Chapter 18: Gavin

Chapter 18: Gavin

We arrived at the farm with an hour of sunlight to spare. I tried to keep my cool around Billie, but the way she acted so withdrawn after our fondling that afternoon left me restless, searching for ways to fill the silence. As we shuffled along rows of tall green stalks and bulbs buried in the dirt, I made idle conversation, but it wasn’t until we were a few rows into the quarter-acre crop that she finally eased up and smiled.

“Being an onion farmer must be cathartic. You can have a little cry whenever and everyone just thinks it’s the onions,” I commented.

A small laugh shook her shoulders. “I heard that’s why farming onions puts you in touch with your emotions.”

“It’s spiritually cleansing,” I said, plunging my fingers into the dirt. The damp soil clotted underneath a tangle of stringy roots beneath the bulb I dug up. “You think I should be an onion farmer?”

Billie dropped an onion into her basket. “How would you have time to lead the pack and run a farm?”

“I wouldn’t. Guess I’d just have to give up being Alpha, huh?”

“That’s too bad,” she said with a chime-like chuckle.

Would she be less wary of me if I didn’t have such an intimidating role? Maybe it was my demeanor that made her so shy. I supposed I could be pretty scary when I was serious, especially so when I was angry, and she only ever saw me when I was in a bad mood before. “Actually if I gave up being Alpha for anything, it would be to go into college for an automotive technician program,” I added.

“To work on cars?”

“Or anything, you know; vans, buses, motorcycles. I think it’s all interesting.”

“I didn’t know you were into that,” said Billie.

“I had a ’69 Chevelle SS I worked on through high school. Sold it in my senior year and was planning to use the funds for college, even get a house,” I explained. “Instead… it all went to supporting the pack.” Because my parents had died just before I graduated high school and left me with no income other than their life insurance payout, and that could only last so long, and I suddenly had a pack of wolves to feed. I missed working on that old car. Without a hobby like that to occupy my mind, I found myself dwelling too much on my day-to-day stress. At least I had onions to pick tonight.

“Sorry to hear that,” Billie murmured.

I glanced back. “It’s fine. I made it work.”

Sensing my gaze on her, she glanced at me too and smiled. It was a genuine smile without a blush or averted eyes, and it made my insides twist before I returned to the onions.

When we finished, it was dark out. The man who owned the farm paid me $100 and sent us on our way, thanking us with a kindly smile at Billie, who he had referred to as my assistant. I had the feeling she liked being associated with me that way; or maybe what she liked was just feeling useful. She did do a lot of work at Hexen Manor. I imagined it would be nice for her to get out and be productive while she was staying with me. It gave me an idea to stop Billie in the hallway later that night, after Muriel had returned and as Billie was getting ready for bed. “I’m getting up early for a patrol,” I said. “Want to come with me?”

Billie blinked in surprise. “O—Okay. I’d like that.”

“Set your alarm for 5 AM,” I told her, then was tempted to invite her to sleep in my bed so she could get up with me, but hesitated, realizing how much more I’d risk growing attached to her. I already wanted to spend more time with her than I should be.

Her smell lingered on my sheets when I went to sleep. I thought I would have curbed my sexual desires, but swimming in her soft lavender smell suffused me with arousal all night until I’d eventually dozed off. It was ridiculous how excited I was to see her face in the morning. I knocked on the bedroom door and she opened it, and my heart did a little flip when she smiled up at me, her hair messy and still wearing her pajamas. We were dressed and ready to drive out to the pack house within a few minutes. Gretel stayed at my apartment with Muriel.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious about what Billie looked like under her clothes. I’d glimpsed her in the dark, shapeless, but never directly in the sunlight. Under the golden morning glow, we stood in the yard of the pack house, and I undressed before Billie. Sunshine washed over my tight muscles and warmed my blood. I was fine—I wasn’t shy at all—until Billie started extracting her clothes and I throbbed with desire for her. Billie’s body was thin and soft with little B-cup breasts and a subtle ass, and though she lacked muscle, I imagined that with more activity outside, she’d lean up. I wanted to hone her body and see it at its highest potential. I wanted to run my hands all over her and declare her mine, too, but in full view of the pack house, I kept my hands to myself.

Mine. Could she ever be?

I transformed first. My body was so accustomed to it that it was nearly painless, the rearrangement of my physique swift and fluid. While I was done and standing as a wolf, Billie continued shifting, her body groaning and twisting and snapping until she had finished a few minutes later. I’d never seen her in her wolf form outside of the darkness, either. Much like her human form, she was scrawny and thin-furred, her pelt strafed with chestnut and almond shades and rubbed with gold on her flanks and neck. Her narrow muzzle pointed at me, green eyes shyly seeking something—approval? I growled and strode closer, watching her reactively shrink, but all I did was mouth at her muzzle before urging her to follow me.

We went in the direction opposite of the Dalesbloom territory. Heading west, I took Billie along the perimeter of Grandbay that circled closest to town. We slipped through yellow wheat fields and overgrown, wet ditches near the highway, venturing into a forest of aspens with shimmering leaves. I showed her where to search for trespassing scents: bent grass was usually an indicator of footfalls, and water sources were common stopping places for traveling animals. She sometimes went ahead of me, and I watched the way her hips bobbed as she walked, her paws delicately dancing through the foliage, her head canting back at me with a wolf’s equivalent of a smile. Our mate bond mirrored her joy onto me. I could feel how happy she was to be out here, and it wasn’t that she was with me, but that she was just out in the wilderness at all. Feeling free and wild, relishing the sun.

As we approached the south-eastern perimeter, I led her to the valley between the foothills and Eastpeak’s mountain. It wasn’t so much a mountain as it was a very tall, rocky hill, with a small town on the east-facing side of it. We stood between two ledges and looked out over the road that wound up the hillside to town. Nearby, across the buffer of unclaimed territory between Grandbay and Eastpeak, were tracks belonging to Everett. It seemed like he’d walked his usual route, so I didn’t investigate further.

It wasn’t until we neared the northern perimeter that I sensed Billie growing wary. We approached the borders shared with Dalesbloom and she hesitated, evidently catching scent of her packmates in passage. The pungent stench of the dragons trickled in, too. I brushed my shoulder against hers, catching her eye, not expecting her to go; we could have gone straight to the pack house from there. Instead, she pushed ahead with courage I felt in my heart, and I admired her for it.

Walking the perimeter, Billie stayed close as I stopped every now and then to investigate a scent. We crossed Colt’s scent several times, gleaning from it that he had paced our shared borders, but there was no sign of Catrina until the end of the shared stretch. Catrina, one of her packmates, and… blood.

Billie kept pace as I jogged toward the smells, uncertainty turning my stomach. The scents were too strong to originate from within Dalesbloom; it was clear they had breached the Grandbay perimeter, and I dreaded having to see Catrina again, let alone her seeing me with Billie. The blood smell became hotter, thicker, soaking the air in sickly sunbaked copper, and my worries morphed from seeing Catrina to what I might discover or walk into. The silence in the forest told me there was no snarling brawl taking place; what we would find was merely the aftermath of it.

A wolf body was sprawled motionlessly in the grass, brown and grey timber fur darkened with blood. His legs were coiled in death and throat ripped open, still steaming. Catrina’s scent was all over the scene, her trail leading back to Dalesbloom, fresh—she must have left just minutes before we arrived. I recognized the wolf and sickened even worse.

Catrina had discovered her fated mate years before I did, but he was a quiet, nerdy guy, Joseph Nym—the farthest thing from Catrina’s type. Now he was here, on my territory… dead. It was obvious what had happened to him. The absence of any other scents pinned the blame on Catrina.

I glanced back at Billie. Her eyes were anchored to the corpse in front of us, a soft whimper building in her throat. I doubted she’d ever seen a dead body that wasn’t prey before, and my heart ached with sympathy—and anger too. I couldn’t look at Joseph for long. My throat felt suddenly tight, my skin cold under my fur. I didn’t even know Catrina was capable of something like this…

If she could do this to Joseph, I knew exactly what she intended to do with Billie.

Nauseated, I threw back my head and called for my pack, and Dalesbloom to hold Catrina accountable for the murder on my territory. This was more than just the result of a lost temper. This was a warning. This was an act of defiance against me. It was a sign that I should be afraid of what Catrina and David could do now that I was no longer under their control.