the sound of the alarm, she got up and showered. She would
seriously need a gallon of coffee.

While she dried her hair, she bent over
slightly, and caught a flash of a white mark on her neck. Pausing,
she touched the four scars that she'd had as long as she could
remember. She could feel them, slightly rougher and warmer than the
surrounding skin but virtually unnoticeable against her fair
coloring except when her light summer sun-kissed skin kicked in.
Only one person had ever asked her about them besides her father,
and it had been one of her roommates in college. Cadence told her
what she knew to be the truth, except it had come out of her mouth
like tacks, as if she were purposely lying and the truth was
waiting to be set free.

“I fell into a rosebush and got cut on the
thorns,” she told her. Gretchen. Snotty attitude, typical campus
slut. She had looked disappointed, like she thought the story
should have been better, and it was the first time that Cadence
gave them any serious thought.

Until now. She clucked at herself in the
mirror. Those marks seemed awfully familiar and meaningful. She
finished drying her hair, dressed for work and drove in. She made
coffee and watched the pot, which made it seem to drip slower.
Perhaps, like pots of water waiting to boil, watched coffee pots
didn’t drip.

“Hey baby girl.” Michael sidled up to the
counter and looked expectantly at the coffee.

“Hey Michael. What’s doing?”

“Nada. Boss is cracking my ass to finish the
engine overhaul on that Chevy out back.”

“He’s a real slave driver.” She gave him a
wink and he grinned. “Hey, can I ask you something about
wolves?”

He looked pleasantly surprised. “Of course.
My vast knowledge of everything is at your disposal.”

She snorted.
What a dink
. “With the
thing with Casper and his girl, was there more to it than the, you
know, biting?” She made a gesture to her neck as if he wouldn’t
know what she was talking about.

“You mean, how does it all go down?”

“Yeah.” She shrugged as if she was just
asking for conversation’s sake, except that wasn’t the case. She
had marks. She
had
marks. Didn’t she? All she could see of
Casper’s skin was hickey-like bruises and teeth marks, but not four
marks like hers.

“Well, it depends on the wolves. You know the
story of my folks?” She nodded. “Yeah, well, most of the time
there’s a public announcement, what they call a public marking. And
then there’s a private one, which is the one with teeth. But a real
marking, doll, is just one mark, over the spine with the fangs. The
rest of Casper’s bruise-job was because they were having sex,
too.”

Her face lit with blush. She was no prude,
but she liked bedroom things to be private. Michael enjoyed her
embarrassment and she knew he’d say something ridiculous and make
it worse so she saved him the trouble. “You ever marked
anyone?”

He barked out a laugh. “Do I look
married?”

“Married?”

“Yeah. I mean it’s not like rough sex, okay?
It’s not about pain for pleasure’s sake or any of that good stuff.
It’s an I’m yours, you’re mine sort of thing. It’s for bonding. And
mate bonding is for life.”

The front door rang and he said, “Oops,
Jason’s here. I gotta jam before he’s got my hide tacked to his
wall. Later.” He snaked the coffee pot out and filled his cup
before darting off.

On auto-pilot, Cadence went through the
motions of filling up her coffee mug and passed Jason in the hall
before shutting the door to her office and trying to get her head
together. He’d smiled and said good morning, but there was nothing
more than that in his eyes. Now last night, she’d been positive he
would have kissed her if she'd waited him out, and she didn’t want
that. Well, she damn well did want that a lot, but she wanted some
space first. A good night’s sleep was in order, but it turns out
she didn’t get one. What she would have liked better than going to
bed alone, was having someone to talk to. She considered calling
Jason a hundred times. And Chris. But something wasn’t sitting
right with her, and that feeling she had when she first got to
town, that everyone knew something about her and wasn’t telling
her, reared its head. She tried to tamp it down, but it stayed put
like that, until she had to get out of the office and take a
walk.

When she got back from lunch, Jason was at
the front counter. “Hey. I was going to offer to take you to
Lonestar’s but you disappeared. Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to get some fresh air.
Maybe tomorrow?”

He nodded, “Sure thing.”

When work was done, she said goodnight to
him, while he was buried up to his elbows in grease and he flashed
her a sweet smile that made his one dimple even deeper and she went
home. To the empty house. There was something wildly unsatisfying
about cooking dinner for herself after just the night before having
a houseful of rambunctious wolves. And damn it, she’d forgotten to
hit the grocery store on the way home, so she was rocking a box of
powdered mac and cheese and nothing else.

Chris called about seven, when she was
flipping through channel after channel and thinking she should have
gotten the movie channels when she paid for the satellite service.
He asked her to go out to dinner on Wednesday. She hesitated,
because if she was going to eat a big lunch with Jason tomorrow,
then dinner would be out, so she suggested Thursday instead, and
when she hung up, she felt unsettled. Oddly, her head was telling
her that she was cheating, that Chris wasn’t right for her. Giving
up on the TV, she went to bed, muzzling the voice in her head.

Jason didn’t even look at the menu when they
sat down for lunch. Cadence did, just to have something to do.
They’d both grown up eating at the restaurant because it was the
only one in town, and since Grey took over, there hadn’t been any
changes to the menu. It was all typical southern meat and potatoes
stuff. Her father had been a good chef, but not a particularly
creative one. His culinary skills were just about his only
redeeming quality. Of the handful of decent memories she had of
him, they all revolved around food. Him teaching her how to make
something, or the one birthday he didn’t ignore when he made
waffles as big as dinner plates and drew smiley faces on them with
syrup.

She realized that Jason was talking. “I’m
sorry, Jas, what did you say?”

“I asked what you’re thinking about so
seriously?”

She made a face. “My father.”

He made a face and it made her chuckle,
sadly. No one liked her father. But he must have had some redeeming
qualities if her mother had married him.

And then he said something that surprised
her. “I don’t really remember much about him or your mom from that
time because I was so young. She hung out with Renee, because they
were so close. But we were neighbors, and I do remember that they
used to do cookouts for both packs, like we do now, except they’d
take one of the Saturdays and another from my father’s pack would
take another one, so that it wasn’t always back and forth between
my dad’s and Jake’s. She was in Jake’s pack of course, but, from
what I remember even back then, it was strained with your dad. I
think he was like Linus’ ex-wife. A part of him was excited by the
wolf part of your mother, but for the most part he wanted the human
life and didn’t want her pulled towards the pack and away from
him.”

Before she could say anything, one of the
waitresses took their order, and when they were alone he continued,
“I think it’s harder for the mixed relationships, when one of the
couple isn’t part of the pack. Linus made the mistake of marrying a
woman that was only in it because she was hot for his wolf, but
when the glow faded and he had responsibilities that he couldn’t
walk away from, then that was it for her. Sometimes the pack has to
come first. I don’t think your folks were married all that long
before she was taken. He’d just started the restaurant, and I do
remember overhearing my dad and Jake talk about buying the
restaurant from him, but he wouldn’t sell. Maybe he stuck it out
because he knew you would need the pack someday.”

The thought of her father doing something
unselfish like that for her sat about as right as a hand on a hot
stove. “That’s a nice thought, but I don’t think he stayed here for
me. I don’t think he…gave me much thought at all.” She cleared her
throat at the sudden lump and looked away. Jason looked so caring
and thoughtful at that moment, that all she could think about doing
was climbing into his lap and letting him hold her.

She liked to be in control. She spent her
childhood not letting her father know that he could hurt her
emotionally by poking at the part of her that wasn’t human. To do
that she’d gotten very good at shuttering her emotions so that her
face was blank, neutral. But Jason’s very blue eyes were following
her like a laser and it was all she could do right then not to fall
apart.

“You know what? I think it would be nice if
you wanted to host a bonfire one of these weekends. Your property
is plenty big.” He changed the topic so smoothly that she almost
cried in relief at the weight that was shifted off her shoulders.
“One of the ones in November, this weekend is too close, and next
week is the full moon so the, you know, the whole thing is
different.”

While they waited for their food, he talked
animatedly about the bonfires and their history. Originally they’d
been set up to bring the packs together on the full moon only. It
was the alphas before Jake and Peter had taken over that thought of
it, because both packs were small and could help keep each other
safe. It had grown from there over the years.