Desired By The Pack: Part Three

Desired by the Pack

Part Three

Emma Storm

1

The Peace River encampment was a slice of idyllic quiet. Without an alarm or buzzing phone to wake her after the exhausting night she’d spent with the Guardians, January slept late into the day. Beck rolled her drowsy body over at some point and made love to her with slow kisses and thorough hands, such a change from the urgent way they’d come together previously. As she stretched awake, the pleasure faded into something dream-like.

Reality manifested in the logs that made up the ceiling of the cabin. Weak sunlight peeked through the occasional un-sealed seam, reminding her that a world still existed beyond the sex-scented sheets tangled around her.

A world she didn’t really want to go back to.

Beck spent the morning covering the terrain around the waterfall and river, carefully destroying any evidence of the activity at the Gate the night before. Ten werewolves in total had come through. Cleo reported two had died from their wounds
while a third continued to fight for his life. The other seven Vikings had burns of varying, but treatable, degrees.

He’d discovered the Vikings were divided into two smaller packs. Loki’s Devils were led by a mountain of a man named Ingar. The alpha of the Warriors of Valhalla was clinging to life under Cleo’s watchful eyes.

Ingar walked with Beck mid-day, chest gleaming with sweat even though it was cold enough that Beck would have needed a coat if he’d been standing still.

“This is a good place.” Ingar spoke with slow, simple words, his English rudimentary. They stopped at the top of a ravine, where Ingar spent long minutes squinting at the tree tops below.

Beck clasped his hands behind his back and waited. Soot blackened Ingar’s expressionless face and streaked the braids knotted over his massive shoulders. With the sun lighting up his fiery hair, the Viking alpha resembled the devil he called himself.

After a time, Ingar nodded. “We will build a raft here and send them to Valhalla on your Peace River.”

“The raft will break apart over the falls, where the Moon shines its brightest,” Beck said.

“Tonight, then, while the Moon is high.”
Ingar turned away and started back to the camp.

“The guardians will assist you in any way you need.” Beck fell into step beside the other alpha.

Ingar set his braids swinging with a shake of his head. “I thank you, but this is a thing we do alone.”

They walked in silence for a while but split apart when Ingar lifted a hand in greeting to one of his pack mates. Beck left them
and hiked up the river to rendezvous with Cross and Maverick, who were watching the Gate for any abnormal activity. He would rather have returned to January’s soft, warm body, but her nearness tempered the desire to something manageable.

It was good to have her close.

The cabin was empty when January woke the second time, but she wasn’t alone for long. As she dried off from a quick shower, she heard someone moving around in the front room. The quick, light footsteps couldn’t belong to any of Beck’s pack. Jittery with the buzz of want beginning to hum in her veins, courtesy of the approaching Moonrise, she quickly dressed in a pair of loose pants and a long-sleeved tee she found in one of the drawers built into the base of the bed. Barefoot, she headed out to investigate.

She wasn’t expecting to find a woman with a rounded belly and a cloud of short, curly blonde hair standing at the tiny kitchen sink cleaning what looked like a rabbit.

January raised her eyebrows. “Hello?”

The blonde didn’t falter, nor did she look up from her task. “Hey. I’m Mira. I saw one of the guys drop dinner at your door and figured I’d come over to get it ready for you. I hope that’s okay. I knocked but you weren’t awake yet. I just know how draining the Heat cycle can be and wasn’t sure whether you’d want or be able to take care of this on your own.”

“Thanks. The only skinning I’m used to involves cellophane.” January leaned against the door frame and crossed her arms under her breasts. “I’m January. I guess you already know that?”

Mira flashed a quick smile. “Word gets around among the packs. You’ll probably have a lot of visitors for a while. Everybody’s curious. Especially since it wasn’t Beck who hunted up your dinner.”

“Who was it?”

“Maverick.” After finishing with the rabbit, Mira bagged the discards and washed her hands, along with the knife and cutting board she’d used. She didn’t look at January as she said, “That got even more gossip going, what with both Beck and Anders…well, it’s hard to keep secrets and sounds quiet. Plus, this is kind of unusual. One woman can bind the whole pack but usually doesn’t, um…”

“Service them all?” January was deliberately crude. She wasn’t sure what Mira was getting at but she didn’t like the gossipy, fishing tone the other woman used.

“Well, that’s not the word I would have chosen. If that’s the way you’re going to think of it, maybe you should reconsider whether you want to be here.” Mira turned around. She put her hands on her narrow hips, which were nearly eclipsed by her large belly. Her cheeks were bright pink and blotchy with emotion, and her mouth twisted unhappily before she said, “Being one woman and belonging to more than one man is hard. It gets harder with every man you bring into the bed and the alpha pack is six strong right now. It won’t just be difficult for you, either, because they have feelings too, no matter how they try to hide their humanness behind faith and duty. You have a career down in Portland, don’t you? You’re a nurse.”

January nodded warily, not sure where Mira was headed.

“Then you know what it’s like to be needed by several people at once. But do you know what it’s like to be needed around the clock when you’re working a shift that never ends? By people whose lives depend on you keeping your shit together even past the breaking point?”

Behind Mira, the door to the cabin swung open. Smoke stepped inside without knocking. January narrowed her eyes but he paid her no attention, all his focus directed at Mira, who didn’t seem to notice the big man behind her. She’d moved one of her hands to her rounded belly and the other to the small of her back. Her breath was coming in shallow bursts.

“It’s not enough to want them devoted to you,” Mira said, her voice low and fierce. “You have to…if you can’t…”

“Mira.”
Her name was velvet on Smoke’s tongue, soft with an emotion that made January’s stomach clench. There was something between Smoke and the blonde woman, and January didn’t like it. The possessive feelings caught her off guard. And this was why she couldn’t stay with Beck. She was greedy, too greedy to share.

Doubt stirred inside her as Mira turned and met Smoke’s gaze. Something intimate flared to life but broke when Mira’s lips pinched in pain.

“I think I’m in labor,” she said. She drew a deep breath through her nose and closed her eyes. “Yeah. Definitely that.”

January pressed her hand to her mouth and glanced at Smoke, who was still ignoring her.

“You were supposed to shift and go to Luminesce before it was time. You swore you wouldn’t wait.”  Moving carefully, Smoke lifted Mira into his arms. When he finally made eye contact with January, his jaw tightened and his eyebrows drew together over his beautiful, intense eyes. He stared at her with a world of unhappy in the set of his mouth but all he said was, “Open the door.”

With a jerky nod, she pushed away from the wall and hurried to pull the door open. The sun had fallen behind the mountain, casting the settlement in winter-colored shadows. January couldn’t see the moon for the cloud cover but she knew it was there. As Smoke drew near, with Mira cradled against his chest, a deep, physical yearning cramped between her legs. Smoke’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed on her but he brushed past without saying anything.

January watched from the porch as he carried Mira between a pair of cabins. Before the shadows swallowed them, Mira slid her pale arm around Smoke’s neck in a gesture that spoke volumes about the relationship she and Smoke shared.

A relationship that was going to be a problem for January, one way or another.
Needing air and some space to think, she shoved her feet into the first pair of shoes she found and clomped out the door. Instinct led her from the camp. For a while, she walked without thinking about anything at all. She could have kept on like that forever but too soon she crossed paths with a group of half-naked, wild-looking men, and she started to shake.

The Moon.

Before the unfamiliar pack spotted her, she spun and retraced her steps to the camp. After last night, she no longer trusted herself in Heat.

In an effort to distract herself from her body, which grew more and more hungry as the night aged, she searched the cabin for something to do. Maverick’s rabbit inspired her and a drawer of winter vegetables occupied her hands for a little while. She assembled a stew and fired the propane stove to cook it, but once the mixture was simmering, she was out of diversions. Every once in a while the wind would shift and bring a woman’s scream with it. Mira must have been suffering greatly. Werewolf young lacked control of their abilities and the trauma of being born usually saw
them changing shapes during the slow journey through the birth canal. The change at that age was purely reflex, a physiological response stemming from spikes in blood pressure, but it was hell on the mother.

Mira must have wanted to talk to January very badly to have risked the agony of an Earth-side birth.

Before she could go down the dangerous path of wondering whether she could survive such an ordeal, someone knocked on the door. She whipped it open to find Anders’ lean frame. Sandy hair fell across his eyes, which swept her from head to toe before coming back to her face. His nostrils flared and the pulse at the base of his throat jumped, betraying his reaction to her scent. His chest was bare but he’d managed to find a pair of pants. They were half a size too big and hung from the blades of his narrow hips, emphasizing the cut muscles of his abdomen.

Her mouth started to water.

“You know about Mira,” Anders said, drawing her attention to his face.

She hugged herself and nodded.
“Yeah. She was here when she went into labor.”

“She’s locked here now. Beck will be with her until she has her pup.” He looked past her shoulder. Tilting his head, he sniffed the air. “You cooked.”

“I couldn’t eat the rabbit raw.” The words came out sharp as she wrestled with the thought of Beck by Mira’s side.

Anders cut his gaze back to her and spoke as if he could read her mind. “As alpha, he is the only one of us who can lock her in this form. Keep her from shifting to cope with the pain. If she loses control now, she’ll lose the pup.”

January beat back her jealousy. Beck had a responsibility to the Peace River packs. Of course he did. He was alpha. She’d worried about having to share him with another woman--what a joke. Another woman would be easy. No, she had to share him with the entire community.

“Are you hungry?” Necessary change of subject to take her mind off all the people Beck was bound to serve.

“Yes.” Anders prowled across the threshold, closing the door behind him. Giving her another long, sizzling look, he added, “We’ll eat after.”

After
. She swallowed. “I hoped you’d say that.”

She turned to go to the bedroom but Anders stopped her with a growl. He caught her by the nape, gentle but firm, and said, “Here.
Can’t wait. Neither can you.”