Twin Alphas: Desired (A BBW Paranormal Romance) (5 page)

              “Okay.” She shook her head in confusion. She could have sworn that Ajax had been talking a lot about cubs the previous year, and how eager he was to have them right away, but right now she was having a hard time thinking clearly at all. She was tired and sore and her brain felt like it had been wrapped in cotton wool.

              “I was thinking of buying us some breakfast after the opening ceremonies,” Ajax said. “Shall we, my lady?”

              Mackenzie groaned. Opening ceremonies. Bunch of werewolves and humans standing up on a stage reciting the exact same thing year after year.  Werewolves protected humans in times of peace and war, humans who married werewolves ensured the survival of their species, blah blah blah. 

              “My hangover is kicking my butt this morning. Would it be terrible if I slept in?”

              “Sleep as late as you like,” Barron said. “We’ll come back and fetch you for breakfast.”

              They both headed off to get ready, and she flopped back down and pulled the covers over her head. She had everything that she wanted. The hot Alphas she’d been yearning for had claimed her, and were treating her like a queen, and she’d be going home with them and she’d be the Alpha’s Woman and…

              Why did she feel a nagging sense of worry gnawing at her, on the morning when she should be the happiest she’d ever been?

* * *

Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Panicking never helps anything. Think with a clear head
, Barron thought, as panic clutched at his throat.

“What the hell happened last night?” Ajax demanded as they hurried away from the cabin, heading down the path towards the central pavilion area. “I don’t understand why we took her back to our cabin when we knew the risk. What were we thinking?”

“Apparently we weren’t thinking,” Barron said grimly. “The beer was doing our thinking for us.” Which made no sense – they’d only had one pitcher of beer.  And they’d shared it with Mackenzie.  They normally had a much higher tolerance.

“Have we just killed the woman we love?” Ajax’s voice was shaking. He was afraid. The man who jumped off roofs for fun was afraid.

“No!” Barron said vehemently.  “As long as we don’t have cubs together, she’ll be safe. We’ll just never have sex when the moons are full. We’ll lock ourselves away.”

“I think she’s going to pick up on that pretty quickly, don’t you?” Ajax asked.

“Hey, guys. What a crazy night, huh?” Vita and Karlie were walking towards them, and Vita was waving cheerily, but her hair was rumpled and she had circles under her eyes.

“Man, I don’t know what was in that beer you drank last night, but I’m glad I didn’t have any,” Karlie said.

Alarm bells went off in Barron’s head.  “What do you mean?” he demanded.

“I mean, first you guys go from barely speaking to Mackenzie to rushing off to get frisky in no time flat, then Miss Thing here is dancing on tabletops and propositioning every guy in the place.” Karlie nodded her head at Vita. “I ended up dragging her back to the women’s quarters last night, because she clearly wasn’t thinking straight.”

Vita blushed, playing with her sunflower necklace. “That was unlike me. I don’t ask men out like that.”

Ajax and Barron exclaimed dismayed glances.

“The beer was drugged,” Barron said. “That explains everything.”

Karlie flashed him a look of alarm. “Who would want to drug your beer? And why?”

Barron cleared his throat.  “We...Let’s just say that someone has it in for our family, and we can’t discuss why.”

“Does this have anything to do with why you rushed off and ditched Mackenzie last year?” Karlie asked.

“Maybe. Kind of.” Ajax glanced at Vita. “You went up to the bar and ordered the beer, and the waiter brought it to our table…did you notice him checking us out in any way? Or the bartender? Did you notice anything unusual?”

She shrugged, looking bewildered. “I wasn’t really paying attention.  So we were drugged? Thank God Karlie was there to keep me from making a total ass of myself.” She glanced anxiously at Karlie. “I don’t remember too much. I wasn’t too bad, was I?”

“Uhhh…no, not at all.” Karlie smiled politely.

Vita rubbed her head.  “I still feel kind of fuzzy.”

“So does Mackenzie,” Barron said grimly. “We need to go to a Mage right away and see if he can tell what we were drugged with. Then we need to go to the bar and talk to the bartender and the waiter. The Tavern doesn’t up until the afternoon, though.”

Ajax glanced at his watch. “We’d better hurry.”

“Please don’t tell Mackenzie about this,” Barron said to Vita and Karlie. “I don’t want her to think that the beer, or the drugs, are why we got together with her.”

“But were they?” Karlie pinned him with a skeptical stare. “Because you guys never really gave a great explanation as to why you ditched her last year. Yeah, I get the whole family emergency thing, but if you really wanted her, I would think that you would have tried a little harder to track her down and explain once things were resolved.”

“They’re still not completely resolved, but yes, we did want her,” Barron said fervently. “More than anything. We want her as our mate, I swear to you. And we will treat her like gold.”

“All right. For now. Just tell us what you find out about the drugged drinks.” Karlie looked doubtful, but she and Vita headed off to the opening ceremonies. Barron was tempted to tell her the real reason that he didn’t want her to reveal what was happening to Mackenzie, but he didn’t dare. He’d just have to pray that she’d keep her mouth shut.

“Who the hell would do this to us?” Ajax growled as they headed off to find a Mage.

“Whoever cursed us.  I mean, all packs have rivalries. Enemies.” Barron rubbed his face with his hands. This was a nightmare. He’d lay his life down for Mackenzie – but how could he protect her from a curse, when he didn’t even know the origin of the curse?

“Yeah, but this goes back a generation. Why would someone still be angry at our pack?”

Barron didn’t answer; he’d spotted a Mage standing by a rosebush. The Mage was waving a long, gnarled wand over the bush, and flowers were bursting into bloom all over it. It was likely one of the rosebushes that was used by the vendors to make into wreaths and bouquets; the Mages could ensure that there was a never ending supply of fresh flowers for them.

“Ricardo, right?” Barron had met him before. They saw a lot of the same faces year after year at the festival.

Ricardo was a tall, lean Hispanic man in his thirties, with dark shiny hair and a goatee. “That’s me.” He glanced at the crowds hurrying towards the Central Pavilion area. “Shouldn’t you be getting to the opening ceremonies?”

Barron glanced around to make sure that nobody was listening.  There was nobody else close by.  “We need your help. Somebody drugged our beer last night with something that had to have been magic in origin, and we want to see if you can figure out what kind of drug it was, who could have done something like this…”

Ricardo waved his wand over them and frowned. “I’m not an expert on this,” he said. “My specialty is plant magic. However, I can generally sense the presence of magic, and I’m not picking up anything. What kind of effect did the drug have on you?”

“It totally clouded our judgment. We ended up taking a woman back to our cabin – it’s a long story.”

“A drug like that would leave your system pretty quickly. Like a date rape drug would for humans.  Wait.  The woman that you brought back to your cabin.  Did you claim her?” Ricardo’s eyes widened in surprise. He saw the grim expressions on their faces. “You did. 
Dios mio
. That kind of magic would be so illegal. Do you think that the woman did it, so she could trick you into claiming her?”

“No way. She wasn’t even there when the beer was brought to our table. And she just wouldn’t.” Ajax shook his head.

“You’ve got to tell the Sentinels. That’s a big deal. Huge.” Ricardo shook his head. “If someone is going around spiking people’s drinks, compelling people to bond with women who they didn’t want to claim…”

“No, no,” Barron said hastily.  “We’re pretty sure that we were the only target. It’s more complicated than that.  We wanted to claim her anyway, but we couldn’t. There’s a curse on us.”

Ricardo looked at him in confusion. “A curse? Explain this to me.”

“We found out about it at the last festival. Well, it goes back further than that.”  Barron took a deep breath. He hated having to dredge up their family’s tragic history, but he had no choice. “Our mother died in childbirth when she had us, and our fathers claimed a new mate a few years later, and they died in a car crash with her.  Our fathers’ pack broke apart, scattered around the country.  We were raised by our aunt and uncle. Up until last year, we’d always believed that it was just terrible luck.”

“What happened last year?” Ricardo asked uneasily.

“While we were at the festival, our aunt and uncle were going through their garage, clearing out old boxes of family belongings. They came across a box that had my stepmother’s stuff in it, including a diary. In the diary, she talked about a curse on the family, which doomed any woman that bore their children.   My fathers had just confessed to her that they suspected they were cursed, and she was pregnant.  They all died the day after she wrote that entry. Driving a brand new truck which mysteriously  went off the road on a sharp curve.”

“Well. Could be a curse, could have been sabotage.” Ricardo frowned. “Maybe from a rival pack.”

“We followed up on it,” Barron said. “Ajax immediately cut things off with the woman who we’d been planning to claim.  As soon as the festival was over, we started visiting Mages who specialized in curses. We had a really hard time finding someone who’d even speak to us, and he couldn’t give us a lot of information. However, he was able to verify that there is a curse on us, and that any woman who we bond with would die in childbirth. And he was fairly sure that if we warned the woman about the curse, she’d die immediately.”

“Given that, why did you even come to the festival?” Ricardo asked.

“The only way we could get out of coming is if we had a Mage swear to the fact that we had that curse. We contacted him after our visit, and asked him for an affidavit…and he suddenly refused and backed off. Said he wasn’t sure if we were cursed at all.” Barron scowled, frustration welling up inside him. The past year had been spent running into one dead end after another.

“What about your fathers’ former pack?”

Frustration boiled up inside Barron. “Every time we contact any of them and try to ask them about it, they say they don’t know what we’re talking about and change the subject.”

Ricardo shook his head. “As I imagine that you’ve found out, there’s a limited number of Mages who deal in curses. Completely outside of my area of expertise; I wouldn’t even be able to detect one. They’re tricky, and require a highly skilled practitioner.  Have you visited Cornelius, the Mage who oversees and regulates all Curse Mages?”

“He refuses to speak to us,” Ajax said. 

“Then you’re screwed, and you’re also late for the opening ceremonies.” Ricardo turned back to the rosebushes with a frown, and began gesturing with his wand.  More roses burst into bloom, and the conversation was clearly over.

“I must say, if you’re trying to impress me, you’re getting off to a good start,” Mackenzie said. 

Ajax and Barron had brought out a massive breakfast spread.  Stacks of fluffy pancakes, piles of crisp bacon and juicy sausages, jugs of maple syrup, cartons of orange juice…they’d brought back enough to feed a medium-sized army.

They were sitting at a picnic table near the Crack of Dawn restaurant, and Karlie had joined them.  Vita was her usual cheerful self. Karlie was oddly quiet.

“Are you sure you didn’t drink anything last night? You seem hung over,” Mackenzie said, digging into a pile of fluffy yellow eggs.

“I’m good. Just worn out after chasing after Vita last night.” Karlie managed a smile.

“Last night went so well, though,” Vita said eagerly. “I can’t wait to see what happens tonight! Maybe I’ll meet the wolves who’ll claim me. Or maybe you will!” she added to Karlie, who made a face.

“I’m dedicated to getting through this festival claim-free,” she said.

“Look at the enormous bounty that my two hot men hunted down for me! Eat up before it gets cold, guys.” Mackenzie waved at the platters of food and Karle and Vita began filling up their plates.

It was starting to sink in. This was really happening. Ajax and Barron truly wanted her.

Oh, she wasn’t going to let go of the whole “family crisis” thing that had called them away last year. Their family was now her family. Their problems were her problems.  However, they didn’t seem to want to talk about it right now, so she’d wait until she was living on their property and once she got to know everybody better, hopefully she could figure out what was going on.

In the meantime, the crunchy, salty taste of bacon was heaven in her mouth, she was surrounded by friends, and Ajax and Barron were watching her with a mixture of lust and tenderness that threatened to melt her into a big gooey puddle. She had no complaints.