Inevitably Yours

MICHAEL

Email after email. Ignored. Certified letters. Returned. Phone calls. Unanswered. This so called occult expert was beginning to really piss me off. My patience snapped this morning when I sent another email and immediately got a return message stating that the delivery address was invalid.

I brought the sledgehammer down onto the tire again. The muscles in my biceps screamed at the force, and the tire bounced up at the recoil. I swung the sledgehammer over my head again, prepared to bring it down.

I wasn’t going to tolerate Quinn being in danger like this forever. I was going to get answers from someone. Quinn handled herself, but she shouldn’t have to. She shouldn’t be panickedly trimming our children’s little blue tufts of hair to hide them.

I had to do something soon. Trying to contact this professor just wasn’t working out. I needed something more. I had half a mind to have one of my private investigators dig into her so I could confront her in person.

The hammer dropped onto the tire, this time from gravity than my own doing. I stopped, breathing heavy as sweat poured down my face.

“Beating up rubber isn’t making our mate safe,” Eros pointed out. I rolled my eyes. He knew I was just working through my anger. “If you are determined that this professor has answers, the only answer is to go to her directly.”

“But is it the wrong move to explicitly expose Quinn like that? Or myself, for that matter? She’s a human; it’s unlikely she has verifiable proof that any supernatural species exist,” I reminded him.

“If things escalate, her identity could be exposed either way,” Eros argued. “Right now, she is odd to others, but things could change should they think she is gifted.”

I looked toward the house to find my favorite blue head of hair bobbing around the side of the packhouse. I dropped the hammer and went to investigate what she was doing. Coming around the packhouse, I found her crouched over.

“Quinn, what are you doing?” I asked. She jumped, and I heard a soft meow.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!” she gasped as she looked over her shoulder at me. Something orange and fluffy peeked out around her legs.

“Ew, Quinn, is that a cat?” I blanched.

“Isn’t he cute?” she smiled. She ran her hand along the fleabag’s back. He closed his eyes like he was enjoying it.

“Quinn, cats are gross. They don’t like us. They know their place in the food chain,” I g*****d. Quinn stood, scooping up the small thing in her arms. She rubbed under its chin, and it made a vibrating sound.

“He likes me,” she grinned. “See?”

I watched as she let the wild thing rub its face over hers. “Put it down. I can’t believe it’s even around here,” I said.

“He’s so sweet, though. And he isn’t afraid at all,” she pouted. She held him up a little closer to me. His feet dangled in the air as he just stared blankly at me. “He looks thin, so I was just trying to find something he might like to eat.”

I sighed. She liked the cat; I could tell by the look in her eye she liked him. Why a cat? “Baby, you really should put it down. You shouldn’t play with it. You don’t know where it’s been,” I tried to reason with her.

“I don’t know everywhere you’ve been,” she countered. “I still play with you.” She said it so calmly and without missing a beat that it took me a whole second to realize what she had just said. My jaw slowly dropped open.

Finally, she looked up at me with a cheshire grin. She won the exchange. I just sort of stared at her, trying to find words. “I’m going to take him inside and see if he likes chicken. You can go back to all that sexy working out,” she said. Quinn walked around me, and I just watched as she headed back around the packhouse.

“You just let her take the hell beast inside,” Eros growled.

“Let is a pretty strong word,” I argued.

“Well, you better make sure it doesn’t stay in the house!”

Sense returned to me as I took off for the back door. I went straight for the kitchen, knowing she was about to feed it. When I stepped through the door, she was at the counter making a plate of food. She looked up at me happily.

“Where’s the thing?” I asked her. She looked down next to her. I stepped around the counter to see it scarfing down a plate with various pieces of meat on it.

“He really likes the chicken and turkey,” she said, handing me a plate. “Here, I figured you might be hungry.” There was a wrap with the extra rotisserie chicken we had for dinner the previous night. My stomach growled immediately.

“Q, you aren’t trying to keep that thing, are you?” I asked her, sitting down at the counter.

She shrugged and smiled down at the cat. “He’s pretty cute. And, like you said, cats don’t come around wolves. Maybe he’s special,” she said.Belonging © NôvelDram/a.Org.

My shoulders sagged as I took a bite of the lunch she had made me. Quinn started cleaning up the food she had gotten out, bending over now and then to pet the cat or offer him another bite of food. My heart tugged at how happy the small rodent made her. “Weak creature,” Eros g*****d.

“I didn’t tell her she could keep it!” I defended myself.

“If she asks, you won’t tell her no.”

I swallowed the last bite of my lunch and sighed. Quinn reached across the counter to grab my plate. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“There isn’t a pet store in Stary. I’m going to have to take you into the human town,” I said.

She looked at me cautiously for a second. Her head tilted slightly. “Are you saying we can keep him?” she said, her lips slowly twitching up.

“Yea, but I’m not taking care of him. And he isn’t sleeping with us,” I told her standing up. She jumped up and down, screaming.

“Really?” she asked.

“Yea,” I told her. “We can go after the kids get home from school.”

She came around the counter and attacked me. I picked her up so I could k**s her properly. I loved that happy feeling flooding through our bond. Making her happy was the best feeling in the world. She kissed me about a thousand times before finally speaking, “Thank you, M. He’s so cute and sweet. I love him already.”

–

The kids were warmer to the cat than I was. Nic watched all the pups so I could take Quinn to the pet store. She researched before we left and brought a list of the things we needed. I followed her around the store, pushing the cart as she added things. She was bubbling about the whole thing, and it mellowed out my rage.

Quinn was very much in love with the rodent. She carried it around the packhouse with her, and it quickly made itself at home. Judy and Nic were not very fond of it, but everyone tolerated it for Q. It immediately became apparent that he would be sleeping with us. I entered the bedroom late that first night to find Quinn curled up with the thing in her arms.

A few days later, Nic and I were sneaking in some training after lunch before we needed to head down to the warrior compound. We were commiserating over our mutual dislike of the feline while doing target practice with throwable weapons. I stopped when I heard Quinn’s voice in my head.

“Michael, Michael, where are you?” she asked panickedly. Nic noticed my stop immediately. Goosebumps erupted over me.

“Quinn, what’s wrong? I’m down at the training rings. Where are you? I’m coming!” I shot back, immediately moving my feet toward the packhouse. She took Rowan to the library with Andrea for a pup play group before lunch. I had taken advantage of the fact that she didn’t ask me to go with her to get some other things done.

I was on the verge of shifting to run with Eros when she replied. “M, the school just called. Get Nic. Junior, Belle, and Diane got into a fight. Daniel was involved somehow, too,” she said, worry still in her voice. I slowed for a second.

“So you’re okay? Are the kids okay?” I asked her. Nic caught up to me.

“We both have missed calls from the school,” she said, shoving my phone into my hands as she held hers up to her ear. “That little heathen….”

“The nurse said they are fine, but the other pup isn’t. Can you meet me there? We were already on our way back with Rowan,” Quinn answered.

“The nerve! We taught them better than that! Three against one! They better have a really good explanation for all this!” Nic vented.

“We’re on the way,” I told Quinn. “Take a breath,” I told Nic. “You’re right. They know better than that. Let’s just go see if we can figure out what happened.”

–

Nic and I rushed into the front office of the school, where Quinn was waiting with Rowan on her h*p. He was squirming around and trying to get down, but I could tell she didn’t want him to be crazy. I could also tell by her face that he was hurting her. Immediately I grabbed him from her arms. “Time to be good,” I told him quietly. I tried to get her to stop picking him up, but he was still very much a momma’s pup.

“Where are they?” Nic asked Quinn.

“We are supposed to be taken to them in a minute,” Quinn said, wringing her hands.

“Do we know anything other than they were in a fight against another kid?” I asked. Quinn shook her head. I put my free arm around her waist and kissed the side of her head, hoping it would calm her a bit.

“Alpha, Luna, Beta,” the principal addressed us, coming from a door at the back of the room. “Why don’t you come with me?”

We followed. I let Quinn go, and she grabbed onto Nic’s arm. Nic was fuming in her own right, but I think she was holding it in because Quinn looked on the verge of tears. I fell in line next to the principal. “I would like to speak with my pups,” I told him.

“We should all chat first,” he said. “I think we are going to ask they all go home for the day before any further decisions are made.”

I nodded, not exactly thrilled with this. I didn’t care what any principal teacher or even the other parents had to say. I wanted to hear from my pup’s mouth why they were involved in a fight before anyone else.

“Don’t yell,” Quinn linked me. I looked over my shoulder to see her watching me carefully. I nodded before looking forward again.

The principal took us to the counselor’s office. There were two benches outside on either side of the door. On one sat two children I didn’t recognize, one looking pretty beat up. On the other sat Junior, Diane, and Belle, looking dirty but relatively unharmed, and Daniel crying softly. Belle had her arm around him, whispering to him quietly.

“Dad! I swear we didn’t pick the fight!” Junior said, immediately jumping to his feet when we got close. “We told them to take it back!”

“That is enough for now, Mr. Galbraith,” the principal stopped him. Another person stepped out of the office. “Looks like we are ready for you. Come on in,” the principal addressed us.

We went inside the counselor’s office. Two other she-wolves sat inside, one looking angry and the other ready to cry. The woman I presumed to be the counselor stood from her chair behind the desk to shake my hand. “Let’s have a seat and chat,” she said in a patronizingly calm voice.

Nic sat Quinn in the remaining chair, and we stood behind her. The counselor began. “Obviously, we are here because there has been an altercation between everyone’s children,” she said, the patronizing tone prevailing.

“You mean the Alpha children were just picking on their classmates because they don’t have consequences!” the angrier she-wolf shouted.

“That isn’t true!” Quinn insisted quietly. Hurt flashed in her eyes at the accusation.

“Please, let us explain what we know, then we can all discuss,” the principal said.

“We aren’t exactly sure how everything started, but we do know that a disagreement began at recess. There were other children cursorily involved, but the fighting happened between Michael Jr, Belle, Diane, Justin, and Benjamin,” the counselor went on. “It seemed to have started around young Daniel, but we aren’t sure how. The pups are all telling us very different stories.”

“And those are?” I pressed.

“Well, Justin and Benjamin assert they were offering for Daniel and a few of his friends to play with them when Belle came over and started a fight with them, telling them to stay away from her brothers,” the principal said. I scoffed. Quinn made a small gasp and covered her mouth, but Nic had the same reaction I did.

“And the Alpha and Beta children assert that Justin and Benjamin were being disrespectful. Junior says he asked them to stop when Justin stepped forward and pushed him,” the counselor said.

“Justin would never be disrespectful to his classmates,” the angry she-wolf argued. “He has told me all about those Alpha children. It’s natural for them to act superior to others when everyone treats them like they are!”

“Excuse me, but do you specifically have a problem with our children?” Nic snapped at her.

“There is really no need to fight here,” the principal said, trying to deescalate the situation.

“But there is,” Nic turned on him. “Junior, Belle, and Diane have been training for years. Fighting isn’t a hobby for them. It’s a skill they are learning to protect their family, friends, and pack. They would never attack someone just because. And none of them have such a bloated ego that they would need to prove anything!”

“Nic,” I said, stopping her. She shut up and crossed her arms in frustration. “I apologize that this has happened, and it is unfortunate,” I said, addressing the she-wolves. “But Nic is right. My children are raised with responsibilities and consequences like any other pup in this pack. They clean their rooms and wash dishes like any other person. They have been taught to respect our birthright in the same way we do – as a responsibility we have to the pack. A fight should never have happened, but I don’t believe for a moment there was not a reason behind it.”

“Can we bring them in here? Ask them all what happened?” Quinn asked. “They might feel differently speaking with their parents in the room.”

The principal and counselor looked at each other and then nodded. The counselor stood and went to get the kids. They filed into the room one by one and came to their parents. Nic took Diane’s face in her hands, looking her over. Belle and Junior came straight to me, and Daniel went to Quinn.

“Do one of you want to explain what happened?” I asked Junior and Belle. Junior looked at his sister, who shrunk slightly.

“Daniel was playing when those kids came up to him. I was with my friends, but Belle and Diane saw him,” he said. “Daniel was trying to get away from them, so Belle and Diane went to him. Then they started fighting with Belle, so Diane came to get me.”

“Dad, they were calling him a crybaby and stuff. I told them they had to stop because it wasn’t nice!” Belle whined.

“I went to get Junior because Belle was getting mad,” Diane confirmed.

“When I got over there, they wouldn’t stop. I told them Daniel wasn’t hurting anyone, so they should just leave him alone,” Junior continued. “But then they started calling us freaks. They said our mom is a freak because she has blue hair and has to be a mutant because werewolves don’t have blue hair.”

I saw red. My eyes went to Quinn who was just looking at Junior and Belle shell shocked. Then I looked at the principal and counselor, who had gone slightly white. Finally, my eyes went to the other parents and their pups who were looking guilty.

“They said stuff about Saph too!” Belle chimed in. “Junior told them to stop because they don’t know our mom, but they just kept going!” She was getting angry again.

“Then he pushed Junior, and Belle jumped in and punched him in the face back,” Diane explained, pointing to the angry woman’s child. She looked at her son.

“Did you insult our Luna like that?” she hissed.

“No, I.. I…” he stammered. The kid clearly didn’t think he would be in the same room as the Alpha and Luna any time soon. I set Rowan down next to Junior, and he grabbed his brother’s hand. I could feel Quinn getting upset through our bond, but she was looking over Daniel like she was only worried about his well-being right now.

“If these two don’t have anything to say for themselves, I think we’re done here,” I said with a note of finality. It was painstakingly clear that the other children targeted Daniel, and things went downhill from there. “I’ll be keeping Junior, Belle, Daniel, and Diane home for the rest of the week. I do expect some action from the administration to be taken to prevent further altercations.”

I turned to Quinn and held out my hand. She took it, letting me pull her up. I led her out first, with the kids and Nic following us. “Junior, Diane, Belle, get your things and meet us in the office. Nic, you and Quinn can go sign them out. I’ll go with Daniel,” I told them. Quinn held her head high as she and Nic silently headed back to the office. Junior hung back for a second while the girls headed to get their things.

“Dad, I didn’t try to fight them. You believe me, right?” he asked. I set my hand on his shoulder.

“I do. Your sister can have a temper, but I believe you were both defending your brother,” I assured him.

“That stuff isn’t true about Mom, right? She’s just a wolf, right? I mean, I think her blue hair is pretty. It makes her different and cool,” he went on.

“Go get your stuff. We’ll talk about this all more later,” I said, pushing him forward.

After talking with Daniel’s teacher and getting his things and work for the next few days, I headed to the office. Nic and Quinn were signing forms to take the kids out early. Nic was running her hands frustratedly through her hair.

“They had to pick a fight on rocket launching day,” Nic g*****d. “I spent hours helping Diane with that thing. They were supposed to be shooting them off in science during their last class today.”

“I think launching rockets is at the bottom of our current worries,” I pointed out.

“Junior and Diane were really excited about it, though,” she sighed. Before I could say anything else, her body stiffened, and she turned toward the doorway where another she-wolf had just come in. Her eyes glazed over a bit, and I recognized the look.

“Mate,” they both said in unison. Quinn looked up to see what was going on, and I couldn’t help the surprise on my face.

“Did she just say…” Quinn linked me.

“Yea, she did…”