Chapter Two
Andrew
I approved the business arrangement with the plant mages three days ago, with no idea of what I was getting myself into.
Silas Romero and his niece, here to work the crops, straightforward professional agreement. I reviewed the terms and signed off on it. How could I have known what fate was about to throw at me?
I remembered Henrietta as a neglected, underfed ten-year-old, who followed me around firing questions at me every time she ran into me in town. Farmer’s markets, festivals, holidays, she was always there, unsupervised, fixing her green-eyed gaze on me.
Just to get her off my back I’d secretly pay various people to go deliver food to her, telling her it was leftover and they didn’t want to have to throw it away.
She’d scamper off and gulp it down like she hadn’t eaten in days.
Maybe she hadn’t. She wasn’t from my pack.
I couldn’t let myself think about it. Feeding her was a strategic move for me, not an act of caring.
I always made sure she thought she was the one doing them a favor by taking care of leftovers. She wouldn’t have accepted pity-food, but this way she’d be fed and also distracted and I could make my escape.
That little girl is gone, replaced by a willowy, brunette haired beauty with plump pink lips and eyes the color of emerald.
Streaks of gold run through her caramel hair, catching the light. It falls past her shoulders and tumbles halfway down her back. She’s wearing a white sundress with embroidered sunflowers, and scuffed brown boots, and when she turns to look at me, an expression of shock widens those emerald eyes.
The feeling hits me like a freight train, shaking me down to my bones, and I take half a step back.
What am I feeling?
Recognition. Certainty. Possession.
Oh, hell no. Not her. She is not ours, she never was, never will be.
She’s the scrawny runt with the father who I caught in the forest doing a deal that would have endangered us all.
Her family are toxic, the taint of Marvin Romero’s crime clinging to them like a sulfurous cloud.
I am the Alpha, the man who is responsible for not just his pack’s safety, but their reputation in the shifter world.
Silas holds his hand out to me, and I shake it firmly. “Silas, good to see you again.” He manages a smile. He remembers what I did – and there’s nothing he can do about it. That’s probably not a great position for him.
Henrietta murmurs an excuse and vanishes into the equipment shed.
Fortunately, Cole and Jesse are throwing punches at each other and they haven’t realized what’s happening yet. They would give me endless grief. And our mother might not be happy if I came back with my idiot brothers’ pelts dragging behind me.
I don’t know why not. Their wolves have very nice pelts, and they would grow their fur back…eventually.
"Give me a minute," I say to no one in particular, and follow her.
The shed smells like oil and dry wood. Henrietta is standing with her back against the shelving unit, arms crossed, trying to murder me with the heat of her gaze as I stalk over to her.
"You’re a plant mage, right? Nothing else?” I bark at her. I am deliberately being offensive. I want her to hate me. And I want to hate her right back.
She narrows her eyes at me. "I'm sorry?"
"Legitimate question. Because what I'm currently experiencing feels like a fated mate bond activating. Did you cast a love spell on me? Are you a love mage?”
She snorts in contempt. "You think that I cast a love spell. On you. Of all the wolves in the entire freaking universe.”
I struggle for breath. The need pulsing under my skin is scrambling my brain. "I'm desperately searching for an explanation for what I am experiencing right now.”
"You are literally the last wolf on this earth I would waste a love spell on," she says. "If I could do love spells — which I cannot, because that is not how plant magic works, you massive tool — I would sooner cast one on a flatulent wildebeest."
I snort in contempt. "A flatulent —"
"Wild. E. Beest.” She bites out each syllable, eyes sparking dangerously. “Before I did one on you."
I don’t want her to like me, but also, how dare she? "I'd do one on a rabid porcupine before I did one on you," I say coldly. "For the record."
She glares at me. “I’m changing my choice. I’d find three-day-old skunk roadkill, find a re-animator, get it re-animated, and cast a love spell on that before I did on one you.”
“You can’t change your choice.” Why did I just say that?
Because she’s so fiery and I want to feel the heat of that fire.
Damn my life.
“Says who?” she says incredulously.
I double down. “Says me. You’re stuck with a flatulent wildebeest.”
She tosses her hair and glares at me. “Good. Then you’re stuck too. Enjoy doing it with a rabid porcupine. Because I don’t care what my body is saying right now, Andrew Rat-Bastard Ward is not my fated mate.”
“Yeah, well, Henrietta Henny Penny Pain In The Ass Romero is not MY fated mate.” I pause. “Just out of curiosity, what is your body saying right now?”
And why does thinking about it send blood rushing south of my belt buckle?
“Why do you want to know?” she scoffs.
I shrug. “Scientific curiosity.”
“You want to know? Fine. I’ll tell you if you tell me.
” She lifts her chin and meets my gaze defiantly.
“The second I looked at you, it felt like someone flipped a switch and my entire body was electrified.
And my wolf went absolutely insane. She's been doing backflips since the moment I laid eyes on you, which is humiliating, because she has terrible taste and I raised her better than this.
" She pauses. "Also there is a very inconvenient amount of heat happening in my nether regions that I am not going to describe in any further detail. "
Yes, I know. I can scent her arousal, and I am sure she can scent mine.
Why. Just why?
She straightens up and looks me dead in the eye.
"So obviously this is a nightmare that I will wake up from any minute now."
Silence.
We both wait hopefully.
A crow calls somewhere outside the shed.
"Not yet, apparently." She exhales through her nose. "OK. Your turn. What happened to you when you saw me?”
I let out a low growl of exasperation. “When I saw you standing by the cornfield," I say, "my wolf woke up and tried to escape, and I almost shifted right there. I just felt this insane urge to stalk over and throw you over my shoulder and…you can stop looking so horrified! It’ll never happen, trust me. "
She is watching me with those wide dark eyes and I make myself keep talking.
"And the heat — yes. I'm aware of it. I will get it under control." I cross my arms. "My wolf is currently under the impression that you belong to him. He is wrong. I've made that clear. He is not listening."
“Well, make him listen!” Her voice rises in hysteria.
"You think I’m not trying? You think I want this?” I snarl.
“Why is this even happening?” she moans. “Maybe…maybe someone from the Shadowpine pack cursed us both, somehow? This doesn’t make sense, we can’t be fated mates. Because we knew each other when we were little, and we never felt this.”
“Yeah, that’s because the fated mate thing never hits until after puberty. Until after we’re ready to…” I choke on the word. “Mate.”
“Nooo,” she groans, with possibly a little more disgust than is strictly called for.
“We need to…to avoid each other. You can’t come back to our property…” Just saying that makes my wolf howl with rage inside me. My claws shoot out. My fangs stab through my gums. It takes all of my strength to re-cage my wolf.
“Not come back? We have a deal with our pack!” she cries out, face flushing with anger. “And my pack needs this money! It figures you’d try to stab us in the back. Again.”
She’s blaming me for her pack’s desperate situation. Yes, I was the one who turned her father in. I did what had to be done.
And she doesn’t know the half of what really happened on that day.
“We’ll pay you anyway!” Anything to avoid this nightmare.
But she’s already shaking her head, dark locks flying. Those silky strands…tangled in my fingers, pulling her hair, pulling her to me…pinning her down, claiming her, knee between her thighs, spreading her legs…
“And how would we explain that?” she scoffs. “Seriously. Why would we say that I’m not allowed here after you hired me, but you’re going to pay us anyway? Are you going to tell everyone that you’re my fated jerk-face stupid mate?”
Maybe?
“Hell no,” I growl.
“Fine. Fine. We hate each other, but fate thinks we’re mates. I have the solution. Here’s what we do,” she says. She takes a deep breath.
Before she can finish her sentence, her eyes flash gray and gold and she lets out a low rumbling growl.
Between one breath and the next her wolf takes over, the shift rolling through her fast and fluid, clothes shredding, and then there are four paws on the shed floor instead of two boots. Her wolf is a glorious, lustrous gray and white, absolutely stunning. My wolf howls in joy, in approval.
Run with me, nip me, play with me…
She heads to the back door at a dead run, bursts through it into the April air, and disappears into the tree line.
I stand there by the shredded pile of her clothes and struggle to contain my own wolf, who’s hurling himself violently against the cage of my flesh.