The change ( his mate)

Chapter 26: In this together

Grayson

On our way back I was still getting over the high of what me and Lara had done. I couldn’t believe she’d wanted to have s.ex in wolf form, I’d figured at most I’d be lucky having a mate who loved me, but she not only loved me, but seemed to embrace the wolf ways as much as I did, I was so f.ucking lucky.

I’d been prepared to live my life trying to fight and control my nature, being more wolf meant I didn’t just want a lifetime mate but to have them by my side always, anything less made me nervous.

I knew women didn’t appreciate men clinging to them twenty-four-seven, and while it would always make me anxious, I would have tried to give them space. With Lara, I felt I could be myself and she would understand, sometimes understandably, she did want space, but nine times out of ten she seemed just as content having me by her side. I look at her and all I see is soulmate.

I was too curious, so when I kept driving, passing the pack house Lara looked at me questioningly.

“I want to see if they’re still there, just look that’s all,” I said.

I looked at her and asked, “want to?”

She nodded, grinning, this was one of the reasons Leo could never make me alpha after him, I was too reckless, violent and hot headed. Lara, while she wasn’t violent, did have the same recklessness as me, too excited to pass up an opportunity to do something we really shouldn’t be.

I parked up not too close to the woods and we climbed out. I took the lead so she could step where I stepped, my darling girl wasn’t quite as stealthy and I knew if left to her own devices she’d be stepping and crunching on leaves left right and centre. As predicted it wasn’t long until she tripped and fell into my back almost sending me toppling forward.

“Careful, darling,” I whispered.

“Sorry,” she whispered back trying to stifle a giggle.

We carried on forward until we reached the same place we’d found the wendigos the other night. They weren’t here right now, probably preferring to come out at night, they were mostly nocturnal creatures.

The man was gone, whether they’d eaten every last bit of him or buried him I had no clue, but I could smell the faint remnants of rot and death, the sharper tang was from the man and the duller scent of rot was the wendigos, it seemed to be their natural scent and the whole ‘you are what you eat’ thing came to mind. They eat flesh and blood and so they smelt like flesh and blood, rotting flesh and blood.

I wasn’t stupid enough to walk out into the clearing and start searching around, instead I crouched behind a bush with Lara beside me and looked out ahead, searching the trees and bushes for any sign of movement or life.

I couldn’t smell them at first, but when the next breeze blew our way I caught that scent of rot. I looked up and saw a white blur jump from one tree to the next, then another blur and another until I counted at least five. S.hit.

I reached my arm back and tapped Lara lightly on the leg to back up. She did so and then I guided her where to step, I felt more comfortable being behind her, protecting and guiding where I could keep an eye on her and make sure no one came up behind. We lightly jogged back to the car and when we got in she asked, “what did you see?”

“A big problem.”

“What kind of big problem?”

“A big nest, I counted at least five of them in the trees.”

Her face grew pale and her eyes darkened with worry.

“Don’t worry, we’ll fix it.”

When I parked up back home I sat there not making any effort to get out, Lara looked over at me, looking back I gave a sheepish smile and said, “so how we telling Leo?”

“C.rap, I didn’t think of that,” she whispered nervously.

I leaned over, gave her a quick kiss and hopped out of the car. “Come on, I’ll take the blame.”

“As if he’s going to believe that, he knows we’re both as bad as each other, he won’t believe I stayed in the car innocently calling you back and telling you to leave it alone.”

“We can still try.”

She got out and joined me and met my eyes, “no, you go down, I go down with you.”

I grinned, “alright then, let’s walk to our doom, darling.”

We had barely closed the door when Leo sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. “Why do you smell like rotting flesh.”

“Uh, about that, we have a problem.”

Leo gave me a cool look from his seat at the kitchen table. “What problem is that?”

“Well, you see, we kind of drove by the wendigos and—”

“Let me guess, it ended with you going for a little look around in there?”

“Uh, right, and good news is the bodies gone and—”

An arch of his brow. “The body gone is a good thing?”

“Yeah, they’ve probably eaten it all, anyway, we saw more of them.”

I looked around at the silent room of people with looks of horror and gaping mouths.

“What?” I frowned.

Amber answered. “You say they’ve eaten some poor guy as if he was nothing but a Saturday night takeaway, he was a person Grayson, with a life.”

“We all have lives, humans, animals, death is part of nature.”

“There was nothing natural about his death!” She snapped.

“No, but we’re dealing with it aren’t we, there’s nothing we can do for him so there’s no point moping, all we can do is try and make sure no more deaths happen.”

She opened her mouth to argue but Leo lightly touched her arm so she settled for glaring at me. I glared back. I didn’t mind Amber, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I liked her, but she was ok, but usually we didn’t see eye to eye on certain things. Like this. We could argue all day and long about the body but it was pointless, she would never understand my point of view and I would never understand hers.

I wasn’t a monster, I understood it was wrong and I didn’t want to see anymore bodies and sure as hell not someone being eaten alive, but I saw it more from the viewpoint a true wolf would.

I didn’t feel anything for the man, I wasn’t upset or angry about his death, why would I be? He was a stranger and not part of my pack, even seeing him be eaten alive didn’t disturb me all that much, I didn’t want to see it again, but I could understand they were just hungry and eating to survive, some animals ate their meals while the meal was still breathing, like hyenas, maybe that made me sound like a cold, callous psychopath, but that was just how I was wired, however, having Leo force me to socialise, be among humans and teaching me empathy, or at least to understand it, I knew it had to be stopped, I knew it was wrong, I just wouldn’t cry about it.

Leo knew this about me, I wasn’t sure he quite understood me, but he understood better than most people. With me and Amber still glaring at one another he asked, “you said there are more of them? How many?”

I didn’t break eye contact with her when I answered, “I counted five, but there could be more.”

She broke eye contact first and I stared at her a while longer making her squirm uncomfortably under my gaze.

“Quit that,” Lara hissed, nudging my side.

A minute longer and when Amber grew agitated and nervous, wringing her hands, I stopped, my point had been made.

We were talking about how to deal with the situation while we still waited for the silver blades to be made when Lara suddenly ran from the room and raced to the bathroom.

I followed her and found her throwing up into the toilet. Had my cold reaction about the death made her sick? The last thing I ever wanted to do was have her disgusted by me, horrified by me. I went in and bent down to pull her hair away from her face. “Sorry darling, are you ok?”

She threw up once more and nodded. “I think so.”

She got up, keeping her head down and not letting me see her face until she washed it, washed her mouth out and brushed her teeth vigorously.

“You should get some rest.”

“I’m fine, it was probably just remembering the images of that man, I feel fine now, honest.”

I traveled my gaze over her face making sure, when she smiled I gave a nod, brushed my lips across her forehead and we went back out.

We all decided grudgingly there wasn’t much we could do at this point, if we did try killing them, even if we succeeded it still meant we would lose the spirit on the other side allowing them to escape and find a way back to our world, so Leo wanted us to stick to the original plan, keep an eye on things and no he didn’t mean for me and Lara to go traipsing in their nest again.

If we saw any signs of them hunting we were to follow and interrupt only if they tried to attack a human, in other words we needed to hope like hell that we could fight them enough to scare or startle them without killing them. Great.