Sharkbait

Kai and Amy were in the back of the open-top Jeep Wrangler, with the wind making it tough to carry on a conversation with them. I was in the front seat with Jennifer, who was a thirty-year-old Beta in a Pack from nearby Alabama. We’d taken three cars, and Luna Adrienne was in an air-conditioned sedan behind us. I didn’t mind; the morning was warm, the breeze blew my long blonde hair, and I felt free. It reminded me of being in wolf form, traveling in a car with your head out the window.

We arrived an hour before departure and did our gear rentals and equipment checks. The water was warm enough we didn’t need wetsuits, so I was diving in my bikini with a diving shirt over it. The suit was a bit more robust than the one I had for the beach because I didn’t need a wardrobe malfunction forty feet down. I looked in the mirror as we got ready to leave the locker room, and reminded myself that it wasn’t MY fault.

My legs were long and tan, with smooth muscles and a firm ass. I had a flat stomach that hinted at the muscles underneath, and my breasts were high and firm. I had the shoulders of a swimmer, broad and strong. My face was like my Mom’s, oval-shaped with a thin nose and deep blue eyes. I turned to look at my backside in the mirror. That asshole would never have a booty like THIS in his bed.

And I’d never have those broad shoulders, those chiseled arms, those kissable lips…

“Are you all right,” Jennifer asked.

“I’m fine,” I said as I grabbed my bag.

“You look like you just dropped your ice cream cone on the sidewalk,” she said as she put her arm on my shoulder. “No one expects you to act like nothing happened last night.”

I looked at her, and she pulled me into a hug as I let out a wail. Soon I was surrounded by five other women, all lending me sympathy and strength until I was able to get my emotions under control again. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Random things just set me off.”

“We don’t have to go out if you’re not ready,” Jennifer assured me.

“No. The water is my happy place.” It always had been. I followed them out to the dock, where we loaded the dive boat and cast off. The Divemaster questioned everyone on their dive experience, particularly with deepwater dives, and what they wanted out of today. “What do you recommend,” I asked.

“Well, the Oriskany is a fun dive, but it takes an hour to get there and back, and the superstructure is at a hundred and twenty feet. Not everyone here has experience going to that depth, and the bottom time is limited. With recovery time and travel time, you’d get about a half-hour total on the wreck.” Not everyone was as hard-core as Amy and I about our diving. With our drysuits, we’d dived to that depth in Lake Superior, and THAT is cold. “Instead, I’d suggest diving the USS Massachusetts. It’s not far from the jetty, and it’s in thirty feet of water. The ship was built in 1890, it’s been on the bottom of the channel for a century. Coral is everywhere, lots of fish, and you can still make out the features. No decompression, maximum bottom time, and no mandatory rest between dives.”

Thirty feet was NOTHING to a free diver. Amy and I looked at each other and nodded our agreement. “That sounds like a better plan,” I said. The others agreed, and it wasn’t long before we were at the dive site. Just because it was shallow enough to stick out of the water at low tide didn’t mean it was easy to dive on. Currents were strong, you had to watch out for nets and fishing lines caught in it, and there was boat traffic around.

We did one last inspection of our gear as we approached the dive site. The divemaster pointed out the hazards, asked if we had questions, checked our gear, then let us hit the water. Adrienne and I went on air, checked our masks, set our dive watches, and let ourselves fall back into the warm Gulf waters.

As soon as I was under, I felt alive again. Staying next to my dive buddy, we kicked down to the sand bottom near the bow of the ship. The only thing I could hear was the bubbles from my breathing, and the sounds of boats driving by.

The next thirty minutes were a blast. The reef was mature, and we saw a lot of fish. The biggest was a Goliath grouper that must have gone two-hundred-pounds, with a mouth big enough to stick my head and shoulders in. Barracuda, snapper, amberjacks, triggers, redfish, and dozens of others swam with us around the shipwreck.

We saw a few sharks, too. The biggest was an eight-foot tiger shark that swam past without a care in the world. A nurse shark was nearly as big, with smaller blacktip reef sharks and a brown shark too. All too soon, the bottom time was up, and we made our way back to the boat.

We changed tanks and rested for a few minutes, then made our second dive. This time we explored some of the features near the stern, farthest from the boat. I saw bubbles coming up fast from divers just out of sight, and it was too rapid for normal breathing. “Let’s make sure nothing is wrong there,” I said as I pointed towards the shaded area.

Adrienne spotted them first and put her hand out to stop me. I looked over at the pair and almost spit out my regulator.

I could see Kai’s white butt moving as he faced away from me, his swim trunks lowered to his thighs. He was holding Amy by the waist, her legs wrapped around his back, and her bikini bottoms clenched in her hand. They were too busy to notice us, and I didn’t need to see the underwater conception of their first child. I shook my head to clear the image. “We should give them some privacy,” I said. “Don’t tell them we saw this.”

“Wasn’t Amy the one who wanted to maximize her bottom time,” Adrienne replied. She took a few photos of them with her underwater camera. “I’ll get it blown up and give it to them as a mating present. It will look great on their bedroom wall.”

This time I did spit out my regulator. They were still going when we swam away.

After three dives, Adrienne was done and we didn’t have enough time left for a full dive. I talked Amy, Kai, and Jennifer into skin diving near the stacks. Amy and I paired up and showed Kai what we’d learned in our time at free diving. We could stay underwater for almost a minute and a half longer than he could, and Jennifer gave up well before then.

All too soon, the dive time was up. I removed my swim shirt to get some sun and enjoy the feeling of it on my skin; after all, we weren’t in frozen Minnesota now. No one was sitting by me when one of the other werewolves brought me a bottle of water and asked if we could talk.

Terry Foster was a nice looking man in his mid-thirties. He got right to the point. “I know the timing of this sucks, and I also know you aren’t ready to think about this yet. I just wanted to meet you and tell you of my interest.”

“Interest in what,” I asked.

“In you,” he said.

“I’m not EVEN interested in that,” I said. “My mate was taken by another woman. I will never take a male from another, no matter how lonely and desperate I am.”

“I understand. If I may, can I tell you my story?” I nodded as I leaned back and took a drink. “My father was and still is Alpha of the Clearwater Pack, on the Pacific side of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Sixteen years ago, I met my mate just after she turned eighteen. She was in a Pack in Idaho that my father and I visited. She was everything I dreamed of, but her Pack held to the Old Ways. We didn’t mate immediately like so many do now. We had to save ourselves for the Mating Ceremony at the next Full Moon.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said. “Kind of romantic.”

“More like the world’s biggest case of blue balls. It was eighteen days until the Full Moon. My father left me behind with their Pack, promising to bring my mother along when they returned.” He leaned back and let out a sigh. “A week later, I joined her Pack for a run in the mountains. Her brothers kept us separated, and on the narrow trail, I was too far away to save her. A rockslide swept her over the edge, and she died instantly.”

“Oh no,” I said. Terry’s mate had been taken from him as he watched helplessly. I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like.

“I attended my first Scratch and Sniff at eighteen and was forced to come back the next year knowing no one was there for me. I’m the only child, so you can imagine the pressure on me to find a Luna has become overwhelming now that I’m thirty-five. My father is slowing down, and I need to step up.”

I put my hand on his leg, and there were no tingles and no mating pull. “I’m not your mate, Terry.”

“I know.”

“My father and stepmother were both rejected by their mates but found each other when they were older than you. My Alpha and Luna were both widowed, yet they found each other. My Mom was human and found her mate in my Pack. All three pairs felt the mating pull.” I patted his leg, feeling sorry for him. “Don’t lose hope, and don’t discount looking among the humans. I don’t know what Luna has planned for me now, Terry, but I’m in no hurry to get a man.”

He smiled and stood up as Adrienne was coming back. “I wanted you to know you have options. I would like to get to know you, and who knows? Maybe Luna will put us together.” He shook my hand and went back to his seat, leaving me to wonder what would happen.

Adrienne sat next to me, pulling me into her side. “You handled that well,” she told me.

“I think I needed to hear it as much as he did,” I replied. “Thank you for being here with me. I don’t know if I’d handle Amy’s happiness this well without you around.”

“Are you happy for her? Deep down?”

I closed my eyes and thought about it. “I’m happy for Amy. She got the man of her dreams. I just wish that he had a twin brother who was MY mate.”