1 Chapter 1 Jazmin's POV

I sit here in the passenger seat of my Stepfather's Ford F150. Ronald is driving down the I-5 Freeway heading south. Not a word has been spoken between us since we left the house that I'd been living in with my mother and Ronald since I was five years old. I know where we're going. We're heading to Mexico.

Ronald had lost his temper and almost beat my mother to death. His biker friends who turned out to be his pack had taken her into hiding so she could heal. Good for my mother, not so good for me. My prom date Tony had used my mom as a tool to threaten me with so I wouldn't break up with him.

Tony's family was rich, and they had a lot of friends in high places giving them power too if they needed it. I'm positive he'll come looking for me as soon as he finds out my mom has disappeared. Now when he comes looking, he'll only find that I'm long gone and the house is destroyed. I wish I could see the look on his face when he realizes I've slipped right through his fingers. With my mother safe he had no leverage over me. It wasn't always like this. Using Mom made what could have been a great relationship into one of lies and distrust.

If Tony had gone about getting into a relationship with me the right way, I would've probably become head over heels in love with him. I've always been drawn to him. I'd liked him ever since I was fourteen. I noticed him as soon as he walked into class. I'd never seen him before so he must have been new. I watched him as he stood next to the teacher's desk while talking to her. Mrs. Green pointed in my direction and he walked over to my table and sat down. We were going to be desk buddies for the entire year in this math class. Not that I was complaining. Eye candy was great in a boring class.

Tony's medium brown hair was cut short on the sides and longer on top which he spiked with gel. He has hazel eyes that switched between blue green hazel to amber green hazel. I liked that his eyes changed like mine. His eyes didn't change as drastically as mine. He kept that green hint behind it at all times where mine changed to a whole different color. His long eyelashes fit perfectly with those bedroom eyes.

I couldn't figure out what Nationality Tony was until he showed me a picture of his parents. His father was Italian while his mother was Romanian and Scottish. He would call himself a mutt because he was mixed. I thought that was cute since he was a pure blooded wolf and a strong one at that. I was the mutt being half human. He was a tall skinny kid then. By the time we went to prom together he had filled out to six foot three with an athletic build since he had joined the football team as a running back. His hair never changed except now he has red and light brown lowlights which he ended up with from being in the sun more. His jaw had squared off giving him a more manly look instead of his baby face one. He no longer looked like that little kid in ninth grade. He looked like a man now.

From the beginning I'd felt like there was something pulling us together but there's no hope for us now. Some things can't be taken back, and I don't think he's gonna change. Tony was what clans like to call a rogue. Rogues were shifters who didn't belong to an Official Clan. Sure rogues would build their own packs but they weren't given the protection of the government. They were on their own. Official Clans received their own territory in one of the country's National state Parks. There was a protection field around the Clans land. Anyone who wasn't a wolf would become disorientated if they got too close to the protection field. This caused them to turn around and go back to where they came from.

Of course nothing was free from the government. In return for the protection and land all male wolves had to serve in the armed forces. They joined special squads made up of only shifters where they would go out on dangerous missions. Shifters were stronger than humans. The strongest shifters out there were the dragons. Next in power were the bears followed by the tigers, lions, and panthers. Wolves tied with the cheetah clans in the power line up. Wolves were looked down on since they were at the bottom in this line up. Rogue wolves were thought of worse.

Most rogues never found their mates so when one did they were known for taking their mates by force. Even kidnapped them from their clans when they had to. Tony was at the least a second generation rogue since his father was a rogue. He probably learned everything he used to trap me into our relationship from his dad. His dad said to do this, his dad said to do it like that. I hated it every time he'd said that. I don't know much about his mother except that his father kidnapped her from her clan in another state and moved her to California with him and that his mother and father were mates.

I thought at one point he was my mate because of how strong my feelings were about him. Hell even with what he did I still couldn't completely put out the feelings I have for him. When my wolf still hadn't surfaced by the age of sixteen I knew I couldn't be his mate. Those with too much human blood in their veins don't develop their wolves. Females didn't have heats and males didn't have ruts. It's not that they don't have wolves inside them. Their wolves never wake up. They can't wake up. The power of their wolves is too small. All those instincts we get from our wolves never show up. So feelings of being drawn to a mate doesn't happen to wolves like me. I've never heard of a human being mated to a shifter of any kind. Since my wolf never showed up on top of never going into heat I figured I didn't have enough wolf blood. I knew my mother was a wolf but I knew nothing about my father so my only guess was he was human.

Even knowing all that I knew, I still wanted Tony even though he was a full blooded wolf. I still wanted him even though I knew one day he might find his mate and leave me for her. He wouldn't be able to help it. My Mother told me the pull of the mate bond was amazing and dangerous. She said there was no fighting it. Even if you did try to fight the pull to your mate you would still end up running into them over and over. Like fate was forcing you to face each other until you gave up and accepted the bond. If your mate belonged to a rival Clan it could cause a war depending on the rank of those involved. If your mate was already with someone else with a pack bond that person would most likely plot against you to take you out of the picture to keep them.

Pack bonds were different from mate bonds. A male could bite the neck of any female to create a pack bond which would be broken if he found his mate. Where a mate bond is permanent and could only be broken when one of them dies. The male doesn't have to bite the neck of their mate. If he does bite her neck it causes the bond to become stronger to the point where you can feel each other's feelings and possibly even talk to each other with their minds. I always liked the idea of being able to talk to my mate no matter how far they were from me. My mom had ruined that dream by telling me that it was extremely rare to be able to talk mentally. She had also said that when a pack bond breaks it's painful to everyone involved but it's nothing like the pain from losing your mate. The pain created from a mate dying wasn't just emotional it was physical as well and could even kill you.

If only Tony had done things differently. Using my Mother as a tool against me to get what he wanted was unforgivable. He didn't have to do that. I never fought him or told him no. I hated his father for telling him to use my mother and I hated Tony for deciding to listen to him. There was this song my mother used to listen to that had one line in it that said "It's a thin line between love and hate." That was so true. How I love to hate him and hate that I love him.

Now I couldn't trust him, and I was scared shitless at what would happen when he found me. Not if he found me but when he found me. He had enough resources at his disposal to find me no matter where I went. I'll have to always stay on the move to stay ahead of him. It would only stop once he found his mate. There was a time when I wished he'd never find his mate. Now I only hoped he'd find her as soon as possible cause only the Goddess knew why he wanted me when I wasn't even his mate. He hadn't bitten my neck so he must have known it would have no effect since my wolf was asleep and could acknowledge the mate bite. That means he's aware I'm not his mate yet he still chases me. I just don't understand his thinking. He's wasting his time and should spend that time and resources on finding his mate.