Deciding Her Faete (Beyond the Veil Book 2) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Jason couldn’t hold back his grin as the adorable redhead in front of him blushed furiously at being caught sniffing his back. Sure, he could’ve just let it go and not said anything, but to a wolf like him, it was the best of compliments that she just couldn’t help herself. Truth be told, his own wolf became more than a little excited by her scent as well.

“Umm … oh God! How embarrassing.” she laughed along with him as she covered her face with her hand. “No, I normally don’t
sniff
strange men.”

“Well then,” he said moving in a little closer to her, “it seems only fair that I get to do the same, right?”

Her stunning green eyes went wide as he slowly leaned in and lowered his nose toward the warmth of her neck. Jason noticed her hands clenching in her lap. For a moment, he thought she would push him away, but as he lightly ran his nose and lips along her skin under her ear, she let out the barest of moans, and he knew what his wolf had been trying to tell him from the first moment they’d caught her delicate and unusual scent from across the bar. This beautiful woman was his mate.

Now that he got close enough, he tried to figure out what was so unique about her scent, but there was just something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. But Gods, she smelled divine.

“You smell good enough to eat, little one,” Jason whispered in a low growl before his tongue darted out for a quick taste. He backed up before he lost his control completely.

“Oh!” April gasped as she stared at his face in shock. “You’re a wolf.”

Jason could only assume that scenting her had brought his wolf closer to the surface, enough that she could see the change in his eyes, but he was also pleasantly surprised that she knew
what
he was. That would save him a lot of explanations.

“You’re familiar with my kind?” He knew to tread carefully. “You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

“No.” She smiled, seemingly amused by his question. “It’s odd, but for some reason, I feel like I’ve known you forever. You must think I’m crazy.”

“No, I don’t.” Jason smiled back, placing his hand over hers. “I think I know exactly how you feel actually. Can I get you another drink?”

“Nah, I think I’m done drinking for tonight.” She set her glass on the bar and then looked up at him shyly through her lashes. “But would you maybe want to go grab some food and coffee maybe?”

He found April’s fumbling attempt at asking him out extremely adorable, endearing her to him even more. She gave off the impression that she did not ask men out very often, and then his wolf bristled at the idea of his mate spending time with any other male at all … well, any male other than his brother Donovan, of course.

Jason and Donovan had always known they were destined to share the same mate, and he couldn’t wait to call his brother and give him the good news. His brother’s position in the pack as Beta put a lot of responsibility on Donovan’s shoulders, and there were times where Jason would swear he felt his brother’s longing for a mate through their bond. They left their previous pack in Alberta when it became obvious that none of the females there belonged to them, and for some reason, after meeting the Vancouver Alpha at the National Summit, they just knew that this city was where they needed to be.

“Yes.” Jason smiled back at April. “I’d love that. We can get a chance to really talk.”

“Awesome, just let me go tell my friends that I’m leaving and grab my coat.” April jumped off her barstool and moved towards the dance floor. She kept glancing back at him as she moved through the crowd trying to get to a group of people dancing in the center of the dance floor.

Jason knew he only had a few moments, so he quickly texted his brother as he waited for their mate to return.

Jason:
Amazing news. I think I just found our mate, brother, and she’s perfect. Her name is April. Going to eat. Will try to get her to come back to the house to meet you.

He laughed out loud when the only response he got from Donovan was two emoticons—a shocked face and a smiley face. His brother must have been in a meeting if he didn’t call back immediately. Jason next texted Ben and Leo, the head Enforcers of their pack, who were most likely at the same meeting. He informed them that he hadn’t found any sign of Fae activity at the bar and that he was taking a break at the diner down the street. He switched his phone to silent as April came walking back up to him with her jacket in her arms.

“Ready?” he asked, guiding her toward the door. She nodded with a shy smile.

When they stepped out into the night air, the quiet sound of soft rain was welcoming after the loud music in the club. Jason had thought that he’d get tired of the weather here in Vancouver, as it could change so quickly and rained so often, but surprisingly, he came to appreciate how the water seemed to wash away the hustle and bustle of city life, bringing a calm and soothing feel that most metropolitan areas didn’t have. There was nothing more invigorating than the scent of the night air right after the rain had stopped, and Jason loved to shift and run through the woods outside their pack house when the water still clung to the grass.

They left the crowded area in front of the bar and continued down the street as Jason led her to his favorite diner.

“Oh, I love this place,” she said looking over at him with a small smile when she noticed where they were headed. “They have the best poutine.”

“Ah, I knew we were going to get along famously.” He held the door open for her, and briefly shut his eyes as she brushed past him, his skin tingling once again from her touch. Once inside, he offered her the inside of the booth and then slid in next to her. “What could be better than fries, cheese, and gravy?”

“It’s because they use real beef gravy that makes it so good,” April replied. She dazzled him with a wink. Apparently she dazzled the waitress as well, a middle-aged looking woman who stood waiting to take their order and who must have overheard her comment. The waitress smiled as she jotted down their order, and then returned quickly to drop off two cups of coffee.

“So tell me, April, where are you from?”

“How do you know I’m not from Vancouver?”

“It’s the accent.” He tapped his ear lightly. “It’s very faint, but sounds American to me.”

“Wow, you’re the first one in the city who’s said anything. I didn’t really think I had an accent.”

“Well, most Canadians from the west don’t think we do either,” he chuckled, “but apparently we do, too.”

“I’m from a small town in Washington, so not too far away.”

“And what brought you up north?”

April paused for a moment as if she was thinking about how to answer. Jason wondered if she was going to lie, or if she had a
reason
to lie about why she relocated.

“To be honest, I don’t really know what drew me here. One day I just woke up and felt I was supposed to be somewhere else, so I packed up the car, gave my notice at the hospital, and just started driving.” She shrugged and blushed a little when she met his gaze. “Wow, that sounds pretty crazy when I say it out loud.”

“Well whatever it was that pulled you here, I’m certainly glad that it did.” Jason took her hand in his and drew it up to place a small kiss on the inside of her wrist.

“What about you?” April asked in a breathless voice, making Jason hard just thinking about all the things he could do to make her sound just like that. “Have you always lived here?”

“No, my brother Donovan and I came from a pack up in Northern Alberta. We’ve been with our new pack for about five years now.”

The waitress brought their meals, and they both dug in with abandon.

“Why did
you
move here?” April asked as she looked at her fork and then finally shook her head and dug into the plate of poutine with her fingers.

Jason looked at the gorgeous woman beside him, licking the gravy off of her fingers and had to struggle to concentrate on what she had just asked him. Obviously, April had no idea what her little display was doing to him.

“Well, my pack…” Jason had been about to answer but stopped himself to look around and see if anyone was sitting close enough to overhear their conversation. “How do you know about wolves anyway?”

“Oh, I was taken in by a really nice family when I was about sixteen.” She smiled when she spoke now. “Long story, but it turned out they were a little different. That’s when I found out there was more to the world than most people think there is. They were wolf shifters as well.”

Jason’s heart broke a little for April at the idea of having to be
taken in
by another family. He wondered where her family was, but decided not to press the issue now. There would be plenty of time to get to know his little mate. He steered the direction of the conversation to the immediate pressing matter instead. “Did she explain how my people find their mates?”

April nodded around a mouthful.

“Well, my brother and I knew that we wouldn’t find our mate in the pack we grew up in, and we realized that if we wanted to find her, we needed to get out into the world and track her down. We had met Gabe, our new Alpha, a few weeks after moving to Vancouver, and liked how he ran things down here, so we petitioned to join his pack and he accepted.” He then briefly explained his and Donovan’s position in the pack.

April’s brow furrowed. “You said ‘our mate’. You and your brother share a mate then?” she asked, seemingly disappointed with something. “Did you and your brother already find your mate in the pack here?”

“Oh, we found her all right.” Jason’s smile took on a predatory cast. “But she isn’t pack, at least not yet. Not until you meet my brother Donovan and we both claim you as ours.”

Chapter Three

“Beta, am I boring you?” Gabe’s tone whipped throughout the room, his Alpha essence making it almost impossible to breathe. Donovan looked up from his phone and met the steely gaze of his Alpha and boss. A quick glance at the other senior members of the pack seated around the board table, and he noted that they were all staring at him, most with a look of gleeful anticipation of the verbal smack down and ass kicking Gabe would be serving in his direction momentarily.

“Sorry, Gabe.” Donovan held Gabe’s gaze as he desperately tried to put his phone back into his jeans pocket without looking or drawing attention to the fact he had the damn thing out in the first place. Normally he wouldn’t have replied to his brother’s text in a pack meeting, but the message he’d received was the most amazing, most fucking life altering communication in the history of the world.

Jason had found their
mate
. The one woman the fates had destined for them from the moment she was born, just as they had judged them worthy of belonging to her. For a shifter, that was the greatest gift in life and one that should never be taken for granted. When he and Jason had left Alberta five years ago, they had done so to look for their mate. When they met Gabe, they had been instantly drawn to his pack and this area, and now it all made sense why.

A deep rumbling continuous growl rolled through the room and drew Donovan out of his thoughts.

Fuck!

Gabe was not a happy Alpha wolf, and if Donovan didn’t get his fucking head on straight, this meeting was going to end with the two of them in wolf form, fighting on the reinforced oak board table. Again.

He racked his brain to think about where they had been on the agenda, making an educated guess at what they were talking about. “Patrols on the south side of the city have proved fruitless. There are still humans going missing, but no concrete leads to follow.”

There was a chorus of chuckles and jeers from the peanut gallery around him, and Donovan shut them down with a growl of his own.

“You gave that report and we talked about that maybe twenty minutes ago, Beta.” Gabe’s tone was one that had Donovan’s own wolf rising to the surface. “There had better be a damn good reason for you to check out on this meeting and concentrate on your fucking phone, or I will bleed you.”

Shit.
Donovan did not want to get into it with his Alpha. He had seen the big bastard fight on more than one occasion, and when Donovan was stupid enough to question an order when he was first made Beta, he’d felt the force of Gabe’s right hook for himself. Not something he wanted to revisit right in that moment. Especially as he planned to meet his mate as soon as possible. He didn’t want to have to face up to April for the first time, black, blue, and smelling like blood.

April
. That was the first time he had used her name, and the realization that Jason had found their mate, actually met her face to face and spoke with her to get her name, had Donovan’s body filling with shock.
Holy. Shit.
He had a mate, and her name was April.

“Damn, Gabe,” Leo, one of the pack’s Enforcers, murmured from his place across the table from Donovan. “Donovan just went white as a sheet. Now, we have all faced your wrath in the past, but our wolves usually met it with a thirst to throw down and get bloody. Beta looks like he’s just been told he’s the father of some random woman’s pup.”

Leo’s brother and Enforcer partner, Ben, who sat sprawled in the chair beside him, barked a laugh and sat forward. “Well, that would certainly explain the lost in thought, goofy expression on his face as well as why he suddenly looks rather ill. Is that it, Donovan? Are you gonna make us all uncles? Leo loves babies. He’d love to babysit for ya.” Leo thumped his brother on the chest in the way that all brothers did to convey to their sibling to shut the fuck up.

Not so lost in his epiphany that he couldn’t give that the response it deserved, Donovan lifted his right hand and flipped them both off. “Sorry to disappoint you both, but there is no baby. And if there was, I certainly wouldn’t trust your hairy asses to look after it.”

Another chorus of laughs rocked the room for a brief moment before Gabe let loose the power of his wolf, the room filling with his dominance. Every man around the table became still, the light humor of moments before evaporating beneath the power of the Alpha. Donovan locked gazes with his Alpha as the man stood up slowly from the table.

“Your challenge is accepted, Beta.” Gabe’s wolf was clear in his voice.

“There was no challenge, Alpha,” Donovan spoke as he fought against Gabe’s dominance to stand, knowing that if Gabe had not allowed it, he never would have been able to rise. “I will cop to checking out of this meeting for a moment due to a message from my brother that had me distracted, but I most definitely did not challenge you.”

Gabe’s gaze narrowed, and he slowly removed the shirt he had been unbuttoning as Donovan spoke. “I will concede that no verbal challenge was issued, but you have shown me disrespect in my own fucking office and that is not something I can or will tolerate. I promised Corrine that I wouldn’t scratch the shit out of that table anymore. We fight with fists only. Now, get ready. The Enforcers all have to patrol tonight and I know they won’t want to miss one second of this one.”

The rest of their group clapped and whooped with joy, the bloodthirsty bastards. Donovan sighed in resignation as he removed his own shirt. Gabe was a force to be reckoned with in his wolf form, a fighter of great skill, and one that Donovan had never seen an equal to. The problem was, Gabe fought with his fists even better.

As they all stood, moving the furniture back to make room for his ass kicking, Niall, another Enforcer in the room, asked, “Before Donovan is no longer able to form words, breathe through his nose, and has to eat and drink through a straw for the rest of the week, do we get to find out what the message was?”

Donovan bounced on the balls of his now bare feet, rocking his head from side to side on his shoulders. He glanced at Gabe with a raised eyebrow.

“Go ahead.” Gabe waved a hand in his direction. “Answer the question. It makes no difference to me. I’ve been hungering for a fight for a while now, but with everything going on in the city, I haven’t had much time for sparring.” Gabe’s eyes glittered with anticipation of the fight to come, and that was something Donovan not only knew but respected. They were dominant wolf shifters, and they needed to release some of that energy and aggression that came with the gift of having an animal spirit. And sometimes that meant beating on each other for a while.

Donovan, now just as eager for the fight despite knowing his chances of winning were slim at best, nodded. “Jason has found our mate. Her name is April.”

There was a moment of silence just before the room erupted in cheers, and Donovan found himself surrounded by well-wishers. His hand was shaken and his back thumped repeatedly, and he grinned, accepting it all. He knew, just as everyone in the room did, how rare it was.

His pack mates seemed to step back, parting to make room as Gabe stepped forward. Donovan narrowed a look at him slightly as the Alpha’s expression was unreadable.

“Congratulations,” Gabe said, reaching his hand out in Donovan’s direction. “We as a pack look forward to meeting your mate, and I as your Alpha most definitely look forward to welcoming her home.” Donovan felt his heart fill with Gabe’s words, and he returned the brotherly embrace Gabe gave him. “You and Jason deserve happiness.” Gabe pulled back with a grin. “But that still doesn’t get you out of the beating you warrant. But it does mean I won’t be as hard on you as I might have been.”

Donovan laughed. “Fair enough, Alpha. But I should warn you. I’m not sure that I will feel any punches in the euphoric state I’m in.”

Gabe’s grin broadened, and he dropped into a fighting stance, his body loose, and his hands up to protect his head while his elbows tucked into his sides to guard his ribs. “Well now, a challenge after all! I’ll just have to make sure that you do!”

****

An hour later, Donovan slid behind the wheel of his truck with a curse. Gabe had taken it easy on him. That was evident in the fact that Donovan wasn’t in the infirmary, but that didn’t mean he left him unscathed. His ribs hurt like a motherfucker. When Gabe had declared his punishment over, they had toasted to him and Jason and their good fortune with a fifty-year-old scotch.

His phone vibrated in his pocket just as he tried to gather up the courage to reach over his left shoulder with his right hand for his seatbelt. With a groan, he pushed back against his seat, reaching into his pocket instead to grab his phone. He fumbled to answer the call in his haste to do so when he saw it was Jason.

“Hey,” he said into the device.

“Hey back, brother!” Jason’s voice rang with happiness on the other end of the line. “Wait until you meet our April. She is so fucking beautiful.”

“Where are you? Shall I come there?” Donovan grimaced a little at the needy note in his voice, but screw it, he thought. He wanted to meet the woman destined to be theirs.

“I thought I would bring her by the house. We’re at a diner now getting to know each other. I have told her a lot about you. ”

“Have you told her about being our mate?” Donovan asked incredulously.

“Yes, and I can understand your hesitation, but,” Jason dropped his voice, barely whispering into the phone so that any humans around him wouldn’t hear a thing, “she knows about wolves.”

“What the hell! How?”

“I know, right? I think she spent most of her life in the system.” Donovan’s heart ached for the little girl his mate once was, an odd feeling considering he had never met her. “She hasn’t told me all the details yet, but she said that a wolf shifter family took her in when she was sixteen and she learned about them that way.”

“Well, that makes it easier I guess. You hear a lot of horror stories about women going a little crazy when they find out their lovers have the ability to shapeshift.” Donovan couldn’t even remember the number of men in his old pack and his current one that had been through a rough time with their human mates. “What was her reaction?”

“She excused herself to go to the bathroom. Even though she knows what we are and how mating among our kind works, she seemed shocked nonetheless. Oh shit, here she comes.” Jason’s voice filled with awe. “Gods, she is a fucking dream. When she looks at me, she fills every part of my heart with a light I never knew existed.”

Normally, Donovan would have ribbed and hassled his brother to no end for spinning such poetic shit, but hearing him now, and knowing he was looking at and talking about their mate, filled him with anticipation and not a small amount of envy.

“Sorry, there was a line for the bathroom,” he heard April say. Donovan closed his eyes at the sound of her voice over the phone. She sounded like smoke and sin and had him wanting to sit up and beg.

“That’s all right, babe,” Jason answered, his voice slightly quieter as if he was holding the phone away from him. “I was just talking to my brother. He wants to say hi to you.”

Donovan wanted to do a hell of a lot more than say hi, but he held his breath waiting. This was the first time he would speak with his mate, the woman he would cherish above all others for the rest of his life.

“Hello, Donovan.” And that was it. Just the sound of his name on her lips had Donovan’s cock thickening behind the zipper of his jeans, and his body heating with the need to get to her.

“Hello, mate.”