The Woodland Packs Read online

  “Your father had a massive heart attack. A cardiologist has been paged, and I believe they will operate tonight, inserting stents into his abdominal aorta. I’m here to give you an update and to let you know that there is a good chance of him surviving.”

  Thank you, God.

  Relief winged through my heart with such intensity, it robbed me of breath for a moment.

  I’d talked myself into thinking there was no way my father could die today, but from the look of this woman’s face, it was a very real possibility.

  My mother had said she couldn’t live without my father, and hopefully she wouldn’t have to. Not for another three decades or so.

  “How long until he can come home?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “Let’s take this one day at a time.”

  I ignored her human pragmaticism. She didn’t understand what my father was, nor what his healing capacities were.

  “We live an hour away. I need to get my mother in to see him. If you could give me a rough estimate, I can let her know.”

  Claire hugged the clip board to her chest. “Best case scenario, he may be home within two weeks. But he’ll need to be managed by a local doctor.”

  She didn’t know that my dad’s shifter genes would heal him if the doctors could repair the damage to his heart.

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  I extended my hand to shake hers, my arm trembling with anticipation of her touch. According to the old stories passed down by my parents and pack elders, I would know my mate the moment I touched her.

  Claire reached over and took my hand.

  Her gasp was as loud as mine, the electricity pulsing between us like a thunderstorm on a dark night.

  It would have taken out my knees if I wasn’t so determined to stand.

  Claire wasn’t so lucky. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she began to crumple to the ground. I stepped forward and swept her up into my arms before she hit the floor.

  Her eyes fluttered as she struggled to stay awake. She stared up at me with a confused expression, her eyelids dropping to half-mast. “What happened?”

  “The mating call.”

  Her eyes closed and her body went limp in my arms.

  I looked around. No one had noticed what had happened yet. There was plenty of activity, and the medical professionals all seemed to be concentrating on the task at hand and not the room at large.

  I turned slowly and began walking towards the hospital exit doors.

  “Excuse me!” I heard a woman call out behind me but I kept walking, forcing my legs to keep moving, even though the scent of Claire made me want to kneel on the ground and thank the Fates for sending her to me.

  I couldn’t stop or they’d take her away from me. I couldn’t have that.

  When I got out into the fresh air it was easier to breathe and I took a huge lungful. My head cleared and I began to wonder what I was doing.

  “Dexter!” Taylor called out from about ten feet away, having pulled the truck up near the entrance.

  I didn’t think about it again. I went straight for the truck with Claire still in my arms.

  “Hey!” There were noises indicating a commotion behind me and I was pretty sure Claire’s absence from the hospital had finally been noticed.

  Taylor opened the back door without asking a question and I put her into the back seat.

  “Let’s go!” I jumped into the back with her and held her tightly against me.

  Taylor slammed the door, got into the driver seat, turned on the engine and gunned it out of the parking lot.

  I looked down on the sleeping doctor in my arms. A human and my mate.

  What the hell had I just done?

  Chapter 2.

  Taylor.

  “What have you done, Dexter?” I asked as we sped away from the hospital like the devil was on our tail.

  I could see them in the rear vision mirror—a group of security guards and nurses staring after us as we kidnapped one of their doctors.

  “I don’t know.”

  Jay gaped at him from the passenger seat beside me. “What do you mean you don’t know? What are we meant to do now?”

  “Just drive, Taylor,” Dexter grunted at me.

  My Alpha, the man I would follow anywhere, anytime.

  “Where to?”

  “Home.”

  I turned the truck onto the highway and headed back to our pack.

  Our all male pack.

  What were they going to do when we arrived home with a young, fertile female? There would be pandemonium.

  “Why’d you grab her, Dex?” I had to ask. “I mean, I know she’s hot and everything, but…”

  “She’s my mate,” Dexter said, and I stared at him in the rear vision mirror.

  That was how I’d felt when I saw her, but I hadn’t believed my initial instincts. I’d put it down to hormones and my horniness. It had been far too long for all of us, me in particular.

  “How do you know?”

  There had to be a way, other than animal lust.

  “I knew it when I saw her. That smile, her scent. But then I touched her, and the sheer force of the mating call knocked her out.”

  I couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up. “Are you serious? She passed out when you touched her?”

  Was that really the way to know your mate? I couldn’t imagine such a thing.

  “Yeah… I don’t know why, though. The elders never said anything like that would happen. Maybe because she’s human?”

  Dexter was holding the doctor as he would a baby, stroking her face and looking at her like she was the most precious thing in the world.

  Envy clawed through my heart like a wolf after its prey. I’d been to every major city within two hours’ drive of our town. Slept with dozens of women, all in the fruitlessness search for a mate.

  Then Dexter manages to find her at the hospital where his father is being treated. What are the odds?

  “Well, what are we going to do with her when we get back to the pack?”

  “I have no idea, but I couldn’t just leave her there,” Dexter said.

  I agreed with him. If I’d found my mate, the last thing I’d do is drive away from her.

  Jay piped up from the seat next to me. “But, she’s human. How is it possible to have a human mate?”

  None of us had the answer to that, and the question hung in the air like a prayer.

  Jay cleared his throat again, his nervousness making my own skin tingle. “Ah… do you think it’s possible that she could be all of our mates, Dex?”

  The Alpha growled in a possessive way. “What do you mean?”

  Jay looked at me and I glanced over to him for a moment. The kid had balls saying such a thing to Dexter, but I knew where he was coming from. There was something special about this woman.

  And it wasn’t my imagination.

  I moved my focus back to the road, taking my cue from the Omega and speaking my mind.

  “I think he means that we all felt it when she walked towards us. That call, the chemistry. Do you think it’s possible that our pack may have just one mate?”

  It was a hard thing for me to say, much less wrap my head around.

  When Dexter didn’t answer, instead looking confused, I continued. “Not that it’s what we really want, Dex. We’ve always expected to have our own mates, but the pack has changed. Maybe the legends have too? I don’t know why exactly… but I do know that I wanted her the moment I saw her as well. The only reason I left to get the truck was because you commanded it.”

  Dexter looked from his mate to me, to Jay, then back again.

  For a moment he clutched her fiercely to his chest, anger pulsing over his face, but then he seemed to relax a little.

  “I… can’t answer that, Taylor,” he admitted gruffly. “I suppose we’ll find out when she wakes up.”

  I looked at my Alpha in the mirror again, guilt gnawing at my chest over the conflict I’d caused him.

  “Well, when she wakes, I want to shake her hand too,” I said, trying to alleviate some of the tension in the vehicle. “If she passes out again we know that she’s meant for all of us, I suppose.”

  Dexter nodded slowly, though he didn’t say anything.

  Alphas didn’t share their women.

  Never. No one shared their mate.

  Or, they certainly hadn’t in the past.

  I was experiencing anger, conflict and jealousy myself. It burned in my skin, my heart, my very core.

  I could only imagine how Dexter must be feeling.

  And all of this was contingent on her permitting us to share her. Being human would mean she would fight our ways, and our wolves.

  I chuckled, realising the inevitable. “You know what she’s going to do when she realises we’re wolf shifters? Run for the hills. No human will accept everything about us. So why would Fate do this to us?”

  Dexter shook his head. “Don’t ask me.”

  We spent the rest of the trip in silence, though Jay tried to chatter and keep us occupied, as he always did. But the unease within all of us was obvious. Even my wolf was on edge.

  What would this mean for our family?

  Would she turn us away?

  Would Dexter fight us for the right to have her to himself?

  The unknown was vast and terrible.

  Once we reached our borders, I began to breathe a little easier. I drove past the pack lands’ gates and along the long, winding driveway.

  What were the elders going to say when they found out what we’d done?

  I parked the truck behind our home and turned the engine off. “I’ll go unlock the house. You carry her inside. It’ll be better if no one else sees her for now.”

  Dexter nodded and I snuck out of the truck, opening the back door and praying no one had seen us yet.

  I had the strangest need to protect and hide the woman Dexter had stolen. If she wasn’t my mate also, I’d be shocked.

  I opened the door and held it wide with my body.

  Dexter got out of the truck and hurried into the house with the beauty in his arms and Jay on his heels.

  “Put her in Jay’s room,” I suggested, just as Dexter went to ascend the stairs and take her to his bedroom.

  We had a four-bedroom, double story house that we’d built together when we’d first joined into our own pack ten years ago. Each of us had a bedroom, and the fourth was set up as a home office with the possibility of converting into a future nursery.

  A dream we had feared would never come true.

  “Why?” Dexter called out.

  “Because it’s the least threatening,” I answered as I brushed past him to open the door.

  My point must have been valid because Dexter walked past me and placed her gently on Jay’s double bed.

  The colours in the room were blue and white, non-threatening and relaxing.

  My room had a red and black theme, while Dexter had silver bedding and heavy wooden furniture. I could only imagine what Claire would think if she woke up in one of our rooms.

  Dexter backed away from the sleeping beauty and we all headed into the kitchen to talk about the next step in our non-existent plan.

  I wasn’t sure why she was still asleep. It wasn’t normal to pass out for so long, surely? But what did I know about human anatomy?

  Jay grabbed three beers from the fridge, popped the lids and handed them out.

  I chugged half of mine down in a few gulps, my thirst stronger than I realised.

  When I put the drink down, I glanced towards Jay’s bedroom once again.

  “Did we just kidnap someone?”

  Dexter began to pace and growl in a strange way. “I need to shift and run. I can’t hold it together much longer. But someone needs to stay here with her.”

  Jay began to strip, shedding his clothes in record time. “I’ll go with you. I’ve been itching to shift since I first saw her at the hospital.”

  Dexter stared at him. “Me, too… so that probably means that we… we could actually share a mate…”

  They looked at me and I raised my hands. “I wouldn’t mind a run, but I’m more antsy to stay here with her. I’m happy to stand guard until you get back.”

  And it was true. Though my shifter circled within my mind, he was more settled than Jay or Dexter seemed to be. Which was interesting. Perhaps I hadn’t bonded to her the way I’d thought?

  Only seeing her conscious and awake would answer that question.

  Dexter pulled his tank over his head and pushed his black jeans to the ground.

  “Thanks. We won’t be long.”

  I watched as my human pack morphed into wolves and bounded out the house and towards the woods that surrounded our home.

  Dexter was silver, Jay was brown. I was black when in wolf form, and we all made the perfect triad of colours. One of the many reasons we knew we were a perfect, balanced pack. The fur never lied.

  I crept over to Jay’s bedroom door, unable to stay away. I watched our mate sleep for a moment, then shook my head and walked away as the thought occurred to me.

  Our mate…

  I was getting ahead of myself here, and was still confused on how it had all happened anyway. I hadn’t known it was possible to have one woman complete a triad of wolves.

  But honestly, it made perfect sense to me when I thought about it. Why wouldn’t a pack be designed to protect one precious woman?

  Though the sharing element of it all… a growl rolled through my chest that I couldn’t control.

  I wasn’t too sure how that was going to work out.

  Dexter would be the worst, the most jealous of us, of course. He was dominant and aggressive by nature—possessive, in fact. I wasn’t much better.

  Jay would go along with whatever we all wanted, as he always did. But it was nice to see him looking enthusiastic and uncharacteristically wolf like today. As an Omega, he tended to be the smallest and softest us of all, but not today.

  Obviously, our mate brought out the best in us.

  My keen hearing picked up a feminine gasp and shuffling movement from Jay’s room. With my heart thumping in my chest as anticipation wound around me, I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and called out to her.

  “Come out and have some water, Doc.”

  My heart pounded harder as I heard her moving about. I didn’t even know her name, which was terrible. I should have asked Dexter more questions about her before he left.

  She popped her head around the doorway, her eyes wide and the smell of fear catching in my nose.

  I stayed on my side of the kitchen bench, not wanting to frighten her by moving any closer.

  But my wolf was rising, I could feel it in the heat of my skin. The way my arms trembled with both weakness and strength.

  My Beta wolf recognised its mate, and human or not, my shifter didn’t care.

  She’s mine.

  I grabbed hold of the bench in front of me and forced a calm smile to my face. I was happy to see her, more than happy. That was the problem.

  But I didn’t want to scare her any more than I probably was going to anyway.

  As she crept out of Jay’s bedroom, all I could think about was stripping her clear of her hospital scrubs and taking her on the floor boards beneath my feet.

  I’d been dreaming about my mate for as long as I could remember. And to finally know the feeling of her wrapped around me, to feel her love and her heart beating against mine… it would be heaven.

  “Where am I?” she asked, her hands clenching into fists at her sides as though she couldn’t decide if she needed to fight her way out of here or not.

  She was pale, and obviously still in shock.

  I wasn’t sure how to approach her. We wanted her to stay, not run from us. But how to do that?

  “You’re in the Woodlands. I’m Taylor.”

  I poured some cold water into a glass and pushed it across the bench.

  “Here, have a drink. You fainted.”

  “I fainted?” she asked, coming forward and frowning as though she didn’t believe me.

  “Yes. At the hospital.”

  She put a hand to her forehead. “I kind of remember that. I was talking to a man about his father and…”

  “And you fainted.”

  “So why am I here?”

  She looked at me expectantly and suddenly our reasons for bringing her back here didn’t seem so straightforward.

  And they certainly wouldn’t make any sense to a human.

  What was the best lie I could come up with, that was kind of close to the truth?

  “Ah… you were talking to Dex at the time, and he kind of panicked and decided to bring you home to make sure you were okay.”

  Her eyes narrowed with anger this time, the bright blue irises flickering with fire.

  Something inside of me cackled with delight. She was a feisty one. Good. She was going to need that heat if she was going to live out here with us.

  “Why would he do that? I was at the hospital. They would have taken care of me.”

  I needed to cut off this conversation until Dexter returned. I was liable to stuff everything up and then where would we be? With a mate who didn’t want us.

  “Dex will explain everything when he gets back. He won’t be long. But for the moment, I should introduce myself. I’m Taylor.”

  I held out my hand and began to move around the island bench so that I could touch her for the first time. Would she faint on me as she had with Dexter? Or would she continue to stare at me with the fear I saw in her eyes?

  “Taylor, this all sounds very dodgy. Are you sure I’m not dreaming? Because this isn’t making any sense.”

  I kept my hand out and waited. “I still don’t know your name, Doctor.”

  Her shoulders dropped a little as though she was letting down her guard for the first time. “It’s Claire.”

  She reached out and shook my hand, and electrical currents of sensation coursed through my arm.

  Claire’s eyes went wide and then her eyes slid shut. She began to fall to the floor and I dove forward with both arms out.

  I caught her just before her head hit the coffee table and swung her up into my arms, loving the feeling of her weight against my body.

  The front door slammed shut behind me and I turned towards Dexter and Jay, who were still naked and panting hard from their run.