Betrayal - The Matlock Pack: Book Two

Chapter 16 - Mac

Friday 29 January—Full Moon

~*Mac*~

It had been a week since I’d seen her.

Seven long days. Seven long, drawn out, and colourless days.

She had intrigued me when I had seen her with Cody a couple of weeks ago at the job Dad and I were doing for Takeshi, but I had brushed the feeling away on the assumption that I wouldn’t see her again, what with how many hours I worked every week and the impending exodus of Uni students to their respective studies. I thought she’d be one of them.

I never dreamed I would actually find her at the Warrior course, least of all, to discover that she was studying full-time to become one.

She honestly didn’t look the type. In my experience, all pack Warriors had a distinctive look regardless of their gender—bulging muscles, closely cropped hair, condescending scowl. I’d become all too familiar with the comparable appearances back in my old pack, after what had happened, before my dad and I had left and come to Matlock.

It wasn’t without a certain amount of unease that I had decided to willingly throw myself in with the Warriors of the Matlock pack, even those who were in their first year of training. I had convinced myself it was only one class a week and I wouldn’t need to spend any more time than was absolutely necessary with them.

Get in, do the class with my head down, get out.

Simple. Right?

Famous last words. Nothing in this life is ever simple.

I had walked in to that first class not expecting much. I knew that the overwhelming majority of the class would be people I had spent the last two years of my school life with. They were decent enough people, but they were training to be Warriors. I just couldn’t bring myself to trust them.

The room was crowded when I arrived. Part-time students were identifiable by their smart business-casual attire or tradie-wear and were squeezed in between all the full-timers who wore athletic clothing. Only one table remained relatively empty, so I headed for it. I was halfway across the room before I realised she was the one sitting there.

She had captivated me almost immediately. There was an attractive hesitancy to her movements and words while she cleared the table for me, which made me smile. It was almost like she was nervous, although I couldn’t figure out why that would be for the life of me.

And that zap when she shook my hand… talk about a shock to the heart. I’d never felt anything like that before in my life. It was incredibly difficult to let her hand go after feeling that.

And then, after the class, she wanted to study more instead of taking a break like everyone else. I knew it was only the second day of classes. I had snuck a peek at the work she had put aside before I sat down, and she seemed like she was on top of everything, probably more so than anyone else in the room. It was a mystery to me why she wouldn’t go outside.

So, beyond my better judgement, I asked.

The nerves she showed me from before the class sprang back with a vengeance. She fidgeted and squirmed as she answered every one of my questions. I’m not ashamed to admit that I may have teased her a little, maybe even lightly flirted, but I couldn’t help it.

There was just something about her…

Just when I thought we were getting somewhere, Bells had walked in, and she shut herself off. I could see it in the way her eyes narrowed, the furrow on her forehead. It was blatantly obvious that regardless of the short time she’d spent in Matlock, there was a history between the two of them.

I did what any self-respecting man would do in my position—I made my excuses and left, safe in the knowledge that at least I’d get to see her in class the following week.

It wasn’t until I was halfway to my car that I realised we had a public holiday the next Tuesday, meaning there would be no classes.

All the colours in the world around me seemed to dull with the realisation that I wouldn’t see her for a fortnight.

And yet, she’d been at The Gap on Friday night.

I knew she was around before she’d even walked in. Colours started getting brighter, warmer, more pronounced.

Nat.

I had seen her walk in with Cody and, much to the amusement of my best friends, my eyes never left her. Resigned to the fact that this would be the closest I would get to her until either our next class or the pack run, I embraced my inner stalker and watched her, absorbing everything I could until one of us left the bar.

No-one was more surprised than me when Cody motioned me over.

My friends couldn’t contain their laughter when I told them where I was going, but they knew me. Hell, they lived with me. They knew as well as I did they could grill me later, so they let me go with nothing more than a tap on the arse and a ‘go get ‘em’ motivational cheer.

Damn, I loved those two.

The conversation had flowed freely, even after Murph joined us. I couldn’t figure out why Cody was suddenly communicating only via her phone and some sign language. It unnerved me that someone who had always been such a chatterbox was suddenly… not. But I wouldn’t press the issue, not when she’d been kind enough to invite me over to sit with them.

When Bells had showed up again, the conversation stalled, just like it had in class. An icy chill had enveloped us as Bells tried to engage Nat, only for her to give him the silent treatment.

Yup, there was definitely something going on between the two of them.

After Cody and Murph had left, I moved into the seat opposite Nat, worried that she would think I was crowding her if I stayed where I was. We talked for about an hour, but the conversation took a while to get back on track. I tried to keep the topics fun and light-hearted and stayed well clear of mentioning anything to do with Bells or the Warrior course.

I think she appreciated it, but it was honestly hard to tell. She kept things so close to her chest.

She did have an adorable blush, though.

We walked back to Building Two, and that’s when things changed. Seeing the damage to the foyer made me think rogues had attacked us, but Nat’s calm questions made me think maybe I was wrong.

The way she controlled the room… It was like she was born to lead, even though there was a resigned uneasiness in her voice.

I finally saw Nat the Warrior.

I saw the potential that Takeshi saw.

And it was gloriously terrifying.

When I got home, I woke Dad and told him we’d been called in for an emergency fix. Goddess bless him, he didn’t ask any questions other than what supplies we needed. We were done and back home in a couple of hours at most.

Nat and I had texted a few times since then, but when I asked her yesterday if we could catch up at the pack run, she didn’t respond.

It baffled me.

I knew she had to shift because of her age, so logic meant she’d have to be at the pack run. Why wouldn’t she want to run with me? Had I crossed a line? A line I didn’t even know was there?

I had spent the last day obsessing over it. It was driving my best friends crazy.

“Will you get your arse out of your room?” Peyton yelled through my closed door. “We’re gonna be late!”

Laying on my bed with my hands behind my head so I could stare at the ceiling and try to unravel the enigma that was Nat, I smirked to myself but didn’t bother responding. He had always been a stickler for being early, too early if you asked me, not that he ever would. I had known him since we were ten and he’d always been exactly the same. It amused me to push his buttons about it and it amused him to push mine by yelling at me that we were always going to be late.

It was a thing we had been doing for years.

My oldest and dearest friend was also his girlfriend, Dakota. It amused her to see Peyton and I bickering like an old married couple, which was potentially why we both still did it.

“I swear to Goddess, if he’s not out in the next two minutes, I’ll put an axe through his f*****g door!”

I chuckled at Peyton’s words, but didn’t move.

I counted each one hundred and twenty seconds before I heard a commotion that seemed to come from the lounge, then a door slam.

A light tapping sounded on my door moments later. “You’d better hurry up, Mac. He has actually gone to get the axe.”

“Oh, for f**k’s sake…” I muttered before I rose from my bed and pulled open the door to find Dakota standing on the other side, grinning like a Cheshire cat. I’d been ready for an hour, and I suspected they both knew it. “A bit riled up today, is he?”

She smirked. “I think it’s because it’s our first pack run here. He’s nervous.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s a pack run. It’s just like one of the pack runs at Mount Buller.”

“You know what he’s like. He wants to make a good impression.”

I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and walked us down the corridor to the lounge. “He needs to relax, Kotes. Takeshi loves you two. You’ll be Matlock members in no time.”

She held onto my hand that was draped over her shoulder with both of hers and leaned her head on my shoulder as we walked. “I hope so. The move took more out of him than I thought it would.”

I stopped us in our tracks to face her. “You guys didn’t have to move, you know. Dad and I… We were doing okay…” I trailed off, knowing that she wouldn’t believe me. Dad had been ill even before we’d moved to Matlock. Both Dakota and Peyton knew I would eventually need help with him and had decided to join me as soon as they finished high school, much to their parent’s disapproval.

The fact that they both moved to be near me meant they wouldn’t be welcome back for any Christmases, Easters, or birthday celebrations for the foreseeable future. Possibly forever.

It was just wonderful being an outcast to your old pack.

“Of course, you guys are doing okay.” Her smile became rather cheeky. “But we all know you could use a woman’s touch around here.”

My arm was still around her shoulders when I pulled her in for a hug and kissed her on the top of her head. “You both spoil us,” I murmured into her hair, the corners of my lips curving up as I breathed the tangy apple scent of her shampoo in.

“Meh, you deserve it.” She wrapped her arms around my waist. “Plus, it’s nothing you wouldn’t have done in our position.”

The front door slammed open, hitting the plasterboard from the sudden force before Peyton appeared at the end of the hallway with Dad’s chainsaw. Thankfully, it wasn’t turned on.

This time, at least.

Not letting Dakota go, I turned towards Peyton and c****d an eyebrow at him, a chuckle threatening to erupt from my lips. “A chainsaw? Really, Peyt?”

He held the chainsaw up menacingly with one hand and grinned the most ominous grin he could muster, which honestly wasn’t very frightening. The guy was a giant Labrador puppy.

“You couldn’t find the axe, could you?”

“It’s not my fault that your garage is a f*****g dump.”

“It’s not my fault that my guests don’t put things back where they got them from the last time they threatened to break down my door with an axe.”

He lowered the chainsaw in defeat. “Oh, f**k you.”

“Been there, done that.” I blew him a kiss while Dakota cackled. “Now, would you put the damn chainsaw back, so we can go to the pack run? I seem to recall someone yelling at me because they thought I was making them late.”

He hung his head, turned around and stomped out the front door, taking the offending chainsaw with him.

“Back where you found it, please,” I called after him cheekily. “Thank you!”

I assume he swore at me again, because I heard something drift back through the open door but couldn’t determine what. I’m sure he’d be repeating it to me on the way to the pack run soon enough.

~~~

Waiting for the full moon to rise, I wandered through the crowd aimlessly. I kept telling myself that I wasn’t actively looking for Nat, but deep down, I knew that was exactly what I was doing.

I had left Dakota and Peyton to their own devices once they started talking to some of Peyton’s work colleagues. He was an apprentice at one of the local building companies, so was eager to stop to chat to them when we arrived. I’m sure the beer that they were all chugging had nothing to do with his decision.

I wasn’t worried about him getting wasted. Dakota was his calming influence and would look after him. She was the smartest of us; she’d have to be to get into the Biomedical Science course she had applied for. Werewolf genetic history fascinated her, and she had grand plans on researching pack genetics from around the world to determine how and why they all differed so much. If anyone could figure that mystery out, she could.

A flash of flaming red, wavy hair captured my attention as it wove through the crowd. There were only four people in the pack I knew that had that hair colour—Cody and her mother, and Rowan and her father. Where Rowan’s hair was curly, Cody and her mum’s hair were wavy, so I knew that the person who had attracted my attention wasn’t Rowan. Taking a chance that it was likely Cody, I slowly made my way towards where she was headed, hoping Nat would be her target.

The closer I got to my destination, the more I tuned into the discussions going on around me and the angrier I became.

“What right does she have to shift with us?”

“I can’t believe Takeshi let her stay. And he made her a Pack member to boot!”

“She’s a freak. Completely unnatural.”

I had no idea who they were talking about, but the hateful venom I was hearing being spouted turned my stomach. The Matlock pack was supposed to be one of the most welcoming packs in Australia. Why would so many people be saying such horrible things?

An overwhelming sense of suffocation started to drown me, so I changed course and headed for the nearest edge of the crowd. I nudged people out of my way, not caring if I pissed them off or not; I just wanted out. This reminded me far too much of what had happened before.

Bursting through the boundary, I leaned forward, placed my hands on my knees and took long, slow, deep breaths, trying desperately to steady my racing heart. It had been quite a while since I’d last had a panic attack, but the overwhelming claustrophobia remained just as I remembered.

Once I felt like I could move again, I headed to a large tree at the boundary of the forest. I leaned against the gnarled bark, crossed my arms around myself, and tried to remember what they had taught me to do to cope with my attacks.

I needed to focus on every one of my senses.

Closing my eyes to shut out visual stimulus, I started tapping my middle finger against my thumb to create a touch centre. Forcibly slowing down my breathing further, I tuned my hearing away from the sounds of the crowd of people in front of me to whatever small critter sounds I could make out behind me in the forest, letting my head swivel to help me concentrate. Once I started feeling the prickly tingling sensations flow down my spine into my arms and legs, I realised I was coming out of the bulk of the attack, even though I knew I’d have one hell of a migraine tomorrow.

I slowly opened my eyes to let them adjust to the lights flooding the crowd. Previous panic attacks had left me fighting against bright halos that surrounded any form of light. Heading into a full moon where everyone was going to be glowing was not going to be fun.

Letting my eyes track over the pack members on the edge of the crowd, I found Nat. Just as I had expected, Cody was with her, as was Cody’s mum. They were all looking in the same direction with anxious faces. I followed their eyelines to find Takeshi, Kennedy, Kelly, and Cody’s dad arguing about something. Kennedy and Kelly looked like they were struggling to keep Cody’s dad away from Takeshi.

I brought my focus back to Nat and took half a step back into the shadows of the forest so I could watch her without being seen. I realised I was totally being a creeper but my curiosity was taking over everything else. Maybe she was meeting someone else tonight, and she didn’t want to tell me. I didn’t mind if that was the case, as I had no monopoly on her time. She barely knew me, and I barely knew her. If she was seeing someone, creeping on her would at least tell me who it was. The full moon was due to rise any minute now, so I would solve the mystery soon enough. Right?

I felt my head rise unbidden to the sky as a sense of calm washed through me. The full moon was on its way. Physically forcing my eyes back to Nat, I realised no-one had approached her.

The curving line of her neck as she gazed upwards sent a thrill through me. She looked so serene watching the sky, her arms drifting ever so slightly away from her body, almost like she was itching to raise them up to embrace the night.

She was stunning.

As I felt the change flowing through me, the white glow of shifting wolves wove its way from one side of the crowd to the other. I dropped to the ground and silently waited for my shift to complete, trying to keep my eyes on Nat to see what sort of wolf she would turn into.

I held my eyes open for as long as I could when she began glowing, but it wasn’t the soft white glow everyone else shifted with. Every colour under the rainbow and then some sprang from her crouched form, bursting through my now shut eyelids. As soon as the light faded, I flung my eyes open to search for Nat.

She wasn’t hard to miss. Her fur was an iridescent white, and she was huge. My eyes widened with the realisation that she must have alpha or beta blood flowing through her veins. It was the only thing that would account for her size. Even Kennedy wasn’t that big, even though he was now the official Beta of the Matlock pack.

As she shook her head, her fur shimmered, reflecting all the light in the courtyard. It was utterly mesmerising.

A few of the wolves closest to her moved away from her with their ears flattened. They were unhappy that she was near them, but weren’t overtly aggressive towards her, simply trying to take a few steps away.

She lowered her head to appear less threatening, but it didn’t make any difference. Letting out a huff, she faced a red wolf that she towered over, which I assumed was Cody’s wolf, Roux. Roux nodded, and they both turned away from the crowd and loped towards the forest, leaving the rest of the wolves behind for the pack run.

I took a step forward to follow them when I realised I wasn’t watching two female wolves running. There was one female wolf and one male wolf.

The enormous, iridescent white wolf was male.

I paused and felt my head tilt to one side.

“I’m not imagining things, am I?” I asked Sasha, my wolf.

“Nope. Her wolf is definitely male.” Sasha sounded just as confused as I felt.

“Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

“I didn’t even think it was possible.”

“Huh.” I let my mind wander back to last month’s pack run. I remembered seeing a flicker of different coloured light on the other side of the field to where I was, but I hadn’t paid it too much mind. I figured it had nothing to do with me.

It still didn’t, but it had the potential to. And it gave me much more understanding of why Nat would be hesitant about running with me at tonight’s pack run.

And, unfortunately, it also gave me complete clarity as to why I’d heard so many horrible things being said earlier, and why wolves were shying away from her.

Although I hadn’t seen anything like Nat before, I had seen crowd behaviour like this before. I prayed then that I’d never see it again.

It appeared that the Moon Goddess hadn’t heard my prayers.