by Amanda LeMay
“Three? Three years old? So young?” I was shocked.
“Yeah, but we make sure they get lots of play time within the pack, so it’s not like we lock them away. They need that interaction with others of their own age.”
I shook my head, bewildered. “All the offspring in the City pack are home-schooled until they’re at least sixteen and then if they do attend school, it’s a private one and the sexes are separated. There is no dating. Rule would never allow it.”
Jessy folded her arms and arched an eyebrow as her eyes did a quick sweep of my body. “Rule is one controlling SOB, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” I nodded then looked down and noticed my own arms folded over my breasts, as if the clothing I had on did nothing to hide the scars on my skin.
It could have been worse.
I breathed in and exhaled slowly. Start small. Say the words. “Yes, Jessy. There are serious consequences when a pack member breaks Rule’s law.” Like death.
Jessy and Maygan exchanged a look.
“I’m guessing that’s not how other packs treat their young.”
“Well, yeah, you’re right about that.” Jessy smiled, but I could tell she was just as confused as I was.
“I understand that I’ve led a sheltered life...”
“Extremely sheltered life.” Jessy huffed.
“Yes, extremely sheltered, I agree. But...” I blinked back tears I didn’t want to shed. It was stupid to cry at this point. I knew what I needed to do and I had to adjust. “If I’m going to make it out in the world, in another pack, I have a lot to learn. I definitely don’t want to break any laws because I’m unaware they exist.”
“I think it would be best if Gunner fills you in on pack laws.” Maygan glanced over at Jessy, who gave a small nod in agreement.
Jessy handed me a cup of coffee just as Maygan placed a plate full of food down on the table in front of me. The amount of thick, smoky bacon covering my plate was enough to feed four or five.
“Oh, wow! This smells...” The steam floating up from the plate was rich with the smell of fresh-baked biscuits, pepper, and bacon. “Divine. Yes, just divine.” Creamy gravy dripped from the first bite of biscuit that truly melted in my mouth. The crunchy bacon was glazed with a sweet, peppery syrup that went perfectly with the thick gravy. I let out a moan. “This tastes so good.”
“You’re welcome.” Maygan grinned. “Now, there’s no big rush, Simone, but Gunner is expecting Dain and Jessy to bring you over soon and I thought you might like to freshen up a bit before you go.”
My next bite stuck in my throat. Gunner. It would be up to him if I stayed or if I went. I took a sip of coffee to help clear my throat as my stomach clenched. I would need to show him my brands. Tell him my story.
But...it needed to be done. And I needed to do it.
I would have to suck up my pride if I expected anyone’s help.
Be strong.
No Alpha would allow a weak wolf to join their pack, breed with their...
No. I will never breed.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t dishonorable to run from abuse. It was smart.
“Yes, I’d like to take a quick shower.” I looked up at Jessy. “Would you mind trimming my hair? It’s such...a disaster...it’s embarrassing.”
“Sure, it’ll be my pleasure.”
“Thank you.” I forced a smile I really didn’t feel. “I’m not sure it matters. Gunner’s already seen me at my worst. I guess, I just need him to see I can contribute, be productive, be useful. I...” I clenched my fists as my heart began racing. “I...refuse to allow the abuse I suffered by Rule’s hand to ruin my entire life!”
“Simone.”
When I opened my mouth again, I couldn’t hide the panic in my voice. “I have nowhere else to go.”
And why did the thought of Gunner sending me away hurt my heart so bad?
“Simone, look at me.” Maygan leaned across the dining table, inches from my face. “Gunner will not refuse you. The Comfort pack is your home now. Don’t you doubt it for one more second.”
Hopeful tears burned my eyes even though I couldn’t erase the doubt from my heart. “You can’t know that.”
Maygan and Jessy shared a look before focusing on me again.
“Oh yeah, we can.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
AS I STOOD ON THE PORCH just outside the front doors, the smell of dirt, horses, cows, and green plants invaded my nose and lungs. The early morning sun had started to heat the air far beyond what I was accustomed to in San Francisco. I glanced into the yard and felt as if I were intruding on another private moment. Dain and Jessy seemed wrapped up in their own little world as they gazed into each other’s eyes. Tears blurred my vision as their lips met in a tender kiss, full of love.
As they broke the kiss, Dain leaned down and whispered something into Jessy’s ear. Jessy laughed and reached up to cup her mate between his legs. Shocked, I let out a gasp that had them both looking in my direction. Dain smiled and even from where I stood, the blush covering his cheeks stood out like a bright pink sunrise. He turned and swung up onto the horse that stood saddled and waiting at his side.
“You ready for that haircut?” Jessy asked as she walked toward me. “Not that I’m a professional, but I do give Dain a trim every now and then and he hasn’t complained. I mean, how badly can I screw up cutting a straight line, right?” She laughed and for some strange reason, the sound of her pretty laughter brought tears to my eyes.
Jessy led me to the bedroom she shared with Dain. Everything was purely masculine—dark wood, dark rich colors, somewhat spartan in decoration. No evidence of Jessy at all. It must have been Dain’s bedroom before she moved in.
In the bathroom, Jessy had set up a small chair in front of the mirror. She’d placed a large hair clip, scissors, and a comb on the counter. I had always enjoyed the sensation of someone gently combing through my hair, pampering me even though it was only a trim. Besides my regular manicure, a trim was all I ever had done at a salon.
“You have such beautiful hair,” Jessy murmured.
The praise startled me, especially since my hair was presently a disaster.
“I...uh...”
I couldn’t remember the last time someone had paid me a true compliment and not just something said as part of customer service. Not knowing how to respond, I stared at her reflection in the mirror.
Jessy smiled and said, “I really mean it.”
I swallowed and inhaled in a breath. “Thank you.”
She parted my hair into two layers, twisted the top layer into a small bun, and secured it with the hair clip on the top of my head.
“My hair is so fine I don’t have much choice but to keep it short, and moussed to the max.”
“Your hair always looks pretty.”
“Thanks. At least I can rock the messy bed-head look.” Her smile reflected in the mirror. “And it’s easy.”
Happiness seemed to flow off Jessy, fill her up. It was almost infectious.
“Is that how it’s supposed to be?” I asked as I looked at Jessy’s contented reflection. “Are we supposed to mate and spend the rest of our lives with one wolf?”
Jessy nodded. “Yep. It doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes one mate dies way too young, like my mom. Sometimes you go on. Sometimes you can’t. Sometimes, fate throws another perfect mate in your path and you end up like my dad and Maygan. Sometimes you find that one true mate and even though you go through rough spots, argue, fight, have lots and lots of crazy make-up sex. You do anything and everything you can to be with that perfect mate.”
With a snip, snip, snip of scissors, Jessy trimmed away part of my ugly past and let it fall to the floor, to be swept up and tossed in the garbage.
If it were only that easy to cut out all the ugliness and bring some beauty back into my life.
I sighed and watched Jessy’s reflection in the mirror as she focused on my hair.
“How do you know when you’ve found the one?
”
“I guess some couples know for certain right off the bat, but me and Dain...we kind of fought the pull. For me, when I saw Dain for the very first time, I wanted him so damn bad, I would’ve let him mount me right there, in front of all the ancient gods and everyone. I couldn’t help it. At the time, I thought it was just a physical thing, you know, because he’s so freaking hot and we were at a Moon Dance with sex happening around us. But I never got close to him and nothing happened.”
A moon dance?
I opened my mouth to ask, but Jessy continued on, both with her tale of how she met her mate and trimming my hair.
“I saw him again at our parents’ mating, but I scared him off. Then, like an idiot, I had a few nasty words with my dad, and took off. That’s when I moved up to San Francisco. I never felt right the entire time I was living there. Something was always missing in my life and I thought it was because I missed my family and friends. No matter how much I tried to keep busy with work, I always felt kind of empty. When I showed up for Christmas vacation, we pretty much figured it out together. Really fast. Like...having-crazy-hot-sex-on-the-floor by the next night, fast.”
I stifled a giggle. “Wow, that is fast.”
“From what I understand from other wolves who’ve found their sakana, fast is normal. Trying to fight what nature’s intended is like trying to stop your heart from beating.”
“Sakana?”
“Yeah, sakana, you know, the one.”
“There’s a word for finding your perfect mate?”
“You’ve never heard that term?”
“No.”
“Fucking Rule, keeping all y’all so isolated. He’s running that pack like a freaking dictator, not a true Alpha.”
All y’all. The words repeated in my head and made me smile. Jessy didn’t seem to have the strong Texas accent like her dad, Maygan, and Dain, but every once in a while, a word or phrase would slip through, a glad reminder of where I was and why.
“Well, a sakana bond is rare. Not all mated wolves experience it.” She released my hair from the clip, parted it again, wound up the knot and clipped it back on my head before she combed out the new section. “What I mean is we don’t go out of our way not to fall in love with another wolf just because we may not have a sakana bond with them.”
“What happens if you’re already mated to another and you happen to meet your sakana?”
“My dad said it happens and when it does, unless all the wolves involved can work it out, it can end up pretty sad.”
“The only wolves I’ve ever associated with were the ones I grew up with. Well...and the few tourists I’ve met, and of course, the one male from college. I haven’t been around enough wolves in my life to know the first thing about finding a mate. Not that...” I shook my head.
Not that any male would have me now.
The smile fell from my lips at the not-so-glad reminder.
Jessy looked into the mirror and caught my eyes. “Simone...let’s get you settled before you start worrying about finding a mate, okay?”
Yes. “You’re right.”
I scanned the sparkling pattern in the granite countertop. Why the thought of finding a mate even passed my lips was ridiculous. Mating was something that would never happen to me. Not now. Not after Rule had ruined any chance I would ever have for the kind of happiness Jessy shared with Dain. And why I even gave it any thought was crazy. Mating was never an option for me before, and now I felt as though it were a lifelong dream that had been crushed and ruined.
Jessy caught my eyes in the mirror. “So, I was wondering, why doesn’t anyone in your pack ever mate? I don’t remember seeing any offspring running around or ever overheard anyone talk about their offspring or show off family pictures. It’s just kinda weird.” The scissors snipped away again.
“We—I mean,” I shook my head. “They don’t celebrate ‘family’. When females come into heat, Rule selects a male to sire the offspring. We never know who it is until our heat cycles with the full moon. And afterward, the mother stays in seclusion until after the offspring is born. No one talks about who they bred with. It’s a sacred honor to even be chosen to breed and it’s kept very secret.”
“Sacred honor? That sick sonofabitch. Shit, he’s got you all brainwashed. ” Jessy growled. “And what about the older wolves? I don’t remember ever meeting one silver wolf.”
“Silver wolves?”
“Yeah, the wolves who’d hit the century mark.”
“Century mark?”
“Yeah. After we hit a hundred years, we start to get a little silver around the ears, like Gunner.”
“Only Alphas live that long.”
“Um...no. All wolves live that long, and longer. Didn’t you know that? Hell, my dad is ninety-three.”
“What?” I shook my head as my hands clenched into tight fists in my lap. “How long do we live?”
“On average, three hundred years. Breeders tend to live a little longer, but yeah, in general, it’s about three hundred.”
Three hundred years?
“No. That can’t be,” I whispered. My chest suddenly tightened as knots formed in my stomach. “My great-grandmother passed away the year I was born. She was only eighty-six. A few days before I met Rule, I found my grandmother crying, but she wouldn’t tell me why. The next night, she died, taken away before I could say goodbye. My mother refused to talk to me about what happened.” I blinked back the tears that threatened to fall. “She told me to get over it. She didn’t mourn her mother at all.”
“So you never found out what your grandmother died from?”
“No. She was never sick. She died in the night and when I awoke, she was gone.”
“I hate to say this, but, that all sounds strangely suspicious.” Jessy released my hair from the clip and combed out the remaining, uncut layer. “How old is Rule?”
“I don’t know. He does have a small amount of silver hair, just at his temples. I remember thinking it was odd to see on a wolf since I had never seen it before.” I thought about all the silver I’d seen on Gunner. “Gunner must be very old.”
Jessy smiled. “Yeah, well, don’t worry about Gunner. He’s got a lot of years to go, yet.”
For some reason, I found the fact that Gunner had many years to live strangely comforting.
“How old are you, Jessy?”
“Twenty-four. You?”
“Twenty-eight.”
So young. Much too young for Gunner to think of me as more than a child and that thought seemed to clench tight around my heart.
“I’m happy for you, Jessy. So happy you found a good male who loves you.”
“How did you find out we were getting married?”
“I overheard the new event coordinator talking with one of the vendors. The vendor had recently worked with you, setting something up at a racetrack in Albuquerque. Later, I overheard a group of males talking about how they saw the announcement online somewhere. One of them had remarked on how they missed their chance to bring you into the pack.” I looked up to see Jessy’s amber eyes locked on mine in the mirror. “They blamed someone else for failing to initiate you properly.”
“Is that what that was? Initiation? Why, those smug little pricks.” She slammed the comb and scissors down on the vanity. “Pisses me off. Assholes. What is it with that pack, that they think females dig that kind of shit? Being tied down and beaten does not turn me on, only makes me wanna kill something.”
“It turned my stomach to hear them talk.”
“Well, there are females out there, both human and wolf, who do totally get off on that sort of thing, and that’s fine, whatever, but not me.” Jessy shuddered. “Being chained up like a fucking dog? I can’t even go there. Dain and I enjoy some wild sex, but it’s pretty tame compared to some of the kink I heard about while I lived up in San Francisco. It was so weird to see these males all standing around in their silk ties and crisply pressed business suits, commenting on the latest female they’d shared f
or a night. Except they didn’t say ‘shared’, they said ‘punished’, which I guess to them means the same damn thing. Sick bunch of bastards. I am so happy I didn’t stick around long enough for them to give me a proper welcome.”
My heart twisted and my stomach knotted even tighter. “Jessy, how many times did you overhear them talking about this—about ‘punishment’?”
“Oh, at least four or five times.”
“It was punishment.”
I stared at her reflection in the mirror, stunned that she had overheard this ‘punishment’ ritual had taken place four or five times during the short time she had lived in San Francisco.
“During the time Rule held me, a female was brought into the room. Rule said he was punishing her for having sex with another male without permission. He said I belonged to him. He said the same thing would happen to me if I ever broke pack law—if I ever shared my body with another male.”
How many other females had Rule punished to death?
“He brought her in naked, with a bag over her head. When the other males came into the room, they were in their wolf forms. Every one of them...” I closed my eyes as tears tried to burn their way out. “They didn’t just punish her. They tore into her. She cried for mercy and I begged them to stop.”
“Holy...” Jessy’s hands gripped my shoulders. The sudden contact made me flinch, but I didn’t pull away. What happened that night poured out of me with my tears.
“Her wrists were bound. She couldn’t shift. She tried to fight back. They didn’t stop. They bit her over and over, until she just laid there and bled. Then they left. I couldn’t help her. She was so young.” I wiped my cheeks with trembling fingers. “I...watched...her die.”
Jessy and I stared at each other in silence for a few moments.
Jessy finally spoke. “You have to tell Gunner. You have to tell him everything.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“TOO BAD WE MISSED THE wildflowers.” Dain pointed out the windshield of his truck at the sprinklings of blue tucked between grasses and native scrub. “These hills are covered in bluebonnets and agaritas during spring and most of summer. Looks like we missed most of the show. It’s really kinda pretty.”