Matefinder

by Leia Stone

  ‘She wouldn’t last a day as a lone wolf,’ Kai told me.

  ‘Don’t underestimate a victim of abuse,’ I fired back into his mind.

  She stepped forward and bent on one knee accepting my words.

  Kai raised his hands high up into the sky. “I call on my ancestors and invite in the pack magic that bonds us all, makes us a family. Let me lead you, let me protect you.” All of the new pack members were lining up.

  “Do you promise to obey me and share all that you are with this pack?” I could see sweat had broken out on Kai’s forehead.

  “I do, Alpha,” the first person said and rolled up his sleeve. Kai transformed his fingers to claws and swiped at the flesh of the young man’s forearm. The man winced and then clawed at Kai’s forearm. They touched their forearms together.

  “Blood of my blood,” they recited in unison.

  “Welcome to my pack, son,” Kai told the young man. The pack roared and cheered behind Kai, welcoming the new member. I was faintly aware of a new string of consciousness added to the pack’s energy.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked Kai.

  ‘Yes, just pushing out this liquid silver. Will be fine with a good night’s sleep and a couple of rare steaks.’ He smiled knowing that would gross me out.

  Kai walked to the next person and repeated the ceremony. When he had finished inviting the last member, Kai’s arm was dripping blood. He looked exhausted. His shoulder was healing but deep gashes could still be seen. Fresh blood dotted his stomach. He needed sleep and food. But he was alive. I smiled.

  Just as I was approaching him to suggest we get him home, the unthinkable happened.

  The male dominant pack member that was third in the Portland pack, advanced towards Kai with yellow eyes. “I challenge you for Alpha status of this pack.”

  The collective intake of breath from the pack gave me chills. I barely saw a flash of fear flicker across Kai’s vision before it was gone. Cold hard anger replaced it.

  Suddenly, Kai’s mother was by my side, whispering. “A pack’s second in command can fight in place of an injured Alpha.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “As second in command, I accept your challenge on behalf of my injured Alpha.” Oh, shit. Did I just do that?

  Kai’s nostrils flared and he glared at his mother, sending ripples of fur down his body. “I forbid it!” he roared.

  The man who had challenged him glared at me. “Too late. She accepted. If I win, I take this pack and you become my second,” he told Kai, “…if I let you.”

  “Then when I am healed I will challenge you again and kill you. Withdraw your request!” Kai roared at the man.

  “No. Challenge accepted.” He started to shift.

  Okay, this was just another guy who preyed on weak people. I had prepared my whole life for this moment. All of Safe Haven, my martial arts training; it was all to keep bastards like this from taking advantage of the weak. I wasn’t weak though and I was going to prove it. I took a hint from Kai’s style of fighting and shifted instantly, running at the man full speed. I slammed into him knocking him back in his half shifted form. I glanced at Kai. He had shifted into his werewolf form. His mother had a chunk of his fur in her hand, holding him back. I knew then, that if it looked like I was losing, Kai would intervene and the council would later kill him.

  I tore at the werewolf’s jugular as his half-clawed hands raked down my back causing me to let out a high-pitched yelp.

  ‘Don’t drag this out. You want a fast kill. He is wolf born. I can feel it. No powers,’ Kai told me.

  I backed out of his hold and came from a different angle. He was fully in wolf form now. I lunged at him but he rolled to the side. I caught his tail in my mouth and dragged him towards me as he howled in pain. When he was close enough, I used my front paws to dig into his hind legs and pull him underneath me. Being underneath your attacker was the worst and most vulnerable position possible. He was squirming and strong, but I was fast. I saw an opening and lunged forward taking his neck in my mouth. He was swiping at my belly with his hind paws but I ignored the pain as I chewed into his neck. Sister wolf had taken over. Nothing about this grossed me out. The vegetarian Aurora was nowhere to be found. I wanted him dead. I wanted his head separated from his body. I wanted to taste his blood, to protect my mate and my pack. This was a means to an end.

  Once I had a good hold, I shook his neck in my jaws and his body flopped like a rag doll. With one last burst of effort, I gave a hard pull to the right and ripped his head clean off. His body crumpled beneath me and I turned around to see Kai’s wolf two feet from my face. He was ready to intervene at any moment. Luckily he hadn’t. I gave a loud howl and the pack began shifting. It was unspoken. We needed a run, together, for the first time as a new pack in our new territory.

  ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ Kai told me and ran off to run beside his brother, Jai. I sat there in silence for a moment and then followed with my tail between my legs.

  Reunited

  The next morning I sat in Kai’s office with Isabelle and Kai. She held his phone in her hand and it was shaking. She set it back down. “I don’t even know if he has the same number. If he has remarried. I don’t know what to say.” She looked at her hands and picked at her nails.

  Kai had agreed she could reunite with her family and depending on her wishes, we would figure out a living situation. Kai barely talked to me last night for fighting in his place. He slept in his room and I barely slept in mine.

  “Let me call him. I can start the call off and you can jump in when you are ready. Okay?” I offered.

  Isabelle began to weep. “Is this really happening? You guys will let me see my family? I can see my kids? Everyday?”

  She had limp brown hair that framed a face full of scars. This woman had taken many beatings, with silver I don’t doubt. Only silver would scar a werewolf this bad. She was emaciated and broken. I don’t think she believed us, that this was really happening. Poor thing. My throat tightened.

  Kai walked over to her slowly. “Dane wasn’t an Alpha; he was a power-hungry monster. An Alpha takes care of his pack like family. I will treat you like you were my own sister. I would NEVER separate a mother from her children. I can clear it with the council. In rare cases, humans are permitted knowledge of our kind. Your children can come live here on the mountain with you and we will protect them as pack. Your husband can too, if you like. Children are a treasured gift in werewolf society. It doesn’t matter if they are human or not.”

  Isabelle gave a weak smile. “I can feel your words are true. Make the call, Aurora. I will give you the number.” She handed me the phone.

  The phone was ringing. I cleared my throat thinking of a story.

  “Hello, this is Tristan.” I had the phone on speaker and Isabelle squeezed my arm hard at the sound of his voice.

  “Hi, my name is Aurora and I live up in Mount Hood.”

  “What can I do for you?” I could hear children in the background laughing.

  “I have a woman here who says her name is Isabelle. She looks pretty shaken up and underfed. She says she escaped capture and is your wife.”

  There was silence. “You people don’t stop, do you? You’re sick. Prank calling bastards.”

  “Tristan!” Isabelle shouted.

  “Oh my God!” He started sobbing and I felt my throat swell. “Izzy! Oh my God! Is that you?”

  “It’s me.” She wept.

  “Are you okay? I’ve never stopped looking for you. Have you called the police? Where are you? I’m coming. KIDS! Mommy is on the phone.”

  “It’s been a long time and it hasn’t been easy but I’m okay now. I thought you might have moved on.” She let that sentence linger. I suddenly felt like I shouldn’t be in here, witnessing this very private conversation.

  “Are you crazy? No, no, no. Where are you? Give me an address right now. The kids are so big. Violet is four and Connor is six. I show them your picture every night.”

  Isabelle was sob
bing and I rattled off the address, telling Tristan not to involve the police. That we would explain why later.

  Diya helped put make up on Isabelle’s bruises and scars to make her more presentable for her family. I lent her some clean, colorful clothes, and Kai and I waited outside with her. I prepped Isabelle to tell her husband she didn’t want a media circus. That the man who did this to her was dead and she was safe now. Meanwhile, Kai put in an urgent call to the council to ask for permission to bring three humans into the pack. He said in rare cases like this, it was approved.

  He thought the fact that there were children involved would get it approved. Children in packs was rare, even if they were human. Also, Dane did a bad thing and brought a person into the pack after mugging and attacking her. Then he kept her hostage. She could go to the media and expose our kind. This all made a good case for telling her husband of our kind. The kids could learn later, when they were older. When I questioned how pack bonds worked on humans, he said pack magic worked to bring any species into the pack, if an Alpha allowed it.

  A maroon Ford Explorer made its way up the hill and Isabelle shrieked. “Tristan! Connor, Violet!” She ran towards the car. Her husband braked hard, kicking up bits of gravel with the tires, and jumped out. He ran towards her and picked her up spinning her around. They were both crying freely as the children got out of the car and ran to their mother, clinging to her legs.

  Kai reached over and held my hand. All was forgiven.

  ***

  Kai had increased pack training sessions to once a day ever since the vampire attack. It had been a week since Isabelle had been reunited with her family. Kai had been given approval from the council to expose our kind to Isabelle’s husband, Tristan, and to make her family part of the pack. They only made one condition, a witch needed to put a spell on him so that if he tried to tell other humans our secret, he wouldn’t be able to. Tristan seemed shocked at first, but was turning out to be a great guy and was taking the news fairly well. He was a firefighter and strongly built. He didn’t seem too intimidated by us. Kai had a special ceremony to bring him and the children into the pack. This gave them our scent so that other werewolves would know they were claimed and not to mess with them. Kai also gave them a house on the mountain because an unmated female werewolf living in Portland was a disaster waiting to happen.

  It bothered me that Isabelle was considered unmated even though she was married. Kai explained that eventually her husband would grow old and die and Izzy would live hundreds of years. She could search for her werewolf mate after Tristan was gone. That thought unsettled me. What if Tristan was her mate but if he never changed into a werewolf then we wouldn’t know? My mind chewed on this for hours.

  When Sylvia put the spell on Tristan, she also told me she could open up my magic so that I could better protect myself from vampires and any other threat. I was tempted but Kai seemed against the idea. After the spell was put on Tristan, I confronted Kai about something that was bothering me.

  “So no one knows of our kind? We have been around hundreds of years and it’s still a secret?”

  Kai looked at me for a long time, weighing something in his mind.

  “None of the general human population know about our kind.”

  That was vague. “Okay, but some humans know about our kind?”

  Kai sighed and leaned in to whisper in my ear. We were outside and a few wolves were lingering about.

  “Every intelligence agency in almost every country knows about the three supernatural races. We scare them, and they keep tabs on us, but they don’t approach us. Many younger wolves don’t know that the government knows about us. It’s better that way.”

  My mouth dropped open. “So the CIA could be watching us right now?” I whispered back.

  Kai shrugged. “Possibly. I know a few wolves who work for the CIA that we could ask.” He winked.

  So we had people on the inside? Interesting. I wonder if the government ever felt that our kind was a threat, if they would take us out. I shivered at the thought.

  ***

  I awoke slowly, Sadie’s wedding was today and Diya and the rest of Kai’s family were going home tomorrow. It had been a thought provoking week. Kai had woken early to go meet with pack members living in Portland and establish a bond. Everyone had found their place in the pack and I was still second. Emma was no longer the most submissive member. I lay in bed stretching my back when my door flew open. I jumped up quickly and got into a fighting stance. Diya flew across the room with her hand out and shoved it in my face.

  “Trent proposed! Oh my God! Isn’t it beautiful?”

  There was a modest princess cut ring on her left hand. I took her hand and brought it closer to my face.

  “It’s beautiful.” I agreed. Wow they moved fast. Anna and Jake were talking of a mating ceremony too. Was I jealous? I had asked Kai to go slow. Was I ready for marriage? She dropped her hand and hugged me.

  “Don’t worry, you will get one too and yours will be bigger, if I know my brother.” She gestured to my hand. I blushed unsure of what to say.

  “So, when’s the big day?” I asked, to change the subject.

  “I have to talk to Papa, but the sooner the better! I love Trent.” She swooned and dropped on my bed just as Emma burst into the room holding a small white plastic pregnancy test.

  My mouth dropped open.

  “I’m pregnant!” Emma screeched. Diya and I starting screaming, then laughed a little at our ridiculousness. If my vision was correct. Kai and I would be married in the next 4-5 months. Emma was heavily pregnant in my wedding vision.

  United

  I looked down at the deep blue silk dress that clung to my petite figure. My hair was a spill of curls that were expertly pinned all over my head and cascaded over my left shoulder. My lips were stained red with lipstick and I wore heavy eye makeup. Diya had made me over and I liked what she had done. Most of the old Mount Hood pack was in route to Sadie’s wedding, while the new Portland members stayed back to defend our territory. Kai was driving his family and me to Seattle. He kept giving me side glances in the car. I smiled. He cleaned up well. His wild hair was slicked back and he wore a grey silk suit with a bright blue shirt.

  ‘You look amazing,’ I sent to him.

  He gave a soft growl. ‘Amazing doesn’t begin to cover how you look, my dear. That red lipstick is driving me crazy.’

  I smiled and puckered my lips.

  Sadie’s wedding was in a rose garden at one of the pack members’ house. It was a full moon and the sun had just set. The aisle was lined with white flower petals and tea lights. It felt magical. A man stood at the altar with a large Native American headdress and he was holding a dagger encrusted with rubies.

  I took a deep breath and took in his scent. He wasn’t a werewolf or a witch but he didn’t smell human. Kai chuckled beside me.

  “Trying to figure out what he is?”

  I nodded.

  “Shamans are their own species. They are closest to spirit and some of them are shape shifters, so they know of our kind. They have been performing our mating ceremonies since I can remember.”

  I looked closer at the man. He could have been forty or seventy it was hard to tell. He had a tattoo of a jaguar on his arm, and a sharpened bone hung from a thread on his neck. His wrists were wrapped in leather cuffs and adorned with turquoise.

  Kai leaned in and whispered. “Legend says that the Shamans hold the power of our fertility. Long ago, any female werewolf could give birth to pups. It didn’t matter if she was mated or not. But then the werewolves did something to anger the Natives and the Natives made all of the female werewolves infertile. Unless they were mated and blessed by the Great Spirit in a ceremony, they couldn’t reproduce.”

  Chills ran up and down my arms. Just then, the Shaman looked at me. I locked eyes with him and everything around me froze. Kai was stuck leaning into my ear and all of the seated wolves were frozen. It was like time had stopped. What the hell was going
on? I felt my heart rate pick up. The Shaman came walking towards me. I put myself in a fighting stance, unsure of what was happening. I didn’t like that my pack was helpless if someone were to attack. I was about to change into my wolf when the Shaman spoke.

  “I come in peace, little sister,” the Shaman said to me with his hand raised.

  “Did you do this?” I gestured around.

  He nodded. “I have a message for you, sister. My name is Nahuel. Spirit has blessed you with a great purpose. My ancestors have cursed the werewolves for a long time. Werewolves were greedy hunters and didn’t share their meat. They became territorial and didn’t share their land. They reproduced quickly and were wasteful like the humans. We did not foresee that our curse would reduce the population of the werewolves so quickly. We only wanted to teach them a lesson, to respect Mother Earth and all of her inhabitants. Now, the werewolves are on the brink of extinction and the balance is being threatened.”

  My mouth hung open at his admission to cursing our kind and reducing our population. He went on.

  “Vampires are a threat to humans and werewolves protect humans. Witches are neutral to all species. If everyone serves their purpose, then there is balance. But there is an alarming amount of vampires in relation to the amount of werewolves. If the vampires chose to attack, they could wipe out the werewolves and eventually the human race. This cannot happen. I perform mating ceremonies to pay a debt to the werewolves because the curse my people laid on them cannot be undone. But I perform them all too little, your presence here will change that. As the Matefinder you will bring together many mated pairings, with Spirits help.”

  He knows what I am? I was breathing deeply now. I think I’m having a panic attack, I thought. I don’t know what made me think of Isabelle and Tristan but I blurted out, “Our pack member Isabelle is married to a human and they are in love. They have human children and are happy. How can she have a mate waiting out there for her? It doesn’t seem right. I don’t understand how mated pairs are brought together, so how can I be a Matefinder?”