The Wolf's Mate Book 1: Jason & Cadence Read online

  It was a hell of a day. In 24 hours, he’d nearly lost his love not only to another but to the shedding of her blood. He didn’t ever want to go through that again. No matter how things played out with Chris, they were together now, at least together enough that he could keep her safe and with him, and that’s what mattered most. He could publicly claim her to the packs on the full moon, and then they’d take their time getting to know each other. Now, running on emotions, she trusted him, but when the glow faded, she would want answers and true to her nature, she wouldn’t let him off easy at all. But he’d take it, whatever penance she wanted him to pay so that they could be together, no price was too great. To keep his mate safe, he’d do anything. She deserved love and happiness and family. And it was his job to see she got it in spades.

  She slept restlessly overnight, waking often and reaching for him, and he was glad he was there for her and that she wanted his comfort. When the doctor came by in the morning to check on her, he declared that as long as there were no complications that she could leave on Tuesday morning.

  Her breakfast was all soft, bland things and she made a seriously unhappy face when she looked at the tray. “You have to eat, love. That jell-o and broth last night wasn’t enough to keep a mouse going, let alone an alpha.”

  She fixed the grits grudgingly but ate, thankfully. He didn’t want their first argument as a couple to be over hospital food when there were so many other things that he was certain she was going to bust his balls over. The first visitors were his parents, Callie, and Michael, who fawned over her, assuring her she looked perfect and lovely. Which was true, even with the cuts that had not faded yet. He knew she was surprised by the flood of visitors from the Tressel pack. Even the girls who had been so callous to her were among the first after his family and his top ranked. The room was so full of flowers that it looked like a florist had thrown up all over everything.

  “Looks like it’s time for lunch, doll.” He said fondly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. She was fading. Hungry and exhausted.

  One more meal of soft things and then she could have a regular dinner, they’d been told, and then home in the morning. She hadn’t asked about going to her own house yet. He was waiting for the right opportunity to tell her that he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight. Not until they’d found Chris. Every time he checked his cell, hoping for a text from Linus, he was disappointed.

  While she slept after lunch, he stood out in the hallway and got updates from his men. Trick was looking for Chris, but so far his cell was turned off and he’d not gotten any hits on his truck description or license plate. A lot of Jake’s pack had been by to see her, and if not they’d sent flowers, but there was an uneasiness now and a lot of that was because no one knew just how bad the punishment would be when Chris was found, and hell, he wasn’t really sure either. He wanted to slaughter him, of course, rip his head off and be done with it, but death was too easy. Whatever he decided to do with Chris would be monumental and the right thing.

  It was late. The TV in the corner flickered, the sound low. “You can go home, Jas.” She yawned, tucking one hand under her cheek.

  “I’m good, baby.” He couldn’t wait to get home to his bed and get a decent nights’ sleep. Exhaustion was seeping into his pores and grabbing hold.

  “You are.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Good. You’re taking very good care of me.”

  “Of course I am. We’re mates, Cades. That carries a lot of responsibility with it. And I, well, I fucked up a lot of things, but I’m trying to set it all right. It might just take me a while.”

  Her voice slurred towards sleep, “We’ve got the rest of our lives.”

  So their first argument wasn’t about eating hospital food, it was about her coming back to his house to recuperate. The doctor said she should take it easy until the weekend and wanted someone with her, and Jason wanted her in his home for more than one reason.

  Arms folded, she glared at him while he held open the passenger door of her car. Bo and Michael had dropped off her car that morning. “You can glare all you like, but you’re coming home with me. There is no safer place than the trailer park, and with Chris still off the radar, I won’t put you at risk in your house.”

  “Even if you’re with me?”

  “Yeah. Even then.” At least she wasn’t saying she didn’t want his company.

  Her mouth opened and then closed, and then her arms uncrossed and her shoulders sagged. Ha! Success! “Don’t look so smug.” She groused as she sat down.

  “Sorry. I don’t win arguments with you very often.” Even if it had been a mild one, it was still a victory in his book.

  As he drove them to the trailer, a lot of things raced in fast forward through his mind. The first time he’d realized they were mates, when she was 7 and he was 12. It was just a simple click in his mind, as if his brain suddenly realized that she was made for him. Then later, when he was 18 and she was 13, and he’d been in the habit of riding by her house after school to make sure she’d made it home okay, and she hadn’t. So he’d driven his motorcycle on the route between her house and the school and found her walking because she’d missed the bus. He offered her a ride and gave her his helmet. He hadn’t said two words to her after offering her a ride, and it had been the hardest thing he’d ever done when she got off the bike and handed him the helmet. He saw the confusion in her eyes, the wonder and hope, and he just put the helmet on and left. And then he bought her a helmet of her own, but she’d never ridden with him again, not until recently.

  When his father had been shot by a hunter outside of town mistaking him for a real wolf too close to his farm, Jason had taken over in interim, and his father had decided to step down. That had been right after Cadence’s father had died and she was a mess emotionally, and he’d needed her but was afraid to ask her for help. It was not the first time that he’d wanted to hold onto her for comfort. Somewhere in the middle of the pack problems and his father’s long recovery, Jason had lost her so many times, but this had been too close for comfort.

  She was chewing her lip. He reached over for her hand and held it lightly on his thigh. The top was bruised from the IV needle. “You don’t, you don’t think Chris will come for me, do you?”

  "He’d be a fool if he did. The trailer park is full of the Tressel pack. It's the safest place for you. The very best thing to do, sweetheart, is a full marking. The full moon is Friday, and I can make a verbal commitment to you and you can make your commitment as alpha. And then when you’re ready, I can mark you again, do it right this time.”

  She didn’t look at him, but continued to chew on her lip and stare out the window. The trailer park where he and most of the pack his age lived was on the other side of town near the garage. He carried her inside the trailer and laid her down on the bed. Thank goodness Callie had cleaned up for him. Michael said she’d been very insistent.

  Walking back out to his men who gathered for instruction he said, “Okay, we’ve got a missing wolf out there that’s got our alpha female on his mind. No matter what his intentions are now, he hurt her and he cannot be allowed to get to her. Until he’s found and dealt with properly, be on alert for him at all times. Linus?”

  “Trick’s had no luck. We can’t find a fresh scent for him anywhere in town. We’ve got eyes on the condo and the credit union.”

  Nodding, he said, “Make sure the entrance to the park is manned until further notice, Michael, you handle the shifts. Bo, go to the station, offer Trick any help he needs to monitor the town. Linus, get any free hands together to get the shop cleaned up. I don’t want any reminders of what she went through." His people nodded and moved to action.

  He stood on the front porch for a few minutes. This was the first time since he’d taken over as alpha and had to prove himself to the older wolves that he felt like a true leader. Part of that was that Cades was with him now, at least as much as she could be until they’d talked everything through, and the o
ther part was that he’d handled things just like an alpha should. Calm, controlled, thinking through every scenario before making a decision.

  His little sweetheart was curled up in a ball, looking tinier than ever, dwarfed by his king sized bed. He’d expected that she might want to cry, and he’d been anxious to get her alone so she could lose it if she needed to. No one would have thought less of her if she’d had a total meltdown publicly at the hospital. Someone she cared about had hurt her physically after terrorizing her. She’d been through a lot, and hadn’t really talked to him about what had happened except when she first woke up. And then she’d been overwhelmed at the support of the pack. But she wasn’t crying.

  She sat up slightly when he came into the room to check on her. "Why didn't you tell me that you were trying to protect me, to keep me safe when you were changing?"

  He sat down on the corner of the bed with a sigh. “I thought that maybe you wouldn't understand, or you would try to be with me anyhow. I was afraid that I’d hurt you and then you wouldn’t trust me.”

  "I wasn't stupid, Jas." She rolled up slowly into a sitting position. "Even though I was young, I loved you. If you told me you were afraid you'd hurt me, then I think, no, I know that I would have stepped back. I would have done anything to be with you, even if it meant standing down for a few years. I felt so lost without you, like someone had grabbed my heart out of my body and left a big gaping hole."

  There it was. The crushing guilt. He'd screwed up so badly. "I'm sorry, baby. I know I didn't handle things right, I was young and foolish and the last thing I wanted to do was hurt you, and I may not have hurt you physically but I know I hurt you emotionally. That's almost worse in my mind. I was always around, always watching over you, but I was afraid to get close to you because the beast is, demanding, in some things."

  She moved closer, her scent swirling around him. "What things?"

  "Mostly you." He swallowed, trying to quell the urges that were surging through him. She was recovering, she wanted to talk – they needed to talk. He had to stop his baser urges.

  "What were you afraid of?"

  He wouldn't have admitted to anyone in his pack that he'd ever been afraid of anything, but she would know bullshit when she heard it, especially from him. "I was afraid that if I couldn't control myself; that I might try to make you my mate, really make you my mate. I couldn't bear the thought of hurting you like that, whether you loved me or not. Once I came into my powers I couldn't really be around you without feeling the wolf snapping in my brain to get close to you. A touch would turn into the desire for more. I don't think you would have stopped me, from anything, and that frightened me more than anything else. Because you were so much younger than me. So I shoved you away and it was the hardest thing I ever did. Did you really think that I didn't love you, Cadence? Really?"

  "I don't know. I hoped you did, but it was so many years, Jas."

  "I'm so sorry. You do understand, though?"

  "Yeah." She turned her head to the side and regarded him carefully. “Do you regret marking me, like you did?”

  He winced inwardly. With a sigh, he said, “Yes and no. Yes because I did it wrong. If I’d just told you first that we were mates and then marked you, you would have had the knowledge, and my father wouldn’t have had to say no one could talk to you about it. And then you would have known that I would come back for you. If I hadn’t marked you, you probably wouldn’t have had such a hard time with the females in the pack, too. But no, I, I don’t regret that act of marking you, what it meant to me. It was the most important thing I ever did, and even though I royally screwed it up, I still wouldn’t change it.”

  She was quiet, looking at him warily, calculatingly. The silence stretched on long enough that he was about to ask her what she was thinking about when she threw herself at him, crushing her lips against his and plunging her hot tongue into his mouth. Her breath came out on a soft moan, the sweet natural scent of her skin surrounding him, drowning him, and he clutched her close, tasted her, and tangled his tongue with hers. The taste was decadent, like something forbidden, and he wanted to park his mouth against hers for the rest of his natural life. She fisted her hands in his hair and pulled away, holding him back. Her eyes were bright and serious.

  “Mark me again, Jason. Make me yours in truth.”

  For a brief moment, the world stopped spinning, and then he remembered that she wasn’t up for it. Not yet.

  Untangling her fingers from his hair he kissed her hands. “Not yet, Cades. If I mark you, then I’m going to want us to make love, and we can’t. You just got out of the hospital, we have time, there’s no rush.”

  She blushed hard and scooted away. “Sorry. I felt a little, anxious, there for a minute.”

  “About what? You’re safe here, I swear.”

  “No, about losing you I guess. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You couldn’t if you tried.” He touched the marks on the back of her neck. “You’re mine. You always have been. Often, but not always, alpha pairs are born into the same pack. Sometimes they’re the same age like my parents, but sometimes the male is older so he can protect the female. I know that you feel like I abandoned you and I see now that I left you feeling unprotected, but I was always watching over you. And the pack was, too. The reason the girls gave you such a hard time is because you weren’t acting like their alpha. They wanted to be led. They took it as an insult that you were not stepping up for them, defending all of them, like you do for Callie.”

  “In a really skewed way that makes sense.” She smiled and then said she was going to take a shower.

  He fixed her something to eat, thankful that Callie had gone grocery shopping and stocked the kitchen with things that Cades liked. They talked together while she ate, about the pack and the future, but he carefully steered the conversation away from marking. If she threw herself at him again, he wasn’t sure he had the willpower to stop himself from claiming her completely, and the last thing he wanted was for their first time together to be a painful or frightening memory for her.

  That night, she asked him to lay with her, to hold her while she slept, and he’d done it, but it wouldn’t have been his choice. To have his woman in his bed and his arms but not take her completely was a little bit of hell in the midst of heaven, especially for his wolf. But he needed her to feel safe and be ready. Really ready.

  Wednesday night, with still no word about Chris, he and Cades were sitting on the couch and talking about nothing and everything, and not really watching whatever Lifetime snooze-fest she’d picked out. And then she completely surprised him. Again.

  “Jason, I want you to mark me. I’m ready.”

  “Cades, please.” His wolf sat up at attention.

  She shook her head. “No. I’m ready. I’m ready to be yours in truth. I need it. I need to take this step with you.”

  He closed his eyes. Could he mark her and not try to make love to her? Probably not. Her arousal was like a beacon for his wolf.

  He felt her hand on his cheek and opened his eyes. “I’m healed, I feel great. And I’m not asking for this because of what happened with Chris or anything, I’m asking because I can’t be in your bed another second and not be with you completely. We’ve talked over our past until we haven’t left a stone unturned. We’ve forgiven each other for the lost time, the anger, the misunderstandings. This is important, I know it is.”

  He thought to protest again, but then she did something he had only ever dreamed about: she licked across his bottom lip with a soft sigh and whispered, “Please.”

  Completely undone by her gesture, something that wolves did when they were asking for sex, he swept her up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom, kicking the door shut.

  She lay down on his pillow on her side, swiping her hair away from her neck. "Mark me, again, make me yours."

  His beast snapped and snarled in his brain, hungry for his mate. He slid against her, as her whole body tightened in anticipation, her
heart beating faster and her breathing going to soft panting. He shifted her so that her neck was positioned so he could mark her properly, sliding one arm underneath her and grasping her close.

  "This time, I've got you forever, Cadence." His fangs extended, sinking into her neck, as he curved his mouth around her spine just under her hairline so that these marks were on either side. She moaned softly, gripping his arms, and pushing her body tightly against him. He growled into her body, and she relaxed in his arms with a contented sigh. This time, he could really sense everything about her. The thrum of her heart beating wildly, the excitement humming in her body, and the main difference, was the desire that streaked hotly through her, for him.

  "Jason." She whispered, and he released his hold on her neck as gently as he could. In his excitement he may have dug deeper than he meant to, she would probably bruise a little. He licked across the wounds, once, twice, and she shivered and shifted against him.

  She rolled in his arms. "Cadence." He smiled at her, trying to figure out something romantic to say. She saved him from thinking too long.

  She brushed her hands across his cheeks and cradled the back of his head in her hands. "I love you. My alpha, my mate, my heart's missing piece. Make love to me, please." She pressed her lips against his and his whole body went tight like his skin was pinched in a vice. She moved from his lips across his jaw and down to his neck, pulling his flesh into her mouth and biting, licking the marks and then starting over. He would be well and bruised by the time she was done, he was sure, but he'd wear the marks with pride. She was his completely now, and he had no doubt that she knew he was hers.

  She released her hold on his neck and looked at him, her green eyes filled with love. "I love you, Cadence. My sweet mate, the love of my life. I'll never let you go again."

  Chapter 9