Page 7 of Protector

Mainly because my poor wolf wants nothing more than to rub her flank against his…

It’s a shifter thing. His scent is intoxicating to me, and if I could roll around in it, carrying it on my skin, my wolf would want to. My ‘human’ half? Not so much. The brain in charge can think past the way my body reacts around Tristan. It knows better than to hope for a mate that can’t seem to make up his mind about me.

He hasn’t rejected me. Not outright, at least, though the bond that sprang into place just about three months ago is… well, it ain’t no bond, I’ll tell you that. Despite my own conflicting feelings for the Beta, I’m stubborn enough to refuse to sever whatever tie we have. The Luna gave it to us, and I have too much respect for the goddess to impulsively throw away my fated mate bond just because the one male meant for me decided, nah, I’m good.

But that’s my problem. If he wasn’t interested, fine. I think I’m pretty fucking amazing. Doesn’t mean everyone else does. The best part of being a shifter is knowing that, fated mate or not, at the end of the day, a mate gets to choose. We both have to want the other for the mating ceremony to take, turning the promise of forever into a finalized mate bond. No mutual feelings, no bond. Tristan, on the other paw… the Beta drives me bonkers with his mixed signals.

When he’s not around, I get the hint. When he is? If he’s not purposely ignoring me, I catch him watching me out of the corner of his eye. His expression is always carefully masked, and with our bond what it is, I can’t figure him out. My nose can’t catch any of his emotions, either, but pheromones… yup. I catch some of those and it makes the whole situation even more complicated.

I don’t like complicated.

Believe me. This hot and cold crap got old the first time the Beta growled softly at me when he saw that I was naked in front of a few of his packmates and a couple of witches. He gave up any right to be possessive over me when he rebuffed me.

I can handle rejection. I understand that, due to the stasis curse, he might be hesitant to go from existing the way he was to jumping into a committed relationship with no way out.

But pointedly telling me that he was walking away to rinse my scent off of him?

I’m a petty, bitter she-wolf. I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for that.

And while bitter I may be, I’m definitely not a glutton for punishment. I’m still living in this town, but I’m not about to poke my snout in where I’m not wanted. I’m not only thinking about Tristan when I say that, either. Even though I’ve moved into the pack house now, that includes cozying up to the rest of the Winter Creek Pack.

Fallon insisted I stay with her newfound family when I made it clear I wasn’t ready to head back to New Jersey just yet. She gave me a room on the third floor of this weird, old stone mansion, tried her best to involve me all while she was dealing with her own shit—including her newly bonded mate, plus the fallout from magically murdering her grandmother—and gave me some space when I told her I was happy being left alone for a while.

I spent four years sharing a dorm with Fallon and Lorelei. When Jeannie Lipton says she needs to be left alone, even those two scattered to the library or another room before I snapped.

It’s not so different now. Only I’m free to show off my claws and fangs if anyone is pissing me off.

Because Fallon found it so easy to fit in with the pack—even when she still gullibly believed she was a full human and not a hybrid supe—I think she thought I would, too. After all, I was born knowing what I was.

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? I was born knowing I was a rare Luna-touched wolf, and that makes me different from nearly every type of wolf shifter except, perhaps, for maybe an even rarer female alpha.

In the supernatural world, there are countless types of shifters. Basically, if it’s a sentient creature, someone somewhere has taken that shape at least once before. I’ve heard of earthworm shifters, shark shifters, even bunny shifters, but they’re also pretty rare. The big three are way more common: wolf, bear, and large cat.

Each has its own type of community. Large cats have their prides, bears have their claims, and wolves? Most of us belong to a pack.

Not me. Not Lorelei, either. It comes down to our bloodline. If you go all the way back, my mother’s side is descended from Romulus and Remus, the twin wolves who founded Rome all those years ago. We were born to serve the goddess, and with a ranking like that, we’re just too unique to fit into the hierarchy that wolf shifters insist on. We exist outside of it, though any shifter who doesn’t know my heritage would gauge my power level as a delta.

In reality, I’m much closer to being an Alpha—and, sometimes, I wonder if that’s another reason why Tristan pulled away.

Besides the Luna, I’ve only ever heard of two other female alphas: one who ignited the centuries-long Claws and Fangs war between wolf shifters and vampires before her death, and another who is currently one-half of the Alpha couple in a pack situated on the East Coast, not too far from where me and Lorelei live.

Tristan is a beta wolf. More than that, he’s the actual Beta of the Winter Creek Pack, second in rank to Lucas—and, well, Fallon now, too, since she’s his bonded mate. It’s ingrained in him to respect and obey his Alpha. Maybe he doesn’t know what to make of such a dominant she-wolf, especially since both Fallon and Jade are deltas and I’m me.

And maybe, three months later, I’m still grasping for straws to explain away his curious behavior…

It could be because of what I am. Most Luna-touched wolves have the trademark silver eyes that show they’ve been blessed by our goddess. She has a few gifts she passes down to her chosen few, including my twin’s ability to sense mate bonds.

Lorelei and me, we’re different from even those shifters. We’re not just Luna-touched. We were born to be her guardians, a pair of protectors who do her bidding in the mortal world. That’s not all we can do, either. When the Luna needs us to, we serve as her avatar, too. She slips into my body, using my eyes and my mouth while I kind of hang out in the back of my consciousness, waiting for her to finish up.

That happened last month. The Luna swooped in, taking over so that she could talk to Fallon directly instead of through me, then disappeared again. Poor Fal. That really freaked the fuck out of her, but I get it. The supe world is a weird place with its own rules, and my poor friend is having to play catch-up.

That’s another reason I decided to stick around. With the curse on Winter Creek finally broken after seventy long years, half of the local pack took the chance to leave the second they could. Supposedly, there’s a truce now between the witches in the sanctuary city and the wolves. They want Fallon to take over for her dead grandma, becoming the leader of the coven. They say they won’t retaliate… but I’m not so sure about that.

Call me suspicious if you want. That’s fine. I’ve seen what people—supes and humans—can do. Lorelei’s not in danger. Fallon is. This is where I’m needed. I’m not avoiding going home because it stings to think of interrupting Lorelei’s happily ever after with Cal, or that I’m hanging around like a stray dog because I’m hoping Tristan might come to his senses and realize I’m the best thing to happen to him since sliced bread.

And, don’t worry, there’s no way I believe that crock of shit, either.

When I first arrived in Winter Creek, I found a spot on the edge of the pack’s territory—just outside of the Alpha’s reach—to hunker down and figure out what I wanted to do next. My only guidance from the Luna was that Fallon was here, she was on the cusp of breaking the curse, and I was still tasked with avenging Jolie Bordeaux’s murder.

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