Page 5 of His True Mate
“Can I come along?” Kenneth, the youngest of the Smith boys, asked.
“No,” Cruz, Brady, Oliver, and I all said in unison and then laughed.
“I’m sure that was a jinx. Milly, bring these guys another round. They’ve got some beers to chug for that one,” Austin yelled over the noise.
Oliver tried to protest, but it was no use. Full glasses of beer were thrust into our hands as Austin led the crowd in demanding we chug.
As the night drew on the beer flowed freely. I had no idea who was picking up the tab, but I wasn’t drunk enough to volunteer for that bill.
The more we drank, the louder we got.
It was like old times again as we joked and reminisced. I missed this. I’d missed them and it felt good to have just a moment of that back again.
Winnie
Chapter 2
Another day, another state, yet nothing seemed to change.
This was my life and yet I longed to just settle down. I chalked it up to wanting the unknown. I’d never had an actual home before. I wouldn’t say I’ve lived a bad life, it’s been mostly good, but when you’re a fifth-generation rodeo entertainer, my life has simply been one show after another.
We traveled with the carnies and lived for the cheers and glory.
I had to admit I did love the thrill of the show. I was just ready for something different, a normal, boring, stable life.
“What are you daydreaming about, Win?” Maxi asked me.
I sighed. “Nothing. Where are we anyway? I didn’t even bother checking the schedule.”
“Omaha, I think.”
Maxi was my closest friend in the entire world.
From the outside, people thought the carnies, like her, were the strange ones, and sure there were a few. But no one seemed to give me and my family a second glance.
They saw what we wanted them to see, an illusion. To the average spectator we were simply a hardworking family with a passion for the rodeo. In reality, we were a small pack of wolf shifters just trying to blend in and make a living for ourselves.
The history of our Pack was unique to say the least. Supposedly about five Alphas back, the Alpha sold off the little bit of land we once had as it was being crowded by a growing America. Without a home big enough for everyone, he took up a “family profession” that would ensure food and shelter for all.
The problem was, we had no land to run, and wolves needed land and time in their fur.
It made sense that we were all a little crazy and guaranteed thrill seekers. The rush of the show offset some of the unease that plagued us from not shifting often enough.
Sometimes we’d borrow one of the tiger cages and shift, but it couldn’t be for long so we didn’t draw attention and there was no space to run.
Dane, our current Alpha, wasn’t very good about finding us places to run.
In all there were five families in the Pack and let’s just say that they’d been mating within the Pack for a bit too many generations now and sometimes it showed.
I was the exception as my dad had met my mother while performing in New York City. Personally, I hated that gig more than most. There was just too much noise and chaos around that place for me. I much preferred the locations we traveled to out west more. The open fields and vast space called to me.
My mother loved my father with all her heart and dropped everything to follow him around the country. She was all in when it came to this alternative lifestyle we live, yet they still considered her an outsider, which meant I was also a bit of an outsider even though I was born into it and have never known another way of living.
It was exhausting sometimes.
Maxi wasn’t a wolf shifter. She was a carnie, born and bred. Most of the carnies knew all about us and occasionally there would be a carnie shifter mating of convenience, though Dane frowned upon mating with humans. To them we were just unique, like many of them. It was normal in a way.
Maxi’s mom posed each day and night as the bearded lady while her father helped setup and break down the rides. Everyone here had a role to play. Bareback bronc riding was my part. It always brought in a crowd to see a pretty girl tame a beast. Little did they know, I was the beast, not the horse. He may be wild and untamed, but we had an understanding. It was all show.
