Mated To The Alpha: A Standalone Wolf Shifter Romance, стр. 21

According to the rest of the pack, Elam wasn't a werewolf, like the rest of them. He was a shapeshifter. And from the sounds of the word, whispered in quiet tones, behind hands, with eyes shifting around and watching for listening ears, shapeshifting wasn't entirely a good thing.

Emma though, didn't really see a difference, and was beyond caring about any of it anymore.

Her mood this past two weeks had gotten more and more dark as well.

Her best friend wasn't turning to her, but to her new mother-in-law, and she really didn't have any other friends here yet, unless you counted Elam. And Elam had his hands full with all the suddenly turning from a wolf into a bear stuff, so he wasn't exactly pleasant to be around either.

Add to all that the fact that Emma was getting more and more hormonal every day. And more and more horny, to boot.

She figured everyone else's issues where just spilling over at her, making her grumpy and short tempered, having to deal with them all, while also still trying to get comfortable with the place and people who were to be her home for the next year.

She spent the last two weeks trying out different aspects of the pack, trying to find a place for a shoplifting college student with no major skills to fit in in a society that had run perfectly well forever without her presence.

She was currently trying to help out in the garden, hoping the combined physical labor and mindlessness of harvesting with others would calm her frustrations for a while.

It was working, too, right up until Ziva showed up.

Emma was pulling ears of corn out of the tall corn fields and filling baskets with them when she heard Ziva berating someone nearby.

"Camphor. I said Camphor, not whatever the hell this is. What's wrong with you? Thomas is having trouble breathing and you give me..."

"I'm sorry Ziva. You said... Nevermind. Hang on, I'll be right back. I'll get the Camphor."

Emma watched on tip toe, peering through a few tall corn rows at the end of the corn field as the young, brow beaten girl disappeared into a greenhouse, trying to appease an obviously angry and frustrated Ziva.

Emma started to say something, thought better of it, and turned back to what she had been doing, but Ziva's voice pulled her up short.

"You. This is all your doing, Emma. Ever since Reine's upset, things have been going sideways. Everything has been back on track again for years and then you show up. You show up and everything goes off the damn rails again."

"Reine was upset? What are you talking about? Do you know why she left?"

Emma put her basket down, all pretense of ignoring Ziva and carrying on with the harvest abandoned as she weaved through the corn to face Ziva near the greenhouses.

Ziva faltered at the direct questioning, but recovered.

"No. How would I know why she did the things she did? I didn't say she was upset, I said ever since her upset at the challenge, ever since she changed the natural order of things and a female was named Alpha..."

Emma tried to follow Ziva's angry rant, but not knowing much yet about how a pack was supposed to be structured, she couldn't understand what Ziva was so angry about.

"First a female Alpha coming to power just as my old pack was being wiped out by humans, and now a damn shapeshifter. When I left my own pack and mated into this one, it was to keep the peace. To cement the two packs and grow, then this pack was the only pack, and now..."

"Your old pack? I thought you were human. Ziva, I'm sorry, I don't know the history of this place yet. A lot has been happening and so teaching me about my lineage, about mom's life here, hasn't been high on anyone's priority list, plus..."

"It doesn't matter. Whether you know anything or not, you are still in play. You carry your mother's blood in you. Everything changed with your mother and that damn challenge. Nothing has been right since. I've done everything I could to put things back on the right path. Then you show up. Now I have to deal with it. But don't worry, deal with it I shall. This ends with you. One way or another, this ends with you."

Before Emma could respond the other girl was back with the Camphor. Without a word of thanks, Ziva yanked the leaves from the girl's hand and turned, storming off back toward the cabin she shared with Thomas.

"What the hell was that about?" Emma asked the girl, completely confused.

The girl just looked at Emma, wide eyed and blinking, and then shrugged her shoulders.

With an angry, frustrated and confused snort, Emma walked away. She wasn't sure where she was going to go, but she felt the need to move, to get away from here.

She aimed her feet toward the closest forest edge, slid between the trees, and started walking.