“Hmmph,” she chuckled and picked up her sandwich. Charlie took a bite and talked around her hand while she chewed. “That’s not on the internet.”
“Christ, female,” he huffed, turning around to make his own plate of food. He required more than a human, and his plate not only had a sandwich, but a leftover piece of caribou and a chicken breast to sate his need for protein. “We searched the internet after you left, and holy shit are they wrong.”
“All of it?” she pressed.
“I’d say about eighty-five percent,” he agreed and brought his food to the table. When her eyes widened, he shrugged. “We eat a lot.”
“I guess so,” she replied nonchalantly. It still amazed him that everything she’d known, plus the information they had supplied, didn’t scare her one bit. Did she really have no fear?
“After lunch, I’d like to go over the schedule for tomorrow,” she replied. “After my last run, I need to head back to Anchorage and work on some things around the house.”
“Tell me about your life in the city,” he asked, honestly curious about her.
“There’s not much to tell.” She shrugged and wiped her hands on a napkin, standing from her seat to take the plate to the sink. He watched as she walked away, waiting for her response, but the sway of her hips mesmerized him. “I have eyes on my face, Mason.”
“Sorry, but you’re beautiful, Charlie,” he admitted after being caught staring at her ass.
She frowned and cleared her throat before returning to her seat. “I worked at Alaska Regional for a few years as a critical care nurse. I had a part-time job as a pilot on the weekends. After this last winter, I decided to quit my job and look for work away from town.”
“What happened to cause you to do that?” he continued.
“Boredom,” she admitted, looking at her lap. “I missed the entire fall and winter season because I was working twelve to fifteen hours a day. It drained me to the point where it wasn’t fulfilling anymore. When the company I flew for filed bankruptcy, I started looking for new work, and that’s when I saw the ad for this job opening. I jumped on the chance to finally get back in the air full-time.”
“Do you have any family?”
“My mother lives in Seattle,” she replied. “She and her new husband decided the winters were too harsh for them and moved south. I decided to stay because the winter is what I love about this place.”
“Your father?”
“He’s not around,” she said in a rush.
“What do you mean?” Mason heard the hatred in her voice, and his protective instincts reared their ugly head. If her father had harmed her, he would find him and kill him. He’d never understand humans.
“Mom kicked him out when I was eight,” she explained. “He moved to the lower forty-eight, and neither one of us have heard from him since. Thankfully, my mother was a lawyer and made good money. We didn’t need him.”
“Whose idea was it for you to learn to fly?”
“Mine.” Charlie smiled widely when she looked up from hiding her face when talking about her father. “I went on a hike outside of Anchorage with my friends in high school, and I saw a plane. It reminded me of my flights with my grandfather, and I suddenly wanted to learn. When I got home, I talked to my mom and grandfather. He offered to get me into lessons, and I haven’t looked back.”
“It’s thrilling, isn’t it?” he asked when he pushed back from the table. He’d already asked too many personal questions. It was time to change the subject.
“It really is,” she said, relaxing a bit.
As he washed their plates, her scent reached him, and when he turned his head to see if she was close, he cursed under his breath when she’d removed her hat, letting her long, blonde hair free. Then leaned to the side and shook out the strands, reorganizing the locks so she could return it to the confines of her cap.
“Leave your hair down,” he blurted, shaking the water off his hands. He dried them and tossed the towel on the counter before taking several steps to reach her. “Your scent is strong.”
“Good or bad?” Her nose crinkled.
“Good, baby. Always good,” he admitted.
Mason’s wolf wanted to run and hunt for the human female, and with that, his need to protect her grew with every step they took back to the terminal. By the time they arrived, he’d grown silent while he locked down all of his muscles to keep the animal from showing itself.
“What’s wrong?” Isabell asked as soon as he entered the door. She was wiping her hands on a towel and paused when he looked up. “Go see your brother.”
“Where is he?” Mason asked through his gritted teeth.
“In his office,” she replied, making a shooing motion. “Go on.”
The alpha’s mate had come into her roll fairly quickly. Mason was happy for his brother, and Isabell had taken over as a mother figure to the rest of them. They needed the stability in their lives. Aspen tried to keep things as family oriented as she could, but that was only recently. When their parents had been killed ten years ago, Aspen was barely thirteen. She didn’t know how to run a pack.
As he glanced at Charlie going through the schedule for the next day, he wondered if she would be a part of their lives soon. She wasn’t telling him to leave her alone, and she sure didn’t run for the mountains like his brother’s mate had done.
Chapter 5
The next three weeks went as smoothly as possible for Charlie. She was settling into a routine of working for Mason’s family and returning to Anchorage on the weekends to take care of her little house.
It wasn’t much. Just two bedrooms and a bathroom. The kitchen was perfect for her and the living room held her fluffy, beige couch and TV. That was all she really needed in life, because she was too busy to have anything more to care for.
Mason had been her flying partner, splitting up the flights to the north end of the trail and supply runs for the people who lived out in the bush. She’d made friends with a few of them, and was pleased they’d sent word to Nash about her work. It was a relief, because the last thing she wanted to do was return to the hospital.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like working in the trauma center. No, she enjoyed helping people, but she needed some time to herself.
And since she had the weekend off, she was going to do things for herself.
She wasn’t able to hunt for anything substantial for another month or two. So, instead, she was going to fly down to the Kenai Peninsula to camp and fish for the weekend. Down there, she planned on forgetting the desire to just touch Mason Ward to see if his animal instincts were right.
The flirting had continued, and to be honest, she wasn’t upset about it. In fact, she liked it more than she ever thought she would. It was obvious they’d grown to know each other more, and she actually liked him. Like…liked him…liked him.
Early Saturday morning, she loaded her backpack, grabbing her fishing gear and rifle. She might only be fishing, but there were predators everywhere. The gun was required.
As she set off to the airport, her desire to fly north became an obsession even if her plans were to fish to the south. She’d learned the lay of the land around her new employer, and she knew of a great river south of the terminal that had a small lake carved out after a million years of glacier ice cutting into the land.
By the time she was in the air, she’d decided to head back to Ward Air & Transportation. She could hike directly from the airfield and be at the river in a few hours. It was the night of the full moon and even with the few hours of dark, she’d have enough light to see everything.
“Ward Air, this is N99 Charlie Alpha Romeo. Do you copy?” She’d waited until she was close enough for them to pick her up before calling. It shouldn’t be a problem for her to use their runway for the weekend. Plus, she had to be back at work on Monday, anyway.
“N99 Charlie Alpha Romeo. This is Ward Air. What’s wrong?” Mason’s voice over the line was more comforting than she had realized.
“ETA is thirty,” she announced. “Permission to use the runway?”
“Permission granted,” he replied, but his voice had changed. He sounded confused…angry even. “See you on the ground.”
She saw him before her wheels even touched the ground. Mason was standing at the back door to the terminal. His hands were shoved in his pockets as he watched her landing. Just like he always did.
But when she came to stop in her usual parking place, she could already see his hazy eyes from the cockpit.
Something was wrong.
“Are you okay?” Mason growled as soon as he opened her door. He didn’t wait for her to get out like he usually did, and his actions were a bit confusing.
“What’s wrong with you, Mason? You’re acting weird.” The yellow haze to his eyes shifted back and forth, and that worried her. He did that when he was unusually upset or being overprotective.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he stated as she shooed him away so she could get out of the plane.
“I wanted to go fishing, and I figured I could check out the lake south of here.” She frowned. “I didn’t think you’d mind me parking my plane here until Monday.”
“This weekend isn’t a good weekend for you to be up here, Charlie,” he finally admitted.
She closed the door and turned around to cross her arms over her chest. “Dude, it’s the full moon. I know. I won’t be hanging around here, anyway. I’m hiking south.”
“Jesus,” he growled and wiped his hand over his face. His dark hair was already in a bit of disarray, and she noticed his scent growing stronger with her nearness. She’d gotten use to it; craved it even. “We don’t know ourselves when we shift, Charlie. I don’t want you in the woods while we are on our full moon run. It could be dangerous.”
“Dangerous? How?” she asked. They’d been nothing but kind to her since she had arrived. She highly doubted they turned into monsters just by the pull of the full moon.
“Honestly, we don’t know. The full moon shift is different than any other. We lose our humanity on the full moon, and our wolves are free to roam until day breaks.”
“That’s what? Three hours tonight?” Summers in Alaska were always full of light. Their idea of nighttime was more like twilight.
“The moon rises even though the sun is shining here, Charlie,” he cursed. “We could shift as early as five or six tonight.”
“Then shift,” she replied.
“What if one of us comes up on you?” he barked. His eyes narrowed and he leaned toward her, causing Charlie to be stuck between him and her plane. The sexy shifter threw his hand up, placing it on the side of her aircraft, boxing her in when he repeated the movement with the other hand. “What if we attack you because we don’t know what we are doing?”
His head dipped, and she swore he was going to kiss her, but he paused only a fraction from her lips. “I couldn’t live with myself if I hurt you.”
“I’m not scared of you, Mason,” she advised and pushed away from the plane. His reaction was quick, stepping back twice as far as he should. “You won’t hurt me.”
“But…” he began. She turned her back on him to grab her backpack.
“No but,” she scoffed and hiked the pack high on her shoulders. One last turn toward the plane, and she produced her weapon. “And if you do, I’ll shoot you. I’m sure you’ll heal just fine. A little brass in your ass will get you moving.”
“Fucking hell, Charlie,” he blared, closing the distance between them again. “I swear to the gods, if you get hurt.”
“Shut up, Mason,” she smirked. “It’ll be fine.”
Mason slammed into the terminal as soon as Charlie headed south through the forest. “Where’s Nash?”
“In his office,” Aspen replied, jumping to her feet. “What’s wrong with Charlie?”
“Oh…a lot of things, apparently,” he growled and marched across the terminal to talk to the alpha. The moment he knocked on the door, Nash called out for him to enter. “We have a problem.”
“What is it?” Nash asked, coming to his feet. Mason felt his brother’s power, and he held up his hand to stop him.
“It’s Charlie,” he began. “She’s here. Instead of staying at home, she decided to hike out to where the river meets the lake and do some camping.”
“It’s the full moon, Mason,” Nash reminded him. “Didn’t you tell her to take the next two days off?”
“I know, and I told her,” he pointed out, remembering how that female had no fear of him or what he was. “She didn’t care, and she wouldn’t listen. So now, she’s already on foot, heading south.”
“That river and lake are in our range,” Nash stated, closing his eyes for a moment. Mason felt his connection to the pack and waited for his brother to call out to the others. “We have no way of staying away from her tonight.”
“I know,” Mason said in defeat, finally sitting heavily in one of the chairs. “Fuck! I can’t believe how utterly stubborn and fearless she is!”
“What the hell is going on?” Aspen ordered the moment she entered the room.
Chapter 6
Charlie set up camp with enough time to spare for some evening fishing. She’d brought dried meat and a pack of granola, but she wanted a hot meal even if she was hot and sweaty from the hike.
While she searched the lake, she stripped off the clothes she’d worn and tucked them in a small plastic bag. Thankfully, she was in a remote area and there was no worry of her being seen bathing in the lake.
She removed a towel from her backpack and dropped it on a large rock by the lake’s edge. The water was cold even for the middle of the summer, but she didn’t care. With a bar of organic soap, she hurried along to bathe. She listened to the sounds around her, noting nothing larger than a few birds soaring above her.
Once she was dry, Charlie started a small campfire and set up to catch her dinner. It took almost an hour, but she finally had something to put in her stomach. She’d wake up early and head back toward the terminal and stay in one of the rooms if they had an opening. If not, maybe Aspen would lend her the couch for the night.
A little part of her mind wondered if Mason would be offering, but she squashed that thought right as it began. The last thing she should be doing is thinking of him.
He’d been pretty pissed off she’d come back during their full moon ritual, or whatever they did. Mason shouldn’t worry. She wasn’t concerned about what they did with their own time. There was no way she’d see any of them in their wolf forms anyway. The area was too big for them to stumbled upon her.
As the evening progressed, she cleaned up her fire and set up her tiny tent with her sleeping mat and bag. It wouldn’t drop below forty while she slept, and if it did, she was going to be just fine with her gear.
She sat on a flat rock for the longest time, watching the lake. It was hard not to imagine a white wolf appearing out of nowhere. When she covered a yawn with the back of her hand, Charlie decided to grab some sleep while she could. Sitting up all night, thinking about Mason Ward, was going to affect her hike out the next day. She just hoped she didn’t dream about him, again.
It was still fairly light out when she heard a branch crack pretty close to her tent. Charlie reached for her rifle and grabbed a small headlamp. Whatever was out there sniffled and chuffed around her camp. Without a window in the tent, she was blind as to what it was, but that didn’t stop her from using her other senses.
Closing her eyes, she listened hard. The animal was moving slowly, breathing heavily as if it’d just ran a marathon. A quick look at her watch told her it was closing in on midnight, but since the sun almost never set in Alaska during the summer, she was certain she’d be able to see it to scare it off.
Her fingers didn’t tremble as she reached for the zipper door. That wasn’t going to be her first encounter with a wild animal, and it probably wouldn’t be her last.
Her first peek out the door revealed nothing but the beautiful l
ake. She wasn’t about to stick her head out to look around, either. That would be like standing in line for your own death certificate. Instead, she continued to slowly move the zipper until the door opened enough to climb out.
Raising the rifle to her shoulder, Charlie’s finger hovered over the safety. The wind blew across of the tops of the trees in a soft breeze, and with it brought a scent…one she recognized. For a moment, her body relaxed as images of the large, dark-haired man who’d taken up her world for the last few weeks rolled through her mind.
“Focus, Charlie,” she whispered to herself as she took the first step out of her tent. Crouching down, she followed the curve of her shelter, searching for the source of the sound that had woke her. The tent was on a sandy part of the beach, but all around, rocks were scattered on the small beach. Beyond that, the forest. A forest full of predators.
“Hey, bear!” she hollered, hoping her voice would scare it away.
With each step around her tent, she scanned the landscape, pausing when she saw a group of willow trees move unnaturally. Something was definitely out there, but what the hell was it? Because, it wasn’t a grizzly or a moose. It had to be a black bear…or a wolf.
Could it be Mason or his family?
“Mason?” she yelled. The sound was gone. The animal was nowhere to be found.
She lowered her rifle and stood there for a moment peering into the woods. A gasp fell from her lips when she saw the flash of white move out of the trees.
It was a wolf.
“Mason?”
Why was she talking to it? Like the animal would understand her? Charlie was probably losing her mind.
The animal just stood there, staring at her. It didn’t even growl, and that was good…maybe? Wolves were vicious hunters, and she felt a shiver roll down her spine. The hazy yellow eyes of the snow-white wolf was one-hundred percent what Mason’s eyes looked like when they would shift.
His Stubborn Mate (The Ward Wolf Pack Novella Series, Book 2) Page 4