[Gemma]I got away from the crowd and made it into the restaurant and it went from a loud, crowded space, to something quieter and more tame. I was grateful for the relative silence. There was something about the place that was calming. Maybe it was just being away from all those other werewolves. There was a sign that said to wait to be seated. I was more than willing to do that. Getting away from all those people was worth it. The bell above the door jingled and another person entered the restaurant. I was focused on my phone, sending a text to Carmen and Ash. They both wanted to be updated as much as possible. After a while, the hostess came and smiled. I put my phone away. “Just two? Right this way,” she said. She turned and walked away before I could correct her. The person behind me chuckled. I turned to him. He was a handsome man. Definitely a warrior. He had dark brown hair and glittering green eyes. He was still laughing. “We better chase her down if we want to get a table,” I told him. “That’s a confident way to ask a guy to eat dinner with you. Your treat?” he asked. “Only if you get the next one.” The man laughed and offered me his elbow. I accepted it and we headed off in the direction the hostess went in. We found her at a nice little booth. She handed us the menus and scampered off to goddess only knows where. I held out my hand to my dinner date. “Gemma Holden, Hallowed Moon.” He accepted it. “Drake Franks, Daylight Moon. Nice to meet another member of an Oregon pack.”“And another Gamma blood wolf. Franks is the name of the Gamma of Daylight Moon.” I giggled. “I knew Holden sounded familiar. You’re right. My cousin, Todd, is the Gamma of Daylight Moon now.” “My cousin, Ben, is the Gamma of Hallowed Moon. It seems like we already have a lot in common, Drake.” I winked at him. “Alas, all but being each other’s mates. Wouldn’t that have been hilarious?” he laughed. I nodded. “People would have gone on forever about how we were perfectly matched, since we’re both Gamma blood. So, what do you do for your pack?” I asked as I looked over the menu. “I’m head warrior. What about you?” “A week after I get back, I’ll be taking over as assistant to the Gamma. Right now, I don’t work for the pack. I’m working at a construction company my best friend’s mate owns.”“I bet you look ѕexy holding a hammer.” I laughed. “I do, but I work in the office at the construction company.” “That’s a shame.” We fell into a companionable silence as we read the menu and it wasn’t long before a server came to take our order. The server told us about a dessert special for mates and we were forced to tell him we weren’t mates. We didn’t want him to get in trouble for offering it to us when we weren’t mates. He took our menus and went off to put our orders into the kitchen. I looked at Drake. He was rather handsome. “I know that look. A word of warning, don’t hook up at the national conference. Look at all those wolves out there.” He pointed behind me. I turned to see people pressing against each other, trying to move around. Two males got angry at each other and started fighting. Suddenly, two warriors pulled them apart and hauled them off. People were growling and pushing at each other. “Looks intense,” I replied. “Yeah, it is. More intense than regionals. There’s a reason why packs only get to be a certain size before they split into another site. Getting this many werewolves together in one place is a recipe for disaster. They get angry, volatile, possessive, and aggressive. If you’re caught fighting, you get put into the cells. “You can buy your way out once, but a second time means you stay there for the whole conference and your pack is fined for the inconvenience. Hooking up at the conference can start fights. If the guy you hook up with finds his mate, she will come after your ass. If you hook up with more than one guy, a fight can break out among them. “My pack instituted a rule that there is no hooking up at nationals. I’m not going to risk it. I may be the head warrior of my pack, but my face is too pretty to get messed up in some stupid, hormone-driven brawl,” Drake explained. “I hope my pack mates figure it out. We only brought fifty with us,” I told him. “A lot of packs only bring older people, ones who have been through at least three regionals. The odds of their mate being in the region is lessened the longer they go without finding them. My pack takes whoever can pay their way in, plus ten omegas that we pay for ourselves. Your pack needs to devise a way to do it, too.”“I’ll talk to Ben once I start in his office. We selected ours by lottery because it was such short notice that we’d even be able to go. Ranked blood automatically got in. My other cousin and my best friend were supposed to come, but they found their mates.” He nodded. “I get that. It feels like everyone’s finding their mates.” “Yeah, it makes you wonder if you’ll ever find yours, doesn’t it?” Our food was delivered and we ate while talking about our packs, noting similarities and differences. Daylight Moon was one of the packs we had an alliance with, but it was a very old one from the first Alphas of each pack. We just kept it going.After our meal, I paid and we left to go check things out. There was dancing in the street with a band that had set up on the stage the Chief Alpha had been on. The side roads leading away from the center of town were lined with stalls. Some had food, others had things people could buy, trinkets, flowers, and things like that. Drake stayed near me but didn’t touch me. We could be friends, but if our mates caught too much of the other’s scent on us it might make them think we were more than that. Neither one of us wanted that. We walked and talked a lot. Both of us were on alert to find our mates, but we were having fun. It started getting dark, and I wanted to head back to the campsite. We’d made a circuit around the bulk of downtown and hadn’t found our mates. He agreed to go because there was still most of a week for us to look. Plus, this would get us to where more people were, and it was possible our mates had arrived. He was in a campground on the other side of town and told me he figured it would be worth it to check if his mate was in our campground. If he smelled her, he could wait by her tent until she got back. As we headed out of town, we saw more and more couples making out or staring into each other’s eyes. We couldn’t help but smile. They found their mate. That was the dream, the hope we all had. We passed a trio of larger men, and one grabbed my arm, pulling me to him. I sniffed, and there was a scent on him that made my heart ache, but he wasn’t my mate. He held me tight as I tried to pull away. “I think I’ll have this one for tonight. You’re a pretty little thing,” the asshole holding me laughed. “Let me go. You’re not my mate and I don’t want you,” I replied with a growl. “Aw, kitten has fangs. I don’t see a mark, sweetheart.” “Let her go. Assaulting women at conferences is an offense they can fine your pack for,” Drake warned. “My father is the Alpha of my pack. I don’t have to listen to the same rules as the rest of you. I like my women with a little fight in them.” They trained me as a warrior and I wouldn’t let myself be taken by some asshole who depended on his daddy’s rank to get him out of trouble. I could afford to buy myself out of the cells. “This is your warning. I’ll have to kick your ass if you don’t let me go,” I told him. He laughed and shook me. “A female is no match for me. Just give it up, sweetheart. I can show you a good time.” I twisted my arm and used my other hand to grab the wrist of the hand that held me and pulled it off my arm. After I had him moved into position, I kicked his knee, dropping him down, then nailed him between the legs. When he hunched over, I grabbed his hair and brought my knee crashing into his nose. His friends seemed frozen as I backed off. Two strong hands gripped my arms and held them behind my back. I didn’t struggle. It had to be one of the wandering warriors, because there was another on the asshole in moments, holding him in the same way as he bled from his nose. “What’s going on here?” the one holding me asked. “That asshole wouldn’t let me go. He’s not my mate and didn’t accept no for an answer. I warned him that I’d have to kick his ass.” “The witnesses will come along. This is a matter for the Chief Alpha,” the one holding the asshole said. They started hauling us off to the cells. Drake was right behind us. I was grateful for that. If my cousin would believe anyone, it would be another Gamma blood wolf. I knew Ben wouldn’t be mad about me defending myself, but there was still a whole week of this event and I didn’t want to have him be mad if this guy decided to get revenge. We were taken to a jail outside of downtown and I was put into a cell with the asshole being put in another cell. These two cells were empty, but the others already had several people in them. The warriors brought chairs for the witnesses to sit in while they were getting the Chief Alpha. I was upset, not just about being manhandled and arrested. It was only the first day of the conference and I was already in trouble with the Chief Alpha. I couldn’t stop the tears as they came. All I wanted was to come here to find my mate. After a while, I saw the Chief Alpha enter the area. He looked pissed. I got up from the cot I was sitting on and went to stand by the cell door. “I want names, ranks, and pack names, now. The girl first,” he growled. “Gemmina Holden, Gamma blood wolf from the Hallowed Moon Pack in Oregon,” I said. “And you, boy?” “Timothy Cook, Alpha blood wolf from the Radiant Moon Pack in California,” the asshole answered. “And the witnesses?” Drake answered with his name, rank, and pack, followed by the others. They were both Beta blood wolves from the same pack as the asshole. They looked like twins. “My warriors gave an initial report about what happened and what Miss Holden said upon them breaking up the fight. You tell me now, Mr. Cook. What happened?” Chief Alpha Pappas said. “I don’t know. She just walked up and started hitting me. I grabbed her arm to stop her, but she attacked. I didn’t fight back because she’s a female. She should be ejected from this conference. She’s a hazard to other wolves.” He was lying, but he didn’t smell like it. His friends were nodding along emphatically. I wanted to scream and hit him a few more times. “Tell me your side again, Miss Holden,” the Chief Alpha said solemnly. “I was walking with my friend back to where my camp was set up. He wanted to see if his mate was in that area. That man grabbed me by the wrist as I passed and said he would ‘have’ me tonight. He isn’t my mate and I’m only interested in finding my mate right now. “He wouldn’t let me go when I told him to, so I warned him I would hurt him if he didn’t. My pack trains females to be able to protect themselves in case of attack. I’m one of the best in my training class. I knew I could protect myself if I needed to. So I did when he still refused. “Chief Alpha, I don’t know how he lied, but he lied. You can ask anyone in my pack, I don’t randomly attack people. That’s not part of my personality,” I told him pleadingly. “She’s the one who’s lying, Chief Alpha! She didn’t think she’d get in trouble and now that she is, she thinks she can get away with it!” the asshole insisted. “Mr. Cook, do you understand what it is to be Chief Alpha? The added power and abilities the goddess gives us in order to care for all of the werewolves in the country? I could smell your lie. This is not the first time someone from your pack has caused trouble here, either. Your older brother, Gregory ended up in my cells at the last conference. “I don’t know why the Cook brothers think they’re above the law, but I will not permit it. I am contacting your Gamma and you will spend this week in the cells. If the two of you do anything against Miss Holden or Mr. Franks, then I will put you right in here with him. Do you understand?” “Yes, Chief Alpha,” the twins replied. “Miss Holden, I will release you, but if you cause another problem during the conference, I will not hesitate to lock you up as well.” “Thank you, Chief Alpha. I promise I’ll be good. You won’t have to deal with me again,” I vowed. He nodded to the warriors and they let me out of the cell. I bowed to the Chief Alpha and he let me and Drake leave before the twins could. The way he turned on them, I was sure he was going to give them a scolding about agreeing with their friend’s lie. Drake walked me back to my campgrounds and gave me a brief hug before leaving me with my pack. I was shaking and decided to go to sleep. That was way too much drama for one day.