Becoming the Alpha (6 page)

Just like that we were back to business. I grabbed my bag off the floor and dug around in it until I found what I wanted. I pulled the tape recorder out and set it on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Then I sat back down on the sofa and pointed at the opposite cushion.

“You bet your ass I do.” I was nothing if not a consummate professional. I turned on the tape recorder and waited.

“When did Markus tell you he wanted you to take over being the alpha?” I wasn’t going to mess around, and I hoped that Lukas didn’t expect me to. He had sat down across from me with a wary expression on his face.

“Practically every day of my life after he formed the Greyelf Grizzly clan and became the alpha,” Lukas said.

I blinked. That wasn’t what I expected. “Yet you and your brother have been estranged for quite some time.”

“No, we’ve never been estranged.”

The answer was short, and that wasn’t going to cut it. I decided to take another tack. “You haven’t lived in Greyelf for the last ten years. How would you describe your relationship with your brother then?”

“Complex.” Lukas sighed. “My brother and I didn’t see eye to eye on many things when I was younger. It took a bit of distance for me to appreciate that. Over the last few years though, we grew close. Markus asked my opinion about many things around the inner workings of the clan. He wanted to be sure that even though I no longer lived in Greyelf I still felt the connection to the people here. And, of course, he asked me to watch over clan members who moved into the city.”

This was something interesting to delve into; I never considered Lukas the caregiver type. “Look over them how?”

“Kind of like a Welcome Wagon,” Lukas said with a wry grin. “To show them the ropes. Many of the clan members don’t want to live here in Greyelf or other rural areas for their whole lives, but they don’t necessarily feel comfortable in an urban environment. It can feel…confining. But I had made the transition successfully and developed the required coping mechanisms for living in that kind of environment. I offered advice and a helping hand when they needed it.”

“That sounds awfully nice of you.”

“Is that judgment that I hear in your voice?”

“No, just making a simple statement. I knew you when you were younger, and you were hardly a role model for kids around us.”

Lukas sighed again. “That’s one of the things I have to say I don’t miss about living in a small town. Memories are long, and forgiveness is usually in short supply.”

“It isn’t as if that’s different living in the city,” I said. My university had been in a town substantially larger than Greyelf, so I understood exactly what he meant, but I wasn’t going to admit that. This wasn’t about me anyway.

“Life moves a lot faster in the city. It’s easier to be distracted, and you don’t have time to dwell on things that you can’t change.”

“Sounds lonely,” I said before I could catch the words.

“Maybe, but I managed,” Lukas said.

The door had been opened, and so I decided to be bold and walk right through it. “Tell me about your past relationships. Having to pull up your roots and come back to Greyelf would be disruptive to them.”

“Greyelf has defined and been defined by the shifter movement, no doubt about that,” Lukas replied. I wondered if he was going to dodge my question. “I dated here and there before and after college, but I knew that it was kind of pointless to get too attached to anyone. At some point, my past would come calling. I always figured Markus would ask me to come back home. I didn’t expect that coming back would mean claiming the alpha role because he was gone.”

“So you weren’t well-prepared for what has recently happened.” I didn’t want to lead his line of thinking. It was often better to get my interview subjects to open up on their own and just keep them talking. I always found the best parts of the story popped out unprompted.

“Who would ever be ready to lose their brother?” Lukas said harshly. He looked away from me then. “I lost my parents when I was so young that I barely remember them. Markus was my parent. Aunt Bea tried her best, but I wasn’t particularly receptive to her either. When I first moved here, I just wanted things to be the way they were before. It was a difficult adjustment. Markus was barely more than a kid himself. Then he became this symbol for an entire species, and he focused all of his time and energy on that part of his life. I’m proud of him and what he accomplished, but I was a real shit to him when I was a kid because I didn’t understand it then.”

That was all information I already knew, although I had never heard Lukas articulate it quite that way. He had rebelled because he wanted attention. It didn’t matter if it was positive or negative attention. In the end, he had been far more successful at getting negative attention, and that seemed to be what he chose to stick with for the duration of his teenage years.

“It must have been a wonderful thing for you then you reconciled with him.”

“I wouldn’t call it a reconciliation. It was simply a relationship that finally matured to one of mutual respect. It took us awhile to get there, but it was solid. It’s hard to believe he’s gone.” Lukas’s eyes unfocused over my shoulder as if he felt the pull of his brother’s memory. I heard the sadness in his voice.

“So now you’re the alpha,” I said, turning the tide of the conversation. “It wasn’t a position that you were able to take on without some conflict.”

Lukas snorted. “Conflict is the shifter’s way it seems. After spending ten years getting to a place where I was okay with myself, I had to come back here and face all of that judgment and negativity all over again.”

“So why come back at all? Why not rescind the claim and go back to your old life?”

“That wasn’t even an option,” Lukas said. I heard what sounded like a growl in the back of his throat. “Markus wanted me to be the alpha. If he had told me that he wanted the sheriff or anyone else to be the alpha at any point in our conversations, I would have stood aside. I wouldn’t have fought it. But that wasn’t the case.”

“It seems like you have a hard road ahead of you, especially with the Summit starting tonight.”

“I can handle it,” Lukas said. “I’m ready, and the clan is my number one priority right now. If anyone thinks otherwise, they can go fuck themselves.”

I had to smile. Every once and awhile, the Lukas that I had once known showed through his carefully polished exterior.

“What’s next for you then?”

“I will declare my mate,” Lukas said. His voice dropped lower. “Markus freely admitted that he thought it would have been easier for him many times through the years if he had a mate. He just never found the right one.”

I felt a flush rise on my cheeks. My fingers slid up to the spot on my neck where under my sweater his bite marked my flesh. I saw his eyes follow the movement of my fingers, and I quickly moved my hand back into my lap. His lips curled into a smug smile. He had gotten under my skin, and he knew it.

“Tell me more about that,” I said lamely.

“About my mate? Or about the mating process?”

I squirmed in my seat and tried to think about how to change the subject without making it so obvious. I couldn’t come up with a segue that would make sense. I also had to admit that I was more than a little curious about what I had signed up for in agreeing to be his mate.

“Both.”

“It has to be a thoughtful decision,” Lukas said. “A mate that is weak won’t support you in the important decisions of the clan. She needs to be strong and well-respected because she is an extension of my authority. In the event that I am called away or unable to advise on a situation with the clan, then that duty falls to my mate.”

“What about the council?” Suddenly I was feeling more than a little nervous. The role of the alpha’s mate sounded a lot more important than I had originally thought. “Aren’t they in charge when the alpha is away?”

“Markus created the council when he first set up the structure of the clan as more of an advisory function for the alpha. I think that was one thing that I always appreciated about my brother. He was brilliant, but he never pretended to be omnificent. He knew that he could be just as blind as the next man when it came to matters that were emotional or complex. It’s important for someone with that level of responsibility and authority to have a safe place to bounce ideas and discuss different options. But given Markus didn’t take a mate, the council here within this clan ultimately had more authority than perhaps it should have compared to others.”

I had a feeling that was one landmine that I wasn’t ready to walk into quite yet. There were so many layers and so many questions to the story that I wanted to ask. This was only going to be the beginning of what would likely be several long conversations with Lukas.

“So your mate…” I prodded to get him back on track.

Lukas smiled. “Naturally, she would be beautiful.”

“And having a mate who is also a shifter?”

“Not important from my perspective,” Lukas said. “It might be important to others within the clan, but for me it is much more important that my mate is intelligent and kind.”

I flushed again. Is this something I was really ready to do? I hadn’t been smart about this situation at all. What if Lukas decided he wanted to mate with someone else down the road after he found out what he wanted to know and was done with me?

“Tell me about the mating process,” I said.

Lukas leaned closer to me, and his fingers touched my wrist. He slowly ran them up my arm, and I felt shivers run down my spine. “The mating process is one of the most intimate experiences of a shifter’s life. It begins when the male marks the one that he has chosen.” His fingers made their way up to my collarbone where they grazed the place where he had bitten me. “It is a sign to the female that she is desired and has drawn the male’s eye. But as with most relationships, it is up to the female to decide if she wants the male as her mate as well.”

“How does she do that?” His touch was distracting me on every level. I tried to keep my thoughts clear, but I felt as if he was drawing a line of fire across my skin as he lazily began to draw looping circles over my shoulder and arm. It didn’t matter that there was a layer of material between us. It might as well not have existed at all.

“She bites him back, of course,” Lukas said. “But that’s just the beginning. The mating process is like a dance. There is a give and take, a question and then a response, attack and then a surrender. All of it culminates in an act of joining that when initiated is so much more than sex. It is a declaration of a commitment that will span their lifetimes. Because once the mating ritual is complete, there is no going back.”

I blinked again trying to draw my shallow breaths deeper. “What do you mean there is no going back?”

“Bears mate for life, Maren.” The words were almost whispered, but they carried with them a stunning revelation.

“I…I…I don’t think that’s something that I understood,” I said. I stood up. I wasn’t sure what to say.

Lukas picked up the tape recorder and turned it off. “Isn’t that what every woman wants to hear? That they will be with someone who will be there forever?”

“Lukas, you asked me to step in and help you find out what happened to your brother. You said that I needed to be declared as your mate to do it. But surely you don’t intend to go through that entire process.” Lukas got to his feet. As he approached me, I took a step backward. “I haven’t seen you in ten years. You don’t know me. I don’t know you. Why would you ask me to do this?”

“Do you really want to know the answer?” His face tightened. “It seems like every time I think we’re going to have an honest conversation about this, you run away from me.”

“Because it’s absurd.” Laughter bubbled in my throat. “I practically threw myself at you for the better part of my teenage years, and you never looked twice at me the way I wanted you to. It was always some other girl that had you all tied up in knots. Then one night you show up on my doorstep, and you were so sweet and so upset. When you kissed me, I thought I had finally broken through, and you understood what I wanted and wanted the same thing. And then you were gone. Now you show up, and I’m so confused about what it is exactly you want from me. Do you want the friend and confidant? You said you wanted somebody you could trust. Trusty old Maren to the rescue. But then last night you kissed me, and today you are looking at me like you want to devour me. But I don’t know who you are anymore, Lukas. You say you trust me, but I can’t trust you. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

My chest heaved as the words spilled out of me. They were the words I had been waiting ten years to say to him. I wanted to trust him, but he hadn’t proved that he was worthy. At least, not yet.

“You can’t just expect me to give up my entire life and jump into this thing with you, especially not forever. I’m willing to help you. I told you that I would. I think for now, it’s better that we stick to the story that I’m helping you document the history of the clan. This mating thing - we need to forget about it.”

“What if I don’t want to forget about it?” Lukas’s voice was definitely closer to a growl than anything else.

“You have to,” I said. “You said that the female has to choose you back for the mating process to continue. I’m choosing not to do that. I can’t, and it is unfair of you to ask me to.”

It killed me to see the expression of pain that crossed Lukas’s face for the briefest instant. I wondered if I was doing the right thing. For the better part of my life, I had wanted Lukas Kasper. Now, when it seemed as if I had the chance to have him, I was turning him down. Maybe there was something seriously wrong with me.

I thought he was going to leave me then, but instead he crossed the room stalking me. I retreated, but he didn’t give me any time to think. My back pressed flat against the wall, and he took my lips in a hard crush as he pressed up against me. My body instantly burst into a hot molten need of desire that threatened to overwhelm me. He took hold of my hands and pressed them up over my head.