Chapter Nine

TRISTAN 

I’m sitting at our usual table in the cafe at the Student Union, when Dominic and Billie finally arrive. I watch them closely to see how the insular students at C. U. react to her presence—and how she and Dom are getting along. He was the best choice of my friends to draw her out of her shell. They seem to have some banter, judging by her smile. She’s wearing a ribbed mid length black knit dress with a plunging neckline, a slit up the side, a pair of knee-high boots, and the moonstone I’ve been keeping for my girl since I was 18 years old dangles from her neck, along with a thin gray lace scarf.  A red ribbon is tied in her hair.

I wonder what she thinks of the inscription on the back of the moonstone. It looks like a jewelry designer name, Mo fhíorghra. Someday I’ll tell her it’s pronounced “moe here-graw”, and that its literal Gaelic meaning is “my true love”. In our world, we use it to mean “fated mate”. I bought it from a vendor at a midsummer fair in our hometown of Tidepool Cove, not far from Crescent. 

Tidepool Cove is part small sea village, part gated community, all werewolf. Only humans who are with a werewolf can get in. On the outside, it seems like a ritzy resort that’s all full up to any passersby. On holidays, wolves from other villages come to visit. The Cove is a popular gathering place for the different shifter packs, the loosely related groups that form inside the larger shifter community. 

The Underground will become a pack once more of us find our mates and start having children. The six of us, the core, plan to stay at Crescent, taking advantage of the performance facilities, art galleries, and University Press to showcase our work, getting jobs at the University, and mentoring young wolves. We’re already on academic paths to set us up when we graduate.

I notice most of the students around Dom and Billie do a double take when they see her. I know they can smell she’s human. And they’ll be able to smell that she’s living with us. I see a couple girls from Kappa Delta, a sorority that is involved with Lunacy, give Billie nasty looks, then start whispering to each other. I make a note to keep an eye on that.

Human students aren’t forbidden here, just rare. Part of growing up as a shifter is learning to integrate into human society, and the kids at C. U. are good at that, for the most part.

Everyone but the Psychos of Lunacy.

Lunacy is men only, made up entirely of business majors, and they all go by their last names, as though they were in the army. Most of them play a sport, and that either football or hockey. They’re all huge rage machines, and that doesn’t make for good relations with the townie girls. Lunacy is why our sports teams have a bad reputation in Meridian, and townie girls know to be careful around them.

They would have been banned long ago if the president of the University wasn’t Charles Spader, Spader’s uncle. 

We gave Spader that meeting at the Gaelic Wolf because he grew up in the Cove, and he and I were thrown together as children. He says he wants to clean up their reputation, but the way he acted screams the opposite. I don’t trust him, and I definitely don’t want him near Billie.

So I watch and wait for Dominic to bring her to me. I want to see her reaction, if she’s still afraid of me. Plenty of human and hybrid women like Billie go through that response when they first meet their mate. It takes patience to coax a human girl to trust you, before you reveal all the final secrets and your heart is fully in her hands. All her hormones make her go crazy and tell her to run.

It’s okay, I’ve been preparing for this hunt for years. I’m ready to chase her, if that’s what she needs.

Apparently, it is, as her reluctance to sit at my table is obvious. She turns around, says something apologetic to Dom, and takes off.

Oh no, Kitten. Don’t make me come for you.

I stand up and shake my head at Dominic—honestly, he had one job—and walk after her at my own pace, which easily catches up to her. Then I stalk her until she enters an isolated outdoor eating area, and sits down.

I plop down in the seat across from her. She shrieks. It’s glorious. 

I grab her arm before she can bolt. “Uh uh, you should know now how excited I get chasing after you, little bunny.” Then I put her hand right on my crotch, molded to the outline of my hard cock.

She squeaks and fights me, and I let her hand go. She gets the point well enough. She’s such a sultry, sensual little thing, sometimes I forget what an innocent she is.

“Ugh! Why…why are you following me?” she asks me.

“Why are you running from me?” I respond.

“I didn’t…I wasn’t…”

“Don’t lie, it’s not you.”

“How do you know that? I could be a serial liar, maybe nothing I say is true.”

I pinch her chin. “Don’t play with me. I’m here to keep you safe.”

She tries to jerk her face away and I grip harder. “What does that mean?”

“You made a major enemy, Billie. Once he finds out you’re on campus, he’ll look for you. One of us will be with you when he finds you. No harm will come to you from him.”

“And then what, you want me to show my gratitude, right? I’m not some human pet. The clothes, the furniture…is that what this was all leading to? I can take care of myself, thanks.”

This girl.

I tip her chin up further and bring her face closer to mine. “You may make a good pet, kitten, but I’m not in the habit of coercion. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will happen to you without your consent. If anyone annoys you, come to me and it will be dealt with. As the leader of the gang Underground, I swear it.”

“F-fine. I’ll eat with you.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t make you promise not to run again. I like it too much.”

“I changed my mind, I’ll eat with you in the cafeteria.”

“Afraid to be alone with me, little townie sex kitten?”

Her face flushes a gorgeous stain of red, as though she’s had an orgasm, and it’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.