Isabel's Choice

Chapter 28 - Lars

"Engage with the female now," Lightning orders playfully, trying to remove my hand from the steering wheel and shift it onto Isabel's thigh.

"Wolf, let me be, I have to focus on driving."

I have engaged several times this week because she willingly sought my presence. Talking and laughing together was ok. But when my body made contact with hers for longer than two seconds, Isabel's muscles got frightfully stiff, a steel cocoon with which the delicate tendrils of our bond collided, getting bent and cracking to the point of fracture. I may be an Alpha with superior self-control and a good understanding of my Luna's past misery, but I also have a human soul which can only take that much-undeserved rejection.

Normally thinking of snowboarding would send Lightning and his horny ideas off on the big slide that ends at the back of my mind. But I don't want to do that either, because it's too painful.

I know from Sven that it has been snowing like crazy at Eagle Rock for two weeks now and that the conditions are perfect. He sent me videos of his first runs with Ale and Elsa, the three of them grinning defiantly. They probably wanted to be funny, but it was heartbreaking. I crave a morning on the slopes almost as much as I crave Isabel's body.

Her body is out of reach until that cursed mark is gone. Maybe forever, if she decides that she doesn't want to seal her bond with me. But the mountains are right here, on my left, rising high and enticing in the distance.

"Everything ok, Alpha?" Isabel asks, probably prompted by my involuntary grinding of teeth when we passed the sign that marks the way to Pass Street One. The way I cannot take right now.

"He's in withdrawal," Eino comments from the back seat, without lifting his eyes from his notes.

"From pot?"

I have to chuckle at how cutely her nostrils flare, trying to confirm the legitimacy of her innocent question.

"From snow. Before his awful temper was confined to spring, now we'll have the pleasure of dealing with it the whole damn year. Well mainly you, because I hope Knox rises by February and I can go back home."

I take his cynical dagger silently and let it rest in my chest. Arguing with Eino in a small, closed space is an abysmally poor idea. We'll settle this when we are back home.

With the speakers on - loud enough to obliterate anyone's wish to keep talking about my addictions- it takes us three more hours to get to Ben's packhouse.

It was hard to find it because his rather small territory is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by miles and miles of marshy birch forest. Makes one wonder why we call this region the Eastern Hills. Eastern Swamps would be a more fitting name.

Ben is only slightly older than me, an Alpha second-born who worked his ass off to buy himself a piece of land. His head is shaved clean, the tattoo of a howling wolf covering most of his skull. I wince at the sight. Since I have seen my mother's memories featuring Isabel's father and his Beta I have become somewhat allergic to the artwork Eastern shifters wear on their skin.

But Alpha Ben has a cautious and polite stance, so I am trying to shove my biases back to the dark corners of my mind where they came from.

His Luna Gia is human through and through and heavily pregnant. Looking at her I have to wonder which of her made the Moon Goddess decide to mate both her and her sister with Alpha Shifters. She is slightly taller than expected for a human, but generally fragile looking and fragile smelling.

I am proud of how Isabel stands her ground when Luna Gia breaks down into tears in front of her.

"I still cannot understand," the human sniffles into her Alpha's shoulder. "I was told shifters cannot hurt their mates."