Temptation (Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow) (7 page)

I loved it and considered the Big House my home as I had lived with the Alpha and his wife since the age of twelve, soon after my father died. The house was enormous with the front of the house facing the mountains. The view was spectacular from the main “great room” with its floor to ceiling windows.

Tonight, the house was lit up like a beacon, against the darkness. I could see cars lining the driveway all the way up to the end of the road. It must be a full pack meeting with all Weres required to be in attendance.

Human spouses and children that lived on the acreage were considered to be under our protection and therefore were not invited to attend pack meetings because they typically did not have the physical strength or resources to contend with or resolve issues that pertained to the protection of the pack.

Therefore, they had to wait until their mates returned home to hear of the latest threat to the pack.

The Big house’s outbuildings consisted of two smaller guest houses, a four-car garage and a horse stable. The house had originally been built many years ago to house the pack’s third Alpha and his family but it was so big that, over the years, we starting using it for pack meetings, weddings or for any large pack gathering we might have had.

The house was always teeming with life and the Alpha’s wife always kept everyone who walked through the door stuffed full of her cookies, breads and pies. If you were ever feeling lonely or bored, you could always head on over to the Alpha’s house.

Chances were, you wouldn’t be the only one who’d come to pay a visit.

I wondered what the Alpha wanted to talk to the pack about? I ran over the conversation I’d had with him earlier in the day when he’d called me at work to tell me about a young, newly turned male that would be joining the pack and arriving early tomorrow morning.

The Alpha wanted me to pick the new Were up at the train station and then bring him up to the training camp.

It certainly seemed that he was turning over more and more of his former duties to me and expecting more and more out of me, while expanding my role as Beta as showing new recruits around and taking them into the wilderness for their month long crash course in “How to be a Were 101” had always been the Alpha’s job.

But he was slowly making it mine.

New Weres were unpredictable at best and were not permitted to live within the pack until they had successfully made contact with their wolf, phased at least once and been evaluated for their response to anger.

Those who still had difficulty with any of those three criteria were required to stay at the training camp until it was resolved.

When all was said and done, this translated into at least a month long stay away from the pack for me.

I wasn’t looking forward to taking this new Were into the woods. I found that as Aspen got older, I found it harder and harder to leave her. It didn’t seem to bother me as much, even just a year ago, but the thought of leaving her now had my stomach tied up in knots.

The longest I’d ever had to keep a new Were with me at the training camp was three months. That was Caver, the little shit.

He was a tough nut to crack. He was wild and completely out of control as a human teenager but as an eighteen year old Were, he was a hundred times worse and was only the third Were that I had ever brought up to the training camp by myself. At the time, I was worried that we might have to stay a fourth month but he finally came around in the end.

Thank god because I was ready to beat him into submission.

The safety of the pack, as a whole, had always been always my first concern when dealing with new recruits. It was hazardous to have an uncontrolled Were running around the acreage. It wasn’t safe for our pack and it wasn’t safe for the humans who lived in Spruce Hollow either.

New Weres were too fast; they were very strong and had no impulse control. And they were stupid too.

Let me rephrase that. New Weres were unbelievably stupid and I could say that because I’d been there at one time too. I suppose it was because they made rash decisions supported by their baser emotions.

I didn’t worry about it too much while we were out in the woods though, because I was always faster and stronger than any of them. I could always catch them, if need be, and drag them back to the training camp with me anytime they tried to take off but here on the acreage was another issue entirely.

There were too many places for them to hide on the acreage and it was easier for them to escape towards Spruce Hollow or the highway and then make their way towards even larger concentrations of humans.

The new female Weres were typically the easiest to deal with, by far. They normally weren’t as aggressive as the males and were generally smaller in size too. Of course, small in size sometimes equaled agile and quick too.

New Weres needed to be taught everything, from the ground up. Most were terrified at first.

Or angry.

Those seemed to be the two most common emotions for first timers. My job was to take them deep into the woods until I got them straightened around. It usually wasn’t difficult once they learned how to get a handle on their newfound strength, speed and heightened senses.

The heightened senses were, by far, the hardest skill for a new Were to master. The problem was that they felt overwhelmed by everything around them.

Imagine waking up one day, to a horrible cacophony of intense sight, sounds and smells. It was pretty awful and some newbies went a little crazy until I taught them how to tone it down.

But I never worried much about it. Male, female, young, old, it didn’t matter. I could handle them all and I’m sure this new male was no exception and I’d be back in Spruce Hollow within a month.

That was my expectation, at least.

The Alpha hadn’t said anything, but I knew what he was doing by passing these tasks onto me.

He was grooming me to take over for him.

Slade had been Alpha when my grandfather was a boy and I think he was finally tired and ready to submit to a younger Were.

He had served our Pack well over the years and I loved him like a father. He had taken me in as an unruly prepubescent teen, after my father died and my human mother had run off and left the acreage.

She couldn’t accept living out the rest of her life in Spruce Hollow without my father. He was the only thing that kept her here, in my opinion.

Never mind that she had a son who still needed her around.

But that was a long time ago now and even though I’d never spoken to her once since the day she’d left, I’d long since forgiven my mother and moved on with my life.

However, my mother abandoning me had left me with a hefty dose of mistrust for women though. I kind of regarded them like ticking time bombs, just waiting for them to explode and wreak havoc on everything in their path.

Truth is, I didn’t think my mother ever really liked living within the confines of the pack because Spruce Hollow was pretty secluded and cut off from the rest of the world. The closest city was almost three hours away.

For a human that type of life might not sound great but for a Were, it was ideal.

                 ***

A
rriving at the Big house first, I sat at the bottom of the stone steps leading up to the front entryway.

I could hear my brothers off in the distance, jockeying for position. They would be here soon.

I sniffed the air and inhaled the familiar scents of my wolf pack members. I could sense that most of the others had arrived before us and were already inside waiting for us to arrive.

The Alpha must have sensed my arrival too, as he opened the door shortly after I sat down on the front steps and looked at me quizzically.

“Where are the others?” he said in his deep, easy drawl. 

“They’re coming,” I looked up at him and grinned. 

“Left them behind in the dust did you?” 

“Yep.” 

“Caver is going to be pretty upset, as you well know. He’s got a hot head that boy. I worry about him,” he said thoughtfully.

“Don’t worry, I’ll look out for him,” I said as I looked out towards the woods. 

“I know you will son. Roan?” 

“Hm?” 

“You’re a good man and a strong leader. Don’t ever forget that.” 

“Thank you Alpha,” I said as I smiled off into the darkness.

I had so much respect and admiration for this man. He had taken me in when I had no one else and I would always be loyal to him.

“Come inside after you’re done gloating. We’ll be in the downstairs meeting area. Everyone else has arrived already. We have much to talk about.” 

“Will do.”

I heard Griff and Caver burst out of the woods before I saw them. They were neck and neck and running like their tails were on fire. I knew whoever got here first between the two of them would be ribbing the other for at least the next week.

For a second, I almost hoped it was Caver, just to spare me having to listen to him all week at work if he lost. Caver and Griff both worked for me, at my auto body repair shop. My Dad had been a mechanic and had opened Sabre’s Auto body back when he had first settled in Spruce Hollow, well before I was born.

When he died, he left the shop to me in his will, but I was only a kid at the time. So, the building was held in trust for me until I was old enough to decide what I wanted to do with it. There was never any doubt in my mind and as soon as I turned nineteen and was considered an adult, I set up the shop again, just as my father had done.

There was no way I’d let his dream die.

My parents had made an odd pair and it was almost laughable that my father had managed to woo my beautiful, delicate, French blooded mother in the first place and then drag her back here to the seclusion of Spruce Hollow. My mother had looked like she belonged in a salon, getting a pedicure, while reading a high fashion, magazine.

They met one day, during a visit to the big city. My father had gone with several unmated Weres for a long weekend of drinking and debauchery and apparently he had caught sight of my mother as he and the other guys were in the hotel parking lot, getting into my Dad’s truck.

I guess he saw her on the sidewalk, walking by and that was it. My dad told me something about her had completely bowled him over and that he just had to know her. He said his senses were humming with the scent and sight of her.

“My father jumped over the parking barrier and followed her for six blocks, just watching her and committing her delectable scent to memory so he would then be able to find her again, anywhere in the city, but he didn’t need to because he physically followed her all the way back to her apartment building.

My dad stalked her for days, following her around, learning about her and her habits. He knew she was human and human/Were mate pairings were inherently difficult in the beginning stages because the human doesn’t feel the connection to the extent that the Were does.

Humans tended to develop their feelings over time, whereas Weres would be on fire with lust and longing for their mate.

It was overwhelming for the human and difficult to control for the Were.

Eventually, my dad got fed up of waiting around and managed to bump into my mother “by accident” as she was carrying groceries home in the rain one day. He zipped right in front of her on the sidewalk. She didn’t even have time to see him and she crashed right into him, sending groceries flying everywhere.

My father, ever the gallant hero (snicker) accepted her repeated apologies of “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even see you there. Are you sure you’re okay?” and helped her pick up all the groceries and walked her back to her apartment. When they got there, she invited him in to dry off and the rest is history. They were married within six months and I arrived almost 9 months to the day later.”

I had a lot of great memories of my dad but my most favorite
ones were of the times we used to spend together at the auto body shop.

I remembered going to work with my father from the time I was a little kid. He would wake me up early in the morning, his baritone voice booming as he came into my bedroom.

“Roaney Baloney, do you want to come to work with me today?” he’d say and I would jump off my bed and launch myself at him and whoop out an enthusiastic “Yes!! Can we go right now?”

Then he’d laugh and sling me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carry me downstairs to eat breakfast with him.

I loved the auto body shop; it was more than the business I now owned. It was a tangible piece of my father and the only physical part of him that I had left.

From the pungent smells of gas and oil to the touch of cold, hard steel, my father was present everywhere in the shop and had taught me everything I knew about cars.

I could change out tie rod ends by myself by the time I was ten years old.

Thinking about my father was like picking at a bloody scab. I missed him every single day since the day he’d died. I thought the sun rose and set on him when I was a kid.

I still did. He was an honorable man and a wonderful father.

When he died in a car accident, I was only twelve years old and had just come into my wolf form. I lacked proper emotional discipline and was overwhelmed by the changes in my body because twelve years old is much too young to have your Were gene activate.

But my father was a Were, as was my grandfather and great grandfather. The closer together the affected generations were, the younger you went through the transformation and after my dad was taken away from me so suddenly, I became one poorly controlled, angry young werewolf.

I picked fights with older, bigger Weres and frequently got my ass handed back to me but I never backed down.

Not once.

I would go home, bloodied and bruised from fighting and my mother would scream at me and give me hell. Then, I would run away from home and vandalize pack property to appease the rage boiling inside me.

I hung out with the older teenage Weres, since there was no one my own age in the pack that understood what it was to be a werewolf. I got into a lot of trouble with the older Weres too. A typical weekend with them always involved drinking, smoking dope and having sex with older girls from the pack or in town.