His to Mate Page 7

  Anxiety was eating her alive, and finally, she got out of bed and went to the door. Maybe a walk would help. She didn’t bother with the robe because she knew everyone would be in bed at this time. It was the middle of the night by now.

  She walked through the house, down to the kitchen, and out of the back door. She could see the moon, high in the sky, and the cow made a low noise of hello. It must have heard the back door close. With a sigh, she turned to her flowers, and brushed her fingers along soft petals. Her heart started to calm and her mind slowed down.

  She saw a light in the garden shed, and walked towards it on bare feet. She could hear voices inside, but not what they said. She made out one word, fight, and then another, ours. What were they talking about in her garden shed?

  It must be the wolves, there wouldn’t be anyone else here at this time of night. She tried to hear more, but the people inside started to move and the door handle clicked. She pressed herself against the wall on the side, where she’d be hidden in darkness, and held her breath. She had a feeling none of those inside would want her to know they were holding meetings in her shed, and wouldn’t react nicely if they saw her.

  9

  “What’s going on over there?” Ann asked a few days later.

  “Joana is pregnant,” Meg, the nurse that had spoken at the last meeting, told her.

  Ann glanced in the direction of the woman named Joana, and saw Penelope doing her damnedest to ingratiate herself to the woman. Penelope might turn out to be a problem, but for now, the meetings had a focus at least.

  “Thanks, Meg. Have you checked her out?” Ann knew it wasn’t really any of her business, but she was curious, and wanted to make sure the woman was taken care of.

  “Yes, and your husband sent a few men out to help me with the clinic. I’ll have it open soon.” Meg’s brown eyes were filled with excitement and Ann was happy about that.

  “That’s good news. I still think the aliens have some technology that could be of use to us, though. I’ll talk to Rager about it.”

  “That would be great. I wasn’t hinting, by the way, just letting you know.” The woman looked away, as if worried, so Ann put a friendly hand on her arm and smiled at her.

  “I know, Meg. Don’t worry.” She stepped back from the small group of women she’d been chatting with as Meg’s face relaxed.

  “Thanks, Ann.”

  “Let’s get down to business.”

  There was a podium set up in the front of the living room, her headquarters for now, and she went to stand in front of it.

  “Good afternoon, ladies. I’m happy to report that a lot has changed over the last few days. Instead of discussing the best kind of potato salad, and what baby names we should pick out, we’ve now got a library started thanks to this kind lady.” Ann paused to point at the woman in question, and waited for the applause to die down. “And Meg has just told me we’ll have a clinic soon. We’re making progress, good progress.”

  More applause and Ann looked around the room. She knew the faces but some of the names still escaped her. She decided she’d have to sit down and memorize them at some point. A new face caught her eye and she made a mental note to introduce herself to the woman. She was pretty, with black hair and tanned skin. It wasn’t the prettiness that caught her attention, however, it was the startling lightness of the woman’s blue eyes. Ann nodded at her and then continued.

  Nope, no other new faces. Time to ask questions, then. She now had an agenda for these meetings and a plan of how each one was to go. Deviations could happen, but she wanted to stick to the plan she had if it was at all possible.

  “Now, does anyone have suggestions about what we should do next?” Ann waited but the women just looked at her blankly.

  It reminded her of a few nights ago when she’d hidden at the side of the shed as the men inside filed out. Each one of the eight men had walked out with the exact same blankness on their faces. She’d managed to get back to her bedroom and cursed herself for going out. She’d wanted to get some air to help her sleep and had gone to bed with more worries.

  She’d told Rager about the meeting, but he hadn’t said anything else about it since then. The meeting must not have been as sinister as she thought if Rager hadn’t said anything more about it, and the fact that these women wore the same expression as those men was only coincidence, she told herself. With a minute shake of herself, Ann began to speak again.

  “I suggest some of you that don’t have projects yet get into groups and try to find something to do that can keep you busy. What resources do we need that we don’t have yet? Will we need daycares, maybe? Or pre-schools? I know we’ll need teachers eventually, perhaps some of you can look into what courses teachers had and start training some people in those fields.” Ann leaned against the podium, her elbows were flat against it, and she could see she had their attention now.

  “I know some of you may not like it, but I do know a wolf shifter that used to be a science teacher. She’s a cook now, but she was one of the best science teachers around, and she would be a valuable person to speak to.” The women started to shift around and murmur, so she held her hands up and stepped back a little. “I’m not saying we put her in charge of the children, I’m saying we should talk to her about the process of teaching. Get some ideas from her.”

  That calmed them down and she smiled as she started to relax too.

  “Now, does anyone else want to speak?” Ann could see Penelope wanted to but didn’t dare put her arm up. Good, she could sit down there and keep her vileness to herself. “If that’s all then, I’d like to end this part of the meeting.”

  Nobody protested so she walked away from the podium to the place where sandwiches and some tea had been set out. She’d found quite a few large cans of powdered tea. It wasn’t the greatest flavored drink in the world, but it was cold and tasted of something besides water.

  She saw that the women had started to form into work groups, although Penelope’s little group of three seemed to be disinterested in doing anything at all. They just stood around and watched the rest of the women as they tittered behind their hands. Ann decided they’d either find something to do or they would become outcasts. The new Earth had no room for people that only wanted to stand around idle while they gossiped.

  She saw the new woman over with Meg’s newly formed group. There were four women with her, all eager to talk to Meg. Ann went to them and listened as Meg spoke.

  “I can’t train you to be nurses, but I can train you to be as near to one as I can. It will take time and dedication.” Meg looked at each woman sternly and they happily nodded.

  The new woman spoke up then.

  “Hi, I’m Skye. I was still in my second year of an RN when the cataclysm happened. I might be able to help. I didn’t get to get my degree, but in my spare time, I studied as much as I could. I raided the local bookstore for my course books and went through every single one I could get my hands on. I just don’t have any practical skills, obviously. I was on my own, so…”

  Her voice trailed off as she saw that she had everyone’s attention. Her cheeks turned a dusky pink and she looked away.

  “That sounds magnificent, Skye,” Meg said, her voice soft. “Right now, you’re probably as well prepared as you can be. And you can teach the others too. Thanks for stepping up.”

  “I agree with Meg,” Ann said as soon as Meg finished. “You’re just as valuable. You can learn the hands-on stuff as you go along. It’s not exactly the best practice, I guess, but we have to take what we can get, don’t we?”

  “Yes, it sounds like you’re well ahead of us, anyway,” another woman in her 30s with blond hair and happy green eyes said. She was a tall woman and competent looking. “I worked as a paralegal, but that’s not going to do us much good now, is it?”

  “It might, one day,” Ann said quickly, more to reassure the woman than anything. The aliens had their own rules and laws and none of the Earthlings knew for sure what all of them were.<
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  She made a few more mental notes and walked around the other groups until she’d spoken with everyone. Except Penelope and her little group.

  “Hello, Penelope,” Ann said quietly as she walked up behind the other woman.

  “Ann… I…” Penelope looked uncertainly around the room, anywhere but at Ann. “We’re, um, we’ve decided we’re going to work on daycare and providing nannies to the other wives.”

  “Have you now?” Ann asked without inflection. She wanted to see how Penelope responded.

  Ann stood there and waited, her head tilted back a little, her body straight. She didn’t want to be intimidating, she wanted to be in control. And from the way Penelope dipped her head down, Ann knew she was. She breathed in softly, and let it out, while she waited.

  “Yes, you see, well, Mary here was a daycare worker before, well, you know. So, we thought it might be good to take your suggestion. You know.” She ended with a firm nod of her head before she looked at the other women for backup. The others nodded and smiled at Ann with hopeful little nods.

  “That sounds excellent. I’ve got a notebook on the table over there. If you’d be so kind as to fill out a sheet with your basic information, who is in your group, what you’ll be doing, things you might need, stuff like that, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Of course, Ann,” Penelope said without any hint of huffiness.

  Maybe she’d be alright, after all, Ann decided. This leadership role wasn’t something she’d ever planned to take. In high school, she and her friends had all encouraged each other, and had sometimes urged each other into a dare, but there hadn’t exactly been a leader. She did her thing, they did theirs, and that’s how it worked. Now, she’d been thrown in, feet first, and somehow, she’d learned to stand up.

  She’d been worried she’d made an enemy out of Penelope, but it didn’t seem she had. Maybe her mate had had a talk with her. Word probably got around about what happened. Ann wasn’t sure who the woman was mated to, but whoever it was ranked lower than Rager, which meant he ranked below her too. Ann didn’t really care, so long as the woman chilled out with her lady of the manor bullshit.

  With a tired smile, Ann shuffled out the last of the women 15 minutes later. She went up to her room and sprawled on the bed. She’d been terrified, as always, but speaking at the podium like that had been the scariest thing she’d done in her life so far. Even the mating ceremony with Rager hadn’t been that bad compared to public speaking. She’d managed it though, and everyone seemed content enough when they left. That was all that mattered really.

  She wanted to build inroads with the wives, and she had plans. Plans like making sure Amanda had a role in the education of future children. Ann knew some of the revulsion over the wolves was simply that the humans didn’t understand that they weren’t in danger. They expected the wolves to turn into raving maniacal killers with huge teeth and claws at any minute. That wasn’t how it happened.

  After five years in the bunker with a wolf family, Ann knew first-hand what happened, and what needed to happen. It was all very silly, she thought, as she stuck her earbuds in and hit play. They didn’t mind having the wolves in their homes during the day, but not at night? That was one of the reasons the wolves were housed away from the homes. People seemed to think dark-time meant murder-time to the wolves. It didn’t.

  She wanted to change those misconceptions, stamp out prejudice, and if that meant doing it one step at a time, that’s what she’d do. She wanted Amanda and Stephan, and Rex even, to be able to do whatever they wanted to with their lives, and if that meant she had to stick her neck out for them, then so be it.

  10

  “Do you know that using candles to create heat is one of the simplest things you can do?” Skye asked Ann as they sat together over lunch the next day. Ann had invited her over before she left the day before, and now, they were outside in the garden.

  “Candles? How?” Ann had learned quite a bit about the woman already, but the main thing she’d learned was that Skye was a survivor. She was bi-racial and had grown up with a lot of flack from people about it, and that had turned her mind inwards. Rather than let it eat at her, she’d taken her solitude and had started creating solutions where she saw problems.

  She had a scientific mind and that had led her into a nursing program at Washington State University. She’d been found last week, in a basement, still clueless that the world had sprung back to life. She was also a lesbian, and Rager had made an exception for her. She would still need to carry a child, but she wouldn’t be forced to mate with a male.

  Speaking of Rager, he’d been very busy over the last couple of days, he’d come home late each night, and left very early. She assumed he was working on something important, maybe to do with that meeting she’d walked into by accident. Or those men of his that hated her so much.

  “Ann? Are you there, Ann?” Skye laughed and snapped her fingers near Ann’s face.

  “What? Oh, I’m so sorry. I completely zoned out. So rude of me.” Ann’s face scrunched in apology. “Tell me about the candles.”

  “You need a lot of them and a lot of terracotta pots, but it works if you do it right. That was one way I kept warm. I also used a bike that I’d rigged up as a generator. It was connected to a battery, which I had connected to an inverter, and as long as I rode the bike often enough to keep the battery charged, I could run a small heater.”

  “Wow. No wonder you’re so fit!” Skye was very svelte, and her body was covered in muscles with a lot of definition.

  “I was bored, and I couldn’t read textbooks all day, so I worked out a lot too. Which also helped me to stay warm.”

  “Didn’t you tell me you lined the basement with cardboard?” Ann prompted, curious as to how Skye had survived so long, alone and without a bunker to keep her warm.

  “Yeah, that came from the bookstore too. I wore a lot of clothes, and was lucky to find some sub-zero gear too. I had a couple of sleeping bags that were made for that too. Some nights, I wasn’t exactly sure I’d wake up the next morning, but I did. I got really tired of eating dried food and canned food, but I survived.”

  “You didn’t do bad, at all,” Ann complimented. “I really admire your ingenuity. I’m not sure I’d have survived without my Dad. We were in a bunker one of his clients gave him when he couldn’t pay his legal fees. It was well-stocked and quite cozy, really. I’m not sure how long we’d have all lasted down there, but, well, it didn’t turn out to be as bad as I thought it would be when we first went down.”

  “You’d have survived, you have that drive. I can see it in your eyes.” Skye nodded her head wisely, her lips pursed in confirmation. “You would have found a way. It wasn’t like one day it was warm, and the next the ice age showed up. We had time to prepare, and I could see what was coming when we got that first super-early snow. I started hauling food and supplies down to the basement.”

  “Did you find a gas stove or anything you could use?” Ann wondered aloud.

  “I did and used it for heat when I cooked. I had to crack a window when I did, to make sure I didn’t kill myself with gas fumes, but it kept the basement toasty. I ended up going through my supply before the aliens found me, but I had a small electric hotplate I’d connect to the bike setup when I couldn’t stand the thought of cold beans again.”

  “That’s really smart.” Ann looked down at her hands, and wondered if she should ask the next question she had. She looked at the smile on Skye’s face, and decided it was best not to bring it up. People’s pasts were dangerous places to tread, mainly because most people had lost everyone that was special to them.

  Ann was lucky, she had her parents, her neighbors, and Rex. Although Rex was a dick, he was still a part of her past. Most of the people she’d met hadn’t been so lucky. And so far, the children she’d seen when they first left the bunker were the only ones she’d seen. She hadn’t seen any since.

  “I guess I just had a lot of time to think things through, down there
on my own. It’s funny, I’d noticed it had started to warm up in the basement, but I thought I was cracking up. When the aliens came down to bring me out, I thought I had died, and we’d got the afterlife all kinds of wrong.” Skye scoffed at her own joke. “I really didn’t know what to think when they gave me an address for an apartment and let me go. With the reminder that I’d have to have a child before I turned 38.”

  “What if you can’t?” Ann had worried about that question too.

  “Apparently they have ways of fixing problems.” Skye grimaced uncertainly. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Maybe it means they have some kind of medical equipment on the ship that we can use down here. We’re all expected to have babies, but they haven’t told us a thing about how they expect us to give birth and not die.” Ann’s voice rose at the end, a sign of her fear.

  “I’m sure they have stuff up there to help us. And I’m going to focus on studying obstetrics, Mary’s going to start studying pediatrics, and Meg’s going to focus on general medical care. It won’t be perfect, but if they don’t have tech and help up there that could make this easier for all of us, well, we’ll just hunt down the supplies we need and take care of it ourselves. I promise.”

  Somehow, Ann didn’t doubt that Skye would keep her word. “Thanks. I needed to hear that. I’m terrified about it, but I can’t really talk to my mate about it, can I? I don’t think he’s afraid of anything in this world.”

  “They’re scary, aren’t they? Those aliens? Sexy as fuck, but scary.” Skye smirked at Ann’s shocked face. “Hey, I’m gay, not blind. Those are some fine men that came out of the sky, I can’t lie about that. Doesn’t mean I’d want to sleep with any of them, but I can admit they have great genes. Hopefully, we’ll all have pretty babies out of this whole thing.”

  “I hope so.” Ann settled back into the white folding chair she was in and looked around. Her cow was out in the field, asleep in the warm afternoon sunlight. “I still can’t believe you didn’t know. You must have been really surprised when you came above ground.”