Seduction (The Journal of the Wolves of Spruce Hollow) (14 page)

It was a bizarre experience.
 

I’d heard members of the pack talking about their blood bonds with their mates before but I had never imagined that it was anything like this. Not something this real and tangible.
 

I was standing in Sorcha’s dining room. Aspen couldn’t see me and wasn’t aware of my presence but I was standing right behind right her as she ate supper with Sorcha’s family
.
 

It was so strange, being able to invade her most private and innermost thoughts. I could observe and experience all her memories and emotions, from any time at all in her past.
 

Most pressing right now was the need to know what had happened to her last night, in it’s entirety, from start to finish. Who was Aspen with? What were they doing? But most importantly, what in the hell had happened between the time that she’d left Sorcha’s and the time that Caver, Griff and I found her on the side of the highway, several hours later. She’d been half dead and already in the grasp of the change.

And I was angry about it.

No, angry wasn’t really the right word. My mood was more of the “filled with nightmarish rage” variety. I couldn’t believe that someone, most likely a
male
Were as I couldn’t imagine why a female would want to bite Aspen, had turned
my own mate
without my say or her consent.
 

Someone was going to pay for this, there was no doubt about that, as I couldn’t think of a bigger transgression in the Were world. You didn’t mess around with a male Were’s mate,
ever
.
 

I knew that I certainly wouldn’t be able to rest until I found out who this asshole was and made him suffer for what he’d done to her.
 

My sole focus and purpose until then was gathering intel, hunting him down and then visiting upon him the same degree of violence and terror that he had visited upon Aspen. He’d really made Aspen suffer and had nearly drained her. Therefore, it was only just and fair that his actions would come back to haunt him. Karma’s a menacing bitch and sometimes she wore size twelve shitkickers.

The male Were was obviously inexperienced and from the extent of her injuries when we found Aspen stumbling along the highway, it appeared that he’d actually intended to kill her but had changed his mind right before she drew her last breath.

Fuck!
I hadn’t wanted Aspen to go through the change right now; she didn’t even know that she was my mate yet.
 

When her adoptive mother died and it became clear that Aspen was finally coming back to Spruce Hollow, I was ecstatic.
 

I missed having her in my life and wanted so badly to finally reconnect with her and set things right between us. It may sound stupid but I’d wanted to romance her and take her out on dates, like she deserved.
 

I wanted to win her over
and I wanted her to fall in love with me.

Drugging her and taking her virginity while we blood bonded was not really part of my ideal scenario.

But I didn’t have to worry about my perfect plan anymore. Nope, not now, no sir. Because now the Were gene coursed through her veins like fire and Aspen was a well fucked, blood bonded mate.
 

There was a large part of me that felt immoral and guilt-ridden for taking her innocence the way that I had, but there was an even bigger part of me that was finally relieved that I no longer had to endure the torture of waiting any longer. It was over and after all these years of waiting, Aspen was finally mine.

Aspen’s memories ran through my head as I sifted through her thoughts. Her emotions, poured through me as I scanned the scene in front of me. I needed to find out what had happened to her before that asshole got away.
 

What the fuck???
She went to the bus station after she had supper at Sorcha’s?
I can’t fucking believe it, she was going to run from me.
Again.

She obviously didn’t understand my Were side very well because I was finished with waiting for her. I had waited long enough and she was fair game now.

All along, I’d had an appropriate age in mind to blood bond with Aspen.
Twenty-one.
Adulthood. And now she was finally the right age and had she managed to run away, nothing would have stopped me from hunting her down and dragging her back to Spruce Hollow. Although knowing her, she would have kicked and screamed the whole way.
 

Unlike when she was younger, the thought of chasing Aspen down now got my wolf excited and made my dick hard. There was no place on this earth that she could hide that I wouldn’t find her. And being able to finally admit that freely was very liberating.
 

 
Plunging into Aspen’s head to get at her memories was both exciting and distressing at the same time because I could feel and experience everything as it happened to her, yet had no control over any of it.

Ok,
now she’s saying goodbye to Sorcha and getting into a car with some guy I don’t recognize.
Who the hell is that guy??
There is a lot of sexual tension between the two of them but she doesn’t seem to like him very much.
 

Sexual tension? Really. I wonder what the hell happened between them? I feel rife with curiosity and a hefty dose of jealousy as I sift backwards through her head, looking for memories attached to this guy.

He gives her the creeps because he tries to hit on her all the time. She kissed him once and he touched her when she was drunk.
 

 
Uh huh. I see. I sure as hell didn’t like the sound of that and I really didn’t like the way he looked at her. His gaze was predatory in nature. He wants her.
 

Omg,
it’s him, isn’t it, little girl?
He’s the Were. I know it. I can feel it in my bones as I fast forward through the past five years and watch the two of them interact.
 

I didn’t like this. It made me feel jealous and angry. And to top it all off, she once let this little asshole touch her when she was drunk?
What was she thinking?

“She wasn’t thinking, she was intoxicated,” my wolf said calmly. “Now concentrate, Roan, we need to track down this Were and hold him accountable for what he did to our mate!”

 
Jealousy was a foreign emotion for me. It was one that I hadn’t had very much experience with because I’d never fallen in love with any of my past girlfriends. Sure I’d liked them and felt fond of them but I’d never loved any of them. But it was a completely different story with Aspen and
jealousy
was currently eating me alive.
 

When Aspen was a teenager, I’d been mildly jealous of a boy that Aspen had a crush on in high school, Justin Meyers. But it was nothing compared to the way I felt towards this male from her past.
 

I wanted to tear him limb from limb. Not only had he kissed and touched Aspen at some point, she now had his Were blood coursing through her veins. And that was a possessive hold that no one but me should have over her.

Swallowing hard, I tried to regain my composure. I had a job to do right now. I needed to extract Aspen’s memories, so I could hunt down that asshole and make him pay. I could vent and be pissed off about the whole thing later.

Okay, baby girl, tell me who this guy is.
 

She doesn’t like him looking at her. She feels uncomfortable being in the same car as him. His name is Jude.
 

Jude, huh? That little prick is dead. What happens with Jude, little girl? What did he do to you? Show me…
 

 
She is in the woods walking. It’s getting dark. She’s starting to feel afraid. She hears a branch snap. Something is stalking her. She turns around and sees Jude coming towards her. He says that he can smell her and her blood turns to ice as she realizes what that means.

She’s running from him, her heart in her throat as he attacks her from behind. She’s screaming and trying to fight him but he is so strong. Her fear is thick, I can almost physically taste it in my mouth.

Frantically, I pulled out of her head, my chest heaving with emotion. I looked wildly around the room for Aspen, my eyes unfocused and still caught up in her head.
 

Finally, my eyes adjusted and zeroed in on her. She was curled up on her side and sleeping peacefully in my bed.
She was alive and safe.
 

 
Fuck. My senses were at the mercy of the sights and sounds of the gruesome scene in Aspen’s memories and the reality of the experience was far more intense than I had anticipated. The whole experience was much more difficult than I thought it was going to be.
 

With a heaving sigh, I grabbed her wrist and stroked my thumb across her delicate wrist bones. I needed physical contact with my mate and prayed that touching her and knowing that she was okay as I watched the scenes unfold in her head would make this easier. I gave her hand a squeeze as I took a deep breath and pushed back into her head.

Aspen is screaming as Jude drags her down to the ground. She fights against him weakly as he savages her repeatedly. She’s powerless against his Were strength and within seconds, she’s laying inert and bleeding to death from her severed carotid artery. She knows she’s dying; she can feel her life slowly slipping away. She tries to hold on and thinks of her parents and Valerie. But mostly she thinks of…me. She loves me. She’s always loved me but never got the chance to say the words. Tears are streaming down her face while that fucker, Jude, sits there and watches the life drain from her.
 

Totally caught up in Aspen’s memories, I knelt on the ground next to her and watched my mate die
. No, no, it can’t be. Not Aspen. Not my little girl.
Her blood was everywhere, spurting out in time with her faintly beating heart. Horror and helplessness filled me as the sticky red started to form a pool under her lifeless body. Her life force was dripping onto the ground and I was powerless to stop it. The emotional pain I felt, watching the scene play out was excruciating.

I was crying and trying to hold her but my body had no corporeal form in her memories.
No, little girl, don’t leave me. Please, stay with me Aspen. I love you
. My wolf was howling mournfully. I wanted to gather her up and slip away with her
. I can’t live without my mate.
 

That bastard Jude, is walking away from her lifeless body, and then walks back again. He seems conflicted. Finally he shakes his head, bends down, tears into his wrist and lets his blood drip into her mouth. He kisses her on the mouth, gets up and leaves her alone in the woods.

When I pulled myself out of Aspen’s head. I sat and cried as I sat next to her with my hand still around her wrist.

I had watched her die and it was excruciatingly painful. She was dead in her memories. And yet I am looking right at her, watching her breathing. It was even and steady as she lay in my bed.
She wasn’t dead.
She was peaceful, safe and alive.

Sniffling quietly, I wiped my tears. I felt stunned and out of sorts from the whole experience. Walking through Aspen’s head and witnessing her death was a total mindfuck, one that I did not want to experience ever again.

I undid her handcuffs and snuggled her deep in my blankets. I handcuffed her ankle to the bottom bedrail, incase she got up and tried to run, like I had seen was her intention before she was attacked in the woods. There was no chance in hell that she was ever getting away from me now. We were mated.
Connected.
And she was mine.

I took out my cell phone and called the Alpha, who answered on the first ring. The entire pack was on alert. The prospect of having a rogue wolf in our midst, who would kill and turn a human unbidden was a dangerous situation for all of us.
 

“Yeah, it’s me. Male, mid twenties, five foot ten, one hundred and eighty pounds, black hair, blue eyes. First name Jude, last name unknown. Philosophy major, working on his masters. He’s a friend of Sorcha’s family. He attacked Aspen in the woods by the bus station and killed her. He sat and watched her bleed to death, then for some reason, he changed his mind at the last second and changed her. I’m gunning for him. He won’t know what’s hit him. See what you can find out and we’ll saddle up later, I need my mate right now.”
 

I shut the phone off and chucked it on the floor as I rolled Aspen’s boneless body over. I lay down behind her and wrapped my arms around her. No one would ever hurt her again. They would have to go through me first.

Aspen became agitated several hours later, her body on fire. She was whimpering as the Were gene slowly took over her human genetics.
 

The change from human to Were was painful, I knew, I was only twelve years old when I had gone through the same torture. I remembered thinking back then that I was going to die from the intense heat that coursed through my body.
 

I hoped that it didn’t go on long for Aspen’s sake. Some Weres took days to go through the change, their body fighting them at every turn and I offered up a silent prayer that she would not be one of them.