~

 

“Well, what are you going to do — stay in your room for the whole weekend?” Elizabeth asked.

Valerie was sitting in the comfy chair by the window. She might have been staring down at the book in her hands, but she wasn’t reading. Thoughts were spinning in her mind to the point where they wouldn’t have let her concentrate on anything, let alone a book.

All that she could think about was Quinn and the fact that she was his mate. To add insult to injury, she’d been excited to read the romance novel that she’d brought with her. Now, that book seemed to be taunting her just with its existence.

“It’s a strong possibility. It’s a nice room,” Valerie offered back in clipped tones that warned Elizabeth that her mother was going to be particularly awkward for the foreseeable future. Not that she could really blame her.

“It’s not like you can hide from your mate,” Elizabeth reasoned, but her mother wasn’t impressed.

“I wouldn’t have to, now would I, if you hadn’t of brought me here?” She shot back with a small glare.

“Okay, that was wrong…”

“You can say that again!”

“I’m sure I’m going to have to say it for the rest of my life, but the fact remains…”

“It was an underhanded, truly deceitful, mean-spirited, horrible thing to do to a person?”

“Now that you’ve got that out of your system,” Elizabeth side inwardly. “You need to eat something.”

“I don’t break bread with wolves.”

“You mean; you’re scared of your mate,” Elizabeth offered back.

“Scared?”

Just one look at her mother told Elizabeth that she might as well bend at the waist and kiss her backside goodbye. She guessed she deserved it — after all, she had set the whole weekend up without her mother’s approval.

But, if truth be told, she really hadn’t expected her mother to meet a mate. She was more hoping that her mother might meet an elder her own age and a friendship might blossom.

“Why don’t we discuss this over dinner?” Elizabeth offered what she hoped was a reasonable request, and her mother would have been less likely to get her proverbial claws out in front of the room full of people.

Yes, she was a coward. Yes, her mother had every right to be angry. But in Elizabeth mind, and as her daughter, she also had every right to try to get her mother the best possible golden years that she could.

She’d screwed up. Sort of. But maybe a mate wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

“Unfortunately, I never perfected the art of telepathy, and I’m not leaving this room.” Valerie returned to staring blankly at the pages of the book.

“Fine, then I will have something sent up to you,” Elizabeth said. She knew her mother well enough to leave matters alone for the moment.

“Will you ask them to cut it into little squares for me as well? Or maybe they should just purée everything.” Valerie muttered loud enough for her daughter to hear.

“Mother!” Elizabeth sighed, but her mother didn’t look up, she just waved an absent hand like she was the Queen of England.

“Go eat dinner. You paid for this weekend, one of us should enjoy it.”

“Would you like me to eat with you?” Elizabeth asked.

“Are you going to spoon feed me as well?”

“I…”

“Run along. I’m trying to read,” Valerie dismissed her and was more than relieved when her daughter turned on her heels to leave.

“I’ll come back and check on you in a while,” Elizabeth offered as she reached for the door handle.

“I don’t need tucking in,” Valerie said. “Be careful out there — you never know when you’re going to meet a mate.”

Elizabeth hesitated at the open doorway. Her mother’s words rang in her ears like a really loud alarm bell going off and sounding a warning cry.

She looked to the left and then the right just to check that the hallway was clear. Right up until that moment, she hadn’t even considered the fact that she’d willingly walked onto pack land, or that she could actually be a mate herself.

“Something wrong?” Valerie’s voice rang out from the room behind her, and it held an element of amusement to it that stomped on her last nerve.

“No,” Elizabeth lied.

Just like every other smart witch, she always had her shields about her, but after her mother’s warning, she pulled on her magic a little more to reinforce them.

“Off you go then. Enjoy your evening with the pack.” Her mother’s tone mocked her.

Elizabeth swallowed down hard. She could hear the sound of her mother’s voice that the woman was enjoying herself. She guessed she owed her that much.

That didn’t stop the sudden urge that Elizabeth had to pack her things, throw her suitcase in the back of the car, and head back to town.

 

~

~

~

 

Three times Elizabeth had gone to her mother’s door, and three times her mother had called back the same thing; I’m still alive. Sarah seemed to think that everything would work out the way that it should and had finally persuaded Elizabeth to leave her mother be for the night and to go and enjoy the hot tub while she could.

Heaven. Elizabeth thought as she leaned her head back and gazed up at the clear sky and the twinkling stars that were putting on a fantastic show for her as the heat of the water soothed her tense muscles.

I don’t deserve it.

My mother is right; I’m a horrible person — not that she said horrible, exactly — but I can read between the lines.

I shouldn’t have brought her here.

She was fine as she was — just a little lonely — I should have bought her a dog, or cat, or both.

Now she has a wolf — not really the kind of pet an elder imagines.

And now I’m on pack land. What could possibly go wrong with that?

The moment that she’d thought it, she regretted it.

I think I need to go back to witch school — tempting fate? What am I, an idiot?

What could possibly go wrong? Why don’t I just slap the great big bulls-eye on my backside and be done with it!

Fate — if you’re listening — I take it back – I bite my tongue.

Elizabeth did just that. She bit her tongue and hoped to hell that fate would be kind to her.

There was a sound of rustling leaves off to her left, and she lifted her head and peered over the side of the tub. Her heart tried to escape her ribs at the sight of the large black wolf that eyed her right back.

“Oh boy,” Elizabeth muttered to herself. It wasn’t every day that you found yourself face to face with a wolf, especially, when you were practically naked and in a hot tub. “Go away, and don’t sniff.”

Elizabeth felt a sudden rush of anxiety as her mother’s words came back to jump all over her last nerve. When the wolf exposed its fangs in a snarl, she wasn’t sure if the first thing she should be feeling was a rush of relief that the beast wasn’t her mate or karma for what she’d done to her mother.

“Oh boy!” Elizabeth said again. This time it had a whole different meaning behind it.

She rushed to pull on the magic within her. Lying in the warmth of the water, she hadn’t really been concerned about her defenses, and she’d let things slide.

Now she was more than concerned, but it would take a moment or two to bring her magic to the surface. When the wolf snapped its jaws together, giving her fair warning of its intentions, she wasn’t sure if she had enough time.