Claiming their Mate

Chapter 6

  “Do you always eat breakfast at the lodge?” Clara was feeling nervous about the whole idea, remembering all those eyes on her the previous day. She hadn’t felt threatened, but being the center of so much attention was murder on an introvert.

"Maybe a few times a week. I would have made breakfast this morning and brought it to you in bed, but it’s important that you to have breakfast at the lodge today.”

  That was just what she needed to hear. “Me? Why?”

  “You’re a human who’s going to have free reign of clan territory. We need to let our clan members see you and catch your scent.”

  “Will everyone be there? The entire clan?” She didn’t like the sound of that.

  “No. We can’t fit everyone in the lodge at the same time, but those who live closest and can make it will be there. Others will get their chance at the next clan gathering.”

  Great. There would be another see-and-sniff event? “What would happen if they didn’t catch my scent? Would they attack me?”

  “You must really see us as animals, huh? Okay, yeah, we are, but we aren’t. We’re civilized enough not to attack humans, except in self-defense or to protect our own. But if a random human was found wandering around our land, she’d be either escorted off our property and told never to trespass again or taken to one of the alphas, who’d then decide what to do with her. Luckily, we haven’t had a problem with trespassing humans.”

  “Really? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Well, Lupus Falls is a small town, and the humans there are good about minding their business. Then there’s the fact that River Springs is such a remote area. Plus, I think there’s instinct at work.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Animals can scent humans and become wary, right? Well, I think the same thing happens when humans get close to River Springs. They don’t know what it is, but being close to so many wolves puts them on some sort of high alert and they can’t wait to head in the opposite direction.”

  “I wonder why that didn’t happen to me. I honestly didn’t feel strange at all that first night. I wasn’t afraid until I saw Adam change the next day.”

  They’d arrived at the lodge and Xavier had pulled the car around the back, parking it in front of one of the seven garage doors. Clara was glad of that. At least she wouldn’t have to walk through the throng of wolf shifters she’d seen waiting outside.

  Xavier cut the engine and turned to face her, his gaze warming her and alleviating some of her nervousness. “I don’t have an answer for that, but I can tell you what I think.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “I think humans have some of the mating instinct wolf shifters do. I think they’ve just stopped paying attention to it and let themselves be overcome by so many other things that they can no longer sense it. But I think it’s still there, just under the surface, and when you came to River Springs, your body instinctually knew you belonged here, so you weren’t nervous or afraid. You were only frightened when you saw something you believed wasn’t possible.”

  “So, you’re saying my intellect got in the way of my instinct?”

  “Exactly.”

  She had to admit, it made a weird sort of sense, but this explanation didn’t do much for her hope that he’d accept that, as great as they were together in bed, she didn’t intend to stick around. Neither did the way he gave her a hand up out of the car and pulled her into a hungry kiss. That kiss said he’d enjoyed having her not more than an hour ago, but he still hadn’t had enough.