Page 10 of Unlearning

“There you go, all done.” I said and stood up, wiping my palms against my pants.

“Carter will show you to the employee housing dorms, I imagine your flight back isn't until tomorrow?” he looked at me and I shook my head. “Good, you can stay there tonight, we have individual rooms in what you'd consider the “pack house”, but we also have log cabins available throughout the Parks territory – you'll stay at those when you're assigned to patrol different areas for days at a time. Other than that you'll live in the room Carter will show you. In the pack house we also have a kitchen, lunch hall, cafeteria, gym, and other facilities, Carter can give you the details. When can you move in?”

“Next week would be ideal for me, I need to fly back to Alpha Frank's pack, load my stuff into my car and then make the 8-hour drive, so that should be feasible,” I mused.

“Excellent, I'll get Bethany to complete the necessary paperwork, and don't forget to submit your receipts for the moving expenses to her as well and we'll see that you get reimbursed for those.”

“Thank you Al- I mean, sir, Mr. Woodward,” I said haltingly and the two of them looked at each other and almost laughed, while I groaned and then actually laughed. “Okay, whatever, sir, thankyou so much, I’ll see you next week then!” I said cheerfully and extended my hand to him. This was business, after all. His hand was warm, calloused, and much larger than mine.

“See you next week, Samantha.”

Carter led me to the pack house, and we talked the whole way there. He had a mate, Ashley, who also worked as a park ranger. They’d met while studying at CU Boulder. He was the youngest of three, which explained a lot. He was originally from Colorado, and by the time we got to my room I had exercised some laughing muscles in my stomach that had been inactive for years.

“Oh shoot, I forgot to ask him about the main office work. I was told I'd need to go to Crescent City occasionally, how does that work?” I asked Carter.

“I'm not 100% sure, since I don't go myself aside from quarterly meetings, but I think you'd go with the Alpha once a month, he normally stays in the city for a week. There is a Parks Department owned apartment he stays in, and it's basically a bunch of meetings and reports from what I've gathered from his complaining,” he chuckled.

“Oh, you know how our kind loves sitting around in stuffy offices, I'll be complaining too, Carter, and you better deal with it,” I threatened playfully.

That night at dinner I met most of the pack, and all of them were extremely nice. James came to dinner as well, looking freshly showered and as serious as the first time I'd seen him. I tried observing his interactions with the rest of the pack to gain some insight into their dynamic but could not do so in a stealthy way. Besides, people kept coming up to me to talk so I tried simply enjoying the newness of it all. This was a new beginning, and both me and my wolf were excited. Before bed, while mentally going over my day, I remembered the pang of pain I had felt when asked about my mate, and I briefly wondered what James was about to say before Carter interrupted us.

CHAPTER 9

November 2015

Brandon, age 29

What a shitshow. I slammed the door of the empty house shut, it wasn’t like anyone was gonna complain. Hailey'd taken the kids to her folks', again. She's been doing that a lot lately. Ever since she'd found out about mates. A delegation from a neighboring pack was visiting this summer, so we had a pack barbecue to welcome them. They came in, and one of our she-wolves immediately jumped up and threw herself into their Beta's arms - legs wrapped around his waist, tongue down his throat, the whole production. Meanwhile, I was in the restroom helping Ben, so naturally my curious wife asked the she-wolves oohing and awwing whether these two were a long-distance couple, so the females told herno, they were mates who had found each other. Hailey wasn't clear on what they meant by that, so they “helpfully” told her about how every wolf has a soulmate who’s the other half of their soul, how when you meet them it’s instant, overwhelming love – you know, everythingthat I hadn’t wanted her to know. She was unusually quiet for the rest of the barbecue and I was none the wiser.

That night, once the kids were in bed, she glared at me and said:

“Brandon, tell me about mates. The truth this time.”

In that moment, I knew what it must be like to be part of an inevitable car accident, to see the semi going straight at you and to have nowhere to run or hide. So I bit the bullet for once. I asked her:

“What do you know so far?”

“I know every wolf has one, they're the other half of your soul, and you’re made for each other.”

“That's the gist of it. Do you have any specific questions?” I wasn't going to volunteer more rope to hang myself with. She didn't need to know about the scent or about the sparks. Or the incredible sleep that you'd never experience again unless close to your mate.

“Will you leave me once you find your mate, Brandon?” she asked in a small voice, one that I'd never heard from her in all the years we've been together.

“Listen to me, Hailey. We'll talk about this now and then we'll let it be, okay?” she nodded. “I've already met my mate,” she gaspedat my revelation but I held a hand up before she could comment. “Just listen. I was 18 and she was 14, I knew she was my mate but she was a kid, right? So I left for college. By the time I saw her again, I was already with you, and you were pregnant with Ben.”

She briefly seemed lost in thought and then her eyes snapped up.

“When you went back home to sign that ridiculous contract, right before I gave birth to Ben?”

“That's right,” I confirmed.

“So why did you come back to me? What happened with... her? Your mate. What's her name?” Hailey, the lawyer, couldn’t stop collecting information.

“Well, I loved you, and you were having my pup. So I came back to you,” I tried to answer without answering.

“Andher?” she wouldn’t relent.

“Samantha,” I managed to say her name without letting it slowly dissolve on my tongue like a lump of sugar. “Well, she noticed I wasn't behaving how a mate should so she followed me to Chicago, and -,”

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