Thantophobia

Chapter 1

-6 years later-

I sipped my coffee, looking outside the cafe and waiting for my friend to arrive. My leg anxiously bounced up and down, and I checked the time on my watch. I huff, clearly annoyed and frustrated. He does this all the time.

Looking up when the bell over the door rang, I see my friend Jaden Strand.

Now, Jaden was a really big teddy bear. However, he looked intimidating as hell, and pretty much scared everyone around him at first glance. His hair was platinum blonde, and shaved on the sides, and long on the top. He had a nicely trimmed scuff type beard that slowly faded into his tattoo that took up almost all the space on his neck. The tattoo was massive, in which the neck, his chest, shoulders and upper arms were all connected to it.

He wore a black tank top, a maroon colored leather jacket, black pants, gold chains around his neck and a pair of sunglasses. Because absolutely everyone needed sunglasses here in Albuquerque during the summer. It was bright and hot as hell.

I raised my hand and waved down Jaden, and he smiled when he caught me in my booth.

He sauntered his way over and sat down, where I passed him his usual order of warm tea. He wasn't a coffee dude.

"Sorry, Berkeley held me back to help her with some job stuff." He took a sip of his drink.

"Doesn't matter if your mate held you back, you would've been late anyways." I tease.

He rolls his brown eyes. "Now Kyle, don't be jealous that I have a mate and you don't."

I frown. Ouch. He really didn't need to go there.

But he didn't know I used to have one. No one did. I ran and cut everyone out of my life for a reason.

There were two things of his that I could never get rid of. His ring, which I put on a chain and wore around my neck, and his mark, which just looked like a really old and aged tattoo that I never got touched up.

"Whatever." I just shake my head and sip my coffee.

"Hey, he's out there somewhere." Jaden comforts.

He has no idea how hard it is to get a second chance mate. And he never will, because he's not a wolf. He's human, but his wife Berkeley is a rogue. Which easily explains how he knows about the werewolf world.

"Maybe he can hit me with a car." I smile innocently.

"Hey! I apologized so many times for hitting you back in Italy. Don't even get me started." Jaden points his finger accusingly at me.

I just chuckle. "I know you're sorry, and you know it's all good between us. It's just fun to make fun of from time to time."

Six years ago, Jaden hit me with his truck he rented out back when we were both in Italy. Didn't affect me all too much, because that's what happened when my wolf was still around to heal me quick enough. And before you ask, no, my wolf is not dead, he just hasn't come out and talked to me since then.

So I feel more like a human than I do a werewolf. I really miss not feeling like a human, but there's not much I can do anymore. Not after I've tried everything. Besides, it might be for the better.

Jaden and I continue talking about random things that come to our minds.

"So, hows Berkeley liking her new job?" I finish my coffee and push it away to the side.

"She's loving it. They assigned her to watch over a man who recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan. He's been back for about six months, but his PTSD is very bad, and Afghanistan really fucked him up. He's gone through so many care takers already, so I'm just worried how he's going to act around Berkeley, and vise versa." Jaden explains.

I just smile and shake my head lightly. "Berkeley is the most stubborn person I have ever met. She'll be fine. And the dude isn't getting rid of her anytime soon, and I'm sure of that." I assure him.

And what I said was true. If I thought Liam was stubborn, oh man, was I wrong. Berkeley went to whatever lengths she had to go to in order to get what she wanted or needed, and wasn't afraid for best a few people up along the way. She may look small and innocent, but that's exactly what she's not.

"But here's the catch. She's not technically supposed to watch over him because she's his foster sister. It's against the rules of the company, but after all the ones he has sent away, they figured that she was the best shot they had at helping him." Jaden finished his drink before he continued on to tell me this.

My eyes went wide. "Well damn. How mentally fucked up is this guy?"

"A lot. PTSD is not something to joke around about, especially when you have as bad of a case of it as he does." He shrugged.

I narrowed my eyes to myself in suspicion. Why does this army veteran intrigue me so much?

"Anyways, I probably shared too much of his personal details. She's not allowed to tell anyone, but yet here I am telling you the basics of what she has told me."

I snap out of my little mental headspace, and nod.

"Yeah no, I totally get it. I just never heard of her having a foster brother before." I tilt my head in confusion.

"He's always changing stations and going where the army tells him to go. Berkeley and him don't get many chances to talk and catch up with each other anymore. It's also hard for her to communicate with him when he's gone to Pakistan and then Afghanistan. He's already talking about doing a third tour, but she's not happy about it. He can't do it in the mental state he's in."

A third tour? Man, how crazy was this dude?

I slowly get out of the booth, and so does Jaden. We throw away our cups and make our way out of the cafe, switching the topic from Berkeley's foster brother.

As I'm decently away from the cafe, I get a weird instinctive feeling to turn around. I stop in my tracks, confusing Jaden.

I look back at the entrance of the cafe across the street, barely having enough time to see a glimpse of a man with black hair.

"Kyle?" Jaden snaps his fingers in front of my face, snapping me out of the trance I'm in.

"Sorry, what?" I shake my head.

"Are you good? What were you looking at?" Jaden looks around to where I was just looking.

"Uh, nothing."

"Are you sure?"

No.

"Yeah I'm sure, it wasn't anything at all. I don't know why I did that. Let's keep going."