fate of the alpha - episode 1 (7 page)

Ainsley came apart instantly, the delicious contractions seemed to go on and on and on.

She opened her eyes to see Erik’s eyes flashing with lust.

Before she could catch her breath he was pounding into her fiercely, almost cruelly. The cold look in his eyes was nothing she had ever seen before.

He came hard, crushing her to his chest as he did.

When it was over he rolled off her immediately and lay on his back looking up at the moon.

Ainsley would have liked to roll on her side and put her head on his chest, as they often did after mating. She loved the steady beat of his heart under her cheek and the rich scent of their love.

But her wolf and his anger lay between them, and there was no room for Ainsley.

So she stretched on her back instead and studied the moon.

A moment later she felt Erik’s warm hand grab hers.

Ainsley’s heart melted. She rolled happily onto his chest.

“I feel
much
better,” Erik whispered, and she could feel him smiling against her hair.

“Me too.”

He stroked her hair and she traced circles on his abs.

“You can do whatever you want, of course, I know that. But please, Ainsley, let me protect you. That wolf is a real threat. And we don’t know what else might be out there.”

“Okay.” Ainsley ran her fingers up to find the dimple in his smiling cheek. “Do you really think he’s still anywhere near Tarker’s Hollow?”

“I know he is.”

“How do you know?”

Erik shrugged.

She put his noncommittal response out of her head and instead concentrated on how the warmth of his skin contrasted with the cool night air.

“Why are you practicing magic at night anyway? How’s it going?”

“Fine.”

“It seems like you’re spending a lot of time with… practice.”

She could tell he really meant
with Julian
.

Ainsley had no clue how to proceed, except that she would die if Erik knew how lousy she was at magic.

“It’s difficult. Requires a lot of focus. Which is something I lack at the moment.”

She scrambled on top of him and looked down into his worried eyes.

“I love you, Erik Jensen. You know that right?”

He rewarded her with another warm smile.

But the moon would have no more of their sweetness and they were pulled back into the mania of mating.

Before Ainsley completely lost herself in the wild embrace of her mate, she implored herself,
Remember that you love him. Please don’t forget.

CHAPTER 7

G
race decided she needed to pay a visit to her abuela.

She swiped her key fob and entered the opulent lobby of Tarker’s Tower. The harsh fluorescents aggravated her building headache the second she removed her sunglasses.

The most recent renovation of the former hotel had been planned by a new board member from out of town. Gone was the Quaker simplicity of dark hallways and plain blue rugs. Now the condominium’s foyer was choked in Oriental carpets and gilt framed prints.

Grace caught a glimpse of her face in a particularly gothic looking mirror as she pushed the button to call the elevator. Having Asian features sometimes helped her mask her emotions from strangers - but she easily saw the anguish in her own eyes and she knew Abuela would see it too.

What had happened with Julian? Why couldn’t she get him out of her head?

Had he put a charm on her? It had looked like he was as shocked as she was.

A delicious wave of excitement washed over her as she pictured him again, his thin lips parted, a look of wonder in his clear blue eyes.

The ding of the elevator brought her back to the present. Minna Randolf exited with a flourish, pulling her grocery cart behind her.

“Grace Cortez!” Minna bellowed, as usual ignoring Grace’s hyphenated last name.

Minna was on the record as opposing the Cortez family’s adding the
Kwan
to Grace’s name to honor her Chinese birth mother. Minna thought it was too much dwelling on the past and what was she supposed to do with all those last names when she got married anyway?

Grace was pretty sure it wouldn’t become an issue if her future love life went the way her current one was going.

“Hi, Mrs. Randolf!”

“Hello, Grace! Have a good visit. They don’t have the heat on yet, so it’s too cold up there, as usual.”

Grace smiled her thanks to Minna as she got on the elevator. Minna was always concerned that the heat wasn’t turned on in the building until October. She was so well padded both by her ample curves and by her fluffy sweaters that it was a wonder she wasn’t impervious to the cold.

“Nieta!” Abuela exclaimed as soon as the elevator doors opened. She liked to prop open the door to her condo to get a breeze and as a result, she’d heard the elevator ding Grace’s arrival.

Grace wondered how the neighbors felt about the scent of the black beans in the slow cooker filling the hallways through Abuela’s open door. But they never complained. And Abuela herself wasn’t one to worry.

“So what brings you here for lunch?”

Abuela didn’t wait for an answer, but began pulling bowls out of the cupboard. Like Grace, she was short, so she had to reach high above her head.

Grace took a seat at the small table by the sliders leading out to the balcony. Abuela’s unit was not in the fanciest section of the building, but it did have a nice view of the hillside facing the college woods. You could just see the creek bending on its way out of Sycamore Woods. One day, when the highway was built, Abuela wouldn’t want these doors open anymore because they would let in the traffic noise.

“It’s about work, Abuela. I told you about Sadie-”

“-A shame too!-”

“-But I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Mm.”

Abuela always knew when Grace was hiding the truth.

“Something very bad was going on in that house,” Grace said.

“Did you use your gift?”

“I tried.”

“And?”

“When I touched her hand I got hit with something. It felt like a shockwave of…static or something.”

“Mm.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s possible that someone didn’t want anyone snooping.”

“Can you just erase something like that?” Grace asked.

“You can’t remove the psychic impressions, but someone could have muddied the picture with feedback or static. The way you might drown out car noise by turning up the radio. The noise is still there, it’s just too hard to hear it over all the racket.”

Grace nodded and then winced in pain. The headache had been getting worse all day. She hopped up to grab some Advil out of the cupboard in the kitchen.

“Headache again? You know those pills are bad for your stomach.”

“I know, Abuela. I can’t think straight, though.”

Abuela buttoned her lip and poured out two glasses of sweet iced tea.

Grace swallowed down three Advil before Abuela could admonish her further, then carried their drinks to the little table while Abuela carried two bowls of black beans.

They sat and closed their eyes briefly in the approximation of a pre-meal blessing that the Cortez family had settled on. Eva Cortez didn’t believe in digging right in, but no one else believed in praying out loud.

The moment of silence gave Grace a peaceful sense of being at home. It didn’t last long.

“Grace,” Abuela said. “If you’re going to call on your gift, you know you need to pay the price, or the price will be taken twofold.”

Grace sighed.

“Abuela, I’m a police officer and this is a small town. I can’t just let my urges take over. And besides I wouldn’t want to - not really.”

Abuela put down her spoon.

“Listen to yourself, Nieta,” the older woman urged. “When your friend Ainsley didn’t want to be a wolf, what did you tell her?”

Grace sighed.

“That she needed to accept her true nature and embrace who she is.”

“This is who
you
are, Gracie. You’re special. It’s not your magic that makes you that way, but your magic is a part of you as much as your determination or your wit, or even your arms and legs.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” Grace returned. “All you get is a craving for sweets and cigars.”

“At my age those extra helpings of dessert add up!”

Abuela laughed her surprisingly deep laugh and patted her little belly.

“You know, it wasn’t always this way,” Abuela said, hopping up to pour more tea.

Grace could feel a story coming.

“When you’re young and your blood runs hot, the magic has a bigger appetite. It triggers the emotions that already run so close to the surface of youth. You are lucky. For me it was anger. Any time I used my gift, I got mean as a snake for days at a time unless I found a way to let it out. One time I tried to keep it bottled up too long and ended up punching the shift-boss at the mushroom farm.”

“Abuelo?”

Abuela smiled, and for a moment looked thirty years younger.

“I felt so bad about it, and I was so scared to lose the job. I made him a big pot of my special Pozole. Once he got a taste, he forgot all about the punch. I made him a lot of Pozole over the years.”

Grace smiled sadly and thought of her abuelo in the rocker on her parents’ front porch. He was never too busy for a story or a boxing lesson.

“I miss him.”

“So do I. But he is always here with us.”

Grace straightened and looked around.

“Do you mean…?”

Abuela laughed again but softly this time.

“No, sweetie. Not like that. In our hearts and minds, same as anyone you love.”

“Did you ever think about…?” Grace knew her abuela could contact those who had passed on. They’d used those special skills together to try to contact Ainsley’s parents for her after their death. They had ended up getting a bit more than they had bargained for.

“Goodness, no,” Abuela said, shaking her head emphatically. “Your abuelo worked hard to get us to a place where we would be accepted for who we are. He deserves some rest. I’ll see him in good time. Meanwhile, don’t you feel bad or ashamed for one minute about any part of you. He would be proud of you. We all are.”

Their moment was ruined by the ringing of Grace’s mobile phone. The ringtone told her it was from the station. If no one picked up right away, incoming calls got bounced to one of the deputies’ phones. Dale was probably on the other line with his wife. Grace grimaced.

“Go on, then. You don’t get to be sheriff by ignoring your job.”

Grace stepped into Abuela’s bedroom.

“Officer Kwan-Cortez.”

“Um…I’m Lilliana.” The voice wavered, and she sounded a little muffled. “I’m a teaching assistant at the college. I…I have some information about the assault on the woman on Princeton Avenue.”

Grace thought quickly. No one should know that it was an assault. They hadn’t released any information at all to the public. Grace hasn’t even shared her suspicions with the other officers. She couldn’t, until she had something solid to go on.

“Thank you for calling me, Lilliana. Would you like to speak about this by phone or should I meet you at the station?”

“I - I don’t feel safe talking now. Can you meet me tonight at the college amphitheater? I don’t want anyone to see me at the station.”

The amphitheater was surrounded by the college woods. It was certainly private, but it was also exposed. Grace nearly offered to meet the girl in a public place in plainclothes instead, but she didn’t want to scare her off.

“That’s fine, Lilliana. What time?”

“I’ll be there tonight at seven. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I will see you at seven, and I won’t tell anyone. Thank you again for calling me - call me back if you want to meet sooner or somewhere more public.”

She came out of the room to find her Abuela packing Marranitos into a Christmas tin. The pig-shaped molasses cookies smelled delicious.

“These are for you to take to your new boyfriend.”

“How did you know?”

“I’m getting flashes of blond hair and blue eyes.”

Julian.

“No,” Grace said, thinking of Landon. “That’s not him. He has dark curls.”

“Like Bougereau’s angel, eh?” Abuela gestured to the framed print of
The Abduction of Psyche
over her sofa.

“Yeah, Abuela, kind of like him,” Grace replied, wondering if her abuela knew the man in the painting was supposed to be Eros - the opposite of an angel.

“No, that’s not right. Give these to the other guy,” Abuela said firmly, pressing the tin into Grace’s hands.

Not Landon. The other guy.

“And learn to cook! Because once he tastes these cookies, you won’t have to worry about paying the cost of your magic for long.”

She laughed her deep laugh again, and Grace couldn’t help but join her.

CHAPTER 8

G
listening red leaves mixed with the pine needles that carpeted the college woods. Each step that Ainsley took released the heady scent of the changing seasons.

But she hardly noticed. Ainsley and Erik were deep in conversation about the motives of the lone wolf they had yet to locate.

“What could he want?” she asked. “If he’s been here all this time, why doesn’t he show himself?”

“Maybe he’s gathering info for another pack.” Erik suggested. “Or maybe he’s planning to challenge you. MacGregor said it wouldn’t surprise him if another wolf tried to move in when leadership looked weak.”

“So my leadership is weak?”

“Not at all.” Erik laughed, as though the very notion were ridiculous. “Everyone is behind you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Any lingering doubts went out the window when you sent Clive packing. But we were without an alpha for so long, we were bound to get onto someone’s radar. Maybe he’s biding his time. Taking the measure of you. Deciding whether or not he should make a move.”

“So do I look tough enough to scare him away?” she asked.

“If he had any idea how tough you are, he wouldn’t be here in the first place. And if he sees you practicing any of that magic you used to blast Clive, he’ll be on the next bus out of town.”