Jaded Anchor: The Wolf

Chapter One - Alexandra

“Lex, I can’t believe you are still sleeping.  You need to be on the road now if you are going to make it to Silverport on time.”  Alexandra's boyfriend planted a kiss on her forehead effectively waking her completely from her entirely interoperate dream. Her cheeks darkened as her dream ran through her mind. What kind of girl had a dream like that about an old boyfriend when her current boyfriend was in her bed?! It was so out of character for Alexandra. It wasn’t the first time she had dreamt of Rowen but it was the first time she had done it with Carter in her bed. What if she was sleep talking? What if she had called out Rowen’s name. i***t.

“Unless you’ve decided that this whole move is outrageous and that you are perfectly happy where you are? In that case place, by all means, go back to sleep.” Carter offered looking down at her with his big brown eyes peeking out at her from beneath his thick brown hair. He was so different than Rowen. Carter was handsome and most girls would call him hot, but Rowen was so sexy that even at the age of sixteen had been able to make a puddle in her panties just from looking at him. Damn girl, snap out of it!

“You know that’s not happening. I applied for the job in Silverport the day I became an RN. I guess I just overslept. I was having a weird dream. I took something to help me sleep last night. Strange dreams are a side effect of the medicine.” Alexandra sat up and rubbed her eyes.

“I know why are you taking it. You know how that medicine affects you.” Carter said sounding very much like the Doctor he was trying to become. She just rolled her eyes. She was a nurse, she knew the side effects of her sleep medicine.

“I am just so anxious about this interview. I just want to go home so bad. I miss it. I miss the trees, the ocean. I miss home.” Alexandra looked over at her boyfriend before offering him a smile. “You understand, that right?” He had grown up in Silverport too. She and Carter had been classmates all throughout her school years in Silverport right up until she had to leave at sixteen. She had been stunned to find him in her Anatomy class sophomore year of college. It had been such an unbelievable shock to see an old face from her hometown. They immediately clicked and after a year or so of reconnecting and hanging out, they started dating.

“I understand you think you have to go. I just hate the idea of you being almost five hours away from me. Call me crazy but I like seeing my girlfriend every day. I hate the idea of you living there alone.” Carter leaned down to kiss her softly his fingers running through her hair. Alexandra forced herself to kiss him back. Her head was still fuzzy from her much to realistic dream.

“I know. You know I will miss seeing you too, but you'll come to visit on weekends, and I'll come back up here to see you when I am off. It won’t be too much longer until you get to graduate, then you’ll be Doctor Carter Lockhart and you can move back to Silverport with me.” She knew she had convinced Carter when his eyes softened. She offered him her brightest smile. It was too easy sometimes. “And you know I won’t be alone. I will be living with Jules. She’s my oldest friend. The only one I kept in touch with when I moved here.”

“Fine. If you get the job, I will be a big boy and let you go. I don’t know why you miss Silverport so much. Your parents died there, Lexie. Please tell me this isn’t about your old boyfriend. I don’t like to share. You know how jealous I can get.” He told her gruffly refusing to use Rowen’s name. He never said his name, in school he and Rowen hated one another. Alexandra never knew the reason, and needless to say Rowen didn’t come up much in their conversations. Alexandra sighed to herself before she lifted her hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. She hated when he was jealous, it was the main reason they had been ‘on and off’ again for the past year.

He wanted her to explain why she wanted to go back to Silverport. Despite the very realistic dream she just had, her desire to be back in Silverport had nothing to do with Rowen. She hadn’t thought about her first boyfriend in years. He broke her heart when he dumped her. A part of her never truly forgave him. She wanted to go home because she missed being able to shift. She missed her wolf. She missed it more than anything. She couldn’t talk about her wolf side with Carter. He was as human as they come. He would never understand or accept that side of her.

Carter didn’t understand why she would want to leave Tuscaloosa, and it was getting harder and harder to try and explain her reasons. It wasn’t as if she had a bad life in Tuscaloosa. Her life had been great. She would always be grateful for her Aunt and Uncle, for taking her in when her parents died, but she hated having to hide what she really was. Her mom’s sister had left the pack when she was a teenager after she had fallen in love with a human. They left Silverport before any harm could come to him. It wasn’t safe for humans to get mixed up in wolf business. Alexandra hadn’t been able to even talk about wolves in their house. It was as if that part of her DNA didn’t exist. Alexandra hadn’t shifted since she was sixteen. Hell, she didn’t even know if she could anymore.

She grew up in a small little beach town in Mobile County, Alabama. It was home to the most beautiful beaches as well as the thickest forests. The perfect home for several different packs of wolves. They had been called many things, werewolves, shape shifters, and even lycanthropes. Alexandra would describe the wolves she was born into as a mixture of all three. They looked like wolves when they shifted, just bigger. Unlike traditional werewolves, they could shift at will, just like lycanthropes. The pack Alexandra had been born into called themselves the Silverstreak Pack. They had been one of the biggest packs in Silverport and one of the strongest. Their only true rivals had been the WestBeach Pack. Rowen’s parents just happened to be the Alphas of that pack, while her parents were the Alphas of the WestBeach Pack.

The day Alexandra's parents died so did the Silverstreak pack. The ones who hadn’t died in the attack left Silverport behind. Without their Alphas, they would have been sitting ducks for the neighboring packs to pick off. As far as she knew nothing remained of her pack. She didn’t care she wasn’t going back to Silverport for the pack. She was going back because that’s where she belonged. She just couldn’t figure out how to explain that to her boyfriend.

“Don’t be silly, Carter. I am not moving for Rowen. I can’t explain why I want to go back. You wouldn’t understand even if I tried. I just want to be home. Now that my Aunt and Uncle moved up North, I have nothing else in Tuscaloosa.” Alexandra had seen a flash of something in his eyes and she sat up quickly running her fingers through her thick red wine-colored hair. She held the sheet with the other hand to keep her bare breasts covered.

“Nothing else huh?” He jumped out of the bed huffing like a big bad wolf. Ironic.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant family. I have no family here. I have Jules in Silverport. She’s not my blood sister but she might as well be. I grew up with her. And you’re going to move down there too. So, stop looking at me like I pissed in your cornflakes.” Alexandra stood up and wrapped the sheet around her body before walking towards him.

“Whatever, Lexie.” He was pissed but she saw him trying to control it. Sometimes she swore he was a wolf himself with all his moodiness.

“Hey. I’m sorry, okay? I need to get ready. As you said, I am already running late. I will call you when I get there.”

Carter seemed to think for a moment, giving that he was silent. Alexandra watched him chewing on her bottom lip. She knew Carter didn’t want her to go and he had been trying his best to convince her he was okay, but his façade seemed to be slipping. Finally, he spoke.

“I don’t know if I want you to go. Mainly because I think if you run into your ex you might do something stupid. But I don’t really have any say, do I? You’ve already made up your mind.” He started before she interrupted him.

“Can we stop? Go back five minutes when you were being the supportive boyfriend, please?” Alexandra put her hand on his chest and couldn’t stop herself from thinking how his muscles weren’t as hard as Rowen’s had been in her dream.

“Fine. I love you. Go to your interview. You’re going to kill it… unfortunately.” Carter told her once his hands fell to her waist. He leaned in and kissed her head. “I have to go to the hospital, I have rounds today. I’ll see you when you get back tomorrow morning.”

 Alexandra could tell by the tone of her boyfriend’s voice that he wasn’t happy, but he was trying. Maybe he had a reason to worry, she had just been dreaming about another man.

“I will see you tomorrow,” Alexandra told him leaning into his kiss for a moment. She didn’t return the ‘I love you.’ She had never actually said those words to anyone besides Rowen. It didn’t mean she didn’t care for Carter. It just felt like a lie to say the words.

Once he left, she went to the bathroom and started the shower. She really was running late. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and sighed. She hated fighting with Carter. It had been the same thing over and over ever since she told him she wanted to move. He was nice then turned into a d**k in the same breath. He was exhausting. The dream had her all hyped up too. It wasn’t the first time she’d dreamt of her ex, but it was the first time she’d dreamt of him on a day when she actually had a chance to see him.

“It was just a dream, Lexie. No one has abs like that. Or a body that hard. Or eyes that are that blue… damn you, Rowen, stay out of my head.” An uneasy Alexandra said out loud to no one at all before she stepped beneath the water. She needed to wash off the naughty feelings her dream had brought up. Rowen was still an asshole. He broke her heart. She needed to remember that. No matter how sexy Rowen Blakesley might be now, he was still the same d**k who left her crying on the beach.