All We See & Seem (Timber Wolves)

  All We See

  & Seem

  A Timber Wolves Companion

  A novella by

  Tammy Blackwell

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  Also by Tammy Blackwell

  DESTINY BINDS

  TIME MENDS

  FATE SUCCUMBS

  AT FIRST SIGHT:

  A TIMBER WOLVES COMPANION Published in

  the United States

  Copyright © 2013

  All rights held by the author.

  Just in case the boys turning into wild animals under the light of the full moon didn’t make it obvious, this is a work of fiction. All characters and events exist only in the mind of the writer. Any resemblance to real life is a figment of your imagination.

  Cover Design: Victoria Faye (www.victoriafaye.com)

  Cataloging Information

  Blackwell, Tammy

  All We See & Seem/ Tammy Blackwell. - Kindle ed.

  Summary : Jase Donovan always knew exactly what to expect from college: frat parties, coeds, and a spot on one of the most prestigious basketball teams in the world. It was the life he was destined for... until his sister became the Alpha Pack's Most Wanted. Now he's playing a dangerous game of espionage and subterfuge with the most powerful Shifters and Seers in the world, and if he loses, his life won't be the only one on the line.

  Talley Matthews has always been able to look on the sunshine-and-rainbows side of life, but it's getting harder and harder every day with the knowledge that one friend is on the run and another is barely clinging to life. To complicate matters even more, after being pegged as an Alpha Pack Potential, she's having to fend off advances from Shifters who want to use her to gain a little power. The attention might be nice if her heart didn't already belong to someone else.

  In this companion to the best-selling Timber Wolves trilogy, readers will finally discover the path Jase and Talley took to discover their love for one another.

  [1. Werewolves - Fiction. 2. Kentucky - Fiction. 3. Colleges and universities - Fiction. 4. Supernatural.]

  “Is all that we see or seem

  But a dream within a dream?”

  -Edgar Allan Poe

  Author’s Note:

  At First Sight is a companion to the Timber Wolves trilogy. The events in this novella take place at the same time as the beginning of Fate Succumbs. The epilogue contains Fate Succumbs spoilers. Consider yourself warned.

  Chapter 1

  In the dream, she was beautiful. Her bright blue eyes were offset by the thick black hair brushing against her bare shoulders. Her skin looked soft and smooth, the shade much paler than the hand cupping her cheek. Even though she couldn’t see his face, she knew it was him.

  “Jase,” she whispered just before his lips met hers--

  “Is this seat taken?”

  Talley Matthews gave a squeak of surprise, spilling at least half of her Dr. Pepper down the front of her shirt. The cold soda running down into her bra made her squeak a second time.

  “Oh my God. I am so sorry.” Talley looked up into the flushed face of a guy she’d never seen before. He grabbed a handful of napkins and reached towards her. At the last minute, he realized where he would have to sponge and froze with his arm just inches away from her boobs. “Sorry. So, so…” His hand dropped to his side abruptly. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s alright,” Talley said, pulling her shirt away from her now chilled skin. “Happens to me all the time.” Not that she made it a habit to pour drinks down the front of her shirt on a regular basis, but public humiliation was such a constant in her life that it didn’t really count as humiliation any more. At some point, you simply have to stop caring about such things and realize your life isn’t going to end just because you’re standing in the middle of a crowded college food court hosting your very own unplanned wet t-shirt contest.

  Talley snuck a glance around, and sure enough, some girls with polka-dotted Greek letters splayed across their chests were snickering behind their hands. She might have been able to convince herself they were merely sharing a humorous anecdote about their professor if they hadn’t been looking right at her. Her face grew at least fifty degrees warmer as she began gathering up her stuff, including her textbook, which was now as soaked as the front of her shirt. If she hurried, she could get back to her dorm room, change, and make it to her Spanish lab before the TA locked the door. Maybe.

  “Here, let me help.” Mr. So Sorry reached for her tray. Unfortunately, he pulled it towards him at the exact same moment she was picking it up. A tidal wave of her remaining soda swept over the table. “Oh God. I’m—”

  “Sorry. I know.” He looked more than sorry, actually. His face was so red it almost matched his hair, which was bright enough to make a Weasley jealous. His brown eyes were stretched to their limit. If she didn’t know better, Talley would have thought he was more scared than apologetic. “It’s no big. Promise.”

  “No, it is. I’ve screwed up everything and completely ruined your lunch.” His eyes dipped down, and Talley tried to rearrange her arms so they would cover the majority of her breasts. “And your shirt. I’ve probably killed it, too.”

  “It’s a cotton t-shirt from the bookstore. It’ll wash, and even if it doesn’t, it’s not exactly irreplaceable. Really, it’s no big deal. I just need to go change—”

  “Take my shirt!”

  “I don’t think—”

  But it was too late. He was already jerking it over his head. Thankfully, he had on a plain white t-shirt underneath, so she was spared the awkwardness of standing around with a topless guy.

  “Here,” he said, shoving it towards her. “Please. Take it.”

  Talley tensed. She wanted to take his shirt. Taking it would mean making it to class on time and not having to walk to the complete other side of campus in a shirt now rendered transparent. If she was a normal girl, one of the millions walking around the world safe in the knowledge they were smaller than 99% of fully grown males, then she would have reached for it without a second thought. But she wasn’t one of those girls. She sized up the guy who was looking at her expectantly. He wasn’t big by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn’t exactly one of those beanpole guys either.

  “I’d hate to steal your clothes…” And would hate even more to suffer the humiliation of giving it back to you because it doesn’t fit.

  “Please. I insist.”

  Don’t be rude, her mother’s voice chided in her head. It’s not this poor boy’s fault you’re overweight.

  “Thank you,” Talley said, attempting to turn the shirt to see what was stamped on the label, not that knowing would help. It wasn’t exactly like she could drop twenty-five pounds between the table and the bathroom. He was holding it in the middle, so she reached for the collar, but he moved his hand at the last second, brushing it up against hers.

  “I really am sorry, Potential Matthews,” his voice echoed in her head. “This isn’t how I intended for this to go.”

  Talley tried not to let the surprise she felt show on her face. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to hearing other people’s thoughts. As a Soul Seer she was able to pull thoughts and emotions out of anyone’s head with a mere touch. She’d learned to block unwanted information from filtering into her head, but since she’d been purposefully eavesdropping, she expected to See something the moment his hand brushed against hers. What she wasn’t expecting was for him to use he
r Sight to talk directly to her. Even if she’d realized he was a Shifter, which she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have expected him to start brain-to-brain communications on first contact.

  “As I said, you have nothing to apologize for,” Talley answered aloud since she could only take thoughts out of heads, not put them in. “If you will wait just a moment…?”

  “Walker. Walker Helkamp.”

  From what Talley could remember, the Helkamp Pack was located in Arizona, and boasted a grand total of four Shifters who were completing the Change during the full moon. Walker wasn’t the first unmated young Shifter to seek Talley out since she was tapped to be a future Alpha Pack Seer, but all of the other guys had come from prominent Shifter families. The Helkamps weren’t just small, they were considered inconsequential. None of their members were Dominants, which explained why Talley didn’t immediately realize what Walker was. She’d identified all the others on sight, their dominance buzzing over her skin, making it feel like ants were on parade up and down her arms. From Walker, she got nothing. Not even a tingle.

  “I’ll be right back, Walker.” With any luck, wearing your clean, dry shirt.

  “I look forward to it,” he said with a smile.

  Talley was too distracted by the problem that was Walker of the Helkamp Pack to notice if there were any blatant stares or pitying looks thrown her way as she walked to the bathroom. For the life of her, she just couldn’t figure out why he would have sought her out. With the others, it had been obvious. As a newly tapped Potential, Talley had the eyes and ears of the Alpha Pack, the ruling body over the Shifters and Seers of the world. The other Shifters came with the hope that by attaching themselves to Talley, they would also gain the attention of the Alpha Pack. All four of them were young, handsome, and strong. They were all wolf Shifters, which are universally recognized as more dominant than coyote Shifters. Walker was most definitely a coyote, and if Talley was being perfectly honest, not all that handsome. He wasn’t exactly ugly, but the others had all been very typical Dominants. Their bodies were lean and muscular, and they carried themselves with so much confidence they were impossible to ignore. One of them was so attractive that Talley had waited several hours before forcing herself to touch him. She was enjoying feeling like he was really interested in her, that all of his smiles and compliments were genuine. Of course, she eventually did brush up against his arm, and because of her Sight, knew he was constantly comparing her to the girlfriend he’d just broken up with so he could try to climb up the Shifter ranks by charming poor, clueless Talley Matthews.

  Talley made sure he was in a car on his way back to North Dakota by nightfall.

  Walker was different than the others in every possible way. His looks and level of dominance allowed him to slip into the background, where the others shone bright no matter where they went. Where Dominants were smooth and charming, Walker was clumsy and awkward. Most interestingly, though, was Walker knew what she Saw. None of the others had, which had worked to her advantage. None of them suspected that she would be able to pull their thoughts and feelings from their head with just the briefest of touches. Walker, on the other hand, not only knew, but purposefully used it to communicate with her. Which begged the question, who had sent him?

  Chapter 2

  “Sarvarna,” Jase Donovan clutched his phone in one hand and a can of Red Bull in the other. “How is my most beloved queen this evening?”

  “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

  Jase eyed the blue and red can with a burning desire. Would she consider it rude if he took a swig while on the phone with her? He wasn’t sure, but since it was a possibility, he decided to sit it on his desk just in case. Above all else, he needed the Alpha Female to only feel warm and fuzzy emotions where he was concerned.

  “It’s noon here.”

  “Ah, but I know how you college boys are.”

  College boy. Jase didn’t really identify himself that way. Maybe it was because this wasn’t what college was supposed to be like. Six weeks in, and he hadn’t been to his first frat party, seduced a single coed, or slept past seven in the morning. Instead of living in the Wildcat Lodge with the rest of the team, he was living in a dorm that smelled of pee and hadn’t touched a basketball in months. The partying and girls he didn’t really regret, but he couldn’t help mourning loss of the future that was supposed to be his. It was selfish of him, two of the people he cared for most in this world were in much worse situations, but still he felt the loss of his dream as if it were a person. He eyed the energy drink again and this time couldn’t resist its siren song.

  “Sorry to ruin your mental image,” he said once he had drained the remaining third of the can while keeping the phone at arm’s length so as not to offend the Alpha Female with his gulping noises. “I’m currently in the too-much-to-do-to-sleep phase of college life. I haven’t seen my bed in days.” Which was a lie. He had seen it, but only for a few short hours here and there. Balancing a full course load with political espionage was really cutting into his beauty sleep.

  “Ahhh… Caffeine IVs. Rumpled hair. Falling asleep in the library, your glasses pressed into your forehead.”

  “You forget. I’m a Shifter. I have no need of glasses.”

  “Potential Donovan, if I want you to wear adorable horn rimmed glasses in my fantasy, then let it be so.”

  “Of course, your majesty. Forgive me. I meant to say, you must have spies keeping an eye on me since your description is one hundred percent accurate.”

  Not for the first time, Jase looked around his room, searching for the tell-tale reflection of a camera lens. He was just joking around when he said that Sarvarna had spies following him, but once he said it, he feared it was true. She was, after all, the most powerful woman in the supernatural world, and Jase was definitely on her radar. If she wanted to know what he was doing every minute of every day, he had no doubt she could get that information with a snap of her fingers.

  She doesn’t know anything, he told himself to calm the pounding in his chest. If she had any idea of what you’ve been doing, you would be dead already.

  Surprisingly, that pep talk didn’t really help all that much.

  “My fantasy also has you sitting in your dorm room right now in jeans and nothing else.” Her silky British accent made the already suggestive statement sound even more scandalous. If she hadn’t been married or completely evil, he might have found it tantalizing. But since she and her husband, the most powerful Shifter in the world, tried to kill his sister, he mostly felt skeeved out. He crossed his arms over his Captain America shirt as if to hide himself from her lecherous fantasy.

  But no matter how he felt, he had a job to do. “You do have spies watching me, don’t you?” He forced his face into a smile and hoped the effort reflected in his voice. “Someone is sending you a live feed, right? You can actually see me lying across this bed, can’t you?”

  “Mmmm…. If I could, I’m sure it would make a most delicious picture.”

  Jase was starting to feel the kind of dirty a shower wouldn’t fix.

  “To what do I owe the honor of your call?” he asked, changing the subject from what he was wearing and where he was wearing it. “Did you need to know what color to paint the walls of my room? Because I’ve always been partial to a nice milk chocolate color.”

  “Milk chocolate? You should have said something earlier. The walls are already a nice grey with a hint of blue. I hope that is to your liking.” Although, she couldn’t really care less if it was to his liking or not. The main concern was it was to her liking. It hadn't taken Jase long to figure that one out.

  There was a time not too long ago when Jase had wanted to give Sarvarna the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t question that there was corruption in the Alpha Pack, but in the beginning he’d believed Sarvarna to be an innocent bystander. Talley thought it was because Sarvarna was beautiful, and if he were being honest, that probably had something to do with it, but mostly he hadn’t thought a girl could be so cold-
hearted. His experience with people of the female persuasion, which was considerable, made him believe they truly were the gentler sex. Even his sister Scout, who could hold her own in a fight with anyone of any gender, was more tender hearted and compassionate than any of the guys he knew. So, initially he believed Sarvarna to be under the power of the evil, controlling Stefan, the husband who had taken her as his bride despite the seventeen year age difference.

  He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  After just a few days with the Alpha Pack he saw who was pulling the strings. Sarvarna wasn’t some damsel in distress who needed saving, but a power hungry queen, dolling out poisoned apples to anyone who got in her way. And Jase had led the Fairest of Them All into the woods, handed her off to a living time bomb, and then crawled back to the castle in an attempt to attempt to distract the queen from their trail.

  As far as Jase could remember, the woodsman ended up dead in this story.

  “I was wondering if you knew the location of Pack Leader Hagan,” Sarvarna continued, upping the difficulty level of this conversation. Idle chatter and a bit of flirting weren't effortless, but they were easy enough. Evasion and subterfuge were a bit more challenging. Luckily, he’d picked up a few weapons along the way.

  “No idea,” he said, meaning it. He purposefully never knew where Toby was, or the specifics of what he was doing.

  Unfortunately, Sarvarna seemed to have a much better idea of his cousin and former Pack Leader’s whereabouts. “He’s with the Northcutt Pack in Virginia. Isn’t that interesting?”

  Jase was sure she would find it more than interesting if she knew Toby was there to gather support to overthrow the Alpha Pack.