The Mate Deal

Chapter 18

It was a good ten minute run, even with my wolf speed.  I didn’t know why I was going there.  I hadn’t been to this spot in the woods since I was eight and David had stopped playing with me altogether.  Back then, life had been so simple.  I never shifted until I was sixteen, two years before you can sense your mate.  They say it’s because you have to get used to your wolf before you can mate.

I never knew that running in these woods in wolf form could be such a new experience.  It was like seeing snowfall for the first time.

When I got to the hiding place, I sighed in relief.  Tyce had never found me here.  However, now he had heightened senses, including scent.  He could sniff me out.  And if I was caught, I could be killed for trespassing on pack territory after everything.

The hiding place was a few fallen trees with conveniently bent trunks that could hide me.  When I was five I put some small branches with pine needles around it trying to hide myself a bit more.

When I reached it, I scooted myself under the largest space between a tree and the ground, still in wolf form.  I crouched on the ground, wishing I had clothes.  I wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, something I could not do in wolf form, but I couldn’t simply go back to human form, naked, if Tyce was out there.

I hadn’t seen Tyce’s wolf before.  I know that’s weird, but I realized that looking back, we’d never shifted in front of each other.  We weren’t around each other much.

How had I not figured it out sooner, though.  I had waited until he told me who he was.

There was no point in being mad at myself, though.  I wanted to get out of here, to go back to Renee’s house, and then back to Oregon with Matt.  Safe Oregon.  Here, I wasn’t home.  I wasn’t welcome here anymore.

“Stephanie!  Steph were are you?”

It was Tyce through the mind link again.  I didn’t know how he was strong enough to keep that up.  I couldn’t ever go very long without getting a headache.  I didn’t respond, but I kept hearing that frantic voice in my head, getting closer and closer, until I could hear a wolf sniffing around, not far away at all.

“Stephanie, is it really you?”

He actually sounded glad to see me.  Like after everything he’d done, he thought I’d come back… for him.

“Stephanie, come out.”  He was a few feet away from my hiding place, and I knew he knew where I was.

“Go away,” I tried to command, but I had no power over a beta.  I may have been a Luna, but that doesn’t give me any power over wolves in other packs.

“I can’t.”  He was losing the mind link connection, becoming too weak to sustain it.  But then, something much stronger than the mind link took over his mental voice.  “Stephanie, it was me!  The vampire lies, they weren’t my idea.  I had nothing to do with it.”

I wanted to accuse him of lying.  I wanted to jump out and tear out his throat.  But instead, my wolf instincts were moving me out from under the trees.  “Don’t lie to me, Tyce,” I snarled through mental communication.

“Stephanie, come back to the pack house with me.  Your old room was never touched once you left.  There are still some of your clothes in there.  You can shift back, and we can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk to you, Tyce.  Not after what you did.”

“I didn’t do anything!”  He growled at me.  “And unless you want to either walk around naked or stay a wolf forever, you don’t have much of a choice but to come get clothes.”