My Alphas: The Complete Series (21 page)

Cass looked down at her toes. She’d painted her nails red a billion lifetimes ago and now they were looking worse for wear. Some chipped, another cracked and as she went barefoot most of the time now, her feet were always faintly dirty and starting to go hard on the soles. Her legs were still smooth thanks to the razors she’d brought along with her but there were only two left now. Eventually she’d need to take a trip to Hinton lest she end up all shaggy.

She was sleeping with werewolves but she didn’t need to become one.

At this thought, Cass almost laughed aloud and managed to suppress it down to a smirk directed at her feet.

Real life intruded and showed how absurd this whole enterprise was. The werewolves lived away from civilization, deliberately, and that meant no access to all the things civilization offered. Electricity. Potato chips. The internet. A thousand more. The cabin didn’t count either - Cass had been studiously avoiding it without thinking why. All she knew for sure was the longer she lived with them, the more she was changed. Her soft feet were the first to go. She’d run out of razors and without a supply trip, things would get hairy.

“Oh my gosh,” Cass said aloud and giggled into her hands.

Kita faltered explaining whatever it was she was explaining but then regained her flow.

Cass felt herself turning red but was almost on the brink of laughter again. What was going on? A moment ago she was Captain Angsty Pants and now everything was hilarious. She looked up to see Kita glancing at her with a not-impressed expression and that was it. Cass stifled a laugh, excused herself and made it into the corridor before it burst out of her.

She grabbed the cabin key from its shelf and was outside in the late afternoon sun in moments, grinning like a loon. Still laughing, she decided to stop being a wimp and made her way to the cabin and went inside, closing the door behind her.

“Oh this is ridiculous,” she gasped as she looked around the room. The tiny sink. The wooden table. The bookcase. It was a miniature house pretending to be a real house.

Cass sank down on to the sofa - nearly losing it at the idea of the werewolves manhandling the cumbersome thing over miles - and laughed until tears were streaming out of her eyes and her stomach was aching. Her mind kept throwing up jokes about things getting hairy and she laughed until she thought she might die.

Eventually she calmed herself, wiping her eyes and feeling her face ache from smiling.

“Oh Cass this is so ridiculous,” she said aloud to the room.

The thrall, the curse, was close now. According to Vara, Cass was the middle, balancing the Alphas but so far all that had meant was fucking both of them in equal measure. Another day or so and they’d drag her away somewhere to have their wicked way with her (and she them). In the blur of one crazy night Edon had mentioned they would leave the den but that line of conversation had been abruptly cut short by a new one: wolf, teeth, bed, now.

Cass stood up and went over to the tiny sink (resisting the urge to laugh at the absurdity of a glorified room playing the role of a house) and filled up a glass of water. It was rainwater and had a sweet aftertaste. Cass drank it down, feeling it cool her from the inside out. It was a relief but with that came realization she was teetering between mania and depression.

“Just like mom,” Cass said to the sink.

Cass pushed all that aside. Thinking about her parents and how she might actually, you know, have
inherited
some bad shit was a sure way of ending up mired in deep sadness.

“Well you did give up your life and come trudging out into the wilderness. How much thought did you put into that exactly?” Cass said aloud.

Cass put the glass down and gripped the sink, looking down at her toes.
I’m tired. Or hungry. Or going crazy because I’m about to be a fertile little baby-wolf mama.

Before that thread of thought could turn… hairy… Cass remembered the phone she’d taken from “Melanie” and hidden under the fridge. She’d deftly blocked it out of her mind, forgetting it in a supreme mental judo move.

Before she knew it, she retrieved it and turned it on.

A moment later it started chiming as message after message arrived.

*

Edon nodded at Kita as the meeting ended. She followed him outside and into the trees, walking along a worn path.

She was going back to Hinton for an extended stay, less a diplomat than a spy, her list of tasks growing longer by the day. She had to find out who started the militia and how they decided to march on the den. Who ordered the plane to spy on them. What the humans were up to. If Carcer was involved somehow.

Kita was to be sneaky and sharp and to let slip the polite veneer so she could get results because there was no counterpart for her. The humans didn’t have a werewolf liaison officer any more than they had someone to negotiate between the bees and the humans. The closest was Sheriff Harmony and all he could do in the end was keep the peace. He couldn’t change the structure that was sharp and spiky and occasionally lashed out to extinguish an entire werewolf pack.

“We need to find the militia leader and convince him to never march on us again,” Edon said.

“Yes, I will. I’ll deal with them.”

Kita kept quiet as they walked. They’d had this conversation multiple times now, Edon wanting to check and confirm what she was going to do.

Edon breathed the cool air of the forest as they walked, heading nowhere in particular but away from the den. He felt like he was juggling but every ball thrown up into the air exploded into ten once it left his hand. Now he was trying to position himself to catch them lest they be crushed to death.

“Your mate seemed very cheerful today,” Kita finally said.

“I don’t know why,” Edon replied automatically.

Since they’d found Cass slogging through the mud Edon had promised himself a hundred times to do something other than have mad passionate sex with her. But every time he went to talk with her they’d end up in bed. When he and Rey were together, it was even worse. Something about the three of them together seemed to pull the moment away from thought, away from words and into flesh and fucking.

The bond he and Rey shared that had, thus far, made them unbeatable warriors had come back stronger than ever since Cass arrived. Now it appeared in the bedroom. Without speaking they knew how to move her, what story was running in her mind and they played into it. Cass, the anonymous girl captured in the forest, face down in the bed, ravaged by the unstoppable werewolves. Cass, the Pack Mate, commanding them without words to pleasure her.

Cass the nymph. Cass the essence of nature. Cass the unstoppable force and they the immovable objects.

Edon felt his cock twitch and start to swell and hastily pulled his thoughts away from his mate but it was too late. Even dressed it was obvious what was happening.

“Something on your mind Alpha?” Kita asked with a sideways glance.

Edon didn’t look back. He knew the expression she’d be wearing. Before Cass arrived they’d mated many times. She wasn’t exactly his favorite, if there was such a thing, but she was the most human of all the werewolves and it had drawn them together.

In many ways Kita was the new evolution of werewolf. She could pass for human with ease and had no problem living in their cities. Many werewolves couldn’t enter them, getting nauseous from the pollution, the smell of rotting garbage, enclosed buildings, concrete and hard roads. The suffocating feeling the air wasn’t fresh but the expelled breath of a million humans. Stale, no oxygen.

Kita had none of these problems. She kept her sharp teeth to herself. Her human side didn’t struggle to keep her werewolf side locked away. It was more like a switch than a compulsion.

Edon glanced across at her and saw the cheeky spark in her eye. He knew it well. She’d poke him, he’d poke back and after a short snapping chase he’d capture her. They had played that game and more like it many times. It would be simplicity itself to play it again.

But he didn’t want to.

Since Cass arrived, he’d only wanted her. His flesh responded only to her touch. Even his memories of past lovers seemed to belong to someone else. Pushing Kita down on to her hands and knees and lifting up her skirt (a pencil skirt she’d told him later). In the dark of a hotel room as she nestled against him, her lips trailing down.

Instead of heating his blood it did nothing.

Kita must have seen it in his face because the twinkle in her eye faded away and she turned away from him and back to the path.

Cass. Cass who he was devoted to. Cass who he’d imprinted on ten years ago. Cass who soon could be the mother of his cub. He had to protect her.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Edon began. He took a breath and swallowed, tasting bitterness in his mouth.

“Find the militia leader and kill him.”

*

Rey chased the werewolf intruder, blood roaring in his ears.

After the meeting ended he ran out into the territory, scouting out miles from the den. The thrall would soon be upon them (Rey noticed Edon called it the curse more often than the thrall) and it was the most dangerous time for the Arctos pack. They undoubtedly were being watched by Turo pack werewolves. The scouts reported tracks in their territory and a few nights ago had fought two werewolves. They’d fled, disappearing over the border.

He and Edon were coming and going at random times. Appearing and disappearing. First at the den and then miles away. Day and night. Sometimes together, sometimes alone or with other pack members. They both alternated this with staying in the den, hiding from sight, giving the impression they were gone and then randomly reappearing.

When the thrall hit it would last for days and they would be away from the den the entire time. The pack would be left to fend for themselves under Vara’s leadership and they needed the Turo pack to think perhaps the Alphas were there, in the den.

Although he and Edon had gone away before, it felt different this time. The extra incursions on their territory. The plane, flying low, spying on them. The human militia. Seeing a group of humans execute two werewolves at Carcer’s instruction. They shared the unspoken fear they would return from the thrall to find their den heaped high with dead bodies, their pack obliterated.

When Rey caught the scent of a foreign werewolf on his land, his first thought was capture, not kill. He’d pushed that idea down, reaching instead for the pure rage that had served him so well over the years but it had eluded him. It was there still, the territoriality, the fury but buried down as though it was locked in a box six-feet deep underground. Another slow change started by his mate appearing and now continuing on its own.

And so Rey stalked, creeping through the trees, staying downwind until he spied the intruder sitting by a stream. He was a young werewolf, layered over in muscle but still carrying the skinniness of youth. He was light brown and folly upon folly was absorbed in watching fish swim rather than staying alert. Rey crept closer, his entire being absorbed in this moment. He felt the air move against his fur and knew the position of the trees around them. He heard birds chirping in the distance and knew no werewolves were hiding over there. It could be a trap but he doubted it. The birds always announced their displeasure at seeing werewolves beneath them.

As Rey moved closer, his estimation of the wolf’s age moved down. His face was young, still juvenile as though it hadn’t yet caught up with his body’s sudden lurch into adulthood. He was perhaps sixteen and alone, miles from his pack.

For some reason, perhaps the wolf’s young age, Rey changed his plan from leaping upon him and crushing him to the ground, interrogation and then a quick death. Barely believing he would do such a thing, he shifted, turning into a man and then stepped out of the bushes.

“Stop,” he said, putting his hands up.

The wolf startled, toppling backwards in his haste to get away. He found his feet and was off sprinting before Rey could say another word.

“Fuck,” Rey said and shifted.

He gave chase, the young werewolf initially gaining distance but fast tiring out of his sprint. Rey followed him through the trees, over rocks and splashing through mud. With every moment that passed, he came closer. Even as the blood pounded in his head and he felt himself getting annoyed at the young wolf, he admired he made him work to catch him. He was running out of stamina but still was ducking and turning, trying to use the environment to his advantage to get away.

But Rey knew his land like he knew the back of his paw. They were in an area of rocks, trees and water and if the wolf had any sense he’d stay there and try to lose Rey in a cave system or in the thick trees. But he was heading toward open ground. Flat and featureless grassland, it afforded nowhere to hide and he would never be able to outrun Rey there.

They crested the last small hill before the grassland and the wolf realized his mistake. Instead of racing out he ducked under a tree branch and turned on Rey, his teeth bared.

It was a good move and Rey felt sharp teeth brush his body as he twisted out of the way but the young wolf had no follow-up. Rey used his momentum to slam the wolf to the ground and into unconsciousness.

He shifted, turning the wolf over and kneeling atop his body. After a moment the wolf awoke from his involuntary sleep and snarled at Rey, only to be punched in the nose.