Chapter Six

Cara’s wolf hadn’t been hunting in years. It wasn’t until she was out with Chase that she realized how lazy she’d become. A bow and arrow was her typical choice of weaponry, taking down a bird or rabbit here and there with her old pack. But out in the denseness of the trees, with nothing but her instincts, she felt inexperienced.

“You know the pack will warm up to you a lot faster if you bring in a nice sized buck. Try to avoid killing any fawns or does,” Chase whispered to her from the tree tops. He was hopping branch to branch while she skulked along the ground waiting for dinner to appear. When he stopped, so did she.

It was like her instincts flooded back to her. The smell of its breath, its coat flaking off of a branch it brushed up against. The sounds of its heart beating through a thick layer of skin and fur. Her sight connected with the buck not too far ahead. He wasn’t as big as others she’d seen. She could take him down by herself if she got her jaws around the jugular. With her adrenaline pumping and the dirt under her feet, she felt the swiftness of the wind whipping around her as she picked up speed. The buck noticed her coming but by the time he turned to run, it was too late. 

He was stronger than Cara anticipated as he wriggled out of her clutches but like a flash of lightning, she saw Chase’s dark brown coat glistening in the sunlight. The snap of his jaws around the deer’s neck echoed through the trees. Cara stepped back as Chase made light work out of the animal.

Once the buck took its last breath, they carried it back to the pack for it to be prepared for dinner. Chase was right, everyone was excited to see Cara participate in a hunt. She made sure to emphasize it was Chase’s kill, but they still appreciated her effort. The only one who didn’t care, and even seemed to loathe the idea, was Shelly.

When they had a moment to themselves, she heard her mumble, “Figures you’d try to wrap Chase around your little finger too. Bad enough you’ve got Titan pantin’ after you.”

Cara wanted to snap her head off, but instead, she told her, “I’m not going to keep saying things to ease your ego. If you want any one of them Finnegan brothers, go after them! Stop blaming me or anyone else for what they do or don’t want from you. You control how you feel. You can control whether you secretly pine after them or whether you follow your heart. But stop taking your crap out on me! If they were treating you like this before I got here then that’s on you, sweetie!”

She walked off, refusing to let Shelly say anything else to ruin her mood. She did good on the hunt, well as good as she could her first time out in years. She felt good being a part of the pack. It was a feeling she hadn’t felt in a long time. Letting her wolf out wasn’t as painful as it had been in weeks. Her nightmares about the bear attack began to subside. Things were looking up and she couldn’t wait until she was fully healed.

“That’s not the best way to get on Shelly’s good side,” a voice murmured from behind her.

Turning around, Chase was a few feet behind her. The scent of the buck’s blood still lingered around him, under his fingertips no doubt from stringing up the animal for the others to prepare it.

Cara shrugged, “I’m not trying to get on her good side. I just want her to leave me alone for now. And honestly, if I decide to stay that’s when I’ll care about what she wants.”

“So you’re still up in the air about it? Don’t you think our pack is a good fit?” he asked touching her elbow lightly to get her to stop walking. The look in his eyes told Cara he felt more in that moment than she did, but she didn’t exactly stop him either. Embarrassment would rain all over her face if she was reading him wrong.

“Chase, after everything that I’ve been through, I think any pack would be a good fit. But the dynamics here are far more interesting than my last one. I like it here,” she smiled at him. It was then that she caught his scent in the air; not Chase but Titan. Her eyes scanned the trees and she thought it was still her heightened senses from the hunt, but she could feel his eyes on her. The heat, the passion, the jealousy as she stood seemingly alone with his little brother.

Chase moved closer to her, never letting go of her arm. Cara hadn’t noticed how close he’d gotten to her until she turned to face him and he was inches away from her face. She backed away and Chase grinned. He leaned in to kiss her but she pushed him back, “What do you think you’re doing?”

The sound of someone or something moving around in the bush drew their attention toward the trees. The silence between them was soon filled with Chase’s apologies, “I’m sorry, Cara. I may have read that wrong. I just think you’re beautiful and we could possibly belong together.”

“Wow thank you for your honesty,” she told him searching for the right words, “But I think you’re misunderstanding why I hang out with you so much.”

“Oh?” the puzzled look in his eyes was mixed with hurt.

“You remind me of my twin brother,” she said in the sweetest tone possible. No man wants to hear that from a woman he’d just tried to kiss. She kept trying to ease the blow to his ego, “You challenge me and always push me to be better. You’re helping my healing process way more than you’ll ever know and for that, I’m eternally grateful. I just don’t think I feel anything more than that for you. When you think about it, do you really like me or is this just something you’d want to taunt your brothers with?”

 

Chase stood there pondering what she’d asked him. He had to admit that even though Cara was beautiful, he’d love for her to be one of his conquests but not his mate. He was being selfish and juvenile, but even though she rejected him, he’d never let his brothers know that.

Shaking his head, he smiled a half smile, “I think you’re right. But I don’t want to put never on the table. Maybe after you decide whether to stay or not, we can revisit the topic of who you’d like to mate with.”

Normally, Cara would say something offensively sarcastic but she believed she’d done enough to bruise Chase’s ego for the day. So she simply nodded in agreement and watched him walk away. When she was alone, the scent of her true affection whispered into her nostrils.

“You don’t have to skulk and sneak around,” Cara said to the air.

Titan made his way out of the shrubs once he was sure Chase had left. Pulling his hair back, he assured her he was doing neither. Titan was gathering supplies to make repairs in one of the cabins, at least that’s what he told her. Cara wanted to believe him, but a part of her knew he was spying. While she wanted to scream at him, that he could throw her down, make love to her on the forest floor, and even mark her, she knew that Titan wouldn’t go for it until she was a permanent member of the pack.

“So how or when are you going to decide?” he wondered.

“I’m going to talk to everyone, get a feel for their opinion. I’ll take it from there,” she told him.

“I think you should start with my mother,” he told her.

Cara was in no mood for the intimidating spouse of an alpha, “I was thinking that I’d save her for last.”

“Don’t avoid her. She can sense that and weakness will not be tolerated. I told you that already,” he warned her.

But Cara still didn’t want to tackle the heaviness of a conversation with Titan’s mother, “Well maybe I won’t save her for last, but I certainly don’t want to speak to her without a clear decision as to whether I want to stay or not. Just let me talk to a few of the others and see what their thoughts are. I do have a question for you.”

“What’s that?” he asked moving closer to her.

Their energies clung to one another. Memories of his fingers inside of her made her moist with every step he took closer, but with everything that has happened to her, regarding matters of the heart, there was something she had to know.

“How do you feel about humans? Whole humans and shifters mating?”

Titan moved so close to her that he could lace his fingers between hers. Gazing down into her eyes, he told her, “We had this discussion already. I’d never choose one, let alone choose one over you.”

“What if I decided to leave? What if I wanted you to come with me? We could start a pack on our own,” she blurted out with far too much uncertainty in her voice.

“There’s much more at stake here than just our feelings. Our emotions cannot be the deciding factor in what happens with you. Whatever this is between us, if it’s real, we can be together in a pack or without one, but you don’t have all the answers to your own personal questions. Answer those questions of self first before you try to make me run out on my family,” he smiled.

“I wouldn’t make you run out on them, but it’s nice to know that you’d pick me,” she kissed him gently on the lips.

“I’d like to know that you’d pick me,” he said backing away from her. It was a painful reminder that Titan would never give himself completely to his urges until he knew what her choice was.

“What if I wanted to go? To leave and find my brother?” she asked him.

“No one’s keeping you here, Cara,” he sighed. “I’m not going to beg you to stay. All I will say is that I care about you and I want you. I want us to be more than sneaky kisses in the trees and my cabin. I don’t want to hide, but I don’t want to run away from my pack either. Stop asking me all of these questions when you need to come up with your own answers. This is your life, Cara! The sooner you make up your mind about what you want, the sooner we can all deal with whatever comes after that. But whatever you choose, do it soon. I’m not going to continue to allow your constant disruption to our pack if you’re not staying!”

She could sense the frustration in his voice as she watched him walk away. With so much on her mind, Cara took off in the opposite direction. She found herself at the hot spring where that spark between her and Titan took off. With no one around, she stripped naked and eased herself into the water. It didn’t take long for her to get acclimated to the heat as she thought of memories from her past.

 

“My, my, my, how we have grown,” Midas sneered toward Cara’s teenage frame. She blushed under his glare as he ran a slender finger around her neck flipping a strand of her hair behind her back. “Your scent is divine, young Cara.”

A part of her could feel his energy was different. While she was too young to realize what it was, she believed she was old enough to know it was love.  Refusing to pay attention to the lingering glares, Cara followed him around endlessly. Midas enjoyed every minute of her doting attention. He’d kiss her on the forehead and tell her she’d make a perfect mate one day, never for him, but one day.

But it all came to an abrupt end when Midas decided he’d had his fill of her childish crush. He rejected her in a way that Cara never imagined.

It wasn’t simply walking in on him in bed with another. No, what Midas did to Cara hurt her deeper than that. He summoned her for them to talk. It was only when she arrived that she noticed they wouldn’t be alone. He said it was to let her down easy, but the glee in his eyes after seeing the pain on her face was telling. He marked another while she stood there, tears streaming down her cheeks only to tell her, “You knew I would never mark you. You’re far too young. Way too naive. You did this to yourself.”

 

Heartbroken and distraught, Cara ran off into the woods to seek refuge and solace. It was when she ran into her brother that she told him what Midas had done. Full of rage and chivalry, Cairo went to battle Midas. It was a tough fight but ended with Midas coming out on top. Not only did he win, but he convinced the alpha and every other member of the pack that Cara put Cairo up to it after he rejected her numerous times. Unfortunately for Cara and her brother, the alpha took Midas’ side. He banished them from their territory and every other pack in the vicinity was put on alert that the brother-sister duo was a lethal pair.

Cara and Cairo roamed the mountain tops looking for a pack only to be turned away at every chance. It wasn’t until they arrived in Myre Falls that they fell in with a pack they could both call home ...

The more Cara reflected on the absurdity of Midas being the one for her, the heavier her eyelids became. Sleep was washing over her in the spring as the heat of the water sang her a sweet lullaby.  Forgetting how deep the thing actually went; it wasn’t until she’d begun ingesting water that she realized she’d fallen asleep. Sinking under the surface, panic rushed over her as she struggled to swim toward the bank of the spring.

The soft hands of Anna and Tryx pulling her out of the water calmed her down. Gasping for air, and coughing up as much water as she could. Cara tried her best to get her breathing back under control.

The red faces of Anna and Tryx as they stared down at her naked body for a moment made Cara laugh, but that only brought on another coughing fit.

“What’s the matter with you?” Tryx asked. She was tall, with her blonde hair pulled into a bun and a swimsuit on. She looked good for a mother of three. “You got some kind of death wish? Don’t let the pups see you out here doing stuff like that… first fighting bears, and now what? Seeing how long you can hold your breath? You’ve got be careful, there are young impressionable minds around.”

Cara pulled her clothes on with an apologetic expression across her face, “I’m sorry guys. I got lost in thought. I’ve been trying to make up my mind about staying and I guess, I just… I don’t know what happened.”

Anna stooped down, almost as if to gaze into Cara’s soul with those big doe eyes, “You want to stay, don’t you?”

“I think I do, but there’s so much to consider. And I truly don’t want to come into your pack and disrupt the working order of things. You guys run a really tight ship over here,” she said sitting up.

“Oh goodness, what’s she doing here?!” Shelly whined as she approached them.

“Just leaving,” Cara huffed pushing herself off the ground.

“You don’t have to,” Anna said, “Besides it’s always best to come to the spring with a few buddies anyway. You know? To avoid things like what just happened.”

“What just happened?” Shelly asked perplexed.

“Nothing,” Cara shook her head, “I’m leaving. You guys enjoy.”

She left them to their spring wondering if her near drowning was some sort of sign to let her past go. It wasn’t rocket science that Midas was a piece of history she hated reliving but her mind refused to let him go. Her eyes searched the trees hoping that she could at least see Cairo. Her brother would know exactly what to say to her.

Shaking away the loneliness threatening to overwhelm her, Cara walked back toward the cabins. The idea of the women in the spring made her wonder who was looking after the pups. Sure enough, when she returned, Nathan and Taylor were chasing the kids around. They’d shift in and out of their wolves while running around the camp. It was a picture-perfect family that Cara suddenly wanted to be a part of. Full of laughter and joy, Cara stood back smiling at the feeling of family amongst them all.

She’d made up her mind that even if she didn’t choose Titan, or if he didn’t mark her, this was a pack she needed to be a part of. The surrogate family was enough for her. It was only in fleeting moments that she thought about Cairo. While she missed her brother dearly, she could picture herself here. This could be her home, so she briskly made her way to Shaw’s cabin to see what she could do to make it official.