The Alpha and Her Secret Mate

One More

"Layla?"

"Hmmm…?"

"Layla, I was asking who you want to start with?"

My eyes snap open at Jamie's words. "What? Sorry. Sure, whoever you want is fine with me."

Jamie considers me carefully for a moment, but he doesn’t question me. “Okay, I’ll go bring someone down. And you’re sure you don’t care what order?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I mutter.

As soon as Jamie leaves me alone in the library again, my eyes drift shut. I spent more than half the night wide awake and staring at the ceiling. My emotions cycled through in stages, first guilt, then desire, then confusion, then guilt again. I can practically still feel his lips on my skin, and the touch made me feel alive.

When he left, I could feel the turmoil in his heart. His desire was just as strong as mine, but he denied me and himself. And then when I tracked him with the mindlink, he left the packhouse entirely and shifted before running away into the forest.

I tracked him for a while, but my sense of him kept fading in and out. He would vanish, then suddenly appear farther away. Sometimes it was gradual and others, he would just pop into my mind. It was infuriating. I can't stop thinking about what Alisha and James told me. Mates aren't supposed to be able to block the link.

This thought turns into a scowl by the time Jamie comes back with one of the rogues in tow. He looks agitated, and keeps pulling on his collar, but when he sits down and picks up the notepad I left out for him, he's all business.

I smile at the rogue sitting in front of us and say, "So why don't you tell us your name?"

We go through each of them just like that, one by one, collecting their stories. We start with their names and how long they've been rogues. Then I ask what event made them rogue, which is usually a longer answer.

Of the nine wolves we talk to, there's almost no cohesion. I look over Jamie's neat notes. We have a mix of ages, a mix of genders. One has been a rogue for just six months, but another has been on her own for nearly 20 years. Some of them seem casually interested in joining the pack, while others seem desperate at the prospect that I'd send them out again.

More than three hours have passed before we're done. I started this tired and I am wiped now.

"Well, Jamie. This is certainly a lot of information to review. I'll need to talk with Penny." I clench my jaw. "And Taylor." Silently, I add and Alex if I can find him.

"Okay," Jamie says. I notice he seems antsy again. He's fidgeting in his chair and won't look at me.

"You can go get some lunch," I say. "Unless there's something else you need?"

"I…there's…" He stands up, hovering over me awkwardly. "There's one more rogue."

I drop the notebook on the table in front of me. “What? Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Um,” he crosses his arms and shuffles his feet. “I don’t…she isn’t healed enough to really move yet. She was injured really badly yesterday.” He picks at the hem of his sweater.

“Jamie, what are you not telling me?”

“Hmmm? Nothing.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “So we should go to their room and talk to her?”

He nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, no. Let’s do that.”

I eye him suspiciously, but I stand up and say, “Okay then, lead the way.”

“Yes, okay. Let’s go.” He nods again, and his hair falls into his face. He leaves it there, as if too distracted to fix it.

“Okay…” I follow him out of the room, and down the hall, but he’s moving so fast. I almost have to jog to keep up. “Jamie, is everything okay?”

“Yep. No problems, why do you ask?” He glances back at me, and nearly crashes into a wall. “Ope, sorry,” he says, patting the wall then rushing past it.

“Jamie slow down! Relax, there’s no rush.”

“It’s fine.” He rushes forward to the door, but stops abruptly outside.

“Jamie, you do know you’re being weird, right?”

“Yep.”

“I see,” I stop next to him and eye him for a second. “Should I knock?”

He stares straight ahead at the wood of the door. “Yes, probably.”

“Okay then.” I reach in front of him and knock on the door.

“Come in,” comes a muffled voice from the other side of the door.

I open it and walk inside in front of Jamie. “Hi, I’m Layla, and this is Jamie, he’s been helping me take notes.”

The woman laying on the couch sits up partially. “Hi, I’m Rowan,” she says. But she’s not looking at me.

I turn, following her gaze, to see Jamie, standing in the door looking like he’s been struck.

I give Jamie a questioning look then gesture for him to sit down. “So, Rowan, I’m glad you’re here–Jamie, please sit down.”

“Oh, uh, sorry, yes. Right away.” He sits down on the floor beside me rather than in the empty chair.

“Alright then.” Now that I look more closely at the woman, I recognize her from the fight. She’s the one who looked like leaving physically pained her. I’m glad she’s back now.

Rowan smiles shyly, watching Jamie.

“So why don’t you start by telling us how you got here. Why are you a rogue?” It’s the tenth time that question has come out of my mouth and the tenth time that I’ve wondered if this is a rude way to phrase it, but what’s done is done.

The woman pulls her eyes away from Jamie and repositions her pillow so that she’s sitting up straighter on the couch. “Uh, gosh, where do I start? Um…” she looks flustered, and I see a blush creep up her neck. “I’m Rowan, but you already know that,” she says with a self deprecating laugh. “I guess it all started six years ago–”

“You’ve been alone that long?” Jamie looks aghast.

I turn to him in surprise. This is the first time he’s interrupted a rogue during their story, and his clipboard of notes is sitting forgotten on the floor.

Rowan nods to Jamie. “Yes, well not the whole time.” She turns to me for a second, as if remembering I exist, then looks back to Jamie. “I was only a rogue for about five and a half. It really started when we had our first shift.”

“We?” I ask.

“Yes, my class? Oh, I…sorry. I come from the Blood Moon Pack. It’s out west, near Chicago. Sorry, that doesn’t matter. What I mean to say is, in Blood Moon, every year shifts at once. I think they used some potion to schedule it. I always forget that not every pack does that. Your pack waits for the shift to occur naturally, right?”

I start to answer with a self deprecating comment about my own shift, but she’s asking the question of Jamie.

“Yes, it’s usually some time right before our eighteenth birthday. I shifted at about seventeen and a half.” Jamie blushes, having shared so much, but Rowan doesn’t seem to mind.

She smiles and continues. “Anyways, I…had been dating a pack member. Peter.” She hesitates over his name. “At our shift ceremony, we knew we might not be mates. It was a possibility we had discussed and prepared for.” Rowan stares into her own lap, unable to look up for this part of the story, but she pushes on. “What we didn’t prepare for is the possibility that one of us would find another mate that night.”

At this, Jamie breathes in sharply through his nose, but he is otherwise, still.

“It was the Beta’s daughter. Peter’s mate, I mean. I obviously ended things immediately, but that wasn’t good enough for Cathy. She wanted to be the only woman in Peter’s life. She was already his mate, she had him.” Rowan tears up at this, and Jamie starts to reach for her, but stops herself. She swallows hard and pushes on. “She started doing little things to sabotage me. Planting stolen things, changing my schedule to leave a gap in the watch. But the final straw…she…she drugged me so I missed work. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but too many things slipped through the cracks. I was responsible for the pups, and the Alpha’s son was at daycare that day. He wandered off and was lost for the afternoon. They found him before I even woke up, but Cathy told the council that this was a pattern, and they exiled me.” She sniffles at the memory, and Jamie scrambles to find her a tissue.

He darts to her side, and when he hands her the tissue, their hands meet. Her fingers wrap around his, and he stares into her eyes.

“J–Jamie?” she says.

He responds with one word. “Mate.” And her face lights up.