25 Rough

Jason

Carrie left early in the morning, to go to her second last shift. She was determined to leave on good terms, and I didn’t mind, other than that it was hard to think straight when she was far away from me because my wolf wouldn’t settle down. He wanted to go and drag her back, or follow her around. Either were acceptable options as far as he was concerned.

I did neither, instead I just spent the day at my desk working through the pile of things that needed to be done, mostly trying to do something besides idly wait for her to get home again. I’d so quickly been drawn into her orbit and already I couldn’t imagine living without her.

“You’re spacing out, Alpha,” Randy commented. “Between you and our beta...”

“What’s Porter doing?” I asked looking over at him.

“Nothing really. He’s just really unfocused lately.”

I nodded. “I’ll talk to him.” Like a huge hypocrite, considering how I was having trouble thinking of anything beside Carrie, with those lovely dark eyes, and that curvy form that I could...

I pushed up from the desk. Might as well find and deal with Porter, I wasn’t getting anything else done.

He was eating lunch when I found him. He didn’t even notice me approach him as he stared off into space while pushing food around his plate.

I didn’t waste any time. “Is she your mate?”

“Who?”

“Carrie’s human friend? Amanda?”

His shoulders slumped a bit. “Is it that obvious?”

“It is. We suspected the night that you met her. And Randy’s noticing you’re absent minded.”

“Sorry, Alpha. I’ll try to get my head back in the game.”

I could have just left it at that, but Porter looked so deflated maybe he needed to get his problems off his chest. Wolves never did good when they were isolated. “It’s not going well, then?”

He groaned. “That’s one way to say it.”

“I’m sure she’ll warm up to you in time.”

“She’s already warm, but that doesn’t mean she wants anything to do with me. She’s got a wall between us. If I press her at all she pushes me away. I don’t know how to get through to her.”

Well, I had no good advice for him. Human mates frequently were rejected, but Porter would never want to something as stupid as that, so he was stuck with her. And we’d have to figure out how to incorporate her into the pack once she accepted him.

“Have you told her?”

Porter scoffed. “I don’t know if I can convince her to be with me, let alone that I’m a werewolf and that she’s meant to be mine.”

“That’s rough, man,” I said, since there wasn’t anything I could do to help. I had no idea how to manage a human mate.

He just leaned back with a groan.

I really would have to give Carrie some thank-you-for-being-a-werewolf sex when she got home. She definitely deserved it.

No. No sex. We needed to talk. There were things I needed to say to her, and maybe that would give her the confidence to open up to me in return.

I was relieved when she came home, even though she smelled faintly of a multitude of humans, obscuring that intoxicating scent my wolf loved so much. I was even more glad when she went immediately off to shower.

Instead of following her like my wolf urged, I went and brought us some supper back from the makeshift mess hall. It wasn’t the best food, but she’d like it better than my substandard cooking.

When she came out of the shower, clad only in a flimsy towel on her way to the spare room, I forced myself not to follow her again and instead called, “I got supper, babe.”

“Sounds good,” she called back. When she came out she was disappointingly fully clothed, although I still enjoyed the visible outline of her curves. I’d already grabbed plates and everything, so she sat down across from me.

We both began eating. After a minute I said, “I think we need to talk.”

She froze and wary brown eyes met mine. “About what?”

“I think we need to get to know more about each other. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing I could want more than to carry you off to bed again, but I also want to know more about you. About your dreams, your family, your past—” I didn’t imagine her tense up with my last word “—and I’ve barely told you anything about me, either. Aren’t you curious?”

She relaxed a bit. “I am.”

I smiled at her, appreciating the way I could calm her, but then at other times I barely had to touch her and she went up like a flame. If I just—

No, not right now. We were going to talk. Our relationship was not going to be purely based on the physical reaction between us, as much as I enjoyed that aspect. I figured that Carrie needed more than that.

“So what do you want to know?” I asked her before my mind could go spinning in my favorite direction again.

“Well, I guess I want to hear whatever you want to tell me,” she answered. Her cagey response again gave me the feeling that she was still hiding something, but I didn’t press her.

“So, my family was from Glenhaven,” I began, watching her reaction. Nearly everyone in the werewolf world had heard about what had happened to my former pack, and I did not need or want her pity. Her eyes widened with recognition. No surprise that she had heard about it, too.

“Jason, I...”

“Don’t worry about it. I was lucky. I survived.” What had happened couldn’t be changed no matter how much I wished otherwise. I had nothing to complain about, because I had been one of the fortunate ones. So many of my family and friends hadn’t been so lucky. “Anyways, I was born to a pair of normal pack wolves, and I started training to be a fighter when I was twelve. By the time I was twenty-four I managed to work my way up to the delta position. I held it for two years, before we were attacked.

“I still have no idea why Stonemason came down on us as hard as they did. Hell, I didn’t even know who had attacked us until later. There was no forewarning. They struck in the early hours of the morning and killed our patrols before they could raise an alarm, so they made it far into the territory before we even knew what was happening. It was chaos, and they killed almost everyone who tried to fight, and some people were killed as they tried to run away.”

I paused, gathering my thoughts. Sweat gathered at the memories I couldn’t forget, but I had no intention of sharing the grisly details with Carrie: a child ripped apart as it tried to escape from the wolf that was dragging it, my father overwhelmed by wolves, the luna being torn to shreds, and my alpha, killed as he wept over her mangled body. I did not want to increase the dismay I could see on her face and I could feel through the bond. It was enough that only I carried the burden of my past failures.

“I fought, of course. I was severely injured, although obviously I survived, and I was taken prisoner. They let me heal, for a few days, but then they tried to force information out of us—information none of us had, some nonsense about vampire collusion—and they were not gentle about it. After a while, Stonemason let most of the prisoners go, but there were nine of us who their alpha considered too dangerous to release. He was going to execute us, but with some help from the inside, we escaped and fought our way out. Porter, Max, and I stuck together, united by the common goal of trying to get Kain to safety. And we managed to.”

Her deep eyes were dewy with sympathy. I didn’t want to make her sad, so I quickly moved on with my story.

“I won’t bother with the details after our escape. It took weeks before we were confident we had lost Stonemason, and then we had to figure out what to do. Our birth pack was dead or scattered, our ruling members dead. Packs were reluctant to allow unknown fighters to join, even when we claimed we were from Glenhaven—apparently some rogues had been claiming that to enter packs and make trouble by that point—so we four continued on as a group. A few of the packs might have taken in Kain since he was a kid and Max since he’s so disarming, but they wanted to stay together with us.”

She looked sad. I didn’t like that, any more than I liked dwelling on it myself, so I quickly continued.

“We became something like a pack, and then we decided to make it official. I got bullied into being alpha, and Porter became my beta. He was only a fighter part time, but his construction experience has come in handy. He didn’t really want a position, either.”

Carrie smiled. “Why not? Too much responsibility for rogues?”

I chuckled. “Something like that.”

“Then why didn’t Max become beta instead? I bet he could have done it.”

“Max used to be a warrior, but he never wanted a position beyond that, especially now. His mate is still alive somewhere and he never felt her die, so he knows she’s out there, somewhere. He doesn’t want to be tied down. He’s actually going to leave again to look for her and search for other survivors while he does next week. They’re free to join us if they want. Some might, but many have found their mates or put down roots. Beginning a pack is rough, and it’s not for everyone.”

I met her eyes. “Honestly, besides the fact I’m afraid that I can’t keep you safe, I also didn’t think you’d want to do this. I know you were a rogue, but you were living like a human. Who would want to give up that comfort for this risk?” I was well aware that we were sitting in a trailer, eating barely decent pack food because everything was still tight. I hadn’t had the life of luxury of an established luna to offer my mate. I still didn’t and likely never would. Most packs had wealth built up over multiple generations.

But they had to start somewhere.

She spoke, her voice tentative. “I already told you I don’t care about that, Jason. I like that we’re building a pack. I wasn’t really satisfied with my life as a rogue among the humans without a pack. I wasn’t really satisfied with my life, waiting for my mate, either.” She inhaled sharply, and then met my eyes, her unease seeping into me. “And I wasn’t truly satisfied with my life as acting luna of Greenwoods.”

My breath caught in my throat as I understood her meaning.