Her chosen mate (The change series 2)

Chapter 14: Snow queen

Kai

Natasha had to stay crouched behind the thickets because she couldn’t blend in and be as stealthy in human form.

The rest of us followed Grayson as he silently padded through the long grass, edging closer to the cabin. He stopped and sniffed the air and I copied him, there didn’t seem to be anyone else with them.

We chose to be in wolf form because one, magic didn’t affect us as much as it did in human form, of course when it came to Natasha we now knew it did affect bitten wolves a lot more, and two, claws and teeth would make it difficult for them to block against, the trick was for us to get close enough to the witch she wouldn’t have time to cast anything.

Grayson took a silent step forward, but jolted back, he shook himself and then tried his best as a wolf to shake his head no. She must have put some perimeter spell up, which meant we’d most likely just alerted her of our presence. She stepped outside with a creepy a.ss serene look on her face, like she didn’t have a care in the world.

“Oh, the pack, I presume?” She looked at Grayson and smiled. “You are definitely the alpha, I can tell. What brings you here?”

He growled at her and she tutted. “Of course you can’t talk to me right now, how silly of me, hold on.” She waved her hand at him and cast some spell, chanted something unintelligible to my ears. “Now you can think your answers and I will hear you.”

Ok, that was a bit creepy if she had enough power to work on us in wolf form.

It was quiet for a moment, and then she smiled. “Ah, you want to know why I created the ice storm, pretty simple really, I want to own this town and yours, they are practically next to one another, so why not have both and have a bigger home to rule.”

Home to rule? What did she think she was, the f.ucking snow queen? Grayson snarled and bared his fangs at her, but she laughed it off as if he were a pup. Arrogance would only get you so far.

Grayson lunged, and she cast a spell firing a bunch of stalagmites at him, but he dodged at the last second and then sprung forward and bit down on her hand, Lara quickly sprung in next to him, biting her other hand so she couldn’t cast any more spells.

She screamed an ear-splitting scream, which I thought was a tad dramatic until I saw Grayson tugging at her hand, flesh and tendons were slowly tearing apart from her wrist until he finally had it in his mouth and dropped it to the floor. Yep, that was Grayson for you.

He wasted no time and lunged for her throat, clamping his jaws around it and tearing, shaking his head violently as he tried to tear her throat out. I jumped in with Amber, and we got her to the floor on her back and started tearing into her.

I faintly heard the mutt running to save his own a.ss, but my wolf brain couldn’t stop, instinct taking over as her blood and flesh hit my nostrils.

You could be the most powerful witch in the world, but you weren’t surviving a pack of werewolves tearing into you while you were still alive.

It was extremely difficult to control our wolf side, especially around blood and violence, instinct always took over, and it was near impossible to keep hold of your humanity, so we weren’t humane, we didn’t put her out of her misery, she died a horrible and slow death, and when she finally stopped choking on her own blood, we were able to think a little more clearly and started hunting for the mutt, but half an hour of searching and no hint of his scent meant he’d stayed downwind, and we lost him.

I remembered Natasha and ran back to check on her. She was still where we left her, but I snuffled my nose over her anyway, checking to make sure she wasn’t hurt.

When the others caught up to us, I was ready for Grayson to discipline me for not waiting for him to take the lead, but he watched me checking over Natasha and did nothing except to go find a place to change back.

When we were all back in human form, Grayson wanted us to find somewhere to eat and discuss how to find the mutt. I thought we’d be doing a lot of walking without the car, but with the witch dead, her spell had died along with her.

The icy snow was melting fast, leaving everything wet, but otherwise back to normal. With the snow out of the way, the journey back down was much faster, and even better, the car was no longer buried beneath snow.

We all climbed in and Grayson threw the keys to me. “You drive.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied sarcastically. I’d been a driving instructor back when Grayson had met Lara, I could say I grew bored of it, or it wasn’t for me, but the truth was worse, I’d been caught having s**x with the hot learner and been fired.

Amber went to climb into the passenger seat, but Grayson made her sit in the back with him and Lara, making Natasha sit up front with me. Now I was really confused, was he actually trying to push us closer together?

I’d been convinced he’d break every bone in my body if I dated Natasha, now I was worried what he’d do if I didn’t want to date her.

I pulled up outside a small restaurant, and we all got out. It was pretty busy in there, which meant Grayson would want us sitting outside. Luckily, it was the start of summer and it was warm now the frost b.itch was gone, but even if this place had been covered in snow he still would have made us eat out here rather than sit among a crowded place of humans.

We found a table outside and Amber and Lara went in to get the food. Again, Grayson had Natasha sit next to me, and I couldn’t help but feel a little put under pressure.

When everyone was sitting down, Amber asked, “how are we going to find the mutt?”

Grayson replied, “It’s probably a good idea if I call Joey first, have him get his police friend to look him up, shouldn’t be too hard if he was Brian o’Connors brother, he was on the system last time, so if this mutt isn’t, then they can find him through Brian, check for any siblings and give us his name.”

“How is knowing his name helpful?” Amber asked.

“We can do a more thorough search about him and his background, find out his living habits, what he does, anything that will help give us an idea of who he is as a person, it could help us come up with places he will most likely visit, or hide and so on.”

I was eating my food when Lara nudged my side and whispered, “why are you so quiet?”

I grinned at her. “I’m not.”

“Liar, it’s Grayson isn’t it, he’s putting too much pressure on you about Natasha.”

“It’s fine,” I mumbled.

“No it’s not, I’ll talk to him later, tell him to back off a bit.”

“Then he might start pushing Charlie onto her,” I laughed.

We were talking low enough they wouldn’t hear, they were busy chatting to one another anyway, and then Lara stood up and asked me to come help her with the rubbish.

When we were inside, she said, “he won’t, he doesn’t like Charlie for her like that, and you can laugh it off, but I can tell that it bothers you.”

“Don’t know what you mean,” I tried.

“You’re jealous, you don’t like the idea of Charlie dating her or having any sort of chance.”

“No I’m not, I just care about her and I know he isn’t exactly monogamous or respectful towards girlfriends.”

“What if he was?”

“What?”

She looked at me and folded her arms. “What if he was respectful and loyal to Natasha? He’s always been good with her, always kind to her, plus she’s a female werewolf and not a human, extremely rare to come by unless you go traveling to look for a female, so what if he did treat her good, you’d step back and happily let them date?”

“Yeah.” That couldn’t have sounded more uncertain if I’d tried.

She patted my shoulder as she walked by me and said, “sure, you keep telling yourself that, buddy.”

Pfft, no idea what she was on about.