Chapter 3
Promise’s phone rang later that afternoon as she was pulling weeds in the flower bed that surrounded a large weeping cherry tree. It had been her favorite as a kid, and she loved it even more now, its branches grazing the ground so delicately in the breeze.
“Hello?”
“Promise? This is Ally from the Freshwater Campground. Your friend Jessi asked me to give you a call.”
Promise dropped the bunch of weeds from her hand and sat back on her heels. “Hi! Thanks so much for calling.”
“You bet. So Jessi told me a little about what was going on with you. Why don’t you give me the full story and I’ll see how I can help, because I’m very sure I can.”
Promise was warmed through by Ally’s kind words. She explained her situation and the desire to find not only her truemate but a home where she could be helpful with her healing abilities.
“Well, I’ve never heard of an apex wolf, but it sounds fascinating and so cool! We have several small cabins that you could stay in while you search for your truemate. I’ll send you a link to the map to get to the campground. When would you like to come?”
Promise’s mind spun. It was Thursday afternoon, but Friday nights were busy at Lonestar with the meat buffet, and she doubted that her boss Karly would appreciate being short-staffed.
“Saturday, probably around lunchtime.”
“That’s perfect. I’ll get a cabin cleaned up for you. Drive safe.”
“I will, thank you so much, Ally.”
The call ended and Promise stared at the screen for several moments. She couldn’t believe how easy that had been. A chance meeting with Jessi at the gas station and now her world was changing.
Shit. She only had two days to make arrangements, and, oh crap, she needed to tell her parents too. Nothing like a hard deadline to make a girl get her act together.
With a smile, she rose to her feet, grabbed the bucket of weeds, and whistled a tune as she headed to the garage to find her mom and tell her the good news.
“Are you sure about this?” Rio asked as she sat on the edge of Promise’s bed and toyed with the strap of the duffel Promise had filled with shoes.
“Which part?” Promise turned from the dresser with a stack of undies.
“The campground.”
“Sure, why not? You can still come with me.”
“Nah.”
Promise stuffed the undies in the corner of the large, wheeled suitcase and stared at the contents. She’d packed for two weeks. She figured that was enough clothes for however long she was going to stay in Pennsylvania. And if she hadn’t found her truemate in a of couple weeks, she could either come back to Allen or move on somewhere else, like Ashland to visit Lyric, or Dalton to see Jessi.
She pulled the lid over and zipped it closed. “I don’t understand why you don’t want to come with me. We’ve been planning to look for new homes for ages, and then you just put the brakes on it.”
Rio wouldn’t look at Promise, so she moved around the edge of the bed and stood in front of her younger sister. “What’s really going on?”
“What happens if I go with you and you find your truemate and can be a healer for his people?”
“I’m going to be happy dancing for weeks, but what do you mean what happens?”
“What happens to me?” At her confused look, Rio continued, “What if you find your happily ever after first and I’m stuck on my own searching for my forever guy? I don’t want to do that kind of thing alone.”
“I wouldn’t let you be alone, babe.”
“Oh please, if you find your truemate, you wouldn’t want to keep looking with me for my truemate. I mean if I find my guy first I wouldn’t want to go anywhere.”
“Nice,” Promise said with a chuckle. “I swear I wouldn’t let you be by yourself if you didn’t want to be.”
Rio sighed. “I was thinking I’d go searching with the girls.”
Promise’s brows lifted. The girls, as everyone called them, were three Angel Mates—Brenna, Dakota, and Kendall. Angel Mates were supernaturally perfect mates for wolves and when they turned twenty-one, their nature kicked in and they’d leave their home pack to find their truemate. When they were mated and had kids, their sons would be alphas and their daughters would be Angels. The girls were waiting for Brenna to turn twenty-one in the fall.
Promise was a little hurt that Rio didn’t want to go with her on their adventure, but she understood that Rio maybe just wasn’t ready to leave home yet. Maybe Promise had more of that wanderlust in her than her sister did.
“I understand.”
Rio lifted luminous eyes. “You’re not mad?”
“Never! You’re my very best friend, Rio. Thick or thin, hell or high water. I’m ready to start the next chapter of my life. None of the guys in the pack are my mate, and helping Mom heal Remy’s mate really renewed my desire to get on the road and find my guy. I don’t want to sit around and wait for him to wander by on chance.”
Rio smiled. “I’ll miss you.”
The two hugged and Promise felt the sting of tears at her impending departure. She wasn’t sorry she was leaving, but she was sorry to go. She could just feel in her bones that it was the best choice for her life. Somewhere out there, her mate was waiting for her, maybe hoping that she’d show up or maybe even searching for her himself.
“I need to get on my way. Help me carry my stuff out?”
Rio nodded and lifted the duffel. “Okay, how many shoes did you pack? You are coming home at some point, right?”
“Well, yeah sure, to pack and move with my truemate when I find him. Honestly? I don’t think I’ll be back to live in Allen anymore.”
Rio stared at her for a moment. “Oh. I guess you want to be prepared for anything.”
“Yep. You never know what kind of shoes you might need.”
“Even the sexy black kitten heels?”
“You know it. And the black dress to go with them.”
“I hope you find your mate soon.”
“Me too.” They walked out to the car and put her things in the trunk.
“Bathing suit?” Rio asked.
“Yep.”
“Pajamas, flip flops, makeup, curling iron?”
“Yes, times four.”
“Charger for your laptop?”
“Ah, crud.” Promise hustled back into the trailer and grabbed the cord still plugged into the wall. She took one last look around the trailer and walked back out.
“You can move in here if you want, you know,” she said, looking at Rio.
“Why would I?”
“Maybe getting out of Mom and Dad’s house for a bit would be good for you. Like a vacation. And the trailer park has great bonfire parties on Saturday nights.”
Promise twisted the keyring until the loop holding her house key popped off. Handing it over, she said, “I’ll text you when I get there.”
“Keep me posted on everything. Lots of pics.”
“You bet.”
“Drive safe.”
“I will. Love you.”
“Love you more.”
Promise got behind the wheel, plugged her phone in, and selected the playlist she’d compiled for the drive. As the familiar strains of one of her favorite eighties songs came over the speakers, she waved at her sister and pulled away, putting the trailer in the rearview.
Soon enough, Allen would be behind her, and Little Hope would be her future.
She wasn’t sure why she was so certain this was the way to go, but ever since Jessi had suggested it, she hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that her life was going to change dramatically in Pennsylvania.
She was looking for a fresh start and her truemate, a place to call home and a place where she could be a healer and useful to her new people.
Maybe they’d be wolves, or another type of shifter group. She didn’t care what her future truemate shifted into or if he shifted at all. She only cared that she finally found him.
I’m coming for you, future-sexy-mate.
Signaling to the right, she hit the main road and accelerated, lowering the windows and turning up the volume. She couldn’t wait to get to the campground.
Artem stifled a yawn as he waited outside his sister’s cabin to take her to town. She shared a two-bedroom cabin with Charlotte, the daughter of a hyena clan who lived and worked at the campground. Charlotte’s three brothers had a cabin next to Artem’s, who lived alone.
He didn’t care to have a roommate, because then someone would be paying attention to his comings and goings, and he’d have to explain why he left at night and didn’t come back until late.
Hence the yawning.
If he could swing it, he liked sleeping in until lunch, but he hadn’t been sleeping well in the last year or so, as his anxiety over not finding his truemate and his aggression slowly got worse. And, honestly, he hadn’t slept at all last night. Guilt had kept him up and pacing, as he thought about the wolf he’d killed. When he’d come to after being choked into unconsciousness, the wolf’s body had already been disposed of and Nero had wanted to see him. All the fighting ring owner had to say to Artem, though, was how pissed he was that he’d killed a fighter when the male had been popular with the crowd.
“Aren’t you angry that he’s dead?” Artem had asked in disbelief.
“Eh.” Nero had simply shrugged. “Everyone knows that shifters fighting is dangerous business, that’s why it’s illegal. He knew what he was getting into, and to be honest he asked to fight you. He thought he could take you out.”
“Kill me?”
Another shrug. “He wanted to get top billing and he didn’t want to work his way through the ranks and train, he just wanted to fight you. He knew what it meant when he stepped into the ring with you.”
“Did he?” Artem asked, hardly able to keep the accusation from his tone.
“Of course.” Nero had handed him his winnings, minus the cost of disposing of Varro’s body, and told him to take off.
That was not the first time that Artem realized how callous Nero was about the loss of life and his fighters, but it was the first time that he’d been a part of it. Knowing that Varro had planned to kill him was chilling in an entirely different way. The fights weren’t supposed to be to the death, but it happened. Business as usual, Nero would say when it happened.
Artem pushed away the thoughts of the previous night and focused on the task at hand, chauffeuring his sister to town. He doubted he’d ever forget that awful feeling of waking up and knowing he’d taken a life, but he couldn’t wallow in his guilt or he’d go insane.
Isolde opened the door of the cabin with a travel mug in hand. She stopped on the porch to put on sunglasses and then walked to his truck. As she sat in the passenger seat, the ice in her mug clinked. “Morning.”
“Hey,” he said, pulling away from the cabin.
“You look like crap.”
“Thanks, that’s helpful.”
“I just tell it like it is. You didn’t sleep well?”
“I never do.”
She hummed and got quiet for a long moment, then said, “You’ll find your truemate this year, I know it.”
“Let’s talk about something else,” he said.
As he turned onto the main road that led to town, she said, “What do you want to talk about?”
“How about you risking our lives by getting a stranger’s address and going to their house to pick up some old piece of shit?”
“I’m not risking our lives,” she said. “Everyone does it.”
“Yeah, murderers.”
“You wouldn’t let anyone hurt me, and besides there’s nothing wrong with taking risks on occasion.”
He glanced at her and rolled his eyes. She gave him a friendly punch on the arm.
“You’re right, I wouldn’t let anyone hurt you, but I still think it’s dumb.”
“Meh. I’ve gotten some great items doing this, so you’re just going to have to suck it up.”
He snorted. She put the address into the GPS and talked his ear off on the short drive about the campground owners’ idea to host a summer gathering instead of a fall gathering.
“Why would they change it?” he asked.
“Because they’ve had fewer and fewer people coming to it. They think a timing change might help.”
“Anything’s possible. So what, like in August?”
“Probably, since June is almost over. They’re going to send out an email to the groups that send unmated people to the gatherings to gauge interest before they make any changes.” She elbowed him. “Maybe your truemate will show up. Or mine! Swoon. I hope he’s sexy.”
“Ugh.”
“What, you don’t want me to have a sexy mate?”
“I don’t want to think about you and any male, period.”
“Fair enough. I’ll just keep a good thought for both of us to find our happily ever after sooner rather than later.”
He pulled to a stop in front of a small house.
“Keeping a good thought isn’t going to do much, you know. You can’t manifest your way to a truemate.”
“But being open to good things happening can’t hurt, right?” She got out of the truck and smiled at him. “Trust me on this, Artem. Your truemate is out there somewhere, hell maybe she’s on the way to Little Hope right now!”
His phone rang before he could think of something to call his sister besides being a perpetual bucket of sunshine.
“Hey, Dad,” he said as he watched his sister go to the door and knock, wanting to make sure she didn’t get snatched.
“I need you to run an errand for me. There’s a four-wheeler company going out of business and I brokered a deal to buy two of their four-wheelers, we just have to go get them. It’s at least a three-hour drive one way. Do you mind?”
“Sure. I’ll head out after I get back to town with Isolde.”
“Thanks, son. Check in with me at the shed and I’ll help you hook up the trailer for the four-wheelers. You can take someone with you if you want, like Kieran.”
“I’ll reach out to him.”
Isolde opened the door. “I need you to grab the desk, it’s in the garage.”
“I’ll see you soon.” Artem ended the call and got out of the truck, following his sister and an old lady to a stand-alone garage where a beat-up desk was covered in dust and cobwebs.
“You’re taking off?” Isolde asked.
“Yep. All day.”
“Okay, let’s grab breakfast on the way back to the campground, my treat. We can go to the bagel shop that has those really good chocolate chip bagels.”
He was going to say no but decided his sister’s earnest look and smile was enough to make him want to go. Plus, he really did like chocolate chip bagels.
“You got it.”
She let out a happy giggle and followed him to the truck with the desk. He wasn’t sure whether he thought his sister’s optimism about finding their mates was a good thing or not. It was easy for her to stay positive when she didn’t have to worry about someday turning into a monster if she wasn’t with her truemate.
He just wanted to find his mate and put the monster-ish thoughts behind him.