From the Shadows (A Shadow Chronicles Novel) (23 page)

“So he’s found himself a girlfriend, then?” Saphrona guessed.

I nodded. “I’m guessing he hasn’t told anybody yet because he didn’t imprint on this girl. Wishes he had, though.”

“
Gonna be tough on them both if he ends up imprinting later, won’t it?” Race queried then, and I found myself looking at my brother, thinking once again of how my mother had admitted to not imprinting on our father.

“Of course it will,” I agreed. “I s
uppose Jake got tired of wondering when he’d meet his mate. Nothing wrong with that, but it’ll definitely cause some hurt feelings when his girl does come into his life.”

The house phone rang then, and it turned out it was my mother calling to give Saphrona an idea of the number of people who’d be showing up. She’d managed to contact several
members of the pack and had gotten positive answers from everyone, so it looked like there would be anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five people coming to the cookout.

It was a good thing, I mused, that Saphrona was
stinkin’ rich. She could afford to buy enough food to feed a third-world country and then some, so feeding nearly thirty shapeshifters would be no problem.

“What can we do to help?” Mark asked as soon as she’d hung up.

“You and your old-slash-new best friend can go and get some folding tables and chairs,” she told him. “We’re going to need six or seven of them so that everyone has a place to sit, as well as a table for all the food.”

“Speaking of which, do you even have a grill to cook on?” Race asked.

Saphrona laughed. “I wouldn’t have suggested inviting the pack over if I didn’t. Mark
insisted
on buying this humongous, ‘manly’ gas grill just last week.”

“Hey, it was on sale, and it’s an awesome grill!” Mark insisted, trying vainly to keep a straight face. “It’s got attached coils for using pans and a smoker too!”

We all laughed, and then everyone got ready to go. I was thankful as I climbed into Saphrona’s truck with her that the weather, predicted to be warm but with light clouds and a breeze, appeared to be following the forecast. She mentioned as we drove past his place that she ought to invite her neighbor, Harry Mitchell, and his boys to the cookout as well.

Then she suddenly frowned. “I wonder…
Nah, not possible.”

“What’s not possible?”

“You’ll think me silly for saying this, but thinking of Harry and the boys, it suddenly occurred to me how alike in build he and Race are. And how they have the same hazel eyes.”

I shrugged, though upon thinking of her closest neighbor, whom I had met once, I realized she was right. “Lots of people have hazel eyes.”

“I know,” she agreed. “Maybe they’re distantly related. Or maybe I’m just seeing things. Just thought it was strange, is all.”

I had no idea if Harry was related to Race at all, but given that the former as nearly ten years older than the latter, if they shared blood at all it had to be distant.

Upon arriving at the store, Saphrona and I both grabbed a cart, though I had a sneaking suspicion we might need a third. As we walked through the grocery aisles filling our baskets with potato chips, cookies, juice, water, hamburgers, hot dogs, buns and steaks, she asked me what I’d been up to in Cleveland. I told her how I’d spent the first week just trying to relax and put the attack behind me, and when that hadn’t worked, I’d gotten a job.

“Still feel bad about leaving them so abruptly,” I said, “but Karen, this one manager I really liked, told me yesterday that the corporate office is looking to open a franchise down here of all places, and they want her to run it.”

“Maybe she’ll ask you to be an assistant manager or something when they get the place built,” Saphrona suggested. “After all, you’ve got a degree and most employers these days want educated workers.”

“True enough,” I agreed.

“What made you and Race decide to come home?” she asked me then. “I know he said yesterday that his work hadn’t been entirely legal and that he wanted to get out of it, but you guys never really told us why you chose to come back now, so soon after meeting up again.”

I sighed as I looked over at her. “
Because it was time,” I said with a shrug. “I’d been gone long enough, I suppose, and Race needed to get away from the people he’d worked for. Getting back to our roots just seemed like the right thing to do.”

“Well, once again I’m glad you’re here,” my companion declared. “Maybe now Mark will stop being so uptight about you.”

“That bad, eh?”

Saphrona laughed. “
Not too bad, but he’s been a bit of a bear to live with.”

“Funny you should mention bears,” I said mildly. “Race turned into one when he first met
your
brother.”

***

The closer it got to the time of the cookout, the more I found myself growing nervous. Though I felt certain everyone would welcome Race, his being a chimaera and what it meant for werekind was knowledge that was certain to have everyone either staring openly or asking uncomfortable questions. Each member of the pack, related by blood or not, I considered to be family—we were all very close—and it was my sincerest hope that they respected me enough to allow Race and I to make the decision without any undue pressure.

After all, it wasn’t as if we weren’t feeling the weight of the decision yet to be made already.

First to arrive, thankfully, were my parents. My mother—knowing what had caused me to flee in the first place—held onto me tightly as Race and my father shook hands.

“Welcome back, son,” Dad said to him. “It’s good to see you again after all this time—and to think that you of all people caught my little girl’s eye. You’re the first boy she’s dated since high school.”

I felt my cheeks redden. “Daddy, please,” I admonished as my mother released me.

Dad grinned at me as Mom moved over to Race. He held out
his hand to her, which she promptly bypassed by standing on her toes and kissing his cheek. I grinned as he blushed.

“So good to see you again,” Mom said softly.

Race nodded. “It’s good to see you again too, Mrs. Singleton.”

“You really must give me your mother’s number. I need to give Caroline a stern talking to about not staying in contact. She and I have so much catching up to do.”

The look Mom was giving Race told him more than she could say aloud—she’d talk to his mother about the pack and how she would like to have been confided in so that she could have helped her cope with Race’s condition. Had she seen him even once after he had phased the first time, Mom would have known.

Race nodded his understanding of her subtle message and smiled. “Remind me later and I’ll be sure to do that. I’ve no doubt Mom would love to hear from you.”

Dad was then introduced to Saphrona, who was referred to as “Mark’s girlfriend” by Mom. He greeted her heartily and kissed her cheek, then congratulated Mark and said that he was lucky to have snagged such a beautiful woman. Mark and Saphrona both laughed, and she thanked my father for the compliment.

Not long after my parents arrived, Tom Wilson and Martha Jensen—our pack’s Alpha pair—appeared with their spouses. Mom and I greeted them together and introduced them to Saphrona. While the two shifters eyed her with some caution, their attention was soon stripped away from the
gathering’s half-vampire hostess when the scent of my mate was carried to us on the breeze. Tom and Martha both tensed, no doubt as confused by his smell as I had first been, until I explained that he was my imprint…and a chimaera. This news both fascinated and delighted the Siberian shifters, who went immediately to greet him where he stood at the grill with Dad and Mark. Knowing that my father was in the dark about the supernatural, they politely asked if they might have a word with him and guided him away from the barn entrance, where Mark had set up his monster grill, and out of Dad’s earshot.

As they w
ere joined by Lauren and David—Tom’s wife and Martha’s husband—three more pack members came up the drive (Mom said she had directed them to park in the front yard). They reacted much the same way as Tom and Martha had to Race’s scent, and after having been introduced to Saphrona and greeting Mark and Dad, they, too, joined the group surrounding Race. The scene played out again and again as pack members arrived and introductions were made, and I began to get the distinct feeling that my packmates were assuming Race and I had already completed our bonding. When I mentioned this in a casual whisper to my mother, she replied that, for now, it might be best to let them continue to do so. She also advised me to try and tear Race away from the crowd for a moment to let him in on the plan, and as I could tell he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable under the pack’s scrutiny, I decided it was time to go rescue him.

None-too-gently pushing my way through the throng, I stepped up to Race’s side, looping my arm through his and standing on my toes to kiss his cheek. “Okay, everyone, let’s give the man some room to breathe,” I chided with a smile. “Go and mingle—and eat. This is supposed to be a party.”

My friends and packmates chuckled and began to disperse as I led Race away from them.

“Thank you,” he said breathlessly. “One more minute and I think my head was going to explode.
I’ve never had so many people interested in what I am before.”

“I’m afraid you might have to get us
ed to it,” I said with a laugh, then raised on my toes again to whisper in his ear that Mom and I had felt it best we let the pack assume we’d completed our bond.

“Fine by me,” he replied, kissing my temple as we joined Mom and Saphrona by the top of the drive.
“Nobody’s business but ours anyway.”

Most of the pack arrived within the first half hour or so
, and with so many animal-scented people around, I thought briefly that it had been wise of Saphrona to put her bull in the far pasture. I recalled her having once described Angus as “twitchy”—especially since the barn fire—and agreed that it was a good idea to keep him as far from the pack as possible. But everyone was sitting down to eat and I still hadn’t seen Jake and his mystery date. I hoped he hadn’t changed his mind—I really wanted to see my good friend, and he needed to know that we would all support him and his decision to date while he waited to meet his imprint. It wasn’t like he was the first of the pack to do so. Hell, my own mother had married and had a child with a man she’d not imprinted on.

I had finally given in to R
ace’s urging that I eat something when all of us shifters looked up sharply. The wind had turned again and every single one of us had picked up the scent of a werewolf. We gazed at each other as naturally as we could, as well as all around us. It was but a moment before I realized that the smell of wolf was coming from the beautiful girl walking up the driveway next to a very nervous-looking Jake.

“Oh shit,” mumbled Danielle Pierce, a
Malamute shifter sitting across from me. “Tell me he is
not
holding Anna Tracey’s hand.”

Anna Tracey
was the only daughter—only child, in fact—of Kevin Tracey, the Alpha of the Dayton werewolves. I knew her probably better than anyone else present besides Jake, as we’d both attended Kent State at the same time.

I rose from the table quickly, followed by Race, Saphrona, and Mark. When I reached Jake I embraced him tightly, then stood back and introduced him to Race. Despite the fact that he had brought a date of his own or that Race had sworn he was not jealous of him, I was not remiss to the fact that the two men were sizing each other up even as they shook hands. I then greeted Anna warmly, kissing both cheeks as was custom, and introduced her to my brother and his mate.

“Is…is it okay that I’m here?” Anna asked quietly. “Everybody is kind of staring at me.”

“No matter what any one of them thinks, Anna, you are welcome here,” Saphrona said firmly. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

The sudden increase of noisy eating was not lost on any of us—I had no doubt that every shifter there had heard her none-too-subtle warning. And she was right to issue it, as this was her land.

I studied Anna’s
dark brown hair and eyes of sepia, her slim, toned figure clad in a fetching yellow sundress. Though I was insanely curious as to when they had met, I could see why Jake was attracted to her.

“But…I’m a wolf,” Anna
said, swallowing nervously. “And they’re not. We’re not… I mean, Jake and I aren’t…”

“Anna, don’t worry about it,” I said. “Like Saphrona said, you are welcome. The
pack just needs to get to know you, that’s all. Once they do, no one’s going to care that the two of you aren’t imprinted.”

The look Jake shot me then was full of thanks, and I watched with fascination as his expression changed when he looked down at the woman beside him. The hard lines around his eyes softened and he smiled a
brilliant smile at her, his countenance telling me what any person with half a brain could see—which was that he was in love. Anna’s face, when she lifted it to return his smile, bore an identical look of bliss. Part of me was deliriously happy that Jake had met someone he felt he could be himself with, but another part was already hurting for both of them, as surely they were in for a world of pain, their love doomed from the start because of someone neither one had met yet.