Lonely Alpha (8 page)

“But now it’s just you?”

Jack nodded. “By the time I came around, the
pack was pretty small. Decades had passed since the only other pack
in the Smokies had been destroyed, which left my family without
another pack to seek mates from. So mates were hard to come by,
which meant that there weren’t many babies being born into our
family. Some of the Half Moons mated into other packs faraway, and
some just left, hoping to find someone somewhere. Others gave up on
trying to find a shifter mate and married humans.” He smiled wryly.
“I have an aunt whose husband has no idea that she’s a
shifter.”

“What about your parents?”

“My parents passed away years ago in an
accident. Eventually it was down to just me and a couple of my
cousins, and then they packed up and left for Alaska.” He frowned.
“Last I heard from them, they were doing just fine out there on the
tundra.”

“Why didn’t you leave?”

Jack’s mouth twisted stubbornly, his jaw
jutting out. “An alpha doesn’t leave his pack.”

Alpha. Well, now that he said it, she could
believe it. She studied his strong jaw, remembering how good he was
at tilting it arrogantly, as he had when she’d first arrived on his
property, lost. “Even if his pack leaves him?”

Jack nodded. “Even then. It’s not like I
could join another pack. My father was an alpha, and his father
before him, and so on and so on, back through the generations. When
you’re born an alpha, you either live as an alpha or a loner.
There’s no in between.”

“Jack.” She reached out and touched him,
laying her unhurt hand inside his. The idea of him living his days
out alone on the mountain, longing for a family that had crumbled
around him, was unexpectedly agonizing. He was too young for such a
depressing existence – not that she would have wished it on a
person of any age. “It must be awfully lonely out here. How do you
stand it?”

He shrugged. “I guess a part of me has been
hoping all this time that some of my family – maybe my cousins –
would come back, and that they might even bring fresh blood to
build up the pack again.”

“What about you? Did you ever think you might
find a mate?”

He shrugged again. “You spend enough time out
here by yourself in the mountains and sometimes you start to think
you might never see another person again, let alone be lucky enough
to run into a pretty female shifter.” His eyes bored into hers as
he said it, and Mandy felt alarmingly as if she were melting under
his gaze.

Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. Clearing her
throat, she searched her mind for something to say to dispel the
tension that was mounting between them. When he looked at her that
way, she felt like all her bones had disappeared. If he didn’t
stop, she wasn’t going to be able to get up off the bed.

The sound of busting glass cut through the
silence, startling them both. Mandy rolled reflexively, shielding
her face from a shower of glass shards that had constituted the
windowpane just a moment ago. “Jack!” She bumped her hand on the
edge of the bed and pain caused her throat to tighten as nausea
threatened to overcome her.

He’d tried to roll too, but it was obvious
that the motion hurt him. Fresh blood streamed from his side, and a
stray bit of glass had cut his cheek. “Change!” he growled,
clasping her unhurt hand tightly within his own. “Then follow
me.”

The next thing she knew, a clawed paw was
resting on top of her hand, and she was staring into the eyes of a
wolf. A whine of despair began in her throat, but it was the only
thing remotely canine about her. “I don’t know
how
to
change,” she said, choking on the last word. Something had been
thrown through the window and it was emitting billowing clouds of
smoke. Teargas, she realized as her eyes stung and moistened.

Jack was already up, but he wasn’t leaving
her. He stood on the mattress, gazing down at her imploringly, an
urgent bark escaping his fanged mouth.

She wanted to shift into her wolf form –
needed
to. Was the desire enough? Jack had made it sound
like it should be. Her natural reflex was to close her eyes, but
she kept them open, tearing up against the gas as she squinted into
Jack’s golden ones, thinking desperately that she wanted to be like
him.

It worked. She was so surprised that she
barked in exultation. She paid for it when she swallowed a mouthful
of teargas and promptly began to heave and cough. Jack pressed his
muzzle briefly against hers and turned, bounding toward the bedroom
door, which he nosed open as if out of habit. Mandy flew after him,
stifling the whimpers that threatened to escape her as she ran on
her broken paw, eyes streaming as suffocating gas and fresh pain
assaulted her.

She followed him out of the cabin, squinting
through teary eyes at his blurred form. She could hardly see, but
her sharpened senses of smell and hearing nearly made up for that
fact. She inhaled his scent – it was the same as when he was human
– and stayed close to his flank.

They were not unpursued. Bullets flew at
them, and the sound was explosive to Mandy’s sensitive canine ears.
She winced with each shot, as much at the volume as out of fear of
being hit. She was probably damaging her broken foot more with each
step, but anything was better than being shot, or seeing Jack take
another bullet. With that horrifying vision in mind, she ran like
the wind, keeping pace with Jack. He leapt over logs – stumbling
occasionally – and ducked under low branches as he wove among the
trees, winding in a seemingly random pattern that nearly made Mandy
dizzy.

What seemed like an eternity passed before
they stopped, and when they did she tumbled into him, sprawling
across the forest floor.

It took him too long to get to his feet.
Mandy eyed his blood-soaked side with horror. His pelt was thick,
and to be that saturated he had to have bled substantially. And
he’d already lost so much blood… Knowing that their attacker was
probably hot on their trail, she bit back a howl of anguish as Jack
stumbled through the underbrush, panting. To her surprise, he
disappeared into what looked like a solid rock.

She hurried to the area where he’d gone,
limping. Her foot felt like it was full of the jagged smithereens
of glass Jack’s bedroom window had been reduced to. Just when she
was thinking she was crazy and that she’d imagined Jack walking
into the rock, she found the entrance he’d gone through. It was
obscured by shadow and foliage, impossible to see until one was
right up on it. She dove inside hastily.

The space she found herself in was roomier
than she’d imagined; a surprisingly large hollow carved into the
earth. There was enough room for both her and Jack. In the enclosed
den, his scent quickly filled the air, sparking a flare of warmth
in her middle. It was soon doused by fear as she scented the sharp,
coppery odor of blood. She extended her muzzle toward the
incongruous mixture of pine, musk and blood scents, reaching for
Jack. When her nose touched him, it met smooth skin, not thick fur.
He was human again.

It was too dark for her to see much detail
inside the den, but she longed to touch him, not with a cold nose,
but warm hands. An irresistible urge to wrap her arms around him
seized her, and the next moment, she was doing just that. She
breathed a thoroughly human sigh of relief. “Jack,” she barely
dared to whisper. She knew she should be silent, but saying his
name brought her a strange sense of comfort, and she needed to know
what kind of condition he was in. “How bad is it?”

Chapter 6

“Pretty bad, I reckon.” His voice was rougher
and shakier than she’d ever heard it. “We’ll have to lie low in
here ‘till nighttime.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, still speaking in
hushed tones. “If we hadn’t made love we might not have been in the
cabin when the hunter came, and this might not have happened.” At
the memory of their tryst, dual waves of arousal and guilt
assaulted her. Maybe her desire for Jack had overpowered her better
judgment.

“Don’t be sorry,” he growled. “I told you
makin’ love to you would be worth some suffering, and I stand by
that statement.”

She eased the embrace she’d wrapped him in,
realizing it was probably hurting him.

“No,” he said, catching one of her wrists and
holding her palm against his chest. “If we’ve gotta lie here naked
together in the dark where I can’t see you, I at least want to feel
you touch me.”

She didn’t argue. She’d do anything to keep
him calm so he didn’t aggravate his injury further, and even this
simple contact with him helped to calm her nerves. What was it
about him? Even shot and bleeding, he made her feel secure. She bit
down on her inner lip as she thought about the men she’d dated –
none too seriously – back in Nashville. She couldn’t say the same
about any of them. After being raised by a single mother and never
knowing her father, she hadn’t been overeager to place her
unreserved confidence in a man – instead, she preferred to get to
know someone over time. But she trusted Jack, inexplicably, to her
core. The irony struck her in the form of nervous laughter.

“Good Lord Mandy,” Jack grunted. “If you know
somethin’ so funny, tell me. I could use a little humor right
now.”

“It’s nothing like that,” she said, tracing
the smooth line of his collar bone and then resting her palm on his
chest again. “I was just thinking that I might be a little
crazy.”

“What, vacation not exactly going as
planned?” he asked knowingly.

“Not at all.” She’d meant to sound
lighthearted – in a good mood, to distract him from his pain – but
it didn’t work. A man had never been a part of her plans for her
week in the Smoky Mountains, let alone a werewolf, and she’d
certainly never imagined the situation she found herself in
now.

“Well I’m sorry about the hunter,” Jack said.
“Seems like you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But
another part of me thinks…well, maybe you were in the right place
at the right time. I hate to imagine lyin’ here like this without
you. I’m glad I finally found you.”

His seemingly heartfelt confession stirred
contradicting feelings of tenderness and alarm in Mandy. “Found –
you’ve been looking for me?”

“Not really looking so much as hoping. Hoping
for a mate, though I admit, I didn’t think I’d ever really find
one.”

“A mate?” Mandy’s mouth went dry.

“Well yeah,” Jack said, as if the idea were
the most natural thing in the world. He picked her hand up off his
chest and held it in his own, stroking her palm with his calloused
fingertips. “Mandy?”

“Yeah?” she barely managed to squeak out.
What was he going to do next – propose? She stifled another bout of
borderline-hysterical laughter.

“I’m tired. I’m gonna go to sleep for a
little while.”

She clenched back, gripping his hand tightly.
“Oh my God, Jack – you’re not dying, are you?” The thought of
losing him was as heart-wrenching as the thought of being hunted
alone by the nameless gunman was terrifying. She was seized by a
crushing feeling of helplessness. What the hell could she do about
it if he was? They were trapped here, and she didn’t know anything
about treating gunshot wounds.

“No, I promise you I’m not. Just wake me if
you hear anything, all right?”

“You broke your last promise.”

“Well, I’ll keep this one, and if I don’t,
you can kill me.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I’ll be fine.” Within moments his breathing
settled into the steady rhythm of slumber.

He had to be exhausted – her own heart was
still racing. She uncurled her hand from his and laid her palm on
his chest. If he was going to sleep, she was at least going to
monitor his breathing and his heartbeat. If they slowed she’d do
her best to wake him and do whatever she could – whatever that was.
She knelt silently beside him, thinking about what he’d said as his
heart beat against her touch.

His mate
. Why did he think that was
what she was? Yes, they’d had sex – incredible sex – and yes, she
was apparently a werewolf, as insane as that still seemed. But that
didn’t mean that they were meant to be together forever. Heck, she
hadn’t even been thinking long term when she’d straddled and rode
him. She’d been living one-hundred percent in the moment, already
seduced and readied by her vivid dreams. Turning him down would
have been like a starving person refusing a juicy steak. She
sighed, contemplating for the first time how her recently
discovered nature would shape her future.

What would she do when the week was over and
she had to head back to Nashville? Could she suppress her
transformations, never going wolf again? The thought sent an
unexpected pang of melancholy through her heart. What was it that
Jack had said – that she’d feel like a caged animal if she returned
to the city? What if he was right? What if the life she’d worked so
hard to build was ruined?

He’d be waiting for her. The truth struck
her, along with a hint of worry. What if she wouldn’t be able to
function like her old self anymore? It seemed that Jack would be
willing to share his life with her here, but could she stomach that
sort of existence? She expected to feel horrified by the idea of
living out her days in the mountains with Jack, but when she really
thought about it, she didn’t. But that didn’t mean that she was
ready to declare herself his mate. For God’s sake, she’d only known
him for a day. She just hadn’t had the heart to dispute his
assumption when he was hurt so badly, and then he’d fallen
asleep.

What did being a werewolf’s mate mean,
anyway? She didn’t know anything about being a wolf – a shifter, as
Jack called it. Apparently, her father had been one, and he
certainly hadn’t stayed with her mother for life. He’d left during
Mandy’s early infancy, and she’d seen neither hide nor hair of him
since. He didn’t even write or call – she’d grown up without
contact with him, often wondering what it would be like to have a
father. Had her mother known what he was, and if so, could that be
why they’d broken off their relationship?