Fulfillment 07

Dear Readers,

Sorry for the delay, don't mean to aggravate you but I've been ill.

Quite a bit of exposition in this one to move the story along. Just a little sex, next chapter will have more.

KemMyst

***

Lyssa had spent the last hour going over what had happened as Emmett fell back into a doze. There was no other explanation -- she had put her teeth on Emmett's throat. She could have killed him. She was acting out her nightmares and was a danger, particularly to her own mate. And she wasn't getting any better. If anything, she was getting worse.

There was only one thing she could do.

She slips out of the bed quietly and pads to the door, taking one last look at Em as she did so. The tears threatened to start and she knew she'd never be able to leave him if she started crying. So, she swallows, opens the door, shuts it, shifts, and bolts. Her initial sprint is almost blind, just getting away. She hears Emmett's sends but doesn't answer. He was awake and would probably be coming for her shortly. She doesn't have enough of a head start and the snow wasn't falling heavily enough to cover her track.

Down the ridge to the stream. Damn, the snow is deeper here. She muscles through and crosses the stream, running along its edge toward the trail they'd spotted. A glance to the left and she sees Emmett bounding down after her.

He was bigger, faster. She wouldn't be able to outrun him for long.

He had to catch her. He had to.

No use to call to her, just catch up and get her back to the cabin. It was past time to talk, to find out what this was.

He loses sight of her as she runs upstream and around the nose of the ridge.

Thankfully, she was a dark colored wolf and he would be able to track her easily by sight in the snow. Thankfully, she wasn't very far ahead.

Around the corner, she's climbing up another ridge, headed for the trail they'd spotted. There were orange paint marks on some of the trees; it looked to be a horse trail.

She gains the trail and heads upward, climbing sideways up the ridge.

He didn't know where the trail led or how long she'd follow it. He could go directly up, straight up the ridge and try to catch her.

Making his decision, he does, leaving the trail and climbing straight up. The snow makes it more difficult, but he pushes forward.

She glances behind again.

The waning full moon is bright in the sky although the clouds, which were dropping large snowflakes, keep most of the light from the landscape.

Emmett's grey fur make him more difficult to see under such conditions, but she should still be able to track him by movement. Where was he?

She had thought it would be easier on the trail, but the snow actually seems a bit deeper here.

As she gains the top of the ridge she pauses briefly. She shouldn't stay on the trail. He could follow it, and her, more easily. Where should she go? She wasn't really sure where she was, or what was around.

OK, so...oof!

She's knocked over. Her reaction is immediate, and automatic. [NO]

She looks at what had hit her. Emmett. Oh, god, no.

She sniffs at him, licks his muzzle. Over the thundering of her heart, she hears the strong steady beat of his. She watches his ribcage rise and fall with his breathing. Thank goodness she'd only knocked him out.

OK. OK. He was alright. Now she could get away.

Lyssa nuzzles him and whines then licks his forehead before turning away and moving down the ridge.

He wakes and thrashes upright from where he'd been lying in the snow. What the hell?

He'd caught up with her, bowled her over...

She wasn't nearby. She'd knocked him out. Damn.

Now, where was she?

He looks around and doesn't see her. But there was her track. Thank Selene he hadn't been out longer.

He starts after his mate. Again.

He follows her track down the hill. Where the hell was she going?

He hurries, as fast as he was able. A gust of wind and he sees her, the darkness of her coat making her stand out. So, he pushes on, closing on her again.

She's breathing heavily and having more trouble getting through the snow. He was going to catch her. Now, how would he keep her from knocking him out again?

A wall. He had to block her out.

She hears his paws hitting the ground behind her, his breathing. He was close.

Lyssa wheels, turns to face him, and growls.

Emmett hesitates, then advances on her again. [Come back to the cabin with me, dear heart.]

Dear heart. The term he used to show her how much he loved her. Even now, he was telling her. And asking her to come back.

But she wasn't sure she could be trusted, so she gathers herself. [No!]

He goes down again and she whines, hating that she'd done it.

Darting forward, she snuffles and licks his muzzle before turning away again to leave. It was harder this time. If he'd only let her go.

She hears him start to struggle upright. Damn.

Turning back, she finds the chocolate brown eyes of the grey wolf as he gets to his feet to face her.

One fat snowflake falls on the end of his nose. She swallows at the wondrous sight of her mate licking it off his muzzle. Her heart hurt looking at him.

[Come back to the cabin.]

[No.] He twitches but doesn't go down.

Crap.

He takes a step forward. [Stop.]

His muzzles twitches, but that's all. [Em. STOP]

A slight stumble.

Shit. He had figured out how to block her. She could hit him harder but she could really hurt him. And wasn't that the point of her leaving? So she wouldn't hurt him?

Emmett set up a wall. It was uncomfortable, unusual. Werewolves were automatically very open to their mates. But, since they could block out other wolves' sendings, they had to have some ability to block their own family, he just needed to reinforce that.

He heard her, sort of, but it was garbled and the power was dampened.

She tries a couple more times and realizes she couldn't stop him. He raises his lips in a wolf grin. He knows that she knows now that she couldn't get away from him.

[Back to the cabin, mate.] He'd find out what she thought she had been doing when they got there.

Lyssa whimpers, whines, and fidgets as the snow settles on her dark coat. He looks at the dark eyes of his mate as the eastern sky begins to turn violet.

[We need to get back before it gets too light.]

She huffs, hangs her head, and takes a step forward. As she starts back she is close enough that he can rub up against her. She stands still as he does so then moves on, back toward the cabin. As she starts up the ridge, the way she had come, he sends, [No, follow the stream back.]

Another huff and she complies.

She'd failed. He'd caught her. And now he would be on guard.

He was herding her back to the cabin and now would come the highly uncomfortable 'talk.' No getting away from it. He'd put his back to the door if he had to and wait her out.

Why not though? Why shouldn't she talk to him, tell him what was going on in her head?

Maybe then he'd realize that.. that she should go.

The snow was pretty, but it was getting hard to push through it, belly deep and sometimes more. He notices that she was having trouble working through and surges forward to break trail.

Emmett pushes forward, through a drift, and drops into the stream bed. It hadn't been cold enough to freeze the water, though a rime of ice lined the banks. He walks directly into the water and trots off toward the cabin, glancing back once as he did.

She was hesitant about walking in the cold water but, cold feet or plowing through snow? She steps in and is surprised. It isn't as cold as she expected.

He leads her around the ridges and through the snow up to the cabin.

Once inside, she sits on the floor and bites at the icy snow packed between her pads.

Emmett walks into the bathroom and starts the shower then returns to the front room. "C'mon. Let's get cleaned up. Then I'll get breakfast and we'll talk."

Joanna wakes up in Nathan's arms, in her bed.

He was laying on his back and she had her back to him, her head on his arm. It was warm and pleasant and he smelled so good. And there was last night, what he did...

She needs to get a bigger bed.

He yawns and stretches as the smell of breakfast wafts upstairs and into the room. His free hand strokes her side, then he rolls up behind her and kisses her shoulder. "Morning, Jo."

She's a bit nervous. "Uh, morning."

He sobers. "You worried about your parents?"

"No. Yeah."

He sits up and pulls her up with him. "They understand what's going on. Between us." He wraps her in his arms. "Would you rather sneak around?"

"What? No!" She sounds a bit indignant.

"Well, then," he kisses the side of her face, "time to be a grownup."

She huffs.

"Look, your parents, the adults do things like this all the time and don't act embarrassed about it. It's all normal."

"Easy for you to say. You've done things before."

"C'mon, love, let's get dressed."

Joanna looks down at what she's wearing. Naked from the waist down, she had pulled on her sleep shirt during the night. He was wearing a pair of blue boxers, and nothing else. As he nuzzles her neck, she pulls away. "I need a shower."

He watches her leave the bed and scoot into her little bathroom. He debates following her in as he hears the water start to run but, her reaction this morning meant she still wasn't comfortable being naked around him. She'd probably scream at him to get out.

So, as he waits for her to finish, he dresses and goes to stand at her window.

The water stops and she comes out, a towel wrapped around her head and another around her body. He watches her reflection, sees her glance at him, then go to her closet.

"Breakfast smells good." She whirls, half-dressed, and sees he's still looking out the window.

"Tuesday. Scrambled eggs. Toast. Sausage and bacon." She throws on a Hello Kitty t-shirt and takes a couple of steps towards him as she rubs the wetness from her hair.

"Did you want to wash up?"

"Naw. I'm good. I can't stay too long."

She looks a bit disappointed. "Oh. OK."

He walks over to her and puts his arms around her, rubbing his arms up her back and kissing her lightly. Now she smells like him again. "It's Mary's birthday and I don't think you'd enjoy the whole bunch of unfamiliar people and all."

She gives him a look that has him wincing slightly. "Did you wanna come?"

She steps away, turns, and flaps a hand at him. "No. It's fine. I got stuff to do."

"Are you mad?"

"Nope. C'mon. I'm hungry."

She was. She was mad. And she didn't quite know why. She didn't think she'd really want to go to a party for his sister-in-law with a whole lot of strange people. But he didn't even ask.

She thought about what that meant as they sat down to breakfast.

And she looks at the empty places that normally held Lyssa and Emmett. Now she feels sad, and worried.

Stephanie sits at her usual place and looks around for Calvin. She now expects him to show up. To come and see her.

They had had a nice sparring session in the circle. It was good to spar with someone whose moves you were unfamiliar with. It made it more like an actual fight. He had beaten her twice and she put him on the ground, her teeth at his throat, once.

She eats while looking around more than she normally would. She sees Nathan Severn sitting beside the Alpha daughter. Hmmph. Looked like another mating in the works. Although she looked a bit upset this morning.

Then she sees Cassie with her infant daughter. Tiny fists, light hair, baby blue eyes. Something she had never wanted and didn't think she could ever have, even if she did want it.

"Stephanie, about ready?"

She blinks and looks at Samuel, shoving the last of her breakfast into her mouth. "Sure."

Time for perimeter sweep. And today was the time for a more complicated check of the range. The Alpha would be renewing the scent marks today, as he did every month.

Calvin was tutoring Erica in the duties required of the Alpha female of the Ross pack.

While certain duties were fairly universal, each pack had some different things they expected their Alpha female to manage. In the case of Ross, she would have oversight of the kitchen, and the clothing, and the den's furnishings.

That meant budgets and Calvin and Amanda, the female that had been managing those areas since Sabine got sick, were explaining things to her.

Unfortunately, she wasn't taking well to the lessons.

Michael was off somewhere, doing who knew what. Normally, new mates could barely be separated from one another.

"You promised you wouldn't run."

"No. I didn't."

Had she? No, maybe she didn't. "OK, so why did you?"

"Maybe I was sleepwalking."

"You were awake."

"It was a nice night. I felt like going for a run in the snow."

"And you felt it necessary to knock me out when I came out?"

Quiet. She had no response for that.

Lyssa sits at the small table and Emmett is leaning back against the counter, facing her.

They've cleaned up, and eaten, and the snow had stopped falling.

And he was trying to figure out what had happened that morning.

He looks at her, shakes his head. "If you were trying to get away from us, Lys, you had other opportunities. This was nuts. You don't know how to survive out there on your own. Without a pack, in winter, it's suicide."

She makes no answer, staring at the surface of the table, tracing designs on the surface with a fingertip.

He was so frustrated he wanted to scream.

He closes his eyes and takes several long breaths. What? What could he do? She wouldn't talk to him. How could he make any sense of it if she wouldn't talk to him?

He needed a drink.

Emmett goes to the refrigerator and pulls out two bottles. Twisting the caps off, he sets a beer in front of her and takes a drink of the one in his hand as he sits at the table. "I don't know how many times I went to your house, to see you. It always gave me a thrill when I saw you. It didn't matter what you were doing."

"I watched, from a corner of your yard one day, as you planted a bunch of flowers. They were little purple and yellow flowers. You were wearing a pair of blue shorts and a light blue top, a halter top."

"I smelled you, your sweat, you smelled so good to me. I could see the edges of you breasts as you moved. And I wanted to touch them, wanted to taste them. I watched your fingers, as you dug in the soil, as you put the flowers in the ground, as you pushed the dirt back around them, and wished they would touch me with such care, so lovingly."

"There was another time, you were sitting on the bench on your back porch. It was a pleasant evening and you were reading a book and looking a little sad."

She had slugged down the first beer, so he brought her another. "It took me a while to figure out what you had on your feet." She looks at him. "Your socks had little dogs and cats on them."

She chuckles lightly.

"I kept coming back to you, Lyssa, and it wasn't just my wolf that wanted you. I did, too."

"I remember coming by once, to see if could catch a glimpse of you again. It was midafternoon and partly cloudy, so it would have been harder for you to see me. The leaves were just past green, thinking of turning. It was warm."

Emmett takes another drink. He smiles. "I scared the squirrels."

"You wondered why they ran towards you. It actually scared you a little. That was me."

The sides of her mouth quirk up a little. She sucks down the rest of the beer. Emmett sets another in front of her.

Her dark eyes flick up to him, then back down. Her finger traces through the condensation on the bottle. "What happened the day you ended up on my porch?"

She knew bits and pieces but he never really had told her everything that had happened that day. She surely had inferred most of it.

What was even better though, was that she had asked a question at all. And not in anger.

"I was running a perimeter sweep. I volunteered for the wide sweep fairly often, so that I could pass by your house. So that I could see if I could see you again."

"I sat there for a while, watching you. In and out, around your yard."

"Since I had been there often enough, I had marked the area."

She quirks another slight smile and asks, "Did you have a favorite tree to pee on?", before she takes another drink.

He smiles back at her. "A couple. And, since my scent was so concentrated there, the Macy pack took notice. So, this time, one of their males came by. He asked what I was doing there and turned to see what I was looking at."

She takes another drink. "What was I wearing?"

His look is soft as he smiles at the memory. "Your hair was in two little ponytails on the sides of your head. You looked so young."

A pause, as he remembers. "You were wearing jeans, those crocs things, and a blue PETA t-shirt."

She laughs at that. "Yeah, People Eating Tasty Animals."

He takes her hand. "I'd smelled your cooking before so I knew you were no vegetarian." Emmett sighs. "Well, he looked you over, made some rude comments, and said he had a better chance of having you than I did."

"Rude comments? About what?"

She sounds a little pissy again. "About humans, dear heart. About how weak you were. And that he'd probably break you if he gave you a good, solid fucking. And then he wondered how you would feel, what your cunt would be like, and then started talking about maybe catching you outside and slumming. After all, it wouldn't be hard to take you down and get your clothes off with claws and werewolf strength. Maybe he'd just knock you down and take you as wolf."

Emmett actually crushes the bottle of beer he's been holding. "Damn. It still pisses me off." He gets up, cleans up the mess, and returns to the table with two more bottles, one for each of them.

"I wanted him out of there but, now that he'd seen you, now that I'd staked a claim by marking your place, he kept it up."

"I told him to leave you alone and go away, that if I found out he'd touched you that I'd kill him. I told him you were mine."

He looks up at her face, thinking, in her current frame of mind, it might piss her off.

She laughs and takes another drink.

"So he basically said we'd see and gave me this look... well, it was a challenge. For you. I couldn't let him.. I went for him and we fought. The slamming of your back door distracted me and he ripped up my leg. That really got me mad so I knocked him down and took out his throat."

"And, with three good legs, I limped over and laid down on your back porch."

"You could have gotten home."

Emmett looks at his mate. "Yes. Eventually. But I wanted to see, I wanted to know how you'd be with me. And, maybe I thought I might be protecting you, that I might need to."

She takes a couple of breaths, still staring at the table. "Do you think he would have actually tried something?"

"I had no reason to doubt it."

"So, before you even knew me, you were protecting me?"

He exhales. "Yes. There was no way I was going to let him, anyone, touch you."

And he hears emotion in her voice when she says, "You never told me that."

Jo spends the day looking at colleges and acting cranky. It just made her mad that Nathan didn't ask her if she wanted to go to Mary's party. Yeah, she wouldn't know much of anybody and it would probably be uncomfortable and awkward and she'd probably get really bored and maybe wanna go home but, he didn't even ask.

Madeline knocks on the door once and they talk for a while. She gushes about Erich and asks about a couple of the pack members.

It takes a little while, but she notices Joanna isn't her usual, bubbly self. "What's going on, Jo?"

"Nothing."

Madeline inhales. "He spent the night. Are you OK?"

"Um. Yeah."

"Doesn't seem like it. Did he do something wrong? Something you didn't like?"