AllFreeNovel
Share Us
BILLIARDS
Now that I’m back to normal—or as normal as I can be—things slowly begin to return to the way they were. The main difference is how I share Lucas’s room on the second floor, and that I’d have one hell of a worried mate on my ass if I try to miss a meal with the rest of the pack.
Of course, that means that part of my ‘normal’ is being left behind at the pack house while the rest of the wolves continue to take their patrols throughout the woods, making sure the witches are still keeping to their territory.
Lucas is home to sit with me—and, following his alpha nature, serve me—breakfast and dinner, no matter what. I fall asleep next to him, waking up every morning to his snores. The heat pouring off of him is almost as powerful as my heat, and I snuggle against him while marveling over how fucking lucky I am that he’s my fated mate.
Snores and all.
The snores actually help me learn some control over my shifter senses. Trust me, when the male lying next to you on his back sounds like a garbage truck rumbling down the nearby alley at 2 am… you learn to dampen how much you can hear before the rumbling blows out your eardrums.
When he’s not around, though, I seem to be left behind with Eleanor again. And while I don’t mind that at all—and my fellow mate is more than happy to answer my questions, giving me tips and stories about what it’s like to be bonded to one of these wolves—I can’t help but be frustrated that I’m back to being babysat.
Not like I have that much free time to complain about it. I’m either with Lucas or doing whatever chore is mine in the rotation. Laundry, dusting, cleaning, cooking… everything is assigned out to a different member of the pack. It’s not just me and Eleanor tending to the home since the guys all are responsible for their own tasks when they finish their patrols, but when it seems like a little more for the two of us than usual, I’m a little curious.
It’s been a little over a week since I moved in with Lucas. Call this the honeymoon period to our mating if you want, but we can’t seem to keep our paws off of each other. I haven’t really been socializing with the others as much, though that’s not the only reason why.
All that time I spent trapped as my wolf… it affected them, too. Kirk eyes me a little warily lately, as though he expects to go feral again and maybe attack Eleanor. I can’t tell you the last time I saw Tristan, but when I brought that up to Lucas, he explains that Tristan’s wolf is searching for something.
A little pushing, and the Alpha admits that his Beta won’t be satisfied until he challenges Remy again for another fight. A fair one, no silver blades allowed. He wants revenge for Remy stabbing him the way he did, and he’s frustrated that he can’t find the witch.
On the plus side, I’m glad to hear that the witches are still keeping their distance. Then again, I don’t like the idea of Tristan spending his days hunting down his enemy. I know it’s pretty damn rich, coming from me, but it seems like it’s too risky.
Too bad I gave up any right to tell him to be safe when I chose Lucas over him… and though I don’t doubt for a second that his wolf craves vengeance against the witch, something tells me that there’s another reason he’s staying away from me.
Oh, right. That something is the little bit of common sense I have left.
Like, really? Why would he want to stay in the pack house, forced to see the woman he made a play for all lovey-dovey with his best friend? Fate might have made it so that Lucas and I were meant for each other, but that doesn’t change the fact that Tristan made it obvious I could’ve picked him instead.
Can you do that? I’m not really sure. I know that mates have to choose, but can you choose a different male than the one the Luna gave you? The way I understand it, most shifters don’t. Why would you give up the one soul that was perfect for you?
But that doesn’t change how awkward and painful my mating Lucas must be for Tristan. And while I’m not so vain that I don’t think he’ll get over me pretty quickly, maybe it’s a good thing that he’s back to keeping his distance from me.
Tristan isn’t the only one who is conveniently missing. A few days after I came out of my shift, I’m playing a game of pool with Eleanor when it hits me that I haven’t seen Jade in a while.
If Eleanor is not in the library or with Kirk, odds are that she’s conning one of her packmates into a game of pool. I was a victim early in my stay here, and only managed to avoid getting completely hustled because the gleam in her hazel eyes warned me against putting up my opal necklace.
Not that I would’ve. Whether I received it from Lucas in my old life, or it found its way to me through my Mom before she died, I haven’t taken it off for as long as I could remember. It’s value is priceless to me, and though I didn’t have anything else to put and bet when Eleanor offered innocently, I was glad I went with my gut when she cleared the billiard table before I even got more than two shots with the cue stick.
She’s freaking amazing at the game, and I’m a glutton for punishment because I somehow keep finding myself trying to beat her.
And I never, ever do.
Today, she’s two balls away from beating my ass at another game. When I mention Jade, part of me is hoping to distract her, but since she sinks the solid red ball in before she answers me, that was pointless.
“Didn’t you know? Jade’s taken a couple of days to cool off.” Eleanor bounds to the other side of the table, angling her cue stick, ready to go for the yellow ball. “She was hoping to leave Winter Creek.”
“Really?”
That’s news to me. As loyal as Jade is to the pack—which is about the same level as her open dislike of me and anyone else she thinks of as a rival… or human—I never thought she’d be chomping at the bit to leave Winter Creek.
Eleanor pauses, lowering her cue stick for a moment as she glances over at me. “Me and Kirk were, too.”
“What? You were?”
“Not forever, silly goose. Just… we’ve been here a long time. Sometimes it feels like forever. I wanted to show him a world outside of Winter Creek. Maybe take an airplane back to England to show him where I used to live before the bombs came.”
The bombs? That’s right… Eleanor used to live in England. London specifically, I believe, and she’d left around the height of World War II when she was a teenager. She moved to the United States to escape the war, and lived here for about a decade before something drew her to Winter Creek on the East Coast of all places.
