Second chance love

S i x

Holly couldn’t bring herself to look at Lisa but took a shaky breath in and simply spoke one word. 

“Warehouse.”

The pack owned a large amount of land, and the warehouse was on the very edge of a patch of land that nobody ever used. It was an unofficial holding area for wolves that were looking for trouble. Holly had never been there before but she knew where it was, and she knew she needed to get there fast. 

“Holly, why are they at the warehouse?” Lisa couldn’t hide her emotions from her voice. Holly could feel the anxiety bubbling in her stomach, threatening to erupt at any moment. 

“Mum didn’t say, but I doubt they’re there for a romantic dinner.” Holly spoke with a little more bite than she might have done, but she was becoming increasingly concerned for the welfare of her mate. What if he died before she could fully claim him? She shook her head to discard the thought and shifted so that Lacey could get them there faster. Lisa followed suit, clearly worried about her own mate, and the pair sped towards the warehouse imagining hundreds of possible scenarios that they might be about to interrupt. 

A cacophony of voices greeted the girls as they arrived at their intended destination which confused their wolves to no end. They shifted back and threw on some large men sized clothes left strategically in a grit bin by the road before stalking over to the building. They steeled their faces and braced themselves for a fight. As they approached the large sliding door, Holly bent down to grab the latch and threw the door upwards exposing the action to her and Lisa. For a second they couldn’t process the image in front of them, but the situation slowly revealed itself to the quietly nervous girls. 

“Dude you can’t say s**t like that!” 

Finn howled with laughter at something Caleb had said, while Darren was stood leaning against a wall with his arms across his chest smiling at the two lads in front of him. Holly was hit with a wave of relief as she established that all three of them were safe and unharmed. Lisa was having the opposite reaction however. 

“Ow!” Yelped Finn as he was smacked around the head by his very angry mate. “What was that for?!”

“You. Shut. Me. Out!” Every word was punctuated with another smack around the head. “I. Thought. You. Were. Dead!”

As she listened to her friends argument Holly watched Caleb. He seemed to be completely unharmed, but she couldn’t work out why her brother brought him here. She said as much via mind link, to which he replied out loud; “if the people who attacked him had followed him, I’d rather they followed him here than to the middle of our community.”

Holly blushed and looked at her feet. Of course that was why. As if reading her mind, Lisa yelled “No need to block the link though, I was terrified that something bad had happened. You send us off to do a search and then run away with no contact? What if Holly hadn’t thought to call her mum? We still would have no clue what was going on!” Finn seemed confused and flinched as Lisa gave him a final smack on the head, but almost all of her anger had dispersed so it didn’t have as much force as she might have wanted. 

“That was my fault.” The deep voice of the newcomer made Holly feel a little weak at the knees. All eyes were on Caleb before he took a deep breath in. “I blocked the link.”

Lisa looked up at Finn who had pulled his eyebrows together. “You couldn’t have. Darren and I were speaking via mind-link before the girls got here.” 

Darren nodded, before adding “And Holly and I spoke just now. How does that work?”

Caleb smiled sadly at the group. “It’s a proximity thing, sort of like a signal jammer. It’s a defence mechanism to stop anyone finding me through the link.” He looked sheepishly at Darren’s surprised face. “I’m sorry, I should have said.”

Darren raised an eyebrow at him before looking at his watch. He looked at Finn and they were obviously having a conversation between themselves, so Holly took the opportunity to move a step closer to Caleb. She could feel Lacey literally bouncing with excitement in the back of her mind but just as she opened her mouth to speak to her mate, the warehouse phone rang. 

“Who is it this time?” Darren’s voice rumbled in irritation. Their mother, the Luna, stepped out of the small office with a cordless phone in her hand. She held it out to Darren with pursed lips that showed a distaste that was alien to the normally calm and composed Luna. She didn’t say anything but was moving away the instant that Darren took the phone off her. 

“You have reached Alpha Darren of the White Tide pack.” The formality in his voice showed his discomfort with whoever was on the other end. 

The voice on the other end of the phone was muffled, and Lacey was begging Holly to shift so she could use her wolf hearing to eavesdrop, but Holly felt that Darren would be pretty unimpressed with that idea, and instead focused on her future. 

“Caleb,” Lacey breathed seductively, “his wolf was beautiful.”

Holly could feel Lacey itching to move closer to Caleb. She looked at him, trying to catch his eye but he was watching Darren intently. 

“If you make a move on him, then we will have no choice but to declare war on your pack. I'm not sure that is a risk that you want to take.” 

Everyone in the room could feel the power radiating off of their Alpha, and Holly felt the hair stand up on the back of her neck.  Was he defending her mate? She held her breath as Darren hung up and looked around, his eyes finally resting on Caleb. 

“So how did you manage to piss off the Black Hart pack?”