Bran Cornick: The Man Behind The Marrok

The New Wolf In Town

Kat's POV

             Kat was starting to feel like her life was sliding down the crap hole.

             First she was kidnapped by a guy whom at the time she had thought was an obsessed fan and the reason she had been looking over her shoulder the past couple of weeks who had actually turned out to be a crazy werewolf off on a rampage and she was his next target. Then she had had to disappear, leaving what was starting to look like a promising dance career in Washington, well on my way to going to LA to really make it big, to move all the way to Middle of Nowhere: Aspen Creek, Montana, to live with some guy who apparently was the head honcho and that he was supposed to teach her the do's and don'ts of being a werewolf. 

          Now she found herself standing at the door of Bran Cornick, who apparently is the Marrok of all the werewolves in North America which from what she had gathered from Charles Cornick; the son of the guy, was that he was pretty much the emperor of all the emperors. Big whoop. 

       She still was not looking forward to spending her foreseeable future around an old fart werewolf who apparently was bad ass enough to rule over all the werewolves in North America. She thought it was rather clever of the werewolves that when they came out they conveniently forgot to mention that they had a ruling body and a werewolf that made all the other Alpha's cry for mommy.

      When the door was finally opened, what she was expecting to find behind the door and what was actually there stunned her. Instead of finding the old man she was expecting to be Bran Cornick, instead she found a man with a lean slim build, with sandy hair that was just long enough to make it look this side of  unkempt, warm hazel eyes and what at first glance seemed to be an average face, not too attractive, but not hideous either. But on closer inspection with her now sharper eyesight and instincts she could see the spark of intelligence and the wear of age in his eyes. He was dressed in a gray t-shit, a pair of jeans with no shoes.

       Realizing she had to say something before this became awkward she held her hand out to the guy and said in what she hoped came off as a "I am not totally begrudging being here" tone,

           "Hello, I'm Kat." After what seemed like an eternity of standing there with the man staring at her, she cleared her throat and put her hand back in her pocket to stave off what she hoped was not the beginning of frostbite. Her movement seemed to snap him out of whatever trance he was in.

         "Katarina Pierce. My Son just called to inform me that you where coming. Please, step inside it is far too cold out there." His voice was calm and gentle and almost had a lyrical quality to it, soothing and relaxing. She took his invitation to step inside and as she stepped past him she got a good whiff of his scent. He smelled faintly of mint and a musky scent that had been present on all of the werewolves she had encountered since her turn. (only two, Adam Hauptmann and Charles Cornick) There was also a salty sweetness to his scent that she found combined with the other two scents made him smell lovely to her new senses. She pushed that thought away quickly, trying not to dwell on it. 

         "So, are you Bran Cornick. I had to stop and ask a few people on the way up here because I may or may not have gotten lost in all the snow." she would have gone off into a rant about the snow and having to drive up to the middle of flipping nowhere Aspen Creek, but then she remembered she was probably in the house of the guy in charge of the werewolves in America and it was probably not wise to antagonize the leadership.

       "The snow tends to give people trouble, and Yes, I am Bran Cornick." She stared at him then looked him up and down, with more interest than was probably wise, considering she had just met the man and knew for a fact that he was THE most dominant and therefore the most bad-ass wolf in North America, if the explanation she was given and her understanding was correct. Many responses settled on the tip of her tongue but, considering who he was she decided to go with the one less likely to get her in trouble.

       "Hmmph." His lip quirked just a little.

       "Hmmph?" His questioning tone was just a little teasing which surprised her. 

        "You are nothing at all like I was expecting." She said honestly, deciding to throw caution to the wind. He didn't seem like the type who would enjoy making people walk on eggshells around him. He took her reply in stride with a sheepish smirk.

        "I get that quite often. I prefer not to scare those under my charge until they need scaring." There was a pause and she saw something in his eye, something that made her believe that if he wanted to be scary, he would terrify extreme levels, despite his young and innocent look. 

       "I will show you to your room, then. Please follow me." He grabbed one of her bags which she had set down upon entering his home and walked towards a staircase and she followed, still with some trepidation. How would she adjust to living as a werewolf, and how would she adjust to living with the Marrok, this man, who seemed full of contradiction. From the accountings she had received from some of the people in town, the image in her head of Bran Cornick was not the slender-built Welshman that walked at a steady casual pace in-front of her. He seemed to be gentler of nature, but she had seen the gleam in his eye, just a small glimpse but a very sobering view of the beast that lurked behind. 

         Her thought so consumed with thoughts of the Marrok, she completely didn't realize he had stopped in-front of a door and she nearly ran him over. Feeling her face flush in embarrassment and then irritation because she was suddenly unreasonably flustered, she could feel her wolf coming to the foreground, and she would bet that if she looked in a mirror her eyes had turned a glossy gold.

       "Sorry." She was just short of growling out. She noticed a slight change in Bran, a flash of something...odd before it quickly dissipated and he was back to his casual demeanor.

      "That's quite alright. This will be your rooms while you are staying here, The kitchen is downstairs, the study is down the hall, feel free to borrow a book if you want, and anything else you need feel free to let me know."

      "Thank you." She said as he opened the door to reveal a very cozily decorated sitting room with plush couches of a warm shade of brown leather and a mahogany middle table. There was a massive flat screen TV and a very beautiful Persian carpet. There were two hallways that led away from the seating room.

    "The bedroom is the first door on the right and the bathroom is the one on the left, the bathroom and bedroom are connected. There is a fridge in the bedroom. Make sure you eat regularly, werewolves need to eat constantly in order to keep up with our metabolisms."

    "Thank you for all of this, I know it is inconvenient for you to-"

    "Katarina." His saying her name sent a small shiver up her back and silenced her prepared apologies about her troubling him with her presence.

    "It is my responsibility to take care of my wolves. All of my wolves. You are now one of my wolves, and it is my responsibility to take care of you." Gone was the casual college student facade and in its place was a man that Kat had no trouble believing was the Marrok. His eyes were bright and shone with the presence of his wolf. She felt her wolf rise again and this time she felt something, like a click or an understanding, between his wolf and hers. Immediately, she felt the door slam down on his wolf and his face.

   "Settle in and make yourself feel comfortable." Then he turned around and started walking out of the room, his walk looking calm but his shoulder stiff and rigid. 

"It's Kat." She said softly, not sure if she wanted him to hear it or not. His shoulders lost some of their tenseness and she thought he might have smiled.

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So this is not quite to the events of the next section which i published before this, there will probably be a chapter or two between them.    I hope you liked this, please let me know in the comments