Hidden Bonds

Chapter 1: Infatuation

It's funny how sometimes life can be so painful, yet so brilliantly pleasurable in the same instance, in the same moment.

I'm in pain.

I can't have what I really desire, but I can look, I can watch.

That's what I'm doing now.

I'm watching as my best friend works on his truck. I'm smoking the cigerattes I got off my Aunt Bee. It's a habit that I slowly picked up from her.

It calms the nerves. It calms the ever present need I have inside me to claim this man.

Beads of sweat are dripping down his naked chest and disappearing into the waistband of his faded jeans. His muscles bulge as he cranks the wrench continuously, tightening the bolts.

"Tal, hand me that bolt over there." He's reaching out his hand, waiting. I have some bolts I could hand him, but I reign in those thoughts, I take a puff off my cig and grab the one he was really asking for.

"Catch." I toss it his way and watch as he picks it out of the air, his reflexes always on par with mine.

I lean back against the garage door and continue to smoke until my lungs feel full and I have to go. I have to leave this sexual display that only I have a free ticket to watch.

I crush the end of my cig into the ground with my black boots.

"You leaving already? Thought I could get some help this time."

"Yea... I don't think so Graham. Your on your own with this one." I give him a twisted smile, the one I reserve for him alone.

My future Beta, my best friend. He knows nothing of my taste for the male side of things. Can I really call him my best friend when he doesn't know the most important part of me? Maybe I should just call him my crush, because I've been vying for his attention since we were pups.

I've watched him grow from a gangly teen into a muscled man and I can only lick my lips and groan at the way his body would feel against mine. If only my imagination could become a reality.

I walk with heavy steps, my boots crushing the fallen leaves along the way to Aunt Bee's clinic.

She's been training me, teaching me how to take care of the wolves in this pack. My father doesn't know that I want to become a healer and Aunt Bee hasn't told a single soul.

I walk into her office and plant myself at her desk, waiting until she is done with her patient. She's been having me read her medical books. I wonder what book she will assign me today?

"Your early. I hope you weren't waiting too long, Tal." Her wild mess of honey curls are tangled with bits of grey. She's under a lot of stress being the only care-taker and her children are rambunctious, always getting into trouble. My cousins have always been that way, but then, they learned from the best.

"Here's your next book assignment. You read too fast. Slow down, process the information you are collecting, it could save a life." I nod at the wisdom in her words before picking up the thick book.

Anatomy.

I wish I could study the Anatomy of Graham a little more. I wish I could get a closer look, get maybe a touch here and there.

Lately my thoughts can't seem to stop themselves. Everything always gets turned around and points straight back to him.

I have an unhealthy infatuation, an obsession that I need to get ahold of before I take action to the words that keep turning and churning in my mind.

With book in hand I head out, hiding it behind my back slightly in case I pass my father.

Luck is in my favor today as I lounge across my bed and start to read page after page of this were-wolf anatomy.

I'm only a chapter in, totally focused for once when I hear the door knob turning.

"Tally! I'm back!" My sister is now on my bed, bouncing around with her ecstatic energy. We're 19 and she still acts like a little kid, her energy always abundant and long-lived.

"You haven't been gone that long." She thinks two days is too long away from her precious twin. I think two days is too short a time.

I hide my book under the blankets as I sit up to give her a hug. She pays it no mind. She knows I have my secrets and I know she has hers.

"Dad wants to see you."

I skipped out on training to study. He's not going to be happy with me.

"Want me to come with you? Maybe he won't get as mad with me there?" He hasn't been angry at Nix in a good while, but I'm a man. I can face him on my own and I know that's what he expects of me.

I drag my fallen boots back over my feet and take my time on the way to dad's office, but no matter how long I drag my feet I still have to face him.

I'm surprised when I see Graham in one of the chairs, lounging back as if he owns the place, his power is always staggering. It is so great that it almost surpasses mine, but not quite.

"Take a seat son." I really don't want to be in the same room with Graham while my father is here. I don't want my father to notice the attraction in the air, but then, not even Graham has noticed.

I sit the the left of Graham and my father frowns, but let's it go. The left is for the Luna, the left is for the lower ranks like the beta, like Graham.

"You have been missing your training sessions a lot these past few months." My dads voice is eerily quiet, that's how I know he's thinking of a suitable punishment.

My head bows down to my alpha, but my hands are gripping the sides of the chair. "I'm sorry." I don't try to explain, explanations don't work to well on him when he's in these kind of moods, calm yet angry.

"Graham is going to be training you for all the classes you have missed out on as well as making sure you show up to the ones to come."

He thinks this is going to give me more motivation to learn how to lead this pack when he steps down. All it's really going to do is motivate my infatuation with my beta to grow until I can't take it anymore.