by May Sage
Hunter's was a lot more chill, all things considered. The wolf understood they had to share that body; each of them got a fair turn. Hunter let him out when the wolf wanted to run, and, in exchange, the wolf retreated when the human wanted his go. Hunter made a habit of often sleeping in his wolf form, too; the wolf liked that. They lived in peaceful symbiosis.
Not today.
They looked at the girl first. Lola, they'd called her. It sounded sweet, adorable, and it suited the little girl to a tee. She already ran on her wobbly legs, and she spoke easily, although sometimes there was adorable nonsense coming out of her little mouth.
It was obvious that she was loved, protected, and well taken care of. Gwen would have been glad. Hunter should have felt relieved and confident in his decision to leave her with the pride. Instead, he found himself remaining longer than he ought to when he was hidden, a sort of sadness and longing anchoring his paws.
And then, he'd seen her.
He knew a lot about the Wyvern Pride. Most groups of shifters had websites, social media, and other things. The Vergas Pack kept theirs very basic, but the Wyvern had been smart about it. A lot of regular humans found shifters fascinating and spent time researching whatever they could about them. The Wyverns had cashed in on that, selling calendars of their males, writing blogs, and setting up social media accounts for each member. They didn't hide what they were at all, making it clear that they were dangerous and disliked strangers, so no one actually bothered them in their territories. Still, thousands of people followed them online.
Hunter guessed that being in everyone's face that way really helped a small pride with fewer than two dozen members; other groups had probably offered them alliances, just to boast about an alliance with famous shifters. And their enemies had to seriously think whether they wanted to risk becoming public enemies.
That didn't protect them from the Vergas, or the wrath of the Shifter Council, but, against smaller threats, their popularity was a nice shield.
Their online info didn't say anything about the kids, but Hunter had taken his time to get to know the adults who took care of his niece. Rye wasn't one to be fucked with. Even in his human form, the Alpha radiated power. Having met him face to face, Hunter knew it wasn't just posing. He was one of the few shifters out there who could stare right into his father's gaze without being fazed. Hunter had liked that a lot.
He hadn't paid much attention to her, before. He knew her name, and he remembered thinking she was pretty enough when he'd seen a picture.
He'd been wrong. Christine Taylor wasn't “pretty enough”, she was an absolute knockout. Surrounded by athletic, kick-ass dominant females who went toe-to-toe against males, she was unapologetically feminine. Her hourglass figure was accentuated by the apron she wore around her waist. Christine was in jeans and a t-shirt, but somehow gave a pin-up vibe, with her glossy, long red hair and her smile.
Her scent hit him hard. Sweetness, pancakes, and vanilla, coupled with a hint of home. He couldn't even describe it, but it was positively mouth-watering.
His wolf was protective, lethal, and territorial. He'd felt off since they'd left the pack, and on edge when they'd entered the Wyvern's territory. Now, he tilted his head and waggled his tail like he was safe and untroubled. He just wanted to play.
Hunter nudged him again, asking him to retreat, but the beast pushed away the compulsion, irritable. When he changed tactics, wanting to take over the rule of their body, the animal bared his teeth, downright pissed now.
That wasn't like him at all.
It took him a while, but after the female and the kid disappeared from view, the wolf finally consented to move away. He let him shift back close to their hotel on the other side of the lake.
As he approached the hotel, he stiffened and his wolf stood to attention, growling low.
"Mr. Wolf?" Yeah, he hadn't bothered being creative about his alias. He blamed it on the lack of sleep.
"Yeah?"
"Your friend said to tell you he took your son to the gardens."
His friend. Hunter's eyes flashed with something that made the receptionist blink and involuntarily take a step back.
It had been a long time since he’d had a friend.
Hunter approached the garden warily, his nose recognizing the scent of the stranger, who was definitely no friend of his.
When he got there, Mike was playing football with a tall, dark guy with some Latin roots; Italian, he'd volunteered on his profile. Self-proclaimed know-it-all, good in the kitchen, decent behind a computer. Ian Summers, enforcer of the Wyvern Pride.
Seeing him come in, the guy waved. "Hey there. Hunter, right? Fancy joining us? Your boy here's pretty good with his feet."
Hunter's voice was slow and purposeful.
"You really don't want to go there, Summers."
The enforcer laughed and shrugged. "You come on my turf, I take it as an invitation to come on yours. Chill, though. We don't hurt kids. Not our MO. I was explaining to your little friend here that I came in peace. Just to talk."
He hadn't. Each of his words held an underlying threat. This was a show of force, indicating the enforcer's intention. He knew Hunter had masked his presence and he was making it clear that he could somehow still track him and find him. How, Hunter had no fucking clue. Felines weren't the worst trackers out there, but they had nothing on wolves, and wolves had a hard time tracking Hunter. But that meant the damn cat could sneak in while he slept and slit his throat.
They had to go. Today. He knew he could take this guy without a problem, but if all the Wyvern rained down on him, he was fucked.
"Talk," Hunter repeated, tense as fuck. "Alright. Mike, go pack your stuff, while your friend and I...talk."
The cat let the boy go. That was something.
"What are you doing here, Force?"
"Just passing through."
"What were you doing behind our pride house?"
His mouth remained closed.
"You know, when the guys were trying to work out who was after us a few years back, I considered your pack. You had the right resources to be a major pain in the ass. I dismissed it, though. Didn't even bring it up to my Alpha. I couldn't see a motive, for one. But there was something else. I dismissed it because I figured that if we were hunted by you, we would have already lost."
Hunter listened with eyes narrowed, trying to see the enforcer's game.
"You remember Drew Hartley?"
The name brought him back to another time. A happier time. Drew had been at Dartmouth with him.
"What if I do?"
"He's a good friend. There aren't that many shifters into hacking; we keep in touch. I remember, a while back he told me of a scary as fuck tracker who could ghost. He told me how that guy ran all night and most of a day, when a girl had disappeared from campus. Tracked the kidnappers three states away and busted her out of a fox den. She was home in less than twenty-four hours. So I figured, if a guy can do that to a fox, the sneakiest motherfuckers out there, there's no way he's after us. We're slow, with the kids. Easy to find." Ian tilted his head. "So when it turned out your pack was behind it all, it got me thinking about a few things. Like the fact that, if Lola's a hybrid she must have a wolf family somewhere."
Hunter didn't know what to say. Honestly, after hiding everything real about him for three years, hearing the truth felt foreign, weird as fuck.
"Are you her dad?"
He shook his head, and the feline waited. Sighing, he replied, "Uncle."
Uncle. What a strange notion.
Ian's brows went up. "So, she's your Alpha's granddaughter and he still wants to kill her."
Hunter chuckled humorlessly. "He wouldn't want to kill her nearly as much if she wasn't his granddaughter."
Ian stared. "Dude, your father's messed up."
"And that's news?"
The feline laughed. "Not to you, I'm sure. I'm gonna have to report that to my Alpha. He's on his way back from Europe as we speak. Can you tell
me more?"
"You want info about my father's pack?"
Hunter stiffened; he might hate the way it was run, but it didn't change the fact that there were kids like Anna and Mike, and some good people. He wasn't going to betray them to enemies.
Ian shrugged. "Nah, we pretty much know everything there's to know about you guys. However private you try to be, if you have cell phones, bank accounts, Internet, I can hack into it and check shit."
Right. And no doubt, that was how he'd found him; hacking, rather than tracking.
Hunter had ditched his phone and credit cards, but someone determined could hack the hotels around the area until he'd found someone fitting his description, for example.
"What do you want to know, then?"
"Anything that can convince Rye you can be trusted around Lola. That is, if you actually want to meet her without a fence between you."
Holy fuck. His heart was pumping at an unprecedented speed.
"She's my sister's pup. I don't know much about the dad. One day, Gwen shows up, shot and poisoned. She tells me Dad's after her pup and makes me promise to help. I promise. And since that day, I’ve done just that."
He explained everything that came to mind, giving dates and facts. Meanwhile, the cat listened, never interrupting him, until he was done telling him everything up until the day when he got Mike out of Texas.
Ian left, assuring him he'd talk to his Alpha. He made no promises. Hunter was still half in shock at the idea.
He might actually get to see the kid before going north.
Chapter 9
Theories
Rye and the others came back from Italy with a bunch of touristic presents – sadly, without gelato, although Coveney was uncharacteristically wordy in describing the foreign ice cream.
The kids were excited to see everyone, especially Ava. She was new, and she doubled that awesome attribute by also changing into a bird. Most of them couldn't shift yet, but their dormant animals still were fascinated with her eagle.
Christine wondered if Ava realized how much trouble she'd be in when the teenagers all chased her. She didn't seem to mind playing with Clive and Victoria, but when the six other shifters eventually joined, she might run away from the pride, screaming.
After Christine had kissed the kids good night, they were all chilling in the living room, listening to their tales about the now-unhidden city of Dale, when Ian burst in, smirking like it was his day job.
"Hey, everyone!" He didn't let anyone reply, immediately adding, "Can we talk?" while meaningfully looking at the Alphas.
Rye got up, but the enforcer backtracked, saying, "Actually, I guess I can talk to everyone at once. It's not a security issue. Well, not anymore."
"Can you, like, stop talking in riddles, and get to the point?" Vivicia suggested, pulling a nail file out of her pocket and starting to file her nails.
She might only have begun to hang out with the pride a year ago, but she knew mister-know-it-all well enough to anticipate a long story. She wasn't wrong.
"So, a while back, when we were still working out the identity of our enemies, I considered the Vergas and I dismissed them..."
By the time he was halfway through his tale, Vivicia had stopped with her nails; everyone was staring at him, open mouthed.
Ian could be super annoying when he was smug, but today took the cake. He was positively beaming, glad to have worked out the story.
"Wait, so we actually owe a bunch of narrow escapes to that guy?"
"Most, if not all, of our escapes, yep. I wasn't sure until I got there, but his eyes are so much like Lola's, I knew as soon as I looked. Plus, he had a kid with him; not his. He just got him out of there because it was the right thing to do."
"If I was the kind of gal who actually swooned, I totally would right now," Ace said. "How fucking sweet." She turned to her mate. "We have to let him meet Lola."
Rye was glowering.
"None of that crap. We have to. Or we'd literally be the bad guys in this scenario."
"I don't fucking care about being the bad guy. I care about the safety of my pride and the fact that this could just be an elaborate story to get close to Lola."
"He was close to Lola this morning, according to Christine. How hard would it have been to jump the fence and claw her?"
The Alpha male growled at the very notion. Every single kid in the pride was his to protect, but he and Lola had always been close. Even casually mentioning a scenario where she could possibly get hurt was making him see red.
"Christine, could he have hurt her this morning?”
She bit her lip. "I mean, there was a lot of us in the house, so we would have jumped him right after, but yeah. If he'd really wanted to, he could have. It would have been suicidal, but doable."
"Maybe he's just not suicidal, so he's waiting for a better occasion," Rye said.
"Oh, shut it. I know you don't like the idea of owing anyone, but you have to face it: that guy did help you in the past. The facts add up. And he has every right to see his niece after all this time."
It was always entertaining to see Rye give in to his mate's logic, however reluctantly. She wouldn't say the Alpha male pouted, but his brooding expression was pretty damn close to pouting. She, Vi, Ava, Rain, and Jas had a hard time hiding their smiles. Daunte was staring at the floor to make sure he wasn't caught smirking and Ian disguised his laughter in a cough.
“Ian, call your friend. Tell him he can come tomorrow morning, with the boy.”
“He isn’t my friend, exactly.” The enforcer grimaced, pulling his phone out. “I mean, he’s a wolf.”
“I’d resent that if I cared,” Vivicia said, batting her long lashes.
"Alright. He can come. But I don't want him alone with her at any point, got it? Lola doesn't know him. She doesn't even like dogs."
"Don't want to rain on your parade," said Vivicia, "but she totally likes dogs. She loves Cutie."
"Don't call that thing Cutie. It's not a cutie. Plus, it's a male. He'd resent being called Cutie. And don't name him at all, because he's not staying here."
"Shush, shush," Ace patted her mate's back. "Don't stress, you're going to go prematurely gray. I think the dog's a cutie. And he can stay if he doesn't spook the cats."
Rye glared and pouted a little harder.
"He'll totally spook your cats, Aisling," Rye told Ace, sounding a little too hopeful.
Christine was all for kicking the dog out of the house, but when Ace's old lynx entered from an open window, stared at the bulldog, and yawned, bored, before strolling to the kitchen, she couldn't help it: she laughed out loud with the rest of the pack.
"This is a conspiracy. Why am I even here? Everything always goes your way!"
"Here," she replied, holding up a plate of cupcakes with a sweet smile. "Have one of these. You'll feel better."
Rye sighed and took a cupcake. A minute later, he was purring and hugging his mate, who massaged his shoulders.
Christine couldn't stop looking at them sometimes. They were so stinking cute. Even if she found a partner who could put up with her crazy pride and the fact that she pretty much had nine children, there was no way she'd ever know that kind of completion. It wasn't just love; it ran deeper yet, as the matching tattoos that peeked out of their clothing, glowing unnaturally on their skin, attested. They were fated mates, just like Ava and Coveney.
Fated pairings were rare and they had two in the pride; maybe even three. No one was discussing it, but they'd nonetheless noticed the strange shadows forming on Daunte's back, matching Clarissa's. They didn't want to talk about it out loud if it turned out they were wrong, but there was a possibility they might also be fated; maybe there was a reason why Rye and Ace's son had bit Clari and turned her into one of them – because she was meant to be one of them.
Three fated pairs under one roof. The odds that anyone else among them found their fated mates were slim to none after that.
"They all almost make you want to thro
w up, right?" Rain whispered, tilting her chin towards the lovey-dovey couples.
"Yep, totally. I still can't believe there's so many mated pairs in the pride."
"I can," said Rain.
Christine lifted a brow.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but only Rye and Ace are of the same species. That's actually arguable, given the fact that she's some unique type of hybrid. I wonder if pairs are rare because people insist on sticking to their own races, when fate tends to mix it all up. Clari was a regular and Daunte, a panther."
"And Ava is an eagle, while Coveney is a white tiger. I see what you mean. But why would fate purposefully mix us up?"
"My guess? To avoid inbreeding. There aren't that many lines of shifters."
That made an awful lot of sense.
"So," said Ian, shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation, "you're saying that the problem with other shifters is that they don't hang out with other types of sups and with regulars."
"Yeah. The difference is, you guys have come into contact with other races, because Ace was a loner and has awesome friends like Vi, Faith, and me."
"Maybe, but it's a big world," Ari said from the other side of the room. "Meeting the one person meant for you still isn't that easy."
"Hello?" Luke piped in. Apparently, the conversation was now open to the entire pride. "Fated. If you accept the fact that fate has something to do with it, you have to assume that fate would, at some point in your life, put you face-to-face with that person. The trick is recognizing it."
There was a long silence as everyone took in those words.
"Thing is, we probably have a bigger chance than anyone else in this pride. We know what it looks like," said Jas, gesturing towards the mated couples.
Another good point.
Christine went to bed with that thought very much in mind. That was probably the reason why, the next day, when she got downstairs late, in her PJs and a toothbrush in her mouth, and came into contact with the wolf, her eyes bulged and her heart stopped. The cheetah inside her stood to attention, thinking one word quite clearly.