Page 2 of Wrangler

Leaning back, Carrie laid her head on his chest and closed her eyes. Archie wasn’t tired, but he was happy to be able to watch over his little family while they did sleep. Christ, he thought, who would have thought that their wonderful vacation could end on such a note as having brought more family with them. Smiling, he was glad that he was going back now. But in a few days, he knew that he’d wish they were back on the island.

When they were ready to land, he hated that he had to wake them all up. It had been a good flight but short. When he touched Wills to wake him, he had to defend himself from his fists. The little boy was nearly unconsolable when he realized that he wasn’t in danger. Amber, having woken up when Wills was yelling, calmed him down quickly so that people wouldn’t be upset with them.

“I’m sorry, Archie. I didn’t mean to hit you. I swear it.” Archie told him that he understood completely and that he was sorry that he had to live like that. “It’s nice to have a long nap, but Ishouldn’t have fallen asleep. You might have needed me.”

“I would have woken you, I promise. Now we’re going to meet my family. I didn’t tell them that you were coming home with us, so they’ll be surprised.” They were wide awake now, and he was glad for it. He was so excited to see who would be Amber’s mate. However, the more that he thought about it, the more he wished he’d had more time to get to know her. He was sure that she was going to be a mate to Beau or Jameson. She had a cool head on her shoulders from what little he’d been able to glean from her.

~*~

Sunny knew that they were bringing home a mate to one of her brothers, but her mom wouldn’t tell her who it was. She had had to nag them all into coming with them to the airport and wasn’t happy that they were grumpy and out of sorts. But they’d perk up once they saw the newest additions to their family. Or they’d better if they knew what was good for them.

She saw Carrie first. She was beautifully tanned and looked so relaxed that she envied her. But with the property that they’d purchased where they’d been, as well as the house that Carrie and Archie had been staying at, they could go down anytime they wanted and enjoy the same thing. She couldn’t wait to have some time alone with Nash. He’d been working so hard lately, getting ready to go back to college, that she worried that he’d forget about her. She should have known better but she was feeling less than secure about a lot of things of late.

Hugging Carrie and then Archie, she was thrilled to meet the other two as well. Amber was beautiful, her skin a nice tan, and her hair, long and curly, was as red as fresh rust. She wanted to see if it was as soft as it looked but didn’t know how the woman would react to that.

“Everyone, I’d like you to meet Amber and Wills Damon. They’re going to be staying with us until we can get them settled in.” Carrie watched the faces of the other brothers and wanted to smack the shit out of them when they were acting backward and shy. It wasn’t until Wills stepped forward with his hand out did they start to get their brain cells working and acted like the men that she knew. The moment that Wrangler touched Amber’s hand, she knew that he’d met his mate in Amber. Now, it was just a matter of them getting to know one another.

The connection to each other affected her immediately as well. More than likely, the contact magic because of her being the pride bitch, a name that she wasn’t all that thrilled with. If not for the small wince of pain or something akin to it, she wouldn’t have been able to tell that either of them had touched their mates. It was time for them all to have their mates if she was in charge, but since she wasn’t, she’d wait. And love them all when they came to them. But if that hadn’t alerted her, then the woman’s reaction would have. She was spitting mad.

“What was that? When we touched just now, what was that a spark or something?” Wrangler looked around, seeming to be a little confused. But what he was confused about, she had no idea. He could have been looking for help, for all she knew. “What did you do to me? I felt like my heart and arm were shocked or something.”

“I didn’t do anything to you. Just shook your hand. You get all bent out of shape when people are being nice to you all the time?” She told him it was more than that, and she was demanding answers. “I don’t know what…” Wrangler looked at his brother, and when Archie nodded, he no longer looked confused but as pissed off as Amber was.

“Well? What did you just realize? And if you think that it’s something to do with my brother and I, we’ll be on the next plane out of here.” Wrangler asked her how she was going to pay for the ticket. “You bastard.”

The slap was hard, and Wrangler’s head snapped to the side, but he didn’t do anything more than to look at Amber. Wills stepped in front of his sister and all she could think about was that had been the wrong move on his part. When Wrangler reached to touch the boy, Amber seemed to come apart at the seams in that moment.

She leapt at him, and Wrangler was barely able to catch her. If he had moved even a few inches, she would have landed on her face. As it was now, she was smacking him around like he’d hurt her.But being the man that he was, he didn’t so much as raise his hands to keep himself from being hurt.

Carrie had enough and as soon as she could put her fingers into her mouth, she let go of a whistle to rival even the train whistles that blew once a day in the middle of town. No one moved for several seconds. It was Amber who got down from Wrangler’s arms, and she stomped away. He looked around at the rest of them, his face battered and bruised, and he looked like a man down on his luck.

“What did I do?” She didn’t know what to tell the other man other than she didn’t know either. She just became this…well, lunatic was all she could think about. “I should go and find her.”

“I’ll go with you. Though if I were you, I’d not touch me again. She’s never done that before. Scared the bejebbes out of me too.” Wills and Wrangler walked away, but he was still upset. Gathering the rest of the family up to leave the three of them alone, Carrie suggested that they all get some dinner before heading home. Archie said that he’d take care that Wrangler knew where they were.

There was little talk during the drive to the diner. She knew that everyone was upset, but really, she didn’t understand why the woman had gone so bat-shit crazy. It wasn’t as if he’d harmed the young boy. He’d not even touched him to keep him from getting hurt. And if that was his intention, she hoped that Amber would apologize to everyone before too long. This wasn’t something that needed to be lingering between them all.

The little diner next to the airport wasn’t all that busy. It was after dinner time, so that was more than likely why. As the waitstaff was putting together tables in their banquet room for all of them, she reached out to Archie and asked him what he thought was going on.

“Fear. I could almost taste it on her. I have a feeling that she’s been fighting battles with herself and her brother for a while now. You know, guilt for not being able to protect him from their parents. They were pretty beat up when they got to the plane. I was just as startled when she jumped at him as everyone else. I wonder now if this was a mistake.”She pointed out that she was Wrangler’s mate.“Still. None of us did anything wrong, and she didn’t have to take his hand when he offered it.”

“True. I don’t know what to think right now. We’ll just have to let it go until they come back. If they do.”Just as she was finished speaking to her mate, the door opened, and the three of them walked into the diner. No one asked, and they looked about as shell-shocked as anyone she’d ever seen. Whatever happened, she hoped to goodness that it would resolve itself before everyone in the family got it into their heads to dislike Amber.

As soon as they were seated, Amber stood up. She looked as if she’d been crying, and it hurt her to see that. After clearing her throat several times, she began to speak. It was then that things became a little more clear for the rest of them.

“I want to apologize to everyone. And to say that I’m sorry to Wrangler for acting the way that I did. I didn’t mean to attack him. It was…I’ve been so stressed out all the time, trying to keep us both safe and food in our bellies. Then, this man and his wife come along and things are just perfect. I didn’t want to believe that things could be so wrong for so long then bam, they’re not. I’ve been keeping myself and my brother as safe as I could while we’ve been out on our own. Which has been a very long time for the two of us. And when he touched my brother…well, I lost it. I was feeling like we had really trusted you people a great deal, and I was…I was being proactive when I should have just kept to myself. I’m not used to… Neither Wills nor I are used to people being nice to us. Unless they want something else.” She looked at Wrangler. “I’m not sure what to think about you being my mate. I’ve not trusted anyone for a very long time, and I don’t know how to be a person with others around without always looking around for the knife.”

“We’ll work on it. You’re going to be safe. I want you to know that. I’d die for you and Wills.” She snorted, and Wrangler laughed. “All right. I can understand that as well. Like I said, we’ll work on it.”

After dinner, they made their way home. Luggage was taken in when they dropped off Archie and her home. The other two didn’t have anything but literally the shirts on their backs, so that made it easier to drop off Amber and her brother at Wrangler’s home. He was going to stay with them as his home hadn’t been built as yet, and the apartment that he’d been keeping was too small for the three ofthem. Carrie had a feeling that by this time tomorrow evening, not only would Wrangler have a home, but it would be filled up, too. Smiling to herself, she also wondered if they’d be in a much better mood all around.

“I have to leave first thing in the morning.” She was disappointed but knew that now that they were back home, things would need to be taken care of. “I have a council meeting with the other members of the pack. Not all of them, but the ones that have been doing most of the work since the previous leader wasted a great many years by doing absolutely nothing but sitting around.”

“You just reminded me that I have a meeting with the women of the pack. I’d completely forgotten about that until now.” She lay on the bed, watching Archie put together his notes for tomorrow. “They said that there hasn’t been a meeting with all the leap in decades. I find that hard to believe. I thought that you were to have them once a month.”

“That’s the wolves. They meet monthly because they’re trying to keep their pack together. We don’t have anyone to pull together. I’ve looked over the leap and if you don’t count us, the average age for the leap is sixty-three years old. Putting all of us in there it does bring it down, but not by a great deal. That’s not really what I’d call a productive group.” She asked him what his plans were. “I don’t know, to be honest with you. I know that I have to do something or the king of our kind can simply disband us and put us all with other groups if we aren’t putting up a good showing of us. I’m also going to meet some of the people in town. We need businesses, and soon or the town will up and disappear as well.”

Carrie decided to get herself a glass of juice and was headed down the stairs when a ghost suddenly appeared. They weren’t supposed to meet at the house, a rule that she liked very much, unless it was an emergency. She only had to look at the woman in front of her to know that something terrible had happened.