The Wolf's Mate Book 1: Jason & Cadence (12 page)

Sunday night he watched carefully for an
opportunity to talk to her about her idea of doing the books and
finally Michael and Linus managed to distract Chris and his
band-mates, a mini clique in the pack, so he could snag Cadence's
hand. He pulled her over to their side of the bonfire. "The
strangest thing happened when you did payroll on Friday." He took a
drink of his beer.

Her curious expression slipped down into a
frown and then she shook her head and flipped her long hair over
her shoulder. "Don't know what you're talking about. I'm the best
bookkeeper you ever had."

He loved her spark. Little spitfire.
"Perhaps, but you also forgot to pay yourself. And you paid for
your own gas."

Her pretty eyes narrowed accusingly.
"Checking up on me?"

"It is my business; I'm allowed to do that."
He rolled his eyes at her. "Why did you do that? I told you that
you should hold back my check; I wasn't suggesting that you should
do it to yourself."

She hummed in her throat and bounced on her
feet a few times. "I don't need the money. Not right now anyhow.
You've sacrificed enough. So don't worry about it."

"I don't want you to do that; it's not your
place."

She looked at him curiously. "Okay, Jas." She
smiled at him, snatched the beer from his hand and took a long
drink, and then gave it back to him with a laugh and walked back to
the other side of the fire where Chris and his group were giving
him the hard-stare. Jason tipped his beer towards Chris and he
could see it pissed Chris off, which he enjoyed a great deal. Then
Chris pissed him off even more by wrapping a lock of her hair
around his finger and giving it a gentle tug. When she looked up at
Chris with a soft smile, Jason wanted to throttle him. He moved
forward an inch with her and Chris shoved him back a mile.

Monday morning, he overheard a conversation
that made his blood run cold. She was in her office at 8:30 and he
was in the front of the shop, debating on asking her to lunch and
risking rejection. "No, I'm not sure who it was, but I didn’t
recognize them. It was definitely a wolf, but not anyone I've ever
smelled before."

Jason practically ran back to her office,
startling her. "Hang up." He demanded. She looked confused. "Hang
the fuck up right now."

"I'll call you back, Chris." She said with an
annoyed voice, putting the phone back in the cradle.

"Yes, my liege?" Her sarcasm was
dripping.

"You smelled a strange wolf? Where?" He
demanded.

"Last night at my house. Why?"

"Why wouldn't you tell me?"

"I think the better question is why would I
tell you? It's nothing, I'm sure, just a curious rogue or maybe a
new teen that shifted before I came back." She shrugged.

"The fuck it's nothing." He yanked her from
the chair by her arm and hauled her out of the shop. She struggled
to stop his pull but wasn't strong enough. Staring at the helmet he
shoved at her, she said, "What do you think you're doing?"

"Taking you to your house so I can figure out
what's going on. Get on."

"No." She growled.

"Get on or I'll put you on." He growled
back.

He thought she might fight him, but instead
she huffed and put the helmet on, sliding behind him. It had been
so long, too damn long, since she'd been on the back of his bike.
He grabbed her hands and put them around his waist and she muttered
under her breath, ‘I ought to gut you' and his laughter was drown
out by the start of his bike. Her hands were warm, hot almost,
through the material of his shirt, and in order to clasp her hands
together, she had to press her whole body against him.

Reacting naturally to being so close to him,
he could smell the need streaking through her as she molded herself
against him, pressing the apex of her sweet thighs into his back,
the vibration of the enormous motor ratcheting up her desire. She
didn't know it, but her beast was calling to his beast, and it was
the sweetest feeling. It was just further proof to him that she
really was meant for him. The part of her that was wolf knew that
they were mates and craved that closeness, even if the human part
of her didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.

The smell hit him as soon as he rounded into
the driveway and stopped the bike. She slid off first, pulling the
helmet from her head and running her hand through her hair. He
sighed in relief. It was one of Jake’s teenagers that had shifted
just a month ago. Of course, no wolf should be sniffing around her,
regardless, so that was a problem in and of itself. At least it
wasn’t a rogue or another pack coming around.

"I think you're overreacting." She said.

"There's no such thing as overreacting when
it comes to your safety."

"Whatever." She snorted.

He snatched her by the back of the neck with
one hand and drew her to him. "Do you think that I don't care about
you? How could you possibly believe that I would want anything to
happen to you?"

She struggled under the grip on her neck and
he dug his fingers in enough that her movements soothed her and she
let out a whimpering sigh and stopped moving, her eyes glazing over
slightly. "You haven't cared about me since I was a kid." Her words
were slurred slightly as the pressure points under his fingers
lulled her into submission.

"That's a fucking lie and you know it."

"I don't know anything for sure anymore,
Jas." She closed her eyes with a soft sigh.

“I’m going to take a walk, check around, but
I believe it’s one of Jake’s wolves. Go in the house and shut the
door and wait for me. Got it?”

He was very tempted to kiss her, but he
thought with the way things were going he’d wind up with a broken
nose if he tried that, so it was better to give himself and his
wolf a little breathing room. Loosening the grip, he rubbed the
pressure points and watched her eyes blink open and then come back
into focus. Releasing his hold on her neck, he waited until she
walked in the house and shut the door, and then he took a long
walk. He smelled the wolf, and it was definitely not one of his.
But he did recognize it, so he called Jake.

“Well, hell. I’ll come by for a sniff and
then round up the youths. You know that part of the problem is that
you and Chris are fighting over her, and its drawing attention to
her unmated status.”

His sigh was edged in a growl. “She’s not
unmated, Jake.”

If Jake was there, he would have put his
hands up in defense, that sound was clear in his voice. “I’m not
the enemy here, Jason.”

“I know. I know.” He walked back until the
house was in view. “I’ll let her know that you’ll be around.”

“I’ll apologize on behalf of the kid, but the
best way to put this sort of behavior down is to claim her.”

“I would, if she’d fucking remember.”

“So do a better job of jogging her memory.
She’s not an idiot. She’s just out of her depths. Your father’s
orders to alter her impression of the marking along with no one
being able to treat her like the alpha she is has stunted her. Your
best bet would be to treat her like an alpha, Jason. You don’t have
to break the oath to include her in the inner workings. Maybe a
little more pack time would help.”

He sounded damn encouraging. “Jake?”

“Look, I love my son, but he’s running on a
misguided notion that getting Cadence is going to change things for
him within the pack. It’s not enough for him to be mated; even to
someone as powerful as Cadence. He’s volatile, foolhardy, and
immature. I worry he’ll undo all the good our packs have managed to
enjoy the last few decades. And more than that, I know what happens
when a male chooses his mate and she leaves him for another. I
wouldn’t wish that hell on anyone. Do what you gotta do, Jason.
I’ll talk to you.”

He hung up in silence and chewed his lip. And
then he made a few more phone calls.

Bounding up onto the back porch he walked
into the kitchen like he owned the place and said, “I hope you’ve
got something to eat around here, we’re going to have a
meeting.”

“Why don’t you go to your own place?”

“Because I don’t want to, and I’m here
anyway.” He moved to the cabinets, hoping to spur her into action.
He’d been very clear with his instructions to the wolves that were
coming. They were going to full-on discuss pack business and they
were to include her in everything. And his secret weapon was
Casper, newly mated.

While she watched in silence, he pulled
plates and cups from the cupboard and when he was rummaging in the
refrigerator, she gave him a gentle shove on his hip. “You’re
making a mess, Jas. Scoot.”

Moving aside to handle the table, he set for
seven, pulling three more chairs from the dining room into the
comfortable kitchen. “Hey, Cades, do you remember that time we dyed
eggs in my mom’s kitchen for Easter?”

She turned from the refrigerator with a
plastic container in her hand and her eyes danced. “She was so mad
when we forgot to put down the plastic tablecloth to catch the
dye.”

Jason chuckled, glad he’d pulled her back in
time so easily. There was so much history between them. “Yeah, she
made me scrub that table all night. There’s still a place on it
that has a little bit of green dye embedded in the oak. I think she
wants to throttle me every time she sees it.”

“Probably.” She snorted delicately, drumming
her hand on the top of the container. “There are seven of you?”

“No, sweet, just six, plus you.”

“Me?”

“Sure, why not? You may not shift, but you’re
still a wolf, and you’re staying in town. That means that you
should know what goes on in the pack.” Her brow furrowed, but her
lips split into a soft smile, and she turned back to the fridge
with a happy little hum.

Jason blew out a mental breath. She hadn’t
told him off or tried to argue. She’d just accepted things which
meant Jake was right. He had been trying to treat her like she
wasn’t like them and ignoring the wolf in her. No wonder she didn’t
know how to deal with anything that was going on around her. She
was literally clueless. Sure, she could have asked, but after what
she’d told Michael about feeling unprotected, devalued, and now
with the in-fighting between himself and Chris, she didn’t know how
to handle anything.

He tried to envision her as a new wolf, which
is how he would have treated her at age 16 even as a half-breed.
His father hadn’t included her in the pack workings because her
father had forbidden direct contact outside of her relationship
with Jake and Renee, but he would have been twenty at the time and
he would have taught her everything he could in private. One of the
first things that a new wolf learned was their place in the pack.
New wolves always started out at the bottom, unless they were born
alpha. And Cades was; that was for sure.

For a quiet moment he watched her move around
the kitchen with a grace and ease that just screamed wolf. Just
last weekend he’d been here, laughing with her, with his close
friends, and it had felt like such a natural thing. He wanted that
with her all the time. He wanted to build a life with her that was
just them. The pack was theirs, too, but he wanted to go to bed at
night with her scent in his nose and wake up with his arms around
her.

She didn’t have a grill but she had all four
burners on the stove going in short order. She would know everyone
well, but she was closest to Michael. Michael, as second, Bo,
third, Linus, fourth, Clay fifth, and Casper, lower ranked but a
good guy all around. And he was still sporting fresh mating
bites.

“Need help?” He leaned against the counter.
It was a bluff. He could grill upside down, but to actually turn on
a stove and cook something other than dry scrambled eggs was out of
his reach. Fortunately she didn’t call him on it and smiled up at
him and said, “I got it covered.”

He heard the bikes announcing the arrival of
the men, and he went to the front door and let them in. They all
looked happy, excited. There was a hum of electricity in the air
around them and it was because they were finally able to include
their alpha female in pack dealings. Once again he felt the weight
of his actions and the repercussions that his people felt as a
result of them. It wasn’t just about him and Cadence now; it was
about all of them.

They all greeted her with just the right mix
of friendship and respect. They all accepted her welcoming cheek
kisses with glances at him as if he would throw them out of the
house for the action, but he didn’t mind. He knew her intentions
were pure. If she had any idea how much she turned the pack on just
by being herself, she’d never want to leave the house.

Michael, an excellent cook in his own right,
stepped in to help and Linus pilfered beers from the fridge and
they all sat down. He took the head of the table and left the left
chair open for her, and the others fell into the other chairs,
carefully arranged so that Casper was sitting next to her.

The table was set with fried chicken tenders,
pasta salad, sliced roast beef, and ziti. She sat down with a glass
of iced tea. She really only drank beer at the bonfires.

The chatter was casual around the table, and
after waiting for her to fill her plate, they set in on the food
like locusts.

After a few quiet minutes while the men all
appreciated her cooking, Michael started the ball rolling, “So
Casp, looks like Gwennie can really mark, huh?”

Casper grinned. He wasn’t playing right now;
he was so thrilled to have found his mate. “Man, I’m bruised head
to toe!” Casper was only 24, but he had a pretty tough go of things
until Gwen started paying attention to his drooling over her.

Cadence turned her head as if she hadn’t
really noticed Casper and made a soft sound. She must have looked
confused because Casper said, “Don’t worry, Cadence. It’s what
mates do. I marked Gwennie, too, so that when we’re not together,
no one will lay a hand on her.”