A Fate Foretold (formerly: A World Gone Mad)

A Fate Foretold 4

          Christian shuffled from one foot to the other. This was torture. This was more awkward than the two meetings with Kate Hawkins, who he was supposed to marry. Possibly because however forced his relationship with Kate would be, it was an understandable relationship with marked boundaries. No one had had a nat amatra in a century, he had no idea how to deal with this girl. He was supposed to sleep with her, hold her in high regard, and stayed unattached enough to not make it awkward for Kate. One contradiction after another. In his opinion, it was going to be awkward any way you looked at it.

           He took his time to get a good look at her. She was slim to the point of looking dainty. She was beautiful, he had to admit. He was happily relieved at that. And she looked calm and collected, almost the point of being unnerving. She was getting handed off to the guy who was allowed to sleep with her whenever he desired. Any normal person would show some concern at that. But of course she wouldn’t be normal. She had agreed to be a nat amatra, or someone had volunteered her.

            Ally gazed at him pityingly. He was obviously uncomfortable. It would be easy enough to help him out of his misery, but neither would it kill him to stew a little bit longer. She wanted to test how long it would take this supposedly future alpha to take control of the situation.

           Too long, as it were. The way he was staring at her would be construed as sexual if he hadn’t had the air of a lost boy about him. She finally broke the silence by saying, “Do you perhaps have some coffee we could make?”

           “Yes!” He said, a bit too loudly, but he was too relieved to be embarrassed about such a small blunder.

          Ally smiled at him, trying to put him at ease. This wasn’t going to be easy. She had to gain his trust, but he was looking at her like she had two heads and one of them was rabid.

         Christian led the way to the kitchen and motioned for her to sit around the small wooden table while he put the coffee on. So not a spoiled-rotten future alpha, then.

         “How long have you been here on your own?” Ally asked.

         “About a week. I was down in the main house for a week, getting caught up with everything. Then I took a week to get away from everything on my own. I had been planning to go back up north the day after tomorrow, until I got the call from my dad yesterday.”

         “I’m sorry to have set back your plans. Will you be missing anything very important this week?”

         Christian wasn’t looking at her as he got mugs out of the wooden cupboard. Everything in the house was rustic, hand-carved wood. “There’s nothing that can’t wait a week. I’m sure that the rest of the pack will thank you for the extended vacation.”

         “Well, that’s a good start for me,” she smiled.

         “Tell me about yourself,” Christian encouraged, pouring the coffee.

         Ally looked at him strangely. “I’m a nat amatra,” she pointed out uncomfortably. “I can’t tell you about who I am or my past life.”

         “Oh. Right.”

         “Why don’t you tell me about yourself,” Ally suggested. “Tell me about the pack unit in Alaska.”

          “Well, we’re about ten wolves from the south. We deal with the members of the pack in the far north, address their needs and concerns, and we secure the border with the Bering Strait.”

            “How many wolves live in the area?”

            “About four hundred. It’s a large area – Alaska and northwestern Canada. It became popular with werewolves who wanted to live in their own segregated communities, exclusively.”