“I guess I’m staying then,” he told her as he pulled back, playing with her hair. She shivered slightly from his touch, wanting to take him up to her bedroom.
“If you want, you can move in here with me and Thea since you don’t have a place,” she told him, batting her eyelashes. “I mean, if you want to.”
“Oh, I want to,” he murmured in her ear, making her blush. “As long as I’m near you, I’ll be fine. But how are we going to tell your dad? Or Kato? Or the rest of the pack?”
“I think my dad already knows,” she confessed, remembering the knowing look he gave her and Lukas when she woke up after being healed. “Don’t ask me how, but the guy is all-knowing sometimes. Plus, I doubt he’ll make much fuss. He’ll be busy anyway, he’s going to find my mother.”
“Really? How is he going to do that?”
“I don’t know. Evidently that Elder that healed me, Michael, is upset with how the Elders have been running everything for the past few decades. He’s been wanting to change it, but he hasn’t had much support, even though he’s one of the oldest and strongest Elders around. But with my dad’s help and the fear that more shifters like Kaiser will rise up, they’ve decided to team up together and try to be more lenient in some areas. My father recently confessed to Michael that my mother was still alive, and now they are both on the hunt to find her, if she wants to be found.”
“How do you feel about this?”
Annie shrugged, honestly not knowing what she was supposed to feel. “I don’t know. I want to have a mom, I guess, but I mainly just want her to be found so that my father can have some type of peace, whether that’s finding her and bringing her home, or whatever the universe holds. I just don’t want him to continue to have this burden. I think he’s been reliving the past ever since Kaiser showed up, and I hate that he’s hurting.”
“Do you think the rest of the pack will be okay with us, though?” Lukas asked. “I know your father will, but Kato? All the others?”
“So what if they don’t?” Annie told him, smiling. “It won’t be the first time we’ve been judged, and it definitely won’t be the last time. I say bring it on.”
“Well, as long as you’re my mate, I’m the happiest shifter around.”
Annie pulled him to her again, kissing him with all of the pent-up desire and love she’d been holding for him since the first time she’d laid eyes on him.
They stood there, in her yard with the slightly chilly breeze, holding each other as if nothing in the world was more important. They both knew that there would be trouble, but they were willing to face it head on.
And Annie couldn’t help but feel that maybe everything, when it was all said and done, would be okay.
* * *
* * *
Book 2: Kato
Chapter 1
“I broke up with Jake,” Thea said into her cellphone, briskly walking to her car as she left the hospital, trying not to break down in tears. She probably shouldn’t have broken up with her boyfriend in such a public place, which also just so happened to be his workplace. But she’d had enough, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She needed to end it, for her sanity and happiness.
She heard her best friend, Annie, inhale in surprise over the phone. “You really did?” she asked her, and Thea knew that she was more than a little surprised.
Thea had been saying that she was going to break up with Jake for the past two weeks, but she never did. She just thought that he would change, and they could go back to how they used to be. But he didn’t. In fact, he got worse, and he became more than a little rude to her.
Their relationship wasn’t always as bad. It was actually perfect, up until the Elders showed up at Thea and Annie’s place, threatening to take Thea away and wipe her memory because she knew too much about shifters. Of course, there was also the threat that they could just take care of Thea so that she wouldn’t be a danger to their society anymore, which made Thea panic with fear. Having your life threatened before your eyes was a lot to deal with.
Thea hadn’t been able to forget the frightening experience, and there had been more than one night where she’d woken up screaming, afraid for her life. Jake, of course, noticed something was off, but he didn’t really handle the situation well. He got annoyed with Thea just wanting to stay inside her house and not go out with him, and he definitely didn’t understand why she was acting all weird out of nowhere.
And it’s not like Thea could tell him. First, he would think she was absolutely crazy. Second, she would never put Annie or any of the rest of the shifters in that type of trouble. Because in her little town in Maine, shifters were basically everywhere. And the second any other humans found out about what they really were, that they could turn into wolves, she knew that hell would descend on both sides.
So, after continuously hearing Jake telling her to get over whatever experience she had and get back to normal, she decided to end things. She knew that he didn’t understand the full story, and maybe if he did, things would be different. But she was more than a little upset over how he was treating her, regardless of whether he knew the whole story or not.
She wouldn’t stand for it.
But now she was crying in the hospital parking lot, almost regretting that she just ended things with him and had stormed out of the place.
“Are you crying, Thea?” Annie asked her over the phone, concern creeping through her voice.
“I know that I needed to end things,” she told Annie, sniffling and trying to find her car through her tears. “But I already miss him, which is horrible.”
“Do you miss him, or do you miss the relationship?”
Thea sighed, knowing that Annie was right. She didn’t miss the Jake she knew now. She missed the Jake that she first fell in love with. Maybe this was a long time coming, and it just took a horrible situation for Thea to see it clearly.
“You’re right, as always,” Thea told her, finally locating her car and briskly walking over to it. “Are you home right now?”
“Yep, Lukas and I are making dinner,” Annie informed her. Thea smiled, loving the new comfortable relationship Annie and Lukas were in.
Lukas, a former rogue that came to town after hearing of a murderous group of rogues on a rampage, fell hard for Annie, and Annie fell hard for him, regardless of the situations they were in. It wasn’t a romance that was supposed to be, yet they’d survived the battle against the murderous Kaiser, growing stronger in the process. Now, since he’d had saved both Annie, the alpha pack’s daughter, and the alpha himself, Lukas was given the opportunity to join the pack and leave his rogue life behind.
Thea, for one, was downright giddy that Lukas had decided to stay. He not only was a stable and loving partner for her best friend, but Thea also now trusted him with her life. When the Elders came to fix the “problem” they had–i.e. Thea–Lukas had protected her from the very beginning, risking his life to get her to safety and away from the Elders. Even though the Elders eventually left and nothing too bad came out of the situation, Thea would never be able to repay him, even though he consistently told her that she really owed him nothing.
Hann, Annie’s father and the alpha of the Moonlight Pack, assured Thea that the Elders would not be coming back for her. Thea had never questioned Hann, and he had always been like a second father to her since she was a child, but she didn’t know if Hann could keep the Elders away forever.
“Okay, how about you two, me, and Kato, go out for drinks tonight after dinner?” Thea asked her, sniffling slightly. “I need alcohol and a drunk night with my best friends, if that’s okay.”
“That’s definitely okay, hun,” Annie told her, her voice going soft. “And it’s a plan. Are we talking any rebound sex with a stranger?”
“Probably not,” Thea admitted. She didn’t know when she would get over Jake, but she did know that hooking up with some stranger would just make her miss him more. She envied the people that were able to move on by hooking up with others. “I
just want to get drunk with you guys and have fun.”
“Then it’s a plan,” Annie told her, and Thea could hear Lukas talking in the background. A slight stab of sadness entered her heart as she realized how happy Annie and Lukas were together.
Thea sniffled and tried to hold back another wave of tears that threatened to break free. Living with a happy couple in love was definitely going to be hell.
Chapter 2
Kato couldn’t get Thea out of his mind. Which was all kinds of wrong.
For one, she was his best friend. He couldn’t be having these kinds of thoughts about her. It was wrong, and it put their friendship in a weird area, not that Kato would ever admit to her what he was really thinking or feeling. Secondly, she was a human. And that was probably the biggest no-no that Kato could think of.
But instead of listening to Hann talk about different alpha leader activities that he did on a daily schedule, Kato was currently zoning off and thinking about how he had felt when he’d held Thea in his arms after the whole Elder incident. What was wrong with him?
“You okay there, Kato?” Hann asked him. Kato immediately snapped back to the present, beyond embarrassed that he had completely zoned off in front of his alpha. That was enough for Kato to realize that he wasn’t in his right mind.
“I’m sorry, Hann,” he confessed, sitting up in his chair that he was slouching in before. He dragged his hand across his face, attempting to rub away the exhaustion from the way Thea was keeping him up at night in his mind and his dreams. “There’s just been a lot that’s been going on recently, and I’m a bit out of it today, I guess.”
Kato hated lying to his alpha, but he couldn’t really tell him how he was feeling about Thea, could he? Though Hann would probably be the most understanding of anyone else in the pack. Hann himself, king alpha and leader of the Moonlight Pack, had married and mated with a human woman. His mate successfully carried a child to term, resulting in Annie; Kato and Thea’s other best friend who was also a halfie. However, Kato was told that Hann’s wife died during childbirth, as many humans did because their bodies couldn’t hold a shifter to full term without consequences.
“I know life here in Maine has been pretty hectic lately,” Hann responded, rubbing his beard. “Which is one of the reasons I want to start giving you some advice about being an alpha of a pack. More so than I’ve been doing before. I want there to be daily sessions and hours where I teach you all about what you can face when you’re an alpha.”
“Me?” Kato asked, stunned. He knew that Hann had always liked him, and there were many rumors around the pack that he wanted Kato as his heir when he retired or died, since Annie couldn’t be the alpha because she was a halfie, and because he knew Annie really didn’t want to be the alpha. But Kato never really thought Hann was serious. Now though, with a serious Hann looking at him, which was incredibly rare, he realized that maybe Hann wanted him to be the next alpha, after all.
“Yes, you,” Hann told him, his serious face turning into that laid-back smile Kato knew so well. “You’ve got what it takes, Kato. And, possibly most importantly, you’ve got heart, and that’s something that every good alpha needs. You need to be strong, while also being compassionate, and you need to be a leader that everyone can rely on. Since you were a young boy, you’ve been a leader, son. And I would be honored if you would be my heir when I eventually get sick of you all.”
“Hann . . . I don’t know what to say.”
“Say yes, and we’ll go from there.”
Kato smiled, wanting to run over to his alpha and give him a hug from the joy that was bursting within him. He couldn’t wait to tell Thea. That was the one good thing about Thea knowing about shifters now, he could tell her all about his day and not hide it from her anymore. Thea and Annie had both hid the fact that Thea knew about shifters all along since they were in high school, and it had only come out recently when the Elders had shown up to take Thea away.
“Yes,” Kato told his alpha, his smile wide and his heart full of pride.
Being an alpha of a pack was the top level any regular shifter could get. Of course, some shifters decided that they wanted to become alphas through the alpha battle, where they challenged an alpha to a duel to the death, with the only survivor being the new or remaining alpha. But being chosen to be the next alpha by the current alpha? Only a few privileged people experienced that.
And now Kato was one of them.
Chapter 3
Thea started drinking the minute she got home, much to Annie’s chagrin. She didn’t care, though. She just wanted good food and alcohol to help her get over the whole Jake breakup. She wanted to numb the feelings that she was having for just a few hours, knowing she would have to deal with the fallout, eventually.
But tonight, she didn’t have to. Tonight, she was going to get drunk with her best friends.
Annie and Lukas refused to drink until they were finished cooking, so when Kato walked through the front door, Thea literally attacked him with a hug, telling him he took forever to get there. All Kato did was laugh slightly as he held Thea, who was now slightly tipsy.
“Finally, you’re here,” Thea told him, slurring her words, hanging onto him as they walked to the kitchen so that Kato could greet Annie and Lukas.
“Sorry I’m late, Thea,” Kato said, letting go slightly to hug Annie hello and give a friendly back slap to Lukas. “You’re never going to guess what Hann told me today.”
“What? Is something wrong?” Annie quickly asked, fear setting in her face. Annie was still shaken about everything that had happened with Kaiser trying to kill her father, and also almost killing her. They’d lost only a few of their shifters in the battle, but both Kato and Annie still felt their deaths close to their heart. Hann, the alpha of those lost souls, felt even worse, and Kato and Annie had been trying to help him through the hard times.
“No, nothing’s wrong,” Kato quickly assured her, sitting at the kitchen island with Thea as Annie and Lukas continued to cook dinner for everyone. “He officially and formally said that he wants me to be his successor and become the next alpha when he retires. He says that he’s going to make an official announcement to the pack at our next pack meeting.”
“Kato, that’s amazing,” Annie smiled at him, walking over to where he sat and giving him a big hug.
“Congrats, man,” Lukas told him, smiling as well and shaking his hand. “You’re gonna be a great alpha.”
“I’m so proud of you,” Thea told him, feeling tears prick her eyes as she hugged him. The amount of alcohol she had drunk was making her emotional, but she didn’t care. She laughed with Kato as he hugged her back, wiping away her tears. At least she wasn’t crying about Jake anymore.
“Oh, did you hear?” Annie told Kato as she stirred the food she was cooking on the stove. “Thea broke up with Jake today.”
Thea groaned and put her head on the kitchen island counter, feeling a fresh batch of tears about to overtake her.
“I need more tequila,” Thea told them all, her voice muffled.
“What? Why’d you break up with him?” Kato asked her, concern in his voice.
“Shut up, I know you’re happy about this,” Thea told him, coming up for air and wiping away the moisture from her eyes. “You’ve hated Jake since the day you met him.”
“Well, the guy’s an asshole,” Kato said, not seeing Annie’s pointed glare at him that was trying to tell him to shut up. “And he’s not even a good doctor. I’m a good doctor. He’s mediocre, yet he thinks he’s the best thing that’s ever walked into the building.”
“Kato,” Annie tried to warn him. It didn’t help.
“And the guy isn’t good enough for you,” Kato continued, oblivious to Annie’s warnings. “Which is something I’ve been telling you for a while now, you know.”
“Kato,” Annie tried again.
“You know what, you’re right,” Thea said suddenly, sitting up straighter with a new purpose in her mind. “Jake has always been
an asshole, and I deserve much better.”
Both Annie and Lukas swiveled around, surprised to see Thea’s sudden change of heart. Before Kato had come in the front door, she was crying about life without Jake. Now, with just a few words from Kato, she was like a changed woman. Kato just smiled at her, making Thea smile back at him with the biggest smile she’d had on her face all day. Maybe all week.
“Wait, did he do something to you?” Kato asked, understanding suddenly filling his brain. “Has he been abusing you? Mentally abusing you? Did he cheat on you with someone else?”
“Kato,” Thea said, trying to calm him down.
“Oh, I’m gonna kill him. He’s gonna regret the day he even looked at you wrong!” Kato stood up, as if about to leave and find out where Jake was, so he could teach him a lesson.
“Kato, calm down,” Thea reassured him, pushing him back into his seat. “He didn’t do anything to me like that. It’s just . . . well, I’ve been a bit off since the Elders came to town, and it’s just taking me a little bit longer to get over it than I thought. And Jake, well, he couldn’t understand why I was acting a bit sad and not like I used to, and I couldn’t tell him why, of course. But the way he was acting? I just couldn’t deal with anymore. So, maybe it’s my fault, or–”
“No, it’s not your fault, Thea,” Kato told her, growing serious with rage over the way Jake was to his best friend. “Never say that again.”
“Okay,” Thea smiled at him, then smiled at Annie and Lukas who were just finishing up cooking their dinner. This was exactly what she needed tonight. Her friends picking her up and reassuring her that her breakup decision was the right one to make. Even though her mind kept on replaying the hurt look Jake had in his eyes when she let him know that she couldn’t continue their relationship. Even though she felt desperately lonely, and had since the Elders threatened her, even though she had friends and family all around her, vowing to protect her.
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