When Rebel and I got home, Beta Lucas was sitting with Dad in the living room area, pouring through documents. Every now and then, Dad would initial wherever Beta Lucas pointed out for him.
Mum and Savy came out from the bedroom. "Oh, Sam, you're home! Savy and I just went through the wardrobe. Is there anything else you need to replace? We might go shopping this weekend."
I shook my head. Oh wait, I did want to buy Mate a leather jacket. I mean, he did freeze all the way home just now. But then I remembered that Mate was James Lorent the Third and decided to let him buy his own jacket.
He probably had thousands of jackets at home.
"Is everything alright, Goddess?" Killion came out of the yummy-smelling kitchen. "Harv and Ben both mind-linked earlier. They reported seeing your car leave the expressway suddenly..."
Seeing my mum and dad look over sharply, he decided to skip the rest of what the other betas saw and ended with, "Unfortunately, due to traffic, they were unable to follow."
Gulp. Ah... I wondered what my betas saw.
"Well, looks like our Luna is fine." Killion gave Rebel a once-over.
Rebel nodded curtly. His expression was way more serious than necessary.
"Sam, what did you do?" Mum asked.
"Nothing! Nothing happened!" I said.
If my expression was half as panicked as I felt, it was way more panicked than necessary.
"Sam..." Mum's tone was warning.
Rebel hesitated. Killion looked almost regretful. I bet he was thinking he should have asked later. But I guess he hadn't expected it to be a big deal.
"Son? What happened?" Dad asked.
Once Dad got involved, it was a big deal.
"She tried to mark me. It's fine though, nothing happened," Mate answered.
"No way!" I said, rather shocked at Mate's perspective of what had happened.
Mate lifted a brow at me.
"I was just... Urm..." What was I doing? Why did my teeth shift?
"Sam, you're 15! That's too young to mate," Mum scolded.
"I wasn't going to mark him!" I protested. "I just wanted a bite!"
"If you bite your mate on the neck, that's called marking your mate, Sam," Savy informed me.
"I know that! I was just..." Oh.
Ooohhhh.
"No way! There was no way I was doing that!" My hair flared up. "NO WAY! NO WAY!"
Savy covered her mouth to keep from cackling out loud.
"Oh my Goddess." Mum groaned and face-palmed.
For some reason, Killion found this amusing. "Let me get this straight, Goddess. You decided to jump your mate and mark him while he was driving on the expressway at peak hour?"
"Dear, say something." Mum urged Dad.
Dad looked generally uncomfortable about dealing with this topic. "It's dangerous to distract your mate when he is driving."
"That isn't the issue here!" Mum said. "She's 15!"
"Yes," Dad amended. "Wait a few more years and try not to do it on the expressway."
"I wasn't marking him!" This was so embarrassing. "I was... Ah... I was pretending to be a vampire."
Yeah. That was it.
"Sam!" Mum had enough. "Marking your mate isn't a game. You aren't a puppy anymore. You can't just do whatever you like whenever you like."
"I didn't mean to!" I flared really bad now. I was this close to crying. This close.
Mate soothed my hair and then admitted, "It was more my fault than hers."
Dad's wolf immediately surged forward. He charged at Rebel, grabbing him by the collar. "What the f*** happened?"
Beta Lucas and Mum immediately tried to settle Dad's wolf.
I crossed my arms. I wanted to hear this out. How was any of that Mate's fault?
"I drove her home in my car. I think there was still trace amounts of my scent, and it triggered her wolf," Rebel said.
Dad released his collar. "Oh."
"Dear, it's Bell we're talking about. You know we can trust him to be responsible with Sam," Mum said, confirming what I had suspected lately. Mum trusted my mate more than she trusted me. Humph!
"No matter how responsible, he is still a man," Dad muttered.
Rebel growled back but nodded.
"Wait, but I aired it and cleaned out the interior and sprayed it out with air freshener!" Killion said.
At this point, I managed to place the masculine cologne. It was Killion's scent.
Beta Lucas shook his head. "No, no, no... You boys don't understand. Sam is her father's daughter..."
That didn't help at all. Nobody understood Beta Lucas, so he had to explain himself. "The bloodline in her is a black wolf, and black wolves aren't just good fighters, we are amazing hunters. Sam's wolf has enhanced senses in Alpha proportions. Even from a young age, Sam's wolf senses were far keener than the adult wolves around her."
"That's true." Mum said, remembering. "There was no place I could hide chocolates in the house."
Why was Mum hiding chocolates in the house?
"If you enclose her in a small space long enough, I'm sure even in trace amounts, Sam would have been able to smell it out," Beta Lucas concluded.
So that mysterious wonderful smell was Mate?
"Yes! I smelled Mate!" I boasted.
Mum face-palmed again. "What will I ever do with you, Sam?"
"I understand," Rebel said. "Killion and I will be more careful in the future."
Dad sighed. "Well then, it's fine. I'll leave it to you, son."
Rebel nodded again.
Suddenly the smell of Mate clicked into the right space, and I could place it! "Mate smells like salted caramel!" I announced.
Everyone froze.
I grinned.
It wasn't chocolate, but damn, it was good. And it suited Mate to a T.
After the hoo-ha over me trying to bite Mate (which was totally unnecessary, by the way), Beta Lucas excused himself and left.
Killion served dinner, which was now my favorite dish. It was like pasta stuffed with meat and what he claimed was spinach but, unlike spinach, was delicious.
Later on, just as I was completing the last of my homework, Killion knocked on our bedroom door. "Goddess, Harv requests for you turn on your phone or mind-link."
Oops. My phone!
"Yeah, okay," I said.
I heard Killion move away from our door.
Savy was in her bunk with her earphones. She had taken to listening to her music like that since the morning I threw her radio clock out. I heard Mum talking to Savy about confined and crowded spaces being hard for my wolf and not to provoke me further with loud noises and stuff.
I think Mum was just using me as an excuse so that the whole penthouse wasn't blasting with rock music.
I mean, I couldn't deny that my black wolf was more territorial... But tbh, Savy was Savy, and my wolf considered her part of my property, so I didn't feel particularly intruded upon.
If anyone was suffering from sharing a room, it was probably Savy, though. I mean, she can't even change in her own room now for fear that my mate would appear suddenly. Well, neither could I. But the point was that it was my mate, not hers. So it wasn't fair that she was the inconvenienced one.
And to make things worse, Savy was the one who liked to coop herself up alone in her room for hours and needed a room to retreat to when we had guests. I wasn't that sensitive or private and could relax or fall asleep almost anywhere.
I found my charger and plugged in my phone. Then I turned it on and regretted it the moment it started chiming non-stop as the messages came in.
Luckily, my phone gave up and silently accepted the rest of the messages. 99+ messages (it gave up counting too), some missed calls, and a notification that my game missed me and I should go on and win a few more battles.
Sorry, I missed you too, game. I was so close to leveling up the last time, but I had been kind of busy.
Missed calls from Harvey, Ben, and Harvey again, but all from this afternoon, so I decided I didn't need to call back.
I didn't feel like dealing with the messages.
There was a really cute plop sound. I turned around and saw Savy pick up her own phone. She read the message and pulled down her earphones. "Sam, Lizzy says a bunch of us are going to hang out in the lounge downstairs and eat pizza. You wanna go?"
Eh? Downstairs?
"What's the occasion?" I asked.
"Nothing much. I think some of them just finished rehearsals for the promotional performance for their spring concert and wanted to hang out and chill," Savy said.
So the guys were back to rehearsing, huh?
"They came to my school today," I told Savy. "They were really good. My school went crazy."
"Really? It was today?" Savy asked.
"You knew?" I asked.
"I just heard them considering it," Savy said. "I heard there were vampires in your school."
I nodded. "They're not all bad."
"And a lot of humans," Savy said.
"Yeah," I said.
"Did the humans like our music?" she asked.
I nodded, remembering River. River really did like the music. The cool girls also bought tickets, but I think they liked the band members more. Hahaha.
Speaking of which... I wondered if Ben was going to get more babes.
I told Savy about the phone numbers.
Savy cackled. "Ben won't call them. He's not allowed. The guys are collecting phone numbers from girls wherever they play as a competition, though."
Wait, what?
"Yeah, I heard Harvey is winning. Lizzy says Ben is seriously cheesed. You know how competitive Ben can get."
Wait, what?
Stupid boys, going around breaking hearts.
I'm going to get them. For the sake of girls everywhere.
I took out a small memo pad and wrote, "I'm going to kill you," on each one, then I folded them.
Savy got down from her bed to look. "I guess you're going downstairs?"
I grinned. "Yup."
Savy cackled. "Maybe you should write a different message."
I tried to think hard.
"How about writing their own name and number?" Savy asked.
Savy can be evil like that.
I found all their numbers, even Ethan's, in my phone book.
We wrote their names and numbers and added the words, "Call me before I call you! XXX."
I even disguised my handwriting by making huge loops and flourishes in my lettering.
Then we cackled evilly (mostly Savy), folded the notes, and put them in my pocket.
All we needed to do was slip them into the guys' pockets without them knowing during their next concert, and I knew exactly who was going to be able to pull it off.