by Leia Stone
‘Aurora, shift and change. Cops will be here within minutes. I don’t smell any vampires near. They’ve gone.’
Kai approached the two women who stared at me with fear.
“Is that a wolf?” one of them asked with a shaky voice.
“Yes, I breed mountain wolves in partnership with the wildlife and gaming commission to help the endangered species. She broke out of the cage in my truck. She won’t hurt you.”
‘Whoa, you’re a good liar,’ I told him. Interesting. I might have to look out for that.
I padded over to the women’s locker room and nudged the door open with my snout. I cringed at the smell. Sweat. Old Socks. Body odor. I shook it off and shifted quickly. Kai and I had the same ability to shift instantly and be super-fast. In this moment, I was grateful. It was stupid of me to have shifted in public in the first place. Rookie werewolf move. I looked down at my naked body and then across the room to a pile of smelly, old gym clothes. Yikes. I quickly grabbed the grey sweatpants and large black shirt and threw them on. Yuck. I reeked.
I popped open a small window on the far wall and slid out. I was at the side of the building and could hear the sirens screaming. They had arrived. I ran super-fast to the front of the building just as the cops were about to turn the corner. I leapt across the broken glass and through the front door.
A few women were gathered outside the gymnasium doors talking in shushed voices.
“Who is in charge here?” I heard a booming voice from behind me.
I turned around. Cops. I had a love-hate relationship with cops. When my father would get drunk and beat my mother up, I would call the cops. They would come to the house and my scared mother wouldn’t press charges. The cops would look at her shaking hands, bruised face, and split lip and leave. Sometimes they took my father in for a night to dry out, but they never really intervened. I guess they couldn’t legally. I needed to keep reminding myself that the man I grew up with wasn’t my real father. Sylvia had shown me that. I was put with my parents for safe keeping, but I didn’t share his blood. It was oddly comforting.
“I am the owner.” I raised my hand.
The cops looked me up and down. No doubt wondering why I was dressed so poorly, with no shoes.
“Please excuse my appearance. My name is Aurora. I own Safe Haven. I was just about to teach a self-defense class when we saw the broken glass and the body. My boyfriend is in the gymnasium right now trying to calm the women down. Follow me.”
I walked toward the doors.
‘Boyfriend?’ Kai spoke into my mind. He seemed disappointed. So he had heard me. Damn werewolf hearing.
I smiled. ‘Mate sounds weird to humans.’
I opened the doors just as the officers came up behind me. I couldn’t tell before because of the stink on my clothes, but I smelled a witch. One of the cops was a witch. We entered and upon seeing the dead, mutilated body, the cops drew their weapons. The two women were sitting up and facing away from it all. Kai had calmed them down. I breathed in again.
‘One of the cops is a warlock,’ Kai confirmed.
‘Good one or bad one?’ I asked. Sylvia had taught me a little about dark witches and light witches, but I didn’t know how to tell them apart yet.
‘You tell me,’ Kai responded.
“What happened here?” An officer barked at me and had his gun drawn on Kai.
I thought of something.
“We should call our friend Sylvia. She will want to come down here and make sure the other women are okay.”
The darker-haired cop locked eyes with me. His pupils shifted white for the slightest second. He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small velvet spell pouch.
“Sleep.” He threw powder in his partner’s face and eased him to the ground as he crumpled into sleep. He walked over to the two women who were looking at him with fear and did the same.
Kai’s wolf was out. His eyes were yellow. I could tell he was ready to shift at any second.
“Friends of Sylvia’s are friends of mine, even if they are werewolves,” he remarked, eyeing Kai.
He pulled out a pendulum, and spun it over the dead woman’s body. I saw a fine mist hover over the pendulum. It was white mist, my sign of a good witch.
“Vampires,” he declared.
“We could have told you that,” Kai offered, tapping his nose. He didn’t need to be rude.
‘Be nice,’ I pressed him.
The cop looked at Kai for longer than what was usually considered polite when making eye contact with an Alpha. “You will have to excuse me, I’m not keen on taking the word of a werewolf.”
This was not going good. I needed to do something.
I extended my hand. “I’m Aurora. I’m Sylvia’s new clan member.”
His eyebrows shot up at my declaration.
“Yep. Witch and werewolf. Unheard of and not possible, but here I stand,” I told him. He shook my hand and then delicately turned my palm up and looked at the lines in it. This was a witch’s way of checking me out. Kai growled, but I shushed him with a glare.
“I’m Adrian. I have heard stories of your kind, but never have I met one. You’re the Matefinder they speak of, aren’t you? Half witch, half werewolf. You can find the mated pairs for your kind?”
I didn’t think he would know so much about me. I cleared my throat and pulled my hand back. “That’s me. I trust that you won’t broadcast that around.”
Adrian looked at me with intrigue. “The entire supernatural community already knows about you, sweetheart.”
‘If he calls you sweetheart again, I’m stuffing that sleeping powder down his throat.’ Kai seethed and stepped closer to me.
I stifled a laugh.
“Why would the vampires be so brazen and attack a public place leaving a mutilated body? They are no stranger to killing, but they don’t usually do so to catch attention. The last thing they want is their food source finding out they exist and fighting back,” Adrian commented.
Something in Kai’s expression changed.
“We don’t exactly have a great relationship with the vampires right now. I think this was done to send me a message,” I admitted.
“Officer Navarro, report on the disturbance at Safe Haven,” the walkie talkie on his belt squawked.
“I have an idea,” he told us.
Adrian grabbed the walkie off of his belt loop and pressed a button. “Officer Navarro here. We have one body. Two witnesses saw a rabid wolf attack the victim. It’s gone now, requesting back up.”
He switched the walkie talkie off and looked at Kai who was eying him with distrust. “Can you shift and walk around in the blood to make paw marks then break through the window and trot off to create a trail? Make sure to leave some fur near the body.”
Kai looked at me. I nodded. It was a good idea. The last thing we needed was an open murder investigation and for the women at Safe Haven to think they were in danger with no one caught.
‘I’ll be okay. Do it. I will pick you up down the street,’ I told him.
‘Now we will have every hunter in the Pacific Northwest looking to kill a rabid wolf!’ he roared.
‘It’s our only option. How else do we explain a body this messy?’ I asked him.
I could hear sirens again.
“The sleeping powder won’t hold much longer. Have you done a memory spell yet, Aurora?” Adrian asked me as Kai shifted and walked around in the victim’s blood.
I shook my head no. Adrian went over to the two women and placed his hands on their heads. He lowered his head and chanted under his breath. A fine white mist left his hands and wrapped around the women’s heads. He walked over and did the same to his partner.
‘Kai, go! If they see you they will shoot you,’ I urged him.
He looked at Adrian one final time and let a low growl rip from his throat before crashing through the window. The sirens were closing in.
Adrian finished with the spell and walked over to me. “Your boyfriend doesn’t
trust very easily, does he?”
“My mate, actually. No, he doesn’t. I can’t imagine he is happy to leave me with a man in uniform.”
‘I heard that!’ Kai shouted in my head. I smirked.
“The women outside saw you, so I want you to give a quick statement,” Adrian told me.
“Thank you for your help. If we can repay you in any way let me know.”
Adrian nodded. “I could use some powerful Alpha blood for my spell castings.”
I nodded in return. “Consider it done.”
Witches were always after werewolf blood or hair for their spells. Hopefully Kai didn’t mind me just offering his up.
After filling out the report, I gave and small speech to the women about the rabid wolf and got in my car. I drove down the street to a protected strip of forest and spotted Kai. He was hiding near the bushes and was naked save for a welcome mat over his private parts.
I laughed when he got in the car. “Welcome to my car.”
He glared at me playfully. I grabbed some pants from the back seat and threw them at him.
“Put these on. Although, I’m sorry to see you cover up,” I flirted.
At that, he dropped the welcome mat and fully exposed himself inside the car. He leaned over the armrest and grabbed my neck, pulling me in for a long kiss.
“When is our wedding night? I’m not sure I can wait any longer,” he confessed in a husky voice.
I smiled. But behind my smile I was worried. I wanted to marry him. I wanted to set a date, but … Layla. “You know we don’t have to wait to do it until we are married. This is the 21st century.” I laughed at his nakedness. “Cover up before someone sees you!”
Kai slipped into his pants and gave me a side glance. “Call me old fashioned. I’ve waited hundreds of years for my mate. They say the first time you go to bed with your mate after the mating ceremony, it transcends this reality. The mating ceremony opens the bond forever.”
Whoa. Having a link with Kai I could never close sounded terrifying. I was a stubborn, private woman with daddy issues. He would know everything, all the time. I drove the rest of the way home in silence thinking about his words.
Rogue
‘Pack meeting, now,’ Kai sent to the pack. The merge of the Portland pack with our Mount Hood pack had made our family larger, more powerful. Kai was never after power or large numbers, but it did help.
Kai stood on a picnic table and looked down on all of us. We were clustered in our large backyard surrounded by hundred-year-old trees. The moss was thick on the branches and the fog was settling on the ground. God, I loved this mountain. I held Kai’s tablet pointed at him so that the werewolf council on the other end could see him as he spoke through video chat.
“There has been a vampire attack on Safe Haven. A human was killed. Mutilated is a better description.” Kai’s voice was deep and boomed with the power of the Alpha. The pack members were outraged.
“For many decades, we have lived separately from the vampires and witches. Our concern was with our territory, our own dwindling population. We have been concerned with finding our mates and having children. I fear now that if we don’t deal with the vampires properly, than we will be leaving our children to a world of chaos. They will grow up as warriors and their childhood will be taken from them. Their parents may not live long enough to show them the way of the wolf.”
The pack roared their agreement. I spotted Devon, who placed his hand on Emma’s swollen belly and nodded to Kai.
“Legend says that Spirit created werewolves to protect humans. There are tales of werewolves guarding the heavily populated human streets from thirsty vampires. Of werewolves being so big in number that the vampires feared us! We have relaxed and become complacent. We let the vampires feed off of the humans and only intervene if they kill a few and it makes it in the news. When is the last time we guarded a human night club or bar from the bloodsuckers?” He let the silence linger.
“This stops today! From now on, we are the guardians of humanity and of werewolf culture. We protect what is ours! Our way of life, our females, our traditions will not be taken! It’s time to live out our legend. It’s time to go to war!” Kai screamed and the last part came out in a half-wolf howl.
The council coursed their agreement. “We will spread the word to all packs. By next week, we will start making our presence known to the vampires. Send a message that killing the humans is off limits,” his father, a council member in India, said over the tablet.
Holy shit. My mate could be inspiring and scary. God help whoever tried to take from him the things that he wanted. I knew then that I would marry him. I couldn’t let fear dictate my life. I couldn’t let the vampires win. I was second in command. I was a dominant. That meant I did whatever the hell I pleased, and I didn’t take crap from anyone! The pack began undressing. It was time for a run. I put the tablet down.
‘Two months,’ I sent to Kai.
‘What?’ He caught my eyes from across the crowded lawn. I took off my shirt revealing my teal lace bra.
‘I’m setting a date. I’m going to marry you in two months. It will be spring. There will be flowers and good weather.’ I unclipped my bra and smiled. His eyes roamed over my body and I shifted in seconds.
‘This will be the longest two months of my life,’ he groaned. I trotted over to him and nudged his neck. The pack was still shifting. Breaking bones could be heard all around us. Kai was a changed wolf, not born of two werewolf parents, and so he had a gift. Because I was the Matefinder, I was able to absorb his gift as well as have my own. Kai trotted out to a well-worn path into the thick woods. The rest of us followed.
I took in a deep breath through my nose. A rabbit was nearby. I was a vegetarian while in human form but my wolf had other appetites. I allowed her to catch a rabbit last week and as long as I let my full wolf come to the surface and not my human self, it didn’t bother me. I debated going after the rabbit and enticing Kai with a little race for it, when I smelled something else. I took in another deep breath. It was another wolf, but not a foreign wolf smell. I was trying to figure it out when Emma whined behind me.
‘Rogue wolf. Protect the females,’ Kai told the pack. Max and the other dominant wolves immediately formed a circle around the females. There weren’t many of us. Anna’s power was extreme strength, she hardly needed protecting, but she found her way inside the circle. Izzy was a badass fighter and didn’t need protecting either, but she trotted into the circle and positioned herself next to Emma. Emma was our first pregnant female and also a submissive wolf. A few other females from the Portland pack trickled inside the protective circle. I tried to make my way out of the circle, but Max tightened it, blocking my way. I met Max’s eyes and growled.
‘What’s a rogue wolf?’ I asked Emma. We could communicate telepathically while in wolf form.
‘A wolf without a pack. Usually very vicious if they have survived this long. They are very dominate, usually Alphas. They keep to themselves. They don’t really have a territory so they don’t smell foreign,’ she told me.
I continued to stare at Max, and gave him a little growl. He lowered his eyes and backed up to let me out of the circle. Max and I had a history. I hated to throw my pack rank in his face, but I wasn’t about to let my mate meet some vicious rogue wolf alone.
Kai saw me and let out a small growl.
‘I figured you wouldn’t listen.’
‘Nope. So what’s this rogue want?’ I asked him.
‘If he’s a recent rogue, he will want to join a pack. If he has survived being rogue for a long time, then he only wants to be left alone or to cause trouble. I will know when I see him.’
‘Survived? Is it hard to be rouge?’ I pondered. The smell was stronger. It wasn’t unpleasant like a foreign wolf, but my hairs were rising. My wolf didn’t like it.
‘Wolves need a pack. It’s in our nature. Rogues who have been that way for a long time are usually mentally unstable. They end up killing themselve
s or going crazy and trying to kill others. The council puts them down.’
‘Jesus.’
I could see him. He was trotting right toward us with amazing speed. He was a huge wolf, like Kai, and all black. Only a few white whiskers around his mouth gave him any color. I inhaled deeply. Whisky. Smoke. Pine. Kai stepped in front of me. ‘He’s been a rogue for a while. Smells like an Alpha. Stay back. I’m not kidding, Aurora. These guys have taken out entire packs.’
I stepped behind Kai and watched. The wolf stopped in front of us and stared behind Kai, directly at me. Kai let a growl rip from his throat. A few of our wolves behind me howled. The rogue shifted into human form. It was slow and painful, but he didn’t flinch. We couldn’t talk to other wolves in wolf form unless they were pack. Kai shifted instantly.