My Alphas: The Complete Series (26 page)

If she was pregnant she could make herself… not pregnant… and escape.

Cass let the darkest thoughts flow through her without judgment, examining each one as it passed and then letting them slip away. Somewhere beyond terror and exhaustion was clarity and calmness. Her usual defense of denial was missing. So despite her mind going to the worst places, there was an undeniable knowledge that broke through…

“I love them,” Cass said and knew it was true.

“Who do you love?” Rey asked from inside the door.

Cass didn’t jump or scream at the sound of his voice. She was too exhausted for it but there was also a
rightness
to the moment, a perfect timing beyond rationality.

Rey was on the bed next to her before she’d fully rolled over and then his hands were touching her, seeming to know every ache and brushing them away. His body was clean and warm and the sheer realness of it pushed away the cloud of memory and worry. She stroked his face and saw the hard lines of it relax.

“I love-”

The words stuck, some last gasp of denial thrashing up. Cass cleared her throat and tried again.

“I love-”

This time the prickle of tears, the warm good emotion shutting down her voice. Cass squeezed her eyes shut, took a breath and opened them again, feeling she was teetering on a precipice.

She had to jump.

“I love you. I love Edon. I love you both. You’re
my Alphas
and I am your mate.”

It spun out of her so easily it was almost ridiculous how difficult it had been to get past two words.

Rey moved closer to her, the warmth of his body radiating through her. He kissed her and stroked his hands on her face and there was no moment she was waiting for him to say he loved her back. His kisses were soft and each one unlocked some tense muscle and soon she was drifting between sleep and awake and between one blink and the next there was a man watching her and then a man asleep, the perfect lines of his face smooth and relaxed. Then she blinked again and drifted away.

*

Days passed and Rey watched Cass’ bruises from the thrall fade and her scratches heal.

He told her he would search for Edon once his shoulder had healed and instead of answering she’d merely smiled and then kissed him and they hadn’t spoken of him again.

Scouting packs went out and returned with tales of Turo wolves on their land, sneaking around in groups. Rey, acting against his desire to obliterate them gave orders to watch but not engage. He couldn’t risk open war with the Turo pack, not until he knew Edon’s fate.

Despite Cass’ curves attracting him and the gentle sighs she made when he kissed her driving him mad, they didn’t mate. Cass was still sore, healing from the thrall but there was some deeper pain than that holding him back. In blunt terms, she needed him with her but not
within
her, at least for now. And so Rey slept with her at night and spent time with her in the day when he wasn’t dealing with pack business. Despite his newfound emotional side, he didn’t know what was happening with Cass. She had happiness and melancholy wrapped together. There was perhaps on another level the feeling that although she was his mate, she was also Edon’s and until Rey knew what had happened with him it didn’t feel right to take her into his bed. As though mating with her would be some final claim, an acknowledgment Edon was gone forever.

His shoulder healed and on the day he shifted, feeling some aching part of his soul sigh in relief, scouts returned with grim news: they had discovered multiple dead werewolves. Rey kissed Cass goodbye and then set off, feeling the joy of running once more.

Three hours later they approached a small clearing that looked like a slaughterhouse. Four werewolves torn to pieces after a vicious battle, their dismembered body parts stacked in a slippery pile.

One of the wolves had copper fur - the same as Edon. Rey sniffed at the bloody pile of fur and bones. He could smell Edon’s blood everywhere but was it enough to say it was him?

He moved away from the pile and looked around. There were claw marks everywhere, signs of a fight between at least six werewolves according to the tracks. The surrounding tree trunks were splattered with blood and had loose bits of fur hanging off splinters. The earth was dotted with drying blood, starting with small droplets on the edge of the clearing and forming a pool of blood mud near the bodies.

Rey sniffed around, catching the mixed scents of the werewolves and their tracks. There was a light breeze disturbing the air but one track stood out above all others. A single werewolf, perhaps the only survivor of the fight, had run off into the trees no more than six hours ago. Rey didn’t know if it was Edon - the werewolf had been soaked in blood and that’s all Rey could detect.

Rey led the way, following the tracks with the scouts close behind him. He hoped he’d find Edon at the end of them but which Edon would he discover?

Sometimes Alphas went bad, past the simple wildness of their nature and seemed to revel in bloodshed and destruction. They would go on killing sprees that wouldn’t end until they themselves were put down.

Rey had seen the darkness in Edon’s eyes as he sat outside the den, scratching in the dirt with a sharpened stick but he’d thought it was the thrall, a temporary insanity that would lift off his friend.

He sniffed at the track, smelling only the mixed blood of the slaughtered werewolves. Perhaps Edon had been right to call it the curse. Perhaps he’d seen his doom, felt it tugging at him.

Perhaps at the end of this track he wouldn’t find Edon but some werewolf who looked like him, smelled like him and moved like him. A madness complete wearing the skin of his old friend.

If Edon had truly fallen then Rey would have to force him down further. Down to the ground. Down into the dirt.

Down into death.

My Alphas, Part Five

As usual, humans are blithely unaware (or actively ignore) the interconnection between us and werewolves. Every werewolf alive has a human mother. Every werewolf alive has a werewolf father. The truth is too confronting for us to bear: women deliberately seek out Alphas and mate with them. Perhaps your neighbor. Perhaps your friend.

Perhaps you.

Gillian Holloway,
Bite Me: The War on Female Sexuality

Cass drifted in the sorta-warm spring, relaxing under the heat listening to the werewolves chatter, trying to make herself feel something about the time that had passed. It had been two weeks since they’d returned which meant Edon had been
missing
for two weeks. After Rey’s shoulder healed, he’d gone out searching for him but come up with nothing.

Cass tried the thought on again that perhaps Edon was gone forever. Dead. Missing. Never to be seen again but it didn’t seem to fit nor take hold. Denial rode high in the list of causes for this and she knew she was practiced in pretending the missing were misplaced and not dead.

Hell, for years she’d pretended on some level her father was out there somewhere, moving from place to place when he was probably some bones in the bottom of a ditch.

Even her mother, whom she knew to be alive, was temporarily misplaced. Cass knew she was somewhere in Florida (thanks to the Aunt who had given her bus money all those years ago), moving from one trailer park to the next but had repressed any thought about it. She was around, somewhere.

After sobbing into the bed Cass hadn’t cried one more tear. She’d even sat in the room thinking about Edon, missing him with all her heart but the sharp pain of loss didn’t come.

Along with feeling no pain, a strange relaxation had come across her that turned the volume down on all the problems. She could be pregnant for starters. There were humans in Hinton who wanted to wipe out the entire pack and they were hemmed in on two sides by rival packs - one who appeared to be actively plotting to kill them and another who by all accounts would sweep in if they were ever weakened. Like by an Alpha vanishing.

Cass wiped her warm wet hands on her face and concluded yes, it could be denial keeping her going but she believed on a deeper level Edon would return.

He wasn’t dead and gone…

She broke out of these thoughts as Nia dived under the water near her, fine droplets of water splashing up in the air. Apart from Nia, Leto had joined her as well as a third werewolf named Marey. Since she’d returned from the thrall it was like a switch had been flipped. They had warmed considerably for no reason Cass could ascertain.

Although part of the no-worry package Cass had received was, well,
not worrying
, a few days ago Cass asked Nia in a whisper if they could smell she was pregnant and Nia answered at top volume THEY COULD SMELL IF SHE WAS PREGNANT BUT SHE WASN’T YET as Cass sank under the water and tried to stop existing.

A day after returning, Marey had walked up to the spring, catching Cass looking down at her belly wondering if there was a baby growing in there. The first words out of her mouth had been, “It’s not a baby. It’s fat. But that’s good for the baby.”

Despite her bluntness there was something Cass liked about her.

She had friends and she knew that should feel good but the other side of whatever was happening to prevent her experiencing sad was keeping her in the middle on this too. She was vaguely aware people had emotions and she’d had them once but now they were something she’d only read about in a book. After all the crazy highs and lows since she’d walked out to find the werewolves, there was a relief to it.

Cass focused back on the werewolves’ conversation.

“Scouts came back this morning. Again, there is no sign of him. He’s probably dead,” Marey said, scrubbing sand down her arm. Like Nia she was blessed, or cursed, with the ability to say precisely what she was thinking.

“I think he’s alive out there somewhere,” Cass said. “He’s going to come back.”

Marey looked at her doubtfully. “Yeah, they keep finding dead Turo werewolves around the place and
maybe
that means Edon is out there killing them but-”

She stopped abruptly as Nia not-so-accidentally splashed her in the face. Although still bluntly oblivious most of the time, it seemed around Marey, Nia had gained some reserve.

“Edon could still be out there and we don’t know. Even if he isn’t, Rey is a good Alpha and will look after Cass and the many cubs she will have.”

Nia said this so fast it was one long single word.

“He is a good Alpha. Not like his father,” Marey said offhandedly.

“Did you know his father?” Cass asked, curious.

“I’m from the Areylon pack, before it was destroyed. I’m two years older than Rey.”

Cass washed herself and tried to hide her naked interest in the topic of Rey’s past. Her last attempt to learn anything about it hadn’t worked at all.

“What was his father like?”

“Arey was a good Alpha in some ways but terrible in others. He used to hurt everyone. He broke my rib once when he kicked me for sleeping outside.”

“Were you… not meant to sleep outside?”

“We slept outside all the time. He was like that - randomly making up new reasons to hurt you and yelling them at you …”

Cass felt she was intruding on Rey’s past but she couldn’t stop.

“How was he with Rey?”

“Mean and vicious. He threw him into a rock wall so hard one time he got knocked out. It was good Rey left when he did.”

Cass had seen the scars and marks on Rey’s body and assumed they were all from standard werewolf fights. It never occurred to her that some of them may have come from his own father.

Cass picked up a handful of sand and nonchalantly rubbed it down her arm, doing her best to appear to be only voicing a passing thought.

“So what happened to the Areylon pack anyway?”

“Rey left. Arey got meaner and worse, the pack got weaker then one day this wolf Varey challenged Arey and killed him. The first thing he did was kill his human mate, all of his children and half the pack. Everyone else fled. Not long after Edon and Rey started their pack. Rey came in and killed Varey and then that was that.”

Cass blinked back sudden tears, wiping her face down with wet hands to hide them. Evidently there was still some emotion lurking inside her. Nia has told her a long time ago about all the packs who broke apart. Most of the time the story ended with each and every one of them put to death. But it had just been a story and at the time Cass hadn’t been listening. Now it was real.

“Were they Rey’s brothers and sisters?”

“Rey’s mother died when he was five. They were the new Pack Mate’s children. Half brothers and sisters,” Marey said, waving her hand as though not being full-blood relatives meant it didn’t matter so much.

Nia splashed Marey in the face again out of nowhere.

“Hey, stop splashing me!” she protested.

They started a minor squabble which was resolved when Marey dunked Nia and then they both started laughing.

Cass sank down into the water, letting it cover her ears. Whether Edon returned or not, Rey was still her mate and she was realizing she knew almost nothing about him.