Most wolves would never find their fated mate. The norm in our world was to meet someone you were compatible with and have a mating ceremony with them. Some wolves didn’t even believe fated mates were real. Unfortunately, I had first-hand experience with them. Which was why I’d really rather have been doing just about anything else. But Ellie had just come in here asking me to research them, so here I was.
She’d been living here for about a month, ever since everything that happened after the solstice party.
Everything had been going great that night until Peyton, a member of our pack who had an infatuation with my brother, got Ellie alone and filled her head with nonsense. Her and Abraham had another one of their fights, and it ended with Ellie deciding to run back home to Raleigh. The problem was, she hadn’t had her car here in Asheville. The bigger problem was she’d gotten a ride from my cousin, Calvin.
According to her, everything had been fine at first. He’d driven her home and left her at her doorstep with no issues. It wasn’t until he came back later that night that she knew something was wrong. She’d just figured out he’d been the one who’d killed all those women and attacked her in the woods and when the pretenses were gone, so was Calvin’s civility.
Ellie fought for her life in that little apartment of hers, but Calvin was an enforcer. He had brawn and experience on his side, so it wasn’t a fair fight. Once he’d subdued her, he dragged her back to his father’s pack lands in Charlotte where he apparently had been keeping all the other women he’d killed.
It was there that Abraham found her, barely conscious and at the mercy of Calvin’s insanity. Abraham tried to reason with him, tried to subdue him, but it was no use. Calvin chose death over losing Ellie to Abraham.
It was still so hard to swallow, but I think after almost losing her that night, we were all happy to have her close.
It also meant Abey was happy all the time and not sick from missing her. A side effect of being fated was you couldn’t be without the other person for long. Both Abraham and Ellie suffered a lot while they tried to make a long-distance relationship work. We were all thankful that was behind them.
Most importantly, it meant Wyatt didn’t have to guard Ellie anymore and he got to stay in Asheville with me. Even thinking about those weeks I’d had to spend without him made me sad, so I stopped that train of thought.
It had been great having Ellie around lately and it seemed she fit in here at the lodge seamlessly. She’d also been a huge help for me and the environmental agency I was trying to get off the ground. I’d been getting her help for months, but with her living out here, I’d begun to wonder if I could persuade her to join my organization in a more permanent way. We desperately needed a good lawyer, and Ellie was a great one. She’d be a terrific asset.
But Ellie wasn’t the only new resident of the lodge.
Will, the original werewolf, had been staying here since the night of the solstice party. I don’t think anyone really knew what he was doing here. I’m not sure he knew what he was doing here, but he was.
He’d showed up in the middle of the solstice party unexpected and unannounced. With him came this unexplainable electric current that affected every wolf in that clearing. He’d said it was the magic flowing in his veins we were feeling. Magic that had come from a witch at his request.
Thousands of years ago, he’d lost his wife to an influential warrior in his village. Being just a simple shepherd, he’d begged this witch to make him powerful enough to get her back. That’s when the witch infused the magic into his body, making him into a giant, formidable wolf.
He’d been able to get his wife back, but not without consequences. She’d been bitten in the fight with the warrior and neither of them knew the ramifications of that until a few weeks later. She was compelled, like we all were, to shift with the full moon, but something went wrong. Her body wasn’t strong enough to make it through the change and she died.
Legends say that he went crazy with grief. That he’d shifted back into a wolf and bitten any villager he came across before he disappeared into the woods. They say he spent centuries as a wolf without shifting back to his human form.
All of this was legend though. No one I’ve ever known could confirm where werewolves came from or how we came to be. Having Will, the original werewolf, show up at our doorstep was as incredible as it was unbelievable. I knew there had to be so much we could learn from him and I’d planned to pick his brain the first chance I got.
Maybe I should ask him about fated mates. If there was anyone who knew about werewolves, it would be him, the first one out of all of us, but maybe that would be insensitive. The legends surrounding fated mates said they were created because of him. Because he’d lost his wife to the shift and he’d never been the same since.
Yeah, maybe asking him was a bad idea.
“Callie?”
I turned to find Bea at my door and gave her a warm smile. I hadn’t seen much of her in the past month and it’d been on my list to find out why, but I’d been too busy.
My environmental practice was so close to getting off the ground, I could taste it. Even now, Abey had men renovating
