This story is fictional, I'm sorry (actually I'm jelous) if it resembles your life in any way shape or form. Constructive criticism is welcome. If gay relationships offend you, then "How did I manage to start reading this story?" is a good question to be asking yourself. However you're still welcome to read it!
This story is owned solely by Gaco and may not be copied by any means by any unlicensed individuals, groups, or organizations.
Copyright 2020 Gaco. All Rights Reserved.
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Chapter 29
What we had expected to be a quick bite to eat in the kitchen rapidly escalated into a lavish pack meal in the dining room I had never seen put to use. Even David joined us at the table, which was large enough to sit ten people. Our guest looked around the room with wide eyes as he sat quietly at the opposite end of the table from Bryce. The pack was jubilant and extremely boisterous, grateful to have their alpha back home safe. I was ecstatic that my pack was happy once again. When we had thought Bryce was gone the pack truly had felt like a black hole of dread.
"Do you remember that time we made Zeke dress up as Little Red Riding Hood on Halloween and answer the door with John at his side as a wolf?" Justin howled with laughter as Zeke blushed scarlet.
"Oh man! So many kids started crying the second the door opened! It was amazing." John grinned and nearly fell out of his chair laughing.
It was a few minutes before everyone got their chuckles under control.
"So, David, what are you thinking of your first experience of a pack meal?" Bryce asked after the laughter calmed down.
"It's different than what I had expected, after my first experience with your people, with werewolves." David said awkwardly after a moment of thought. "I had expected everything to be violence and beatings and rank structure after I realized all of this was real."
"Your people too, now." I reminded patiently, remembering my own thought processes from less than two months before. "I was in a similar position to where you sit now just a few months ago. I had the benefit of a protector after I was bitten by Seth, but I too was dragged into this world with no choice or say in the matter. You'll have to come to terms with your new nature. It takes time."
The mood quickly took a less serious tone when Zeke asked about Christmas shopping, reminding us we were just a few days away from the holiday. Jackson, John, and Alexi volunteered to go to the mall with him later in the afternoon.
It was after nightfall when Bryce and I began to work on the two remaining shifters who had yet to wake. Not wanting to deal with the acid like effects of the silver laced blood once again, we used a very sharp knife to begin the poison drain, and gloves for cleanup. The process went much faster with the two of us able to take care of the process simultaneously on each patient.
Justin, having already went through the talk once with David, volunteered to explain the current situation to both of the very confused and wary shifters. Like David, and all of the men Seth had taken for his army, they were exceptionally muscled and fit. David had pitch black hair, tan skin, and striking cerulean blue eyes. Steven, however, appeared to be his polar opposite with platinum blond hair, fair skin, and striking green eyes. Our other new member was Andy, who had brown hair, and hazel eyes. All were well over six feet tall and heavily muscled.
After we were certain Justin had both of the newly awakened shifters well in hand Bryce and I retired to our bedroom, collapsing on the bed with exhaustion after the door snicked shut. I laid down on my side, exhausted from the constant use of my healing gift all day, and began to fall asleep. Just before the fog of unconsciousness took me I felt Bryce curl up behind me, pulling me tight against his body.
I awoke the next morning to an incessant shaking by Bryce.
"Wake up we have to go!" He said urgently.
My eyes popped open and I was instantly alert.
"What's wrong?" I asked, reaching my hand to the nightstand where I had a pistol stashed.
Bryce, who was standing next to me chuckled softly when he realized what I was doing.
"You won't need that, I hope." Bryce leaned down and kissed my forehead. "Get up, we need to get going."
"Bryce. It's..." I began, turning to look at the alarm clock next to my bed. "Eight AM. On Christmas Eve."
"Yep. So get up. We're going out!" He said cheerily before leaving the room with a wave.
I groaned loudly but got up and proceeded to shower and prepare to leave. When I arrived downstairs Bryce was waiting for me in the kitchen with a breakfast of pancakes, eggs, and bacon. My stomach grumbled in appreciation.
"What's the occasion?" I asked, sitting in front of a prepared plate on the kitchen island.
"Nothing special." He grinned as I began to eat, moaning in pleasure at the delicious feast he had prepared. "I just wanted to do something nice for the best mate in the world."
I grinned back at him, leaning into kiss his lips after he sat next to me, our legs touching beneath the lip of the countertop.
"One of these days I'll have to prepare a surprise for you." I said softly, after thinking of the previous months. "You've done so many little things for me and I've hardly had a chance to reciprocate."
"You being here with me, with our pack, is all I've ever wanted or needed." He smiled before returning to his food.
I squeezed his leg and we quickly ate until our plates were clean. A few minutes later we were on the freeway and headed north.
"So where are we headed?" I asked, eager to know what he had planned.
"I thought we would recreate our first trip." Bryce said with another beaming smile. "With a twist!"
Confused, I could only nod and peer out the window as Bryce drove.
Thirty minutes later the scenery changed as if a flip were switched. The dead grey winter landscape of leafless trees and brown grass quickly gave way to the sparkling white splendor of snow. I was glued to my window in wonder and awe. It felt as if we were on a different planet as we drove. The pristine, unblemished landscape of white on both sides of the freeway was such a foreign sight to someone who only got to see a flurry once every several years. As we continued further north and entered Tennessee the it was cold enough to actually have survived on the sides of the roads, where it had been scraped off to the side.
I finally looked back to Bryce for the first time in nearly half an hour when he pulled to a stop in downtown Chattanooga. My grin must have been contagious because the second I turned towards him his grew to blinding intensity.
"I had hoped you would enjoy the snow." He said cheerfully. "But I had not anticipated this reaction. It's like you've never seen it before!"
"It is definitely one of my few experiences seeing more than an inch or two!" I said excitedly, looking back to the small greenspace we had parked beside.
"You see more than a couple inches on a regular basis!" He with mock indignation and a silly smile. "But yeah, we don't get much back home."
Before he could say another word I jumped out of the car and went to run through the fluffy white snow, grabbing handfuls of it and throwing it into the air, laughing. Suddenly I was hit in the back of the head with a cold wet blob, and gasped in shock. I turned to see Bryce leaning down and forming another snowball. I quickly leaned down grabbing more snow and creating one of my own, and threw it back at him. He surprised me by intercepting my snowball with his own, causing them to plop down onto the ground where they met. The war had begun and we played and laughed like children in the snow for nearly an hour.
I had not realized it until we stopped that my fingers and hands were as cold as ice. I shoved them into my jacket pockets and shivered slightly as we headed for the sidewalk. Bryce put his arm around me and directed us towards a café down the street.
"My hands are freezing!" I shivered out.
"Yeah..." Bryce said after a thought. "I should have suggested we bring gloves. Hopefully we can find some coffee or hot cocoa to warm up."
Fortunately the café was open, though the sign on the door said they had reduced hours for Christmas Eve. We quickly warmed up just as Bryce had suggested and were back out on the street once again within fifteen minutes, exploring the cheerily decorated downtown area. We headed towards the riverfront, hand in hand and talking happily, when I caught a familiar scent on the wind which was blowing into our backs.
"You smell him?" I asked Bryce curiously over our mental link.
"Yep. He's been there for a few minutes now." Bryce responded immediately.
"Let's go through there." I sent with a playful smirk in Bryce's direction, indicating with a nod of my head towards the tunnel in front of us. "You get ahead of me a little way."
Bryce laughed and quickly took off at a jog through the empty tunnel, I casually kept my pace steady, waiting for our guest to make himself known. The moment Bryce had turned the corner past the tunnel I could hear the impossibly loud footsteps of the man running full tilt behind me. I waited until the last second to dodge, using his own weight and momentum to throw him to the ground onto his back. His breath left him in a loud woosh and he wheezed and coughed as he attempted to catch his breath.
"You didn't even make it fun!" I mocked incredulously as I looked down at the shifter before me. "You could have at least had a modicum of stealth."
I kicked lightly at his leg after he did not rise for a few moments. The second my foot touched him he attempted to drag me down to the ground. Instead of allowing myself to be pulled down, I shifted my weight to the leg he had grabbed, yanking myself free and slammed my foot down onto his hand, the cracking of bones audible to my ears. His scream echoed loudly in the tunnel. I looked up to find Bryce walking back to us as if he were out for a quiet stroll.
"Look who I found!" I said with a grin, as if we didn't already know he had been following us.
He struggled to use his left hand to reach behind his back for something.
"That's a really bad idea." I said boredly, focusing on the man who had begun to bring his hand back out with something in his grip.
His clothes began to smoke and just as his hand came back out into the open he began to scream again and dropped the gun he had begun to pull. Bryce growled when he saw the weapon, but his eyes were wide in surprise. This was the first time he had seen me use this particular gift. Just as I was considering turning up the heat and turning him to ash Bryce shook me from my anger with a single word.
"Mate?" He asked worriedly, and I realized that he must have been speaking for a few moments.
I stepped back from the shifter we had met on our last visit to Chattanooga, the one who had accosted me in the restaurant bathroom. He now looked disheveled and frantic, but did not move from where he lay on the cold concrete of the tunnel floor. I looked to Bryce who was studying me.
"What did you say, love?" I said, taking his hand in my own.
"I asked if you were going to kill him." Bryce responded.
"I may have, had you not gotten my attention. I could do it with a thought. Did it with a thought, during the battle at the warehouse." I said, thinking back to how easy it would have been to just destroy the entire building in an instant had our pack not been with me.
"I have a better idea." Bryce said, putting a boot on the mans chest and rifling through his pockets, finding his wallet and phone.
"Who is your Alpha?" Bryce asked, golden glowing eyes staring down into the eyes of the now quaking shifter.
"Pa-Patrick Albertson." The man stammered.
Bryce touched the man's phone, activating the screen, then turned it to face him, using the recognition feature to unlock the phone. Bryce grinned and shook his head at the simplicity. A moment later Bryce was clicking buttons and a ring came out over the speakerphone.
"Louis?" A gruff voice asked. "Where the hell are you? You were supposed to be back an hour ago."
"He's here." Bryce said, grinding his boot into the man's chest when he opened his mouth to speak. "This is the second time a member of your pack has accosted my mate, an Alpha in his own right, as I am, in as many months."
A muffled swear came across the speaker and Louis looked decidedly uncomfortable.
"And where did this act take place, Alpha...?" The main trailed off.
"Bryce. From Atlanta." Bryce responded.
"The first time was in a restaurant downtown, this time it was in a tunnel. My mate came very close to killing your wolf this time." Bryce said matter-of-factly. "I'm starting to think it was a mistake letting him live after the first time."
"I've heard of your pack, and you, Alpha Bryce." Alpha Patrick said slowly. "Could we meet to discuss this situation? I don't want bad blood between our packs."
"It wouldn't last long." I said growing slightly aggravated that our date had been interrupted.
"That was my mate." Bryce said with a slight glare which turned into a smile a second later. "He did just eliminate a rival pack of nearly thirty wolves with very little help, however, so he's not wrong."
"That's... Interesting." Alpha Patrick said over the line, sounding skeptical. "I can be downtown in fifteen minutes. Louis, try not to end up dead before I arrive."
Before we could respond he had already hung up.
"Guess I went a little heavy on the intimidation." Bryce groused with a chuckle, putting Louis' phone into his own jacket pocket.
Bryce backed up, taking is boot off of Louis. As he began to rise I glared at the suddenly skittish man.
"You run, you die." I growled. "You fight or resist, you die."
"You should probably just do exactly what we say." Bryce said softly after taking a moment to look me over.
We found a nearby bench to wait and all sat down. Less than fifteen minutes later a call came in over Louis' phone.
"Yes?" Bryce answered with the phone to his ear.
"We'll meet you there." He said after a moment before tossing Louis his phone back and standing.
We met Alpha Patrick at a tavern which was fortunately still open. I slid into the booth across from the man Louis had indicated we were here to meet. Bryce followed, pushing his body up against mine when we were seated. The man across from us sniffed for a moment and finally acknowledged Louis, who was standing at the end of the table.
"Go sit at the bar." He dismissed the man with a flick of his wrist.
"I want to apologize to both of you for the actions of my packmate." Alpha Patrick said, looking us both in the eye for a moment. "After catching your scent, I can imagine what was going through his mind. I'm sorry I haven't yet taught him better control or respect."
Bryce and I nodded. A waitress came to our table and we ordered drinks and lunch after it was offered by Patrick. By the time our meal had finished we had become friendly, all exchanging numbers. We found that we had much in common with his pack. While he had moved his own pack to a much smaller city, they still lived in a much more densely populated area than most shifters.
"We'll have to have you back for a visit when we have more time." Patrick said, standing after he had paid the bill. "I need to get back home and finish preparations for tonight and tomorrow. My pack has gone all out this year for the holidays."
"We should probably be heading home as well." Bryce said after a moment. "Give us a call if you need anything. While our meeting wasn't under the best circumstances, I'm glad we got to know one another."
Bryce and I shook hands with Patrick and he went to the bar to collect Louis after we said farewell.
The ride home passed quickly as I had fallen asleep quickly in the warmth of the car's heater. When we arrived, Bryce roused me with a soft shake and kissed my lips gently before coming around and opening my door.
"Let's see what the guys are up to." He said as we headed inside.
We found the rest of our pack, including our three new guests, in the entertainment room laughing and watching a movie. After greeting each of them, room was made for us on the couch, though it was a tight fit as Zeke and Justin stayed seated at both ends. Rather than squeeze four of us into a couch meant for three I climbed into Bryce's lap and leaned back against his chest. I wiggled contently in his arms with a happy sigh.
For the first time in my life I had a family around me who celebrated Christmas and I could feel the happiness and joy coming from each and every one of them. I made eye contact with each and every person in the room, giving them all a nod in thanks for their contributions to making our pack whole and hale.
"Merry Christmas, guys." I said before leaning my head back onto Bryce's shoulder, nose at his neck and breathing in his scent.
I drifted off to sleep more happy and content than I had ever been in my life. I knew that this was where I belonged. This pack was what made me whole.
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