The Woodland Packs

I gulped at the air and forced my arms to unhook their death-like grip.

“It’s my father. He can’t breathe… I think it’s his heart.”

“We need a gurney out here!” one of the men yelled and another man in uniform came running up with a white bed on wheels.

The man who’d called for the gurney touched my arm. “It’s okay. We’re going to take care of him.”

I helped them put my dad on the bed and they wheeled him away quickly. His skin was grey and sweaty, his eyes were closed, and he didn’t seem to be moving.

“What the hell are they going to do to him?” I asked Jay, and he squeezed my arm, hard.

“Let’s follow them and find out.”

I walked into a human hospital for the first time ever. I’d spent my life in the woods, fighting bear shifters and protecting my pack, and this truly was the strangest scene I’d ever witnessed.

The fluorescent lights burnt my eyes and the stark, white walls stretched up before me like an enormous maze.

I skidded to a halt before an indoor cage. The sign said reception desk, but it was a cage nonetheless.

How did humans live and work in places like this?

A woman approached us and I searched my instincts. Despite the fact I hadn’t seen a human woman in months, she did nothing for me.

Her face was too coarse and pinched. Her aura wrong and unattractive.

“Can I get you to fill in some forms for the man they just brought in?”

She handed me a black clipboard and a pen. I nodded and managed to relax enough to sit on an uncomfortable plastic chair with Jay at my side.

Taylor came running in the door, spotted us and took a seat on my right.

The three of us against the world, as it’s always been.

Pack mates. Alpha, Beta and Omega. Brothers, not by blood, but by a bond stronger than any other I’d shared.

“Whoa, I’d forgotten how hot these women are.” Taylor whistled as more nurses moved about and patients staggered into the Emergency Room.

I shrugged my shoulders and focused on the human forms. “You’re welcome to them, Taylor.”

The pack took turns travelling to town, hitting up the bars. Finding women to bed for the night. I’d always struggled with fucking women I wasn’t connected to. Slaking my lust and keeping my passions under control so I didn’t hurt the fragile humans is not how I’m designed.

The Alpha wolf inside me craved the constant contact of my true mate. A woman to love and protect. Someone to complete me and bare my children.

“What’s wrong with you, Dex? It’s been months since we came to town. You must be horny as hell.”

I was. But I’d been running miles a day to keep the demons at bay.

“I am. But I don’t want any of those.”

I gestured to the room as a whole and glanced up again as a young blonde woman stumbled over her feet as she stared at us.

I rolled my eyes and kept focusing on the paperwork. “When my mate shows up, let me know.”

Jay sighed. “We may not have mates, Dex. A mate is a wolf shifter, pack-born. You know that’s not our path.”

I looked over at my Omega, battling to keep my anger at bay, my gut burning at his words. “What is? To die without a mate, and childless?”

Jay’s mouth set in the grim line he always adopted when upset. “We’re still a family, Dexter.”