Inevitably Yours

MICHAEL

Shopping for myself was a new experience. Ash wanted me to try coconut water and other dietary changes to help with hydration and nutrition overall. I was browsing the shelves looking for coconut water when a scent hit me like a brick wall. I stopped, inhaling deeply; it couldn’t be.

“It has to be,” Eros replied, bounding around like an excited puppy. I put the water in my hand basket and turned to look down the aisle. She was standing there with a total look of shock that had to have matched mine.

“Michael?” she exclaimed, a huge grin spreading across her face.

“Oh my Goddess, it is you! Nic?” I closed the distance in a few strides, dropping my basket and pulling her into a rib-cracking hug, her feet now dangling off the ground.

“I missed you too, but you’re hurting me, hun,” she grimaced, albeit still smiling.

“f**k, sorry! I just can’t believe you’re here! We’re so far from Stary!” I said the last part in a hushed voice. I didn’t share where I was from around town in case it caused a problem.

Nic, or Nicole, was my best friend from middle school. Before Quinn, she was it. I had a lot of female friends because I hated the agro fighting for dominance in male friend circles. Nic and I immediately flirted when we met at a choir orientation. All I’d had at the time was a rubber band and a sharpie, but I used it to write notes back and forth. She thought it was adorable, and we “dated” for a while, if you could call it that so young. We ended up having a weird relationship that was part best friends and part friends with benefits until she moved out of the pack. We tried to stay in touch by calling each other and writing letters. Unfortunately, she just disappeared on me one day; I hadn’t heard from her since before I met Quinn.

She looked at me apologetically, “It’s hard to explain, but I have missed you so much!”

“I missed you too,” I told her. “Stop f*****g disappearing on me!”

“I’ll think about it,” she replied like the brat she was. She laughed and hugged me again, and I pulled her close, enjoying having her back.

“Please tell me you actually live here and aren’t just stopping through,” I pleaded, hoping the Goddess was throwing me a bone.

“You’re in luck,” she giggled, smiling up at me. “I’m here to stay for now.”

“I have a tournament to run to, but can we catch up later?” I asked, realizing I was going to be late getting back to my parents.

“Of course,” she assured me. “My number is the same and back on. Call me?”

“Duh,” I teased. I gave her one last lingering hug, and I tore myself away. Goddess, I hope she didn’t hate Quinn like everyone else I’d ever liked.

“Guess I was wrong,” Eros whined. Before Quinn, there was a time he thought she was our mate. To be fair, I wondered too. There was no comparison to the pull I felt to Quinn right away, though. I loved Nic, but I was in love with Quinn. Still, I could not believe she was back.

–

I looked down at the picture of Quinn I’d set as my phone background. Anytime I was nervous or anxious, it helped. I couldn’t help but trace the lines of her face for the millionth time. Her green eyes stood out from the frames around them, and I wanted to k**s the tiny smattering of freckles across her cheeks. Then there was that gorgeous smile-

Tyler smacked me in the head with his handheld game, interrupting me thinking about Quinn.

“Watch it, dude,” I growled. He’d been a douche since we got in the van, and it had only been an hour.

“You watch it,” he spat back, already absorbed in his game again.

“Yea, that’s not how this works. If you hit me again because you’re throwing a tantrum over a game, we’re going to have a problem.”

“Michael, stop picking on your brother,” my mom whined from the front seat. Anger welled immediately in my chest.

“I’m not picking-”

“You can’t hear Tyler back there, Claire?” my dad interrupted. “He’s throwing a temper tantrum, and he was told to keep his hands to himself. If you keep up this one-sided bullshit, he’s never going to learn-”

“I don’t need advice on how to raise my children, Melvin,” my mom said venomously, her eyes narrowing.

“Then raise Tyler and stop placating him by yelling at Michael.”

The silence in the car was heavy as we continued to our destination. My mom was smoking like a freight train, and my dad stared stoically through the windshield. My mom had always favored Tyler, but since we’d moved from Stary it had gotten progressively worse. I was at the point that I’d rather shift and sleep in the woods than come home most nights. I was tired of being yelled at when the problem was Tyler. No amount of brotherly advice helped; he didn’t want to listen. I knew things were hard for him in a different way, but he was taking it out on the wrong people.

Back to Quinn.

ME

| so on my way to a tournament

| i hate that you’re not here for it

BLUE

| ooo where?

| a wrestling tournament?!

ME

| kind of

| remember the jiu jitsu stuff I was telling you about?

BLUE

| oh yea!

| I believe in you

| you can win this one!

ME

| I’m glad one of us thinks so lol

BLUE

| excuse me, where did my confident Michael go?

I felt my cheeks redden as I read the message several times. I was probably reading too much into “my Michael,” but maybe she’d meant it and not realized. I certainly thought of her as my Quinn.

Tyler carelessly hit me in the head again, this time throwing a book he had with him in anger because he couldn’t do something in the game.

“I swear to the f*****g Moon Goddess, you will be the first person I choke today-”

“You’re just mad because I interrupted you talking to little Quinny,” he snapped back at me. His voice and his facial expression made me want to murder him. He looked just like Lawrence right now. His attitude shift toward Quinn was new but not unexpected; he acted as if anything that made me happy was torture to him lately.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied, putting my phone down.

“I saw your background, and you’re always texting or hiding in your room to call her! You know exactly what I’m talking about. You can’t let go of the one girl you can’t have because we’re halfway across the country!”

“Quinn…” my mom said aloud. “Michael, why does that name sound familiar?”

“She’s the blue-haired girl he was cheating on Andi with!” Tyler yelled, happy to get the spotlight off of him.

“Shut the f**k up, Tyler,” I warned him. He wasn’t going to survive this car ride; I’d never put my hands on him before, but I was getting close.

“Let it go,” Eros muttered. “He’s testing your limits and lashing out because he lost his father too.”

“He only gets to use that excuse for so long.”

“You’re still talking to that girl?” my mom asked, turning to me incredulously.

“Uh, yea,” I admitted. “She’s basically my best friend.”

“She’s a little young, isn’t she?” she asked, trying to blow her smoke behind her, so it wasn’t in my face.

“She’s old enough,” I grumbled. I didn’t want to have this conversation with my mom.

“Blue hair?” my dad interrupted.

“Yea, why?” I asked, not sure why he cared.

“Is it dyed?”

“Actually, no. She says it isn’t, and she doesn’t have any reason to lie to me,” I answered with a shrug. If there was one thing Quinn wasn’t, it was a liar.

He took a deep breath, “Uhm, she wouldn’t happen to be from the Samuels, would she?”

My heart stopped for a minute. Why did Dad know her last name without me telling him? Did he know something about her? About her family? I didn’t talk to him about Quinn.

“Yea, that’s her last name. Her dad’s name is James. Why? What do you know?”

My dad looked at my mom with an odd expression, and hers became puzzled in return. I watched her brows furrow as she bit the inside of her l*p. She only did it when she was scared or nervous about something.

“Don’t link right in front of me! What?” I demanded.

“When Stary was a young pack, many, many years ago, a member of that family was mated to a fae,” he answered hesitantly. I had no idea how to react to that. Was he trying to tell me that Quinn was a wolf and fae hybrid?

“And?” I asked impatiently.

“I found out about it when I was researching our Alpha lineage and the founding of Stary. I haven’t gotten to this part of your training yet, but to use weapons in battle with the supernatural, our family has a special gift to imbue them with the Goddess’ blessing. In war, we found that a fae hybrid from their family could bless our weapons much stronger than we could, and they had other abilities too.”

“So, Quinn’s whole family is like this?”

“I don’t think so,” he clarified. “It seems to be completely random how much of the fae b***d is passed down. It’s not diluted the way a normal pairing would be. It seems like it skips many generations at a time and could be very little or quite a bit of the mix passed down. They can usually tell by the amount of color in their hair. So, parts of it are blue?”

“No…” I said, my brain going a million miles a minute now. “All of it. All of her hair is blue.”

“Seriously?” my dad exclaimed. “All I could find were a few wolves through our history with partially colored hair. Nothing on all of it, except for the first one. I wonder if that means she’s 50/50….”

“So, do you think her parents are keeping this from her?” I asked quietly. They kind of sucked and were absent a lot, but could they be avoiding her because she’s different?

“I don’t think they know,” he answered. “The last one I could find was a few generations ago. Also…” He cleared his throat again; he did that a lot when he was nervous.

“What now?” I demanded once more.

“My Beta mailed me most of my sensitive documents, including everything I have on our lineage, the fae hybrids, and most of our pack’s history, to keep it away from Lawrence.” Eros pushed the image of a post-it note into my mind.

“I think Lawrence was trying to find out too. I got into the files in his office, and he had a note in their family file with ‘breed’ and a question mark. It worried me a little, but everything else that happened after made me forget.”

“Awwww, Michael is in love with a freak!” Tyler laughed. “Does she have you under a spell? Is that why you can’t stop talking to her?”

I ripped the book in my hands in half, “One… more-”

“Stop the terrorizing bullshit, Tyler,” Melvin said, his voice low but the tone clear. He was done.

“Did you just call my kid a terrorist?” my mom asked, her face growing red.

“If the shoe fits,” my dad snapped back at her. They started fighting, and Tyler didn’t get any better. Finally, my dad pulled over to the shoulder of the highway. “Do I need to leave you two in this town ahead and come back for you after the tournament, or can we act like a normal family and get along for more than five minutes at a time?”

My mom didn’t say anything but turned back to look out the window away from him. Tyler turned his game back on, and the car fell silent except for the annoying noises from his game. We started down the road again, and it wasn’t long before we were pulling into the parking lot of a large coliseum.

My dad looked back at me through the rearview, “We’ll talk about it more in training at home. We can look through my books. I just wouldn’t tell her quite yet.” A weight dropped in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to keep this from her. “We’ll figure it out, but until then, don’t worry the poor girl for no reason.”

“Fine,” I agreed.

“One more thing.”

“Yea?”

“Is there any chance she could be your mate?”

Ice shot through my veins, “Why?”

“Just something else I read… The fae thought that if one of the hybrids ever mated with an Alpha from our line, it might create a bond that would change them forever.”

Well, that sounded like what I felt for Quinn, alright.

–

ME

| i’m here

| just nervous

BLUE

| want me to call before you get on the mat?

ME

| couldn’t think of anything better

I was standing at the edge of the mats pacing when I texted her back. I could see my parents in the stands, and I’d been looking at my blue-haired possibly fae best friend on my phone for the last ten minutes. I wanted more. I answered my phone without even giving it a chance to ring fully.

“Hey,” I answered happily.

“You answered so fast!” she said, giggling at the end.

“I’ll answer anytime you call me,” I flirted. “I was waiting for it, though.”

“Oh, um, okay.” She was so cute when she didn’t know how to react to something. “Are you on soon?” she asked, blowing past the flirting.

“Yea, my name is on the screen, and they called me already. It should only be a few minutes.”

“Many people in your bracket?”

“Five other than me, I think?”

“You’ve got this,” she insisted. I could almost hear the smile in her voice.

“I can do anything with you in my corner,” I told her truthfully.

“I am there. Just close your eyes and imagine it. I’ll be thinking about you until you text me after!”

My name boomed over the intercom. “I have to go, but I always imagine you here with me.” She sounded a bit lost for words on the other end. “I’ll text you after. Miss you.”

“I miss you too. I’ll be waiting.”

I set my phone into my bag and walked over to my mat, where I was looking at a guy in his thirties staring back at me. He walked over, and we met in the middle, shaking hands. The whistle blew, and our match started quickly. He began to fight for hand control, and I realized that in some form, he wrestled. Most of the BJJ guys dropped to their butt and pulled guard. He shot in for a double leg, his hands starting to close around my thighs with his head on the outside of my h*p, a big mistake. My arm came under his chin, and my other hand met under it. My hands closed together, tucking his head into my elbow and my arms locking around his throat. I was able to pull him upwards from his takedown, standing tall and pushing my h**s into him as my arms squeezed. I felt his tap within seconds, and the ref’s whistle followed. I’d won in all of about fifteen seconds.

I stepped off the mat, riding high off the adrenaline and the win. I’d gotten to talk to Quinn, and I might have something for her once I knew more. She’d always been weird about her hair and wouldn’t shift in front of me. Maybe this would make her feel better about it. Not that she needed to be self-conscious; I couldn’t think of anyone more beautiful than that girl. The circumstances of her birth or if she wasn’t all wolf didn’t matter at all. My next match wasn’t far after; I finished it in a similar fashion.

I found myself in the finals with a guy quite a bit taller than me and covered in tattoos as my opponent. He nodded his head upward as I approached him and held out his fist. I bumped it with mine, and we were off. He sat on his butt, so I grabbed control of his ankles as he tried to use his feet to pull me in. I dropped a knee between his legs, slicing through and ending beside him. He tried to turn into me, but I put a knee into his h*p and posted one leg out like a kickstand. He started pushing into me, his hand trying to press my knee away from him. I pressed down on his face in response, and his opposite hand shot up towards my chest, trying to push me off him. I grabbed that arm, swung the leg I was posting on over his face and fell to my back with a deep armbar. He tapped, and I jumped to my feet, Eros howling inside me in glee.

I grabbed my phone on the way to the podium, pulling it out after they awarded our medals and we stood for pictures. Before I stepped down, I held the medal up under my chin as I snapped a picture for Quinn, a massive smile on my face.

ME

| only could have been better if you were really here

BLUE

| OMG

| I knew you could do it!ConTEent bel0ngs to Nôv(e)lD/rama(.)Org .

We went to dinner after, and on the ride home, Tyler could have tried to burn us all alive inside the car; I wouldn’t have cared. I rode the high of an almost perfect day all the way home.

–

When we walked into the house, I could see the light blinking for a message on the home phone. I thought it was odd because we just had it as a formality. We rarely used it now that we had cell phones. Curiosity got the better of me as everyone walked into the kitchen behind me, and I pressed play.

“You have one new message.

Claire. Michael. Tyler. I know where you are. I told you, you can’t run from me. You’ll be hearing from me soon, and I’ll expect my son back when you do. Sweet dreams, you f*****g w***e. I hope you enjoyed this little moment of peace. You won’t get another one, cunt.”

Just like that, the perfect day was shattered as I looked across to see my mom’s face white with horror, my dad looking both terrified and angry, and Tyler completely unreadable. My chest was tight, his voice cutting through me and making me feel like a helpless child again.

“We’re going to have to kill him,” Eros demanded.

“I don’t think you’re wrong,” I agreed. I wasn’t leaving the home we’d built. Not again.