บท 2: Chapter 2: The Meeting
Grant’s perspective:
There is no need to put our snouts to the ground and sniff out those trespassing on our territory. The scent fanning through the sedges with the cold, wet Alaskan breeze is thick enough to pierce with a claw and close enough that I can already imagine the taste of their flesh.
Through our telepathic connection, Bram speaks. “Grant! There are two, but they’re—” Bram’s blues eyes flicker with confusion.
“I know.”
There is something in the scent of one of the trespassing shifters that is unique. There’s not only a peculiar sweetness to their smell, their aroma is captivating my senses in such a way that I can’t concentrate. Like magic…like a hex…With the smell, the fierceness in my bones dissipates into a warm-blooded yearning. The thick succulence draws my mind from the hunt to—I shake my raised mane, trying to get it out of my head.
“You okay?”
Bram knows something is off. We’ve been on enough hunts together. He is intimately familiar with the ferocity that typically dominates my hunting style, especially when I’m on the trail of a trespassing shifter. Though we take in rogue shifters seeking refuge, it is not often that they come to The Territory in secret.
And those that have, more often than not, have been hostile. Besides, you can never be too careful. Being the Alpha of rogues takes a certain amount of trust, but it also requires a wildness that assures any who come face to face with me that I am not the kind of wolf one, or even two, should trifle with.
“Fine,” I lie. “Keep going.”
We come from the cover of the sedges and hurriedly creep through the field between the hedge and underside of the log cabin. Now in the shadow of the small, stilted lodge, I give Bram a low snarl and nod that directs him to the stairway leading up to the back exit, while I make my way to the front steps.
Positioned at the bottom of the steps, Bram waits for my signal. Twelve steps between us and the trespassers. Twelve steps between me and the spring from which this mystifying fragrance emits. I look to Bram and bare my fangs. “Scare. Don’t kill.” He silently consents.
Step. Step. Step. I long to know. I long to see. Step. Step. Step. My mane surges. My claws extend. Step. Step. Step. The intoxicating scent rests on the back of my tongue. Step. Step. Step. I face the front door and raise my snout into the air, then unleash a primal howl.
The wooden door splinters around me as I burst into the cabin. Immediately, I am face to face with the unbridled canines of a she-wolf. She’s reared back, white coat standing on end, claws protracted, prepared to pounce. Savagery, desperation, and love linger in the purple eyes glaring at me as I crouch, waiting for her attack.
Something overcomes me, subduing the tension in my muscles. She is the source of the scent. She is the source of my desire. She is the potency confusing my instincts. She is the source of the aroma that beckoned me to come.
The wildness in me shifts from the need to dominate a prey, to secure my place as Alpha over a trespassing shifter, to a wildness I have never known before. Is it the purple eyes? Is it the pristine, white coat? Is it the fearlessness in her stance? I don’t know. For the first time in my life, I feel dominated by something beyond words, beyond sight—fate.
My angry snarl gives way to pretentious tranquility as I sit back on my tail and pretend to be utterly relaxed. I can tell by the instability on her confused face that my actions mixed with what she feels toward me are overwhelming her. Part of her knows that she should be on guard. Another part of her desires something else, something beyond her control. I know she feels it too.
“Don’t be afraid.”
She responds with a low growl. Just then, I notice the shadow of the other shifter behind her. Infatuation for this wolf kept the second hidden from my pursuit. The second shifter bends around, daringly showing her fangs and snarling. She is a smaller wolf. By her scent, I know she has only recently come of age. She, too, has a white coat, but streaks of black give it a unique, visceral presence of its own.
A resemblance in the posture of these shifters lets me know that the smaller one is the younger sister of those fated, purple eyes still staring me down. Yet, the little sister’s eyes are no less fierce and their blackness reveals a violence in her nature, a budding violence as black as the large Beta creeping out from the shadows behind her.
Bram unleashes a rumble that sounds more like a laugh than a threat, causing the wolf’s little sister to turn tail and face him.
Bram offers a shrewd promise. “We’re not going to hurt you if we don’t have to.”
“Shift!” I command.
“No!” the older one refuses.
“Back off!” the younger of the two grunts at Bram.
“This one’s ballsy, for a pup,” Bram chuckles.
“Don’t call me that!”
“Back off, Bram,” I command.
“We’ll shift, if you shift first,” says the older sister.
“What? No.” Bram responds.
“Bram. We need them to trust us. Shift.”
Bram gives the younger one a piercing glare. His body begins to transform.
My claws retract and paws convert to hands and feet as my forearms and back legs shift into my human form. Naked, I rise to my full height and stature, still keeping my eyes locked on the captivating white wolf in front of me.
“Now, turn away,” the younger wolf demands.
“Why?” asks Bram. “It’s not like we haven’t seen—”
“Just do it, Bram,” I say, respecting the request, though a yearning to keep my eyes locked onto the purple gaze is crawling all over me. Bram turns. The anticipation of seeing this she-wolf in human form is wrecking. It takes every ounce of will in me to do what I have just commanded of my Beta. Reluctantly, I turn.
The soft moans of transformation tell me that our trespassers have shifted.
“Not yet!” screams the second one at Bram.
“Sorry. I thought—”
“Bram!” I turn my head away from the sisters to keep from going against my own word and give Bram a look of warning.
Rustling clothes, panting, and the occasional curse resonate through the small cabin as the sisters hurriedly slip on their clothes.
“You can turn around now,” snaps the youngest.
The white wolf has shifted into something more delicate than I could have imagined. She is about five and a half feet tall with perfectly symmetrical curves that are only expounded by her tight blue jeans and the black, cotton turtleneck perfectly contrasting her olive skin. I follow the turtleneck up to her rosy lips, freckled cheeks, and almond eyes that I now can see are not purple but a strangely deep blue. Most stunning are the white, disheveled, shoulder-length locks highlighting her beauty, reminiscent of the gracious beauty of a field of purple asters dusted white after an unexpected flurry. Somehow, she is cute and breathtakingly sexy at the same time.
“Yuki,” I say under my breath. Then, trying to catch it, I uncharacteristically stammer through “Who are you?” and “Why are you here?”
“We,” the smaller wolf starts to answer when the one who has caught my attention takes the lead.
“We came here because we were told that you take in rogues. We don’t have a pack. We need protection.”
At these words, I begin to step forward and assure them that I will keep them safe no matter the cost. Bram breaks in and stops me before the words can pass my lips. “Tell the truth,” he says.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“I’ve seen you before. I know who you are.”
I look to Bram. “You have?”
“You have to, only it’s been a long time. She was a pup, but I remember those eyes. Tell him.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Tell him or I will.”
“My father is Lin Yuko, Alpha—” she stops and corrects herself “—former Alpha of the Yukon. I’m Emily Yuko. This is my little sister, Gabby.”
My heart drops. She’s my fated-mate. I know you can’t fight fate but she is the sister of Vin, Alpha of the Yukon. That can’t be.
“Vin’s sister?” I ask.
“Yes. Twin sister.”
Unconsciously, I scratch at my chin and expel a whispered, “Sh*t.”
He’s trouble on a good day. He has overtaken all the tribes around us by force or trickery. We’ve managed to stay away from war with him because our tribe has more advantages, technologically and monetarily. It helps that he is afraid to face me one on one. I’m the only Alpha in this valley that is bigger and stronger than him. That fear won’t last forever and if I hide his sisters from him, let alone reveal that one of them is fated to me, his wrath will overcome his fear. I know I can beat him. I’d just hate to lose members of my pack in the struggle.
With this debate still ticking in my mind, the pull of fate, a pull that is beyond reason, brings me forward. I reach out, nearly revealing to everyone in the room what is going on between Emily and me, but stop myself from touching her. Though I know this may be a choice that delivers more trouble than I want, and I know our love is forbidden, I can stop myself from touching her here and now, or from saying what is burning within me: “I will protect you.”
“Grant, you can’t. We can’t. We don’t even know why they left.”
My eyes shifting between Bram and the younger sister, I demand, “Out. Both of you.” I huff breathlessly and clench my jaw, still fighting the urge to touch Emily.
“But,” start Bram and Emily’s little sister, simultaneously.
“Out!”
Both slip out the back door without another word.
I slowly walk up to her, feeling the pull of fate gripping at my hands, begging me to reach out and feel the warmth of her skin. My eyes shift to look down at her hand. It is trembling.
"Stop," she whispers, though the tone in her voice is not one of rejection but defeat. She feels the pull I feel. She knows we are fated. "We can't." Together, we pull back from one another.
“You can’t do this,” I think to myself. “She’s right. Bram’s right. We can’t. Beside, you don’t know why she’s here. You don’t know if you can trust her. What if Vin sent her here?”
“I can give you a ride back home, back to the border of your land,” I say.
“No. I can’t do that either.”
I continue to question myself internally, holding myself back from the fated yearning in my bones, and as I do, the very words I shouldn’t say come from my mouth. I double-down on what I know is not reasonable. But there are some things that are beyond reason.
I step back toward her and get close enough to sense the pulsation of her nerves, but don’t allow us to touch. “I will protect you.”
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