She Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 2)

Chapter 24: The Night Out

Ronnie

Though the outside of the packhouse is pretty much how I remember it, the inside is quite different, at least in the part where Aly and her family lives. I remember from before that the Alpha’s family lived on the top floor of one of the wings of the building, with her parents in a master suite and then other miscellaneous rooms down that same hall. Aly’s was at the end, and my guest suite was right next to hers.

She’s been busy remodeling and changing it all up to accommodate her growing family. They want lots of kids, “as many as the Goddess sees fit to bestow” upon them, so they’ve converted the top two floors of that wing of the house into a large two-floor apartment. Instead of being just a long hallway with lots of rooms, it’s laid out like an actual house with a kitchen, living room, dining room, and so on. There’s a playroom and a guest room downstairs, and the rest of the bedrooms and guest rooms are upstairs.

It’s really nice and has a cozy, homey feel to it, in contrast to how it felt sort of like a hotel before. What I like most about it is that I can camp out at Aly’s place and take time to settle in without having to be stuck in a bedroom while I avoid venturing out into the rest of the packhouse for now. I can play with the kids, help Aly around the house, and hang out and watch a movie all without having to worry about meeting anyone new until I’m ready.

And my guest suite is everything I’ve been dreaming of. The bed is perfect, not too hard and not too squishy. The sheets are soft and smooth, just the way I like them, and the bedspread has the perfect weight to it. The bathroom is even bigger and nicer than the one I had before, but there’s still a magnificent soaking tub for me, which is all I care about. The closet is spacious, which is good considering how much stuff I have to find homes for, and I even like the way the room feels. It’s quiet and has good, subtle air flow. I haven’t been this comfortable in years.

My only complaint is that I can definitely hear Aly and her guys in their room making more babies at odd hours of the night. But it’s not loud, and not even close to as obnoxious as listening to my mom and Warren going at it, so I don’t mind too much. But if she ever asks me about it, the answer will be no, I sleep soundly and never hear a thing. I’m the intruder here, and I don’t want her changing anything more about her life to accommodate me.

Friday night Aly lets me settle in and get used to being there, but by Saturday evening, she wants us to go out for a girls’ night. I don’t know why she’s so insistent on dragging me out of the house already, but there’s apparently a place in town that makes a steak dish she’s been craving.

“And on Saturday nights, there are tons of drink specials you might enjoy. Just be sure to remind the server that you’re human so they get you the right stuff,” she tells me excitedly, still pulling clothes from my luggage trying to find just the right outfit for me.

“It can get a little crowded in there on Saturday nights, though, so if it’s too much, she can get her steak to-go,” Matt chimes in. We’re sitting side-by-side at the end of my bed watching his pregnant mate tear through my belongings.

I didn’t spend much time getting to know him back when we were all at the same school because it was mostly Tyler who Aly brought around our dorm room, but I’ve since learned that he is the one person I know who can relate to both my anxiety and my sensory sensitivities. His are caused by his special kind of werewolf, but the end result is the same. He knows from personal experience how overwhelming crowded places can be for someone like us.

“That’s true. I can, and I will in a heartbeat if you need me to,” Aly agrees, throwing a pair of black jeans my way. “But do yourself a favor and give it a try first. Don’t just take one look and back out, actually go in and sit down and see if it’s something you can adapt to. I have a feeling you’ve mostly been taking your meals in your bedroom lately, and it’s time you poke your head out of your hermit shell just a tiny bit.”

“I’d love to say you’re wrong, but you’re not. You are wrong about why, though,” I tell her. “I’ve mostly been eating in my bedroom because I haven’t been able to afford meals worth eating anywhere else. But going out is not as hard for me now as it was a couple months ago, other than financially.”

“Because you’ve been taking your meds?” she asks, holding up two different tops for Matt and me to choose between.

The rules are we both have to agree, or she goes back in for something else entirely. I don’t know why. Matt doesn’t even have to wear whatever she picks.

“The purple one,” we say in unison.

“Yeah buddy,” he exclaims, turning to give me a high five.

“And yes,” I answer Aly’s question from before. “The meds help. They’re not a cure, but they help, and I’ve learned some mental strategies to help ground me in the moment and push through until I’m more comfortable. So, I’m willing to give this a try, though I am questioning the wisdom of taking a pregnant woman to a bar.”

“It’s not a bar, though it has a bar, and I won’t be partaking of the alcoholic beverages. The wisdom comes from knowing it’s the better option than asking the pregnant woman to go without her steak when she already has her heart set on it,” she explains, finally coming out of my closet.

“She’s not wrong,” Matt agrees. “Tyler and I have become very wise very quickly.”

“Hey, I resent your insinuation,” Aly protests.

Matt is up and running away not even a second later, and Aly hurries after him much faster than I was aware that a pregnant woman could move.

“Get ready, and meet me downstairs in thirty,” she hollers back at me, already out in the hall chasing after her mate.

-

-

Jason

I don’t always find myself in my office working through a Saturday, but when I do, it’s because my sister called me not once, but twice this week to come and help her with random stuff around the house. Some days, she gets a certain thought in her head and just can’t live a single second longer without resolving some made-up crisis like cleaning the gutters so the house won’t flood or tearing up all the tile in the kitchen because she can smell something off and she just knows there’s something wrong with it that will kill them all in their sleep. She only gets like that when she’s pregnant, and though she just had a baby not long ago, I’m suspecting they’ll soon be announcing a third on the way.

And I’m happy for her, but I wish she would call her mate for stuff like that, or heck, she has another brother. And a father, not to mention uncles. Why is it always me? But I guess the better question is why do I always go over there and help? Well, I suppose that answers the first question. Everyone else has probably stopped coming at her every beck and call.

What’s even more annoying is though I don’t keep regular Saturday hours, it’s almost as if someone put out a memo alerting everyone on the face of the planet that I’m in the office today. My phone just won’t stop ringing, and it’s seriously putting a wrench in my plan to catch up on work with enough time left over to meet up with Brian and his friends in town. He invited me to come have some drinks with them, and it’s been just long enough since I’ve allowed myself a social outing that I was actually hoping to go.

It also doesn’t help that Finn has been driving me nuts all day. He does this sometimes, when something that smells even the least bit fruity or flowery reminds him of Ronnie until the point that he’s making it so we both start smelling her everywhere, and it makes it so hard to focus. Orange juice and roses seem to be the worst culprits, and neither are in my office currently, but sometimes he doesn’t even need a trigger to miss her so much that she’s all he can think about.

I think it’s been happening today because he’s growing increasingly more agitated about the fact that I’ve actually been considering Brian’s crazy idea to help get our parents off my back. Tomorrow is Sunday, which means another dinner, but I can’t think of an unmated she-wolf that I know well enough to even ask. Clarice has crossed my mind, though. I have been tempted to ask her.

She’s technically an elder, but with her magic, she can be whoever she wants to be. It seems like each time we go for a run, I get a different version of her. Black, gray, various strangely unnatural coat colors, even a chocolate brown once. And if her wolf can do that, then I’m assuming that she could alter the way she looks in human form too.

Technically, she already does. If she went around in her natural form, she’d have bright green hair and not look a day over 21. She chose the middle-aged brunette to be her illusory form, and I’m sure she could alter it to look younger and unrecognizable. If we’re going to fool my parents anyway, might as well pull out all the stops, right?

But even though I trust Clarice and I know she would be respectful of my relationship with Ronnie above all else, I can’t bring myself to do it. It doesn’t feel right, and I don’t trust how Finn would react to it. If anyone so much as called her my girlfriend or my mate, he’d probably flip out.

As my stomach starts rumbling something fierce, protesting that the small working lunch I fed it earlier was the last time I ate and it’s now well into the dinner hour downstairs, I finally give up. I’ll just have to come back and finish the rest tomorrow after training. Right now, it’s time to get out of this office and away from whatever is messing with Finn’s senses and go have some drinks with the guys.

You know, as much as you keep falling for false alarms, someday we really are going to smell Ronnie, and I’ll be on top of her before I realize it, I scold Finn.

Not like that, I add when I realize how he took that. I expected him to whimper and relent, but instead he got excited.

He’s learned a lot of words that he uses when he takes over my body, but he still doesn’t talk to me. I can sense him, maybe even better than most can sense their wolves, and I know he pays attention to everything going on around us, but I haven’t heard him speak to me in my mind after the day he identified Ronnie as my mate. The only other time was on my sixteenth birthday, when I asked his name and he said Finn.

Sometimes I wonder if that really was his name then, or just some random sound he managed to make in my head that is now his name because he’s used to it. Someday, I hope I can meet a much older, more experienced berserker who can tell me whether that’s normal for our type of wolf, or if Finn is just one-of-a-kind.

Thankfully, the scent of whatever he has been smelling is completely gone by the time we get outside the packhouse, and it only takes me a record time of ten minutes to get back to my house, shower, change, and head back into the village. Because I’m feeling ravenously hungry by this point, I decide to take my car instead of just walking. I’m sure my brother will rag on me for that, but he’ll probably change his tune when he inevitably drinks too much and doesn’t have to stumble his way home for once.

Brian and Jeremy, his roommate and longtime best friend, are already sitting at the bar when I get in there, and I slide into the open seat next to my brother.

“Please tell me you’ve already ordered food and I can steal it when it gets here,” I say, completely bypassing greetings and small talk.

“Sure,” he laughs. “I hope you’re in the mood for a burger and onion rings. Somebody skip lunch?”

“Basically, but yeah I’m not feeling very picky right now. Next round is on me though.”

When his food comes out, I scarf it like the animal I am. I think he’s hoping I’m too distracted to be paying attention when he orders himself a small fortune in liquor and steaks, but the truth is I wouldn’t care anyway. I owe it to him. I stole his job. It’s something I’d always wondered and gone back and forth about, but that’s the conclusion I’ve reached definitively now that he’s confessed the truth of what happened.

A couple of their other friends eventually come and join us, and we move to a large table that can better accommodate the five of us, one of those wrap-around booths that looks like a good idea until it sinks in that there’s more seating but just as much table space as any other booth would offer. It’s only a problem because of how Brayden seems to like to flail his arms around as he talks, and with all the stuff on the table in front of him, there are a lot of near misses.

“I kid you not,” he insists, holding up his hands to gesture the length of something. I wasn’t paying attention, but I hope he’s not talking about what I think he’s talking about.

“Nah, no way,” Jeremy argues, shaking his head.

I catch a flash of his neck as he does that and notice the mark there. It could be the mark of the girl he’s supposedly been with for exactly the same amount of time as Brian has been “mated” to Tasha, but now I’m suspicious because it also looks like my brother’s wolf. That would explain a lot. He smirks at me when he notices me looking, and I feel like that’s confirmation enough. Brian has probably told him that I know now.

I just can’t help wondering how they do it. How do they go out in public and act like only friends, when they’re mates? And how does he handle my brother taking someone else to hang out with his family week after week? Although I guess in a way, Tasha’s taking one for the team there. I’d send someone else in my place if I could, especially since my parents have decided it’s fair grounds for matchmaking now.

As if my thoughts have somehow summoned her, Jamie suddenly slides in next to me in the booth, so close that she’s practically in my lap, and leans in to kiss me before I even know what’s going on. It’s just a small peck, but it’s unsolicited and unwanted, and she had no right to touch me in a way that is only for my mate.

“Hey baby,” she says while I’m still in shock, which is quickly transforming into rage. “Saw you over here and thought I’d come say hi.”

This girl has been harassing me all week, randomly approaching me in the pack hall one night at dinner, which I was having with Aly that night, and thankfully, she didn’t hesitate to back me up when I told Jamie to leave me alone. And then two days ago, she brought lunch to my office, just barging in during a meeting and plopping herself in my chair. I told her then that if she didn’t leave me alone, I would have the Alpha intervene officially. I thought I was pretty clear about it, but apparently this girl isn’t so easily deterred.

Brayden and Alex are laughing at me and probably about to start hooting and encouraging Jamie on, but Brian tells them to knock it off. He knows how I feel about this girl and is also aware of the trouble she’s been giving me.

Silently cursing my mother and her friends, I grit my teeth and struggle to hold Finn back as I say, “Jamie, you need to leave. Now. I do not want you here, or anywhere, ever. Understand?”

“No, I don’t,” she retorts, and I sense she might be about to make a scene. “I don’t understand at all why you’re insisting on being like this. Look at me. I’m a catch, and we could have a lot of fun together.”

Maybe some other guys would find her appealing, but she is the farthest thing from it in my opinion, and she is apparently not used to being turned down.

“Out. Now,” I manage to grit out, demanding that she move so I can leave. She’s blocking me into the booth seat.

Finn is so close to breaking through my thinly held control and giving her a piece of his mind, and it doesn’t help that the mystery scent is back and stronger than ever. Thankfully, Brian gets up and intervenes, taking Jamie by the arm and hauling her up and out of my way.

I pause long enough to take out my wallet and hand him enough cash to cover the bill, shooting one last impatient glance at this infuriating woman before storming out of the place. I’m tempted to march myself straight to Aly to find out what she can do about my stalker problem, but it turns out she’s right outside standing next to my car with another woman, so I don’t have to go far.

And then my brain finally registers who the woman is, and why I’ve been smelling her everywhere.

“Ronnie,” I breathe out in disbelief, but it’s as much Finn’s voice that comes out as mine, and I lose the battle for control of my body a split-second later.

Oh no. Please no. Not again.