Love in the Dark

Chapter 18

Dallas

Nick has a sister. I don't know why, but that comes as a shock to me. He just gives off such only-child vibes that it seems impossible that he could have any siblings. But no, he has an older sister. 

And she's coming to visit. 

I know Nick is super excited from the way he's been bouncing around the house for the past few days, always with a smile on his face. Whenever I ask him why he's smiling, he just says, 'Taylor's coming.' 

His older sister, Taylor, was born four years before him. He's told me a little about her. I know that she used to be really into punk rock, and was a goth for a few years before she mellowed out and became more hippie-like. Then, she became a cool person, who didn't give a fuck about what anyone else thought, and who wore whatever she wanted—even if it didn't please their parents too much. Hearing so much about this girl made it feel almost like I knew her, but also didn't at the same time. 

All I know is that I'm excited to meet her, and get to know what she's really like. Younger siblings aren't exactly the best at not putting their older siblings on a pedestal, so I doubted that Nick was able to tell the whole truth. 

She was supposed to arrive today, sometime around dinner. I was extra excited because today would be the first day that I would actually help make dinner. so not only would I get to meet her, but she would get to be one of the first people to try my cooking. 

Standing in the kitchen, I have on an apron that Holly made me wear to keep my clothes clean. She said it could get pretty messy around dinner time. It was cute, with pink and purple flowers on it. It cinched at the waist, making me have a girlish figure. 

I hated it. 

But, there was something to be said of the style of the apron that I actually liked. I liked looking down and seeing the flowers.

But that's not important. What is important, is that I'm finally helping! It took forever for me to actually do something around the house, and I feel so much better now helping out. I feel like less of a deadweight. 

"Honey, can you hand me that?" Holly asked, her voice like...well, like honey. I smile as I hand her the raw chicken. "Thank you. You can start chopping up the carrots." 

I take the peeler and begin scraping the icky sides off of the carrot. When I'm done, I set the chopping board on the table and begin chopping away at the orange vegetable, pretending for a moment that I'm playing fruit ninja. A few of them end up looking a little wonky and cut diagonally, but I'm sure nobody will notice. 

"What can I do now?" I ask when I'm finished. 

Holly looks around the kitchen. There are five other people, women and boys both, helping make dinner. There's a lot of work that goes into feeding almost sixty people, and if anything, we're a bit understaffed. 

"You can start the water boiling, and then prepare the pasta noodles," She said. She has a southern lilt to her voice that makes everything she says sound sweet. 

Because some of the people in the Pack had different tastes, there was always a wide variety of food for them to choose from. We made stuff from pasta to hamburgers to vegetable salads. Anything a person could want was right here, ready to be served by six o'clock. 

Soon, dinner was ready and finished. Holly whistled, and people came streaming in from all directions. There was a particular group of teenagers that caught my attention. They were sweaty and breathing hard, as if they had just come in from working out. 

Or training. 

I felt the sudden desire to train. I wanted to become useful to the pack in other ways. At least for the duration of my stay here. I wanted to be able to protect the women and children from that rival pack that Nick had told me about the day I found out what he was. I wanted to be able to protect these kind people who had taken me in, fed me, clothed me—yes, they had bought and lent me clothes—and taken care of me. I wanted it so badly that something in my chest gave way. 

I made a mental note to talk to Nick about it later. As far as I knew, he was my lifeline here. He was the person I needed to go to about things like that. 

It seemed as though he had a lot of responsibility around here. I wondered why. I would have to ask him about that, too. 

------------------------------------------

I sat on the couch, across from Nick's infamous sister, Taylor. She had asked to speak to me immediately upon arriving. After her hellos to her family, she had taken my wrist and dragged me to the living room—which was not empty, thanks to dinner having been served an hour ago. 

I looked at her, waiting for her to say something. She hadn't told me why she wanted to talk to me, only that she had wanted to talk to me. It was strange, and it made me a little uncomfortable. 

"So..." I began, trailing off. 

She was still watching me carefully, as if she were also waiting for something. Nick had told me that she had left the Pack House to join her Mate and his Pack, but he hadn't told me what 'Mates' even was, so I was left in the dark. 

"You left to be with your Mate," I try again. It feels wrong to ask her a question so soon, but it's been killing me. "What are Mates?" 

Her dark eyebrows shoot up. "Nick didn't tell you?" 

"No, he didn't." I'm a little annoyed by it myself. I thought Nick would tell me everything—he had promised he would, after all—but that was the one thing he refused to talk to me about. 

"Well, Mates are...it's hard to put it into words. I believe 'Soulmate' explains it pretty well. Mates are two people who have something called a Mating Bond that makes them depend upon each other. Not in an unhealthy way, they just...need each other. Being around your Mate calms you down, it makes you feel safe and at peace. There are a few of us who choose to reject the bond entirely, but when that happens, it's very likely that one or both of them could die from a literal broken heart." Taylor explains it all clearly. 

I'm sort of getting the picture now. It makes a little more sense as to why she would leave to be with hers. 

"Okay," I said slowly, "So Mates are Soulmates, and you can't live without each other. What if you go your whole life without ever finding your Mate?" 

Taylor's brows draw together. "That's happened a few times, but we don't know what actually happens to said wolves. We just know that it's very unlikely. It's fate that we end up together, and there's this pull to one another that can't be ignored. Does that makes sense?" 

"Yes." It did, mostly. There were still a few questions, but I didn't want to bombard her with them. "So, why did you want to talk to me?" 

Taylor laughed. "I just wanted to see you. You are living in my house, after all. Besides, it's not every day that Nick brings someone home." 

I get a warm feeling from those words. I push the feeling down, focusing on the present. "So, you don't want to talk to me?" 

"Not really. Not that I think you're boring or anything, I just wanted to see you. I'm pretty jet-lagged, so I'm going to go to bed." Taylor stood. "Goodnight." 

She left quickly. I couldn't believe all the information that had just been dropped on me. 

I made my way back to my room, shutting the door behind me. Alone with nothing to distract me, I let my thoughts take me away.

Mates. Mates. Mates. 

That word wouldn't get out of my head. It was circulating around my brain as the earth revolved around the sun, constantly going, going, going. At one point, I got so annoyed that I took a piece of paper and just wrote that word down as many times as I could before my hand got cramped. 

Finally, tired enough to actually sleep, I laid down and let my thoughts take me into unconsciousness. 

Mates. Mates. Mates.