Array
(
[text] =>
Chapter 1.
*****
*Corey*
“Corey. Corey! COREY!” I groaned sitting up in bed, no longer able to ignore the man that was rapidly shaking my shoulders to ruin my sleep.
“What do you want?” I hissed at Jayden while running my hands over my eyes to clear them.
What time was it? It felt like it was so early in the morning. Once my vision was cleared, I moved my gaze to my mate. Jayden looked frantic and it immediately made me perk up with concern, suddenly completely awake, that was until he spoke again, “I-I can’t find — I can’t find Eli anywhere.” I frowned at him for a few seconds before dropping back into our bed and pulling the covers over my head. For a second there I really thought something was wrong, damn Jayden and his ability to make me panic at the slightest sound of worry in his voice. “Corey!”
“Babe, I’ve had a long week. I haven’t slept at all. Please, please just let me sleep.” I groaned letting out a heavy sigh while shutting my eyes.
“Corey! I’m not — I’m not kidding. I can’t find him.”
The fear in Jayden’s voice made me sit up again and look at him as he stared back at me with panic-stricken brown eyes that made my heart clench. Letting out a deep sigh, I tilted my head at him and spoke calmly.
“Jayden, Teddy…” The nickname made him smile which subsequently made me do the same, “Have you looked in the basement?” I smirked as his eyes fell to the floor.
“Why… Uhm… why would he be in the basement? It’s dark down there…” He mumbled. I chuckled at how cute he looked standing there and studying the wood beneath his feet. It was hard to believe we were so much older when he still acted like a child sometimes.
“Because he takes after me and he isn’t a wimp like you are, Dad.” He shot me a glare and I chuckled. “I love you.” I fell back into bed but instantly jumped out when I landed on something effectively making it let out a scream. “Tamia! What —?!” Jayden laughed as our seven-year-old little girl smiled up at me innocently.
I let out a groan and turned to tickle her as punishment for interrupting my sleep, evoking giggles and cries of happy agony from her. The one day I get off work, but sleep wasn’t in the cards for me, was it? I guess my sorrow could be numbed by being around the adorable weirdoes I called my family.
“I’ll get Eli,” Jayden announced walking out.
“You sure you don’t need me to hold your hand?” The question earned me another fiery glare before he disappeared into the hall and I laughed, “Come here, sneaky Princess.” I grabbed our daughter and lifted her out of the bed.
Jayden and I had been together for almost nine years. I had taken over from Sean’s dad and was now Beta of our pack, Sean was the Alpha. It was a lot of work, as I had expected but it was ridiculous sometimes. Sean and I barely slept because of work, pack meetings and duties, add Jayden and our twins and I was basically the living dead at the moment. Jayden joked that I even sounded like it when I had to get out of bed in the morning.
“Papa?” My focus was aimed down at Tamia as she looked up at me with big, brown eyes identical to Jayden’s.
“Yes, Baby?” I asked kissing her forehead.
We had them through surrogate. Being werewolves, the gestation period was only a few weeks before they were born. After a few weeks of hell at the sudden realisation that I would literally be responsible for a pair of lives, Jayden had found my fear both funny and annoying. We had planned to have kids for a year before we actually made it happen and after the initial panic, it was quite amazing being with them… despite the lack of sleep they gave us.
“Why aren’t you and Daddy married?” Her question caught me off guard because it was the first time she had ever asked that.
“Uh…” I cleared my throat, “Why… why are you asking that?”
“Alpha Sean’s married to auntie Izabella and Bonnie says her parents got married because they love each other… Do you love Daddy?” Bonnie was Hayley and Kyle’s six-year-old. Sean and Izabella had a seven-year-old son, Ashton, who was a few months older than the twins.
“Of course I do, Tammy,” I said smiling to reassure her of the fact if my words had not already done that.
“So why aren’t you married?” She asked.
I let out a sigh while entering the kitchen and set Tamia down on the table before resting my hands on the counter at either side of her as I stared at her curious face.
“Honey… It… it’s complicated…”
‘It is?’ Jayden’s voice sounded in my mind as he linked to me so the kids couldn’t hear him. It was a type of telepathic communication that was possible between families. It was also possible for Sean and me to connect to our entire pack because we were the Alpha and Beta. Jayden was eavesdropping from somewhere in the house. Our exceptional hearing proved to be annoying quite often, but I was used to that.
“Why?” Tamia pushed.
“Please, explain to our daughter why it’s so ‘complicated’, Papa,” Jayden said with a forced smile as he followed our son into the kitchen.
I opened my mouth as all three of them stared at me questioningly before giving my mate a pointed stare.
‘Can we not do this right now?’ I linked to him before ruffling Eli’s curly blond hair and smiling to change the mood that had filled the kitchen, “How about some veggie platters?” The twins grimaced at my suggestion; unfortunately, they both had Jayden’s taste in food. Jayden’s sickeningly unhealthy taste in ‘food’. Eli, at least, loved healthy food as well but I had to force the other two to eat properly every day. I guess this was one of Eli’s Jayden days. “Waffles?” I asked the twins.
“Waffles!” They shouted bouncing in excitement. I laughed but stopped when my gaze moved to the opening that led into the hall to find that Jayden was gone.
“Babe?” I yelled out to him.
“I’m not hungry! I have to get to work, you’ve got the twins, right?!” He called back. He didn’t wait for my answer as I heard the front door shut.
I let out a sigh and turned to the cupboards. Jayden had suggested marriage a lot, he talked about it all the time and I always pretended to fall asleep or be distracted when he did. It’s not that I didn’t want to be married to him, but what difference would it make? We were together, mated, we lived together, we had children and he knew I loved him and them more than anything. So why was a stupid paper so important? It wasn’t. Humans got married, werewolves didn’t need to but it had become a trend in the past few decades.
“Can Tammy get married?” My neck almost snapped as my head quickly swung to face Eli. To say I was shocked by his question was an understatement.
“What?” I croaked.
“Can Tammy get married? You know, to Ash.”
“Ash? Ashton?” I coughed. My daughter’s face was adorably embarrassed as my son nodded frowning. “Wait, Uncle Sean’s son, Ashton?” I asked for clarification even though we all only knew one Ashton.
“Yeah, he said he’s gonna marry her. He can’t, right?” Eli asked.
“Hell no! Of course not. He better stay away from her.” I said brushing Tamia’s curls from her face. She smiled up at me. Ashton. The nerve that kid had saying that… What the hell did a seven-year-old boy know about girls, let alone marriage? I didn’t care what everyone said about them definitely being mated, they were not.
“I’ll keep him away,” Eli smirked. I smiled.
“I know you will, Alpha,” I said.
Eli had been born Alpha, something Sean seemed quite happy about. I had told him he was an idiot because we weren’t going to get any time off any time soon. My plan had failed. Before the twins were born I told Jayden I wanted to have children as soon as possible because I just knew that our son was going to be either an Alpha or a Beta and that would mean I could retire sooner, it had left Jayden stunned and then I received a lecture about how I couldn’t have kids just to give them a job to benefit myself. It didn’t matter now anyway. I mean, we had what, sixteen more years before Eli and his generation of leaders took over? Sixteen. I dreaded the next sixteen years, if they were anything like the past nine years, I might not even make it to retirement.
“Come on, guys, help make your lunch while I make breakfast!” I smiled at my kids.
They happily agreed and we began making a mess that would probably not be cleaned until Jayden got home and yelled at me to clean it up by myself saying that I was the grown-up before he would help me clean it anyway because he felt bad that I was doing it by myself at night.
———
I had dropped the twins at school and was now stuck in a meeting with the pack Elders; a bunch of old and not-so-old ex-leaders of the pack who helped us lead by offering their suggestions and history lessons – oh, and personal opinions of every decision Sean and I made.
“Look, I understand what you’re saying, Cole, but we need to expand. The pack’s getting bigger very fast and this ground cannot accommodate us all anymore. We’re too many for this piece of land! We need to move, before the end of the year.” Sean said to his father.
We were talking about migrating the entire pack because the land we were on was becoming too crowded. I was listening to everyone speak while taking some notes and wondering how Jayden’s tea break was going because it was around time for that. I wanted to call him, I missed his voice…
“Very well. You will have to visit these places. It could take weeks, months even.” Cole, Sean’s father and our ex-Beta, said.
“Not actually, we’ve been doing research and I’ve narrowed our choices in plots down to five. They’re all either in or beside a forest, each looks very promising.” Antonio, our current Delta of Agriculture, said as he pointed over to the screen the information was projected onto.
“It’s not about how they ‘look’ like from far away. You’re going to have to visit these places, check the ground, the animals and if there are any, meet the packs living around the place and make sure they’re alright with us moving there because we cannot win a turf war against a pack that knows the place better than we do. You will be away for a month at least.” Our ex-Alpha Ian spoke.
“Fine, Antonio and I will go,” Sean said.
“You can’t go on your own. You need to be a group, a strong group at that. Our strongest wolves would have to be with you. In case you get attacked while you’re travelling. Also, Corey has to go with you to second any decisions you make.” Ian said.
My ears perked up at the sound of my name and I looked at him.
“Our strongest? What happens if the pack gets attacked while we’re away? I have to stay here. My duty, as Beta, is to be here when Sean is not.” I said.
“Yes, we cannot both go.” Sean agreed.
“It’s pack customs for you both to make decisions this big.” One of the older Delta’s spoke.
“Then I can just fly out to wherever they are when Sean chooses a plot.” I said.
“That’s not how it works, and you’ll be wasting more time just for you both to be away at the same time anyway.” Ian said, “Really, we have three generations of Alpha —” Ian was saying.
“Two, Eli’s seven.” I interrupted.
“Three, Eli still counts. If anything happens to you, the pack will be fine. We’re here to take care of everything while you’re gone.” He said.
I sighed exchanging glances with Sean. We both knew the elders were not going to budge.
“Fine. We’ll leave on Friday. Corey, Zeke, Jason, Keisha, Antonio and I.” Sean said.
Zeke wasn’t a Delta, but he was one of the strongest wolves in our pack having worked harder than almost everyone to prove himself worthy and useful once the pack accepted him, he used to be a rogue wolf — a wolf without a pack but now he was part of us. Jason was our Army Delta and Keisha was Delta of all things security and technology.
I frowned as everyone discussed leaving times and routes for visiting the places we had chosen to look at earlier. Jayden was not going to be happy about the trip. He barely saw me as it was with all the work. And now I was leaving for a month. It’s not like I had a choice though, he would probably understand after a while. I didn’t want to leave him and our kids but I had to do my duty. Hopefully, we would be back sooner than expected.
******
[text_hash] => 5c36e9c3
)