Guarded (True Alpha 2) (2 page)

Big time.

Steamy anger started to gather in her chest. She elbowed her way around him and stomped past the open doorway to his vast gourmet kitchen. Its multiple stainless steel ovens and sparkling black granite countertops looked hardly used. The lamps hanging over the bar to the living room glowed like small white ghosts, but the rest of the apartment was lit only by moonlight falling through the bank of windows along the far wall.

They hadn’t even taken time to turn on the main lights.

She strode into the expansive center room. It was as richly appointed as the kitchen. A black leather couch and chair sat in the middle of the room and faced a large black-glass-paneled wall with a huge built-in flat-screen TV. Speakers were embedded in the wall, and a glass table spanned the distance between the couch and the entertainment center. A pair of strange Z-shaped chairs stood off to one side, next to a wooden table with white orb lights hanging over it. There were no pictures, just a few modern-art-looking adornments. The entire room was sleek and luxurious and probably cost double her entire year’s tuition.

She paced along the back of the couch, running her hand on top of the glove-soft leather and trying to wrap her head around the situation. It suddenly seemed much worse than she thought.

Lucas stayed by the door, watching her.

She stopped and gripped the couch as she faced him. “Your pack is rivals with the Red pack.” Her voice was surprisingly steady for the trembles running laps up and down her body.

“My father’s pack is rivals with the Red pack,” he said coolly. “I don’t have a pack.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re not in your father’s pack.”

“Not since I formed my own.” He met her stare. Cautious. Arms folded.
Still
holding back.

She pushed off the couch. “Dammit, Lucas, you have to tell me what’s really going on here! Why does the Red pack want me? What am I to them? Is this part of some rivalry between your packs? Am I… am I…” Her throat was getting thick. “Am I just some kind of
prey
for them?” She could see it now: in that alleyway, those Red pack wolves wanted to play some kind of sick game with her. Lucas stopped them… but then he’d hovered over her ever since. Making her quit
The Deviation.
Getting her a driver, so he could control her comings and goings. And today… today he wanted to move her out of her dorm!

“Is this all a game to you?” Her voice cracked then, and she braced herself against the couch, because there was a sudden weakness in her legs. What had she gotten herself into?

Lucas’s stance softened. He unfolded his arms and quickly crossed the room, like he was going to hold her up or something. She stopped him with an upraised hand.

He scowled at her hand like it offended him. “This isn’t a game, Mia. You’ve seen the Red wolves—they’re brutal. They let their dark wolves come out to play, both in business and pleasure. I’m only trying to protect you from them.”

“But they compete with you. With SparkTech. You have the same territory or something.” She couldn’t figure out the angle. Why her? Why was she in the middle of this?

He folded his arms again and leaned against the couch next to her. “They have a physical territory carved out in Seattle. And we respect that. But yes, they compete with us
in business
. You’ve seen the reports.”

Her eyes went wide. “They want LoopSource.” The mobile computing platform they were both diligently evaluating for SparkTech to acquire… until she stormed out, got attacked by Red wolves, then ended up in Lucas’s apartment.

“And they’ll do anything to get what they want.” He edged closer to her, arms still folded. He wasn’t touching her, but it was like he had cast a protective shadow over her. He was contained, but ready to spring out and hold her the moment she allowed it.

She shook her head, still not piecing it together. “But why me? I mean, I’m just a bartender. Or I was… wait! Did they
know
I was going to intern at SparkTech?”

Lucas’s eyebrows lifted, like he hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe.” Then they settled into a scowl again. “Or you could have just been a target of convenience. Either way, when I stepped in…” He struggled for words for a moment, then dropped his gaze. “Well, that’s when they figured out they could use you as leverage. Against me.”

“Because I was your intern.” She frowned. That still didn’t make sense.

“Because I saved you.” His jaw worked. “They think I care about you.”

She involuntarily glanced at the door, where they had just… what? Made love? Had sex? Gave in to their animalistic passions? That was probably closest. She dragged her gaze back to his deep, dark eyes. He seemed even closer, and the air between them was still perfumed by the lust of their bodies.

“Do you care about me?” she asked, almost a whisper.

“No.”

The air went out of her.

He unlocked his arms and reached like he was going to hold her, then stopped when she flinched away.

“It’s not that I don’t…” He looked pained. “It’s just… the Red pack thinks there’s something more than there is, Mia.”

Something more than there is.
Namely, not much at all. It was just a casual screw of the intern for him. A burning sensation rose up in her cheeks, and then she realized… “Oh my god. We didn’t even use protection!”

He looked surprised at that, but the heat in her face was turning up to volcano-level. How could she have been so
stupid?
She had unprotected sex with her boss, who was just out for a quick lay, then on to the next thing.

“Oh my god,” she said under her breath, mostly to herself. She brushed past him, determined to grab her purse and get the hell out of there as quickly as possible, but his iron-strong hands grabbed hold of her shoulders, stopping her cold. “Let go of me!” It came out as a shriek, but she didn’t care. It was too much: all the danger and heated sex and crashing betrayal… it all came to a head of fury at once. She growled at him, her claws coming out as she thrashed against his hold, but he wouldn’t let her go.

“Mia!” he said, loud enough to be heard over her wolf’s protest against the indignity, but his voice was strangely calm. “Mia, it’s all right.”

“What do you care?” Her words were half-growls, and she could feel her wolf growing more angry, taking more control. Her claws were shredding his shirt. “It’s not
you
that might be carrying a wolf baby!”

At that, his grip became even stronger, more insistent, almost painful, except she could tell he was holding back, holding
her,
drawing her closer into his chest. His words quieted, and she had to strain to hear them, which had the strange effect of quieting her wolf as well.

“It’s okay, Mia, listen to me.”

“Lucas.” This time it was more like a sob. She gave up fighting him and just tucked into the safe harbor of his arms.

He held her completely then, the tatters of his shirt brushing her face. “You’re not pregnant. You’re not going to
be
pregnant. You’re not fertile right now. When I thought you were human, I assumed you were on some kind of medication that controlled fertility. Once I realized you were a shifter, I just assumed you knew.”

“Know? How could I know?”

“Female wolves… know these things,” he said softly. “You would have been taught how if you’d been raised in a pack.”

The panic had subsided, and she didn’t want to move away from his arms, but she needed to see his face. To tell if he was teasing or making some kind of awful joke.

She twisted up to look at him. “How do
you
know?” She could feel the slight chuckle rumbling in his chest.

“That’s something young male wolves learn to detect early on. The scent of a female in heat is… hard to miss. Also sometimes hard to resist.”

She flushed at that—did she really go into
heat?
She had the normal hormone swings of any girl… at least she thought they were normal. At the same time, it was comforting that he understood all of this, even if she didn’t.

Still, she wrinkled up her nose. “But what about disease? I mean… I assume I’m not your first conquest.” This didn’t seem like the right time to tell him he was
her
first. Or at least, the first that really mattered. The first time she had actually felt like she had been with a
lover,
not just a bumbling boy who was scared off by her wolf.

The humor fled from his face. “You’re not a conquest, Mia.”

“You know what I mean.”

He held her slightly away from his body, so he could look down into her eyes. “Have you ever been sick a day in your life?”

She frowned. She hadn’t, of course, but she figured it was just a part of the quick-healing aspect of being a wolf.

“Wolves don’t get the same diseases as humans, even in human form,” he said patiently. A hint of the smile was back. “I couldn’t have caught anything from you, or you from me. If you had been human, that is.”

“And as a wolf?” She bit her lip. “Is that why you were so angry when you found out I was a shifter? Because I might have some wolf disease?”

His face darkened again. “Wolves don’t have those kinds of diseases. Even in a pack, there’s rarely any diseases that can be passed from wolf to wolf. We really don’t get sick at all.” He didn’t move away, but his expression had cooled ten degrees. He dropped his arms from their hold around her.

She missed them immediately.

Her mind was still a haze from the panic and everything else, but she tried to line up the pieces. “So the Red pack wants LoopSource, and they’re trying to use me as leverage against you to get it.”

“Yes.”

“Because they think you care for me.” Then she hastily added, “Enough to stop them from kidnapping me.”

“I couldn’t let them hurt you in that alley, Mia.” His eyes bored into hers. “And I didn’t even know you then. I’m certainly not going to let them hurt you now.”

A warm flush ran through her. She didn’t know where that rated on the scale of
caring,
but she was pretty damn sure no one else besides her mother had cared that much about her. Ever. Certainly not her father, some loser shifter who knocked up her mom and left before she was born. Or any of her so-called boyfriends, who had likewise taken off as soon as her wolf became apparent. That feeling of
belonging
came rushing back: she
belonged
with Lucas, even if he couldn’t see it. Some part of him must know it, too. She just had to find that part and bring it out.

“You’re going to protect me, right?” she asked, looking up into his dark, serious eyes.

“Yes.” There was no hesitation. In fact, he seemed to loom larger as he said it, like this mattered to him.
A lot.
Like it wouldn’t just be bad for SparkTech if the Red pack got hold of her… like protecting her was a point of personal pride
to him.

“So, if I’m going to stay out of those creeps hands, then I need to know more about what I’m dealing with here, Lucas.”

Thankfully, he nodded solemnly. “I take it your mother isn’t a shifter. So that leaves your father.”

“Who was a loser who booked out of town once my mother was pregnant.”

Lucas wrinkled his nose in disgust. “So you’re half shifter by patronage. Can you fully shift?” He glanced at her hands and smirked. “Or is it just the claws?”

She shrugged. “I can fully shift, I’ve just been hiding it so long, I’ve never had much practice. And apparently I really don’t know jack about being a wolf.” She frowned. “Tell me more about this Red pack. You said they didn’t shift when they attacked me in the garage because they couldn’t fight you in wolf form. What exactly does that mean?”

Lucas took a breath and seemed to relax, leaning against the couch. Then he shocked her by taking her hand. He turned it over to inspect it, as if he thought he would find claws there instead of fingers. His touch was warm and gentle, and she couldn’t help feeling that electric attraction she had whenever she was near him. At least during the times he wasn’t yelling at her.

“Your wolf form is very different from your human form.” He held up her hand, like he wanted her to look at it. She did, but it was just her hand. “Do you feel her inside you? Wanting to come out?”

She nodded, entranced by the way he was looking at her. Like she was under his care, and that was just the way he liked it.

“Well, when you let her out, she’ll control your every thought, feeling, or impulse.”

“I’ve felt that,” she said quickly. “I become much more… instinctual.”

He smiled. “Exactly.” He released her hand, and she had the same sensation of missing his touch. She reluctantly brought it back to cross her arms over her chest. “There are several instincts that are very strong with your wolf, but the strongest is probably submission.”

Submit.
She remembered the Red pack wolves with their arched backs and tucked tails.

“You made them submit to you,” she said, her eyes widening slightly. Her heart rate ticked up a notch. Her wolf had understood it immediately, and it had both frightened and excited her. The idea of being under Lucas’s command like that… she swallowed.

He was watching her carefully. “Yes, they submitted. Partly because I’m an alpha. Partly because I was going to rip out their friend’s throat if they didn’t.”

“So, once they do that… does that mean you control them?” The idea was still running hot and cold shivers up her back.

“Not exactly.” His jaw was tight. “If I commanded them to do something, they would have a hard time resisting. It’s like a compulsion. A desire to do the will of the alpha. But most of the time, submission isn’t about giving orders—it’s about being part of the pack. It’s a swearing of fidelity to the alpha, who likewise is bound to protect those who have submitted to him. Or at the minimum, not to hurt them. Once the Reds submitted to me, they couldn’t fight me… but I also couldn’t fight them.”

“Like a truce.”

“In a way.”

“So… does it last forever?” Something about that nagged at the edges of her mind—it seemed impossible that any bond, no matter how strong, could last so long.