To Feel Again [Welcome To Wolf's Peak]

Chapter One - Owen

Owen

"Ginny, you're going to be late!" I yelled up the stairs. I said the same thing every school morning that I was here and not working at the fire station. I often worried about those times, was she going to school like she was supposed to?

My worries were founded on solid facts, her past spoke for itself after all. Maybe I'd been too easy on her after Mom and Dad died, or maybe it was just plain old teenage rebellion. Either way she'd fallen in with bad group of friends. One boy in particular gave me nightmares. Mark!

I didn't want any teenage boys around my little sister but especially not one who was almost nineteen and smelled of weed 24/7. Something about him made the hair on the back of my neck stand upright. I didn't like him, he was bad news.

"Ginny!"

"I'm not deaf, you don't need to shout." My little sister descended the stairs in tight jeans, a pink tee and more make-up than I'd realized she owned. She looked older than her sixteen years. My stomach hollowed and I had a real fear of what the future held. Boys would be sniffing around her, they already were. I'd have to interrogate them to make sure they were good enough for her, they wouldn't be. I'd have to pay the parent and the big brother, roles I was already struggling to master.

"What do you have on your face? You need to wash that off." Ginny was a beautiful girl, she didn't need that stuff on her face to look amazing. I might be biased as her brother but it was the truth.

"I'm not washing it off. God! I'm sixteen now Owen every girl my age is wearing it. You need to loosen up and stop trying to tell me what to do, you're not my father." She brushed past me to the kitchen.

I felt like she'd slapped me across the face. No I wasn't her father. I was her brother but it was my job to take care of her. Before I could collect myself and make a comment of my own she was opening the front door, her bag slung over one shoulder carelessly and a breakfast bar in one hand. "Bye bro." She waved the hand holding the bar and let the door close behind her.

I let my shoulders slump forward, exhausted from work, from the stress of being the adult, from everything. I'd only been home an hour when I'd called Ginny downstairs for school. Now I trudged up those same stairs and looked forward to curling up in my sheets and sleeping for a few hours. Work had been boring on this shift. There had been one minor fire then there was a three year old who'd gotten stuck up a tree and his pet cat who'd been up there with him. Except for when we'd been on those call outs there was nothing to do but sit around watching TV. It had been awkward to say the least since I was on the same shift as Jacob Mentis. I'd seduced Jacob into fooling around once, he'd been avoiding me since then but the station house was too small to avoid anyone for long and so we'd ended up silently watching TV together.

I'd liked Jacob from day one, he was cute and smelled amazing but I'd never really expected it to go anywhere. That didn't stop me from hoping though. I was lonely. Life as a single parent/big brother was hard, I worked a lot of hours and didn't get time to socialize. I wanted someone of my own, someone that I could share everything with. Most of all I wanted someone who could take charge.

I wasn't a confident person and I second guessed every decision I made. I wanted someone who could do those things for me, who could take the pressure off of me without being completely overbearing and trying to rule my life. Maybe I'd been looking for the impossible, but I'd found it.

I opened my bedroom door and smiled at the sight before me. My sheets were folded back ready for me to slip between them and there was a gorgeous man waiting there for me. "Hi." I said the word on an exhale.

"Hi," he said smiling and patted the bed beside him. "Get some sleep and I'll be here when you wake up."

I hadn't realized how tense I was until I allowed myself to relax fully at his words and stripped down to my underwear. "I'll be right back," I told him and quickly went to the bathroom to wash up. I made a thorough job of it, hopeful that perhaps today would be the day he finally gave in and made love to me. He was very secretive every time I asked him why he wouldn't fuck me. I would be getting paranoid by now, thinking that he wasn't attracted to me, but he'd assured me that I was his mate.