A note to readers: This series follows Finding Home, so it's recommended to read that series first. Finding Home was written completely in advance of posting. I don't think I'm done with the DeLanes, and I have a lot of ideas for the pack. I'm going to try writing in real-time this time around, so the stories will come much slower than before. I'm going to try to make the chapters longer, but as you know by now, I usually prefer shorter. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
I'm the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.
Jackson ran his large rough hand through the sleeping women's brown hair.
Our mate.
Her back rose and fell with each breath as she slept soundly on top of him, the sunlight dancing atop her naked curves. The couple remained inside the mating circle though the ceremony had ended the night before.
From his experience watching other Turnings, Jackson expected Lucy would stay asleep for another day or two. Her body was in the middle of drastic change. According to legend, the longer the sleep, the stronger the wolf.
Jackson wrapped his arms tightly around the sleeping woman and managed to pull himself up into a sitting then standing position. Lucy stirred briefly at the movement but quickly settled back to sleep. Jackson looked down at his mate once more.
So goddamn beautiful.
Her face hadn't even begun to change yet, and she was already devastatingly gorgeous. To accommodate the change in bone structure, Turned wolves experienced a change in facial features in their human form. It just so happened that the change generally made Turned wolves more attractive than they had been as humans, but Jackson couldn't imagine how Lucy could ever be more beautiful.
And that body!
For the life of him, Jackson would never understand her constant self-criticism. She had curves in all the right places and knew how to use them. He forced down his growing arousal.
She needs us now.
He placed a chaste kiss on her lips before carrying her back to the estate house.
The place was a madhouse. Although it was fairly normal for the Alpha's home to be a centralized pack hangout, the mating ceremony had brought quite a few out-of-towners. Jackson tried to focus on taking Lucy to their bedroom, and not the fact that so many wolves were near to his mate while she was in such a vulnerable position.
He growled lowly at many of the unmated males as he hurried into the house and up the stairs. Jackson
knew
none of his packmates would dare to threaten his new mate, but his wolf was on high alert.
Mine!
Lucky for them, the other wolves understood Jackson's alarm and gave him a clear path up the to bedroom. No one even dared to look at the Alpha in his current state.
Jackson ran inside his bedroom and kicked the door closed behind him. He laid Lucy down on the large bed and gently positioned himself behind her. He heard the quiet clanging of dishes as someone set a tray of food outside of his door. He could smell the slight char on the outside of the steak, the warm luscious butter melting atop the earthy potatoes, the sweet sour of the wine.
A distant cousin of Jackson's was Alpha of one of the French packs. That pack had had a vineyard and winery and Jackson stocked up quite a bit during a Council meeting a few years ago. It took a lot to make a werewolf drunk, but the complex flavors of some wines or other alcoholic drinks were a delight to a werewolf's heightened senses.
Jackson was hungry.
Hell, I'm always hungry.
But his wolf refused to leave his mate. Jackson could feel his inner beast growl at his human form for even thinking of getting out of the bed. Jackson wrapped Lucy in his arms and tucked his head close to hers on the pillow.
He inhaled deeply.
Mine.
***
Jackson stared at Lucy, deep in thought.
She's been asleep for over 4 days now...
The story of their mating had traveled well beyond Pine Creek by now. Jackson had been fielding calls from Alphas near and far, domestic and abroad. It had been quite some time since a sitting Alpha had had a mating ceremony. Most of the others had mated long before ascending to the Alpha position. Add to that the fact that his mate was a human... well, the packs were in a frenzy for more information about the situation.
It was actually quite a fortuitous turn of events- Jackson had been meaning to rekindle some of the DeLane pack's more dormant alliances and possibly invite some new.
And now that his mate had been asleep for longer than any Turned wolf in recent memory, it seemed like every pack was anxious to see what the new addition would mean for the DeLane pack's standing in the werewolf community.
Jackson himself was still working on wrapping his head around the situation. Of course, he'd known about mates since he was a pup. But after spending almost two centuries on this earth without a mate, Jackson had started to lose hope in his own future. In fact he'd even grown a fair amount of thinly-veiled disdain for mated pairs, even those in his own pack. The DeLane Alpha had looked down upon those more concerned with sex and passion than the livelihood of the pack. Those who would abandon their posts to attend to a lonely mate. T
hose who went mad and lost all sense of reason after losing their mate...
Jackson shook the thought away. Those that lacked such self-control that they would stop and mark their mate at first scent, no matter what was happening around them.
To be fair, that last one is still very much frowned upon.
Jackson almost had to laugh at his former position now. It's a wonder Luna hadn't cursed him for all eternity for how condescending he had been to mated pairs. He had thought of them as
weak.
The Alpha wolf inside of him snarled at the implication that he himself was now weak for finding Lucy. If anything, now he felt stronger.
The moment he had smelled her, Jackson had known what she was to him. Through all of the smog and filth of the city, her scent had hit him like a ton of bricks. She was crisp and clean. Fresh linen and citrus. Floral.
