Chapter 6 - Alanis
The drive took three hours, and Rael spent most of it not talking, which she'd have appreciated more if she weren't using the silence to build a case against him.
She was good at that—building cases. Eight years with the Lumen had trained her to treat every new person as a variable rather than a constant, to gather evidence before forming conclusions. It was useful in the field, but also exhausting.
The mate claim echoed in her head. She wanted to dismiss it.
She'd been in a holding facility for seventy-two hours, spent an evening on an auction stage, bought by her one-night stand, and was now in a moving vehicle going to an unknown location.
The psychological conditions for attaching significance to the wrong things were all present.
Stress, isolation, and physical proximity to someone her body had already shown poor judgment about.
Except she was a shifter. A shiftless one, but a shifter all the same, which meant she understood, at a level below reasoning, what a mate claim meant when an Alpha made it. It wasn't a feeling or an impression. It was a biological recognition, as specific and unambiguous as a fingerprint.
Which meant one of two things. Either he was telling the truth, in which case the situation was genuinely complicated, or he was lying—in which case the question was why, and toward what end, and whether she needed to revise her assessment of who he actually was.
She didn't know him. That was the problem. She knew what he'd shown her over the course of a couple of hours in a bar, one night in a hotel room, and the disastrous morning after. She knew he'd gone back into that warehouse to free women he had no prior obligation to.
By the time the SUV veered off the main road onto a two-lane track that cut through dense tree cover, she became tense. The air shifted to something she was familiar with—pack territory.
The Caldwell pack's territory never felt like home for her. She never once felt she belonged there. She had no idea how this pack would be.
Rael pulled up to a building at the center of a small, cleared space with an old stone, heavy door. Torches in iron brackets flanked the entrance, illuminating their surroundings. He cut off the engine, stepping out of the car. Alanis followed after. “What is this?”
The door creaked open, revealing an older-looking man, who stopped at the entrance, looking down at both of them.
"Bonding hall," Rael said.
She turned to look at him. "Hell no.”
"Alanis."
"I don't know you." She hissed. "I've known you for three days. I don't know your last name. I don't know where I am. I have not agreed to anything."
"I know." He held her gaze. "And I'm not pretending this is a good situation. But you're in pack territory, which means you need pack standing to be protected.”
“I don’t need your protection.”
“Yes, you do. They are rules. Especially since you are...shiftless.”
Alanis took a tentative step back, shaking her head.
She looked at Rael, then at the old man who looked like he wanted very much to be elsewhere, then at the building, thinking about her options.
She was in unfamiliar territory, without her contact channels.
Walking away from pack territory alone at whatever hour this was, with no resources, was careless and stupid.
She took a step forward. She’ll figure out a way later. Now, she had to survive. “Fine. Let’s do this.”
The ceremony was brief, which she appreciated. Just a couple of words exchanged and a mark appearing on her shoulder blade. She recognized that mark due to the countless mating ceremonies she’d witnessed. It showed that she belonged to him—that she was his mate and wife.
They walked back out into the cold night air, filled with the smell of lime and damp earth.
The pack was already there when they came out of the bonding hall. About thirty plus people
gathered in the cleared space, looking at her. She knew what they expected. It was almost customary where she came from—a newly bonded female was expected to shift. To show off. But after a couple of seconds had passed, when Alanis didn’t shift, they figured it out themselves.
An older wolf stepped forward. “A shiftless female?”
Rael stepped partially in front of her. “She is my mate. That is all that matters.”
Murmur moved through the crowd in a wave. Alanis could see the exchange of glances and the slight repositioning of bodies. This reaction was nothing new. She had been on the receiving end of it enough times that her nervous system had developed a particular response—zoning out.
“She's the Alpha's mate.”
"Human mate.”
"She can't contribute to the pack.”
“Enough!” Rael’s voice boomed across the gathering. “She is right here. She can hear you. She’s my mate, and we are done here. You all can leave.”
More murmurs and finally the crowd dispersed slowly.
Rael touched her arm briefly. "Come on." He led her toward a house at the north edge of the cleared space. Alanis didn't speak until the door closed behind them.
Then she turned around.
"Your pack," she started, "is going to be a problem."
Rael set his keys on the table near the door. "I'll deal with the pack."
"I'm not talking about you dealing with them.
I'm talking about the fact that they've already made up their minds about me.
I know how this works. First, they give me looks, then it's comments, then it's something more direct, and at no point does anyone who isn't on the receiving end notice it's happening.
I won't be bullied. Not by them, not by anyone. "
"Alanis,” he stepped forward, his brows furrowed. “I will never allow that to happen to you.”
"But you're also not in a position to stop it.
You can tell them I am your mate, and you can tell them to treat me with respect, but you can't make people who have decided I'm a liability change their minds because you said so.
That's not how it works. I know that because I've seen it, and if you're honest with yourself, you know it too. "
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "You're right."
“What?” She did not expect that. She quite honestly expected him to tell her about his authority and how he planned to exercise it, which would have been the beginning of an argument she was prepared for.
"It won't change overnight," he said. "I know that. Hell, my brother has a human mate, and they all still haven’t completely warmed up to her after a couple of years, but they don’t know you.”
“And who am I?” She folded her arms. "A woman who can't shift. Who appeared out of nowhere. Who you bought at a trafficking auction.” She eyed him warily. "What exactly is the version of that story that ends with them deciding I'm worth their respect."
He didn't answer immediately. Rael looked like the person who was used to having a solution to every problem, and her—his current problem didn’t exactly have a clean solution.
Good. She wanted him to sit in it.
She also wanted him, while he sat in it, to think.
The situation needed critical thinking. She had already established that she was alone in unfamiliar territory and no contact with the Lumen.
What if, and this was a crazy thought, but what if Rael was in on the trafficking network.
What if he were also part of an organization like the Lumen, whose sole mission is to build trust with their members first. It was not the most likely explanation for everything she'd witnessed tonight. But she needed something to hold on to.
She would stay. She would watch. She would maintain the cover of a woman who'd been pulled out of a trafficking auction and had no resources of her own, because that cover gave her access and time and the advantage of being underestimated.
She would gather enough information about Rael, his pack, and his operation, just to be certain.
And if she needed to escape, she would escape.
She looked at him. He was leaning against the far wall with his arms crossed, watching her the same way he did in the bar, which she found less irritating now than she would have preferred.
He was still infuriatingly good-looking.
The way the lighting in the house highlighted his eyes distracted her. Same as his annoyingly broad shoulders.
She cleared her throat and asked, “Where am I sleeping?”
He pushed off the wall and moved toward the stairs. "I'll show you."
She followed him up and took a mental inventory of the house as she went—exits, windows, floor plan, the location of the main door relative to the staircase. She would not need to use any of it, probably. But she took the inventory anyway, because that was how she had stayed alive this long.
He opened a door at the end of the upstairs hall. A room—bed, window, dresser, bathroom through the far door. Clean and spare, like the rest of the house.
"There are clothes in the dresser," he said. "They'll be too big, but they're clean."
"Fine."
He looked at her for a moment in the doorway, and she stared right back at him.
"I know you don't trust me yet.”
“No shit.”
“But I will try to change that. "Goodnight, Alanis."
He pulled the door closed, leaving her standing in the middle of the room, with the bond mark on her shoulder blade throbbing, listening to his footsteps move down the hall.