Sugar Creek 2(9)

She looked over her shoulder at Luke. “What do you mean, your whole family?”

Damian wanted to be involved in this conversation so he moved away from her and embraced his human side, pushing his wolf back. When he was once again looking at her through his own eyes and not his wolf’s, he was pleased to see that she was having trouble keeping her gaze from his naked body. Without hurrying, he reached for his clothes and began to get dressed again. The whole time he put his clothes back on Melissa never removed her eyes from his body. That was, until he was fully dressed again, and then she looked up and met his stare. He walked over to the sofa, sat down beside her and Luke and took one of her hands in his.

“We live in a cabin on a large property. There are lots of other cabins on this land, but there is also a large house in the center of the other houses. Our Alpha and Betas live in that house with their mate.”

“What’s an Alpha?” Melissa asked and then put her hand up when Damian was about to answer. “Wait! Is that like the leader of the pack?”

“That’s exactly what an Alpha is. Our Alpha is Lucien Woolf. He is the Alpha of the Sugar Creek Pack and his brothers, Gabriel and Raphael, are his Betas,” Luke explained.

“What’s a Beta?”

Damian squeezed Melissa’s hand to get her attention. “A Beta is second to the Alpha. There are only two Betas in our pack, and the rest of us are Omegas, myself and Luke included. We handle the security and business side of the family. The younger werewolves, or what you would call teenagers, are Sigmas. Most of the Sugar Creek Pack are family, and we all work and live together.”

“Wow.” Melissa sighed the word. “It must be really nice to spend so much time with your family. How many people are in your family and how many live here?”

“There are over fifty that live here alone,” Luke answered. “Most of the older werewolves move on when they retire, but they come back now and again to visit. And it won’t be long before our pack starts expanding.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our Alpha and his brothers met their mate not that long ago and she’s already carrying a pup in her belly,” Damian said.

“A pup?” Melissa sounded horrified, and when she covered her mouth with her hand, Damian knew she had taken his term for a baby literally.

“We don’t give birth to puppies.” He gave her a gentle smile and drew her hand away from her mouth. “A werewolf doesn’t change forms until they reach puberty.”

Melissa exhaled as if with relief. “How is it that you are werewolves?”

“We had werewolf parents, sweetheart,” Luke explained. “The Lycan gene has been in our family for generations. No one knows where it originated from and to be honest, we don’t really care. We love being able to change into wolves and run through the forest in our animal forms. It is so freeing to be one with nature.”

“Yes, I imagine it would be.” She looked at Luke, then back to Damian again. “What do you mean when you say that I am your mate?”

Damian cleared his throat nervously.

“You are the one woman that is the other half of our souls, Melissa. A werewolf, or in this case, werewolves, have one special person that is meant to be theirs.” Damian knew he was making a muck of explaining things and glanced at Luke.

Luke resumed the explanation. “What Damian is trying to say is that you are meant to be our wife, but what a werewolf feels for a mate is so much more than what a human man and woman experience when they marry. You are our destiny, Melissa. Once a werewolf is mated, it’s for life. There is no separating or divorce. A werewolf never wants to be away from its mate for very long once the mating is complete.”

Melissa pulled her hands out of Damian’s and pushed to her feet. She began pacing and twisting her hands together with either nervousness or agitation, or maybe both. “This is so much to take in. I still can’t get my head around…I can’t believe that any of this is real.”

“We can get our Alpha’s mate to talk to you if you want to, baby.” Damian stood up and walked toward Melissa. His heart filled with hope when she didn’t pull away from him when he placed his hands on her shoulders. He gently pulled her into his arms and inhaled her natural delicious perfume. She smelled so sweet, but underlying the scent of the body wash and shampoo she’d used was the perfume of her arousal. His wolf was pushing at him to pick her up, carry her back to bed, strip her naked and make love to her for hours on end, and claim her, but he ruthlessly pushed his wolf back down.

“How do you claim a mate?” she asked.