Rocky Mountain Beautiful!! They will always be home to me!
Two parts in one day.... I must really love you guys.
There are some answers you have been asking for coming up.
Bon Appetite.
Love
NJ Kuhr
xoxo
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My pelvis was mending quickly, much faster than I'd ever healed before. Something I suspected had to do with my bond to Bash. It hurt but I pulled myself up into a sitting position anyway. Lying down in the back seat was getting tedious.
Gemini was restless. We could see the four feet of snow on the ground as Bash drove along a back country highway. The mountains were beautiful, huge and blue with snowcapped peaks. I tapped on the arm rest just below the button that would roll the window down.
I'd grown used to Bash's quiet company. Every now and then I could smell anger rolling off of him at whatever he was thinking. My own fear would mix into the cab and he would calm himself down. He never lost his temper but the only time he was short with me was if I ignored Laurel's advice. I wasn't sure if that included risking a cold by letting crisp mountain air into the cab. I wanted to smell the woods and the trees. It was like there was no one in the world but us.
The window rolled down on its own. I glanced over and caught Bash's eye through the rear view mirror. He had controls on his door and figured out what I wanted. The corners of my mouth tightened as a thank you. I closed my eyes and leaned against the frame. Cold air flooding in, it was fresh and crisp. I could smell the trees and the snow. I didn't know snow had a smell but it did. Bash smelled like snow and clove, clean and spicy.
Gem had her tongue out but we could feel him watching us. She was enjoying leaning into an open window but she didn't like that I'd closed my eyes. She surfaced a little, cracking one of my eyes open in a guarded manner. He glanced at us in the mirror again, turning back to the road.
Bash chuckled. "Down little wolf. You have nothing to fear from me. Parker is safe."
My wolf wasn't so sure but she was stubborn too and settled back into my mind. I didn't respond just stretched my chin out more as wintery air brushed against my face. Gem even began to forget about the male driving the truck. She relaxed feeling the fresh moisture that we never experienced in the desert. Phoenix was a dry heat; the air in Colorado was reviving, light and moist.
Knowing she could influence my emotions made me doubtful. I could never be as confident in the safety that Bash alluded to if Gem wasn't relatively secure with him and his pack.
I sat like that for over an hour waiting for him to roll the window back up but he never did. Half expecting him to my impatience got the best of me. "How long are you going to let me keep the window down?" I could enjoy it more without expecting it to be over any second.
He checked the side view mirror out of habit. We hadn't seen another vehicle on the road for hours. "However long you want to keep it down. It doesn't bother me." Laurel had fallen asleep.
"What if I get sick?"
There was that hesitation again. "Werewolves don't get sick. Things like cold's and flu's are human ailments. There are things that can harm us, silver for one, certain poisons but most diseases and viruses don't affect our immune system. You'll never get cancer, never age. Any illnesses or genetic diseases you had were eliminated when you were changed."
The trees were swooshing by. I could see them in perfect detail. They would have been blurry to human eyes but I could make out each leaf, the patterns of the bark. "I won't age."
"No." He let that set in before he continued. "Our bodies regenerate too quickly to age."
Nineteen, I thought I was twenty. I'd missed my birthday but in my head I'd been thinking I was twenty. I was going to stay nineteen. "For how long?"
"Forever. The only way for a werewolf to die is if he or she is killed. We can die but we're immortal. A lot of men start to struggle after a few hundred years, women earlier. Sometimes werewolves go age-crazy and have to be..... removed. The life expectancy of most wolves varies. We don't forgive forced changes anymore; technology today is making it harder and harder to hide our existence. Eventually, we will have to come out to the public. Now only people willing who have been through a qualifying process are turned by an Alpha. Three in ten survive the change that they volunteered for. I don't even know the odds on a forced change. A lot of new wolves can't handle it so they don't make it past the first shift. Women have an even harder time than men with becoming a werewolf. If a werewolf survives the first year without losing control the life expectancy goes up."
I knew there was an undercurrent. Not only did I survive a forced change but I'd done it in horrible circumstances. I didn't feel strong, not the way he was implying. Like I was some miraculous superwoman, I wasn't. I was just determined and bull headed. "How old are you?" I wasn't sure if that was rude but Bash didn't seem to mind.
"I was born in Philadelphia in 1921. When Pearl Harbor was bombed I enlisted at the age of twenty. I was deployed in Europe. A few months after we stormed the beaches at Normandy in 1944 a bomb fell on the bunker I was in. All the men in my unit were killed, I was dying. There was a General who was a werewolf. He found me, and turned me. Sebastian Harvey Phillips is inscribed on the Tablets of the Missing at the Lorraine Memorial Cemetery in France."
He was almost one hundred years old. Wow. I did the math. He looked older than twenty-three. I would have guessed he was closer to thirty. Becoming a beast would mature a person, harden them. I wondered how old I looked. That made Rikkard's Germany comment mean something more.
Silence stretched on. I didn't want to roll the window up so I let it be. Thinking over everything he and the others had told me. What was spoken and what was left out. "Did you spare me because I have freckles? Zeek told you not to kill me because I have freckles."
His eyebrows arched. "You remember that. I wasn't sure how much you would recall. No, I could not have ended your life even if it was the right thing to do regardless of your freckles. Zeek is honorable and his actions would have been the same as well. He was born with a twin sister. She was a remarkable young woman, spirited and adventurous. When Ford created the Model-T she saved all her money to buy one. That was before the safety features of today. Betty had light red hair, almost as blond as your gold hair but still on the red side and the same sprinkle of freckles under her eyes."
Bash voice was soft with old sadness. "She loved driving and had a lead foot. Betty and Zeek went for a drive one afternoon outside of Boston. The roads were muddy and wet from a late spring storm and Betty lost control. When a werewolf from a neighboring pack came across the accident he was able to save Zeek by changing him but Betty was either too far gone or didn't survive the change. The old wolf wasn't sure and Zeek doesn't remember much. He would have done anything to keep you safe Parker. He's a good man and noble, but having to watch you die would have dragged up old grief."
It was silent for a while after that story. Bash sounded as if he had known her but I didn't think so. Zeek was changed long before WWII if he was human when one of the first vehicle was created. I wondered if being Zeek's Alpha had given Bash a more personal look into Zeek's memories.
"What's an Omega?"
If I didn't know better I would have thought he didn't hear me. Werewolves hear everything and Bash was the biggest werewolf of them all. Well, Rikkard might be bigger and there was a huge man in Bash's pack that I hadn't learned his name who was definitely bigger but as far as I was concerned Bash out-werewolfed them all.
Knowing I knew he heard me he relented. "An Omega is a rare wolf. I've never met one before you and I know few wolves who have. I don't know of any cases in North America. The only person I knew who has met one is very old. The last Omega wolf he recalls died over three hundred years ago."
It was making me uncomfortable but it helped explain their behavior. Why they were all treating me like a fragile vase. Why Bash hadn't wanted the other packs to know what I was. I was unique.
"Omega's are the opposite of an Alpha. You fought because you had to not because you wanted to. Dominant wolves enjoy the fight, and are easily threatened. We crave violence but can control the urges. That is why having a pack balanced with submissive wolves is very important. Wolves are social creatures, we live in packs. Lone wolves struggle and the longer they are separated the more the depression strains their control. Dominant wolves are aggressive but our most basic need is to protect, around other dominants a rank is established so we know who is to protect and who is to be protected."
"Submissive wolves create a balance. Not many changed wolves are submissive because their gentle personalities prevent them from being strong enough to survive the violence of the change. However, the ones who do are guarded and treasured so they live longer than most dominants. I believe it's love that helps them survive. Dominate wolves survive the change because we're natural fighters, as humans we were blusterous but I think submissive survive for love of another. The ones who have someone they love so much they have to live for them, they make it. The ones who don't have that strong of a love succumb to death. They don't threaten the dominant wolves because we know the submissives won't attack to prove who's more dominant or challenge to rise in the ranks."
I called them lesser wolves, the ones who were scared of the mean wolves. The information was making Garrett's pack easier to understand. There weren't many submissive wolves in that pack. Bradley killed most of them.
As if reading my thoughts Bash continued. "If a pack is purely dominant then there will always be chaos. Wolves fighting each other to gain power over others, dominant wolves need some security that their position in the pack is safe. There's a hierarchy, the most dominant wolf is the Alpha, the Beta, and then the Gamma. After the Gamma it tends to branch off a bit more. I have two wolves who are considered my fourths. Dominance can be fairly even after that but there are always three more dominant than the rest. Submissives are the foundation of the pack, they hold the pack together. The dominant wolves are more protective over the submissives because they provide stability and unity. They keep the pack grounded as a family. Submissives are adored and taken care of."
"I'm submissive." Garrett had never adored me and he certainly didn't treasure me.
"Not exactly." Bash smiled. "You have all the dominance of an Alpha. That stubborn streak of yours for example. Submissives wolves don't feel the desire to argue with a dominant, they're passive. They will shield themselves when they have to but submissives are gentle, peaceful. They are also obedient, which you most certainly are not. Garrett couldn't order you into submission he had to physically force you to do his will. All the men in his pack, even his Beta, had to follow his commands. You didn't so he found other ways to make you."
The more he talked the more he settled into his seat. He wasn't watching the mirrors as much. "Omegas have the same protective instincts an Alpha has, a fierce desire to defend. Omegas bring that out in dominant wolves even more than a submissive. We don't feel threatened by you and you have the ability to calm the aggression. Dominant wolves are still aggressive around the submissives. We don't worry about an attack coming from them but we are still on alert, always on the edge. Omega's can alleviate the aggression in others. Our wolves can relax around you, sleep. Which, after hundreds of years of constantly being on guard, is a very powerful incentive to protect you."
Garrett's wolf was crazy, but I couldn't calm his aggression. Bash had said the humanity was gone and with it his protective instincts. "I didn't help with the others."
"You did." He looked into the rearview mirror again making me wonder if he was worried someone might follow us. His body language was more telling to the truth of his words than anything else. When he was talking about me he sat casually in his seat, leaned back into the cushions. When he talked about the Phoenix pack his spine straightened and he checked the mirrors more often.
"Garrett brought you into the pack because he needed to calm his wolf. He knew he was losing control and for werewolves that is a death sentence. Each Alpha is in charge of his own pack but there have been long standing agreements with packs all over world. An out of control wolf will alert the humans to our existence. If and when the humans find out about us we want to be able to control the way that happens. You did keep him in enough control to hide his activities for over a year. If you hadn't been there we would have been alerted to his madness months ago."
So I had taken away some of his aggression. I shivered, if I wasn't an Omega he would have been a bigger monster. "He didn't bring me into his pack though. I was human when he took me. He had his Beta attack me in an alley."
Bash considered what I told him. "Alpha, Beta, even submissive is about personality. I was dominant as a human; it's why I rose through the ranks in the military so easily. Omegas are the same. As a human you were still Omega, he could smell it. Being a werewolf intensifies our characters, it doesn't change them. There are very few Omega humans, I've never come across one that I knew of but there are even less Omega werewolves. Once, I think I caught the scent of one but they were human and I was in a crowd of people boarding a train in Austria trying to get back to the states. Dead men don't get issued identification. It was quick and the smell was lost in the engine smog but I remember it. For half a second I felt almost human again. I missed the train trying to find whoever's scent that was. Until you I didn't know it was omega. The protective instincts are too strong in healthy wolves to turn one from human to werewolf. A wolf in control would not have been able to force himself to harm you. To become a werewolf you have to be on the edge of death. It's the only way. Right before you die your body is weak, there's no resistance. You either turn or die. Then the werewolf magic can remap your genetics. Only a moonstruck werewolf without humanity could harm you to the point of death."
"So they targeted me. It wasn't a wrong place wrong time thing."
"No, Garrett sought you out."
I'd always wondered what would have happened that night if I had just continued going to the bus stop. If I had left when Jason did he would have given me a ride. When I was healing in the Kennel I'd pretend I'd said yes to Sarah and went with them. I imaged dancing and enjoying girl's night out, creating alternate outcomes. "So if I hadn't walked into the alley that night it would have happened anyway. They would have attacked me a different night or followed me home."
"Yes." He wasn't going to sugar coat anything but he said it gently. "They'd been following you for weeks. A wolf who'd been killed shortly after your attack came across you on a city bus and had followed you for two days, probably mesmerized by the effect you had on him. He didn't know what you were but Garrett punished him for not returning when he was supposed to. When he told Garrett what you'd done to his wolf Garett knew and he'd order his inner circle to stalk you and find a time and place to take you."
I rolled up the window. I knew I wasn't cold but I wanted to curl up under a heavy blanket. I'd been hunted. They'd stalked me and ran me down. I shifted carefully, mindful that my hips were still healing and stretched across the back seat. Pillowing my head on my arms I stared at the back of Bash's seat. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to feel better or worse.
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Hope you enjoyed it.
Love
NJ Kuhr
xoxo