Reclaimed and Restored

First Shift

“We going to spar tonight?” Silas asked.

He and Marcus were eating a late dinner in the mostly empty dining hall that night, which wasn’t an unusual occurrence―neither one of them liked going through the effort of cooking, not when there was a fully-stocked buffet right downstairs. Now and again, Marcus would put a frozen pizza in the oven or order in when he was craving Chinese or Indian food, but mostly, his meals were spent downstairs.

“Not tonight,” Marcus replied. His plan for the rest of the night included drinking a few beers or maybe some whiskey to try and forget how good Ava’s hands had felt on his skin.

“Why not?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I said so,” Marcus gritted out. Sometimes it was like Silas purposefully poked the bear, and when he did, Marcus usually just ignored it, but he wasn’t in a very forgiving mood that night.

“Is this about Ava? She’ll be done with her community service now, so we won’t bump into her if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Marcus dropped his fork onto his plate and leveled a glare at Silas. Because of the man’s meddling, he’d been distracted all day by thoughts of a certain hazel-eyed eighteen-year-old who had soft golden skin and who spoke so quickly that her words sometimes blurred together. It didn’t exactly help that Marcus was quite certain he’d seen interest in Ava’s eyes―interest that had no business being there.

It would have been hard enough already, but knowing that Ava was attracted to him too only made Marcus more conflicted. It would have been much easier to forget all about her if he didn’t think he’d have a shot with her if he tried. But knowing the attraction wasn’t one-sided made him feel a bit less like a disgusting creep, so that was something, at least.

“You need to drop it. Nothing is ever going to happen there,” Marcus said in a low voice. “Nothing,” he repeated in a hiss for good measure.

“Fine,” Silas sighed. “I’ll let it go, you big baby.”

“Good.”

“So, is that still a no on sparring?”

Despite himself, Marcus had to fight back a smile. “If you hadn’t called me a big baby, I might have reconsidered.”

Silas rolled his eyes and stabbed one of his fries with a little more aggression than was necessary. “You’re sure acting like a big baby,” he mumbled.

Marcus was torn between wanting to laugh and wanting to punch the man in the face, but before he could do either, a strange sensation began in his chest.

He tensed in his seat as the feeling grew and transformed into a sharp, tugging pain, and the more primal part of him knew exactly what that pain meant: his mate was going through her first shift.

She hadn’t died before she’d turned eighteen, and she wasn’t non-existent. His mate was very much alive and real, and she needed him. Marcus didn’t give himself time to think about it; he simply stood up and rushed out of the dining hall, forgetting all about his unfinished dinner and about Silas, who called out after him as he fled.

The echo of pain in his chest acted like a guide as he rushed out of the lobby, got into his car, and drove out of Beacon Hill. There wasn’t exactly an abundance of forests in Boston, but the Fells, a large reservation, was a ten-minute drive from the Council building, and as Marcus was led North by the tugging in his chest, he knew that was where his mate must have been.

As he turned onto the Interstate, he finally allowed himself to acknowledge what it all meant. He had a mate. She was eighteen. And either she shared the same birthday as Ava, which would be one hell of a coincidence, or the girl who he’d been obsessing over all day was his mate.

God, she was so young. She practically oozed innocence, while Marcus had left his innocence and naivety under that trap door when he was ten. They couldn’t have been more different, yet the universe had decided to pair them together for reasons he couldn’t comprehend.

Inside of him, relief over the explanation of his attraction to the young woman warred with a growing sense of unease. His ambivalence only made the situation seem worse. If he didn’t know what to think about the fact that his mate was eleven years younger than him, what would Ava feel? What would others think? And what did this mean for his plans for Gold?

~

Ava’s hopes had been dashed when her shift had begun a few minutes after she, Molly, and her brothers had sat down at the coffee shop. The ache in her stomach had been insignificant at first―almost negligible―but she had immediately known what it meant. It had grown into a terrifying and impossible-to-ignore pain by the time the twins had driven her to the Middlesex Fells Reservation and reluctantly left her in a secluded and forested section of the park far from any hiking trails.

She and the twins would have all preferred it had they been able to stay with her and provide her some comfort during what was sure to be the most painful event of her entire lifetime, but it was impossible. A werewolf going through their first shift was unstable, uncontrollable. Though wolf and man were one and the same after the fact, during the first shift, the wolf was almost a completely separate entity, harming anyone who came near them with the exception of their mate.

Despite the chill of the late April night air, the pain permeating her body had her sweating as if she were in the heat of summer. Ava wondered if her mate, whoever and wherever he was, could feel her pain as she lay in a whimpering ball on the hard ground. If he was close enough, he might be able to reach her before her shift had come to an end, but it was also possible that he was on the other side of the world, too far away to find her when she needed him most.

The idea of a mate had always been such an abstract concept to her before that night―her parents were mates, true, but her brothers hadn’t found theirs, and Molly hadn’t been found by hers either. Ava had never put much hope into having her mate find her as soon as she’d turned eighteen, but she suddenly found herself desperately wishing for precisely that. Her mate was the only one who could help her right then, and she longed for the comfort he might have been able to provide.

Considering where she was and the fact that the sun had set at least two hours earlier, her screams of pain were unlikely to be heard by anyone, but Ava still held them in and used her palm to muffle the ones that managed to escape. Werewolves, especially those raised in the Council, were taught never to bring attention to themselves. The fear of what would happen to her if found, not to mention what would happen to any unsuspecting humans who might stumble upon her in the middle of her shift, was great enough for Ava to stifle her agonized screams.

So lost in the torture of her reforming body and the sickening snap of her breaking bones, Ava almost didn’t hear the crunch of dried leaves that signaled someone’s fast approach. The snap of a twig, so similar to the sound of her breaking fingers, had her wolf taking over as she bared her newly elongated teeth and released a threatening and animalistic growl.

The sounds of the stranger’s approach lessened as they slowed down, but they and the beam of light that they were using to guide them didn’t stop moving in her direction. Fear clouded Ava’s already-pain-riddled mind, but when the smell hit her more sensitive nose, the fear vanished, and her growl immediately cut off.

The strong aroma of coffee mingled with the fresher scent of cardamom, and the crippling pain in Ava’s shifting body seemed to withdraw as the intense flavors permeated the air around her. Her mate had found her.

She was momentarily blinded as the beam of light landed on her face, but the light from what she thought must be the flashlight of a phone was extinguished as soon as she flinched and shut her eyes to block it out.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said as he carefully approached from between the trees.

Ava recognized his voice before her tear-filled eyes could take in the sight of him walking toward her with his hands held placatingly in front of him. Had her eyes not been changing along with the rest of her body, she might not have been able to make him out in the darkness, but his face was almost as clear to her as it had been that morning in the dining hall and the training room.

“Marcus?” she gasped.

He nodded but stopped where he was, looking torn and unsure over whether or not he should come closer. But when Ava whimpered and arched her back as pain that felt dulled but still very hard to ignore shot down her spine, the uncertainty on his face morphed into concern.

Marcus rushed forward, and Ava was surprised but grateful when he lowered himself to the ground and gently pulled her up and against him so that her side was pressed against his chest and her legs were stretched out between his. One of his hands wrapped against her waist while the other softly stroked her back in soothing circles, and the pain became even less intense, as though chased away by his gentle touch.

“I’m here,” he whispered.

Marcus repeated the two words with every new bone that broke, sometimes adding a soft kiss to the top of her head, and Ava wasn’t sure how it was possible to experience such pain and such pleasure simultaneously.

When her bones began to reform and her joints began to reconstruct, Marcus carefully laid her back down on the ground. Ava wanted to complain and beg that he keep touching her, but she could only pant through the new round of pain. A metallic clink, the sound of a zipper, and the rustling of clothes soon explained his reasons, though. Within seconds, his wolf was lying beside her and pressing against her side.

His nose nudged her shoulder in support, and Ava smiled through the pain as she looked into a pair of familiar dark brown eyes. His wolf was massive―larger than most, she was sure―and its obsidian coat was delectably soft against her feverishly hot skin.

It took far longer than the seconds it had taken him to shift, but eventually, Ava’s wolf emerged. Her wolf was smaller than his but bigger than she had expected it to be, and she knew that the eyes that Marcus was looking into would be a mixture of greens and browns, mirrors of her human eyes.

Too spent to move, she simply lay next to Marcus, her black coat giving way to his near-identical black fur. She had spent years harboring a crush on the Council member, but not even in her wildest dreams had she imagined that he could have been her mate.

She was a nobody, an artsy freak, the much less cool friend of a turquoise-haired rock chick, and he… well, he was Marcus. And now, Ava thought with a fair amount of shock and disbelief as her eyes closed and she gave in to her exhaustion, he was hers.