Wolver's Reward
Authors: Jacqueline Rhoades
Tags: #romance, #wolves, #alpha, #romance paramornal, #wolvers, #pnr series, #wolves romance, #shifters werewolves
Fate has played River for a fool. Again. He
thought he'd earned the respect of a decent and admirable wolver
pack. He was grateful for it. He was content...until they took it
all away, and left him alone and angry. Again.
Yet Fate rewards him with another pack, one
that needs his survival skills, and one where he meets the girl of
his dreams, but River is no longer a fool. The beautiful Rebecca is
an Alpha's daughter. She can never be his and she knows it, too.
But knowing the outcome, changes the game, and both River and Reb
decide to play this one on their own, but different, terms.
What Fate knows, and River must learn, is
that happiness comes when you least expect it, and finding a love
worth fighting for is what brings a Wolver's Reward.
WOLVER'S REWARD
By
Jacqueline
Rhoades
Copyright © Jacqueline Rhoades 2015
Published at Smashwords
Cover art: E-Covers by
Georgi
©2016
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In Memoriam
And with all my love to my father,
James Miller
(July 8, 1918 – November 20, 2015)
That dash between those dates was a long and
wonderful one.
I was so blessed
To be a part of it.
The reference is from the
poem,
The Dash Between
by Ron Tranmer©
You can find it at
http://www.rontranmer.com/the-dash-between
Special Thanks
Character names are always hard for me. I
stew over them and change some of them a dozen times in search of
the one that fits. This time it was for the young woman meant for
River. I saw her in my mind, heard her speak, knew her history, but
she wouldn't give me her name. Two wonderful readers who belong to
my Facebook group, Rhoades' Runners, came up with the same
suggestion and it was perfect.
Thank you,
Linda Baker
and
Donna Carder
.
Table of Contents
O
ne of the many odd things about Eugene Begley was that
physically he didn't look like an Alpha. He was short, slightly
built, and carried a bit of a paunch up front. Alpha Charles
Goodman had met him once before at the Convocation of Wolvers where
pack Alphas met to discuss the growing needs, problems, and
successes of the Wolver race. Every Alpha who participated in the
Convocation knew that Eugene was a matchmaker. Only certain women
qualified for the position of an Alpha's Mate, and Begley had a
knack for finding them. The little Alpha had, in fact, found
Charles' own Mate, Katarina.
Every Alpha also knew that Eugene Begley was
a problem solver. He had the means and the men to take care of
things beyond the scope of a single pack. Some said he ran a Wolver
Security Force, though it had no official name and no one knew for
sure. Exactly who he was, and what specific role he played in the
wolver world was open to argument and speculation, but on two
things, they all agreed. The first was that Eugene Begley was one
of the most powerful Alphas they'd ever come across. The second was
that an Alpha would be a fool to argue with him.
Alpha's Mates, however, were a different
story. When it came to defending the wolvers in their pack, they
had no fear of anyone.
Kat folded her arms across her chest. Her
head snapped side to side in emphasis to her words. "No, no, no. I
won't do it. What you're asking me to do is essentially turn my
back on the boy."
"He's not a boy, Katarina." Her mate reminded
her of an issue they'd argued over many times before.
"I know, I know. River isn't a boy. He's
never been a boy. He never had the chance to be a boy," she
repeated his argument before he made it. "I get that, but what you
don't get is that knowing that, he's still my boy and always will
be, and…" She raised her finger in the air. "He never had a home or
a pack either until we found him. Don't ask me to do this. I
can't." The accusing finger pointed to Begley.
"This is your fault. You made me a Mate. You
gave me the power to feel what each and every member of my pack
feels. I feel their pain. I feel their losses. I've felt enough
from River to last a lifetime and now you're asking me to betray
every promise I ever made him and send him away."
Eugene raised his hands in denial. "I don't
make Alphas and I don't make Mates. I just make opportunities.
Y'all made it happen, not me. None of us made River happen. You've
given him more than he ever dreamed of, but it ain't enough. I'm
here to offer him an opportunity is all."
"River isn't happy," Charles told her gently.
"You know that."
"He's content," Kat snapped back.
Eugene sat back and wove his fingers together
over his soft belly. He nodded sagely. "Content is a fine thing for
a man my age. But at River's age? Content is likely to give you an
itch. You itch, you scratch. You keep scratchin' and that itch is
gonna fester, and what pours out of it won't bring no good to
anybody. That wolver's already itchin' and a-scratchin'. Deep down
he knows the cause, but he won't seek the cure. We gotta do that
for him."
"He has the right to happiness," Charles
said, taking Kat's hand in his and tugging her to him. "Or at least
the right to pursue it."
Kat bowed her forehead against his chest. "I
don't know if he's capable of it."
In her mind, she substituted love for
happiness, because for her, one stemmed from the other. She wasn't
sure River was capable of love. It was an emotion that needed to be
learned in the early years of life. River's early life contained
nothing but cruelty and abuse. He was protective of those closest
to him and Kat felt privileged to be among them. He cared in his
way, but caring wasn't love. He was loyal to a fault, but loyalty
wasn't love.
That intangible emotion couldn't be found in
River. She knew this because she was the Mate and she opened her
heart to him regularly to see if the situation had changed. She
prayed for it and fought to light the flame, but the spark never
took hold and she was beginning to think it never would. In the
Wolf's Head pack, he was safe. His caring and loyalty, and their
love for him would help him control what was raging inside. What
would happen if he was out there alone?
"What if he can't find happiness?" she
whispered aloud. "What if we're the closest he can come? What if no
one out there sees what we see?" And finally, she admitted the
truth. She had felt River's anger and self-loathing. Laying her
head over her mate's heart to find what comfort she could in its
steady and reassuring beat, she spoke to the little Alpha.
"You talk about a festering itch, Mr. Begley.
I'm worried about a fetid and vile infection that runs much deeper
than that. It's been, as you say, festering a long time. If it
pours out, there'll be no cure, no happiness or contentment,
either. For any of us."
Charles tightened his arms around her,
understanding how hard it was to admit her deepest fear.
Eugene Begley understood it, too, but had
none of her mate's sympathetic concern. His voice became hard.
"Good or bad, the truth of a man's soul always wins in the end.
There's nothing you or I can do to stop it. You know what he feels.
Only River can find out how much truth those feelings bear. Charlie
here can talk about the pursuit of happiness. You can talk about
love. I don't give a good goddamn about either one of 'em. Good or
bad, that wolver is ready to jump and I need to know which way he's
jumpin' before too many get hurt. One way or t'other, he's got to
go."
"I've felt other things, Katarina," Charles
added gently. "Other things that could be dangerous. I've told
Eugene about them and he's felt them, too. He knows about these
things. We need to trust him. You need to trust me."
That was the end of the argument, because as
much as Kat loved her pack and River, she loved and trusted her
Alpha more.
"I won't fight you," she said in surrender.
"I'll do what I can to soften the blow, but don't ask me to like
it. If he goes, he'll go with all the love I can send with
him."
Eugene Begley smiled and nodded. His easy
downhome twang was gone. His diction became formal. "I'd expect no
less from an Alpha's Mate."
River laid his foot on the gas pedal and shot
the pickup into a space between two cars with barely a foot to
spare on either end. He stuck his arm out the open window and
raised his middle finger in answer to the blaring horn behind
him.
"Fuck you," he muttered, "And fuck them,
too."
They'd kicked him out. Oh, sure, they'd been
all nicey-nice about it. Charles hinted that there were things
River needed to work out that couldn't be worked out in the
confines of the Wolf's Head Pack. Ryker kept pointing out that he
had no intention of either dying or retiring and River would be an
old man before the Security Chief's job was open. Kat guiltily
danced around the subject when she asked if he ever thought about
going out into the world to see what it might hold for him.
They were fucking cowards, all of them. Only
Eugene Begley had the nerve to lay it on the line. It was while
River was taking a break in the shade offered by the striped
umbrella next to the pool. An assortment of wolvers, mostly female,
was enjoying the water. River always took his break by the
pool.
He was sitting there, minding his own
business, and staring out over the land that used to be wild and
free, but was now dotted with roads, homes, and businesses. The
pack had grown. It was all part of their Alpha’s design to bring
wolver society into the modern world. It was a planned community
with room for more growth that still left plenty of land for their
wolves to run and hunt. It made sense, yet River felt every tree
that fell in the name of progress, every neatly mowed lawn that
replaced the fields and meadows where the rabbits and other small
game lived and died. Thinking about it, as he often did, brought a
tightening to his chest and an anger rising within him.