Mates: Werewolf BBW Romance (Running With Alphas Book 8) (2 page)

They weren’t. They were a neurotic fixation, one that he entertained on a nightly basis. As far as Hale’s wolf was concerned, Alder was dead the moment he tried to set foot on Halcyon territory. Even the knowledge that Taylor would hate him forever if he killed Alder was enough to dissuade his wolf. Only his humanity and the distance he forced between himself and Taylor, kept him believing that he wouldn’t actually go through with the plans.

Hale stayed in the cabin while Cammie performed her examination and Lark and Fenix pummeled Taylor with questions. Taylor was still noticeably flustered from their unresolved conversation, but she remained patient and poised, her eyes only occasionally darting over to the corner where Hale lurked.

After confirming that her back was bruised, but otherwise all right, Cammie shooed Lark and Fenix out to give Taylor a more intimate examination. Hale remained inside, but averted his gaze, his jaw clenching as he heard Taylor moan in distress. When it was over, Cammie decreed that everything appeared to be “structurally sound” and that the pups would be okay. She advised Taylor to stay off her feet for a few days and asked that Hale bring her to the den where they could keep an eye on her. For once, Taylor didn’t utter a single protest about having to stay in the cave.

After swaddling Taylor in furs, Hale picked her up and carried her outside, where the weather had continued its descent into chaos. Flanked by Lark, Fenix, and Cammie, he began the trek back to his den.

During the long walk, he considered the ramifications of his confession to Taylor. Ultimately, he decided that he didn’t regret it. He was glad to finally be honest with her and also glad that she didn’t think his behavior had anything to do with not desiring her.

But it changed nothing. He still had to keep his distance from her.

Even as he thought this, Hale’s wolf growled low within his chest. He had the nagging suspicion that he wasn’t doing anyone any favors by keeping his wolf on a short leash. He was just setting himself up to snap and lose control in spectacular fashion.

T
he bleeding had stopped
by the second day of the blizzard. Cammie assured Taylor that nothing was wrong, and while Taylor believed her, it did little to assuage her anxiety. The entire ordeal had kicked her maternal instincts into overdrive and she was through with taking her pregnancy for granted.

By the end of her first week in the den, the snow still showed no signs of stopping. The winds dumped snow into the main chamber of the den, forcing the pack to retreat into the lower chambers for warmth. There was plenty of firewood to last them, but after a few days the fresh food supply ran out and they had to fall back on what was in storage. Each afternoon, Hale led a small hunting party out into the snow-locked valley, usually coming back with enough meat to feed the beta wolves and Taylor.

For the most part, Taylor tried to take her meals in private so as not to taunt her friends. Thanks to the maternal instincts, she didn’t feel the least bit guilty about gorging on fresh meat while the others gnawed on jerky husks.

Although Hale was considerate in providing food for her, their relationship hadn’t changed much. Since his bizarre confession, the alpha had remained as distant as ever. Some mornings, he would come to their room and stand by her bedside to stare at her. He never said anything and she couldn’t work up the nerve to admit she was awake.

Taylor wanted badly to bridge the gap between them, but she had no idea where to start. She wasn’t even sure how she felt about what he’d told her. She felt in her heart that Hale would never kill his brother, especially over her, but that didn’t change the fact that Hale believed that he would. So, as much as it pained her to do so, she let Hale keep his distance.

Perhaps it was because of her accident, or maybe because she knew that Hale still cared about her, but she managed to snap herself out of her depression. When she wasn’t sleeping or furtively eating venison, she became quite the social butterfly, hanging out both with her core group of friends and several new shifters.

One night in particular, while she, Lark, Glenn, and Holly were congregating in Lark’s cluttered room, Beka came in carrying a large woven basket. She approached Taylor and, without preamble, dumped the contents of the basket into Taylor’s lap. Taken aback, Taylor braced herself, only to find her lap filled with knitted garments. Very tiny knitted garments.

She held one up, her eyes widening. “Are these…baby clothes?”

“Yeah,” Beka said, putting her hands on her hips. “Unless you plan on dressing up those rodents Lark is hiding in here.”

Lark gasped. “I’m not hiding anything!”

“Yeah, about that,” Glenn said, wrinkling his nose. “If you’re going to keep those raccoons in here after Alder told you to get rid of them, you have to at least clean up behind them.”

“You brought the raccoons back in?” Taylor asked distractedly. She was still captivated by the array of little outfits. The knitting was flawless and many of the outfits were downright adorable.

“What was I supposed to do?” Lark asked, throwing her hands up in the air. “Have you seen the weather? They’d be dead out there.”

“They got on just fine while you were gone,” Holly said. “Besides, they’re not babies anymore. You need to let them fend for themselves. If they die, they die. Circle of life, and all that shit.”

While Lark and Holly argued, Taylor held up another one of the garments, a knitted onesie. “Where did you find these?”

Beka let out a scoff. “I didn’t find them, I made them, obviously.”

“Wow. That’s amazing.”

“Whatever,” she said, waving a hand in her usual blasé manner. “Look, if you want more, let me know. It’s not like I have anything better to do while we’re stuck in here.”

“Can you teach me how to make these?”

Beka arched a brow. “You want me to teach you how to knit?”

“I’m a fast learner,” Taylor said, flashing the she-wolf a hopeful smile.

She thought she saw Beka roll her eyes. “I’m not sure I have the patience for that. But, I guess I can teach you how to sew. After all, it’ll be hot out by the time the pups come. You’ll need something more breathable than these.”

“Yeah, I guess they won’t even need these until autumn or winter. Will they even fit in them then?”

“Of course. I made them bigger on purpose.”

Taylor scrutinized the onesie. It was
so
tiny. Were her babies really going to be even smaller than that? She tried to think of a time when she’d held, or even seen an infant, but couldn’t. In fact, she didn’t know anything about infants, and now she was going to have two of them.

Great. Another thing to obsessively worry about.

“Yeah, sewing, that’d be helpful,” Taylor said, suddenly feeling a bit dizzy.

The snow finally began to taper off after ten full days, but Taylor wasn’t eager to return to her cabin. While she didn’t particularly like the den, she took comfort in knowing that Cammie was close by if any problems arose. She was also enjoying spending time with her friends and learning to sew.

“What’s that supposed to be?” Holly asked.

Tonight, they were in Holly’s room, an immaculate lower chamber that was sparsely furnished and lit with an inordinate amount of candles. Cringing, Taylor twisted away so as to hide her project.

Holly all but climbed over Taylor’s shoulders to get a look at what she was doing. “What
is
that?”

Taylor mumbled a response.

“A what?”

“A hat,” Taylor said more clearly.

Holly fell backwards, laughing hysterically.

“Aw, Taylor, it’s not so bad,” Lark offered.

Taylor cast her a weak smile. Sewing garments wasn’t nearly as easy as she’d assumed it would be. Beka had provided her a lot of different fabrics to work with, but hadn’t been the most stellar teacher. She was good at demonstrating her skills, but whenever Taylor asked for an explanation on how she did a certain stitch or measured a cut of fabric, Beka would just shrug and say “I just do it.” She insisted that Taylor would figure it out with practice, but it was very disheartening when she couldn’t even sew a baby hat.

“Yeah, it’s not so bad,” Holly chirped. “If your babies are going to have cones for heads.”

“It’s a work in progress,” Taylor said, shoving her failed creation back in her basket.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Glenn said in a reassuring tone. “In all honesty, I doubt your kids will even need all those clothes my sister made.”

“Why do you say that?”

He gave a slight shrug. “Well, they’re pups. I mean, they’ll be human when they’re born, but as soon as they figure out how to shift, they’ll probably stay like that for a while.”

Taylor scooted closer to him, her brows drawn together. “You mean, they’re going to be wolves? For how long?”

“It’s different for everyone,” he said, scratching the back of his head. “I can only speak for Beka and myself. She shifted when she was about a month old, but not long after, she shifted back to her human form and stayed that way for years. She told me once that she could tell it made our mom sad to see her in wolf form.”

“She could remember that?”

“Most of us can remember things from not long after we’re born, so long as we’re in animal form,” Holly said.

Lark gave an enthusiastic nod. “I remember, this one time, gosh, I must have been like, maybe three months old, and my dad, he brought me this giant worm—”

The occupants of the room made a collective noise of disgust. Lark scowled at the floor, kicking at imaginary dirt.

“I didn’t eat it,” she mumbled. “Just chewed it a bit.”

After clearing her throat, Taylor redirected the conversation. “That’s fascinating. And a little scary. I always thought it was a good thing kids don’t remember the first few years of their lives. It gives parents time to figure out what the heck they’re doing.”

“I think even humans remember their early years,” Holly said. “The memories just don’t fit into any framework that their adult minds can make sense of. But the heart remembers everything.”

Taylor mulled that over for a few seconds, and was surprised to find that she agreed with the fox. She didn’t have memories of her teenaged mother, or her first family, the one that had adopted her before her health issues had become apparent. But she did remember love, and also abandonment. Those two things had been the foundation of her life and had shaped her like nothing else had.

“So what about you?” Taylor asked Glenn. “When did you shift for the first time?”

“I was about three weeks old.”

“Yeesh. How long until you shifted back?”

“Five years.”

“
Five years?
” Taylor repeated, sure she hadn’t heard him right.

“It’s why Beka and I left,” Glenn said, averting his gaze. “Our dad died before I was born. Our mom tried to raise us in her hometown, but when her baby disappeared, people started asking questions. We moved around a lot. Mom was always depressed. She had to tell people that I was the family dog. Eventually, Beka decided she’d be happier if we were just gone. So we left.”

Taylor placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”

“It happened a long time ago,” he said, giving her a genuine smile. “I just don’t want you to worry about your own pups. Beka and I didn’t exactly have a normal upbringing.”

“You think raising children out in the wilderness is normal?”

“Children, no. Pups? Yeah. This is the best place for them, Taylor. They’ll be able to be themselves and they’ll have parents that can teach them how to be humans
and
wolves.”

A
lthough Taylor napped with ease
, laying down to sleep in the mornings was never easy. It was bad enough that her mind seemed determined to dredge up all of her worries and insecurities in the darkness. Worse still, her hips ached no matter which side she lay on and her belly was downright unwieldy.

This morning, she was ruminating over her earlier talk with Glenn. While it had alleviated some of her fears about raising children away from modern society, it had given her a new and rather selfish concern. When she envisioned her children, they were always sweet, tiny babies with chubby cheeks and big smiles. That was what she planned for, what she now wanted quite badly. Not a pair of puppies.

Sure, she liked puppies as much as the next person. They were soft, cuddly, and adorable. But she didn’t want to trade her little babies for a small animal that would bark, chew furniture, and collect fleas.

Look at the bright side
, she thought.
Housebreaking is a hell of a lot easier than potty training.

Taylor pushed aside a pang of sadness to smile. She would love them no matter what, she knew that much for certain. But a big part of her held out hope that at least one of the children preferred his human form.

The skin on the back of her neck prickled, signaling Hale’s arrival. Taylor lay still on the pallet and tried to keep her breathing slow and even. Each morning he came in to check on her, Hale never gave any indication that he knew she was awake, but she still wasn’t sure that she was fooling him. She knew that shifters could pick up on subtle changes in heartbeats, as well as perspiration, and no matter how cold the room was, Hale had a way of making her sweat.

Today, it wasn’t just sweat that plagued her. Her body tingled with anticipation, electricity skittering across her skin, inwards from her extremities and converging in the pit of her stomach where it became a caustic orb of excitement.

Why now?

She had craved Hale’s attention and affection for weeks, but it had been a while since she’d desired something more physical from him. Now, that long-forgotten ache was back with a vengeance.

A consummate predator, Hale’s feet made no sound as he walked from the doorway to the side of the bed of furs. Even so, Taylor was aware of each step he took. Her mate projected a charged energy of his own, one that she was intimately familiar with.

Her back was to him, but even so, he wouldn’t have been able to see that her eyes were open. They were deep underground, and without the aid of even the faintest light, he was just as blind as her. But when he crouched down, his hand didn’t fumble as it reached out to stroke her hair.

Her heart betrayed her as it began to hammer in her chest. He always just stared, sometimes for a few moments, sometimes for much longer, but he never touched her. She wished he hadn’t touched her. The way her body reacted, she would have thought her hair was made of nerve strands.

Maybe she was aggravated with her body’s reaction, or maybe it was Hale’s standoffishness that finally snapped her patience. In a movement so swift it would have made a shifter envious, she reached back and snatched Hale’s hand at the wrist. Though he made no effort to shake her off, she held in a vice grip.

For a moment, they both remained frozen in place. Taylor realized she had no idea what she wanted to say, nor did she know why she was gripping his wrist. She just knew that she didn’t want to let go.

There were a lot of things she could say. She could ask him a neutral question: What are you doing? Why are you here?

She could forgo questions altogether: Get out. Let me sleep. Don’t bother me again unless you’re ready to stop avoiding me and have a real discussion.

What she said instead came entirely out of left field.

“I love you.”

Before she could think too much into that, Taylor sat up and turned to face him. She could feel his warm breath on her face and could smell his sweat. Those were two aspects of an ordinary man that she would have never found appealing. But Hale was no ordinary man. He wasn’t a man at all. He was wolf, and his breath smelled like the hunt. His sweat smelled like summer rain, mixed with an irresistible male musk.

Her mouth found his in the darkness. His soft stubble pricked at her soft lips as she kissed him with unbridled need. Despite the passion of her kiss, the alpha remained unresponsive. Rather than upset or unnerve her, it only made her feel more determined.

“I love you,” she said again, this time murmuring the words across his lips.

When he still didn’t respond, she ran a hand down his chest. It was bare, and she raked her long fingernails across the rigid expanse of muscles. When her hand reached the junction of his pelvis, she felt him tense ever so slightly.

“I love you,” she repeated.

He wore a supple deerskin, tied loosely around his waist. She reached beneath it and grasped his cock. A wave of pride rushed through her when she found him fully erect. She gave him a hard squeeze and then deepened her kiss. A tremor ran through his body, but Hale otherwise remained stubbornly still.

The more he resisted her, the more it excited her. She put an arm around his neck and pulled herself into his lap. Her tongue delved into his mouth, while her teeth nipped at his firm lips. It was an odd feeling, to be completely in control of such a powerful male, knowing that he could seize that control back at any second.

Her hand began to move, pumping his stiff erection in slow, deliberate strokes. By the third stroke, Hale had begun to growl. At the fifth, his entire body trembled to the tempo of the deep, animalistic sound. She never made it to the sixth.

All at once, Hale was returning the kiss, and in brutal fashion. His hand went behind her head, pushing her face hard against his. His tongue thrust into her mouth over and over in a crude mockery of fucking. A careless fang cut the inside of her lip, and she tasted blood.

On reflex, her hands flew up to press against his chest. But as they came in contact with Hale’s hard, sweat-slickened muscles, her rebuff turned into encouragement. Finding one of his flat nipples, she grabbed onto it and pinched.

The alpha snarled into her mouth. His hands went to her hips and he deftly flipped her onto her knees. He maneuvered her much more roughly than she would have liked. She would have told him as much, but by the time she regained her sense of equilibrium, he was already positioning himself behind her.

More wolf than man, Hale kept one arm around her waist and the other braced on the ground while his hips gyrated against hers, his swollen cock seeking out her wet cleft. It didn’t take him long, and she let out a lilting moan as she felt his crown nudge against her entrance. In one efficient thrust, he buried himself inside of her.

It had been months since she’d been with either of her mates, and it felt as though he would tear her apart. But in a good way, a very good way. She’d forgotten how big he was, not just his manhood, but his entire body. His massive body dwarfed hers, and on her knees beneath him, she felt small and even a bit vulnerable. All of the control she’d felt earlier was gone, but she didn’t miss it. This was how it was with Hale—how it would always be with Hale. While he could be woefully inept at other aspects of their relationship, when it came to mating, he knew what he wanted and he was always in command.

His thrusts were far from gentle, but she knew that he was holding back at least a little. Even his wolf recognized that she wasn’t in any condition to be manhandled. She still had trouble matching his pace, and eventually gave up, allowing him to take charge completely. For some reason, her surrender seemed to please him and his movements became more fervent. He began growling again, though it lacked the even cadence of his previous sounds. After a moment, she realized he was speaking to her.

“Mine,” he growled. “Say it. Mine.
Say it
.”

Her body started to shake uncontrollably. She tried to pretend like she couldn’t understand him, but the words became more demanding with each repetition. Tears pricked at her eyes, even as her pleasure mounted. For once, she found herself trying to fight her climax. She was afraid that the rush of ecstasy might make her say something she would later regret. But as she reached her peak, so did Hale, and whatever words she said were drowned out by his harsh snarl.

His release lasted much longer than usual, evoking memories of the mating thrall. During their week of ritualistic mating, Hale would hold her close, his claws digging into her hips as he pulsed inside of her over and over, filling her with his seed. Sometimes he would hold her like that long after he spent himself. When his brother would come close, Hale would let out a growl that both chilled and excited her. It was a sound that had promised violence and blood.

Hale rolled onto his side, bringing her with him. She half expected him to get up and leave without another word. Instead, he lay beside her, his soft panting rustling the hair at the top of her head. She almost wished he had left. It would have been easier.

“I miss Alder so much. Every time I lay down to sleep, I wish he were here instead of you,” she said. “You’re constantly pissing me off. Sometimes I want to scream at you. Sometimes I want to hit you. You’re so inconsistent and it drives me insane, and sometimes I really, really hate you.”

Hale said nothing.

Her eyes began to burn. “And that’s why I know that I love you more than him. Because he can be gone for two months and it makes me cry, but you can ignore me for a day and I start planning out your murder.

“I love you more than him. I have for a very long time. Almost since the beginning.”

Hale turned her onto her back. She almost thought she could see his face looming over his, and she wondered which expression he wore. Pride? Confusion? Disgust?

“Alder deserves better than you,” he said, his tone perfectly neutral.

“You’re right,” she whispered.

“But I don’t,” he said. “And that’s why we belong together. That’s why I should be your only mate.”

Tears rolled freely down her cheeks now.

“I know,” she said, knowing full well that she was too selfish to ever let either brother go.