Joel

There was a certain tenseness in the air.

And for once it had nothing to do with me.

The first guests had started to arrive and so everyone jumped into action.

As much as I hated washing up, I longed to be there right now. Who'd have thought that I would want to watch my hands shrivel up like prunes while trying to scrub pebble dashed pans?

Was it wrong that I wanted to trade places with those pans? That I wanted someone to scrub me clean and have the mess that was my life be washed down the plug hole?

I could hear Lyla's voice in my ear, telling me not to be so dramatic. But for once in my life, I felt that it was justified. Here I was, serving people who I mainly despised, while watching my mate, the potential love of my life, proclaim his undying love for another wolf. And all the while, knowing that with one touch of his hand, I could stop it all. But also knowing that with one touch of his hand I would ruin everything.

Without realising it, I let out a huge sigh.

"What's up bud?" a voice at my ear said, making me jump round in shock.

Mark sniggered.

"For fuck's sake Mark," I growled quietly so as not to draw any attention.

"Ooo, moody!" he said, before walking away.

As annoying as he could be, I was pleased that Mark was here tonight. He was going to be a waiter. This was his first event in the post after having some intensive training from Duncan.

I suspected it was so he could keep an eye on me.

But I couldn't think about that right now. I just needed to concentrate on doing my job.

I saw Emily arrive, and I went straight over to her.

"Good evening Miss Hartley, may I take your coat?"

"JOEL," she cried in astonishment, pulling me in for a hug.

I remained rigid, not quite sure what was happening. I saw Jeremy literally stop still in shock.

Emily pulled back, and I saw a faint blush appear on her cheeks.

"That was a little over familiar, wasn't it?" she said quietly, leaning in towards me slightly.

I couldn't help but smile.

"Uuummm," I said, while dramatically stroking my chin pretending to consider it. "Maybe just a tad."

Emily started giggling while taking off her coat and handing it to me.

I hooked it over my left arm, while offering her my right arm to lead her through the manor.

I walked her into the lounge, noticing all eyes turning to us as we entered. I sought out Casper and walked her over, releasing her from my arm.

"Your lady, Sir," I said before bowing, and walking away to go and hang her coat up.

I smirked to myself as I left. I was going to be the model Valet tonight, I could feel it. I wasn't going to give them any reason to doubt me. No reason at all to think that I could be the chink in their armour, the flaw in their plan, the wolf in the flock of sheep.

Ok, ok, I was getting a bit carried away, but after days of wallowing in my own self pity, it felt good to feel like I had some kind of power over them.....even if they didn't know it....and never would.

More guests began to arrive.

Two men and a woman stepped in. I was pretty sure it was Emily's mum and dad, Pamela and Archibald, Archie for short, and another younger guy - possibly Emily's brother?

I tried to look busy while I took sneaky glances in their direction.

Pamela Hartley looked incredibly graceful, with sleek brown hair, much like Emily's. It was her dad, Archie, that drew my eye though. He was obviously the alpha of the pack. He had power just oozing out of him.

Despite his slightly greying hair, and rounded belly, he was still an intimidating figure. He must have been at least 6" 6' and his shoulders looked broad and strong. He had a large beard which somehow made him look even bigger, a bit like how I imagined a giant would look in one of the fairytales my mum read to me as a child.

As Mr and Mrs Hartley made their way passed me, I allowed myself to briefly look at the other man.

He looked like he was in his early thirties, and had jet black hair which was tied up into a neat bun on the back of his head.

If this was Emily's brother, it didn't really make much sense. Once a son reached around 25, he would be expected to take over the pack, so why wasn't he alpha yet?

I suddenly wished Lyla was here. She always kept up with the latest gossip and would know exactly who he was. I never really paid attention to her when she was going on about who did what to who.

I was busy hanging up the coats in the cloakroom when I heard a slightly odd noise.

Tap tap tap.

I peaked back out to see the man with the bun walking towards the rest of the guests, using a cane.

His limp was quite pronounced, and the noise of the cane tapping on the tiled floor, resonated off the walls.

I must have moved a fraction, as his head suddenly snapped my way, his eyes meeting mine.

I ducked back into the cloakroom, my heart clammering wildly.

I remained as still as I could, listening for him walking away. But I heard nothing. No noise at all.

I frowned, wondering how that could be possible. Unless of course, he was just standing there waiting for me to come out.

I looked into the cloakroom, and briefly wondered whether I should climb through the hatch into the next room, but quickly decided against it.

Well, I couldn't stay here all night, so I straightened my shoulders and strolled out of the room, with purpose, like I had somewhere important to be.

As soon as I turned out of the room, I collided straight into a heavy object, sending myself, and said heavy object crashing to the floor.

"Shit!" I said, as I watched the cane clatter onto the floor beside us.

I sat up, groaning as I rubbed my side, which had taken the worst of the impact.

"Are you ok?" I asked the guy who was sprawled out underneath me.

I quickly climbed off him, and fear began to set in, as I realised he hadn't moved at all.

"Hey," I said quietly, while poking him with my foot to see if he was dead.

Suddenly I saw movement and his whole body began to shake. Was he having some sort of a convulsion?

I turned to run to get help, when a sound stopped me in my tracks. I turned back round and stared in disbelief as I saw that the guy was laughing. And I mean about to wet himself, clutching his stomach in pain kind of laughing.

I just stood there, staring at him, in a bit of a daze, wondering whether he was actually a little bit crazy.

Eventually the laughter died down and the guy held out his hand to me.

"So are you just going to stand there or are you going to help me up?"

I quickly leant over and took a firm grasp of his hand, before pulling him onto his feet.

It was a simple gesture, but it was not lost on me that I'd just had skin on skin contact with another male.....who was evidently not my mate.

"I'm Ronan," he said, the name seeming vaguely familiar to me. Maybe Lyla had mentioned him....

"Joel," I replied, while picking up his cane and handing it back to him.

"Ah, so you're the famous Joel my sister has spoken about," he said with a grin on his face.

I rolled my eyes. "As long as it was all good, then yeah, sure, that'll be me."

"Well, it's good to finally put a face to a name, and I can see it's rather a pretty looking face at that."

I swear that if I'd have had a mouthful of drink, it would be all over his face right about now. But instead, my jaw just dropped to the floor.

"Anyway Joel, I have a favour to ask of you."

I nodded at him, not sure I could trust my voice at this moment in time.

"There's been a guy following me around recently, and it's really starting to give me the creeps. Anyway, I saw him hanging around outside your gates a while ago, so please can you keep an eye out for him, and make sure he doesn't get in here."

My eyes widened slightly. This was a big responsibility. After all, he could be anyone. A rapist. A serial killer. A thief. Anyone of those, or maybe all three!

I quickly pulled my attention back to Ronan as he began to give a description of the guy.

"Did you get all that?" he asked.

"I think so," I replied, "let's see, he's got dark hair, with a light stripe down the fringe, dead looking eyes, and he's wearing camouflage combat gear?"

"Great, you've got it. Now keep and eye out for me, and I better get going before they notice I'm missing." And with that he started to limp off.

Just as he was about to go through the door, he turned around and said, "Nice meeting you Joel. That was the most action I've had in days." And then he winked at me before going through the door.

I stood there for a good minute, my head reeling with all this new information.

Was he flirting with me? It definitely felt like he was flirting with me. But who would do that? Gay wolves generally weren't accepted anywhere in our society. And he was going to be the alpha! Or was he?

The limp certainly explained why his dad was still in charge. He wouldn't be much use defending his pack. But was the limp permanent? Or would it heal in time?

It certainly made more sense why the Hartley pack were suddenly trying to make peace with our pack. With the future alpha injured like that, they were definitely vulnerable.

And what about this guy he asked me to look out for? A stripe down his hair? Dead eyes? Combat gear? Was he winding me up?

Anyway, I needed to get back to work.

I dashed off to the kitchen to go and grab the trolley with teas and coffees on.

As I was wheeling it back to the lounge, a gentle, low thump caught my attention. It was the sound of the large front door closing. Normally I wouldn't give the sound a second thought, but after being told about that stalker guy, I felt a slight chill on the back of my neck.

I quickly abandoned my trolley and quietly padded towards the cloakroom area.

I peered my head in the dressing room, and saw nothing untowards. I was about to turn away when a shuffling noise, coming from the dark cloakroom made me freeze on the spot.

Someone was in there.

Ok, it could be a member of staff, but why would they be in there without the light on?

I peered round the corner and saw a figure, rooting through the coats.

My eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, and I gasped as I definitely glimpsed a streak of light hair on the very dark headed man.

My heart started thumping hard in my chest. He was here. Inside the manor. What should I do?

I watched to see if I could figure out what he was doing, and eventually he seemed to find the coat he was looking for.

He held it up, and I was almost positive that it was Ronan's coat. And then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys.

I needed to go and get help.

But it was too late.

He put the coat down and started heading back out of the cloakroom, straight towards me.

I looked around in a panic, trying to find somewhere to hide, then quickly ducked behind a rather large potted plant.

As he emerged into the light, I could see that Ronan's description had been very accurate. He had dark brown, almost black hair, with a striking slash of silver going down the front. He was also wearing dark camouflage combat pants and a t-shirt, and they were splattered in mud, like he'd been hiding in the bushes in the garden.

I suddenly panicked as he headed towards the door.

It was too late to get help. I had to do something.

So without much thought (because if I had thought about it, I would have realised that he was considerably bigger than me), I ran at him emitting a sort of growl/scream, before hurling myself at him in an attempt to stop him getting away.

It was like time slowed down, and as I leaped into the air, the man turned around, with clear shock on his face.

In that brief second, I noticed 2 things about him. Firstly that his eyes, like his hair were silver in colour, and although they were unusual, did not look dead to me at all. And secondly, and maybe more importantly given my current situation, the guy was ripped. I mean like action man ripped.

But by this time I was past the point of no return, and I felt my body flying through the air towards him, in what I now knew would probably result in certain death.

My body collided with his and it felt like I hit a brick wall. He didn't even flinch, but then my head, carried by the momentum of my leap and sudden jarring of my body, whipped forward resulting in my forehead colliding with his nose with a force strong enough to emit a bone tingling 'crack' from the centre of his face.

The guy staggered backwards, his hand flying to cover his nose, and I could already see some blood oozing out from between his fingers.

I somehow managed to land back on my feet and then just stood there in shock, conflicted between feeling immensely proud that I had done such damage, or extremely fearful that I had just angered the beast.

"WHAT THE FUCK!" he shouted in my direction.

I should have been scared, but something about the site of this big muscular man, with blood dripping out of his nose, and tears in his eyes, just made me want to laugh.

I bit my lip, but not before a sort of snorting noise made its way out of my mouth.

Funnily enough, that seemed to anger him even more and in two strides he was right in front of me. He picked me up using the collar of my shirt, with just one hand, letting me dangle in the air, while he wiped away more blood with the other.

He stepped forwards and slammed me into the wall, knocking the wind out of my lungs and leaving me gasping for breath.

"You, you little piece of shit are gonna.."

"PUT HIM DOWN RIGHT NOW."

I was instantly dropped onto the floor, in a heap at his feet.

I stayed still, concentrating on getting air back into my lungs, before turning to see a furious looking Emily marching over to the guy.

I quickly tried to get back onto my feet, worried that the guy might attack Emily instead.

"Nathan, what on earth is going on here?" she asked.

I looked at her curiously, surprised that she knew his name.

"Nathan?" I choked out.

"Yes, Nathan, my father's Beta," she clarified.

I felt my face drain of colour. Oh my god. I was soo dead. I had just attacked a beta! And not just any beta, the beta of one of the most influential wolf packs in the country. And a beta who looked like he ate wolves like me for breakfast.

I staggered back and leant against the wall, before I fell over.

"Oh fuck, fuck, fuck, I am soo sorry," I wheezed out.

Suddenly there was a bit of a comotion from the corridor and Ronan burst forward whooping and clapping in glee.

All attention turned to him, and so I slowly started to edge away.

"Oh my my Nathan, look at your pretty little face," Ronan said in amusement.

"I should have known you'd have something to do with this," Nathan growled at Ronan.

"What on earth is going on out here?"

I paused in my attempt at escaping when Casper entered the hallway as his eyes fixed on me straight away.

"Going somewhere are we Cub?" Casper said raising an eyebrow.

Emily and Nathan looked round and were clearly surprised at how far I'd managed to get away unseen.

"Is one of you going to tell me what happened?" Emily asked, the curiosity written across her face.

"Oh I think it'd be best coming from the Cub here," said Ronan, clearly reveling in the mischief that he'd managed to create.

I wanted the ground to open and swallow me up.

"Well......" I started, looking up to meet Casper's curious gaze.

".....you see the thing is, I thought he was an intruder, and he'd taken some keys from Ronan's jacket.....so I sort of....well....I kind of tried to stop him."

Casper's eyes scanned across to Nathan and then back to me. I tried not to feel to insulted by the none too subtle raise of his eyebrows.

"Yes, I did that!" I snapped at him, then quickly lowered my head in regret.

Casper walked over to me, making me try to take a step back, only to realise I was already up against the wall.

"Well done Cub," Casper said patting my shoulder, "you did well."

If I wasn't so relieved at not getting in trouble for this, I would have felt severely patronised by his tone.

"He got lucky," was all that Nathan mumbled, still dabbing at his nose, and glaring at me.

"Here," I said, quickly pulling a small towel off the tea trolley and handing it to Nathan.

As soon as he took it off me, I stepped back out of his reach.

"Come on Nathan," Casper said, "lets go and get you cleaned up."

"Hang on, I just need to go and get my clothes out of Ronan's car."

My head swung round to look at Ronan, which made him chortle with laughter.

"I'd shut up now if I were you," Emily said to Ronan, "or I'll let dad know about your little game."

Ronan did stop laughing, but only so he could stick his tongue out at his sister.

Honestly, how old was the guy?

While Casper and Nathan disappeared, I went back to the tea trolley and wheeled it into the lounge.

I stared at the coffee longingly.

Although to be honest, I could have done with something a lot stronger than coffee.