Chapter 7

A man stepped out from behind him. "Oh, I want y'all to meet our newest member, Milton. I want him to feel welcome. He was an urban wolf. So be patient with him. He's not used to our traditional customs."
Milton continued to stare at Isabella. She tried to ignore him as best she could while goosebumps formed on her arms.
On a normal night, the moon would have been full in the sky, but that didn't stop the moon's power from sending a comforting sensation coursing through her veins. It was hard to resist the urge to turn, and her wolf instincts led Isabella to her mate. She heard a deafening sound piercing through her sensitive ears. Stop it. she pleaded. Make it stop.
"Don't resist." said Logan over the maddening noise. "Let your wolf guide you," but she couldn't do it. She knew what was at stake.
The noise is killing me, she hoped to say aloud. Please make it stop. She didn't know who she was begging, but a voice that eased the pain for a second answered.
"Stop screaming." She said, "You're screaming because you're scared."
She paused, but still she couldn't silence her screams.
"Think of your human body." it whispered through her screams. "Your she-wolf will soon calm down."
It talked at Isabella, surprising her when she finally felt neither her wolf nor the fear that threatened to engulf Isabella in its darkness. Perhaps she did.
When Isabella woke up, she frowned in confusion. She didn't understand why she'd spent the night in the woods, snuggled in a ball under a tree.
The elders, Logan in his almost dirty-blond form, led them in a neatly formed triangle. He growled at me.
She said nothing. She didn't even move.
She saw his eyes narrow. He wanted Isabella to turn. They couldn't communicate while she was still in human form. She knew he was getting angrier as time went on, but she needed more time to sortout her thoughts.
With another hostile growl piercing the air, he went behind the nearest tree and transformed. A few seconds later, he was standing in front of her. She blushed and closed her eyes in embarrassment.
"You're naked." said Isabella dryly.
He looked down at himself as if he needed confirmation, frowned, and then rolled his eyes. "I know." He looked behind him and said. "You can transform."
Half the pack transformed. Mostly it was teenagers. There was one old man who did, he was a little over fifty. She snorted as he met her gaze, trying to grin what would have been a grin if his arctic eyes and seemingly icy lips had warmed a bit, and she hastily turned her gaze back to Logan.
Something in the corner of her eye caught her gaze; cautiously, Isabella looked at her brother, "Lee, not you too." She felt uncomfortable with all the girls looking at him all the time. Hearing his bones crack, she looked around.
Loraine was staring at her, for a second Isabella thought they were friends, but when she didn't see any possession in her eyes, she knew the thought was absurd. Isabella rolled her eyes at her.
Within the next few seconds, Leslie transformed into his sunburned wolf. His eyes betrayed his animistic facade. They were too intelligent, never missing even the smallest detail.
"So, what happened?" asked Logan, drawing their attention back to him.
"I met a Wendigo..."
"I know this genius!" he interrupted Isabella perkily, "What did he want?"
"If you weren't such a pain in the ass, I'd have worked it out already," she tried to match her voice to his to make it sound antagonistic and cool, but she failed miserably. He didn't even blink.
His eyes narrowed dangerously from a deep blue to a hellish navy blue. She buried her hands between her knees as she realised she was shaking. It was hard to calm her she-wolf as he kept touching her shoulder in a fatherly gesture she didn't understand.
He was two to three years older than her, at most.
She exhaled slowly, hoping the tension in her shoulders would ease. "He came for you." Anger drove Isabella to lie, and this time she succeeded perfectly.
He rolled his eyes. Is this the new blonde now? If so, she certainly didn't get the memo.
"He can't touch me, I'm stronger, I'm the alpha, remember?" He grinned, and Isabella longed to wipe the grin off his face. It was true, alphas had certain abilities, like his voice, and those under his control couldn't deny him anything. He was stronger than anyone in the pack and almost twice the size of a she-wolf, though some with alpha bloodlines were an exception.
For the life of her, Isabella couldn't think of anything to say quickly enough.
"Not even Peter?" She looked him in the eye and was pleased to see the fear disappear as quickly as it had come.
"You're lying." He said to make sure, not to lie. "No one has seen him in over four years, and if he were really here, he'd be the one to prove it."
At that moment, the wind blew a cool breeze that made everyone shiver. Had Isabella missed something? She, on the other hand, was freezing-not because she felt whatever had infested her backpack-but because the air hit her bare skin so sourly that she shivered involuntarily.
"He touched you?" her father spoke this time. Who touched her? Isabella looked at him frowning, he wasn't making much sense and her brain seemed to stop working. "You smell like him everywhere," his chest rose and fell as he tried to calm down.
He didn't wait for Isabella to respond, "I'm going to kill him." As he said this, he trembled. Sweat trickled down his forehead.
Logan looked up at the sky as if he'd all the answers. "Where's Sue?"
Sue skipped to a stop in front of Inez. She expelled a lungful of air. "If something bad happened to her, I'd know: I'm the mother here." Her voice was calm, and she put a hand on his shoulder, and he relaxed slightly under her touch.
"Hmm," he hadn't heard a word Sue said.
"Honey, look at me." Inez obeyed. "We don't know what happened. Try to be civil about this."
"Do what you've to do." Papa finally said.
She smiled reassuringly at him and turned her motherly gaze on Isabella. "Come."
When Logan voiced his displeasure, she waved him off flippantly. "Are you going to keep your daughter from me?" she continued when Logan didn't answer. "Hmm, I wouldn't have thought so."
Isabella didn't know how she did it, but no one spoke to Logan like that, not even his mother. He was full of respect.
Sue took Isabella's hand in hers and pulled Isabella roughly behind her. When they were far enough away from the pack - far enough that they couldn't hear us - she stopped and Isabella almost crashed into her.
"Baby, what happened, did he touch you somehow?" She managed to put on a charming, suave smile despite her worried face.
She sighed. Are all mothers like that: annoying and persistent? "Mom, there's nothing to tell."
She tickled her honey blonde waves to the side and looked at Isabella with annoyance. "I don't suppose you said that on purpose."
"No, Sue, it was an accident." Isabella lied perfectly, emphasising the word Sue, hoping it would stick in her brain. Isabella had told this lie so many times that she believed it.
Even though she knew it was a blistering lie, she still wanted to believe me. "Honey?" her voice was painfully sad. "He didn't do anything, did he?"
Isabella's gaze dropped to her lower body; she couldn't bring herself to look Sue in the eye. She was wearing a tight-fitting skirt that made her knees kiss. How could she walk in that thing? "I-uh ... no-"
She interrupted Isabella. "You're hiding something."
"Okay, Mom-Sue," she gulped, so much for being stuck. Calling her by her name was more exhausting than becoming a Wendigo's mate. Would she ever get used to it? "He was just there, Mom, and..." she realised her heart was beating faster at the thought of Peter. She couldn't help but wonder if Sue had heard, hopefully not.
"And..." she continued more urgently, seemingly unaware that she was calling her mother. She probably had the loudest mother in the universe. At moments like these, she wished she could disappear.
"I don't know what to say, Mom." Noticing her stare, she quickly said, "Sue, Sue."
"Isabella, what're you not telling me, is he your buddy?"
Why did her mother have to be so intelligent?
"What, no." she lied convincingly. "Sue, I don't have a mate. No one could ever be paired with me."
A look of horror crossed her face. The sorrow that beckoned was enough to bring tears to her eyes. A second later, she gave Isabella a downcast look and averted her eyes.
"I'm sorry," Sue said. "I didn't mean to remind you of your situation." There was pain in her voice that she shouldn't feel.
Isabella didn't answer, instead she ran away as fast as she could. She hoped that her skirt would hold her off long enough for Isabella to escape. Nothing she could say would ease the pain except the truth, which she was unwilling to share with her.
When Isabella got home, she went straight to bed. It was hard to fall asleep so early in the day, and with nothing else to do but stare at the walls, she thought about Peter. She smiled cockily as the image of his smile came to her mind.
Isabella heard loud chatter at the bottom of the stairs and her heart beat fast, threatening to tear Isabella apart. She heard Leslie ask about Isabella and no one answered. She considered joining them, but she couldn't face them, certainly not her mother.
This went on for a good forty minutes before Isabella heard a chorus of good-nights. Shortly after, she heard heavy, hesitant footsteps stop outside her door until they disappeared down the hall a minute later. It had to be Leslie.