Chapter One #2
“You brought a human here?” Torren asked, his beast rising once more as his suspicions were confirmed as to who resided in Jaxon’s home. There wasn’t a single Grant amongst the wolves within his pack or the other outlying packs. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“She knows what we are, Alpha, and Olivia would never do anything to hurt the pack. I know I shouldn’t have told her about us, but she caught me mid-shift one day.
Someone made me so angry I nearly lost control of my wolf.
I thought I’d gotten away from the populated areas, but Olivia saw.
It scared her and I had to explain. I didn’t have a choice but to bring her here. If you only knew…”
Torren growled, silencing the younger wolf.
“She’s hurt,” Jaxon said softly. “Hurt pretty bad.”
“What happened?” Baxter asked. “Why didn’t you leave her with her people? Take her to a human hospital? She doesn’t belong here, Jaxon, and you know that.”
Jaxon sighed and hung his head. “Do you know anything about the Grant family?”
Baxter shrugged, and Torren couldn’t remember hearing the name. The stench of so many humans was a bit unbearable. One of the perks of being Alpha was that others could purchase the items he needed and deliver them to his home. The rest he bought online.
He waited for the Omega to continue.
“Olivia’s parents are not well-liked around town. She moved out when she was seventeen after hearing her parents talk about prostituting her for drugs. They’re into some really fucked-up shit. I’ve helped her when I could, but it wasn’t enough.” Jaxon bit his lip.
“You have a kid in there?” Torren asked, horror filling him. Not just at the thought that his Omega had taken off with a kid, but at the way his beast had reacted to her scent. He knew his wolf was fucked up after losing Gwen, but this was going too damn far.
“No. I mean, she’s not a kid anymore. She’s nineteen.”
That made Torren feel marginally better. Not much though. She was still really damn young.
“Get to the part about bringing her here,” Baxter said.
Jaxon gave a nod. “Right. Well, Olivia was living in a bad part of town. One of her neighbors broke into her apartment and beat her pretty bad. They cleaned out her place and trashed what was left. She managed to call me before she passed out. When I got to her apartment, she was bleeding all over the floor and I wasn’t even sure she was alive.
The asshole who had left her for dead came back, probably to make sure she couldn’t identify him.
He was strong, for a human. I left him breathing, but I got Olivia out of there. ”
“What if people start looking for her?” Baxter asked. “You could bring the town to our gates if they figure out where she was taken.”
Anger blazed in Jaxon’s eyes. “No one will look for her. In that part of town, no one cares if someone disappears or not. They’ll see the wrecked apartment and blood and write her off as just another hopeless case. The police don’t look too hard into things around there.”
Baxter muttered something under his breath, then walked off a few steps before coming back.
Torren could understand his Beta’s frustration.
The fact that a dying human was on pack lands didn’t bode well for any of them.
The humans had tall tales about shifters living nearby, and maybe some really believed them, but most chalked it up to folklore and fantasy.
And Torren wanted to keep it that way. If people knew there really were wolf shifters living nearby, it would be the Salem witch hunt all over again.
Or worse… Once upon a time, long ago, shifters had made themselves known to humans.
It had been a disaster, with entire packs wiped out. Never again .
“Show me the human,” Torren said. If the girl was dying, best to know now and figure out what the hell to do.
Jaxon backed up and went into his cabin with Torren on his heels.
The scent of blood became stronger as they approached the Omega’s bedroom, and Torren felt another rumble building in his chest. For whatever reason, his beast didn’t like the thought of the human lying in the other wolf’s bed.
Torren didn’t want to think too much about what it might mean.
The bedroom stood open and the early morning light streamed through the window.
A small human female was on the bed, her clothes ripped and bloody.
Her hair was a tangled mess with crimson streaking the blonde strands.
Everywhere Torren looked, it seemed like she just had bruises on top of bruises.
Not to mention all the open wounds, like someone had tried to carve her skin from her body.
The way she breathed, the rattle he heard in her chest, didn’t bode well.
It was possible a rib had broken and punctured her lung.
Torren moved closer, scenting the air. Death.
He smelled death. His heart ached as he stared down at the young female.
As battered as she was, he couldn’t have said what she looked like.
Her bones looked delicate, the ones not broken, and she seemed overly fragile.
Her cheek was caved in, likely a punch having crushed the bones, and her nose was a little crooked.
The way she held her jaw told him it was possibly dislocated.
He lifted her hand and sat on the side of the bed.
Her hands were soft and dainty, much like the rest of her, but far too cold.
She was small, too skinny from what little he could see through all the carnage.
His keen hearing picked up the young woman’s heartbeat, and it was slow. Really damn slow.
“She’s dying,” he told Jaxon.
The Omega whined and tears gathered in the younger wolf’s eyes. It was obvious that Jaxon was close to her, maybe closer than Torren had thought at first. His beast didn’t like the idea at all, and he had to fight back another growl.
“How do you know her?” Torren asked. “Have you ever…”
Jaxon shook his head. “We were never intimate, but she was my friend. She refused to come stay with me, saying it wouldn’t be fair. I gave her what I could, but her circumstances… She needed a miracle.”
“She’s not your mate?” Torren asked.
“No,” Jaxon said, his voice breaking. “There has to be something… What if she’s the mate to someone else in the pack? It’s possible, right? They could bite her, and she’d heal. She doesn’t have to die, right? Or what about a witch? Maybe a witch could heal her?”
“Jaxon.”
“Please,” the Omega begged. “You have to save her.”
Torren focused on the young woman again, leaning a little closer.
He breathed her in, trying to get through the scent of death and blood, looking for the subtler scent that would be uniquely hers, the one he’d smelled earlier.
He found it, barely, but it was there. The closer to death she got, the fainter that smell became.
His vision shifted as his wolf came closer to the surface, his beast distraught over the broken woman.
The wolf inside of him whined and whimpered, pawing at him and urging him to do something.
His wolf had never shown any interest in a female before and it baffled Torren.
Not even when he’d been mated to Gwen had his wolf cared one way or another about the female in his life.
Why did the beast react to this small human?
His fangs lengthened, making Torren jolt.
Fur sprouted along the backs of his hands and he felt his muscles swell, nearly bursting the seams of his shirt and jeans.
His Omega moved closer, his gaze locking on Torren’s extended fangs. Excitement flared in the other wolf’s eyes.
“Bite her, Alpha,” Jaxon said. “You can save her. And maybe she’ll save you too.”
He focused on the other wolf and saw hope blazing in Jaxon’s eyes.
Was it possible? Was Olivia his mate? His fated mate?
Yes, he’d claimed Gwen, but it had been an arranged mating.
They’d never actually bitten one another, but had a mating in name.
They’d been intimate on occasion, but there had never been any true passion between them.
When she’d gone into heat, she’d practically begged him for relief, and he’d granted it.
But not once had they ever touched one another out of more than obligation.
At the age of thirty, he’d assumed he’d never find the one female meant to be his, the one who called to his wolf, so he’d settled when the opportunity presented itself.
It seemed impossible that after all this time, he’d found his mate. And she was dying.
Torren leaned over Olivia, lapped at the blood along her shoulder, and growled as her taste exploded on his tongue.
His vision sharpened and his pulse quickened.
Mate . His beast became excited, nearly spinning in circles in Torren’s mind, like an overenthusiastic pup.
If he’d had any doubts, he didn’t now. Without any hesitation, he bit, his fangs digging deep until they hit bone.
His saliva entered her body, mixing with her blood.
Torren growled again and released her. He licked his lips as he sat back and looked down at the woman who now belonged to him. For however long she’d live.
It was too soon to tell if she’d survive both her beating and his bite.
Torren realized he may have claimed yet another female destined to die, but he hoped the fates wouldn’t be that cruel.
All he could do was wait and see if she began to heal.
His enzymes would bond with her cells, and her body would have slight alterations from his claiming, as well as rapid healing.
But only if she lived through it. It wasn’t often his kind claimed a human, and he’d heard tales of the females not surviving the bite.
He could only hope that Olivia was a fighter.
“Take your mate home, Alpha,” Jaxon said softly. “She should be in your bed when she wakes.”
“If she wakes,” Torren muttered.
“She will,” Jaxon said. “She has to.”
Torren nodded and stood. Slowly, he reached for his new mate and lifted her into his arms. He had no idea how she’d react if she woke in a strange place with a strange man, but it couldn’t be helped.
Jaxon was right. She needed to be in his bed and not the Omega’s.
If she truly knew about wolf shifters, then maybe she wouldn’t completely freak out.
He didn’t know if she’d feel the mating pull since she was human.
If she’d been a shifter, then she’d have sensed that he was her mate when she woke up.
As a human, she’d likely be scared. He’d just have to prepare as best he could, and hope that things went well.
Torren wasn’t sure he could handle losing another mate.