Fane looked at his Alpha in amazement. "Father, you do realize who I'm mated to, right?"
Vasile cleared his throat. "You do have a point there." But he still offered no apology for his nonchalance in the matter.
The door to the office flew open as a frustrated looking Jacque stormed in with a worried looking Sally right behind her.
"What's going on, Fane?"
"First, it's not as bad as it sounds," Fane began.
Jacque held up her hand to cut off her mate. "Spit it out, fur ball."
"Sorin took Jen to the pack plane to fly back to the States."
"WHAT!" Jacque and Sally yelled at the same time, causing both wolves to grimace in pain because of their sensitive hearing.
Jen sat on the plane, drinking the second Coke Sorin had brought her while she waited for the runway to be cleared. Apparently, December in Romania got icy. Go figure. She didn't really care about the runway or the plane being ice-free, she just knew that the longer she sat here, not in the air, not moving towards North America, the more nervous she became that she would be discovered by her two neurotic best friends who she knew meant well, but didn't get why she had to leave.
Everyday Jen woke up hoping that she would go downstairs and find Decebel; she went to bed every night wondering why he left. She had no idea if he knew about her wolf blood, and she was to the point that she didn't want to care. Easier said than done, she thought. Why couldn't she fall in love with a normal guy, someone who didn't go furry at will? No. That would be too stinking easy.
She leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Her mind wandered back to the night of Jacque and Fane's bonding ceremony. Her life forever changed when Dr. Steele had explained that the blood test she had run on Jen after the car wreck had come back abnormal. Abnormal as in not human. Jen remembered feeling like the walls of the room were closing in on her.
"What do you mean, 'not human'?" she had asked Cynthia.
"You have werewolf blood. Though it is a very minute amount," Cynthia had answered.
Sally'd been sitting next to her, and her reaction had been what Jen wanted to say: "SHUT UP." Sally yelled this, causing everyone around them to stop and stare. Jen hadn't really noticed. The only thing she'd been able to focus on was a certain wolf who had been eyeballing her all night.
"What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means that somewhere in your family, generations ago, was a werewolf." The doctor seemed baffled by this. "I don't even know how it's possible unless all of his descendants mated with humans and the bloodline gradually diluted."
Jen and Sally had listened to the doctor explain that maybe something as traumatic as the accident had triggered the very dormant gene – perhaps that was why her wounds had healed so quickly. Jen asked if she thought she would develop any other werewolf characteristics. Cynthia felt that since Jacque hadn't, and she was half-were, that Jen was in the clear. But she truly didn't know what it would mean for Jen or her future. "You are the first dormant I have ever met," she told Jen.
For two months after learning about the werewolf blood that lay dormant in her blood, she had been constantly watching for any other wolf-like attributes. The only thing that she felt was different was that she could sense emotions. Well, strong emotions to be exact. She didn't really understand it, but she could almost smell them and each emotion smelled differently. Jen mentioned it to Sally and Jacque and they both had wanted her to go to Dr. Steele. She never did.
Jen heard a car door slam, which brought her back to the present, to the wonderful fact that she was sitting in a plane, a plane that would take her away from all this werewolf stuff.
She tapped her foot impatiently and drummed her fingers on the arm of the seat. "What could possibly be taking so freaking long," she said to the empty plane. With an exaggerated huff she undid the seat belt and stood, tired of waiting. It was time to take things into her own hands.
She looked out a window and her breath froze in her lungs at the sight. Where there had only been one black Hummer, now sat two. No way, she thought. It's not him. Vasile has, like, a million black Hummers. She had long ago decided it was a wolf thing.
Jen stepped back from the window, taking some slow, deep breaths. She closed her eyes and tried to regain her bearings. I got this. Finally ready, she walked towards the exit sign.
To what, she didn't know.
Chapter 3
"Don't you think you should call him?" Jacque asked Fane as they walked out to the car, moving slowly, trying not to slip on the snow covered ground. Fane opened the passenger door for Jacque but she didn't get in. He realized she wasn't moving until he answered all of her questions.
"My father will be the one to decide if Decebel should be called."
"That's not good enough," Jacque growled. "Not when it's my friend making possibly the biggest mistake of her life." She turned and, holding her arms out for balance on the slick ground, headed back into the mansion.
Sally stood next to Fane, her arms folded around her waist in an attempt to ward off the cold. She watched her friend leave. "She's going to tell your father what he should do, isn't she?"
"I keep telling her it's going to bite her in the butt one of these days.”
Jacque pushed the door to Vasile's office open without knocking. Alina stood in front of Vasile's desk and Jacque stopped beside her.