5. Not so great Discovery

Grant

He was half excited to visit Gemma; he could sense her intelligence, though he didn’t blame her for being untrusting.  He couldn’t think that she’d had any kind of good experience since she’d been brought here and then his stupid commander and friend didn’t want his mate and locked her up again.

Grant could see himself being friends with her; he felt drawn to her.  Not in the creepy stalker type of way, but the ‘we could be friends and partners in crime’ way.  He wasn’t sure how much humans ate, so he always put together a tray that would fill his own stomach.  But this time he’d brought a plate for himself as well, maybe eating together would make her feel less like a prisoner.

He just really wanted to get through her defenses and see the real person.  He was sure she was an undiscovered treasure and he wanted to be the first to find who she truly was.

Unlocking the door, he glanced around and then into her office and closet, but then he noticed the closed bathroom door and heard the splash of water.  She had to be bored out of her mind, but taking a shower and a bath hours apart seemed odd.  If she was a siren or a mermaid; maybe, but for a human it couldn’t be good.

Grant put the tray on the chair and went to knock on the door.  “Hey Gemma, you’re going to wash your skin off!”  He called teasingly through the door, but he was met with silence.

He knocked again, but something felt off.  Taking the doorknob in his hand, he twisted it and there was still no reaction through the door.  He was worried that she had decided to kill herself; it couldn’t be easy to find out you have a mate and he doesn’t want you, but doesn’t want to let you go either. 

He nervously opened the door, hoping he was wrong, and found the empty bathroom with the tap of the bath dribbling water into the already full bath and making the water sounds he had mistaken for her bathing.

The little sneak!

He closed the tap and rushed out into her apartment checking all possible exits until he finally focused on the window.  Surely, she hadn’t gone through there…  He checked it nonetheless and made a sound of amazement.

She’d kept the unlocked window a secret from them all.  He’d assumed the pack had nailed the window shut and never bothered to check.  Did that mean that they had kept a guard at the window or she hadn’t had the chance to escape before?

Sniffing outside, he could follow the trail she used out onto the roof; his wolf was excited for this hunt.  He followed the trail and then realized she’d used bleach water to burn his sensitive nose and mess with her scent.  It was not to say that she had killed her trail completely, but her trail was not as fresh, pairing that with the full bath told him that she might have sneaked out not long after he’d left her with breakfast.

She had used bleach water a few places.  But he found her trail into the woods.  How had she managed to run over the open garden without being noticed by anyone?  Not long and he thought he caught a strong scent of her. 

Had she hurt herself and was unable to go any further?  He was sure she wouldn’t just hide in the woods if she got out; she was too smart for that, so she had to have hurt herself.  He followed the stronger scent to a thick bush and then barked a laugh of surprise.

The smart little human had undressed and left her clothes under the bush.  He doubted that she would continue in the nude.  He found a tainted scent leaving the bush, doused in bleach water.

The bleach water was actually helping him to follow the trail easier now that she had changed into someone else’s clothes.  Then she must have run out of bleach water, because the tainted trail continued without the bleach scent.  He was impressed with her plan; she did it so well, so far.  He was proud of her accomplishments; he could see them getting along like a house on fire.

“Hey, Dale?”  He called in mind link. 

“What?”  He all but snarled with annoyance.

“You know how you said you don’t want to deal with your mate?”

“What about it?”

“I think the feeling is mutual.”

“What are you on about?”  Dale growled impatiently.

“So your mate escaped.  And left the pack territory.  I’m standing on the border and she just kept going.”

“You let her escape?”  Dale roared in rage.

“She was rather smart at doing it.  Do you want me to follow her trail?”

“I can’t!  Elder Stuart will be here any moment to handle the pack transfer to another alpha.”

“Well, I can follow her and keep you updated if you want?”

“What do you mean ‘if I want’?  You lost my mate!”  He snarled.

“Technically, you didn’t want her, so…”

“Michaels!”  Dale growled with annoyance.

“I just want to put it on record that you allowed a smart cookie to slip through your fingers…”  Grant answered smugly, knowing that it would irk Dale.  He deserved to suffer at least a little for disregarding his mate so completely – while she was awake, at least.  Crawling into her bed after she was asleep does not count as attention to his mate.  That was entirely selfish of him.

Grant continued following her tainted trail until he reached a medium sized stream.  He leapt over to the other side, thinking that she might have gone over to the other side, but her scent wasn’t there.  She must’ve either gone upstream or downstream.  He thought she might have somehow found a map of the area since she seemed to be heading securely in a certain direction.

“Michaels, have you found her?”  Dale snapped through the link and he rolled his eyes.  He was very moody for someone who didn’t want his mate.

“No, I’m going to have to search for her trail.”

“What do you mean ‘search for her trail’?  She’s an ignorant human!”

Wow, this guy was just racking up brownie points when it came to his mate.  “Maybe if you claimed her like you were supposed to she wouldn’t be out here, now would she?”  He retorted with a surly attitude.

He wasn’t even really in the mood to find her anymore; perhaps she would be better off escaping Dale.  He’d always thought Dale was someone with integrity, but he was starting to think that he was just a dick.

“Come back; I’ll try to get leave and help you…”  Dale sighed with annoyance.

“Maybe you should just let her go; you clearly don’t want her.  So let her be free, then.”

“Aside from the fact that you’re being an ass, she’s a single human lost in wolf territory.  How far do you think she’ll make it?”

“Oh, now you care?  Speaking of being an ass; was it not you that told her to her face that you don’t want her; now suddenly you want her back?  So you can lock her up again and get your fix every night sneaking into her room to calm your wolf?”  He snapped angrily.

“What crawled up your ass?  It’s none of your business what I do with her; she’s my mate!”

“You really are a selfish dick!  What crawled up my ass is that I felt the death of my mate and I never got the chance to have what you got, falling into your lap.  Now you want to abuse the biggest gift of your life?  At the very least, reject her.  Then I’ll take care of her, because where I’m standing she’s amazing.”

“Look, I’m sorry, man.  Just come back and I’ll help you find her…”  He could hear his friend’s sadness at his confession, he’d been there when he felt the bond break; he’d helped him through it when his wolf wanted to go feral.  He knew what it was to lose that bond and he just wanted to throw it away.

“To do what?  You don’t want her.  Get leave for me and I’ll find her and at the very least find her somewhere where she can be happy and appreciated.”

“I said I’ll help you find her; don’t you trust my word?”

“I don’t trust you where she’s concerned.”  He retorted angrily.

He couldn’t believe the man he’d thought was someone he could trust could be so cold towards his mate.  He didn’t even want anyone to know that he’d found his mate.  He locked her back in the rooms she’d spent more than a month in and he expected him to be fine with the way he treated the best gift he’d ever get.

He considered going AWOL and taking care of her, but that meant he would have to run for the rest of his life and he couldn’t protect Gemma if he had to run for his life.  And he wanted to protect her.  She was a jewel in his eyes.

“Don’t think about it, Michaels.  They’re going to make me hunt you down if you go AWOL.  Don’t make me hunt and kill my friend.”

“Fine.  I’ll come back to get leave, first.”  He retorted, he stared into the stream and then reluctantly turned around and ran in his wolf form back to the pack they had conquered.  He guessed Elder Stuart was probably settled in already.

He was in charge of their division.  Alpha Stuart was charged with overseeing the military side of things.  They were mostly meant to protect wolves, but their work extended to hunting down dangerous ferals and packs that threatened to expose their kind to humans.  They were also considered the royal law enforcement.

Dale headed the leading team that did dangerous missions, like conquering this pack and finding the missing she-wolves.  Grant was his second in command; they didn’t usually get called in so soon; they were sort of the last resort – not that they weren’t busy enough.  The only real reason they were called in so soon was because the last she-wolf to go missing was the daughter of a close friend of Elder Stuart.

He found Dale waiting for him just inside the trees with an extra set of clothes.  Grant thanked him coldly and then asked where Elder Stuart was.  He was not going to allow Dale to think he was about to talk him out of it.  He’d joined this task team to be the good in the world where wolves didn’t always care about each other.

He needed to find Gemma and make sure she was safe; it had become his own personal mission and he needed to see it through.

“Eat something, first.  It’s dinner time and I know you didn’t eat lunch.”  Dale urged gently.

Grant nodded stiffly and stalked into the pack house.  He’d lost some respect for his friend who had shown no real care for the one thing he had not been blessed to have in his life.  And Gemma was amazing.  She’d survived on her own in a pack of wolves, despite being smaller, weaker and alone.

Not to mention that she was intelligent and was sharp as a tack.  He’d picked it up from the little he’d talked to her and her escape plan had added to his opinion of her.  He would have loved to have her as a mate.  Having a human mate was rare and few wolves would want one.  But he wouldn’t mind a human mate; they were not so much different from wolves, aside from the fact that they did not have mates; they just tried to survive and Gemma had done it perfectly.

He’d decided that if Dale didn’t want her; he would make him reject her and he would try to win her over the way humans did.  They did study humans extensively in their line; they had training on them two weeks before they had stepped into this mission.  Personally, he found them to be fascinating, Gemma even more so; since she was the first human he’d met face to face.