“There shouldn’t be any packs out here,” she told me. I smiled. She had done her research.
“If you would have told me that two years ago, I would have said you were right. We are a new pack. We established ourselves out here just because the packs are far enough apart that we didn’t feel squashed and they didn’t feel threatened by us,” I told her. She nodded, then took a deep breath and looked at me, as if to find an answer to a question she had. I couldn’t help but to study her. She was a beautiful wolf. The way her deep green eyes shifted with her emotions was fascinating.
“I’m latent,” she said and took a deep drink from her coffee. It appeared every word out of her would surprise me, I thought.
“As in you don’t have a wolf?” I asked.
“Yeah, like I don’t have a wolf,” she said. There was an undertone I couldn’t pinpoint. Bitterness? Hurt? Both would be understandable.
“You smell of wolf,” I said. She smiled a sad smile.
“That may be the case. But I’m twenty-two and I haven’t shifted.” I wanted to tell her that there was still time. It wouldn’t be a lie. But shifting this late would be highly unlikely, and I didn’t want to give her false hope when she clearly had accepted her fate.
“Is that why you left your pack?” I asked.
“It was the root of all the reasons I left,” she answered.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Are you going to tell me why we are doing this?”
“I told you, I want to get to know you,” I told her.
“Yes, you did. You just didn’t tell me why.” I hadn’t, and I wondered if now was the right time. She was skittish, and I had a feeling she would bolt if I moved too quickly. But she had asked a straight to the point question. She deserved an answer.
“I want to invite you to join my pack,” I told her. She looked at me like I was insane.
“You did hear the part about me being latent, right?” she asked.
“I did. There is no issue with my hearing,” I said.
“Maybe not your hearing, but you obviously have some issues,” she said, then her eyes grew bigger when she realized she had said it out loud. I threw my head back and laughed.
“You are not the first one to tell me this,” I admitted.
“Listen, I don’t know why you want me in your pack. But I’m doing fine on my own. I have made myself a new life that I like.”
“Don’t you miss the pack life? Being around your own, not having to hide who and what you are? Don’t you miss the full moon celebrations?” I asked her, and I saw longing in her eyes before she looked away. She stared out over the lake.
“Maybe, but that life is not for me,” she said. There was something deeply sad in the way she said it. The Alpha in me wanted to pull her into my pack, to give her the comfort I knew only a pack could offer. I instinctively knew she needed it.
“Before you turn me down, why don’t you take a couple of days off work and come to the pack. It’s a new pack, but it’s a good one. If you give it a chance, I promise I will never step foot in this town if you turn my offer down. I will even make it out of bounds for the rest of the pack,” I offered.
“I don’t know,” she hesitated.
“The moon will be full in three days. Come and celebrate it with us.” She looked at me with those deep green eyes and I knew she stood on the very edge of accepting my offer.
Chapter 6
Amie
Icouldn’t believe I was sitting in the truck of an Alpha I hardly knew, heading towards an unknown pack. I must be losing my mind to have accepted his crazy offer. He must have been even more insane to make the offer in the first place. What Alpha offered someone without a wolf a place in their pack? An insane one, that’s who. And I, as the idiot that I am, then agreed to get into a truck with said insane Alpha. I had suggested I could take my car. That way I could drive myself back if, no,whenI turned his offer down. But Finlay had insisted it made more sense to drive together. That way, we could keep getting to know each other.
“If your pack has only been around for two years, you haven’t ranked yet?” I asked.
“No. We didn’t leave our old pack until just about two years after the latest games,” he told me.
“That sucks,” I said.
