by Zoe Chant
It took Joel a minute to process that, a minute he spent just blinking stupidly at his brother.
“We thought you knew about it,” Jeff added, shooting Zach an annoyed look.
“You said it sounded good at dinner last night!” Zach said plaintively. “And then I called you and left a message saying we were heading up this morning. And I texted you about ten times. I thought for sure that if you didn’t want us here, you would’ve told me to stay the hell away.”
“My phone’s back at the house,” Joel said heavily. He’d left it there because he’d shifted to run before he met with Nina at the diner. Objects like phones were much less reliable than clothes, when shifting; you were liable to leave it lying on the ground instead of bringing it with you.
Then he hadn’t gone back to the house at all, too busy with Nina, and they’d come right here to sleep.
“And I didn’t realize you meant today when you were talking about it last night,” he added. “I thought you meant...you know, sometime.”
“By which time your secret snow leopard stowaway would’ve been gone?” Zach asked. “Why is she here? What’s she hiding from?”
“Nothing!” Joel said.
“That’s not true,” Alethia said suddenly. She’d been watching the conversation with an unreadable expression, but now she stepped forward. “She was hiding. She hid when we came up, and she ran when we asked who she was. What’s she afraid of? Did something happen to her?”
The concern in her voice brought Joel’s attention back to her. He didn’t know Alethia very well, but right now, she seemed to be the only person who was more worried about Nina than curious or accusatory.
“She’s been alone for her whole life,” Joel said to her. “She’s had...bad experiences with packs. She might’ve thought you guys were coming to—to hurt her, or something.” What had happened to Nina when she hadn’t fit in with other packs?
Alethia frowned, and stepped away to stare off into the mountains where Nina had gone. After a second, she shifted and started sniffing.
Nina had probably thought that the pack was coming to attack her, or something. And Joel hadn’t been there. He’d run away, thinking he was doing the right thing by separating them before the mate-bond could completely overwhelm their judgment.
But maybe he hadn’t been doing the right thing. Maybe he’d just been a coward, running away from the thing he was most afraid of.
And abandoning Nina in the process.
“I have to go after her,” Joel said. “She’s running away, she’s afraid—I cannot believe you didn’t wait until I told you it was all right to come up here!” he said, whirling on Zach.
“I’m sorry,” Zach said sincerely. “I really thought it would be all right. At worst, I thought you’d tell us to get lost. I didn’t know anyone else was up here.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about her?” Teri asked, frowning. “We would’ve been happy to meet her.”
“She didn’t want to!” Joel scrubbed his hands through his hair, feeling sick. “She was afraid. I was going to try and introduce her to Cal today, but then—” Then he’d woken up and the mate-bond had chased any plans right out of his head.
Zach was frowning now, too. “Joel, how long have you known her? The other night in the diner—”
Joel shook his head. “I didn’t know her then. We just met.”
Zach looked at him sharply, leaning forward. “I haven’t seen you like this in years. You’re worked up as all get-out. Who is this girl?”
Joel stilled, and then glared at Zach. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
But Zach had seen his reaction. “You’re more upset than I’ve seen you since you were a teenager. Over a woman you met two days ago. Joel—is Nina your mate?”
“Shut up, Zach.” Joel couldn’t deal with this right now. Not until they found Nina. “I’m going to go—” He paused. “Where’s Alethia?”
Grey, standing several feet away, said, “She went after her.” He sounded completely undisturbed. “Said that more people freaking out wasn’t helping a scared woman. She wants to talk to her alone.”
“I want to talk to her alone.” Joel turned to glare at Zach, and the rest of them by association. “You all stay here.”
He shifted. Nina’s scent was as clear as day. He started to run.
***
Nina wasn’t running yet.
It was stupid. She should already be halfway across the mountains. There was no going back after something like that.
But she couldn’t. The thought of leaving Joel, of putting more and more miles between them...
It hurt too much. Even though she knew she had to, it just hurt too much.
She’d get herself together and do it. Soon. Nina knew how to push through pain and heartbreak. She’d done it before, and she could do it again.
Just not yet.
She’d found a little hollow in the forest, and curled up in it in leopard form. She’d give herself just a little while to stay here. An hour, maybe. An hour to huddle into herself, breathe slowly, and get ready to move.
Mate, her leopard was howling. Our mate is out there! Find him!
He doesn’t want us, she told it.
That isn’t right. Her leopard was filled with absolute certainty that that had to be wrong. There was no way their mate couldn’t want them. That was what mate meant. Someone who always wanted you.
I guess our mate isn’t like that, Nina thought, exhausted. She shouldn’t be surprised, maybe. After all, it had turned out that packs weren’t for her. She’d accepted that when she came to Glacier. So it looked like a mate wasn’t for her, either.
We can go on alone, she insisted. We’ve done it for a long time. We’ll be okay.
No. Her leopard was adamant. We’ll be with our mate. We belong with our mate.
The stubborn, animal disbelief was making everything harder. Because that was how it was meant to go. You belonged with your mate.
But apparently Nina didn’t.
She’d tried to come up with some other explanation for what had happened, but she couldn’t. Joel would’ve woken her up if there had been an emergency. His scent hadn’t led toward town, but far away into the wilderness.
Maybe he’d just been hunting? But why wouldn’t he leave her a note? And why would the whole pack show up while he was away?
Joel hated the whole idea of fated mates. So the explanation that made the most sense was that now that he had one, he wanted her as far away as possible.
It just wasn’t fair.
Great, now she was being childish. Nina was glad she was in snow leopard form, or she’d probably be crying like a little kid about this.
Get over it, she thought fiercely. You thought this was going to work out for once? Well, it didn’t. That’s nothing new. It never works out. Get up and move on.
She’d just started to stand up, in preparation for heading...away somewhere, she didn’t know yet, when there was a rustle in the underbrush.
Nina froze, not sure what other animals might be out here with her. A bear?
But no, the movement she saw in the leaves eventually resolved itself into a snow leopard.
Not Joel, she knew immediately; this was a female, and her coat was paler than Joel’s, her markings more subtle. As Nina tried to decide whether to run, fight, or wait to see what happened, the other leopard’s form shimmered, shifted, and became Alethia, from the diner.
Nina hesitated, poised to run. What would Alethia think, now that she knew that Nina was a feral shifter, a loner invading her territory?
But she was wearing the same friendly smile Nina had seen so many times in the diner. “Hi, Nina,” she said calmly. “Can we talk?”
Nina hesitated for another long moment. Then she shifted.
Alethia’s smile brightened as Nina took on human form, and she took a few steps forward, until they were standing close, facing each other.
“Nina," said Alethia. "Hi. I didn’t know you were
a shifter.”
“Neither did I,” Nina said softly. “About you, I mean.”
“Hey,” Alethia said, “then it’s a good surprise for both of us. Right?”
Nina couldn’t quite muster a yes, not after everything that had just happened. She shrugged.
Alethia’s smile faded. “Nina, what did you think was happening, back there at the cabin? Why were you afraid?"
That wasn't what Nina had expected to hear. "I thought—I thought you'd come to chase me away," she said haltingly. "I thought you didn't want me in your territory any longer."
"No," Alethia said immediately. "No, that's not it at all. We'd come to see Joel. None of us even knew that you were a shifter, let alone that you were up there. You surprised us as much as we surprised you."
"...Oh." Nina had to reorganize her thoughts. She felt like they were coming too slowly, caught up in all of the things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours like mice in a maze.
"Were you looking for other snow leopards? Is that why you came to Glacier?"
Nina shook her head, feeling her cheeks heat at how stupid the whole situation was. "No. It was a coincidence. I was trying to think of the best place to go, a place that'd be good for a leopard to roam, but also had enough people coming and going that I wouldn't stand out. Here seemed like a good bet. I didn't know that there were leopards already here."
Alethia raised her eyebrows. “Sounds like a lucky coincidence to me.”
Nina felt a surge of hope. Maybe she could stay after all, if Alethia was talking about things like good surprises and lucky coincidences. But then she remembered the real problem. "Well—Joel—"
She stopped. She didn't know what to say. Or she did, but she didn't want to say it out loud.
"What's the problem with Joel, Nina?" Alethia asked gently.
She was afraid, she realized. She was afraid of what Alethia would think about her if she knew that Joel didn’t want her.
But Alethia didn’t look like she was ready to judge. She looked kind and compassionate, ready to listen, wanting to help. Nina wondered, suddenly, what it would be like to have a close girlfriend. Someone who could make that face when a man hurt her, who would be on her side. Someone she could talk to.
"We're mates," she blurted out.
Alethia's eyebrows shot up. "Really?” She frowned. “Are you okay with that?”
Nina nodded vigorously, started to tear up despite herself. "Yes! I thought since I'm his mate, maybe I could stick around, but he doesn't want a mate. He ran off this morning, and I'm pretty sure he wants me—gone." She swallowed a sob, but it got caught in her throat.
"Oh, honey." Alethia came forward and, without any hesitation, folded Nina up in her arms.
Nina froze stiff at first. She couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten a hug like this, to comfort her when she was sad. Not since before she left home. Years and years.
Alethia's arms were warm, and she smelled like some delicately lovely perfume, and she felt soft and welcoming. Nina couldn't help herself: she melted into the embrace. Tears choked her.
She’d been right. Alethia wasn’t disgusted, she wasn’t judging Nina. She was helping, in a way that Nina hadn’t even realized she wanted.
Alethia made soft shushing noises while Nina sobbed and sniffled and struggled to get herself under control. It took a while.
Finally, she caught her breath and pulled away. "Sorry for that," she mumbled, not meeting Alethia's eyes.
"It's not a problem," Alethia said softly. "Can I ask you something?"
Nina nodded, wiping her eyes. "What?"
"If you're Joel's mate, why did you think we were going to chase you away?"
"He doesn't want a mate," Nina repeated. "I thought maybe he just—wanted me gone."
"So you thought that he called up all of his packmates to come chase you off, while he hid in the woods like a coward?" Alethia asked, with an edge to her voice. "Has he done something like that before?"
Nina shook her head immediately. "No! He's been—nice, and sweet, and just really wonderful. We spent all last night together, and we ran in the mountains, and we talked, and we—" Maybe best not to mention that last part out loud.
"Did the sort of things mates do, yes, I understand," Alethia said dryly. "All right. If he was so nice and sweet to you, why were you so afraid of what he'd do?"
Nina bit her lip. "It's happened before. Not the mate thing, but people trying to chase me off. I didn't want to stick around and let it happen again, not after—" Not after everything they'd shared together, in such a short time.
Alethia’s eyes were gentle. “Who tried to chase you off?”
Nina closed her eyes. “Everyone, really. Even back when I, I had to leave my parents’ house, because I’m adopted.”
And then suddenly, before she knew it, the whole sordid, awful story came pouring out. Nina had never told anyone before last night. Telling Joel had felt like a meeting of minds and hearts, an intimate sharing of something secret with someone she trusted.
Telling Alethia, on the other hand, felt like setting herself free. Like she was taking the secret, this awful secret that had gotten deeper and heavier the longer she carried it around, and letting it just...fly away into the air.
Alethia listened quietly as Nina talked, not interrupting at all. Her face held such a deep compassion that it made Nina want to start to cry again.
Finally, she finished up with, “So then I thought that I might as well give up, and accept that I was going to be alone. So I came here.”
Alethia let out a long breath. “That’s quite a story.”
Nina shrugged. It was hers.
Alethia pressed her lips together, thinking. Finally she said, “Okay. Can I offer you some advice?"
"Please." Nina knew she sounded desperate, but she didn’t care. If there was one thing she needed in this world, it was some sort of guidance in how to navigate it. She'd definitely never managed to do it successfully on her own.
"I can't help you with Joel and his problem with mates. I don't know him that well, and I'm not sure why he feels that way. But I know a thing or two about assuming people are going to hurt you."
Alethia said it easily, as though it wasn't painful to admit. Nina looked at her. She looked serious, like she was talking about something that didn't make her happy, but not like she was hurting.
Not anymore, maybe.
"If you get hurt enough," Alethia went on, "you start to expect it, even from people who've never hurt you. And that's a problem, because it means that you start assuming the worst about people. You start self-sabotaging. You're sure everything's going to go wrong, so you prepare for that to happen. You assume it is happening...even if it isn't."
Nina couldn't laugh, because everything hurt too much. But she let out a sound that was maybe halfway between a chuckle and a sob. "That sounds like me, all right."
"It was me, too, for a long time. It meant I almost screwed up getting together with Grey, which was the best thing that's ever happened to me, just because I couldn't believe it was real."
Nina tried to imagine this confident, beautiful, self-assured woman in the same situation as Nina, broken and hurting and ashamed. She couldn't at all. Could Alethia really have made it, somehow, from that situation to this one?
"It's hard to realize what's happening," Alethia said quietly. "Because you think everyone else is hurting you. But really, you're just hurting yourself. Because that's what you're used to."
Nina swallowed another sob that was trying to work its way up her throat. "Okay," she said, forcing her voice to stay steady. "Okay. So how do you stop?"
Alethia spread her hands. “Live in the present. It’s harder than it sounds, but it’s the best thing. What’s happening to you now? Is anyone hurting you? What do you want now? What do you expect now?”
Nina shook her head, feeling dizzy at all the questions. “I don’t know. It’s too much.”
“If it’s too much, just.
..breathe. Take a step back. Breathe in, and feel yourself breathing, and breathe out, and let the past go.” Alethia smiled ruefully. “I only just figured that part out a little while ago. Grey’s never had any trouble living in the present. I’m the one who was always stuck in the past. But I’m getting better.”
“Breathe,” Nina said doubtfully.
Alethia nodded. “Try it now. Breathe in, hold it, let it out slow.”
Nina breathed in deep, and held it, thinking about herself. What did she feel?
Loneliness.
She wanted to be with Joel. She wanted to be with her mate, and have a pack.
At that thought, the past welled up in her. It was just like Alethia said—the second she remembered, she started thinking that it was impossible. That she could never have a family again.
She breathed out, and tried to let those clamoring doubts go. It was hard.
“Again,” Alethia said softly.
Nina tried it again. Breathe in. Hold. Was anyone hurting her? Not right now. Right now, she was standing in the forest with Alethia, and nothing was happening. She breathed out, and tried to let go of the memories of pain.
“It’s hard,” she said.
Alethia nodded. “One more time. Just think about yourself this time. How it feels to breathe.”
Nina breathed. Her chest filled, her body expanded with air. She held it. Then she let it out.
It felt like her muscles were uncurling, her anxieties melting away. “It’s working,” she said, surprised.
“There you go,” Alethia said. “Now. What do you want?”
Nina knew the answer to that question. “Joel.”
“Well,” said Alethia, turning to look into the trees, “I think I know where to find him.”
Nina turned too, and saw him. Joel was crouched in leopard form on a rock, looking down at her and Alethia.
“Come down,” Nina called to him. “Please come down.”
Slowly, Joel padded down from the rock. He walked across the forest floor until he was standing in front of Nina and Alethia.
“I need you to talk to me.” Nina stared at him, willing him to shift and explain what had happened. “Joel. I need to hear what you’re thinking.”