The wolf inside Gabe was thrilled by the kiss and couldn’t stop obsessing over it, but Gabe himself was furious. He felt physically sick. The only woman whose lips had been on his had died. The last person he had kissed, before Val, had had her impression on his lips erased by some human he had gotten himself stupidly entangled with.
Gabe closed the store early and went immediately home. What had that girl been thinking, ambushing him like that? Just because he had claimed her didn’t mean they had to act like a couple or something, did it? She was saying one thing; that she wanted to leave and stop being a burden on his life, then the next minute, her lips were on his and she was trying to push the importance of his wife right out of his life. But she would never replace Molly. Never.
The more Gabe thought about it, the more furious he became, until he was passing by his house and on his way downtown. He parked outside the Council’s building, his chest tight and his heart angry. The wolf was warning him against going inside; it was against his nature to refuse the role he had accepted within the pack, even if he was unhappy about being tethered to a young woman who, despite being very attractive and sweet, neither wanted his help nor respected his devotion to his late wife. He just couldn’t let that go on any longer.
“Gabriel, what do you need?”
“Leon, I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
Leon was alone behind the check-in desk, but glanced behind him and gave a mysterious nod to someone Gabe couldn’t see.
“All right, Gabriel. Right this way.”
Leon stood from the desk and began walking, leading Gabe to a small conference room off to the side. It was opposite the room where Gabe and Molly had been married in so long ago. The memory made his stomach churn. Why had things gone so horribly wrong? There was no way he could continue on the path he was on; not with an unpredictable young girl who made him angry and confused about everything.
“So tell me, Gabriel, what is it that brings you here today?”
“I need to take back my claim. I can’t live like this anymore. The whole thing was just a huge mistake.”
The wolf inside whimpered, angry at him for turning his back on the pack, but Gabe set his jaw, determined to take care of this problem once and for all. It would be better for both of them. If he didn’t believe that, he wouldn’t be there, begging the Elders to give him his life back.
“Are you sure that’s what you want, Gabriel?” Leon asked.
Leon was a brick wall; impossible to see through. Whether he was angry, disappointed, or impartial, Gabe couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he would do anything to be rid of the young menace that was turning his world upside down. That kiss had left him breathless; made the wolf eager for more. The lack of control he’d nearly succumbed to had been powerful and terrifying. He hadn’t felt that way before; not any time in his entire life. His relationship with Molly had always been gentle; give and take. They had always known what to expect from each other. They had known each other like the back of their own hands.
It was nothing like what he was experiencing with Valerie. There was nothing predictable about the way the wolf prompted him to act around her. And there was even less predictability about the way she seemed compelled to act around him. Gabe was used to being in total control. But that wasn’t the way he felt when it came to Val. And that freaked him out more than anything.
“All right, Gabriel, you’re going to have to understand something about your claim on this girl.”
Gabe sighed heavily. Behind Leon’s stony exterior had been lurking a lecture. What had he been thinking, coming to an Elder about his problems?
“If you can understand it any better than I do, then I guess I would be pretty grateful about that,” Gabriel said with a sigh.
There was nothing easy about his situation with this girl. He felt like he was betraying his late wife; worse, betraying his own feelings. He was entirely devoted to her, and of all people for the wolf to decide to move on with, he refused to let it be such a young, innocent woman. She had her whole life ahead of her and she didn’t seem to understand a single thing about shifter culture. There was no way they would be able to make this work.
“When Stonybrooke was first founded, the land was wild and untamed. The shifters who settled here had done so after much deliberation. There was a myth from back then that underneath the hollow where the constellation of Mishgen’s snout points on the eve of the winter solstice, there lies a portal. It was discovered by the two lovers, Ashjn and Loshadel. The same two who, upon being thrown to Earth, searched a decade to find each other once again.”
“That’s just a myth, Leon,” Gabe mumbled. “Don’t tell that shit to me like I’m six years old or something. I’m asking you for help here, not a fairy tale.”
“Just because there are no documents confirming the ancients and their impression on the world doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a myth, Gabriel. Now hush and let me finish telling you the story.”
Gabe pursed his lips and folded his hands together, resigning himself to listening to the rest of Leon’s story. It all sounded like make believe to him, but Leon was an Elder. He was telling him the story for a reason. It would probably help him figure out what the hell he was supposed to do with the damn kid he’d claimed.
“Anyway, the couple were convinced the portal would take them back to the world from which they had fallen. It is rumored that for every group of shifters that were lost from the world of shifters, a portal was opened on the planet they ended up on. And so, together they crossed through the portal.”
“And…?”
Leon smiled.
“The portals are dangerous. But once they stumbled upon the portal, its magic did just as they hoped. They returned back to their own world. It worked. They returned to the planet they had been lost from. Only, everything was different than they remembered. There was something strange about it.”
Gabe sighed.
“I don’t know why you’re telling me this about the portals, or the people. All I want to know is if I can abandon my claim on the human. Neither of us are happy with it.”
“That’s the thing,” Leon said, shaking his head. “The couple I’m talking about were bonded for life. There’s a feeling; a sense that the wolf and the wolf alone can understand. There is only one true mate for you in this world, and once that claim is made, that’s the one that counts the most, whether it feels abrupt or not. So, you see, there is nothing you can do to unregister something like that. Even if it’s stricken from the records, it isn’t just going to disappear from your life.”
Gabe shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know why it has to be so damn complicated…”
“The couple that went through the portal knew something was wrong once they reached their world. Things were different than they remembered. It was impossible for them to be happy there; it was just a feeling they both had. They spent the next three years searching together to come back to Earth. Eventually, they made friends with powerful warlocks on their planet. By the time they returned to Earth, their love had withstood trial after trial. But Ashjn’s claim never wavered. They worked their hardest together, and ended up meeting their goals, no matter how impossible they seemed. They returned to Earth. They protected Stonybrooke. They marked it as a sacred space. And soon, our community was born. Against all odds, the claim provided them with a strength neither would ever have on their own.”
“All right, all right.”
Leon smiled knowingly at Gabe and nodded.
“All right, Gabriel. I’ve told you all I have to say about it,” Leon said, standing up from his chair and bowing graciously to Gabe. “I can’t take back your claim once it’s been filed, and even if I did, the wolf knows better than any single one of us what it meant to do. It will guide you.”
Gabe left the conference room feeling even more frustrated than he had been when he’d gone inside. Leon was giving his wolf a little bit too much credit as far as he could tell. It had been a stupid mistake by a wild beast that he didn’t have a handle on, and he wasn’t going to forgive himself for it. He was going to stay loyal to his wife, no matter what the Council had to say about it. That was final.