Fate of the Alpha: The Complete Bundle (9 page)

J
ulian walked briskly down
the sandstone sidewalks.

The tree canopy overhead burned with fall colors, but he didn’t allow himself to take it in. The sooner he got to Ainsley, the sooner he would have this weight off his chest.

He hadn’t slept last night. Instead he’d spent hours combing the books, researching online through his magical community, and even making a midnight call to a colleague in Europe who had obliged him by rushing out to pore over an ancient tome.

He reached her front hedge and saw that she was on the porch, sponging the wooden door. Some things about Ainsley hadn’t changed when she became alpha.

“Are you
cleaning
?” he asked.

She shrugged and her ponytail bobbed.

“If we’re putting a spell on it,” she said, “let’s put a spell on
it
, not the dust on top of it.”

He laughed in spite of himself.

“Thanks for doing this,” she said. “I know you came to do wards on the doors, but can we talk about Erik first?”

He paused and she grinned at him.

“Or we could talk about Grace…”

Fuck.

“Let’s do the wards first, I’ll feel better when that’s done,” he said quickly.

“I thought you guys looked almost like you belonged together. Even though I know you don’t like each other.” She shrugged and moved the bucket and sponge to the wicker table. “I guess magical side effects conquer all.”

“Pardon?”

“Like you always say, magic has its price.” Ainsley wiped her hands on her jeans. “For Grace, the price is, uh, desire.”

Dear god. How had he not put that together himself?

“So, how do you put a ward on something?” Ainsley asked, changing the subject.

Julian shook his head, willing himself to put thoughts of Grace and her affliction aside.

Since that incredible kiss, Julian’s chest had been filled with a lightness he hadn’t felt for many years, in spite of the gravity of the work he was doing for Ainsley. He hadn’t realized how hopeful he’d felt until this moment, when those hopes were dashed.

Suddenly, the colors were draining out of the radiant fall day and his heart was heavier than before the kiss. Why must the shadows obscure every bright thing?

Why did Grace hold such power over him? He was no melancholy schoolboy. He had important work ahead. Work that would require all of his concentration.

He ran his hand through his hair and looked back to Ainsley.

She gave him a crooked smile.

He shuddered inwardly, wondering when he might see her smile again after the news he had to give her.

“To begin with,” he said, “the magic we will need today is abjuration. Where the evocation we’ve practiced deals mostly with damaging an enemy, abjuration is designed to protect, or interfere.”

Ainsley’s eyes were already beginning to glaze over.

“Let me demonstrate,” he offered, glancing around to be sure the sidewalks were clear of any potential onlookers.

Julian spoke the proper words with perfect inflection. Instantly, his hands held a writhing mass of energy that shifted and squirmed, in contrast to the smooth blue spheres they had used for target practice.

“Now you,” he said.

Ainsley took a breath and repeated his words. A fragile handful of what looked like blue worms appeared in her palm.

After the unbelievably powerful evocation she’d nearly killed him with last night it was pathetic. But he didn’t feel right pushing her today.

“Now we’ll paint a symbol around the portal in question.” He lifted his right hand and used it to wrap the blue light around the frame of her front door. At first, it didn’t want to take, as though there were already some kind of magic on the door. Julian examined the wood carefully, but saw no trace of any kind of spell. On the second attempt, he managed to make it stick.

He looked back at Ainsley who watched him in wonder.

“Come on, you take the other side,” he said.

She stepped forward and tried to wrap her light around the other side of the frame. It didn’t want to stick either.

How odd.

Ainsley scowled and tried again. This time, a delicate thread of blue trailed her hand and clung to the door. She looked to Julian.

“It’s enough,” he said.

They stepped back.

“Now the binding spell:
Avertat ab inimicis Clausa custoditur,”
he intoned.

They watched as the shimmering blue paint turned white, then disappeared.

“That’s all?” Ainsley asked.

“That’s all. How many more doors are there?”

“Sunporch, back door, family room door,” she counted them off on her fingers.

“Okay, you’ll do the next one on your own, Ainsley.”

She cocked her head and remained in place.

Julian made a move to go inside, but she held up a hand to stop him.

What was she up to?

The jingle of a leash and collar signaled the approach of a pedestrian on the sidewalk. Of course she had heard it before he had.

“Hey there!” boomed a familiar voice. A tall man with a small dog rounded the hedge. It looked like that real estate man.

“Hi, Charley!” Ainsley called back. “What are you doing with Camilla Parker Bowles?”

“I told Dale I’d keep her awhile. Until Sadie’s out of the hospital.”

The dog headed right for Ainsley’s house. Charley laughed and followed.

“I guess she knows her neighbor,” Charley said.

Ainsley knelt to pat the little dog. It had no interest in her. Instead, it headed straight for the rhododendrons and began to paw around. Julian recalled landing rather harshly in those same shrubs. Someone must have replaced them.

“Oh no you don’t, missy,” Charley admonished.

The dog didn’t want to take no for an answer, but a tug on the leash brought her back to the walkway, where Charley scooped her up.

“Have you two met?” Ainsley asked politely.

Julian shook his head. This was not a good time for a meet and greet.

“Charley, this is Julian. He’s a visiting professor.”

“Nice to meet you,” Julian heard himself say politely.

Charley immediately extended the hand not holding the little dog and shook vigorously with Julian.

“You too, I’m Charley Coslaw. And this is Camilla Parker Bowles.”

A King Charles spaniel named Camilla Parker Bowles. Fucking Americans.

“Camilla,” Julian said.

He swore the dog nodded at him coolly.

“It’s good of you to take care of her, Charley,” Ainsley said.

“I go for a lot of walks anyway - always wanted a dog of my own. Maybe this little lady will inspire me to take up dog ownership.” Charley smiled down at the dog.

Camilla Parker Bowles lunged out of his arms, and hit the ground running for the rhododendrons again.

“I guess we better get moving. You guys painting the front door?” Charley asked as he retrieved the little dog again.

“Thinking about it,” Ainsley said. “Any suggestions?”

“I always like a red front door. And black shutters. Shows well. But if you’re not selling, just paint it however you like. It’ll need it again soon enough after the winters we’ve been having. Speaking of not selling, I’ll stop by with a termination to that listing contract this evening if that’s okay?”

“Thanks, Charley,” Ainsley said.

He waved good-bye and headed down Princeton.

“Nice guy,” Julian said.

Ainsley sat down on the front steps. She had a serious look in her eyes. He knew the time had come.

“Julian, listen, I know we have three more doors. But I need to talk about Erik now. He’s my mate and he’s suffering. Please tell me you can fix him and I’ll evoke all afternoon, ok?”

Abjure. Julian thought twice about correcting her, and decided against it.

The plaintive note in her voice tugged at his heart strings and he knew that she knew already, must have known in some part of herself what he should have known from the beginning.

He took her hand in his. Her hazel eyes implored him.

“Ainsley, I’m so sorry.”

Her jaw twitched, but she held herself together.

“So you need to do some research,” she said.

“No. The research is done.”

“But there has to be some way.” Ainsley’s voice lifted a note.

Julian shook his head and squeezed her hand tighter.

“What if we find the one who set the trap?” she asked. “That’s the way it always works in the movies.”

“That might be helpful
if
there were a counter-curse. The caster would have no trouble reversing his own spell. But the people who wrote those spells weren’t worried about giving wolves back - there are no counter-curses to any of the spells.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

“So it’s over?” she asked.

The thought flitted through his head that there was a time when he would have been so happy to hear her ask that question - when he would have tried to win her for himself.

But that had been before he truly became her friend.

And before he’d met Grace.

“Ainsley, I don’t think there are options to bring his wolf back. If you love him, you’ll make it work. Wolf or no wolf.”

She was a woman of character and she would stand by her mate, he knew that about her.

But Ainsley stared through him with a blank, soulless expression.

“Right, Ainsley?” he asked.

“My pack…” she whispered.

And in spite of the warm sun through the maples, Julian shivered.

“I’ll do the rest of the wards,” he said. “Why don’t you go find Erik and talk with him.”

She didn’t even say good-bye. She just ran into the house.

He heard the back door slam a moment later, and he pictured her running into the woods, shredding the jeans and melting into a giant red wolf.

A
insley dropped
into her wolf as soon as her feet hit the grass of the backyard.

She didn’t care about whether the neighbor kids might be outside, or how hard it would be to replace her favorite pair of jeans. She only knew that she couldn’t be human for one more minute.

As her paws hit the moist dirt, her vision contracted and the earthy smell of autumn filled her lungs. Though she still felt sadness, the delirious bunching and releasing of her massive muscles distracted her. And the sadness was all one thing, bound together - a lost mate - not the complicated tangle of history and guilt her human mourned.

A familiar scent beckoned. It was her mate and not her mate. His slow footsteps crashed clumsily through the brush.

With regret, Ainsley rose back to herself.

Erik was running toward her. His face had an unfamiliar flush and he was gasping. My god, she’d never seen him out of breath before.

When he caught sight of her he flinched. Had he not heard her coming?

“Ainsley!”

“Erik, what’s wrong?”

He bent over with his hands on his knees and huffed. After a moment he straightened and gave Ainsley an intense look.

“Someone is here, someone important from the Federation.”

“Who?”

“Her name is Ophelia Winter, she’s on the Executive Council. She’s a
big
deal. We have to get back to my house. And she absolutely can’t know about my wolf.”

Ainsley was shot through with a bolt of grief. She closed her eyes.

“Erik, we need to talk.”

“After you meet Ophelia, yes, come on!”

He turned and began to walk in the direction of his house.

A wave of fury at this insubordination washed through Ainsley’s wolf.

“No,” she said in her calmest, cruelest alpha voice.

Erik turned, amazed.

“Ainsley, she wants you, you have to come.”

“I’m the alpha. No one summons me.”

“She outranks you, Ainsley,” he said slowly. “And you need to be careful with her.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s here for the Federation, to sign off on you.
If
you handle it the right way. If she says the word you’re out.”

“I won the pack by inheritance and by blood,” she said.

“Yes,” Erik replied. “And until Ophelia Winter signs off, the Federation will not officially recognize you as the alpha.”

Ainsley’s wolf gnashed and shuddered near the surface of her skin. It was all too much, the anger, the pain. She needed to shift, to run. But Erik couldn’t run with her… She wanted to scream.

“How are we going to explain what’s going on when you don’t shift in two days?” she asked instead.

“I was kind of hoping we’d have this thing figured out by then,” he admitted, reaching through the distance between them to stroke her hand.

As it always did, Erik’s warm touch soothed her immediately. Ainsley felt her shoulders go down. They began to walk back toward his house together.

“We’ll have to think of an excuse,” she said. “Fake an accident or something. Something to keep her from asking questions.”

She thought of Sadie. Oh boy, there was another kettle of fish.

“Hey, would you shift if you were in a coma?” she asked.

“Don’t you think that’s kind of harsh?” Erik asked uncertainly.

“Not you!” She laughed, in spite of herself. “Sadie Epstein-Walker. She’s in a coma in the hospital in Springton. Is some orderly in for the surprise of his life when he comes in to check her bedpan and finds a sleeping wolf instead?”

“Why, Mrs. Epstein-Walker, what big ears you have!” Erik laughed. The sound made her tingle all over.

“I’m serious!”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it’s possible. The pull of the moon is pretty strong. Especially around here.” He gazed up with a wistful expression. “It’s so strange to lose that connection.”

Ainsley looked up at the swelling moon. It seemed to pulse and blur at the edges as she looked at it.

“Is this how regular people feel all the time?” Erik asked. “Even my senses are going. I feel like I’m being dragged down. Like
Harrison Bergeron
.”

Ainsley raised an eyebrow at him.

“You do know that I can read, right?” he asked, the smile returning to his face. “It’s just that I can’t smell anything, and my ears feel like they’re plugged with wet cotton.”

A rustle in the woods nearby caught Ainsley’s attention.

“Did you hear that?” she asked.

“Very funny.”

“No, I’m serious! Shut up.”

They froze. A twig snapped.

“There it is again!” Ainsley lifted her nose and sniffed the night air.

There was the homey warmth of rotting leaves, the light musk of the small animals, and another scent. It was rich and strong. A wolf.

But not one of the pack. A stranger.

Ainsley grabbed Erik by his t-shirt and inhaled.

“This Federation chick, was she close to you?” she asked.

“Well…” Erik looked almost guilty.

Ainsley took in the scent of the woods again.

“This isn’t her.”

Before she could extrapolate, a brown form exploded into the clearing. He was enormous. Though not as tall as Erik’s missing black wolf, the stranger was much wider in the chest and shoulders.

Something in his wide-legged stance and the soft look of his chestnut coat made her think this was a younger wolf. His snarl made it clear that he had something to prove.

Well, he’d come to the wrong place. Ainsley looked forward to kicking his ass.

“Ainsley!” Erik cried helplessly.

Fuck. Erik would be defenseless now.

“Stay back, Erik, I’ve got this under control,” she said, carefully modulating her tone.

She turned to the chestnut giant and gave him a disdainful stare.

“I don’t know who you are,” she said. “But you picked the wrong time to come trespassing on my territory. I’ve had a really bad week, but it will be nothing compared to what’s going to happen to you if you don’t turn tail right now.”

To his credit, the young wolf held his ground. He really was enormous, which probably made him used to getting his way. This was going to be very disappointing for him.

As she studied his form, he growled. The sound seemed to emanate slowly from the tips of his paws and rumble through his belly.

Ainsley pulled her dress over her head and tossed it to Erik. The cold air on her skin barely registered as her wolf moaned and pawed to come out.

“I am Ainsley Connor, alpha of the Tarker’s Hollow pack, and I accept your challenge.” Her voice echoed off the trees.

She slid gracefully into her red wolf.

The two wolves faced off, circling each other. The familiar woods reached out to Ainsley, she knew every tree, every contour of the forest floor. She had only to keep a small part of her awareness on her enfeebled mate, and the rest could be focused on her enemy like a laser.

The lone wolf rushed at her. But his enormous form needed momentum, and he projected his intentions long before he moved. She dodged him almost before he took a step toward her.

The waxing moon and the pull of her pack coursed through Ainsley’s veins. She felt invincible.

He rushed her again without heaving and this time came closer. He was strong and fast, and a quick learner.

But Ainsley was faster and stronger.

She dodged him a few more times, enjoying the game. Each time she stayed put longer, teasing him. Then her heart leapt as she sailed away from him at the last moment, landing on stiff, prancing legs.

Infuriated, he circled Erik then, and snapped at him.

That was not acceptable.

In a flash of red fur, she was on him. Frantically, he tried to shake her off. But Ainsley had a huge mouthful of his scruff in her teeth. She bit down hard and splayed a paw against his back, pressing hard.

The sheen of his fur in her mouth went salty with blood and still Ainsley bore down on him.

In a single breath, he relaxed under her and rolled onto his back, showing her the creamy fur of his belly and the tip of his brown tail between his hind legs.

Then he shifted.

Ainsley shifted too.

She quickly wrapped a hand around his throat in place of her teeth, and looked down at her assailant.

He was short, but bursting with muscles. A tribal tattoo encircled each of his biceps, which were immense and chiseled. He peered up at her with large hazel eyes through too-long soft brown hair the exact color of his wolf’s fur.

Strong as he was, she held him easily.

He glared up at her and bared his teeth.

Ainsley simply stared back until he broke eye contact and looked away.

Her wolf was delighted with this show of submission. The approval was followed by an immediate instinct to mount and claim him.

Before she could consider it fully, she felt him stir under her. His nostrils were flared slightly and his eyes were locked on her breasts.

She felt a jolt of heat between her legs that was echoed in his feverish shiver beneath her.

The moonlight drenched her skin and left her feeling half-drunk with power and desire. Her nipples hardened painfully.

His whole body tightened in response and his cock throbbed helplessly where it was pinned to his washboard abs by her posterior.

Ainsley nearly succumbed to her wolf’s command to slide herself against him.

Oh god, Erik was right there.

Was this what wolves did?

The alpha inside her commanded her to claim the omega beneath her.

The human part of Ainsley Connor reached blindly for control.

In a heartbeat, she slid her hand down the muscular planes of his chest, and then further, to grip his stiff and quivering organ.

She tightened her fists to squeeze his penis and his throat at once until he whimpered.

“Your life is mine now,” she said in her coldest alpha voice, tightening her grasp on his throat as he began to sputter.

“This is mine now,” she said, squeezing her other hand tightly. “And if you ever fuck with anyone in my pack again, I will rip this off and serve it to you before I tear your throat out with my teeth.”

From somewhere in the darkness of the trees, Erik let out a low whistle of admiration.

Ainsley sprang to her feet.

The male prostrated himself and backed away.

A sharp tangy scent told Ainsley he had peed a little. Again, her wolf pranced in her chest.

She turned her back on him, posturing a complete lack of concern, and padded over to Erik for her dress.

Erik’s eyes were wide.

Ainsley raised her arms and he slipped the dress over her head, allowing his hands to caress the flare of her hips as he pulled it down.

“I’m sorry,” a deep, soft voice came from behind her, “I heard there was no alpha in Tarker’s Hollow.”

“You heard wrong,” she said, and began to walk toward Erik’s house. Erik scrambled along in her wake.

“Wh-what do I do now? Do I have to go?” the stranger implored.

Ainsley stopped walking.

“I’m sure I could find a use for you,” she said, with her back still to him. “You’ll have to think of a way to prove your loyalty first.”

Ainsley strode away again and Erik followed her.

There was silence in the woods behind them, but she could still smell the fear and excitement of the strange wolf.