I opened the passenger door for Vanessa. This wasn't a status symbol of a car—just a generic mid-line car. Don't get me wrong, those things were used by various packs, so we have a few sports cars for events where you had reason to flaunt it, but we were a part of a much bigger inner-city community, and people confused wolves for gangs—gangs get shot up. No way in hell did I want to be out in a vehicle that screamed "steal me, shoot the owner". Of course, this was armor reinforced with an appropriate refitted engine—we did much of that work ourselves, as it's cheaper. Just because I'd recover from whatever could happen out there, that didn't mean any company we had with us would.

         As she sat down and I closed the door, I was really grateful for the rabid protection we installed in these things. At least, my other half was. Those animalistic urges were all about the mate within it's grasp, protecting her. Cynically, I was more than willing to risk her life to not have to go through what I knew would be coming. It was quite a dissociative moment. You let anything happen to her, you coward...Of course, that was as far as Diablo got before we were back to unity because I had already dismissed the urge without needing the wolf's help.

         It wasn't long before I was on my way to Spireshade's urban pack house, hidden amongst decaying factories and storage, right on the edge of a pocket of inner city slums. Of course, I turned into an old bricked-over garage port, and let her whimper as I drove through the barrier—her reaction was cute.

         Of course, anything the girl did would be cute right now. Don't get me wrong, she's attractive in her own way, but it's the bond that spoke more than I did. I mean, fairly coarsely curled brown hair, a body that clearly had some muscle at one time that was turning towards fat from laziness—just at that stage where it added extra heft to her rack and ass. Heck, she could keep the extra weight, as it would give me more to play with, but odds were that having her turned fully wolf would eat away at that excess without her having to try. Seriously, her body wasn't why I wanted out of this so badly.

        It was her scent. Don't get me wrong, your mate's aroma was manna from heaven but the very nature of an Alpha is to sniffout mutations. And she was off, in a bad way, which meant that one of her wolf genes wasn't functioning right, and not just the common one—I knew by how it felt off that it wasn't the genetics we already knew about. Who the heck am I kidding? It wasn't only her scent, the girl had a heavy mark of mutation right there on her face—a streak of white hair blurring into a streak of pale skin, shifting down through her eyebrow and eyelashes, ending in one milky-white eye, contrasting against her other more baby blue one. It's like some barbarian smashed her face with an axe, and it still wasn't healed right. If I accept this girl without addressing what makes her so off, I'd be adding whatever malformation she had into active were bloodlines. But that wasn't why I rejected her, although that was reason enough for most Alphas. I just didn't want to go through a single thing that was headed our way. And this would be a shitstorm and a half if Uncle Horatio passed this on up the chain of dominance. What the hell am I kidding for? The old man's going to pass this on, period.

        No, it wasn't a chain of command because any Alpha that knew it was Alpha and trained as one as well would not just submit to orders. It forced us all to rule with a light touch. Seriously, it's like a party of polite drunks because they knew that the evil they held in while sober would be devastating in a drunken rage.

          For this girl, I was about to do something that was worse than saying "Bath" to a dog. This Alpha was heading in to surrender his authority and freedom. Hopefully, it wouldn't be long, and the sacrifice would be worth it, but man, things like this can ruin relationships for a very long time.

         Thank the goddess she chose to withhold her own counsel. I didn't think I could handle a woman's "small talk" right now.