Page 20 of Cursed Wolf

The last few days had been busy with pack business, plus I didn’t want to overwhelm Emmaline. She probably wasn’t crazy about male attention after her boss had been such a creep.

I purposely didn’t ask for her number so she wouldn’t feel pressured, especially after that incident. I’d given her mine instead, to leave the ball in her court. The whole time we talked, I tried to scent her emotions as discreetly as I could. She’d been obviously rattled by her boss coming on to her, but I sensed no additional discomfort or fear while she sat next to me. If anything, I thought I picked up disappointment from her when I had to leave.

“Can humans even call our phones from their world?” Ruse asked. “How would that work?”

“Both phones would need a strong signal, but yes, it’s possible,” Orson cut in. “Some of their cell phone towers actually straddle borders between our worlds. So our devices sometimes ping off of them too. I’m sure their cell companies write them off as anomalies.”

Ruse’s head swiveled toward. “How do you know that? Actually, never mind.”

He answered anyway. “Shiloh and I had the day off, so we decided to try mapping out all the entrances to the human world.”

Orson was the tech and finance wizard of the pack and full of knowledge that went over most of our heads. However, what he had in IQ points, he lacked in social skills. With some pushing from me, along with a meddlesome dragon shifter, he’d successfully gotten together with his fated mate. Shiloh was a witch of Vargmore and the owner of Stout & Spirit, the fine establishment we currently sat in.

“Well, did you find them all?” The question came from Fallon with a toothy grin.

While he was a fellow werewolf, Fallon was technically no longer part of the Howling Death pack. He’d become known as the Traveler and was a sort of mediator between all worlds. Not just us and the humans, but also the vampires, dragon shifters, and angels. I didn’t know how he did it, but he was somehow the only werewolf freely able to travel to the vampire territory of Sanguine and their allies, the dragons.

His mate, Aria, playfully slapped his arm. “Don’t taunt them.”

“No.” Orson leveled his icy blue stare at the other wolf. “Care to do any sharing in that regard?”

“Nah, I like watching you all chase your tails.”

That earned another smack from Aria and grumbling from Orson.

“Answer me this, Ice Man,” Ruse said. “Would Tryn know if his human had attempted to reach him even if she wasn’t in a prime signal area?”

Orson rolled his eyes at the nickname but proceeded to answer. “It depends. Texts and voicemails will go through once the signal is strong enough. But if she called, couldn’t get through, and didn’t leave a message, probably not.”

That gave me a little hope. Emmaline may have tried calling, but it just hadn’t gone through, so I didn’t receive a notification.

“Why don’t you just call her instead of sitting around waiting?” Ruse asked. “I know it’s a new age and everything, but we’re wolves. We go after our mates.”

“Says the wolf who doesn’t have one,” cracked Derric, our Alpha and MC president, from behind his drink.

“Hey, you’re one to talk,” Ruse shot back. As the VP and second in command, he was one of the few who could get away with talking back to Derric. “You’re a single pringle like me, and better for it.”

“Eh.” Derric made a noise like he wasn’t sure about that last part.

“No, Derric. I need you.” Ruse whined dramatically. “Stay single in solidarity with me while all these guys are getting mated up.”

“That depends on what Tryn sees, I guess.” Derric looked at me with a raised eyebrow, referring to my ability to see fate threads and other phenomena that others couldn’t.

I grinned at the two of them. “Sorry, guys. Both of your fate threads are as clear as ever, reaching out through the walls. Your mates are out there somewhere.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ruse grumbled.

It was true. Ruse’s thread stretched from his heart toward the center of town. His mate could be anyone in the territory, from someone in our community to a wolf in one of the feral packs living deep in the mountains.

Derric’s thread pointed in the opposite direction, roughly toward one of the few entrances to the human world like mine had. Maybe his mate was like Emmaline, a human, possibly a latent wolf who had no awareness of their heritage.

The Alpha didn’t seem to care one way or another. He scoffed at Ruse’s grumbling before turning his attention to me. “Ruse has a point though. Why don’t you reach out to her?”

“I never got her number,” I admitted. “Some guy had been bothering her and I stepped in. She was pretty shaken by it, and I didn’t want to make her even more uncomfortable. So I figured I’d let her decide if she wanted to see me again.”

Ruse snorted. “And I thought Orson was the most clueless werewolf I’d ever seen.”

Orson growled. “Fuck you.”

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