Lost Lycan's Mate

The wolf within me clawed at my insides, trying to escape and run after the lycan.

My mate.

My father’s back was still toward me as he watched where the lycans had disappeared. “Take her back, Coda. I’ll make sure they leave.”

Coda relaxed his grip on my wrists. He somehow knew I was calmer as I pushed my wolf back to wherever she had been hiding for the last ten years.

The beta scooped me up with one hand under my knees and the other around my back.

“Come on, kid. I’ll take you home and we can talk there.”

I nodded numbly in response, too overwhelmed by today’s events to speak. I felt the eyes of my pack members follow me as Coda took me east, back toward the house.

They were all as shocked as I was to learn that I had a wolf and that it had been hidden away for all these years. Some of the stares were probably because my supposed mate was a lycan.

As for me, I wasn’t sure what I was more upset about.

When we arrived at my house, Coda set me down on the bathroom counter and ran a bath for me. “You smell like that lycan,” was his only explanation. Again, I nodded in response.

He stripped me out of my shorts and underwear because I was too numb, too exhausted, to think.

He pulled a pair of scissors from the drawer and cut away my bandages before picking me up and setting me in the water.

He washed my hair, my neck, and my shoulders and handed me the soap so I could wash the more intimate parts of myself.

Werewolves got over modesty quickly. Nudity was a part of our culture, since shifting in and out of our wolf skins was necessary. Coda had become like an older brother to me anyway, so I didn’t care.

He wrapped me in a towel and handed me a pair of sweatpants and some underwear. He told me to come down to the kitchen when I was ready and he would re-bandage my shoulder.

I took my time wringing out my hair and sliding on the clothes I had been given. I left my top half bare because I would need to take off whatever shirt I put on so Coda could wrap my shoulder.

I trudged down the stairs and hopped onto the counter, where Coda had pulled out the gauze and tape.

He wound the gauze around my shoulder, across my chest, under my arm, and back down my shoulder and around again and again until he was satisfied.

I jumped down and went to the couch, where I could look out the window and see my father come home.

Coda wrapped me up in a blanket cocoon before going back upstairs.

I didn’t know what he was doing or what he was getting. I just stared out the window waiting for my father to come into view. Coda came back downstairs with a pair of socks, a blow dryer, and a brush.

He grabbed my legs from under the blanket and pulled on the fuzzy socks before turning me so my back faced him. He plugged in the blow dryer to dry my hair properly, brushing it as he went.

“You are going to get sick, Cleo. You should know better than to leave your hair wet this far into autumn.”

I didn’t say anything in response.

Running around in a pair of shorts with only a white bandage half covering my chest in the middle of the night probably hadn’t helped either, but I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

I didn’t care about a cold at this point anyway.

Nothing mattered anymore.

“What you are feeling right now is rejection,” Coda told me, brushing the underside of my hair, blow-drying it as he went.

“He didn’t reject me,” I said robotically, void of any feeling. “He said he was coming back for me.”

Coda exhaled a soft breath. “But he walked away from you, Cleo. Your roots are treating it like a rejection. You are depressed right now. It’s normal.”

“I don’t care if he rejected me, I don’t care if he’s my mate. I don’t care about him at all. I don’t even know him.”

Coda clicked the dryer off and brushed through my brown hair several more times. “I know you don’t care, Cleo. But your primal instincts do. The wolfish part of you cares.”

He set the brush down and got up to go back into the kitchen.

“I thought I would be happy to find out I had a wolf, but I’m not,” I told him monotonously.

I heard him digging through the pantry as he called, “It’s all just bad timing, Cleo. All of this at once is poor timing.

“Everything that’s happened today would take a few days to process, but all at once—it’s not surprising it’s overwhelming.” He closed the pantry and pulled the lid off a can.

I heard the slosh as he dumped whatever it was into a bowl before putting it in the microwave.

“You don’t seem too surprised about me having a wolf. Even I thought I would never get one.”

I stared into the night before me where snowflakes had begun to fall. They melted when they hit the ground.

Now Coda was digging out the tea pot from a cabinet where it had been buried for years. He filled it with water from the tap.

“To be honest, kid, I don’t think I would have been surprised either way.

“You are too strong for a human, and you have too much alpha in you, but your wolf took an abnormally long time to come out. So if it never had, I wouldn’t have thought much of it anyway.”

The ticking sound of the gas burner being lit came next.

“I thought the lycans were all dead.” I moved past my wolf to confront the other event of today.

“A lot of people believe that. Your father killed nearly all that was left of them after they murdered his mate. But he knew that the lycans would never become fully extinct.

“They are needed to keep the balance. I suspect what you saw today was the last of them.”

“Who is he?” The snowflakes outside started descending more rapidly, the beginnings of a storm.

“His name is Hakota Blackwaters. He’s the alpha of the lycans, which you probably already pieced together.”

“Why does he want me so bad?”

The microwave beeped as whatever was inside it finished cooking. I heard the rattling of the silverware drawer and soon Coda walked around the couch with a bowl of soup in his hands.

He handed it to me and sat on the reclining chair next to the couch where I was huddled in the corner.

“Lycans are different than werewolves.

“Mates for werewolves are just the best genetic match for strong pups with desirable traits. The pull to mate is pure instinct to reproduce, nothing more, which is why fast marking and mating is common.

“Most females encounter more than one mate. The males fight and the victor gets the female. The loser usually finds another possible candidate. Once marked and mated, they’re paired for life.”

“But sometimes the females are already mated and marked and still find another mate,” I interjected.

“Yes, it happens. When it does, it’s only because the new male is stronger than the previous one. If a challenge is issued, the previous bond between the already-mated male and female is annulled.

“Then the males can fight each other. But normally they don’t, because the female is already happy with their mate.”

“Like you,” I murmured, remembering three years ago when he had told me the story of his mate.

“Like me,” he affirmed.

I took a spoonful of the chicken noodle soup he had made me.

“What’s different about the lycans, then?”

“Lycans have mates that are, in all senses, their other half. Unlike werewolves, they only find one mate. They kill anyone in their way because they only have one chance.

“It’s their gift and their curse. The blood of their mate heals them, even of our Hunter’s venom. That’s why he wanted you, Cleo. You’re his only chance, daughter of a Hunter or not.”

“If I’m so special to him, why wait three years?”

I kept my eyes on the snow outside, which was escalating quickly.

“I don’t know,” Coda replied softly. The whistling of the teapot saved him from further explanation. While he brewed my tea, I finished the soup he had given me.

He swapped the cup for the bowl. He had made me lemon and ginger tea, and though I hated it, I knew it would soothe me. I nursed the cup, clenching my jaw as my thoughts wandered.

Coda caught my angry action.

“Try not to bite your father’s head off when he comes back, Cleo. I know he threatened your mate, but he was only trying to protect you.”

I turned to face the beta, dragging my attention away from the snow flurry outside.

“I’m not mad because of that, Coda. I’m furious that my wolf couldn’t care less about my own life.

“That nearly dying wasn’t enough for it to come out, but a mere threat to my mate has it spiraling out of control trying to jump from my skin.

“I growled at my father, Coda. I challenged him for a stranger.”

“It couldn’t be helped, pup. Your wolf came on too quickly. You had no chance of controlling it. I’m impressed you didn’t get more aggressive.”

I wrapped the blanket more tightly around myself, but the cold air penetrated my barricade through the opening left by my arms.

“It’s my fault you were attacked today. I shouldn’t have left you alone. I’m sorry for that, Cleo. I would never intentionally put you in danger.” Coda was apologizing to me for the first time ever.

I shook my head.

“Don’t worry about it, Coda, I heard Grey chewing you out enough for it already. You thought the threat was elsewhere, and you went to eliminate it. Don’t apologize for protecting the pack.”

His gaze bored into mine. “You are a part of this pack too, Cleo. I should have protected you better.

“If we hadn’t gotten there when we had, you could have been torn to pieces or snatched away by Hakota.”

“But I wasn’t, and it’s over and done with now.” He was silent, and I knew he was still angry at himself.

“If you really want to make it up to me, Coda, let me take the initiation. Take me on as your real apprentice and teach me what it means to be a wolf.”

“You’ve been my real apprentice this whole time,” he told me, but I shook my head.

I sipped my tea, turning my attention back to the window where a storm of white was whirling around in the porch lights. “You were appeasing me.”

A dark figure emerged from the snow, coming closer to the house, and soon the porch light illuminated my father.

“If your father allows it, I will do it,” Coda replied, his attention also focused on the alpha plowing through the snowstorm.

The door banged open, and gusts of snow blew inside the house.

My father slammed it shut behind him, and his claws, which were still extended, gouged deep lines in the door as it flew from his hand. He stormed past us without a word or a glance.

We heard the sounds of drawers opening and slamming and then the loud crash of objects being flung off a desk in my father’s rage.

Coda and I said nothing to each other as my father stomped back into the room and threw a set of leather-bound books on the coffee table before me.

“We need to talk.”