Mating the Alpha (4 page)

Keeping as quiet as I could, I knelt down on the floor and put my cheek to the floor. I would have looked like a crazy person to anyone watching me, but I was looking for something very specific. I began to carefully zig-zag across the floor until I felt a cold spot. I tapped lightly on the floor and then a few feet next to it. It sounded hollow. This was what I had been looking for.

Using my meager fingernails, I began to pry at the edges of the floorboard. After a few hard tugs, one of them finally came up and brought several of the boards next to it with it as well. Luckily for me, the old hinge holding the trap door in place didn’t creak loudly enough to be heard outside the room.

Lukas and I had spent a lot of time exploring the old buildings around Black Falls Cove. I’d also spent time researching the town in the library for one of my school papers. The town was in a remote corner of Minnesota where once the snow flew and the temperatures dropped it made it miserable to go outside. The miners came up with a clever solution. They spent their off-time burrowing tunnels underneath most of the buildings. The town was as connected underneath it as it was by the regular roads. It was a handy mechanism so that the miners were able to still move about town without having to go outside.

There was a small ladder that led down into the tunnel. I hated dark places, and I could only imagine the spiders and mice that might be living in the tunnels now, but I had to risk it. I needed to get out and escape before Lukas did something stupid. I took the gas lamp from the corner of the room and began my descent down the ladder. I pulled the floorboards shut over my head. I’d leave Joshua and his gang with quite a mystery on their hands as to how I disappeared out of a locked room.

I reached the cold earth floor of the tunnel a moment later and immediately looked at the wall. I could barely make out the words etched in the rock “General Store- 100 yards. Mess Hall- 200 yards. Stables- 50 yards.” There were arrows pointing in the direction for each. I decided to go to the General Store. If I remembered correctly, it was the closest of the available options to the edge of town.

As I made my way through the tunnels, I gave myself a pep talk about how much I actually enjoyed dark, rank places. Several times, my bare foot seemed to touch something furry, and I bit my lip to keep from shouting out. I just had to make it 100 yards, and then I’d be out. I thought I heard squeaks around me several times, and each time it just encouraged me to move faster.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I found another ladder reaching up into the darkness. I saw “General Store” etched on the wood rails of the ladder. I quickly made my way up the rungs and pushed open the floorboards over my head. I peeked out and didn’t see anyone in the room. I set the lantern down on the floor and hauled myself up out of the tunnel. I left the lantern where it was and rushed across the room to the door. As I reached it, it opened. A smiling Joshua stood waiting for me.

“Well, now. Aren’t you a clever one, Maren? I was wondering if you had figured out where you were. It’s funny how well people from Greyelf know the lay of the land around here. But that’s okay. I like a woman with a good head on her shoulders. But now the fun’s over. Boys, string her up.”

I felt my heart sink. I wasn’t getting out, and I had a feeling everything was about to get a whole lot worse.

“I told you I can handle this on my own.” I felt as if I had said the same words a hundred times, and no doubt in the last ten minutes, I had. I stood in the woods about fifty yards away from the tent. On the ground, I stared at Maren’s shoes and purse. She was nowhere to be seen.

“You aren’t going to run off half-cocked on your own,” Billy replied. “Especially not by yourself. So you can forget that idea. I’m the acting sheriff right now, plus you’d be crazy if you think I don’t have a vested interest in what happens to Maren.” This time the growl that rippled through my chest was loudly apparent. “Isn’t it about time you came clean with somebody, Lukas? You and Maren have something going on between the two of you. I know it. Christ, the whole fucking clan knows it by now. So own up to it, at least to me.”

“So you can try to have my alpha claim rescinded again?” I didn’t trust anyone, least of all Billy Miller.

“No, so I can do my job. Both of them,” Billy said with a long sigh. “Look, I know we got off on the wrong foot, and most of that has to do with Maren. But I am a council member, and it’s my job to help you decide the best course of action. And since you decided to lay one hell of a hurt on Sheriff Monroe this morning, I also am all you’ve got when it comes to the law in this town. You might not believe it, but I’m on your side. I want what’s best for the clan. I think that could be you, but you have to be smart about what you do decide when it comes to your mate.”

I ran a hand through my hair as I knelt down and picked up Maren’s shoes. I felt like I was on the edge of panic. I was the one who had pulled her into this mess. I promised her that she would be safe, and with each passing moment, I felt that became less and less the case. I needed to find her, and a little help along the way wasn’t a bad thing. I just wished there was someone else I could trust.

Markus had little to say about Billy Miller the few times he came up in our conversations. Billy was young to have attained a council member position, but he had come highly recommended from his old clan. He wanted to join the Greyelf Grizzlies because of the visibility of the post. His family had a long line of lawyers and policemen and even a few federal agents in it. It was as if the whole lot of them were cut from the cloth of the law. Markus had remarked that Billy was usually fair and level-headed. Of course, Markus had also thought the sun rose and fell out of Sheriff Monroe’s butt. I thought that was likely for a far different reason though. My big brother had been woefully blind when it came to his best friend, and I was fairly certain it was because he had been in love with him.

That was neither here nor there now though. I had to find Maren. I decided to take my first tentative step toward establishing some kind of trust with one of my council members. I knew where Doc Walden stood. It wouldn’t hurt to have someone countering his opinions inside the council.

“I intended to take Maren as my mate,” I finally said. “I think that given enough time, she would be agreeable to it as well.”

“You haven’t seen Maren in a decade,” Billy said after a short pause. “Plus, she’s human.”

“I’m well aware of that fact,” I snapped. “But she’s the one that I want. And before Doc Walden threw the monkey wrench of Vivian Reddon into the mix, I would have declared my intention to the council in the morning.”

“So you do care about her.” Billy’s voice was considering.

I swung on the man with tightened fists. “I’ve cared about her for as long as I can remember. You dare question my intentions?”

Billy put his hands up. “Look, I don’t know much about what happened between the two of you back then, but I do know that Maren was heartbroken when you cut bait after you slept with her. It looked like you were out to score just another conquest.”

My hands were wrapped around Billy’s collar, and I thrust him up against the tree trunk behind him. Hard. “You don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. Maren was never a conquest to me, and if I hear you talking about my mate that way again, I’ll shove one of these tree trunks right up your ass.”

Billy put his hands on top of mine and began to loosen my hold. He seemed nonplussed by my outburst. “Easy does it, Lukas. Your side, remember? If you’re going to get all hotheaded every time someone tries to speak to you about this, you’re never going to get anywhere.”

He was right. I released him and took a step back. “I’m sorry. Where Maren’s concerned, I don’t have a lot of patience.”

“Yeah, I gathered,” Billy said as he straightened his shirt’s sleeves and collar. “So, how far along did you take the mating ritual?” He caught my warning glance. “I’m assuming by the fact that you continue to reference her as your mate, and just mentioned the fact she’s possibly amenable to the idea, that you began the mating process with her. We can talk about what a shitstorm that is going to cause with this whole thing with the Lopers later.”

“She bears my mark,” I said stiffly.

Billy nodded. “Okay, then. That means we’re in business after all.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll be able to track her,” Billy said. “But it’s possible that the people who took her understand that too. So my aforementioned warning about this being a trap still applies.” He knelt down and looked at the ground in the clearing. He pointed. “There are at least two sets of footprints here that are considerably larger than Maren’s. Her footprints disappear right there, so I think it’s another safe assumption at this point that she was carried away from here.”

I growled again. “How do we track her?”

“That’s all up to you,” Billy said as he stood up. “I’ve never taken a mate myself, but obviously you know there is an initial bond now that exists between the two of you. You should be able to sense her.”

“Yes, that I know,” I said. “But I don’t understand how to turn that into GPS directions.”

“It’ll be easier in your bear form,” Billy said. “You should be able to scent her more easily. Between that and the pull from the bond, you can track her. I’ll follow you.”

Billy’s description of the scene had my hackles up, but his warnings were finally settling in. “This seems too easy,” I said slowly.

Billy nodded again. His expression was grim. “If they know what Maren means to you, and there is a good chance that they do, it means they’re up to some kind of mischief around the Summit. They aren’t going to make it too hard to find them.”

“They want me to come after them.”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Glad to know you’re finally listening.”

“I can’t let anything happen to Maren,” I said.

“Once we figure out where they are, we’ll regroup,” Billy said. “I don’t want anything to happen to Maren either. But we have to play this smart, Lukas.”

“Something I’m not exactly known for,” I said with a grim smile.

“That was before you became the Alpha,” Billy said. “Everyone in this clan expects that you will be there to take care of them, just like Markus did. You can’t let them down.”

I felt the weight of that responsibility in my bones now. It was an odd sensation. I nodded curtly. “Let’s go.”  I stripped my clothes off and effortlessly phased into my bear form. It was something that I looked forward to more than I’d ever care to admit. It would be hard to explain to someone who wasn’t a shifter, but the ability to move through the world based simply on instincts and the nature’s hints with sights and smells was the most freeing experience I had ever experienced.

I let my nose down to scent Maren’s left behind belongings. I knew her smell by heart, but there was another undercurrent of a scent there that my woefully inadequate human nose hadn’t been able to smell before. Blood.

I wanted to let loose a howl, but I was too close to the tent and the five hundred other shifters who were boozing it up and having a good time. I heard a rumble next to me and swung my massive head toward my companion. We didn’t need words to communicate in this form. Billy had smelled the blood too, and I sensed his agitation.

I had to give the guy props. I knew he had a thing for Maren, and if I hadn’t shown up in town a week ago, whatever had been going on between them might even have gone somewhere. The idea made me green with jealousy, but since pulling her into my crazy scheme, Maren hadn’t given me any indication that she wanted anything else from the deputy. In fact, it had been exactly the opposite based on the tail end of the conversation that I heard at the bear match that morning.

If Billy wasn’t going to act like a sore loser, then I could use the fact that he had feelings for Maren to my advantage. That was what I was counting on in any case. I cleared my mind. Billy said that between the scent and the bond, I’d be able to find my way to Maren. Someone else might have scoffed at this, but we in the bear community didn’t take things like that for granted. Our animals innately knew things we did not. It was those things that made us strong. It was also the things that humans didn’t understand about us, so it made them fear us. I could understand that too.

I ambled slowly forward letting Maren’s scent guide me. It changed after a couple of steps, and I knew it was because she was no longer touching the ground after that point. She had been injured and carried away. I smelled the masculine tones of the one who had stolen her out from under my nose, and I cataloged it away in my mind. When I found him, he would be dealt with. My bear demanded it, and I wasn’t going to disagree. There would be a lesson taught to the ones who thought that they could come onto Greyelf Grizzly land and take the one who belonged to me. Oh yes, there would be a reckoning. But first things first. I had to find her.

I opened my mind to her. I thought about her scent and her face. She had grown lovelier in the ten years. Where before she might have been considered a little on the skinny side and her red hair was usually wild despite her best attempts to tame it, she had matured into a vision of beauty that took my breath away. It made my heart pound in excitement and wanting every time I looked at her. It had taken considerable effort to keep other parts of my anatomy calm when I saw her standing at the foot of the stage before my speech at the Summit in her provocative red dress.

If the men who had taken her harmed her in any way…. The thought caused my vision to blur. I heard a soft grunt from the bear beside me. He was telling me to focus, and he was right. I had gotten distracted.

I let my mind wander back to Maren, and the expression of exquisite pleasure I saw on her face when I drew her to orgasm earlier that afternoon. I licked my chops at the thought, and suddenly, it was there. The softest tug on my mind. I would probably have missed it if I hadn’t been paying attention. This was the indication that the bond existed, and my mate waited for me on the other end,

Kicking up my paws, I ambled in the direction of the tug. Every minute we delayed was another minute that someone could be hurting Maren or worse. I couldn’t think about that though. I kept my thoughts of her soft and inviting. I ran the cascade of warm memories from our past through my mind almost on autopilot. It wasn’t the first time I had done so over the years, but this time it was enhanced by that tiny little tug pulling me closer and closer to that object of my affection.

I wasn’t even sure how long we ran through the woods, but as my awareness of our surroundings sharpened, I knew where we were, and in that instant I knew where Maren had been taken. I pulled to a stop and phased back into my human form. Billy moved to stand next to me. We stared into the night ahead of us. There was the faintest glow through the trees lighting up several small buildings in the distance.

“The old mining town,” Billy said. He sounded slightly out of breath. “Isn’t that place condemned?”

“Black Falls Cove,” I said. “It was named after the tiny waterfall by the lake just beyond the town. It started out as a logging camp but grew up into this after they found iron ore here.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a history buff,” Billy said giving me a sidelong glance.

“I wasn’t. Maren’s always been into that kind of stuff,” I said softly. “We’re going to have to split up and scope it out. We have no idea how many are in there with her.”

“I’ll scope it out,” Billy said. “Give me five minutes.”

“If what you say is true, they’re expecting a bear to show up.”

“I’ve got some tricks up my sleeve. Trust me,” Billy said.

I didn’t have any tricks up my sleeve at the moment but sitting still was the absolute last thing I wanted to do, and I said as much.

“We need to know how many we’re dealing with and if they’re armed.”

“I could smell the gunpowder a mile away,” I said flatly. “Of course, they’re armed.”

“We’re two against at least two with guns. Likely there are more.”

“We’re not just any two men,” I said grimly.

Billy shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. We can’t just go rushing in there half-cocked without a plan. I know you know that.”

“Well, then let me enlighten you. I do have a plan, and it involves using the town to our advantage.”

“What do you mean?” Billy asked.

“There are a series of tunnels around the town. There’s also one that leads out here. The old miners really didn’t like the long winters. They added another couple of tunnels that allowed them to go further out into the forest for hunting and trapping during the winter. We passed one a few yards back. That’s when I realized where we were.”