3. Three

Three

Griffin

"Sir?" Tor asked tentatively. As if it wasn't the first time he'd tried to get my attention.

"Yeah?" I tried to keep the bite out of my response. Judging by his flinch, I was unsuccessful. Great. I didn't need to add upsetting my second in command on top of everything else that was going on within my pack.

"The cleaning service has arrived now that the house is clear," Tor reported with a carefully blank face.

"So the sale is going through?" My frown deepened at the thought of it. The house next door had been empty for nearly a decade. We had done our best to keep it that way in an attempt to keep the street for the pack. A haven where the shifters could be themselves. We had paid off the previous owner until their death. The new owner was desperate to get rid of the place. Wouldn't even consider the rent we paid them out of the pack finances after their attempts to rent it had failed.

"Looks like it. Joanna looked very pleased with herself earlier. I saw the buyer—only briefly—a young man. I think he's alone."

"Shifter?" I dared to hope for a moment for just one less complication.

"No."

Fuck.

"He would have scented us. We're all over the neighborhood."

A deep, rumbling growl escaped my chest. I didn't have the energy to deal with a human. It was difficult enough to hide what we were from the rest of the town. We didn't need one on our doorstep.

"Keep an eye on the cleaning crew. I wouldn't put it past Ray to use someone to spy on us." I was pretty sure the realtor was taking cash from Ray's pack to report on us as it was.

Tor sighed. "Griff, that's your paranoia talking. The truce is going to hold."

My friend was far too optimistic. "At what price?" I grumbled. "You shouldn't have to do this."

He scoffed. "Have you seen Nora? She's stunning. It's hardly a punishment to be mated to her."

I tore my eyes away from the window to look at my friend. "Still, I don't like the idea of her not being who you would choose." I didn't like arranged matings at all. Especially this one, since it was set up to broker peace between the two packs.

"How'd you know I wouldn't have?" His eyebrows practically hit his hairline. "If it wasn't for her being in the Southridge pack and her dad, then I probably would have been chasing her for a date." He smiled. "That woman is gorgeous, and this arrangement is doing me a massive favor. Helping the pack is honestly just a plus to me."

"Tor…" I began, but trailed off.

"Griffin, I'm really okay with it." He gave me a pleading look. "Please, just accept my choice. Nora has been great on our dates. We've got chemistry, man. I think we can make this work."

I sighed, ready to give in. If this was what he really wanted, I had no choice but to accept it.

"If she changes, if you want to end things, we can find another way to get peace. You aren't stuck." I looked him square in the eyes so he could see how determined I was to give him an out.

"I know. Hopefully, someone is giving her the same speech over there. I think we can be happy together," he said, almost wistfully. He checked his watch. "We have a call, so I'll get James to watch the house."

Glaring once more at the house, I grumbled. "Don't bother. I trust you on this. There's nothing we can do right now. We'll let the sale go through and make a plan to get rid of the owner after. We can't have an outsider in the middle of our pack."

The cleaners worked until late after the house was cleared of the excess furniture, to do a deep clean. I used my extra senses to listen to them prattling through the open windows. They knew nothing about the new owner, just that he had moved to town in the last few days and had fallen in love with the shit heap next door. Paid a pretty penny for it, too. In cash.

Something about how they spoke about him set off alarms. My inner beast, the wolf who lived under my skin, longed to take a bite of them. Unfortunately, neither of us could afford to give into that whim. If we bit them, we cursed them like we had been cursed decades ago. We would have to make them our packmates. Our responsibility. I shuddered at the thought and my beast went quiet.

They were at the house early the next day to continue with the cleaning. The house had been empty for so long a family of mice had moved in. Hopefully, this guy would be frightened of the harmless creatures and opt to stay in a hotel until he could sell.

My sigh was loud in the quiet of my bedroom. I pulled my senses back from watching the house. The way my luck was going, this guy would fall in love with the house, the neighborhood and adopt the mice as pets.

I was eating lunch alone when Tor walked into my house. "Any more news on the neighbor?"

Pushing the other sandwich across the kitchen table to him, I said, "nothing concrete. Just suspicions."

He raised an eyebrow even as he picked up the food and took a massive bite. "And?"

"Him being human might be the best result we get."

Swallowing, Tor took a drink of the glass of water I pushed his way. "What do you mean? He can't be a shifter. He would have scented us."

"There's a chance he did, and he either ignored it as a lone Were or shifter." I was technically a Were as I had been bitten. Tor was a shifter. A born shifter, the gold standard of us. He couldn't make weres, but I could with the virus in my saliva through a bite. "It's possible he's something else."

"Like what?"

I shrugged, picking at my sandwich, appetite gone. "No idea. There's a lot out there. None of them are good options if others will follow him."

"So we have to hope he's alone? Or human."

"Yeah."

"Fuck, is it depressing talking to you sometimes. Who knows, maybe this guy will want to join our pack."

"Under the terms of the pact, neither us or Ray are allowed to take on new people," I reminded my second. Giving up on my food, I rose and threw it in the trash before setting the plate in the dishwasher.

"What's got you all bent out of shape over this? We'll deal with whatever comes." Tor took another bite while he waited for me to speak.

"Just the timing. The truce is delicate. Once the pact is formally accepted by both sides, I'll be able to breathe better. Having an unknown on my doorstep is riling up my beast."

"Maybe if you didn't call him a beast, he'd be calmer."

This was an old argument between us. Shifters had a better hold over their animal. Mine had been forced upon me when my sire had taken a liking to me. He changed me on my Dad's orders. Didn't work out well for either of them when I put my sire down after my first shift.

Memories of the moments after my first change tried to pull me under. I wouldn't think about her. No matter what people said, I blamed myself for what happened. I blinked back to the present.

"Yeah, yeah."

"So what's the plan? Are you going to ‘welcome him to the neighborhood' once he arrives?"

"What? With cookies and promises of cutting his lawn? No. I'm going to keep a lookout for him showing up. Assess what he is and the threat level—"

"Threat level?" Tor laughed. "Griff, man, you need to chill out. Ray hasn't sent someone to buy that disaster zone next door. There's no new pack ready to move in on your patch. Whoever this is will soon see the house is too much work, and bail. Plus there's the extra security we added…"

I grinned thinking of what we'd placed in the house after the owner said they would be selling no matter what. The pack didn't have the funds to buy the house so we'd added something to ensure the house wouldn't sell, or if it did, the buyer wouldn't last long.

"Sure."

Unless he was supernatural. Then he'd be able to deal with it on his own, making our efforts useless. Dammit.

I must have growled because Tor seemed to think I was stuck on our argument and seeing enemies everywhere, not catastrophizing.

Seeing that our disagreement was going nowhere, and missing that we had something new to worry about, Tor finished his lunch and got me up to speed on the mating ceremony plans. There were only a couple of weeks until the big day. The more Tor spoke about Nora, the more I believed he was doing this for the right reasons.

"Look at what she sent me this morning." Tor showed me the pic on his phone. It was of Nora in bed, not a thing showing, except her bare face and rumpled hair.

All the text said was, "looking forward to waking up next to you."

I felt a brief pang of loneliness. A wish for a mate to put with my grumpy ass. Someone to hold on chilly nights.

Nora really seemed to like Tor. "I'm happy for you both. She's sweet."

"Thanks. I think we can make this work. We both want it to."

"Because she knows she's getting my best shifter."

"You sure—"

"Don't even finish that. No. I don't want a mate. Nora wouldn't want me either."

A rumble of a vehicle cut off whatever Tor was about to say.

Together we crossed the open floor layout of the ground floor to the window, which faced the house next door. An old black jeep that had seen better days pulled up and parked in the driveway.

I opened the window and pushed out my senses as the driver exited, talking to something in his hands.

"We're home at last, Jinx. I hope the cleaners did a thorough job. I'm too tired to clean after last night."

What had happened to him? He stood staring at the house, a mixture of expressions crossing his face. There was trepidation, hope, longing. Mostly, though, he looked tired. Under his glasses, I saw dark circles.

The creature in his hands moved, catching my eye. A lizard, he was talking to. A familiar.

"My new neighbor is a witch."

"Sure is. His familiar is cute. Wonder what kind of lizard that is."

I didn't get a chance to answer Tor as the wind blew, ruffling the witch's hair and blowing his earthy lime scent my way.

No. Hell no.

My new neighbor was my mate.