Chapter twenty-four #2
“I second that,” Lark added, giving them a smile.
“While I grew up surrounded by werewolves, I never knew soul mates existed. And even though I realize now that Mike is The One for me, we never would have found our way back to each other without all of you. I know we probably made it more difficult than it had to be, especially when I first came back to Dallas, so thank you for putting up with us.”
Gage chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. We were all like that.”
“Truth,” his wife, Mackenzie said with a grin.
“I’m a journalist and was convinced there was something weird going on with the SWAT Team, so I was determined to learn their secret.
Obviously, it all worked out, but not before everyone freaked out and thought I was going to reveal to the world that they were werewolves. ”
Lark blinked, not even wanting to think about what could have happened to Mike and the rest of his pack if that had happened.
“Yeah, that was tense,” Xander agreed. “Unlike me, Gage was smart enough not to fight the attraction to Mac like I did when Khaki joined the team. I could have saved myself a lot of heartache.”
“Me, too,” Khaki muttered, smiling at him.
“At least, you weren’t on the wrong side of the law when you met your soul mate,” Jayna said, nudging her husband, Becker’s, shoulder with hers, where they stood side-by-side.
Lark lifted a brow. “Seriously?”
“Jayna was one of the werewolves trying to rob an import/export warehouse,” Becker said with a grin.
Lark gaped in amazement as she listened to the rest of the couple’s story. It seemed like finding your soul mate was an adventure for everyone in the Pack. Including Cooper and his wife, Everly.
“We met during a bank robbery,” Cooper said.
“And that was just the beginning,” Everly added. “We also had to survive a serial bomber and my family.”
Lark had questions about the bomber for sure, but right now, she was more interested in hearing more about Everly’s family.
The other woman rolled her eyes. “They wanted to kill Landry when they figured out he’s a werewolf.”
Yikes. Luckily, that story had a happy ending.
The unbelievable struggles to find their soul mates didn’t end there for the Pack, either.
Alex and his wife, Lacey, got caught up in a trafficking ring, Remy and Triana fought a group of werewolf hunters in the middle of a New Orleans hurricane, and Max had been put in the difficult position of having to tell Lana, who was now his wife, that she was a werewolf.
Because somehow, she’d never known. That must have been interesting!
The situation with Brooks and his wife, Selena, had been just as tricky to navigate when she’d turned into an omega werewolf.
Zane had met his soul mate, STAT agent Alyssa, out in Los Angeles while going up against a nest of vampires.
And Rachel’s relationship with Knox had been complicated by the fact that he’d been hired by those same vampires to kill her Pack mates.
“Sometimes I think someone has a sense of humor, considering I turned into a werewolf myself,” Knox said with a chuckle.
“And the drama doesn’t stop there,” Diego said, glancing at his fiancée. “Bree and I had to deal with her psychotic ex-husband, her teenage son turning into a beta werewolf, and a mind-controlling serial killer.”
“I know it’s not a competition,” Trey said, smiling at Samantha. “But we had to contend with a serial killer trying to build his own Frankenstein’s monster.”
Connor then told Lark about how he found his girlfriend, Kat, a witch who had been turned into a cat.
Wait a minute, her name was Kat, and she’d been turned into a cat? Maybe someone really did have a sense of humor.
Trevor had fallen for Connor’s sister, Jenna, while saving her from some kind of supernatural who lived in the sewers.
Hale had found his soul mate in Karissa, a woman who’d been selected to be a champion for a Greek goddess. And she carried a sword that could appear out of thin air!
And lastly, there was Carter and his soul mate, Hadley, his psychiatrist. Lark wanted to ask how you had a relationship with your shrink, but decided to keep that question to herself. Clearly, everything with these werewolves was complicated.
“So, as you can see, we’ve all had to go through a lot in order to find The One for us,” Gage said.
“But we all know how incredibly lucky we are, too. Many of us were alone for a long time—some longer than others. But in the end, we all found the people we were meant to be with. There are a lot of werewolves out there who will probably never find The One for them, so count yourself lucky each and every day.”
Everyone left a little while later, all their Pack mates stopping by to give them a hug and tell them to have fun on their honeymoon. After, Lark and Mike moved around the quiet dance floor together in a slow shuffle as the DJ played soft, romantic music.
“I can’t even tell you how happy I am right now,” she said, leaning up on her toes to kiss him. “I’m so thankful you waited for me all those years.”
“If there’s anyone who needs to give thanks, it’s me,” Mike said. “You’re the one who came back to me. If you hadn’t, I would have been alone for the rest of my life.”
“Gage was right,” she said. “We should count ourselves lucky that fate took a hand and brought us back together again.”
“I already do,” Mike said. “Let’s just hope fate is as kind to the rest of the werewolves out there as it is to us and our Pack mates, so they can all find The One for them as well.”
“I’d like to think all of them will find the happiness we have,” Lark said. “And will fall in love with someone who accepts them for who they are.”
Starting with her sister. All she had to do was give Violet a little nudge in the right direction, Lark thought, smiling up at Mike.
After their honeymoon, of course.