Alphas in the Wild (3 page)

Then there was Ryan. He was supposed to take over as shaman for his tribe, except he was such a lazy sack of shit, his father passed him over in favor of another. That hadn’t stopped him from practicing magic, though. Far from it. Except his spells developed a twisted edge once he knew he’d never be the tribe’s magic man. Even without any supernatural powers of her own, she’d felt their perverted taint in the air. And she’d heard Singing Bear castigating his son on more than one occasion.

“Humph.” She shrugged. “Don’t suppose I’m going to solve that one today. Do we ever truly understand why we fall in love with anyone?”

A ground squirrel popped out of a hole, stared at her, and chittered madly.

She laughed. “If you know something about love, by all means spill it.”

The furry creature dove back underground.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you off.” She squatted, looking down the hole. She’d never really loved Ryan, but she had been lonely. He’d filled a void and introduced her to sex. She’d been a virgin when she met him. If it wasn’t for that, she might not have been sucked into his web so easily.

Straightening, Moira turned and walked back to her truck, surprised by how much better she felt. She pulled bread and cheese out of a cooler and made herself a sandwich to eat while she drove. It was easier to eat if she was doing something else. That way, food consumption was relegated to more of an automatic process, and her internal mavens didn’t predict gloom and doom for every crumb she swallowed.

* * * *

T
im spun the combination dial on the medication safe. That done, he walked out of the clinic and locked the dual dead bolts. With the recession in full swing, the clinic had been broken into regularly. The locks helped cut down on burglaries as did the alarm, which he set next.

He caught a glimpse of himself in the side mirror of his car, not surprised he was grinning like a fool.

It was pushing nine at night, but he wasn’t the least bit tired. His good humor had been so apparent through his afternoon and early evening clinics that several regular patients commented on it. So much so, he wondered how he usually came across to them.

Not like a fellow in love, that’s for sure.

Tim reached down to rearrange himself. His cock had been ecstatic to see Moira. It reminded him of that over and over by pushing uncomfortably against the front of his pants. Scrubs fit loosely and had a tie waist, but an erection was almost impossible to hide under them. He’d donned his long lab coat and buttoned it, once he understood he’d never be able to coax the damned thing into submission.

He even ducked into the men’s room during the afternoon, hand curving around himself practically before he got the stall door closed. Shutting his eyes, he imagined Moira naked, her masses of golden hair falling in a tangle to her slender waist. Not that he’d ever seen her without clothes, but he could imagine what she looked like. His fantasy only got as far as closing his mouth around one of her nipples and feeling it harden under his tongue when his cock erupted in his hand. He’d thought that would hold him at least until the end of the day, but he’d started to swell again almost immediately.

Medical school and residency had been real libido killers. Whenever his long-denied sexuality threatened to surface, he volunteered for another twelve-hour shift that often morphed into twenty. He hadn’t been able to control his dreams, though. In them, Moira kissed him, licked him, and fucked him with abandon.

Tim started his car and headed for the modest two-bedroom apartment he rented on the western edge of town. His clinic job in Bishop was courtesy of the United States Public Health Service, and they didn’t pay much better than what he’d earned as a resident.

Until Moira’s grandmother, a talented hedge witch, had died three years ago, he’d kept surreptitious tabs on Moira through the old woman, swearing her to secrecy. So he’d known about Moira’s relationship with the Indian, but not her marriage. Tim clutched the steering wheel in a death grip. It had taken everything he had not to race to her side after she took up with another man and beg her to reconsider, but he wasn’t any freer than he’d been the day she walked out on him.

Not really.

He nearly missed his driveway and hit the brake so hard his body lurched against the seatbelt.

“Damn it!”

He rubbed his collarbone, undid the belt, and got out of the car. He’d always been ambivalent about becoming Arch Druid. The dark side of magic revolted him. And the price of maintaining celibacy—and silence—until after his investiture was too high. It had cost him Moira.

Though Liam finally gave him permission to find a life outside Druidry, it came with conditions. Liam’s heavy Irish accent still rang in Tim’s mind. “I expect you to return to us, son, once you’ve had a taste of the other world. I’ll not be dying till I see you seated in my place.”

Tim trudged up the stairs and into his apartment. Despite everything, he still couldn’t believe his luck running into Moira again
.

I should have called—

Yes, but I didn’t have anything better to offer her.

That’s not what I told her today,
he thought guiltily.

His cell phone rang. Tim looked at the caller ID and felt his eyes widen. It had been years since he’d seen that number, but he’d never forgotten it. Could the call be coincidence?

There are no coincidences,
an inner voice reminded him.
Everything is driven by the gods.

He tapped the answer icon with fingers that weren’t all that steady. “Liam?”

A familiar chuckle warmed him. “So you remember an old man, do you?”

“Of course. When I saw the number, I was afraid—”

“Someone was calling to tell you I’d passed beyond the veil. Not quite yet, son.”

“Thank the goddess. I—”

“Be quiet and listen. I told you I would let you return in your own time. That promise still holds, but I have had a sending. It came on All Hallows’ when the wards betwixt the worlds are thin. You are in danger. That woman you used to love is mixed up in this somehow.”

An iron bar of tension settled between Tim’s shoulder blades.

No, not coincidence at all.

He tried for decorum, but couldn’t stop the words from rushing out. “I saw Moira today for the first time in years. Please, Liam. I must be free to tell her what I am, and I must be free to wed her if she’ll have me. I couldn’t stand it if she walked out on me again.”

Tim heard a weary intake of air. “We have been over this ground before. You’ll recall that I told you—”

“I recall exactly what you told me. Liam, you need to hear me out. I love you like a father, but if I have to sever my ties with you and Druidry to have Moira in my life, that’s what I’ll do.”

Tim’s stomach tightened. This was it. The confrontation he’d been avoiding for years. He sucked in a jagged breath. The inside of his lungs felt raw, as if he’d inhaled ground glass. “I’m scarcely a youngster anymore. By the time you were my age, you had four children. Or was it five?”

“Aye, but I was Arch Druid.”

“Not the point.”

“You would turn your back on your heritage?”

Well, would I?

Moira flickered before his eyes. His golden girl, all hair and eyes and flashing temper. His ambivalence toward the destructive side of Druid magic rose to taunt him. He’d have to master it to sit in the Arch Druid’s chair.

Still, it was hard to just say
yes
and be done with it. If he were brutally honest with himself, he always thought he’d move into Liam’s role—just a whole lot later down the line—and with Moira by his side. He bit hard on his lower lip.

Why was Liam forcing his hand?

No. I’m forcing his.

“Maybe there’s some middle ground,” he began cautiously. “If I could tell her the truth and be free to...to do more than kiss her—”

After a silence that was so long Tim looked at the display to see if they were still connected, Liam said, “If you bed her, you will be as good as wed. It will link your souls through all lifetimes. ’Tis part of the Arch Druid’s legacy.”

Yes, I know.

Tim clutched his iPhone so hard, the metal dug into his hand. “Did you just give me permission—?”

“Not exactly.”

“What then?” Tim blew out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “You’re squeezing the life out of me, Liam. I don’t want to walk away from you, but I will if I have to. There’s a part of me that owes you loyalty and is willing to take on the burden of being Arch Druid. But a bigger part wants Moira and a normal life.”

“I was afraid of that.” Another pause. The air in the room warmed. Tim sensed the Arch Druid’s presence. The next words sounded in his mind.

“I have prayed and discussed this with our Council and the goddess, Gaia. I had planned to get hold of you. The sending hastened my time line.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

A chuckle.
“If my astral self meets the definition of here.”

Tim clicked the phone off and set it down. He didn’t need it anymore. “Tell me the outcome of those discussions.” He swallowed, girding himself for the worst. If he had to strip-mine something from his life, it would be Druidry, not Moira.

“Mayhap if you had a wife, ’twould hurry you along getting back to your true calling.”

Tim wasn’t certain he’d heard right. “I think you just gave me permission to break my celibacy and follow my heart.”

“I did.”

His eyes stung. He squeezed them shut. This was a time for joy, not tears. “How much can I tell Moira?”

“Only enough so she’ll forgive you.”

“What about my magic?”

“You are considerably older now. ’Tis a gamble, but not so great a one as it would have been ten years ago. We shall hope for the best.”

The warmth in the room surrounded Tim. It felt a lot like a hug. His face split in a broad grin. “Thank you, Liam. If you were truly here, I’d hug you back.”

“What’s that American term?”
The Arch Druid laughed, the sound rich and warm.
“I’ll take a rain check on that, son.”

“Sure thing. Uh, Liam, one last thing. I think my true calling is medicine.”

Liam chuckled again.
“You might be surprised. There is a reason the goddess sent me that vision. Take care of yourself.”
The warmth of his sending winked out.

Tim danced a jig around his living room, then raced to the bedroom, dragged out his backpack, and started tossing things into it.

On his umpteenth trip to the closet, something caught his eye, and he closed his hand around a hand-hewn staff of rowan wood. Liam had told him it was carved out of downed branches from the One Tree. Before Tim went on hiatus from the order, he’d used the staff to call and focus his magic. It had been lying in the back of one closet or another for a very long time.

The wood warmed instantly under his touch. “Okay.” Tim placed the staff on his bed next to his pack. “You’re in. We leave at first light. You can masquerade as a walking stick.”

He could’ve sworn he heard the wood chortle deep in his mind.

M
oira moved briskly up the rocky trail. She’d slept—or tried to—in the back of her car at the trailhead and dreamed about both Tim and Ryan. Morning arrived far too soon. One advantage of getting going, though, was that the specter of Ryan’s infidelity retreated when she was on the move.

Sleep’s overrated,
she thought wryly, tugging at the waist belt of her regulation-issue backpack to tighten it. She sighed as some of the weight moved off her shoulders. Despite employing women rangers for better than fifty years, Park Service gear was still designed for men. Moira blessed her broad-shouldered, slim-hipped build. If she’d had a girlier figure, she’d have been out of luck—and miserable.

She scanned the familiar Sierra backcountry in an effort to move beyond the muddle her mind had become. She was close to timberline, the few trees twisted and stunted by their fight to survive at altitude. Open, shale-covered terrain spread around her. She named off the surrounding peaks in her mind, all of which she’d climbed at one point or another.

It was early November, and the wind at nearly ten thousand feet held a definite bite. She had cold weather gear in her pack, but she hoped it wouldn’t snow. Fresh snow would fill in the holes between good-sized talus blocks littering the mountains, making them impossible to see. A turned ankle was a reality she couldn’t afford right now with John breathing down her neck. It would be embarrassing—never mind a career-killer—to use her sat phone to call for rescue because of a stupid mistake. The Park Service rewarded self-sufficiency in its rangers.

Moira grimaced, imagining the humiliation of trying to explain what should’ve been an avoidable injury.

Stop it. Hasn’t happened. The last thing I need right now is to borrow trouble.

She peered at lenticular clouds floating high above her head, at the mercy of the jet stream. They were always harbingers of bad weather.

A particularly vicious gust of wind attacked her braid. Long, blonde hair plastered her face, and she stopped to shove the errant strands out of the way. Spying a house-sized boulder, she sheltered on the lee side, shucked her pack, and hunkered behind the rock to gather her hair together. Once she wasn’t moving, Ryan’s face rose to mock her. Unfortunately, so did the rest of him, all naked six foot four inches with his cock buried in some nameless redhead he’d shoved up against their living room wall.

“Not
my
living room anymore,” she ground out between gritted teeth. Moira willed her mind to stop playing the fucking tape loop, goddammit, but it wouldn’t cooperate. Ryan’s chiseled Native American features, dark braids, and intense dark eyes stared at her. Shock etched into his face once he realized she’d come home early.

And caught him red-handed. Or red-dicked as the case may be.

Rage, a constant companion ever since
the incident
, tightened her guts into a painful knot. Bile rose, burning the back of her throat. Moira hoped her lawyer was taking care of all the particulars. She’d given him a list of everything she wanted, aside from the clothes and personal effects she’d grabbed after sending the redhead packing. She hadn’t been back to her house in the weeks since
it
had happened. And she didn’t intend to go there ever again. She’d moved into the barracks at Park Headquarters. It wasn’t bad, actually. She’d lived there before she started hanging around with Ryan.