Damien's Dilemma (Ch 24)

Damien ran for hours, well past dusk, but he had needed it. Too many thoughts, too much confusion in his head, most of which centered around Tess. Despite all his arrogance in telling her that her wolf would return, he had to face the very real possibility that she wouldn’t. Would a blood-bond with her doom him? Genetically, she was still shifter, at least he thought she was. This was new territory. The WSSO held the answers, and the anti-shifter organization certainly wouldn’t give Damien what he needed to know.

If her wolf was too weak to return, did that mean the bond between Damien and Tess would be weak, or even non-existent? There was a very real possibility that blood-bonding with her would be the equivalent of blood-bonding with a human, and that was a risk an alpha couldn’t take. No one knew why exactly, but his father and his grandfather, and every alpha he’d ever heard of, had always said blood-bonding a human would kill an alpha. Sometimes he wondered if they were being figurative. Alphas couldn’t be weak, which is why they only blood-bonded with strong shifters. Did blood-bonding a human kill an alpha? Was his physiology different from someone like Blade who could blood-bond a human?

There were too many questions. All Damien knew for now was that his pack wasn’t ready to accept a non-shifting shifter. Until Tess shifted, there would always be some asshole like that teacher who would question her right to be here.

She would be in danger, from his own pack. Damien couldn’t fight them all, let alone kill shifters simply because they opposed Tess’s presence. If blood-bonding her left him severely weakened, he’d be unable to fight, unable to protect her.

Hayden would have to take over as alpha, and for as much as Damien trusted Hayden to make the right choices, Hayden would have to think of the pack first, not Damien and Tess. That could mean he and Tess would have to leave, to keep peace in the pack. They’d be without a pack. He’d seen what being a lone shifter had done to Blade, how even six years after joining Damien’s pack Blade still had trouble fitting in. He’d been a lone wolf for two years before joining Damien’s pack, which didn’t sound like a long time, but to a wolf who was raised in a pack, worked for and depended on the pack, an exile could feel like an eternity. The effects of those years as a lone wolf still showed on Blade, all these years later.

Damien wouldn’t give Tess up. A life out there, with no one to watch their backs, wasn’t a life he wanted for himself or Tess.

Damien tried to thrust the dilemma aside for the moment. He was too agitated to think straight, and right now all he wanted was to be with Tess, to smell her sweet scent, to feel her soft skin beneath his fingertips, or better yet, her lips on his. Just picturing her sweet smile and how her eyes lit when he drew near had his heart racing. He’d never understood how lonely he’d been before, not until he had her in his house, his arms. Losing her would be… No, he wasn’t going to think about it. Losing her wasn’t an option.

The closer he got to his house, the more his wolf relaxed. Damien would feel her, smell her, hold her soon. She calmed him and his wolf, and that was not a gift he’d throw away just because she was more human than shifter.

Damien pushed the door to his home open. Stale, odorless air greeted him. A second later, he picked up Callen’s scent. His enforcer was sitting on the sofa, yellow eyes tracking his every move. Tess’s scent was faint, old. She hadn’t been here for hours. It was disappointing, but not unexpected. Damien had been gone for a while. He couldn’t expect her to sit here waiting for him forever, though he wasn’t quite sure where she would go. She hadn’t really made friends with anyone yet. As soon as he dealt with Callen, he’d track her down, see what she was doing.

“When I call a meeting, I expect you there, Callen,” Damien said as he slammed the door shut and reached into the wall unit by the door where he kept pants and a few shirts for when he, or his shifters, entered naked. He slipped a pair of sweats on and headed for the kitchen. He pulled open the fridge and grabbed a beer, still trying to identify that odd scent that didn’t belong in his house.

“It was unavoidable,” Callen said, being his usual guarded self.

Damien wasn’t in the mood for this, not that Callen was one to bullshit. As Damien moved toward the kitchen, he caught that scent again, still too slight to identify. He considered asking Callen if he’d sent Tess away so he and Damien could speak in private. But he wanted to get this over with, so he could go find her and spend the night talking to and holding her, shutting out the pack and the outside world for a few hours.

“Of all days not to show, you picked the worst. Ransom would have been here immediately.”

“Ransom’s not here. He’s off with Elise living the quiet life on the border with a newborn. Face it, Damien, he’s not coming back. You’re stuck with me.”

Damien raised a brow. It wasn’t like Callen to talk back. “That’s not what I meant, and you damn well know it. He trained you to take over for him and I know you’re just as good as he was. Perhaps even better. But maybe you don’t realize what happens when my enforcer doesn’t show. Shifters get too brazen for their own good. I nearly put down that new guy Tim, Tam, Thomas…”

“Trent.”

“That’s it. The stupid bastard. He knows nothing about fighting. We need to start assessing everyone’s fighting skills and working with them, no matter what their jobs. If the WSSO ever attacks, we need wolves who at least know the basics, not a bunch of pups running from their own shadows.”

Damien was getting off-track, which was unlike him, but that other scent in his house was aggravating his wolf. He needed to stay focused, chew out his enforcer, and then track down Tess. Maybe she headed to see the kids camping by the lake. She had mentioned the idea earlier in the day.

“I was investigating something,” Callen said, now leaning forward, his clasped hands hanging over his feet as his elbows rested on his knees.

“This better be good. What, precisely?”

“A lead on Ian.”

After taking a long swallow of the beer, Damien set the bottle down and paced behind the sofa, where the scent was stronger. The house reeked of sweat, anger, and an odor he couldn’t quite grasp. He turned his nose toward the stairs, the office, then Callen. Nothing unusual about Callen’s scent. Damien was simply wound too tight from that disaster of a meeting, despite all the hours he’d spent running afterward. His wolf was creating problems, not willing to give him a moment’s rest.

“You found Ian, then. It’s about fucking time.”

“I followed him here, Damien.”

Damien’s hackles shot up even before he set his beer down. The scent had been Ian’s. Terror overwhelmed him. Tess.

Bones started moving beneath his skin, and he clamped down hard, shoving his wolf into submission. Callen rose slowly, cautiously, no doubt because Damien had started to shift.

“What happened? Where’s Tess?”

“Ian is under guard, but Tess is gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?” He scented the air. That’s what that was. A trace of fear, her fear, had remained. “Don’t make me ask again.”

“I don’t know where. She fled after Ian attacked her.”

“Why didn’t you stop her!”

“By the time I contained Ian, she was gone. I have guards and scouts out looking for her, including Blade, but the rain washed most of her scent away.”

“You should have called me, or sent someone to find me.”

“I did. I had so many howls in all directions the pack was starting to panic. Hayden ordered me to cease. He said you’d return when you were ready.”

Damien didn’t wait for Callen to finish. He flung the door open so hard he ripped it off its hinges. Small bits of clothing rained down as Damien shifted. Desperate to catch her scent, he ran a grid sweep. The rain had washed the area clean of all scents, except the most recent shifters to pass by. He kept running wider and wider perimeters until finally he caught her scent on the wind. Southwest. She had taken off toward Devil’s Peak.

Damien ran as fast as he could, his wolf recognizing what was at stake as much as Damien. If she reached town before he caught up to her, he could lose her forever.