Mistakenly Mated (12 page)

“K…Kerry, that’s not nice.”

“Just a quick peek at your book to see if there is a name on it and we’re all good.”

Willard stared at her with an intense and strange look of concentration on his face. “That’s blackmail. I don’t like that.”

“Well, I didn’t particularly care for being shot and I want the son of a bitch that did it,” she said, letting a growl flow into her voice.

Willard shook a little. His eyes darted around, as if deeply suspicious that someone listened to them. He nodded his head in the direction of a beaded curtain that led to the back of the store.

She smiled at him, going underneath it and to the ledger where they kept of all purchases. Willard’s father was a stickler for knowing who bought what in his store. If a police investigation ever cropped up, which it could do considering some locals’ fondness for drinking and shooting, he wanted to be sure that the persons responsible could be tracked. He didn’t want his business getting shut down.

It was all kept in a ledger because Willard and his father were both too poorly schooled about how to work a computer with any degree of skill. Willard had to rely on his cousin, who went all the way through school, to come over at the end of the week to check his figures.

Kerry found the leather volume sitting open on the counter. She counted backwards a day or so after she and Caleb became mated. Kerry assumed it would have taken at least a day maybe two for whoever shot her to make a plan and purchase a gun Kerry focused on the numbers, names, and descriptions of the purchases.

She heard Willard out in the store turn the lock on the door and flip the sign over from open to closed. Kerry looked up at a clock mounted on the wall. It was 12:00 p.m. From what she knew, the store always closed between twelve and one for lunch. Willard would let her out when she was done looking at the ledger.

There was no sign that Avrilyne or anyone in her family bought a rifle recently. From the put together and perky look of her mother, they weren’t the type who hunted so Kerry decided they probably didn’t have rifles already. They looked like the kind of people who spent their weekends in church, not in the woods looking for deer—unless it was a full moon night.

Kerry thought to herself.
Okay, let’s say they had a rifle already. To shoot from a distance they would need a pretty good scope
. Kerry scanned the pages but only one scope had been purchased in the last month and by Willard.

She looked at that again. It was a pretty expensive night vision enabled scope, which cost a fair bit—far out of Willard’s price range. Most who knew him knew he spent the majority of his pay on weed to get high and spent the rest of the month perpetually broke. So, in the middle of the month—right after the full moon—where did he get nearly three hundred dollars to buy a scope?

Kerry thought,
what could he possibly need it for?

Pain blossomed in the back of her skull. She crashed to the floor like a marionette with its strings cut.

* * * *

Caleb woke up alone. His fingers searched the bed for Kerry but found the sheets empty and cooling. He blinked sleep out of his eyes. He hadn’t meant to sleep in so late. He spotted a piece of paper waving at him from under the lamp. Caleb jostled it free and read it with bleary eyes.

Borrowed your car to go to town. Be back later. Love, Kerry. X

Caleb smiled at her note. She marked it with a little kiss just for him. He snuggled against her pillow, clutching the note to him as he took in her lingering scent. Their relationship was slowly becoming more than an animalistic urge, an attraction they hadn’t been able to fight. They were truly becoming intimate.

Caleb threw back the covers, strolled casually naked into his bathroom, and turned the water to hot in the shower before stepping under the spray. He let the warm water run over every muscle. Some in his arms ached from carrying Kerry but he had such pleasure from being her strong protector.

Some part of him knew he should be worried that she took his car and gone off into town by herself. He hoped people would assume it was him in the car and therefore she would be safe from further attack until she returned to him.

Caleb poured liquid soap into his hands, lathering up his arms and shoulders. Then he worked it over his broad chest and the tort plains of his stomach. He closed his eyes and imagined Kerry stepping into the shower behind him. Her small hands worked the soap into his chest, sliding lower and lower. He shuddered and finished soaping his muscular thighs, trying to ignore the burgeoning shaft that stood out. He wished even more that Kerry was there with him. He doused himself with a quick spray of cold water and then climbed out. He wrapped a towel around his waist and stalked down to his office in search of his Blackberry.

A few hours later, when Kerry hadn’t returned and she hadn’t called, Caleb began to worry. His worry compounded when his home phone rang and it was Kerry’s mother.

“Mrs. Bradley, what can I do for you?”

“Is Kerry there?”

“No, she went out quite some time ago. I thought she might have popped back to see you to change her clothes.”

“She’s hasn’t been here. How long ago did she go out?”

“Four hours, maybe five.”

“She hasn’t called?”

“No, ma’am.” .

“Well then, you should be worried about her and I can tell that you are. Have you called Susan?”

“I’ll do that right now. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. When you find her, you make sure you come over for dinner so we can meet you properly.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He hung up with her and strolled down to his office where he had a list of numbers from his research into his new mate. Susan Verde’s cell phone number was the third one down. He dialed it in.

“Hello,” said a suspicious female voice.

Caleb knew he must have come up on her caller ID as an unknown number.

“Hello, Susan. This is Caleb. I’m looking for Kerry. Have you seen her today?”

“Caleb? No, I haven’t seen Kerry. Bart said you took her home with you last night.”

“I did. She went out sometime late this morning and hasn’t come back yet. I’m worried about her. You’re her best friend. Do you know where she might be?”

“Up until recently, if she wasn’t with me I would have said she was at Dick’s place. Seeing as those two broke up, you call me back in an hour if she doesn’t show up. We’ll go looking for her, okay?”

Caleb thanked her and hung up. He sat down in the chair behind his desk and rocked back in it, thinking. Until recently, if Kerry couldn’t be found, she would have been at Dick’s. He hated to think that might be the case this time. Although they became a little bit closer, he wondered if the irritating young Wiccan still held her heart. She couldn’t be with him because it was against their laws but perhaps she still kept his company. Maybe that was why she hadn’t mentioned where in town she planned to go.

Caleb turned to his computer and searched through the town directory for Kerry’s ex’s address.

* * * *

Dick was surprised to hear knocking on his door. He tore himself away from the glowing of his computer screen and went to answer it. He wasn’t expecting company and wasn’t in the mood to receive it anyway. Dick was even surer he didn’t want it when he saw who stood there. Caleb Vander, relationship saboteur. He reluctantly pulled open the door.

“Is Kerry with you?” Caleb asked him in a snappish voice.

Dick arched his brow, making one of his piercings twitch.

“I was under the distinct impression that Kerry is with you now.”

“No, I mean is she
here
? I can’t find her.”

“Run her off already? There is a shocker,” he said, throwing his door open and allowing the bigger man inside.

Dick didn’t know why he let him inside but there was something in his face that made his better nature chimed in. There was also something’s he wanted to tell Caleb.

Caleb looked around his studio apartment at how everything was crammed into the small space with a kitchen in one corner and only the bathroom separate. Dick shrugged his shoulders as if to tell him this was how people who didn’t make a lot of money lived.

“I’m not going to say I’m glad you’re here but there is something I wanted to show you,” he said, walking back to his computer monitor glowing in one corner.

Caleb, momentarily distracted, followed. He peered over Dick’s shoulder. He saw a window with a dark-haired Goth chick, sitting in a bedroom and grinning sardonically at them.

“Sorry Bethany. I have company. I’ll call you back later and thanks for your help.”

“No problem Richard,” she said in an accent was not American. Caleb thought it was perhaps British—London maybe. The window with her face in went black and Dick clicked it shut.

“She’s nice,” said Caleb, hoping that it was a sign that Dick was moving on. Dick didn’t notice the hopeful tone in Caleb’s voice.

“Bethany is Wiccan like me. She lives in Hastings in England. She’s helping me with research.” Caleb crossed his arms over his chest. His stance became defensive and suspicious very quickly.

“What research?”

“I am trying to find out why the hell you people think those like Kerry are cursed? None of you know why.”

“What made you look into this?”

“I want Kerry to be happy,” Dick said, pulling up a saved document onto the screen. “Even if that’s not with me. Even if it’s with you instead. She shouldn’t have to be pushed to the edges of your community because she’s different. I just thought if I could find out why and prove that it didn’t matter anymore, or if it was never really true in the first place, maybe people would accept her better.”

Caleb relaxed his shoulders. He, too, thought about how she would fit in. He could force some mild acceptance but there would always be the whispers and jeers behind their backs that he didn’t want her to have to suffer.

“What did you find?” he asked, curious.

“I found an old English story. It’s about a fife lord who took a liking to a daughter of one of his tenant farmers but she was promised to another. When the lord heard of this, he kidnapped her. He took her away to his estate where he kept her prisoner until she would agree to marry him. This enraged the fiancé who laid siege to the castle, killing everyone inside save the woman and her abductor.”

“This relates to us, how?”

“The woman was a white wolf. From what we could find, her fiancé was wolf too but we can find no mention of color. The lord was completely human. Bethany told me there was an account, which claimed the white wolf smells so good that males are drawn to her like an opiate. It was the human lord who stated that she was cursed to explain why all those around her who opposed her mate died.”

Caleb furrowed his brow. Kerry did smell incredibly good.

“So, how do you think my people came to believe white wolves were cursed too? What her mate did was hardly her fault.”

“Yes. The problem was that the two wolves had been raised together since almost infancy. He lived with her scent day in and day out, so he was like an addict that went on a rampage,” said Dick,swiveling his chair to face Caleb. “His supply was taken away so he did what he had to, to secure it. After they were mated and the moon passed again, the intensity of the smell would have dropped but their bond would have been really strong. From all we could find between us, white wolves are the fiercest and most loyal of mates.”

Caleb noticed that Dick looked a little sad having to admit that some genetic inbuilt switch had been flicked in his girlfriend to make her intensely loyal to a man she’d hardly known turning her against him.

“Kerry can’t help wanting to be with you as much as you can’t help wanting to be with her,” Dick admitted. “It goes against my grain to admit that but I see that it’d be stupid to come between you. Besides, both of us were keeping secrets. Our relationship would always be second place to those secrets.”

Caleb relaxed even more, feeling for the first time a little bit sorry for the other man.

“So, why did my people cast out the white wolves?”

“We can only guess. It was probably a choice of either making sure her mate was selected early and they were raised separate from everyone else so no one could interfere or just to keep them out of the pack to stop men from ever fighting over one again. They chose the easier option. Declared them cursed and took measures to make sure they died out. We worked out that it was around the time that your cast system of mating began. No same color mating.”

“I still don’t understand why two brown wolves can have a white wolf,” said Caleb . “Surely genetically they would have another brown and I’m sure in some cases they do.”

“That’s because you’re not thinking of it from a mystical point of view. If you do you will note that white is the color of purity. Pure or, for a better word, true love creates the white wolf. I can’t be sure of this but I think they were probably once a lot more common than they are now.”

Caleb smiled a little.

“I can definitely think of purity when I think about Kerry. So, it’s never been a case of they can’t mate, just that they weren’t allowed. I think someone should set the record straight and…” Caleb stopped and considered for a minute whether it was right to ask this man his next question. However, the Wiccan might know something from his research which could alleviate his doubts. “What about pups?”