Page 11 of Alpha’s One-Night Stand (Shifters of Clarion #3)

M y mother’s office is dimly lit. The walls are lined with ancient tomes and magical artifacts. She motions for me to sit down in front of her desk.

“Chad,” she says, her voice soft and gentle. “Clearly, you don’t have proper control over your lycan.”

“What would you have me do?” I say as she walks away, a washcloth in hand. She disappears into the bathroom, and I hear the water running. “I’ve done everything that I need to do as an Alpha, and more. I’ve been properly educated. I’ve been hunting since I was twelve . . . I’ve even done the Labors at Moonhelm.”

She sucks through her teeth as she comes out with a now damp washcloth. “Lean back,” she tells me. I lie back in the chair, and she places the rag on my forehead. The coolness feels good against my skin.

“Control over your lycan,” she begins, “well, it’s less about leashing it and more about accepting it as yourself. It is as much a part of who you are as the human form that you’re currently residing in. When you restrain it or neglect it, it becomes wild and independent.”

I scoff. “Father never thought of my wolf as being part of me. He always said that it was a beast and I was a man and never the two should meet.”

She shook her head. “Your father’s philosophy on the lycan inside you has always been outdated at best. Reckless at worst. If he’d just listened to me instead of opting to let you run wild, we might not be here right now. You might even have a mate.”

I cringe a little on the inside. Mother has always had this superpower where she would start off being really helpful and then switch into full nagging all of a sudden, and you wouldn’t even know how you had gotten to that point. She was also the queen of “I told you so.” The last thing I wanted to mention was Yarra.

I don’t have the chance to say anything, though. As she looks at me, her eyes widen a little as she stands up from her desk. “Oh, my word. Your mate’s here, isn’t she? That’s why you’re having so much trouble today.”

“Mother—”

“Don’t try denying it. You’ve encountered her or picked up her scent, and now you’ve been set off, haven’t you?”

I sigh and pull the cloth off my forehead. I could tell her all about our night together. Could even tell her how I almost marked her. If I did, she’d be planning our bonding ceremony by the evening.

“There’s a scent . . . of a girl. It sets off my wolf every time.”

My mother raises an eyebrow, and I wait for the I told you so to come crashing down. She’d doesn’t say it, though. She just crosses her arms and leans back against her desk. But I can tell by the upward lift of her lips that she’s ecstatic by this new information.

“Why didn’t you mention that sooner?” she asks.

“Well, I just mentioned it, didn’t I?”

She ignores that and walks around her desk to her chair and sits down. “So, you caught her scent somewhere on campus? And your wolf went wild?”

She makes it sound so gross. “Mother, could you not . . . put it that way?”

“Why not? That’s what happened.”

I stand up, setting the damp cloth on her desk. “I don’t think I want to talk about this anymore.”

“Have you met with this girl before?” She steeples her index fingers together as looks at me over her half-moon shaped spectacles, scanning my face for my reaction. I stiffen a little. Mother has always been skilled at sniffing out lies.

“I have talked to her,” I admit with as straight a face as I can manage.

“ And? ”

“What do you mean, and?”

“Did you ravage her? Sexually or otherwise? Did your lycan leap out to devour her right there?”

I cringe away from her. “Mother!”

“What? Oh, please grow up. You’re an adult now. We can speak candidly about sexual attraction—”

“If you could stop saying ‘sexual,’ that would be wonderful.”

She sighs, her closed lips curving in a smile, like she’s trying to find the right words to reach me. “If her scent gave you such an extreme reaction, that means something important. You realize that, right? She’s the one you’re fated to.”

There’s something about hearing Mother say that out loud that I automatically reject. Maybe it’s because she’s been trying to push the issue for so long. “I already told you,” I say, “I don’t need a soulmate. What I need is to find a way to control all this power.” My wolf has started to calm down. Maybe it was the cold rag. Maybe it’s the high concentration of my mother’s scent instead of Yarra’s. Whatever it is, it seems to be chilling out right now.

“So, you talked to her,” she says with a short nod. “And by just talking to her, your wolf woke up?”

“Yes.”

“And nothing else happened? You didn’t do anything other than talk?”

She’s fishing. I try not to think about last night. The way Yarra felt in my arms. The way she tasted on my tongue . . . how her nails felt in my back.

Most importantly, how calm I felt when I woke up in the middle of the night. My wolf was snug and asleep inside me, as if it had finally been sated after years of thirst. I guess in a way that’s exactly what happened.

And then she left. She rushed out of there like she was horrified that I was there with her and—

My muscles tense up at the thought, and a rushing pressure flushes my head. I lean over, my head falling into my hands.

“God, how can I make it stop?”

Mother says nothing as the pressure swells and then recedes in moments. As I lean back in the chair, she says, “You have a wild animal trapped inside you. You need to learn to tame it. It’s long overdue.”

“Okay, how do I do that?”

“Well,” she says, getting up and walking to one of the cabinets behind her desk. “The way I see it, you couldn’t be in a better position to finally solve this problem of yours. I find it funny that all your meditation and ‘anger management’ techniques are failing you now that you’re around real stimuli. I always said it would only be a matter of time.”

And there it is. The I told you so . I knew she’d fit it in there somewhere.

“Being at Moonhelm,” she went on, looking through cabinet after cabinet, “you’ve got two advantages: you can commune with your wolf through Labors—”

“Like hell I will.”

“And you can get to know your mate a little more . . . intimately. If you haven’t already.”

“I haven’t,” I lied. “And even if I have, her smell drives me crazy. If I get close to her, it will get worse.”

“Not if you have this.” She turns around, holding a small wolf head carved out of what looks like ivory or marble. She turns back around to get a string from the same shelf.

“What is that?”

“It’s a totem,” she says, threading the string through a loop in the top of the figure’s head. “It’ll help you control your urges when you’re near her.”

I roll my eyes. “You could have opened with that, Mother.”

“Why? It’s not going to solve the problem. Your lycan will still want to be free. The totem just helps you build better walls to keep it in while you work to actually fix the problem.”

She hands it to me. I regard the thing in my palm as its frozen snarl stares back at me. “So, you’re giving me a bandage.”

“More like a barrier. Think of it like one of those construction signs that divert traffic when there’s road work. You’ve got your sign, now get to work on fixing the problem. Labors start every morning at ten.” She takes my chin and lifts her face up to me, her dark eyes boring into mine and a soft smile playing at her lips.

“You will find your way,” she says, her voice soft, “but you have to stop being so guarded. This process won’t be easy for you, but anytime you need me, I’m here. Regardless of whatever you think, I’m your mother. I’ll always be present for my son.”

She takes the wolf head from my hand, then places the cord over my head and around my neck. The totem, now a pendant necklace, rests on my chest, and the moment it does, my lycan recedes.

I shut my eyes. She’s right. She’s always right. Maybe if I stopped being so resistant to her, I might get a little farther along in this world. It’s hard, though. Our relationship is complicated, and complicated relationships are never easy to navigate through.

“How do you feel now?” she asks.

“Better.”

“Good.” Her warm lips kiss the top my head. “I’ve missed you so much, Chad.”

That makes me smile. I missed her, too.

“I was really looking forward to seeing you at the Awakening, but I’m sure you were busy ‘talking’ to your new mate.”

“You should be happy about that,” I tell her, “since you’ve been campaigning so hard for me to find her.”

She gives me a slight smirk. “Touché.” She walks back around her desk. “Come on, I’ve got a class to teach in a few minutes. You could be my aide for the day, if you’d like.”

“I’m not interested in your classes or baby wolves.”

“Oh, but I think you would benefit from this one.” She walks back to her desk and extracts an old brown textbook from a stack of books. “Don’t you want to repay your mother, who literally just saved you from an episode?”

I sigh in resignation. “What’s the class?”

“First Labor.”

I raise my eyebrows. “I thought the Labors were over. You said they were at ten every day.”

“I said they start at ten.”

I scoff. “So, you’re teaching blue bloods now?”

She chuckles. “I really hate that phrase, you know. It never ceases to amaze me how you older ones seem to think you were never brand new at this school. Like you arrived here already initiated.”

“I thought you didn’t teach first years,” I say, correcting myself. She shrugs.

“Who better to usher these young ones into discovering their inner selves than me?”

I shudder, thinking back to my first year. “I still have nightmares about First Labor.”

“Yes, well, you were too busy trying to impress everyone by showing off how ‘tough’ you thought you were. Shall we?” She drops the books with a thump in front of me.

Grudgingly, I pick up the books from the desk and follow her out of the office. The halls are no longer as crowded as they were before. Thank goodness. It’s not as claustrophobic out here now. My mother walks with a brisk pace like she’s always in a hurry to get somewhere. For such a small woman, her legs sure move like she’s eight feet tall.

We get to the classroom, and she stops at the door, turning to me. “Today, just sit quietly. Try not to stand out too much.”

“Gladly.”

We walk into the room, and two things happen at once. A wave of nostalgia comes over me. The room’s decorated with large murals of full moons and wolves running through the woods. The desks and chairs are made from sturdy wood, with the occasional scratch marks from claws digging into them, purposely and not so purposely. The room is full. Every desk has a student in it. I catch a hint of wet fur emanating from one of the students. Someone must have taken a swim before coming in here.

The second thing I pick up is Yarra’s scent. Thick as soup around my head. I feel like I can smell her everywhere. I scan the room and found her relatively quickly. Her amethyst hair is pulled back into a ponytail as she looks down at her notebook.

Then she stops writing, sitting stock still for a moment. My wolf hunkers down, the instinct to stalk and pounce igniting within me. She looks up at me directly. Her eyes widen with surprise. I turn away, pressing on the wall around my lycan to keep it silent.

“Good morning.” My mother’s voice rings out, her greeting holding a sort of authority that demands immediate attention. I watch as the rustling of conversation comes to a stop as soon as she makes herself known. No surprise there. Mother is at the top of her game. She was once awarded Exemplar Educator of the Era, an equivalent of a Nobel Prize in human circles.

“My name is Jean Robertson, and I will be your instructor for the entire Labor duration.”

I drop her pile of books on the desk at the front of the room, then find a chair in the corner.

“Welcome to your First Labor class, where we will embark on a journey of self-discovery and unleash the lycan within you.”

I spot some excited looks around the room. Like a moth drawn to light, my eyes gravitate back to Yarra, who only looks puzzled. She glances around, feigning a soft smile. Her hair is barely held in place by a black hair tie, and her eyebrows are slightly knit together, like she’s trying and failing to fully understand what’s going on. I can feel her perplexity from here.

“It’s important for every young wolf to come to terms with themselves and embrace the beast that resides inside. Remember, each one of you is unique and will emerge at your own pace, so there’s no need to feel pressured. Just relax and know that you’re doing great. Are you all ready to begin?”

Affirmations rise up from the students. All except Yarra. She stays quiet, fiddling with her pencil. Her eyes are wide. Something is wrong here. Maybe she thinks she’s in the wrong room?

“Now,” Mother continues, “everyone, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. In and out. In. Out. Come on, let’s go.”

Everyone shuts their eyes and follows Mother’s instruction. I watch as Yarra shuts her eyes as well, her chest slowly rising and falling. The memory of her breasts heaving as I looked down at her on my bed, the way the light hit her skin, the way her nipples were so hard they could have cut glass . . .

I look away from her. My wolf is alert, but the urge to free him is muted. I guess this totem really does work.

“Feel the heat that bubbles up from your lungs to your nose,” my mother says. “Let it flow. Allow the thoughts to overcome you. Taste the air, listen to the stars, just breathe.”

Slowly, the students start to change, their bodies contorting and their limbs elongating as they transform. The sounds they make are low and menacing. Growls and whines rumble around the room. Some of them manage to transform completely, becoming large animals and pushing away from their desks to get on all fours. Others are stalled at various stages.

“Excellent! Remember, don’t push it. Your lycan will come to you when it’s ready.”

My mom walks among them, observing the transformed and offering guidance and encouragement. “Yes, that’s it. Hold it in, don’t panic, just breathe. Remember, in and out, in and out.”

I look over at Yarra. She opens her eyes for a moment, then shuts them quickly, her entire body stiffening. Her heartbeat is loud in my ears. It’s racing a million miles a minute. I frown as I sense something unexpected from her. Fear. Real, genuine terror.

I tilt my head as I watch her grip her desk as her body starts to shake. She looks as though she wants to bolt. Like a terrified rabbit.

Like a human.

No, that’s crazy. For a million different reasons. For one thing, she doesn’t smell human. At all. For another, why would she choose to take classes at Moonhelm without knowing what she was getting into? And a Labors class at that?

No, no. This isn’t right. She’s not a human. She simply can’t be. But if she’s not, why is she so terrified?

Soon enough, the growls begin to turn into howling. And howls are always like a chain reaction. When one wolf gets going, others are sure to join in. The room starts to fill up with the chorus of wolf calls, echoing off the walls and creating a beautifully eerie but exhilarating atmosphere. The sound gets my heart racing. I almost want to change too, just to howl with everyone else.

I see the look of pride in my mother’s face, and she even laughs out loud and claps her hands joyfully. “Perfect, perfect! Now. I need you all to change back. Don’t worry. This part is easy. Just let go. Your wolf will know where it belongs inside you.”

They begin to change back to their human forms. Those who changed completely lost their uniforms. They lay in piles by their desks. But none of that matters. The students are all panting and sweaty with a newfound sense of pride and accomplishment. The few who did not change look disappointed. Some of them are looking over at their naked classmates longingly.

But not Yarra. She’s sitting there with her head down, still gripping the desk like it’s about to take off at eighty miles an hour. The fact that she didn’t change today isn’t unusual, but her reaction is.

“Congratulations,” Mother says. “Your progress is exceptional! If you didn’t shift forms today, don’t worry. Tomorrow could be your day. It’s all a process, and every wolf is different. Trust me, though. Before this class is over, you will get to taste the rush of the wild!”

The class goes on for another few minutes with my mother discussing aspects of the change, but I’m not paying attention. I’m watching Yarra, whose eyes are on the door.

And before I know it, Mother has dismissed the class. Not surprisingly, a number of students pool around her, asking questions.

Yarra gathers her books quickly, then gets up to leave. I watch her go, desperate to follow her, to find out what’s going on in her mind. Why was she so frightened?

I will say one thing about this totem. It’s allowing me to think rationally in Yarra’s presence. I’m more concerned about her reaction to all this than my wolf’s need to mount her.

I’m going to have to find her. Maybe it’s concern or curiosity, I don’t know. But I need to know what the story is with her.