My Alphas: The Complete Series (20 page)

As Edon described two of them, stunned and finally pulling themselves up, Cass started to laugh.

Edon leapt up from the bed and lurched around the room, waving his arms and legs about.

“Gloop monsters, covered in flour and syrup…”

“Stop, stop, I can’t…”

Cass was on the bed in a ball, tears streaming down her face as she laughed.

“We’re thinking we might be in there all night. There is no way back up to the roof and the place is locked up tighter than a bank vault. So as we search, Rey gets the clever idea to mix together the flour and syrup and eat it. We’re both hungry and it tastes delicious so why not? So we eat and search and I come across a key. Now we’re out, looking for a hose, a swimming pool, an empty hotel room with a shower. Anything. The flour has dried like glue and we’re these gluggy white ghosts. When…”

“Oh no, what?”

“This company made a laxative product. That was what the syrup was for…”

Cass burst out laughing and collapsed on the bed.

“No more, no more!”

*

Cass awoke in the morning, her face buried in fur.

It was Edon - some time during the night he’d shifted and she’d slept, bundled up against a giant wolf.

After Edon had finished telling the story of the great Syrup Laxative Debacle (which continued on through sneaking into a closed gym, setting off the alarm halfway through showering, escaping the city with the police hot on their heels and having to use scissors to cut flour and syrup out of their hair all the while having severe digestive problems), he’d pulled her close and she’d slipped into sleep.

He stirred as she did and then rolled over before shifting. One moment there was a wolf, the next a man. Edon opened his eyes and smiled at her before sniffing the air.

“They’re back,” he said.

Cass bolted out of bed and hurriedly dressed. Edon waited in the doorway, naked as the day he was born. As Cass pulled her top on she knew this would always be one of the differences between her and the werewolves. She couldn’t imagine a time when she’d be happy to walk naked around them.

Once she was dressed she rushed down to the den, Edon close behind her. She could hear werewolves talking all at once. Behind the voices she heard Rey and her breath caught in her chest. She burst into the main den and ran across the room. Rey was surrounded by werewolves who parted before her.

Cass ran up to him and hugged him, relief flooding through her like a drug. It only lasted a moment however. She pulled back when she saw the streaks of dried blood down his back. Across his shoulder was a bloody line, three inches long, a groove in his flesh dug half an inch deep.

“You’re injured!”

“My clever mate,” Rey said, pulling her close to him and kissing away her objections. “Your plan is working already.”

“But your shoulder,” Cass said, her voice trailing away as he kissed her again.

Rey pulled Cass along with him and sat down so Vara could attend to his wound. As she did, Rey told the assembled pack about their attack on the humans. Cass couldn’t stop smiling as he told the thrilling account. Sneaking in under the cover of darkness, shredding tents and water bottles. He made piercing cans of baked beans sound like a truly heroic act.

None of the werewolves had been killed. Apart from Rey there was only one injury - Mera, who had lost the very tip of her ear thanks to a stray bullet.

“A group of thirty have already departed. There are now forty men with limited food, no packs and none of them have had any sleep.”

After the werewolves had escaped they had taken to the hills around the camp and stayed up howling all night. The humans had clustered together around the generator and lights, clutching their weapons. The scouts had reported in the morning the militia had fashioned slings out of torn tents and were carrying whatever food they could salvage.

“It is a good plan,” Rey said to Cass. She felt the attention of the pack on her and she blushed, mumbling something that sounded like thank you.

*

Edon listened to Rey tell the story of the attack and then left the den as he began to tell it again. He touched Cass across the shoulders but she didn’t look at him, enraptured as she was with Rey’s tale. Trying to not let it bother him but feeling the sting of it nonetheless, he went outside and stood in the morning sun with his eyes closed, feeling it warm on his face.

The sky was blue, the air was clear, the day was full of promise. The human militia was severely weakened and wouldn’t last another night without sleep. Things were going well for a change.

So why did Cass looking at Rey with such adoration bother him so much?

He heard footsteps behind him and knew without opening his eyes it was Vara.

She came to stand beside him, enjoying the sun.

“Have you come to give me advice?” he asked her.

“If you would like some advice, I have some,” she replied.

“I would love some advice,” Edon said, opening his eyes and raising an eyebrow at her.

“Don’t be cheeky first up,” Vara said, raising an eyebrow in return. She couldn’t keep a straight face though and soon smiled back at him. After a moment, she spoke again.

“She is your mate as well as his. In one instant she is yours. In another his. In another, both. She will come and go like the tide. There is no reason to be upset when the tide goes away. It is always coming back.”

Edon looked at Vara, who kept her face smooth and her look reserved. She was his most trusted advisor for a reason. She knew when to push, she knew when to hold back and without fault she could see to the heart of him.

Edon looked around to ensure no other werewolves were close.

“Sometimes I am afraid I will kill Rey,” he said to her, his voice low.

“It may still happen. The path you two have chosen to walk is the most difficult one of all. The price of a misstep is death for either or both of you and perhaps all of us.”

“I don’t feel we chose this path. It was chosen for us when we met her on that river bank.”

Edon felt his fear loom large in his heart. It was a multifaceted thing. Fear of losing Cass. Fear of killing Rey. Fear of what his desire to protect would do to him, of what he might become.

Vara moved close to him and took him by the hand.

“You chose her. Both of you did. It will work out.”

She patted him on the back of the hand and left him there, standing outside the den, wondering if she was right.

*

“I will be there soon,” Rey told her, giving her a hungry look and Cass had given him one in return before walking back to her room, her heart pounding.

She’d gone from warm relaxation to fear and relief all in an instant and now upon seeing Rey she wanted him in her bed, pulled close. She’d run out of words to say and now only had her flesh to speak with.

Cass stripped off the top she wore and switched it for a shirt that did a lot more for her cleavage. She knew each wolf loved her body but had their particular preferences. Edon reveled in the curves of her hips. Rey wanted her breasts, often trailing kisses down her neck to her nipples. Cass was jiggling some more boobage into view when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned with her most sultry look and then stopped still.

Vara.

“Rey will enjoy that,” she said.

Cass pulled her shirt closed and flushed red.

“Don’t be ashamed. Be proud of your body.”

Vara was naked, as the werewolves often were, and Cass tried and failed not to look. Although Vara was the oldest werewolf in the pack, Cass had no idea of her true age. Her body was still a gravity defying miracle, slender and muscled and perfect in every line.

“I’m not ashamed, I’m… modest,” Cass said, letting go of her shirt.

“You and I must speak. Do you know what is expected of you?”

Even as the days passed and her fertile time came closer, Cass’ extraordinary powers of denial were hard at work. Why was she here? To have amazing sex with the two Alphas and…

“You’re here to carry their cubs,” Vara said. “It won’t be long until they’re enthralled and then they will mate with you.”

Cass breathed in as the cold hard truth hit her. It had been playing on the edge of her mind but she’d been hard at work denying it. Now Vara had punched her in the face with it and it seemed absurd. What, this was it? A few weeks of incredible sex and then bam, pregnant?

“But can’t they wait?” Cass mumbled. She walked across to a small table and filled a cup of water. Anything to distract herself from this.

“Werewolves don’t wait. For them, making cubs is the ultimate bond of love.”

“Love?” Cass croaked, almost choking on her water.

“Love. It is the opposite of indifference, which is to not care at all. Love is to care absolutely.”

Cass put the cup down and wiped her hands on her clothes. The second big question that had been looming large in her mind arrived.

“But… what if I don’t become pregnant?” she whispered.

The older werewolf laughed, creases appearing in the corners of her eyes.

“Nothing happens! You come back and next month you try again. The Alphas are very good at trying again.”

Vara gave her a ridiculously filthy wink and Cass felt relief uncoil inside her. It was short-lived however. Vara came close to her and took her hands. Her palms felt soft and warm.

“You’re the Pack Mate. She balances the Alpha. She does not fight, she does not bite but she determines the fate of the pack. You have two Alphas to balance. You will need to hold them together. Show favor to one more than the other and it will all topple. One will kill the other and all will be lost. You’re in the middle.”

Cass stopped breathing and then found herself swallowing as her mouth filled with saliva.

“I think I’m going to be sick,” she said.

“You’ll do fine.” Vara let go of her hands and passed her the half-drunk cup of water. Cass held onto it like a lifeline.

Vara left the room, leaving Cass standing there, clutching the cup and trying to remember how to breathe.

She determines the fate of the pack?

Oh crap.

My Alphas, Part Four

Make no mistake - werewolves are a threat to human society.

If a wild dog attacks you, put it down.

If a werewolf attacks you, put it down.

It is a mistake to think they are human. They may come from us, products of brutal rape but they are not us. They are vicious dangerous beasts.

Ormand Holt, Grandmaster Dragon of World Without Werewolves

“The last of the humans have turned back,” Kita announced and the surrounding werewolves clapped and cheered (and some howled).

Cass smiled and clapped along with them but she felt she was a million miles away. She knew she should be happy her plan had succeeded. She’d saved human and werewolf lives and prevented an attack that inevitably would have brought on a much worse counterattack. She knew all these things but they felt hollow and empty.

Weighing on her mind was one repeating thought: they chose me but they didn’t know what they were choosing.

It had been ten days since Vara told Cass what the Pack Mate was expected to do and although Cass’ ability to deny reality had been perfected growing up with her terrible parents, it was failing badly now.

She’d let herself fall back into the pattern of sleeping, eating, Alphas. Sleeping, eating, Alphas. The days passed rapidly and she avoided starting any deep and meaningful conversations with Edon, Rey or anyone else.

Edon and Rey made it easy to fall into a mindless pattern. They were insatiable and she was too. But even as she stripped off and fell into bed with either or both of them, she recognized on some level she was using her body rather than her words; trying desperately to take overwhelming lust, the totally absorbing moment of flesh uniting and pretend it meant more. That perhaps it meant love or connection. That it meant caring.

That they loved her for who she was when they had no idea at all.

“… last five stayed camping there until this morning. Finally they broke down and have returned to Hinton.”

Cass brought herself back to the moment and clapped again. After the initial thirty men had turned tail, the remaining forty dwindled rapidly. Within two days there were only ten men who had slowed to covering less than three miles a day. Sleep deprived, hungry and lacking water, they seemed to be pushing forward out of pride while not intending to actually arrive at the den. After a period of time passed so they could say “well, we tried our best” they turned around and marched back home.

She looked across at Rey. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, not listening. Cass had felt his gaze on her but every time she looked at him he was looking elsewhere. It was a stalking game - predator and prey and normally that would have pulled her in but she was stuck in her own head, too preoccupied to let go.

Edon was against the other wall, a magazine cover model on his day off. He met Cass’ gaze and the edge of his mouth quirked into a smile. The suggestion of a smile at least.