Chapter Playing nice
MIA
“Are you hungry?” Drake asked me after clearing his throat. If he thought I didn’t catch him ogling my legs, he was so wrong. But instead of getting mad all I could do was blush again. What the hell was he doing to me? Putting a strand of hair behind my ear, I simply shook my head no. Don’t need food when your stomach is full of butterflies flapping all around it. I took a deep breath, and the scent of pinewood and rain took over my senses. It was a calming scent.
“I don’t want to upset you, Mia, but I need to know a few things. Do you know who those wolves were?” he asked me carefully, studying my face. I should tell him something. I didn’t have to tell him my life story, but I was on his lands, they did take good care of me and were nursing me back to health. The least I could do was tell him what I knew about those wolves, even if it was nothing.
“No, I have no idea where they came from or even if they belonged to a pack. They attacked my little community, we tried to fight them back, but there was too many. In the end I ran. Ended up here and to be honest I have no idea where here even is.” I explained while looking around to maybe get a better sense of where I could be.
He looked pensive for a while, digesting the information I’ve just gave him. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t know much about the wolves either, just that they attacked and seemed to be after me. But I couldn’t tell him that. If he knew they were after me, he would want to know why and that’d led to a whole new problem. Although Drake seemed honest, I didn’t know if I could trust him. Sure, his pack saved my life, but they had no idea who I was. Things could have been different.
Drake seemed lost in his thoughts, and I was relieved he was not asking anymore questions. There were so many things I didn’t want to talk about. I rested my head on the back of the chair and closed my eyes. The moment I did it, memories of happier times with Max and the others flooded my mind. I miss them so much. I just hoped that some of them made out alive. We were an odd bunch, but we were like family.
“Were there only humans in your community?” Drake asked in a soft voice, like he didn’t want to upset me. That’s when I noticed some tears had fallen down my cheeks. Damn it! I hate crying and even more crying in front of people. I took a deep breath to calm my emotions and again the scent of pine woods and rain. Was it his scent? Should I even be able to smell it if it was? Weird.
“No, we were a mix of all kinds of rejects, I guess. We had a few werewolves, some vampires, a few nymphs, the odd witch and even a druid.” my voice was almost a whisper. Talking about them hurt more than I expected.
“So, you were the only human?” he seemed surprised about it. Truth be told, it was. Usually, humans were far away from supernatural creatures and completely oblivious to their existence. So, I simply nodded to his question. I was sure there were more coming my way and I was already tired of it.
After a few minutes of silence, I opened my eyes and looked at him. Drake was looking at me with a sad thoughtful face. I guess it was sad, I have lost everything. To think how far we had come just to be slaughtered like nothing. Again, I felt tears trying to escape my eyes, but I blinked them away. Enough is enough and that damn wolf had seen to many of my tears already. I was not weak; Max had trained me for a reason.
“How many of you were there?” he asked calmly.
“I’m not sure, we had some people that just spent some time with us, others would come and go. But I think we had around fifty people that were staying the camp site. Or village, like we called it.” Gods, even my voice was broken.
“And the wolves there were rogues?”
I snorted and bit my lip hard. Yeah, like that was an option to be any different. Sure, you could call yourself a rogue if you wanted that life and wanted nothing to do with wolf law or a pack. But to call those people rogues was just wrong. They were all kicked out of their packs for doing nothing wrong. Just because their mighty Alpha didn’t think them strong enough, or they didn’t want to sleep with them and so on.
“They were lone wolves, refugees. Not rogues.” I hissed at him.
“I don’t really see a difference between lone wolves and rogue wolves, so it doesn’t matt–”
“Of course, you don’t! You, Alphas, are all the same! Bullies!” I spat at him, suddenly furious.
DRAKE
She was standing and seemed ready for a fight. Her whole body was trembling, if it was from exhaustion or rage, I could not tell. Well, considering her clenching fists I would go with rage. I had pissed her off very badly and I didn’t even know how I’ve done it. The worst part of all? She was sexy all flustered and driven like that. She looked like she could jump at me at any second, and to be honest, I would not mind if she did it. I could work with that. Focus!
“I’m truly sorry if I said something wrong that offended you, Red, I had no intention in doing so.” I tried to reason with her. I could tell that rogues were a sore subject for her, and I intended to avoid that for a while, or forever if I could help it. “I was just surprised to hear about a bunch of ro–” she gave me a death glare. “I mean, lone wolves together.”
She snorted again and sat back, avoiding looking at my eyes. I guess Kyle was right, I was bound to piss this woman off even if I had no intentions of doing it. I took in a deep breath and closed my eyes. I had to fix the situation before it got out of hand, and she stopped talking to me altogether. Opening my eyes, I put my hand on top of hers on the armchair, the slightest tingling sensation run through my hand. Damn it, I can’t even control my attraction. Sighing I asked, “How did you end up with them?”
She narrowed her eyes at me, glanced at our hands and took hers back. Boy, she was still pissed. “It’s none of your business.” Mia hissed at me and by the looks of it that would be all I would get from her at the moment. She had adjusted herself on the chair to be as far away from me as possible and angled herself to the wall, facing away from me.
I tried to start a conversation again, but she had it with me for the day. No more words or even glances my away, she just point blank ignored me. I released a frustrated sigh “I’ll let you rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Nada. Zilch. Didn’t acknowledge that I was there at all. Guess that’s my cue to leave. Taking a last look at her I made my way to my office.
“Kyle, keep an eye on her. She’s not on the bed and I don’t want her falling and getting hurt trying to get to it”. I said through the mind link.
“On it, boss.” And surprisingly enough he didn’t make fun of me for pissing her off again.
Once in my office I started again with work. Even though my mind couldn’t get rid of thoughts of her, I somehow managed to actually do something. But why couldn’t I get her out of my head? Why every awake moment that I had I thought about her? I shouldn’t be feeling like this. I should be getting information at every cost and shouldn’t care about her feelings, just care about protecting my pack. So why was I so averse to that idea?
I would understand feeling that way if she was my mate, but clearly, she wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, she was beyond beautiful, and I was totally attracted to her. Her scent was something else, but it wasn’t that alluring, right? Silver hadn’t screamed in my head that she was it. I could feel his doubt, he wasn’t sure either. The whole situation was very confusing and above all frustrating.
I tried talking to her the next few days and again she didn’t even look my way. But her distaste wasn’t directed only at me anymore. According to Kyle I had really screwed things up since she wasn’t talking to him either. Guess I’ll have to try and think something else to do to make her talk to us again.