Chapter Five
Treg
Hemlock Mountain
“What the fuck is he doing, Treg?” Kirk growled at me, but I wasn’t about to stand around and wait to find out.
I left him there, looking dumbfounded as I sprinted after my mate and best friend.
Damon didn’t smell dangerous. Just the opposite in fact.
He smelled freaking delicious and as if he was so worried Chasten might drop dead at any second that he had to get him somewhere warm.
That was one thing he and Kirk had in common.
The latter swore under his breath and chased after me. Big fat white snowflakes began to fall again, and I shifted down into my wolf to brace against them. I carried my earmuffs in my mouth to keep them safe.
“Maybe the Snow Demon sent him,” my wolf rattled off in my thoughts, but I pushed that away.
There was no way Damon was the Snow Demon. He was way too young to have been around with Juda and Frost. Hell, I didn’t even know there were yetis on Hemlock Mountain. What else didn’t I know about my home territory?
After a few minutes of running, a crowd of yetis came into sight.
They were all different colors. Mostly browns and tans but a few with grey, black, or white fur.
One or two had almost every color as if they were giant calico or tortoise shell cats.
They were all gathered around someone – Chasten!
It had to be Chasten. A few wolves lingered in the crowd and I remembered what Damon had said about how he had a wolf form too.
In the center, Chasten sat eating a bowl of spaghetti.
“Don’t worry. I have my stuff,” Chasten said when he spotted me. “My sugar will be fine. This is good spaghetti. Your mate’s sisters really know how to cook.”
Kirk ran snout first into my tail and growled.
I fought off the urge to jerk around and snap at him.
Chasten was my best friend but he was also Kirk’s mate and to be fair this wasn’t the first time we’d gotten into something just outside the line of sane.
Still, it wasn’t my fault he skidded into my furry ass.
He bumped me in the butt with his nose again and circled around me to join Chasten.
He sniffed the bowl and sat on his haunches.
He glanced around the circle of yetis and sighed.
Was I the only one surprised that a whole colony of yetis lived not too far from town?
Did pack leadership know or had we stumbled upon something that had been a secret up until now?
I left Chasten and Kirk with the gathered group and sniffed out Damon. Now that my friend was safe, every cell inside me demanded that I find him. All the other questions could wait. If Sky and Darian didn’t know about the yetis by now, well, that wasn’t my problem, was it?
“Mate?” Damon’s voice reached my ears and I let out a happy sigh. My days of bad dates and being interrogated by clueless people were over. Well, at least clueless people I thought maybe I’d date.
I followed Damon’s voice inside of a cave. Inside was damp and snowy but the first cavern broke off into several corridors.
“This way,” Damon called out to guide me.
With my nose to the icy ground, I sniffed him out.
Hundreds of yetis had came and went this way and yet his scent stood out to me.
His was the only one I could focus on. The cave’s corridor had carved doorways here and there all leading deeper into the side of the mountain.
I found Damon through a carved arch with a dark blue curtain covering what was on the other side.
A room with stone walls and a ceiling that stretched up way higher than I expected.
The walls were natural stone but some had been painted with tiny nature scenes.
In the back of my mind I expected his bed to be a pile of furs in the corner but I was only half right.
The bed was in the corner and covered with furs and hides mixed in with blankets but the bed was …
well, a bed like what could be found in most bedrooms on Hemlock Mountain.
Damon sat in a high backed desk chair, facing away from the desk behind him. He was no longer a yeti but a man with long white hair that hung down over his chest and shoulders. What limited body hair he had was soft and white too like the fur that covered his entire body in his other form.
“Not what you expected, huh?” He smirked at me as I let the curtain drop closed behind me. A heater sat in the corner of the room. It was the sort that was powered by magic crystals that could be purchased at almost any store.
Since I wasn’t sure if wolf and yeti wolf was the same language I dropped my earmuffs on the ground and shifted back into human form. My hair was a mess and Rudolph’s nose was ripped out of the sweater but at least I didn’t lose my pants. That would’ve been awkward.
“I’m not sure what I expected,” I admitted once I situated myself back into this form.
“The First Mate of the Mountain was surprised when he stumbled in here. We nearly buried him in the snow for trespassing but thankfully for him he smelled so much like his draconic mate. We’ve traded with dragons for years.
Longer than I’ve been alive but elves like their shinies and they want ours too sometimes. ”
“Don’t touch your shinies. Got it!” I teased him.
He laughed and met my gaze. That was the moment it really hit me.
I was alone with my true-mate for the first time.
In the half an hour or so since we met so much had happened.
He technically kidnapped my best friend and brought him here to eat spaghetti.
This Yuletide was going to be an interesting one.
“Better interesting than boring and our mate looks anything but boring,” my wolf chimed into my thoughts.
They rubbed against my ribs, nuzzling me from the inside out and trying to get to our mate. Only they wouldn’t get to the wolf inside Damon until after we exchanged our claiming vows.
“Lick his owie,” my wolf said a second later, bringing my attention to the bite mark on his arm. I swallowed a sigh and hoped Chasten planned on getting on with him better
“It’s not customary to fight your mate’s best friend,” I said, flashing Damon what I hoped was an apologetic smile.
“Chasten’s just… overprotective. Our circle isn’t very large and that makes us pretty close knit.
If it makes you feel any better, he’ll be the same way about you once he gets to know you.
I’m sorry he bit you. It was a bit much. Okay, a lot much.”
“He’s had a pup recently. That makes the most levelheaded wolf irritable,” Damon nodded. “I think he believed I meant to eat you or him or maybe both of you. We don’t eat shifters, though.”
“Thanks for feeding him after he tried to eat you,” I said because I wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Well, that’s what we do for wolves. Sometimes the wild wolves come here to eat too.”
I looked around the room, wanting to compliment him on anything that I could.
Just being with him filled me with this giddy sort of warmth that I’d have drawn with all sorts of wavy dancing fire like lines if I ever portrayed this moment in a comic strip.
He was beautiful but that was a given. He had a mirror on the wall and must’ve seen himself every day. He knew he was beautiful.
“Did you paint those?” I settled on asking about the seasonal paintings on the wall.
“They’re not that great but they’re enjoyable to make,” he nodded.
“I like them. They’re almost like a calendar. I’m an artist too. I do web comics and…”
How was I going to explain the internet to a yeti? He’d probably know what it all meant after our claiming vows, but was I just supposed to jump his bones so that he’d know? Was I supposed to..
My train of thought derailed at ‘jump his bones.’ That was one way to put it.
I wanted to nuzzle and lick every inch of the beautiful person sitting in front of me.
It wouldn’t be hard to start. I could just crawl across the floor and nuzzle right into his…
he had pants on and even true-mates needed consent.
“You’re hard again,” Damon smirked. “Does art make you horny?”
“Sometimes,” I shrugged. “Depends on the art. Though, this time it’s solely the artist’s doing. What was I talking about before my dick rudely interrupted us?” I tried to play it cool but the space between us was too much.
“You were talking about your internet art, and you stopped mid-sentence. You were probably wondering if I knew what a web comic was. Most people don’t believe how much we know about the modern world because they think we’re all natural or some shit.
I know what the internet is. I even have a phone.
We have wifi. It wasn’t hard to get a mage out here to hook it up.
Mages keep secrets if you pay them enough.
We’re more worried about the First Mate’s big mouth than we are the mage’s. ”
“Uh…” I was no longer confused about his tech savvy but I didn’t know what to do next. I wasn’t sure how his culture handled mating responses and wasn’t even sure how to ask.
“You’re really horny,” he pointed out, nodding at my crotch. “Do wolves in the cities make themselves wait a long time? I’ve never seen two yeti wolves wait this long while they were alone before coming together.”
I bit my lip. Was I already messing this up?
“Go over there. That was an invitation. It’s the reading between the lines stuff that people do. Don’t worry. Soon we’ll be so far inside his body and soul that all the blank spaces will make sense,” my wolf helped me out.
Following my instincts I crawled across the carpet covered cave floor to where he sat in his comfy chair.
As if he planned for this very personal encounter, he wore green pajama pants with little snow people and wolves all over them.
I rested my hands on his fabric-clad knees and went down the list of questions I had in the back of my mind.