The Tiger's Mate: (Book 12, Grey Wolf Pack Romance Novellas) (2 page)

“That’s… wonderful, I…”

“Hopefully this won’t be my last grandchild.”  He took a step closer to her and gave her a hard look, and Simone struggled to meet his eyes.  Her tiger wanted to lower her head in submission, but Simone fought against it.  She had nothing to be ashamed of in this respect.  Nor did she have to explain herself.  Females may get a rum deal in the pride, but they weren't breeding machines.  They weren't forced to give birth on a schedule.

“I must get going.  I’m sure Parker’s wondering where I am.”

Locke let out a long breath and chuckled.  “Of course.  I feel like I never see you or my son.  Come to my house for lunch tomorrow.  I’ll have one of the girls cook us something.”

“Actually I can’t,” she said, hoping she was managing to hide the relief she felt.

The Alpha stared at her, and she could feel the ripple of power.  “Oh?”

She ignored her shivering beast.  “My mom has a doctor’s appointment.  I need to drive her to Alexandria.”

Fury flickered across his face.  “Can’t someone else take her?”

“She’s my mother,” said Simone, firmly.

Yellow filtered into his eyes and a deep rumble escaped his throat.  “Fine, but you’re not going on your own.”

“I…”

“My Beta will drive the two of you.”

Her tiger shuddered.  Patrick the Beta was not a tiger you wanted to spend ten minutes with, never mind a four-hour car journey. 
Ugh, eight hours there and back
.  “That’s not necessary.”

“I insist.”  A smile spread across his face, but there was no warmth in it.

“But…”

“No arguments!” he roared and his eyes flashed yellow, fur started sprouting on his face.

Simone felt the tendrils of his power seeping into her body, commanding her to obey.  She tried to stay strong but after a few moments she gave in.  She inclined her neck in submission.  “I’m sorry, Alpha, of course,” she panted.

The handsome Alpha returned.  “Great, and tell Parker I still expect him for lunch.”

“Yep, I will.  Sure thing.”  She didn’t even bother trying to come up with an excuse as she hurried away.  There was no point.  Excuses ranging from root canals to attending the birth of your first child wouldn’t be accepted.  The Alpha’s word was law, and she couldn’t wait to get away from it.

Chapter Three

Acksel groaned as he pushed the door open to his mom’s house.  It had been a long day.  Teenagers from the next town over had taken to sneaking onto pack land and lighting bonfires at night.  They were ruining pack land.  With the help of the pack tracker, Don they had managed to track one of the teenagers and spoke to the boy’s father.  The human didn’t seem overly enthused with punishing his son.  The son had smirked at him and Don as they tried to impress upon the father that if the son returned to their land, they were prepared to shift into their wolves and eat him alive to teach him a lesson.  Neither father nor son believed them.  His wolf was itching to teach the boy a lesson, but Acksel held back.  Wolf shifters had a hard enough time being accepted by humans.  They didn’t actively need to give humans reasons to dislike them.

He wasn’t really in the mood to deal with any other argumentative teenagers, but his mom, against Hans’ strenuous objections, was out of town on vacation with her new boyfriend.  Their twin sisters were seventeen and Acksel had lost the coin toss to see which of the brothers would move back home to make sure neither Gwen nor Britt burnt the house down or threw any parties.

Acksel sniffed and scented Britt but no Gwen.  There was, however, a male scent - an adolescent male.

“Hello,” he called, hoping that if anything were going on it would stop at the sound of his voice. 

“In the kitchen,” came a tired sounding Britt.

Acksel found Britt at the kitchen table, scowling, and Craig Tanner beaming at her.  Textbooks, paper, and pencils were covering every inch of available space.

He nodded at them and scooped a beer out of the refrigerator.  Apparently his mom knew in advance he would be staying – she’d stocked up on his favourite brand.

“Checking up on us already?” she asked, tartly.

“I’ll be moving in while mom’s away.”  Although, apparently their mom decided to let him tell them.

“That’s not necessary,” grumbled Britt.

“The last time she left you two alone, Gwen got her hair caught in the waste disposal, and you blew up the microwave.”

Craig chuckled, but it quickly turned into a cough as Britt glared at him.  “The microwave didn’t blow up; it set on fire.”  Apparently there was a big difference.  “And it wasn’t my fault, the instructions on that bag of popcorn were printed way too small.”

“If you’d just wear your glasses…”

“You wear glasses?” asked Craig lighting up like a particularly gleeful fireworks display.

“No!” said Britt as Acksel said, “Yes.”

Britt gave Acksel the ‘embarrassing brother’ look usually reserved for Hans.  “Only sometimes for things close up.  I don't really need them.”

Acksel almost choked on his beer.  She did need them; she was just too vain to admit it.  It was a source of contention that Gwen didn't need glasses and Britt did.  The girls were only indistinguishable by their scent – they were like mirror images.  But there was some kind of stigma that since Gwen was a cheerleader and Britt was part of the model UN, that Gwen was the ‘hot’ twin and Britt was a nerd.  Britt hated it, and assumed the glasses made her nerdier.  Craig, however, didn’t agree.

“Can I see them?”

“No!”

“I’ll bet you look cute in them.”

Britt flushed, trying not to look pleased while Craig looked far too excited at the prospect of seeing the she-wolf in glasses.  Acksel’s wolf growled.  He considered that he might have to talk to the boy about his intentions towards his sister.

Acksel started pulling out food for a sandwich.  He tried to ignore the whispering between Britt and Craig until his prowling wolf couldn’t take it anymore.  He disregarded the nagging voice that told him he was behaving like Hans.  No, if he were Hans he’d have already kicked Craig out of the house.

“Where’s Gwen?” he interrupted.

“Out,” said Britt evasively.  Which was code for ‘out with her boyfriend’ - Darryl Tanner.  Oddly enough, Acksel considered that if it had been their mom asking her, Britt wouldn’t have lied.  But then their mom considered the Tanner boys to be cheeky young boys.  Hans and Acksel considered them to be walking hormonal nightmares that were only going to get worse with age.

Feeling unusually tetchy, Acksel slammed the refrigerator.  “Jeez, Britt, Mom’s gone three hours and already Gwen’s out with her boyfriend and you have a boy in the house.  Can’t the two of your act responsibly for once?”

Hurt flashed over Britt’s face, and Craig shot him a dirty look.  Great, now the pup was feeling protective of his sister.

“I don’t have a boy in the house,” she declared in the face of all evidence to the contrary.  “I’m tutoring him in math.  Being a tutor will look good on my college application, and I made the mistake of putting up a notice at School to say I was available for math and French.”  The last part was said while she narrowed her eyes at Craig.

“Hey, babe…” started Craig.

“Britt!” snapped both Britt and Acksel at the same time.  Acksel’s wolf voiced some loud objections about anyone calling his sister ‘babe’.

“I need help in math, and since my mom’s willing to pay…”

“You seem to be doing fine without my help.”  She held up a graded test paper.  “You got a B+ on this one.”

“Wow, even I got solid Cs in math,” commented Acksel.  He was solid student rather than a great one.  He preferred sports to studying.

“But I could be doing better,” Craig told them, solemnly.  “Hans isn’t going to be staying here, too, is he?” asked the young wolf, with just a modicum of fear.

“No.  You glad about that?”

Craig visibly relaxed.  “He threatened to cut off… well, he threatened me the last time I saw him.”

“Why?  What were you doing?”

He shrugged, and looked far too innocent.  “Nothing.”

Acksel quashed a throaty growl from his wolf as he guessed it involved leering at some part of his sister he shouldn’t be leering at – such as any part of her.

“Hans is all talk,” said Britt.

Acksel winced.  For the most part, yes, he would agree with that.  But his brother wasn’t exactly known to think about consequences before he acted.  If Hans really thought that a boy was out to hurt his sister, Acksel worried about how far he’d go.  In fact, considering the restive mood his own wolf had been in recently, Acksel worried what
he
might do.

“Well, mostly,” he agreed.  “He’s been much better since he stopped cage fighting, and since he got out of prison, and, of course, meeting his mate helped.”

Craig nodded before snapping to attention.  “Wait, what?”

Britt frowned.  “You know Melanie.”

“No, I meant about the whole…”

“Why don’t we have a study break?” suggested Britt, brightly.

Curiosity was forgotten in the face of excitement.  “Sounds good.”  The young wolf leaned back in his chair and tried to look pensive.  “What could we do during our break?”

“Nothing that you’re thinking of,” growled Acksel, darkly.  His wolf seconded that with a snarl.

Britt closed her textbook with a thud.  “Why don’t we take a run?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s fun, too.  Let's see if you can keep up with me.”

She raised an eyebrow.  “Keep up with you?  Maybe you should worry about whether you can keep up with me.”

Acksel took a bite of his sandwich to stop himself from laughing.  He loved his sister, but she wasn’t overly athletic.  She’d tried out for every sports team at School – because it would look good on her college application - and had been rejected by them all.  She was in mathletics, though.  Craig, on the other hand, had been a freshman for a month and was already on the football team.

Craig smirked.  “Please, babe…”

“Ahem.”

“Please, Britt,” he corrected.  “I promise not to go too fast for you.”

In a hitherto unknown fit of athletic confidence, Britt taunted him.  “Oh, you wanna race do you, junior?”

“I’ll feel bad when I crush you, but I reckon I’ll enjoy it.”  He jumped to his feet; his huge body towering over Britt’s slim form.  “Besides, what do I get if I win?”  The young pup almost vibrated with excitement as he considered the options.

“Hey, take it down a notch, kids, okay.  No racing!  And don’t go near the road!” Acksel called as they ran out the door.

*

The moment Britt hit fresh air she started stripping out of her clothes.  Craig stared open-mouthed, practically drooling.  Even at pack runs she didn’t like stripping in front of other pack members.  But she had written some checks her body couldn’t cash, so when it came getting on edge over Craig, she wasn’t above resorting to dirty methods.  Of course, she kept her back to him, and she was so fast that he only saw a flash of flesh.  But the mere hint was enough to send his teenage hormones soaring.

“Catch me if you can,” she teased before shifting to her wolf, wagging her tail and bounding away.

“That’s cheating!” he called after her.

The she-wolf let out a bark of excitement as she sprinted through the woods.  She relished the feeling of freedom and pushed herself on.  She wasn’t a fast wolf, but that didn’t mean she didn’t adore moments like these.

She yelped as something nudged her flank.  A second later a huge wolf with blonde ears pulled ahead of her.  He was almost twice her size and seemed to be loping along as if he barely had to make any effort to keep up with her.  If she didn’t know better, she’d say he was smirking at her.

The she-wolf growled and willed herself to go faster.  She was too busy watching what he was doing.  She didn’t seven see the tree until the male wolf pushed her out the way.  The she-wolf scrambled, losing control of her limbs and she flailed, careening onto the road.

A car swerved to avoid her and slammed into a tree.

*

Simone gripped the steering wheel.

“I’m sorry, Alpha, I merely forgot what you said.  No, that didn’t sound sincere.  I knocked on Patrick’s door, but he must not have heard me.  Better, maybe.”

She was practising her apology and excuse to the Alpha.  It was much easier to disobey the Alpha when he wasn’t standing in front of her. 

After talking to the Alpha, she changed her mind about allowing Patrick, the Beta to drive her to the hospital.  She didn’t want to spend hours in a car with him, and there was no way she would subject her mother to him, either.  Patrick was far too interested in her mother.  He had the nerve to call her mother a ‘damaged female’ – and that was a direct quote.  He sniffed around her and seemed to think she’d be interested in a ‘fuck buddy’ arrangement. 
The idea was nauseating.

The doctors wanted to keep her mother in the hospital for at least a few days.  That was another thing the Alpha wouldn’t be pleased about.  By which she imagined he would actually be filled with murderous rage.  He didn’t like any of his pride being away for even a night.  He was very possessive and considered that all pride mates belonged to him.  Plus, he probably feared what would happen if any of them got a taste of life outside the pride.  But it wasn’t her mother’s fault.  It couldn’t be helped.  Her mother had a lot of health problems and had spent the last seventeen years in and out of hospitals, and visiting various healers.

Her mother’s family had been low down the rankings ever since her grandfather took his own life.  The rest of the pride considered it to be ‘shameful’.  Of course, there were a few whisperings that her grandfather had been dallying with the Alpha’s female at the time, and that his death wasn’t quite straightforward, but those kind of whisperings resulted in punishments.

Nobody wanted anything to do with her family after that, so her grandmother forced Simone’s mother, Karen, into mating a much older tiger shifter, who was fairly high up in the ranks.  Simone’s grandmother guilted her into it.  Karen wanted to leave the pride and strike out on her own.  But she was given the spiel about looking after family, yada, yada, yada, which led to a life full of misery from a selfish family and an uncaring mate.  But Karen, ever the doting mother, said it was worth it to have Simone.

When Simone turned six, her father had come home drunk and accidentally set the house on fire while Karen and Simone were sleeping.  Her mother managed to wake her and protected her as she got her out the house.  But Karen suffered severe burns that even her healing powers couldn’t fix.  Her dad died in the fire, and her mother’s body was so severely damaged that she could no longer shift.  It put her family right at the bottom of the rankings and meant that her mother, as a ‘damaged female’, was treated as little better than a slave to the rest of the pack – worse than the unmated females.  A few males had shown her mother interest over the years – given the lack of females in the pack, widowed females were usually snapped up – but the males were shamed by the idea of having a mate who couldn’t shift, so they left her be.

At least now with Simone being mated to the Alpha’s son, her mother could take it easy, and there was no more scrimping and saving to pay for her medical bills.  The Alpha was more than happy to foot the bill.  Shame he hadn’t cared about Karen for the thirteen years before that.

Simone just wished there was something better for her mother.  Karen was only forty-three years old.  She deserved a better life and Simone was determined that she was going to get it and… holy fuck!