Chapter 31
Tanner’s POV
“Tanner, I need you to speed up, man. I need to get to the Crimson Shadow pack right now!” Gavin yells at me from the back of the SUV.
“What the hell, Gavin? Why?” I called back to him and kept my eyes on the road. “We will be there in like 20 minutes. What is the rush?”
“Some of the trainers from Ever Green are there and they were going to teach some sparring techniques, and anyone is free to join in. You know that I wanted to see them. This is just a bonus. Please speed up. I know Taylor sucks, but Alicia will protect you, and so will mom and dad. Don’t ruin this for me man. This is a dream come true falling into my lap”, Gavin complained from the third row, so I sped up to get him there. We pulled up in 12 minutes and he was already trying to shove our sister out of the way to get out.
“Gavin, 1 minute isn’t going to make a difference, is it?” Mom calls after him, as he clears the SUV and goes into a full run, disappearing behind the packhouse, never looking back towards us.
Mom and dad are shaking their heads after him and I bit back a laugh because he never gets excited about anything, except learning from his “heroes” as he likes to refer to them. I hope he has a good time and I grab his duffle bag with mine to take up to the 2 rooms that we have been assigned. Mom and Alicia will get ready in their room, and dad, Gavin, and I will get ready in ours, but the plan is to not stay the night unless one of us meets our mate, or I can lock myself away and make sure Taylor can’t get to me.
Spoke too soon. I know one of those damn guards told her we had arrived. Well, it is only an extra 7 minutes, with the most annoying person ever. I see Taylor dressed like she is about to go to the club. Who has a leather skirt on at home at 2 in the afternoon? She runs over to me and jumps off the ground at me and I have to catch her or get knocked over. She gets more devious with every visit. Thank the Goddess for my sister who is already heading over to me and helping me get this leech off of me. Taylor is refusing to let go and I see Stone, who comes down the steps and helps to get his sister off of me.
Taylor glares at him and I see his eyebrows come up in some secret message and she gave him a sneer. She obviously didn’t realize that I had caught it and then turned to me to give me a huge smile and asked, “Tanner, please save some dances for me tonight. It IS my birthday after all” before she heads back into the house.
“Goddess, she is in rare form today,” Stone tells me and then shakes his head after her and tells me, “Heads up, she will be after you. She had already harassed two of the trainers from Ever Green. She wouldn’t leave the big one alone, mom wouldn’t tell her if you were coming or not, so she wanted to lock down another guy, just in case. Poor guy, he really looked uncomfortable with her, much like you do right now”.
“Yes, I heard about the trainers. Gavin asked me to speed up so he could make it here in time so he could see them in action”, I told Stone.
“Yes, they are actually very, very good. I will have to get back to you on a fun fact about one of them later tonight. Mom and dad wanted to be the ones to announce it. On the stage, Taylor was furious about it, so I take even more pleasure from that. The only good thing to come from it is that she won’t get spoiled anymore. This is my favorite part actually” Stone started laughing and seemed like he was really happy about whatever it was.
“Please help me tonight with your sister Stone, she is absolutely horrible. I will not be spending any more nights here alone, as she woke me up by climbing naked into bed with me the last time I stayed overnight. Nothing happened, but I was so worried about coming here again, I brought my whole family to run interference for me” I told Stone, and he appeared shocked by her actions. “I just wanted to come and see if I could find my mate here, or Gavin’s, or Alicia’s mate, as this is a ball and will have a number of young people present here for the party”.
“I will watch her for you Tanner, I am so sorry that she did that. I did warn her that if she didn’t stop, I would tell mom and dad, but they usually don’t do anything to really punish her. Hopefully, now they will start to, Goddess willing”, Stone tells me, and we head inside.
I take our bags up to the room and put them in the right rooms for us to get ready. I noticed that I smelled an intoxicating scent, like lavender and orange, both calming and sweet, and I loved it. I hope this means that I will find my mate tonight and I sniffed in deeper and was glad that I had already seen Taylor, and this was definitely not what I smelled when she was near. She had a lot of perfume on, and it did not smell good to me at all. I got excited and went to my parents in the room next door, to tell them that I could smell the most amazing smell. I describe the smell to them, and what I am smelling and feeling. They grin at each other and say, “Yes, your mate is somewhere around here. You need to try to go find her”.
I strolled around the whole inside of the packhouse looking around, trying to find who the scent belonged to. I wandered into the kitchen and saw my brother with a small group outside and they were doing some kind of martial arts out there together. Gavin looked like he was ecstatic to be a part of the group and was all in with getting there to work with them. He talks about the training group all the time and I am happy that he is having such a good time. I get a bottle of water from the fridge and watch them sparring outside. I decided to go out to watch Gavin in action as he was now about to spar with one of the smaller trainers. He is about 5 inches taller than that trainer and then I remember my Beta, Peter telling me that one of the new trainers was an 18-year-old girl, and I suddenly couldn’t get outside fast enough. I got to the edge of the group, and I smelled the same scent and it washed over me like a huge wave in the ocean.
I was smelling my mate and I watched my brother fighting my mate, and he was intent on trying to take her down. I was outraged that he would put his hands on her. Before I could react and take care of it. She had taken him down, very quickly, and was reaching down to him with her hand to help him back up. I could tell when she sensed me because her head snapped up and I could see her sniffing the air as well. A few seconds later, her beautiful blue eyes snapped to mine. I held my arms out for her to come to me, but she took off like someone was chasing her with a gun. I saw a really big guy look after her retreating form, and then he glanced at me and narrowed his eyes at me like I had done something to her.
I hadn’t. I only wanted to love her, to mark her, to make her mine, but never hurt her. I know I had confusion on my face as well and the other guy, who was big and tall too, but had a much slimmer build, came over to me.
“I am Hudson Crawford, from the Ever Green pack. May I ask who you are?” Hudson asked me.
“I am Tanner Wright, Alpha of the Blood Rose pack. I didn’t do anything to her. I don’t even know who she is, besides being my mate. I could smell her scent inside and I was looking for her when I found her out here. I just held my hand out to her, and she ran away from me.” I couldn’t keep the pain out of my voice when I said the last of it.
“Alan, come here for a minute”, Hudson called over to him.
The big guy came over and gave me a hard look and said, “What is up, Hudson?”
Hudson motioned to me and told him, “This is Gabi’s second chance mate. She got freaked out and ran off. We need to let Luna Von and Alpha Heath know. She is probably freaking out right now”. Alan nodded in agreement and his eyes clouded over while he contacted his Alpha and Luna.
“I am her second chance mate?” I asked Hudson, who nodded and waited watching Alan until Alan’s eyes cleared and he said, “She is with Luna Von and Luna Liz. She is ok”.
That made me happy, and I sighed in relief. Alan looked at me with narrowed eyes and said, “What are your intentions with Gabrielle?” and it wasn’t a nice, pleasant, or respectful tone. I was kind of getting a little bit upset about the disrespect he was giving me.
“That is none of your business. Are you dating her or something?” I asked him back.
“That is none of your business. But do not toy with her. You had better not hurt her. We will not take that lightly. She is one of us and earned her spot on my team. We will protect her if we need to”, Alan said to me, and I narrowed my eyes.
“Are you threatening me, Alan?” I said to him and stepped up to him.
“If I need to, I will” Alan said, and he took a step forward, closing the gap between us, and we were now nose to nose.
Hudson steps forward and puts his arm between us and says, “Stop it, both of you. It won’t look good for either of you to get into an actual fight, and this could embarrass Gabi. Call a truce, and we can all sit down and discuss this in a calm manner, where we will be going from here tonight at the party”.
I nodded and stepped back from Alan. Hudson was right, it would look bad for me to get into a big fight, especially with her teammate. And that is what it was going to be, out here on their training field. I have looked for her for the last 3 years, I can wait 3 hours to get to meet her. I now cared about what I would look like for the party and decided I needed to go into town really quickly as I needed a shave and a haircut. I looked a little scruffy, and maybe that turned her off of me. I will find out the full story tonight, and I will have my dad put in a good word for me with Alpha Heath, and mom can do the same with Luna Von. I am willing to do whatever I need to do for this to work out in my favor, because now that I have seen her beautiful face, I am NOT letting her go.