My Hybrid Mate

Chapter 4: Spiderman T-Shirt

“That f*****g bastard.” I mutter under my breath, stroking the place his lips touched mine and where his fingers caressed my cheek. Then he disappeared.

I feel like I’m constantly talking to a brick wall. He doesn’t want this mate bond, yet he won’t let me reject him or vice versa. And then, to top off the confusion, he tries to kiss me but then disappears in a second. I don’t understand it. I don’t know what to do with myself. Mates are something I grew up with knowledge of. When you find a mate, you find the other half of your soul. It’s like you start your life from the point when you learn their scent. But I can’t start my life with a brick wall. Not unless it’s purple. And Everest is definitely not purple.

“Ave! Lunch!” Dad yells up the stairs. I swallow and fix my hair behind my ear.

“All is fine. Everything is all good.” I whisper to myself as a mini pep talk before leaving the room. My legs feel heavy as I walk down the stairs, gripping the banister as I go. When I reach the kitchen, everyone is sitting around the table next to the window, Cameron and Charlie are flicking spaghetti at each other while Shane laughs at them and Sophie glares, staring down at the plate in front of her like it’s a serial killer. Mum is desperately trying to get her to eat something and dad is still trying to fix himself a plate of pasta.

“Morning.” I greet, this being the first time I’ve seen them today.

“Afternoon.” Dad replies, setting his plate down in front of me and turning to get another one. I grumble a ‘thank you’ and twirl my fork in the spaghetti.

“Your father and I have a pack meeting to go after lunch. Can you and Shane babysit until we get back?” Mum asks distractedly, shoving another forkful of food towards Sophie’s closed mouth. “You know, it gives you superpowers, right? You’ll shift into your wolf faster if you eat it.” she mutters to her under her breath. Sophie takes the fork and places it in her mouth at this point, the concept of her wolf obviously close on her mind.

“Are you paying us?” Shane asks. I tsk at him. “What? I’m broke!”

“You have all that money from last Christmas, and savings from the phase when you wanted to go to university.” I point out.

“Well, that’s not going to get me far in life.” he retorts.

“You have a job, don’t you?”

“Oh come on, until dad finally hands over the Alpha position, all I have to go on is that lame assistant job at the hospital. That barely pays for lunch on my break!”

“You eat like a horse, there’s no wonder.” Mum butts in. I chuckle at him as his face turns to annoyance. “We pay for your food at home, and water and heating and electricity, oh, and the Wi-Fi. So you can do this one job for us.”

Don’t get me wrong; having a big family is amazing. For my four other siblings and I, life is pretty great. Our parents are perfectly happy, mated werewolves, we can afford to live in our own house away from the hustle of the pack house, and I’m not going to lie – being the offspring of the Alpha and Luna of one of the largest packs in America has its perks.

But when my oh-so amazing parents leave my one older brother and I to babysit for the afternoon, life seems to be fading into darkness pretty quickly. Especially with Sophie’s puke stinking away on my shirt already. Seems she had some bad food at her play date yesterday, and now I have a sick child and a ruined shirt to look after.

“You better put that vase down, Cameron, because I swear to the clouds above that if you break it-” smash. “You broke it.” My brother, Shane, sighs in annoyance. “Mum is gonna f*****g kill me.”

“Aw, was that the one Aunt Cath gave her for Christmas last year?” I ask him, walking round the corner with Sophie clutching onto my leg, crying. Shane nods and buries his face in his hands. “Oh, for crying out loud! Why do you have to be so freaking annoying Charlie?!” I half yell, turning to one of my even younger brothers. Sophie starts coughing violently onto my leg, so I turn my attention back to her, picking her up by her under arms and running – legit running – to the bathroom.

Luckily, we made it there in time for her to throw up into the toilet. I pull her hair out of her face, rubbing what I hope are soothing circles onto her back.

“It’s okay, Soph.” I coo, as she finishes. Picking up a wet cloth from the sink, I wash her face and the sweat from her forehead. “Let’s get you to bed.” She nods weakly, which breaks my heart a little, and I pick her up to rest on my hip.

I make my way up two flights of stairs to get to her bedroom on the top floor and place her in her single bed with the waste bin pulled up next to it and the portable fan on full blast. “Anything else you need?” I whisper, turning off the lights. She only got out of bed a few hours ago, but rest seems to be what she needs at the moment. Mum would probably get her special tea or medicine or something, but I don’t know where or what those things are, and mum’s in a pack meeting right now, so no tea for Soph.

I make a quick detour and change my clothes to get rid of the puke smell before legging it downstairs to find Cameron and Charlie.

At the moment, Shane is chasing ten year old Cameron around the kitchen, trying to grab the spatula from his hands while he just laughs menacingly. Charlie tries running past me with toilet paper unravelling behind him, but I grasp his hand as he tries to get past stopping him from doing so. His blonde hair whips round to look at my larger hand in his before he stares up at me with innocent blue eyes and a frown of confusion.

“Char, we leave the toilet paper in the bathroom. We don’t need to throw it around the house.” I say, trying to conceal the majority of my anger. He nods slowly and hands me the toilet paper reluctantly.

Nodding at him, I take the toilet paper and place it on the dining table. Then, I grab his hand and we walk over to Cameron, who stops running around when he sees my stern expression. They’re ten, but they act like three year olds.

“Ave! Dad just mind-linked me, there’s a rogue attack near the borders.” Shane yells, running into the room. I look at him to Charlie and Cameron, and back again. “Get them to the safe room and grab Sophie from her room.” He orders in a stern voice. This is why he’s the next Alpha. The twins jumped out of their seats and I headed up the stairs to the third floor of the house. Pushing them into the store cupboard at the very end, I use the key I grabbed on the way to open the other door inside it. The safe room is a tiny room with a couple of dusty sofas, canned food and water that dad replaces every month, just in case.

“You guys stay in here and lock the door while I go get Sophie. Don’t answer to anyone but me.” they nod and I hand Cameron the key before legging it to Sophie’s room. She’s sleeping soundly in her bed still, so I wrap her in her duvet and run back towards the safe house.

I hear a snarl behind me. The world seems to stop.

Turning slowly with my sister still sleeping in my arms, I lay my eyes on a copper coloured wolf with blood around the mouth. His eyes are a midnight black and his teeth are browning, some missing. I try to stumble back towards the safe room, but the rogue wolf growls at me again.

I shake Sophie awake and motion for her to be quiet, which she thankfully does in all the confusion. I place her on the ground, letting the duvet pool on the floor.

“Go to the safe room. Now.” I whisper softly. She nods numbly and I block the wolf’s view of her using my body. After she’s rounded the corner, I shift into my deep brown, almost black, coloured wolf. Okay, so I’m slightly smaller than the rogue, by about a foot, but that doesn’t mean I can’t take him on.

Dad, there’s a rogue in the house. I mind-link him, trying to think sensibly in this situation. Shane is out fighting at the borders, my parents are also, and I’m stuck at home with my three siblings and a rogue. Great.

He takes a step forward but I stand my ground until he lunges, canines extended towards my neck. Ducking to the side, I manage to miss the attack, but he’s ruthless. The wolf lunges again and grabs my hind leg in a death grip, blood oozing to the floor. Whining in pain, I kicked him in the face with my other back leg, not hard enough for him to fly into the other wall, but hard enough for him to let go of my leg.

I spin around, trying not to put any weight on my leg, and push my canines into the wolf’s flank, taking a chunk of skin with me. His dark blood pools down the side of his leg and he turns to me with narrowed eyes. Out for revenge.

His claws retract from his matted paw and he swipes at my shoulder, leaving a trail of claw marks down my body. My own wolf gets extremely angered by this, retracting our claws and lunging towards his face. The rogue dodges the attack, rolling to the side and putting pressure on the wound on his flank, causing him to whine in pain. I pant heavily whilst trying to ignore the pain from my leg.

But the wolf takes my vulnerability as a chance to move forward to my neck. He dives to it, but stops midway. I stand frozen in shock as the wolf literally hovers in the air with his teeth out ready to kill me, but he doesn’t move.

Suddenly, he’s thrown into the wall in the corner or the room, body lying limp on the floor.

I can’t hold myself in wolf form any longer, and I feel myself shift into human form, falling to the floor, screaming in pain as the shift stretches the claw and bite marks.

Tingles embrace me, and I feel something being draped over my naked body.

“s**t. Avery, wake up, listen; don’t close your eyes. Alright, f**k. Ave-” that’s all I hear before darkness consumes me.

***

When I wake up, the first thing that comes to my attention is the plastic jabbing into my side. I twist uncomfortably until I realise it won’t go away, and then sit up. The head rush that comes with moving hits me like a bulldozer and I put my hand to my head while my body sways.

Finally, it stops. I look around and realise I’m in the backseat of a car, and the plastic that was jabbing into my side was actually the seatbelt. At this time, I also notice I’m wearing nothing but a massive t-shirt and Sophie’s duvet is covering the rest of my body.

I can’t see who the driver of the car is until he looks up into the mirror and our eyes meet.

“Everest?” I croak out, causing a round of coughs to rack my body. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t do anything to help it.

“Yes?” he replies smoothly, turning the indicator on and going right up a slip road.

“Wha- where are we going?” I stutter, moving completely to a sitting position and flinching when I move my stomach.

“My place.” He shrugs, like it’s nothing. But why are we going to his house? Where does he even live? I start picturing dark caves and massive haunted mansions.

“Why?”

“Because you’re hurt, I’m running out of gas and I’m still not completely sober.” Again. He answers so fluently I almost think it’s okay that he’s doing this. But it’s not. This is k********g. My parents would never let a half wizard take me somewhere while he’s drunk and I’m hurt.

“You kidnapped me?” I state bluntly, as a realisation more than a question. Everest chuckles loudly, taking a left off the motorway.

“I’m not k********g if you wanted to be kidnapped, and you seemed pretty content snuggling your body further into my arms when I saved you from being mauled by a rogue.” A blush starts covering my face as I realise that that probably did happen. Stupid mate bond.

“I could’ve taken it by myself.”

“No, Avery, he was about to kill you. Don’t be so in denial.” I know he’s right. There’s not even any point in trying.

“Take me back to my house, Everest. What are you even doing? You’re meant to hate me.” I mutter under my breath.

“No. I don’t have enough gas to go all the way back.” He replies. I grumble something incoherent and we continue to drive in silence.

When we pull up, I can’t help but let out a tiny chuckle. For someone who has a demeanour that could kill a person with just one glance, Everest lives in the opposite type of house you would think.

A bungalow.

Red brick exterior, a small patch of grass outside the front, and a black front door. I can practically feel the decor inside spilling over to the outside area.

Everest gets out of the car and I struggle to walk with the injury on my leg and chest. Eventually, he just picks me up bridal style, rolling his eyes at me. I try to make it look like I don’t like it, but the tingles erupting all over my body seem to think differently.

When we get in, I’m not surprised to find the walls completely void of any emotion. In other words, grey. The carpets are white and look like they need to be replaced, the lamps and furniture are all black, and then there are the grey walls. It looks like he went in with a vacuum and soaked out all the colour in the house.

“This is the living room.” My mate coughs awkwardly. I nod, noticing there isn’t even a TV in there; dark leather sofas and a black metal coffee table sit there instead. We walk into the kitchen, which is small and again devoid of any emotion. Grey walls, black countertops, old beige tiled floors. “Yeah, I don’t cook much.” He comments.

After leaving the kitchen, we go along the corridor and past another door. Everest’s hand hovers above the handle for a minute before he decides better of it and turns to a different room. It makes me extremely curious, but I don’t want to say anything.

The room he takes me in next is obviously his bedroom. I’ve never really thought about what Everest’s room might look like, but if I did I’d imagine it to look like this. Grey walls, white (going light grey) carpet, black bed and covers, desk in the corner flooded with books and pens and scrunched up paper.

“Uh, so yeah. That’s my house.”

“How long have you lived here?” I wonder out loud. He lets out a long, deep breath.

“About four years now. I fell out with my dad and bought the first place I could see and afford. Just so happened to be this place.” He shrugs.

“What happened between you and your father?” I question absentmindedly.

“None of your business.” He states quickly. I look up to face him, watching his face as he takes another deep breath and combs his hand over it. “It’s still a bit tough.” He adds, quieter this time. All of a sudden, the door which was previously closed opens, pushing against Everest’s back. He moves away from it and a small boy comes in, about three or four I would say, and with black hair and deep brown eyes, and looks around.

He takes in me first, assessing me like a threat. He has cute glasses placed a little wonkily on his face, and is wearing a Spiderman t-shirt and black jeans.

“Dad?”