Stressed Out

Lya

I wasn’t the least bit surprised when I woke up the next morning to a big black wolf on my bed again. He was sprawled out and snoring like the day before. Tala was practically purring in my head.

'Do you have a thing for Mr. Stalker Wolf or something?' I demanded.

'If you only knew…' she hummed.

I shimmied my way out from under the wolf and found clothes. Then, out I went to find coffee.

The conversation from last night kept running through my mind. In fact, it had kept me up for hours last night. His last question - “So what are you going to do about it?” - plagued me.

I needed to run.

But how did I go about doing that in such a way that it drew the hunters away from this place? I could only imagine Ted’s father would be solely focused on hunting me down. They were so close, after all, and if Ted knew what I was, I was certain his father did, too. The people here were innocent and had shown me nothing but kindness. They did not deserve to be caught up in the mess I created.

Even worse, not even a week in this pack - only a portion of which I was conscious for - and I was coming to the conclusion that I liked Oliver. I wasn’t his mate, but that didn’t mean I didn’t have feelings for him, and people I had feelings for were not safe. The best thing I could do for him was ensure all of my problems were as far away from him as possible. I couldn’t be his partner, but I could still keep him safe. Maybe my slowly blossoming feelings for Oliver that I knew would never be reciprocated, coupled with what I knew I would have to do, was my penance for already killing someone I loved.

'You can’t take on an entire army of hunters by yourself,' Tala scoffed. 'Besides, they didn’t follow us all the way out here. They still don’t know exactly where you are.'

'There were some waiting for us in Pierre,' I pointed out.

'So what’s the plan then, huh?' she demanded. 'How the hell is a little girl who doesn’t even have control of her wolf and no idea how hunters operate and think going to do a damn thing?'

The wolf had a point.

'Checkmate. We stay.'

'Just for now,' I reluctantly agreed.

'That will be an argument for another day.'

I had just settled out on the patio with my coffee to watch the river when I heard the door open.

“HI!” Rose chirped as she waltzed out with her own mug. “Hope you don’t mind, I grabbed some, too.”

“Oh! Hey,” I said, turning my attention to her.

“I wish my apartment had a view like this,” she sighed, taking a sip from her own mug.

“Just trying to enjoy it while I can,” I said. “I imagine now that I’m all healed up, I’ll need to move out soon.”

Rose laughed. “Doubt it. Besides, this place is rent free. You got a job?”

“Uh… you guys have a vet clinic?”

“Nah, just the hospital.”

I shuddered. Working on humans was a totally different ballgame than working with animals. One I was completely uninterested in.

“But after coffee, let’s head over to the training grounds. We can work on some stuff,” Rose suggested.

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to train?” I asked.

She shook her head. “There’s other stuff besides combat we can work on.”

I furrowed my eyebrows, already dreading whatever it was that she had up her sleeve.

“But coffee first.” Rose settled back in her chair and looked over at me. “So what’s your biggest question about pack life so far?”

“Oh my god, is everything a suitable answer?” I groaned.

Rose threw her head back and laughed. “Fair enough, but really.” She paused to wipe a tear out of her eye. “There’s gotta be something.”

I sighed and thought. “Okay, I’ve got one.” She motioned for me to go on. “The whole mate thing… does it weird you out?”

Rose scrunched up her nose. “We are a society of people who shift into wild animals and that’s your question?”

“I mean… how do I ask that question to a person who has a mate, or whose main goal in life was to leave the pack to find his mate?” I asked.

“Well how do you know I don’t have a mate?” Rose chided, wiggling her eyebrows.

I rolled my eyes. “Because you’re talking to the pack’s lost girl on a Sunday morning.”

“Ah, fine, I guess that’s fair,” she sighed. “But not really? I don’t know if I feel that way because that’s how I was raised, though.”

“You mean you don’t care about falling in love and all that stuff? You just want to find your assigned life partner?” I demanded.

“Oh it’s not that easy,” she quickly corrected. “At least I don’t think so… I don’t know, I don’t have a mate yet.”

“Well, do you want a mate?” I prodded.

“Oh, yes,” she sighed. “Do you not?”

She had such a dreamy expression at just the thought of having a mate. For me, it just, if anything, made me feel guilty. Some poor sop was going to be stuck with me for eternity. Because let’s be honest, my opinion of it was shifting. The concept in itself was quite nice. A person who was destined to be perfect for me and me for them, because we were quite literally a part of each other. But don’t so many things sound nice on paper, but work out horribly in practice?

And maybe it just added to the justification that I was indeed crazy. The whole mate thing was the hardest for me to wrap my head around.

Oh no, I can shift into a wild animal, but give me a person that was meant to make me whole? Nope. That was the part that put me over the edge.

“How do you even know if someone is your mate?” I asked.

Rose leaned in like she was about to tell me a secret and raised her eyebrows. “Sparks!”

I stared blankly at her. “That’s… it? Some static electricity?”

Rose laughed. “Supposedly they smell really nice, too. And your wolf will tell you. You’ll know soon enough. Now come one!” She reached out and grabbed my hand, dragging me back through the packhouse.

“Hi, Alpha!” she called as we passed him in the kitchen.

I turned, flashing a smile over my shoulder. “Bye, Oliver!”

“What the hell,” I heard him mumble as the door slammed behind us.

My head was on swivel as we made our way from the packhouse to the training grounds. I could only hope that someday I was able to find my way around. So far, I was just lucky I could find my way from my bedroom to the kitchen, and I think that was only because I followed the smell of coffee. Maybe I could just tell people to brew a pot of coffee wherever I needed to be.

Luckily, someone in the pack seemed to have invested heavily in signage. There were fairly regular signs with arrows pointing in the direction of what must have been prominent locations in the territory. On more than one occasion, I saw one that pointed off into the woods with no road to take you to the place.

“Alright, here we are,” Rose said as she pulled into a parking place in front of the training grounds. “Welcome to the Snow Moon Pack training grounds.”

“Huh…” I mumbled. I don’t really know what I was expecting a werewolf training grounds to look like, but four buildings connected by breezeways surrounding a large field was decidedly not it.

Rose looked over, taking in my expression, and laughed. “What? We didn’t get to be the largest pack in North America by having shit security.”

“How big is this pack anyway?” I asked.

Rose hummed. “About five thousand by now I think.” My eyes very nearly bugged out of my head. She continued before I could ask any more questions. “It was about thirty five hundred strong when Oliver took over as alpha because his dad had absorbed another pack, and people just kinda… don’t leave. We’ve got more people coming in than leaving.”

“He took over another pack?” I squeaked. I just couldn’t see Oliver as being the sort that would go to war over something like territory.

Rose scrunched her nose. “Yes and no… they came to us and asked to create an alliance, but they didn’t have an alpha, and we just took them in.”

Rose went on to explain a bit more of the pack function. I had heard a bit about it while in the hospital, but definitely not the whole story. There were four total towns within the Snow Moon pack - the one we were in now, one about 20 minutes north, one an hour or so south, and the one over in Wyoming - but only a couple hours drive. With the exception of the town just 20 minutes away, each had a smaller, satellite training complex. But, this one was still considered the home base and was where all the primary training took place.

Oliver’s father had started the training academy, opening it up to other packs to utilize in a way to promote alliances, and Oliver had developed a fairly seamless plan for keeping the entire pack trained to fight once he took over. It truly did operate very similarly to my basic understanding of a national guard - once a pack member turned 18 or an adult joined the pack, they were required to report to “headquarters” for a 6 week bootcamp of sorts. After that, they returned to their own towns and had mandatory training for a few hours each week at their home training grounds, other than a 2 week tune-up at headquarters once a year.

“Now,” Rose said, pointing to herself, “I am a career warrior, so I’m here all day, every day, not just once a week.”

I nodded in understanding. “So was it ‘bring the new kid to work’ day then?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, silly. Other than patrols, we have Sundays off. We’re here to get you started!”

I stopped in my tracks and looked at her. “What?”

Rose shifted a bit. “Yeah, I uhm… I thought maybe you’d like a friendly face around to start working on shifting.”

“Oh.” I looked away. The idea of shifting into my wolf made my stomach turn. Ever since the night my mom found out, I had only ever shifted when I lost control. Sure, the ability had saved my life a couple times now, but I never really saw it as the sort of thing you did just because. Only out of necessity.

“Lya,” Rose said quietly. “Bad things happen if you shut off your wolf too much. It’s important you develop a seamless relationship with her, and that means being just as comfortable in your second skin.”

I sighed and nodded, slowly becoming more and more resigned to the fate I had no choice but to accept.