Chapter Three
Treg
Hemlock Mountain
“SNOW DEMON! SNOW DEMON! SNOW DEMON!” The crowd chanted.
Even Chasten got into the spirit of things and called out for the non-existent demon with them.
It was great to see my best friend having fun but a weird energy moved over the crowd and crawled across my skin.
The direction of the icy breeze shifted and the scent of a nearby wild wolf pack blew up my nose.
I sniffed but wild wolves weren’t anything new on Hemlock Mountain.
They were a protected species after all and allowed to make their home in any of the wild land surrounding the towns and cities.
They had hunting rights even before we did because they didn’t have farms or factories and we did.
The breeze picked up to a gust and I wrapped a protective arm around Chasten. Maybe bringing him here was a bad idea. He was still nursing and perhaps he shouldn’t be out in the cold.
A pain danced through my thigh and I flinched away. Chasten pinched me!
“I had another baby! I didn’t turn into an invalid,” he growled in my ear having picked up my thoughts over the pack link.
The wind gusted in another direction, and I let out a long, slow sigh. Yep. Chasten and I would both be wind burnt tomorrow. I started to take my scarf off to wrap around my friends face but he side eyed me and I gave up on the idea.
My cells vibrated from the call for the fictional demon.
The voices melded together into some many syllabled beast that threatened to erupt from my skull.
I tapped my fingers against my legs, trying to hit along with the sounds coming from the supposed humans around me but their chanting bounced off the snow and the trees and hit against my forehead again and again.
I stood up, ready to go. I’d wait in the car until Chasten was done with his chanting.
His throat would get sore and tired sooner or later.
“What’s that?” Someone closer to the front called out. “There’s something out there! It’s moving just beyond the trees!”
“It’s the Snow Demon, stupid! We’ve been chanting for twenty minutes now! Who do you think it is? Frost and Juda making babies? Santa Claus!? Sheesh! Dragon eggs on pita bread!” A man called out from the back.
“Excuse you! Don’t use our young in your foul-mouthed—“ I never heard the end of what the woman said because an icy gust slapped me in the face and I landed on my ass next to Chasten who grabbed me to ensure I didn’t topple out of the chair.
“You okay?” Chasten asked but I had no words because that last breeze brought a scent that filled my nose and then my lungs and for a couple of seconds there wasn’t anything else.
I saw my friend’s mouth moving but couldn’t make out the words.
For a split second, I thought I was heading for a shut down - one of those periods of time where I was so over stimulated that I couldn’t process anything and my words got stuck on the back of my tongue like I was trying to cough up a fur ball.
“Nose. Use your nose, flesh bag! Use your sense of smell. Open that big mouth of yours if you have to! Breathe in and do it again and again until….”
Normally my wolf could talk me down enough to find a quiet solitary place but breathing in made everything ten times as intense.
I panted, opening my mouth as Chasten squeezed my knee, trying to draw my attention back to him.
A wave of warmth washed over my body and for half a second I wondered if I was getting hypothermia.
Only it was a pleasant warmth - like a favorite blanket on a cold night.
Warmth like being the only patron in a library filled with your favorite books or the first time a new reader gushed over my web comic.
It was delightful as far as sensations go.
So I breathed in again and let the new scent wrap around me. It was snow and fur and wolf and hair and something I couldn’t place at all as my thoughts rambled on adding more and more ‘ands.’ Whoever it was — they were MINE!
My wolf howled the last word into my thoughts and Chasten flinched.
A few other wolves sitting nearby did too.
An older wolf whispered to a younger one who appeared to be her grandson, asking if he felt a mating response coming on.
He didn’t and I was thankful because I didn’t need a mate barely past their first heat.
I mean, I’d love my mate at any age but couldn’t think of anything I’d have in common with someone ten or fifteen years my junior.
Someone shouted about something moving in the woods again. I clamped my mouth shut and forced myself to focus on the white blur skirting across the crust of the snow. If danger was afoot, I still needed to keep Chasten safe - mating response or no mating response.
“SNOW DEMON!” Someone shouted, terror scratching at their tired vocal cords!
The crowd shifted backwards and I grabbed onto Chasten, holding him as close as his bulky coat would let me. This time he didn’t struggle, or side eye me. Stampedes were dangerous.
The blur moved and for a moment I thought a white coated gorilla moved towards us as the crowd tried to knock us over.
“I thought they wanted to talk to the snow demon!?” Chasten whimpered, his wolfy intonations making me pull him closer.
Most people were afraid of getting what they wanted. But that wasn’t a snow demon. That was a gorilla or maybe a bigfoot.
“You believe in those but not snow demons?” Chasten asked, picking up my thoughts over the group link.
“Well, no one says there’s only one of them and no one says they promise to find someone’s mate! They seem more real! Plus – hey, look!” I pointed with one finger at the creature still sprinting towards us despite most of the crowd having fled to the parking lot. “You can see it!”
“Maybe it is the snow demon in question!” Chasten said.
I ignored his train of thought and shoved him behind me as the creature came closer.
Wherever my omega was, he hadn’t run far.
I still breathed in his scent with each and every breath.
Hopefully, he wasn’t hunkered down too afraid to run.
Then again, thinking like that meant I was a huge asshole like the rest of the idiots running away.
Maybe this yeti guy was just out for a run.
Maybe he was coming to the Snow Demon party too and was confused at why everyone ran away as soon as he arrived.
“Treg, I think we should go,” Chasten said, trying to edge backwards, but I grabbed ahold of his coat sleeve.
“Chasten, the parking lot isn’t safe right now,” I shook my head. “And not just for my ears. People are acting crazy trying to get out of here. I think we need to wait a while or call Kirk to come pick us up in the truck over in that field or something. Maybe we shift and run home the back way.”
“I’m not running with my teats dragging in the snow, thank you very fucking much!” He snapped and I flinched as the sound sang through my bones. In human form, Chasten hadn’t sprouted breasts but like all carriers, his nipples protruded to feed his baby in wolf form.
“You can ride on my back!” I said, wondering how much of my clothes would get sacrificed to the shift. Hopefully not my earmuffs! This was my favorite damn pair!
The creature stopped a couple yards away and Chasten tried to tug me backwards. Only I didn’t budge. Even as kids, I’d been bigger than him. Bigger than most of my alpha peers too even before we knew where the lines between alpha and omega were drawn.
I took another deep breath.
Big mistake!
Huge fucking mistake!
My mate’s scent wrapped around me again and I almost sprinted forward. Chasten wrapped the arm I wasn’t holding around my waist, trying in vain to keep me in place.
“Mine!” The snow gorilla roared and Chasten tried to run but I couldn’t relax my grip on him. I couldn’t let him go to face the crowds alone and my feet were moving me towards the newcomer.
“Treg, let’s go the other way, okay? Just go backwards. I’ll lead us. Come on,” Chasten begged but I couldn’t stop myself.
I had to go forward. The yeti-gorilla-bigfoot didn’t stand much taller than me.
Maybe two or three inches. He (they? Who was I to assume?) had a mane of thick white hair that fell from the crown of his head and rippled down like a waterfall around the sides and assumingly down his back.
His face, arms, and the rest of him that I could see was coated in thick white fur.
In some places it shone a light icy blue to match his eyes.
“Mate?” he called out.
He had abs and chest muscles and thighs that I wanted to lick despite the fur. Wolves groomed each other all the time. So a little fur wasn’t going to stop me.
“Treg! Stop! I don’t want to die! I know you’re lonely and everything, but I refuse to let you die either!
” Chasten tackled me and swiped his foot under my heels so that we both fell face down in the snow.
I tried to open my mouth and explain but it was filled with snow now and I couldn’t manage to think straight over the pack link.
The newcomer knelt down in the snow and Chasten’s scream rattled my brain.
He dusted the snow off my earmuffs and Chasten sprung forward still in human form.
He knocked my mate backwards and head butted him.
Chasten aimed for his maned white head but my mate was quick and took the brunt of it on his chest. One day we’d laugh about how he head butted my mate in the tit but today was not that day.
“CHASTEN!” I cried out, trying to grab his middle but he was squirmy when he wanted to be.
“Mate! Your pet is vicious! Make it stop!” My mate said, attempting to scramble away.
“I’m not your mate!” Chasten growled and I tried to grab him again.
“I’m an omega too! You’re not my mate!”
“CHASTEN!” I growled and grabbed his ankles, pulling him off my mate in a not so gentle tug. “You’re my best friend don’t make me bonk you because then I’ll have to bonk Kirk and I don’t want to do that!”
My mate made it to his feet and lifted Chasten up by the middle. Shit! Maybe I had chosen the wrong side and was about to see my fuck up in action!
“Shhh… s’okay,” my mate crooned.
Chasten looked up at him wide eyed and trembling.
“Chasten,” I said, stepping forward. “This is my mate. It’s hard to think straight but I don’t think he wants to hurt you.”
“Did he really call me your pet ?!” Chasten huffed and started squirming again.
“Late reaction, but okay,” I sighed and fought off the urge to slap my earmuffs like I sometimes did when the stimulation of life got too ridiculous. “Mate, that’s Chasten. He’s not a pet. He’s my best friend and the carrier of three pups and…”
“I can tell. Well, not how many,” my mate screwed up his face, his thick brow ridge riding high. “I am trying to soothe him. He is so tiny!”
I cringed. Chasten did NOT like to be called small. He squirmed and flipped over in my mate’s arms, and I tried to catch him. My mate managed not to drop him but headbutt him. My mate howled in pain and took several steps back, dragging his big, bare, hairy feet through the crackling snow.
“Chasten! You stop biting that guy right now!” Kirk’s voice filled my head from behind and Chasten flopped onto the snow. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. I twisted around to look for Kirk and found him just a few feet away.
“Who has my god babies?” I asked.
“Grina,” Kirk sighed, stomping over to help Chasten up. “Chas, you can’t go around biting people. You don’t know where they’ve been!”
“Why are you here?” Chasten asked as his mate looked him over as best as he could through his five million layers of winter clothes.
“I felt you freak out and left straight away! Then I felt Treg freak out when I pulled into the parking lot. To be honest, I thought they were having another biting spell! I didn’t expect that it was you….”
Kirk looked back and forth between me and Chasten and finally over to my mate again. His pupils dilated for just a second before he walked through the snow and shook his hand.
“I’m Kirk. The little bitey one is my mate, Chasten. The big bitey one is Treg - they/them pronouns. Sorry about this mess.”
“They were yelling for me and I didn’t know it was a weird mating call!” My mate said and I face-palmed. “I didn’t know I was expected to fight another omega either. No one told me the rules.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Kirk said and turned back to face us. “What is going on here?”
“This is my mate,” I said.
“And you want him to fight Chasten? I mean, I get it. Chasten is vicious right now with the pups at home but come on…”
I didn’t get the joke until Kirk cracked a smile. Hopefully his jokes went over better with his young patients than they did with me.
“I think it’s time for me to take Chasten home and let you two get acquainted,” Kirk said a second later.
“I’m not leaving Treg here alone!” Chasten protested and my mate took a step back.
I loved Chasten to pieces, but it broke my heart to see my mate so afraid of him. So, I left Kirk to deal with his mate and took a few tentative snowy steps to my mate. I held out my hand, afraid he’d step away. Instead, he pulled me in so tight to his chest I thought I might pop.
“It’s nice to meet you too!” I managed to grunt out while being crushed.