Seduction (The Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow) (25 page)

As I made my way back upstairs to get dressed, I felt more and more uneasy with each step that I took.
 

The house was way too quiet.
 

I could not hear Aspen in the house at all. I couldn’t hear her crying, breathing, sighing, changing body position.
Nothing.
Besides the beating of my own heart, I could hear no evidence of anyone else in the camp at all.
 

Running up the rest of the stairs, two at a time, the towel fell from my hips and rested on the floor outside our bedroom door.
 

“Aspen, Aspen, where are you?” I called out as panic and disorientation raced through my brain.
 

But the training camp remained silent. There was no answer from Aspen.

Where was she?
 

Running through our bedroom, I jumped over the corner of the bed and raced to the closet. My heart racing, I poked my head in, my eyes darting back and forth like a man unhinged. But she wasn’t there.

Omg, Aspen was gone
.

 
I sniffed deeply and was relieved to find that her scent was still really potent. Judging by how strong her scent was, I figured that she hadn’t been gone more then a few minutes.
 

But where the hell had she gone?
Was she hiding from me somewhere in the house?
There was no way that she’d take off outside. I was positive that she was terrified of being alone in the woods after being chained to the platform for three days.
 

Besides, she’d get lost in a second as she had no sense of direction whatsoever. We were deep in the Caledonia mountains, she would have absolutely no idea how to navigate all the way back to the truck.
 

“But her wolf would have no problem,” my wolf said, interrupting my train of thought.
 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Aspen hasn’t even learned how to phase yet and there’s no way her wolf could offer her that much navigational help without actually being in wolf form,” I replied as I quickly pulled on a pair of jeans and a grey t-shirt.
 

It was easy to track her through the camp. She’d obviously gone down the stairs and I easily followed her scent all the way to the front door. All I had to do was follow the most enticing, sexually charged scent that I ever had the pleasure of inhaling and I would be able to find her no matter where she was.
 

I had no doubt of that.
 

Aspen obviously didn’t know much about the mating habits of Weres because there was no way that she could hide from me when she was in heat. I was nearly worked into a sexual frenzy from her scent as it was. There was no way in hell that I would let Aspen get away from me in her current state.
 

I stood at the front door and pulled on my boots. Shrugging into my warm winter jacket, I grabbed my gloves and opened the front door.
 

Mmmm
.

I could smell her immediately, her scent sharper than it had been inside. She must had stood out here on the front steps for several minutes.

“Aspen!” I called out as I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled into the clearing surrounding the camp. Listening hard, I could hear no response to my call and I felt irritated at the prospect of having to chase her down through the snow, when all I wanted to do was tell her that I was sorry and have hot makeup sex.

Ugh. That sounded way more crass and unfeeling than I’d meant it to. Fucking female in heat is driving me crazy
.

Shaking my head, to clear the fog that Aspen’s scent was creating, I started down the steps and followed her trail across the clearing and into the woods.
Where the hell was she going?
Knowing her, she was probably out there, lost and crying in the woods somewhere.
 

I started jogging and calling her name, but there was no sign of her. The ground in the clearing around the training camp wasn’t much help because it was frozen solid and there wasn’t any snow on the open ground due to drifting and the wind. So, trying to follow her footprints to indicate the path that she’d taken was a waste of time. But her scent was still very strong and that told me more than enough information.

When I had a general bearing on which direction she had gone, I took off into the forest after her. Aspen hadn’t been gone from the training camp for very long, maybe 15 minutes at the most. I would find her as I could outrun her easily, in both my human and Were form.

As I got deeper and deeper into the woods, it became apparent to me that Aspen wasn’t traveling by herself. While the ground was bare in the clearings, there was some snow in the woods and it was easy to follow the prints. Unfortunately, the only prints leading away from the camp were wolf prints, not human footprints.

 
How in the hell had she managed that?
 

“It would appear that our mate is much more resourceful than you gave her credit for,” my wolf snickered.
 

“Apparently,” I said as I stopped jogging and pushed into Aspen’s head.
 

Surprisingly, I slid into her consciousness without any resistance.
 

Ha! Success!
Thankfully, she hadn’t thought to block my access to her thoughts in her mad dash to get away from the training camp.

“Aspen, where are you going exactly?” I asked her calmly.
 

“What? Oh, go to hell Roan, I’m getting away from you once and for all! You can’t force me to stay here any longer. My wolf and I can take care of ourselves,” she spat out venomously.
 

“Hmm, I see. Well, from the tracks I’m finding, I gather that you’ve managed to phase since I last saw you. You do realize that by running like a crazed lunatic through the woods that you’re leaving an awful lot of footprints for me to follow?” I replied with a smile in my voice. Now that I knew she was just ahead of me and clearly unhurt, I was thoroughly enjoying her little vie for freedom.

“You stay away from me, Roan. Just stay away. I have a big head start and my wolf is fast. Don’t you even waste your time trying to catch me,” she said, her voice sounding frantic and a little bit desperate.
 

“Not bloody likely, little girl. You smell like dirty, hot sex and there’s nowhere in this entire forest that you can hide from me now. Your wolf may be fast, but mine is even faster. I’ll see you in a few minutes, Aspen,” I said with an evil grin as I pulled out of her head.
 

So, she’s managed to phase and thinks that she can run away from me. I started laughing, thoroughly amused by Aspen’s naivety. She had absolutely no idea what a sexually frustrated male Were would go through to mate with an attractive female in heat.
 

Well, she was going to find out soon enough. Calling my wolf forth, a shimmery wave erupted down my spine and extended down my arms and legs. Filled with a sense of exhilaration that only phasing could bring, I landed on all fours and looked out into the forest with my wolf eyes. Sniffing the cold winter air, my wolf caught hold of Aspen’s scent immediately. “Let’s go,” he said determinedly. “I want our mate. Now.”

I could sense his excitement. He was a jumble of sexual tension and intense longing. Chasing Aspen’s wolf down was going to be fun.

Chapter 31

~Roan~

Aspen had managed to get herself a lot further into the woods than I figured she could, but I was quickly gaining on her. I could smell it. Her mating scent was now so strong, I could taste it on my wolf’s tongue.
 

I commented on it to my wolf but he was so intent on the goal that he didn’t spare me a response. As he ran though the woods, he was silent and completely focused on the task at hand.
 

Aspen going into heat was just as exciting for my wolf as it was for me as neither of us had smelled a female Were in heat since before I met Aspen.
 

From the day that I met her at the pool, I’d
technically
had a mate and was therefore unable to mate with other female Were’s and get them pregnant. So, I couldn’t smell them when they went into heat.
 

I also couldn’t smell Aspen when she finally started ovulating and got her period at thirteen years old, because she was human. I shook my head as I thought about the day she got her period for the first time. She was a skinny, short, force of nature with mussed up, curly strawberry blonde hair. Completely inattentive to her looks, she carried herself like a young girl who was completely unaware that she was going to be a real beauty when she finally grew up.
 

Her mother, Valerie, had gone away on a business trip and had dropped Aspen off at my place for the weekend. Valerie frequently shrugged off her parental responsibilities on me but I didn’t mind. I enjoyed having Aspen with me because I could keep an eye on her and she loved staying over at my place because I gave her everything she wanted.
 

But, Aspen wasn’t a kid who was greedy for material possessions. What Aspen hungered for was my time and attention. She was very emotionally needy and had severe “Daddy issues” due to her father dying when she was a baby. Cementing her emotional abandonment issues was being orphaned after her mother had killed herself by drug overdose. Aspen had had some pretty deep emotional scars for a little girl and she was clingy with a capital “C” and I catered to every single one of her wants and needs.
 

How could I not? She was my mate and I loved her, even though she was just a kid. It was my responsibility to take care of her, whatever that entailed.
 

So, we would watch movies together with her snuggled close to me as she sat on my lap on the couch. We would play board games and I would usually let her win. I enjoyed sitting with her and listening to her endless chatter about school, her friends and my most hatred topic -boys. I did all the things with her that a father would have because that’s what she needed from me at the time. She would do cartwheels and handstands in the backyard for hours and would desperately look at me, hungry to hear an occasional “Good girl” or “Wow, that was a really good one!”

All she wanted from me was the attention that she never had from her father, or any other male figure, for that matter. And I gave it to her, because I loved her. She was my little shadow and followed me around like a lovesick puppy. It was kind of cute.

But the day she started her period, I don’t think either one of us was ready for that. I’d known something was wrong because she kept going into the bathroom.
 

But she would only be in there for less than a minute and then would come right back out again. She was very fidgety and seemed upset about something but wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.
 

Finally, after several hours of this, we were sitting on the couch watching tv and I confronted her about it as I was worried that maybe she was feeling ill.
 

I’ll never forget the look of absolute terror in her eyes as she shot up off the couch and ran to the spare room, which served as her bedroom, and slammed the door shut.

I got up and followed her to her room and found her hiding underneath her covers and crying her eyes out. With trembling lips, she’d finally blurted out that something was wrong and she was bleeding to death.
 

Now, Aspen was emotionally immature for her age due to the life that she’d led before she came to Spruce Hollow and once she came to live with the pack, we all kept her pretty sheltered in order to protect her.
 

But, until that moment, I had no idea that she was quite so clueless about puberty. Worried, I’d grabbed her arm and yanked her out of bed in one sharp motion. I started checking her all over while she hid her face in her hands and cried.
 

However, I couldn’t find any blood, cuts or scrapes.

Anywhere
.

Yet, she was still sniffling and crying.
 

With much gentle prodding, she finally spit out that she had been bleeding from her vagina all day.
 

I was only twenty-three years old and I just stood there, completely stunned and stared at her for several seconds. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry right along with her.
 

My thirteen-year-old mate had started her period.
Someone please kill me.
 

I wiped her tears and told that her she was going to be fine and then gently explained to her that getting your period for the first time was part of becoming a woman.
 

Her pale, lightly freckled face was the color of a tomato by the time I was done explaining it to her.

Then I loaded her into the truck and we went to the drugstore to go buy maxi pads. Although the majority of the girlfriends that I’d had in the past had used tampons, there was no way in hell I was buying tampons for Aspen. I think we were both sufficiently traumatized by the entire situation without me having to explain to her how to use them.