A note to readers: This series follows Finding Home, so it's recommended to read that series first. Finding Home was written completely in advance of posting. I don't think I'm done with the DeLanes, and I have a lot of ideas for the pack. I'm going to try writing in real-time this time around, so the stories will come much slower than before. I'm going to try to make the chapters longer, but as you know by now, I usually prefer shorter. Enjoy!
Chapter 1
I'm the luckiest son of a bitch in the world.
Jackson ran his large rough hand through the sleeping women's brown hair.
Our mate.
Her back rose and fell with each breath as she slept soundly on top of him, the sunlight dancing atop her naked curves. The couple remained inside the mating circle though the ceremony had ended the night before.
From his experience watching other Turnings, Jackson expected Lucy would stay asleep for another day or two. Her body was in the middle of drastic change. According to legend, the longer the sleep, the stronger the wolf.
Jackson wrapped his arms tightly around the sleeping woman and managed to pull himself up into a sitting then standing position. Lucy stirred briefly at the movement but quickly settled back to sleep. Jackson looked down at his mate once more.
So goddamn beautiful.
Her face hadn't even begun to change yet, and she was already devastatingly gorgeous. To accommodate the change in bone structure, Turned wolves experienced a change in facial features in their human form. It just so happened that the change generally made Turned wolves more attractive than they had been as humans, but Jackson couldn't imagine how Lucy could ever be more beautiful.
And that body!
For the life of him, Jackson would never understand her constant self-criticism. She had curves in all the right places and knew how to use them. He forced down his growing arousal.
She needs us now.
He placed a chaste kiss on her lips before carrying her back to the estate house.
The place was a madhouse. Although it was fairly normal for the Alpha's home to be a centralized pack hangout, the mating ceremony had brought quite a few out-of-towners. Jackson tried to focus on taking Lucy to their bedroom, and not the fact that so many wolves were near to his mate while she was in such a vulnerable position.
He growled lowly at many of the unmated males as he hurried into the house and up the stairs. Jackson
knew
none of his packmates would dare to threaten his new mate, but his wolf was on high alert.
Mine!
Lucky for them, the other wolves understood Jackson's alarm and gave him a clear path up the to bedroom. No one even dared to look at the Alpha in his current state.
Jackson ran inside his bedroom and kicked the door closed behind him. He laid Lucy down on the large bed and gently positioned himself behind her. He heard the quiet clanging of dishes as someone set a tray of food outside of his door. He could smell the slight char on the outside of the steak, the warm luscious butter melting atop the earthy potatoes, the sweet sour of the wine.
A distant cousin of Jackson's was Alpha of one of the French packs. That pack had had a vineyard and winery and Jackson stocked up quite a bit during a Council meeting a few years ago. It took a lot to make a werewolf drunk, but the complex flavors of some wines or other alcoholic drinks were a delight to a werewolf's heightened senses.
Jackson was hungry.
Hell, I'm always hungry.
But his wolf refused to leave his mate. Jackson could feel his inner beast growl at his human form for even thinking of getting out of the bed. Jackson wrapped Lucy in his arms and tucked his head close to hers on the pillow.
He inhaled deeply.
Mine.
***
Jackson stared at Lucy, deep in thought.
She's been asleep for over 4 days now...
The story of their mating had traveled well beyond Pine Creek by now. Jackson had been fielding calls from Alphas near and far, domestic and abroad. It had been quite some time since a sitting Alpha had had a mating ceremony. Most of the others had mated long before ascending to the Alpha position. Add to that the fact that his mate was a human... well, the packs were in a frenzy for more information about the situation.
It was actually quite a fortuitous turn of events- Jackson had been meaning to rekindle some of the DeLane pack's more dormant alliances and possibly invite some new.
And now that his mate had been asleep for longer than any Turned wolf in recent memory, it seemed like every pack was anxious to see what the new addition would mean for the DeLane pack's standing in the werewolf community.
Jackson himself was still working on wrapping his head around the situation. Of course, he'd known about mates since he was a pup. But after spending almost two centuries on this earth without a mate, Jackson had started to lose hope in his own future. In fact he'd even grown a fair amount of thinly-veiled disdain for mated pairs, even those in his own pack. The DeLane Alpha had looked down upon those more concerned with sex and passion than the livelihood of the pack. Those who would abandon their posts to attend to a lonely mate. T
hose who went mad and lost all sense of reason after losing their mate...
Jackson shook the thought away. Those that lacked such self-control that they would stop and mark their mate at first scent, no matter what was happening around them.
To be fair, that last one is still very much frowned upon.
Jackson almost had to laugh at his former position now. It's a wonder Luna hadn't cursed him for all eternity for how condescending he had been to mated pairs. He had thought of them as
weak.
The Alpha wolf inside of him snarled at the implication that he himself was now weak for finding Lucy. If anything, now he felt stronger.
The moment he had smelled her, Jackson had known what she was to him. Through all of the smog and filth of the city, her scent had hit him like a ton of bricks. She was crisp and clean. Fresh linen and citrus. Floral.
She smelled familiar in a way. Her scent brought him back to a sunny morning running through a meadow with his father and brothers. Chasing rabbits. Chasing squirrels. Chasing their own tails. It was a time of laughter and fun, long before responsibility or jealousy or suffering made their way into his life. Long before everything had gone so far off course. Lucy's scent was a reminder of the best of times...
Well,
the best until now.
Imagine his surprise when after finding the woman he was destined for, he discovered that she was already quite familiar with some of his pack. After stumbling upon Lucy in the park, Jackson reached out to his city-dwelling packmates and learned that Briana and Melanie were as good as family to her.
Luna's doing, to be sure.
Jackson had been somewhat nervous about sending his newfound mate to The Den for their first meeting, what with all the other unmated males around. But as Alpha, Jackson had silently communicated to all in the dance club that his mate was
his and his alone
and any wolf bold or stupid enough to interfere with his claim would suffer swift and permanent consequences.
Plus, meeting in a pack establishment gave Jackson a little insurance just in case he was unable to control his wolf once they were face-to-face.
Imagine explaining a giant black wolf on the dance floor to a human club owner.
When Jackson tasted her skin, he knew he had found his other half. It was an otherworldly kind of experience. He was overwhelmed with the complete and irrevocable dedication he felt to her, and he was overwhelmed with the feeling of foolishness for previously discounting the strength and force of the mating pull. He was ashamed of judging his packmates unfairly. But, more than that, he was filled with the need to claim his mate for all to see.
That night in the club she had so greedily orgasmed from his rough treatment on her neck, the spot that now bore his mark. From the first smell of her unwavering arousal for him, he knew he would never get enough of her.
His wolf had wanted to take her right then and there, but fortunately Jackson had just enough self-control to get away from her in the nick of time. His wolf was aching to bite her. To fuck her. To claim her. And Lucy's body called out to him like no other, all too willing to make the sacrifice. For him.
He was relieved to learn she had virtually no contact with her family. That would have made things much trickier for the Turning. Still, judging by the way he almost ripped a few heads off his own packmates during his weekend away from her, Jackson would have been willing to do anything to keep his Lucy. And he did mean anything.
Hell it was all he could do not to take her right there on the conference table her first day at DeLane Industries. The presence of Hank and the others in the room had been driving him closer and closer to a territorial rage. Luckily Hank was able to manufacture a believable reason for Jackson and Lucy to be left alone.
Good old Hank.
The DeLane Industries plant manager had been Jackson's father's Beta for as long as Jackson could remember. Hank was tough, extremely loyal, and had an eye for bullshit better than anyone Jackson had ever known. Hank had been instrumental in keeping the pack afloat after Paul DeLane's passing and all the
turmoil
that followed.
And Jackson owed Hank a huge personal debt that both men knew would never be repaid.
Even in his relatively old age, Hank could keep up with the best of the younger crowd. But Jackson knew that Hank's time as Beta was coming to an end. Though he was still sharp as a tack, Hank had more than earned his retirement.
