The Alpha's Desire 5

The Alpha’s Desire

Alpha’s Desire Series

Book 5

Willow Brooks

Copyright © 2015 Willow Brooks

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher

www.mahoganypublications.com

Chapter One

A different world went by me as I ran beside Lex as a wolf. A variant of the one I’d once known, not at odds with my previous knowledge but a wonderful and amazing variant of it ripe with vibrant details I’d not known existed with the limits of my human senses. Sight and smell heightened, hearing elevated, even touch with paws and definitely taste all increased, granting me the blessing of almost getting to live in a newer, better universe than before, only compounded by the glory and luxury of this private, secret tropical paradise.

After six months here on the island, I finally experienced the dream of being a werewolf shifter mine elf, magically given the ability to turn by the Royals in a long, lavish ceremony that had lasted hours ending of course with an extravagant party that had flourished late into the night. Laughs, love, food and drink along with ball gowns had flowed after my change, made me feel queen for day, despite the fact I’d already lived like one here each and every day.

One of the many things the ability to shift gave me was that Lex and I were truly mates now, in both forms, human and wolf. So, right now, all seemed right with the world day in and day out. I’d never known such happiness, to have the love of a good man along with every luxury I could imagine and then some along with my heightened awareness of the magnificent scenery around me.

Free, exhilarating, I couldn’t possibly describe what it was like to be living here on this secret island, practicing magic, transforming into a wolf, and sharing it all with the man who was the other half of my soul, the one whose heart beat in time with mine always. If one could imagine what it was like to stand on a rocky bluff, overlooking a seemingly endless ocean, free to howl at the full moon on a clear night with gentle, warm breezes blowing over my powerful form, then maybe, just maybe, they could come a little close to imagining my extraordinary life. From poor orphan to magical werewolf shifter with a Royal bloodline, the leap my life had taken still took my breath away, scrambled my mind, if I thought on it too long. Instead, I just embraced it, every moment, day by day, and minute by minute.

As we took a hairpin turn on the path, our pace was forced to slow a little. Still, having been clocked at highway speeds in my training, even slowing remained overwhelmingly fast. The sheer thrill of it tingled along my hide, only enhancing the magic that let me be this way in the first place. No terrain proved too tough. My large front paws gripped rocks, and steadied my weight no matter the obstacles. With the power in my hind legs, those I couldn’t stand on, I could now leap vast distances even in mid-run. Fallen tree limbs, steep crevices between rock outcrops, were no match for my steady abilities on four feet.

We’d covered every inch of this island several times, easily climbing up bluffs, maneuvering through the caves, unafraid to explore every intricate detail of the place. Parts were open to me that hadn’t been as a human, and each of us were able to be perceived with new attention to design and structure. What I gained from a simple sniff was more than I’d ever been aware of in nature prior. I’d not realized how limited the human body could be until able to exist as another being, another animal altogether.

Privilege didn’t come close to describing this chance at life I’d been given. I realized daily I’d not been born to have this, yet some sort of windfall of fate had bought me the right lottery ticket, and everything had turned on a dime from the minute I’d laid eyes on Lex in that club.

So, how could I not get a little dizzy thinking over the past months of my life, this last one in particular? From standing on the highest peaks, observing the birds, to resting on a beach studying the animals that roamed under the waters, I remained grateful every minute of every day for the experiences I had both as a wolf and as a Royal with magic, not to mention the best role, that of being Lex’s wife and lover.

There had been adjustments. It hadn’t all been fun and games. Adapting took hard work at times not to lose my mind. The first obstacle had been to adjust to my hearing. Being able to hear sounds at over a ten-mile radius could drive one loony deciphering it all until I’d learned to cope. Now, the heightened senses thrilled me. Being able to hear far past what a human can, things like rodents gnawing beneath the underbrush, gave me not only an advantage, but a sense of being one with the world in a way I’d never known possible.

Of course, the sound of tiny bugs scurrying along under the fallen leaves between blades of grass, that had been a real adjustment not to shiver and run. Sometimes what you didn’t know could be a blessing. Now I knew the exact location of a spider on a branch several feet above my head. Even in wolf form, I had no love of the skinny-legged creatures that scampered about unconcerned about my presence though I had to be a thousand times its size.

The night vision had to be the best. With larger pupils and more rods, my eyes now glowed, utilizing low light, allowing me to see in the dark as much as I could as a human in the light. Sometimes more. The world of the woods, while humans slept, had been a new place for me to discover, especially on this tropical island of unique and beautiful animals of all types. When I couldn’t sleep, usually eager, anticipatory excitement over what I would practice or learn in training the next day, I now loved to go out prowling as a wolf, watching the nocturnal lemurs the Royals had brought to the island to protect forage for food or just hang about in the trees. The little creature’s whimsical play could serve to entertain me for hours.

Smell had proven the most overwhelming of all to adjust to. My wolf nose now able to detect one hundred times greater than my human nose, things like even natural decay could overpower, leave me reeling at first. If possible, my touchy female stomach had turned, reeled at smells taken in as a wolf. I knew my human brain still worked when in wolf form, so why not? Even the salty ocean full of fish had been quite the challenge to process and not gag, if a wolf could do so outside of eating.

Training had been especially detailed with this new and highly improved sense. Smell was vital to a wolf’s existence in ways I’d not realized initially. Scents were actually used for interpretation of situations, to predict danger, or the state of prey to fight back. I’d gone through extensive trials to learn to decipher what I smelled, and to utilize the knowledge gained from those smells in case we were needed to go back to the States and fight one day. In particular, we’d recreated scenarios like we’d been in at the warehouse where Lex had been taken by Daniel, the man in the black suit, showing me how I could have sniffed out and evaluated the situation as the other werewolves had done. 

While we didn’t make a practice of eating in wolf form, I’d been trained to in case survival meant staying in the form for an extended period of time. Thankfully I’d not been a vegetarian, or being a meat-eating wolf may have been hard. Of all of the senses, this one stayed with me, gave me issues not in my wolf form, but once I’d turned back. Because my werewolf had powerful jaws - in fact I’d been told twice as powerful as a wolf’s which were twice as powerful as a canines - the ripping and tearing of food gave me the creeps, made my human form shudder if I thought of it after.

The hunt had been a paradox, as exhilarating to the wolf as it was revolting to the human. As a woman, I ate meat purposefully, never associating it with the actual animal it came from. In hunting training, we’d been given game to chase that had been purchased for food. When the animal ran, there was no outwitting instinct, my wolf ran and attacked. Yet, after, the bloody raw meat in my stomach, I had a hard time once I shifted back keeping it down. It was unclear if the food ingested as a wolf remained in my human stomach, but I surmised it couldn’t given the sheer quantity. Still, the idea of it later made my stomach roll. Thankfully they’d only made me do the hunt a few times, stopping after I’d been successful at it.

The only thing my training had lacked, as in I’d been told but not practiced, was wolf pack mentality. With no new recruits at the moment, I had been mainly trained alone by Catherine and Edward with Lex’s help. So I’d been told about the alpha and the omega roles, important for structure in battle, but not had the privilege to run with a pack; well, not a true pack. The Royals and Lex had simulated one for me though a few times with the Royals here that shifted too.

I’d found a connection to one, another male. Though no one thought anything of it. Apparently often two would make a stronger connection without rhyme or reason as to the why of it. I’d not had the chance to really flesh out the ability though, just enough to master it and move onto something else. With so much to learn, I assumed there’d be time another day to go back and practice and improve upon what I wanted at some point.

Running now, with Lex either beside or ahead of me, was just for fun though, a thrill of letting the wind I created with speed alone rush through my fur.  With all five senses sharper, the world around me came alive in ways I’d never dreamed possible even if just out playing, exploring, in this form. I didn’t have to concentrate for the changes to be very apparent at all times.

Everything about life since meeting him had been just that way though, a thousand times better to put it simply. Before I’d woken at horrible hours to the annoying sound of an alarm clock to gulp down cold cereal and cheap coffee before fighting the crowds of New York to get to a boring pencil-pushing job of servitude in an office setting. Cubicles of computers and phones, staplers and stacks of papers had been about as good as it had gotten. I’d traded that in for castles and tropical forests, along with elaborately cooked fresh seafood and the juiciest of fruits. Even my clothes had gone from boring, dull black dress pants or yoga pants back then, to cocktail dresses and some magical training special jumpsuit that was flame retardant.

In so many ways, in every way in fact, now, every day held the promise of fantastical things, of powers and of love beyond anything I thought could be since losing my parents; well honestly even before then, as magic and shape shifters, not to mention Royals outside of the country of England, were all something only available in books.

Like everything, even my writing had changed given my experiences. My descriptions, my storylines were beyond my wildest dreams literally, all pretty much a diary of the past six months, though the world would never know or believe that. So, fiction my writing would be deemed. I was fine with that. At this point, luck holding, I thought the tale had a great chance of getting published; unless that is, as I liked to joke with Lex and Catherine and Edward and the rest of my Royal family, that even the fiction world deemed it too fantastic to buy into.

Lex stopped suddenly at the end of the tree line in the field where we’d been married just last month, knocking me out of my reminiscing, sometimes taken by moments of fancy still as I evaluated my new life. This field remained a favorite place to stop and relax on our runs. We circled around each other a minute before stretching out our paws and laying side by side, with our heads resting against each other. We made a perfect picture. I knew that to be a fact as one of the Royals, a younger girl who had the magic of my bloodline but had chosen not to be a shifter, loved to play with a camera. She’d asked to photograph us as wolves one day after we’d been married. Several of those shots were now framed and hanging in our room at the castle.

With our connection, I knew we were both remembering our wedding. Today was our month anniversary, which had sparked this whole run this morning, a celebration of life together, and thus my walk down memory lane as I marveled at the changes, feeling the need to practice gratitude in some major way for all I’d been blessed with.

The Royals had thrown a grand, albeit small event. The day had been wonderfully sunny with only a few fluffy clouds overhead. While we’d had a backup plan to have the ceremony in the castle if rain threatened that day, we’d not needed it. Even the weather had played its part in giving us one of the greatest days of my life, and my day to day living was pretty hard to beat.

No expense had been spared from the arch we got married under to the reception food and everything in-between. When one wore lavish dresses and ate five course meals on a daily basis, topping that in way of celebration could be mind-boggling.

I pictured it all in my mind again. The small ocean breezes of the day had fluttered the white material draped over the arch which had been tied back with bundles of flowers that included white peace lilies along with sprays of blues and yellow flowers mixed with ferns. Tiki torches had lined a path to the arch, each with our own drape of material and bouquet of flowers to match the long flowing one I had carried.

My dress had been designed for me, drawn and tailored from my own imaginings with the help of another Royal who lived to design clothes, having a line she exported off the island just for fun as money already was no object. Cinderella had nothing on me that day with layers upon layers of white accented with pearls. I’d of course been given a tiara to wear, Catherine herself having done up my hair in a halo of curls and painted on makeup that had been natural and beautiful, accenting my best feature while improving upon my worst.