Page 4 of Matched in Mayhem

“What? Were you Grady Moore?” I laughed, referencing a vampire who lost his mind and then kidnapped omegas hoping to get them pregnant via IVF to have a perfect vampire baby. He never achieved his goal and was taken out by the Hemlock Wolf Pack in the end.

“If I was, I wouldn’t let Alby come here. That man put his family through a lot. No Grady Moore references around him,” he said, narrowing a look on me that reminded me of his carrier.

“Hey,” I held my hands up. “You didn’t tell me that and I wanted to guess the most unlikely asshat so I was wrong.”

The doorbell sounded off and Raziel went off to answer it.

“You’re worried about him,” my tiger chimed off into my thoughts.

“A lot changed while we were gone. He’s… Different but I don’t know if it’s in a good way. It’s like he’s based his whole personality around whoever he was before,” I thought back to him.

“No. This is his way of centering his true-mate in his life even if he won’t just go off and have his true-mate response. If you ever pull this shit on me, I’ll shift your fingers into claws and go for your balls,” my tiger said.

My tiger didn’t have to worry about me avoiding my true-mate. While I would never try something like Mated for the Holidays to find him, I wouldn’t actively avoid him either if information about his identity landed on my lap. I believed in fate and that in the end whatever we decided on before this life would happen. Sooner or later, we’d bump into each other. It would probably be somewhere mundane like the grocery store, but I was okay with that. I only required as many fireworks as it took to make my mate happy. Outside of a full belly, a good napping spot, and some books to read, I didn’t require much in the way of material possessions. Sure, they were nice, but I’d lived without them on the road before and would undoubtedly do it again.

Chapter 3

Alby

The Hemlock Wolf Pack, The Train Station in Star’s Territory

Like most alphas, Raziel was easy to slip by. Unlike a lot of the alphas from the sanctuary might have, he didn’t show up to the train station hours early in case something changed in my itinerary. Though, I counted on them being more hands off this far away from Hemlock Mountain. After all, this used to be the Wildlands. I wasn’t actively avoiding him, but I did tell him I’d be on an evening train despite arriving just after noon. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to meet him, but tossing my bag into a storage locker at the train station and enjoying a few hours of exploring on my own seemed a better strategy than throwing myself right into the mix. Besides, we had three months to spend together. He could wait a few more hours to meet me.

Though, some habits die hard, and I had already looked for the nearest Mama Dragon’s franchise and headed straight there for a quiet lunch. I had bought a new book before leaving the Sanctuary. It was the dramatization of a real-life tragedy written by some guy out in Heartville. So far it was interesting and the perfect lunch companion. This book was going to break my heart, but sometimes one needed his heart broken to regulate his emotions and to remind himself that the world wasn’t always a kind place.

I had spent days scrolling through Raziel’s social media, but no matter how far back I went there wasn’t really anything about him there. Sure, it was the pack’s social media network, but that was the only one I could find him on. Mostly he shared upcoming local events and news. He also shared a lot of events hosted by Alpha Talk, a support group for alphas, and for a company called Dark Soul, which might’ve been a meditation club out in the Raven Hollow Territory. Having so many family members come from out there, I should’ve looked it up, but since I never planned on being that far east for long enough to participate, I didn’t bother. So, outside of his bloodline and that he supported mental health services and pack events, I knew next to nothing about him. If he had looked at my social media, he’d know I was an open book. I posted everything from what I had for breakfast some days to what I was reading to random thoughts that went through my head. I’d been offered sponsorships for products but as a general rule if you lived on the Sanctuary you didn’t advertise products if you didn’t personally use them. It wasn’t in our laws, but new products circulated quickly around our neighborhoods, and it was just shitty to recommend something you never actually used yourself. Still, there were plenty of rules about what you couldn’t post even from a visit to the Sanctuary. So maybe mine was just as cryptic as Raziel’s.

“He has cute friends, though,” my wolf chimed off into my thoughts.

Yes, I had scrolled through his list of friends. Mostly, it was people he was related to and a few others. One named Benjamin had posted the most photos of them together. At least, recently. The guy had been all over the world working with the Temple of Frost and other organizations helping to make the world a better place. I was sort of surprised that he never ended up at the Sanctuary. The Temple of Frost types always passed through. Though, we are a self-sufficient community these days, able to fold newcomers into the folds without much outside help. Still, Benjamin, Bennie, to his friends, was fascinating.

“Cute and well-traveled,” my wolf nodded from inside his inner sanctum.

After lunch and a bit of reading, I walked around downtown near the train station. Everything from grocery stores and restaurants to high-end fashion boutiques could be found. I only window shopped, not wanting to carry anything around with me all afternoon. There were taxis and a ride service app, but growing up at the Sanctuary had taught me to never get into cars with strangers. That’s how Grady Moore managed to kidnap so many people. That’s how he got my grandcarrier. So, nope. No ride shares for me.

With less than an hour to go, I headed back to the train station, stopping only at a food truck to buy a taco. It had the official Hemlock Wolf Pack sticker on it and its barcode showed up in the ‘SAFE SHIFTERS’ app. It was a nifty little app that my grandsire and a few other wolves put together years ago. Businesses that were officially registered with the pack and who never failed food and safety inspections got accreditations and listed as safe on the app.

Back at the station, I spotted Raziel before he spotted me. He was still in the parking lot sitting behind the wheel of a giant black truck.

“Does he think we brought our whole house with us?” my wolf chimed off into my thoughts.

He hadn’t spotted me and I wasn’t ready to give up my alone time just yet. So, I took the long way around the parking lot before heading inside to grab my stuff from the storage locker. I passed some vending machines full of candy bars and fruit snacks and loaded up before going back outside. I wasn’t sure how far Raziel lived from town, and I didn’t want to make the possibly long walk back if I got a sweet tooth. I assumed the hunting would be great near him because I didn’t think Star would live where the food wasn’t easy to scoop up.

“One of those dragons are going to scoop us up thinking we’re a deer because they forgot their glasses,” my wolf laughed.

The train I was supposed to be on rolled onto the platform two seconds after Raziel walked into the station. He stood there with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders squared. It was such a weird pose. Hands in pockets meant someone was nervous. Shoulders squared meant the opposite. Maybe he had something important in his pockets. A gift bag hung from his arm. At least he brought me a welcome present.

“We’re not compatible with him. Remember that,” my wolf reminded me.

“For science,” I told myself and circled around so that I could join in with the crowd coming off the train. I squinted ahead of me, searching Raziel out. Only he wasn’t there. Where had he gone. I looked up, wondering if he flew up to look for me from above the crowd.

“Alby!” a friendly voice called from behind me.

How had he done that? I twisted around to see him, hands out of pockets, waving with the one not holding the blue gift bag. I smiled, despite the butterflies exploding in my stomach. There he was – the strange, incompatible alpha I was going to live with for the next three months. He was tall. Dragon shifters were always taller than I expected them to be. It didn’t matter if they were alphas, betas, or omegas. It was all the same. They were tall and broad and took up so much space without thinking about it.

“Raziel?” I asked when we reached each other despite knowing exactly who he was.

“Yep. I almost made a sign with your name on it but figured that would be overkill and I know how the Sanctuary is about privacy.”