Treasure
Crucial Conversation

Rori felt like she was floating under the water. Her senses deadened, unaware of her surroundings. It wasn’t the first time she’d woken from a drug-induced slumber. She knew to relax and let herself wake slowly. Over the next few minutes, her hearing sharpened, and she focused on the scents.

It smelled like oil, gas, and sweat. Rori let her wolf picked through the scents; most were stagnant, but one was strong, and easily recognized. Doctor Nygaard. She remembered the hot doctor from the hospital; he made her feel safe. She listened and heard the road noise and the sounds of cars and motorcycles. She opened her eyes to find she was in a van. It was daylight out, and the Doctor was driving.

Chase? She tried to move, and pain shot up her back. She let out a pained cry, alerting him that she was awake. “Don’t move, Rori, you’re still pretty torn up. That bear did a number on you,” Chase said.

She thought back to the attack. This time was different. She remembered it all as she sorted through what happened in her mind. She remembered swimming below the waterfall, the bear, her shift, and the fight. She remembered the paw ripping her open and the pain of crawling from the water and back upstream. Her Mom and stepfather, helping her, then carrying her until it all went black again. “Where… where am I,” she asked.

“An hour from the clubhouse in Portland,” he said. “Your parents called me for help. Your wounds were bad, and you nearly bled to death, but you’re going to heal. I’ll take care of you, Rori, I’ll always be here to take care of you.”

“Mom?”

“She’s fine. She’s going with Wolfman back up to Renton. Roadkill called the Club for help after you got hurt.”

“Why didn’t they come with me?” She couldn’t believe her Mom would leave her alone when she couldn’t even move without pain.

“It was important for you to disappear, and they have to return to Florida soon. It’s a long story.”

“It’s a long ride, isn’t it?”

Chase just laughed. “I guess you’re right.” She felt the van start to slow, then make a right turn. She could see the sign for the gas station. “We’re stopping?”

“Yeah, time to gas and go. Are you hungry?”

She was quiet for a bit. “A little. I have to go to the bathroom.”

“I’ll get you some food and figure something out. We had to sew your back, buttocks, and leg back together. You shouldn’t be walking, much less sitting on a gas station toilet seat.” Chase parked the van and asked her to stay where she was. She listened as he opened the gas cap and started fueling, then hung the nozzle back up.

The door opened, and her eyes protested the light briefly before the smell hit her. Her wolf was instantly forward. Rori recognized the scent; it was the she-wolf she had fought that night when they tried to take her. The woman at the door was tall and blonde, and her senses screamed danger. She pushed herself onto her hands and knees, the sharp pain making her cry out as she felt scabs rip open. “Wait, it’s all right, I’m not going to hurt you,” the woman said.

“You attacked me,” Rori said.

“I’m sorry. I was trying to stop you so we could help you. My name is Coral, Coral Nygaard.”

“You’re his wife?” The thought caused her stomach to flip. “Mate is OURS,” her wolf roared in her mind.

She laughed. “No, I’m Chase’s sister, his twin sister,” she said. Her body and wolf relaxed; that explained her being here, and she wasn’t a threat. “Please, lay down again before you hurt yourself even more. Trust me, I’m not feeling great either, and I’ve got a few days of healing on you.” She lifted her shirt, showing the parallel lines from where Rori had ripped open her stomach with her back claws. “You don’t know how embarrassing it was to lose a fight to a wolf who didn’t even know what she was,” she said as she lowered it again. “I’ve been training to be a warrior my whole life, and you still got away.”

“You were trying not to hurt me, and I was fighting for my life,” she said as she sank back to the makeshift bed. “I REALLY have to pee.”

“Well, that’s why I’m here. Can I come in?” Rori nodded, and she climbed up and closed the door. In the confined space, she could sense her smell, her clothes also having Chase and her parents on her. She relaxed as Coral opened a bag. “It isn’t the most pleasant way to do this, but my brother insists you don’t leave the bed.” She tore open a small packet and removed an adult diaper, holding it up.

“Depends? Really?”

“It will relieve you. Just relax and don’t move too much, I’ll get it in place.” Rori was wearing only a big T-shirt that held Chase’s scent, so Coral moved it up out of the way and placed the diaper around her. “Just let go, these things can absorb liters of fluid.”

She felt helpless, but her need won out, and she let it flow. When she finished, Coral took the heavy diaper and put it in a plastic bag, then used some baby wipes to clean her up before covering her up again. “Thanks,” Rori said.

“Anything for my new sister,” she said. “I have to go. Chase is waiting outside, and I have my own Harley to ride. We’ll talk later,” she said with a smile. She jumped out the back, closing the door behind her. “You could have warned her,” Coral scolded her brother. “She hurt herself, trying to get away from me. She remembered my smell from the hillside.”

“Shit, I forgot you two have history.”

“You’ll need to check her dressings when we stop again; she may have pulled some stitches out. Don’t scare my sister like that again,” she said before the driver’s side door opened.

“That’s twice now,” Rori said to him. “Twice, she’s called me her sister.”

“She has more confidence in me than I do,” Chase said as he started up the van. She heard the Harleys firing up around them, and they followed them back onto the road. “You’re my mate, my one true love, the woman I want to call mine for the rest of my life.”

“You barely know me!”

“I didn’t need to know you; I fell in love with you the first time I laid eyes on you. My wolf is in full agreement. I am yours, and I want you to be mine.” He paused for a moment as she turned towards him. “What does your wolf say?”

“She says you’re my mate. She wants to drop down, present you her sex, and have you pound into her until you leave her pregnant,” she said as her face turned red. “She’s a shameless hussy, this wolf of mine.”

“Our wolves are alike then. Mine wants to chase you down, pin you to the ground and put a pup in you too.”

“Oh God, she’s not going to take over and… oh God! I barely know you! I’ve never done, I mean, I’ve never even kissed a guy. The things she’s telling me to do to you are obscene!”

Chase wanted to laugh, but he needed to reassure her. “Our wolves are part of us. I trust mine because we are two halves of the same coin. He won’t take advantage of you because he wants you to love BOTH of our sides, and for both of your sides to love us before we mate completely. I’ve waited for you for years, Rori. You feel innocent and inexperienced, but I do too.”

She scoffed. “Really? You’re gorgeous, you’re a DOCTOR, and every time you passed the desk, those nurses were undressing you with their eyes. You’ve probably had more ass than a toilet seat in Grand Central Station.”

“I’ve never kissed a woman on the lips, and I’m a virgin, too,” he said. “I didn’t date. I didn’t fool around. I wanted my mate, no matter how long it would take to find her, and I didn’t want her to wonder if some other woman had done something with me first. You are the first and last woman I’ll ever kiss, ever hold, or make love to.”

He got quiet, and Rori closed her eyes and considered what he just confessed to her. She was shocked; that kind of thing just didn’t happen in the world. Her wolf was jumping about in her mind, giddy over his confession of love. She thought back to how jealous she felt when she thought Coral was his wife. She wanted to kill the woman for touching him. Her wolf was there already, but she was nervous. “Tell me about yourself,” she said as she settled back into the blanket. “Why did you become a doctor?”

“I should probably tell you something about Packs first.” He explained the structure of a Pack, the ranks, and the basics of how they functioned. She had a lot of questions when she found out he was the third son of the Alpha. “Can anyone be an Alpha?”

“Not really. Being an Alpha requires a dominant wolf. In most Packs, the Alpha position is hereditary. My father has been training my oldest brother, Sawyer, to replace him for over a century now. He probably won’t take the spot for another century or more.”

“Wait, century? How old is he?”

“Coral and I are the pups of the family. We’re twenty-five. Sawyer is a hundred and thirty-three, while Carson is eighty-eight. Carson is training to be Sawyer’s Beta. My Dad is only two hundred and twenty-six, still in his prime.”

“Wow.” She couldn’t get her mind around that kind of lifespan. “So why aren’t you the Alpha?”

“My wolf isn’t that dominant; I’m a caretaker, not a fighter. I mean, I can fight if I need to, but Coral’s wolf is more dominant than mine, and she has made a life out of fighting. She is a warrior now and was loaned to another pack at Beta rank to teach wolves how to fight.”

Her wolf preened a little in her mind, proud of herself for beating her. “I bet she’d be fun to spar with,” she said.

“She’d love that.” He snuck a glance back at her in the mirror and smiled. “Since I was not in line for one of the major Pack positions and my interests lay elsewhere, I went into medicine. Pack Doctors are important and respected members, and it was a good way to contribute.”

“Why psychiatry? That seems to be a little specialized for someone who is working only with their Pack.” He had explained that Packs ranged between twenty and three hundred members, and how there were only eleven recognized Packs in North America.

“A little over a year ago, one of the Packs was found to be breaking our laws and harming our members. Forced matings, abuse, sexual assaults, and slavery, it was a mess. The Alpha and his senior leadership were tried and executed for their crimes. The abuse was so systemic, the children growing up thought it normal. The victims were a mess, too; their physical wounds would heal, but mentally it was a minefield.”

“Oh, God, you saw that?”

“Yes. During my summer break, I had an internship with the Pack Doctor and saw just how much care was needed. We couldn’t bring in humans, and this is what convinced me I needed to become a psychiatrist. I could still do the things a normal Pack doctor would do, but I’d be able to help them too.”

She thought back to all the doctors who had tried to “help” her during her time. “I hope they are smarter than my doctors. Most of them just gave me drugs and convinced me everything I heard in my mind was something wrong with me. Even after I escaped from that compound and saw those wolves turn into men, I convinced myself that I was mentally ill and was having hallucinations. I never gave it another thought.”

“They are doing what they can.” He sighed, figuring honesty was the best policy. “The other reason was you.”

“Me? You didn’t know me!”

“The Council knew by then who you were, that you were a werewolf without knowledge of what she was, and how you ran from your family.”

Her eyes got big. “Family?”

“Yes. Charles is your grandfather, and Martin is your uncle. They had thought you to be dead for fifteen years, but you were in hiding, and they didn’t know how to reveal themselves. They sent a Pack member, Ashley, in to befriend you and got you to go to their Pack lands on vacation. Your wolf shifted, ran around, she was happy there. They were shocked when you took off, and that is when the Council got directly involved.”

“Oh, God!”

“No one knew what to do. We never had a wolf become so estranged from the human side. We gathered as much information as we could get on you, and my boss gave it all to me. I researched anything I could find on problems like this, becoming an expert on how to help you. We all expected you would be found and brought to us within days, but that didn’t happen, and then I had to go back to school.”

“Ashley? She was trying to help me?”

“They all were trying to help and protect you. It didn’t start that way; the people who tried to take you in the woods, and in the Mayo Clinic hospital were members of the Pack that tried to take you as a baby. They were going to kidnap you and force you to mate their Alpha, but you got away. Their failure at the hospital is what led the Council to investigate, and eventually eliminate them. In New York and Seattle, both times, we were trying to help you. Coral feels bad about it; she was supposed to stop you from running, and instead, you jumped on a semi.”

“I didn’t know.” Her head hurt; she had to rethink almost everything she thought she knew. “Why? Why did the Alpha want ME?”

“You’re special, Rori. You are the only daughter of the Arrowhead Pack Alphas. The Alpha after you killed your entire Pack when you were a year old. He killed dozens of wolves, including your parents, because you are werewolf royalty. You are the last firstborn female descendent of the first werewolf, King Lycanos, and that comes with a blessing of fertility.” Her jaw dropped; THAT was her superpower? Pumping out babies? “Our females go into heat once a year, but the success rate is between one and two percent. My parents, even as fate mates, have only had the four of us in a century and a half of mated life. You could have a baby every year. You could singlehandedly grow a Pack from nothing to the most populous in the world. That makes you a target, just like it made your mother a target.”

She couldn’t handle it all at once; her head was swimming with everything he told her. Rori’s eyes rolled back as her body shut down, and she relaxed into the bed as Chase called her name.

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