Her chosen mate (The change series 2)

Chapter 10: Losing part of me

Natasha

I was expecting Kai to completely blank me, but although he was less upbeat, he still said good morning to me.

“Morning,” I mumbled.

“You want some breakfast?”

“No, I’m not that hungry.”

“You need to eat, Natasha.”

I shrugged.

“You know it’s important, I’ll bring you some breakfast up.” He pulled his t-shirt on and went out to find something.

When he returned I had to force myself to eat the fruit salad, cereal, cooked breakfasts and pancakes, yep, werewolves had to eat a lot.

Charlie knocked on a few hours later, we could smell him before we even saw him. Kai let him in, and I ran over and hugged him. “Charlie!” I grinned.

I’d try and do what Amber said, I didn’t want to be too obvious about it though and this wasn’t an unusual greeting for me, so it wasn’t that that suspicious.

“Hey sweetheart,” he grinned and grabbed me up into a hug like I weighed nothing.

“Are you staying?” I asked.

“Nope, just dropping your stuff off, I’m not allowed to investigate, apparently I don’t listen to the rules well enough.” He rolled his eyes.

Grinning, I kissed his cheek and he murmured, “you know, you could always kiss me on the lips.”

I was going to lightly give a chaste kiss, but Kai pulled me away from him. “Ok, enough greetings, cheers for the stuff Charlie, you can go now.”

“Pfft, hello to you too, buddy.”

Kai was practically shoving him out the door when he said, “we’ll go for drinks when I’m back, right now, we have a case to solve.”

“But—”

“Bye!” He shut the door on Charlie’s face.

“That was rude.”

He looked over at me. “We’ve got stuff to do, we can hang out with him after this is over.”

I frowned, unable to tell if he’d been jealous or genuinely just wanted to focus on the case. Probably the latter.

Clearly he didn’t want to talk about us, so I asked, “do you think it could be a mutt working with a witch?”

“Most likely, I’m guessing witches don’t go around eating people.”

When we were ready, we left the motel and looked around the town some more. A lot of people were wearing coats, passersby talking about how weird it was to be so cold in June.

I saw a man scraping off frost from his windscreen, every so often he would shake his head in disbelief.

We were walking along the pavement when I slipped and grabbed onto Kai’s arm to keep from falling down. “Sorry,” I laughed.

He wasn’t laughing, and I followed his gaze to see him looking at a thin trail of ice along the floor. One kid ran and slid along it, giggling. “I really hope no one licks it or anything like I did.”

“Why would they?” He laughed.

“I don’t know, kids do dumb things all the time.”

He lost the laugh. “I’ll ask Amber what we can do.”

Luckily nothing, humans were immune to the supernatural effects of a witch, apparently they could help humans with spells and whatnot, but unless this witch was specifically targeting humans they’d be immune because they had no magic running through them for the frost to latch on to and feed off.

Amber explained that’s what it had done with me, as werewolves, technically we were magical because we could change into full wolves and had supernatural abilities like super strength and heightened senses, the frost was in a way connected to her, and almost like a living thing it had been feeding off me and the magic that made me what I was.

Amber wasn’t done talking, and my stomach dropped at her next words. “A born werewolf can fight against it better, they weren’t given the werewolf ‘curse’ if you want to get all dramatic, they are the magic in a sense, to keep it simple let’s call being a werewolf magical, the witches magic, like her frost for example can feed on that magic and the werewolf’s body will just replenish and regenerate that magic so to speak, but a bitten werewolf my friend wasn’t sure about, without being offensive, a bitten werewolf is in some ways more human than a born one, your body might not have enough of the wolf to regenerate and replenish itself like a fully born one, but then there’s the fact you were technically born a werewolf, so, we just don’t know how it may have affected you.”

“What does that mean, ‘affected me’?”

“The witch’s powers feed of other magic making her stronger, the frost could very well have fed on you enough to take away you being a werewolf.”

“I could lose my wolf?” I whispered.

Her voice growing grave she said, “not just your wolf form Natasha, everything, the werewolf gene, all of it, gone, leaving you human again.”

I didn’t hear anything else she said as the blood pounded in my ears, the world swayed and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe through the fear.

I’d wanted to be a werewolf for so long, my change had failed leaving me human in the end, dad had to sedate me, or it would have killed me, I’d finally found a way to become one and felt like I finally fit in with the rest of the pack, even though they’d never treated me any differently, now I might have lost it. Again.

Kai finished talking to Amber and after hanging up he led me away from the crowded town. “Don’t worry, we don’t know anything yet, do you feel any differently?”

“No,” I said, my voice sounding dangerously close to a tremble.

“Shall we find somewhere to test it out? You can put your mind at ease.”

I nodded, and he gently led me away from town. It was a five mile walk back to the pack house and I couldn’t wait that long, so Kai took us back to the motel. “I thought we were going to test it?” I asked.

“We are, but this close to humans is too risky, safer to do it inside where no one will stumble upon you.”

I nodded, “ok, ok,” I breathed, and gave my hands a shake as I mentally prepared myself. Kai went into the bathroom to give me some privacy because the change was not pretty, it was quite grotesque, and no way did I ever want Kai to see me mid-change.

I stripped off my clothes and got onto all fours, taking a deep breath I brought on the change. Nothing happened. That was ok, I told myself, sometimes it happened if you hadn’t changed recently. I tried again. And again.

Nothing was happening and the more I tried, the more I panicked, I was almost hysterical and had to stop trying. I pulled on my jumper and trousers and curled up in a ball sobbing.

I’d lost everything, being a werewolf, feeling part of the pack, now there was absolutely no way in hell Kai would ever want me as a mate, the fact I was the only available female werewolf was all I’d had going for me, now I had nothing.

Kai came out of the bathroom and sat on the floor, pulling me into his arms. “I’m sorry, baby,” he whispered.

He stroked my hair and soothed me, but I sobbed harder and said, “that’s all I had going for me, being a female werewolf, now you will never want me, no matter what I do.”

“Woah, hey,” he pulled back to look down at me. “Natasha, if I wanted you, it wouldn’t be because you’re a werewolf.”

I looked at him narrowing my eyes, and he muttered, “ok, I do want a werewolf as a mate, but I don’t want just anyone, she’d have to be the right girl, who you are is what would make me want you not what you are, if we were mates, and you lost the werewolf gene I wouldn’t stop loving you, I wouldn’t leave you, like Grayson I know when I choose my mate she will be it for me, there won’t ever be another.”

“So does that mean you don’t like who I am?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t want me last night, why? What’s wrong with me?”

He looked at me softly and stroked my hair out of my face. “Don’t say that, babe, there’s nothing wrong with you, and I love who you are.”

“Why don’t you want me then? Is it because I’m not tall and beautiful like the girls you normally go for? I could dye my hair blonde, learn how to walk in heels and—”

“Ssh, don’t be silly, you don’t need to do anything, and you should never change yourself for a man.”

I was still crying, and it was probably the worst time, but I tried to kiss him and was shocked when he responded.

He softly kissed me back, our mouths opening and closing against one another, I didn’t know if I was doing it right and just tried to mirror what he was doing. He seemed to come back to his senses because he quickly broke the kiss and mumbled, “I shouldn’t have kissed you.”

“Why not?”

He tried to dodge the question, but I wasn’t letting him this time. When he got up, I followed him. “Tell me why not, Kai?”

“You’re my best friend’s daughter.”

“I told you he doesn’t mind.”

“I don’t believe you, this is Grayson we are talking about, hot tempered, psycho wolf.”

“So you’re scared of my daddy?” I said sarcastically.

“Pfft, hell yeah I am, I’d be stupid not to be.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“No, you’re just telling me whatever you think will help your case.”

“So that’s it? You think I’d lie to you to get what I want?”

He shrugged and I knew I was right. “I thought you knew me better than that,” I whispered.

He looked at me then. “You were literally willing to change your whole self just to win me over.”

“But I’d never lie to you!” I snapped.

He growled in frustration but took a breath and said, “we can talk after this is all over, right now, we need to focus.” He walked to the door and then stopped to look back at me. “We’ll find a way to fix what happened to you, don’t worry.”

There was no point me boring you with the details, the first few days were boring, we didn’t talk about us, and we spent a lot of time just staking out the town looking for anything or anyone suspicious. The fourth day we found something.

Kai was discreetly sniffing the air and caught the scent of a mutt, he pointed to a man further up ahead walking with a white haired woman walking down a small fenced alleyway that led to the parking lot.

We followed, keeping downwind. Some luck was on our side, I couldn’t even use my senses right and that made my heart sink, but Kai explained the mutt was wearing cologne, a lot of it which meant he was one of those who didn’t use his senses much, probably hated what he was and didn’t accept it, wearing cologne meant it would mess his sense of smell up meaning if he chose to try using his nose to sniff us out, the cologne would be too strong.