His wolf was large, but it wasn’t the beast’s size that stilled the crowd. Instead, a concerted wave of goosebumps crashing across every shifter in the room proved that the newcomer’s alpha dominance was single-handedly responsible for throwing metaphorical cold water over the proceedings.
Of course, alpha dominance was nothing new in the werewolf world—everyone had the ability to some extent. Still, a shifter’s capacity to sway others to his will was largely dependent upon the relative strength of each contestant’s wolf. My weak animal half, for example, could have been barked down by anyone in the room...which is why she was currently sound asleep within my human body.
At the other extreme, the eddies of invisible yet very tangible compulsions rolling off my stalker’s lupine form proved that he was the rarest of the rare—an uber-alpha. The newcomer’s dominance was so intense that he was able to part the raucous shifters like the Red Sea with a single glance, leaving a clear path between the door he’d padded through and the table on which I crouched.
In fact, if the evidence around me was any indication, I should’ve been glad my own wolf was asleep or I’d likely have fallen flat on my face at my stalker’s approach. The rest of the room’s inhabitants weren’t so lucky. Some of the nearby shifters remained rooted to the spot. Others dropped to their knees, heads bowed to the floor. And a drunk in the corner nearly choked on his own vomit until the stalker’s gaze followed mine and released the shifter from his spell long enough for the poor guy to finish throwing up.
While the uber-alpha was looking the other way, I glanced up at the window through which half of my pack had recently disappeared. Perhaps this was my chance to escape?
But Ten-Gallon was as frozen as the next guy, and I knew our rescuer would be torn to shreds by his fellows as soon as my stalker left the room. I didn’t even know my new comrade’s name, but a budding leadership sense suggested that he would soon become our pack’s newest member.
Which meant I was going to have to suck it up and deal with the wolf who was responsible for my outpack status and who seemed intent on following me across the country in order to gloat. His eyes latched back onto mine as I pondered my options, and I could tell I wouldn’t have made it out the window anyway before his teeth closed around my skin. So, as usual, I settled on bravado as the best solution to a bad situation.
“Hunter,” I greeted him.
In response my stalker shifted so fast I couldn’t even discern the transition, hair receding and body lengthening in an instant until only his amber eyes remained the same. “Lost Wolf,” he countered.
And with those simple words I was flung back three weeks to our first meeting. Then, as now, the uber-alpha had walked into a room vibrating with peril. Then, as now, I’d felt duty bound to protect my pack even while risking my own skin.
But at that point in time, the danger had come from Hunter himself.
Come to think of it, I wasn’t so sure anything had changed.
***
When Hunter and I first met, I was a happy-go-lucky member of a different clan entirely. Our alpha was kind but firm, our pack was quite capable of protecting its weaker members from all comers, and my wolf spent nearly all of her time asleep.
Despite that pastoral tranquility, though, half of my days involved patrolling the pack’s boundaries to make sure potential dangers didn’t encroach. So when I discovered the aforementioned uber-alpha in lupine form nosing through trees half a mile from our village, I immediately bared my human teeth and shouted out a challenge.
“Stop there!” I demanded. Never mind that I couldn’t back up my posturing with any alpha dominance of my own. I’d learned that simply lifting my chin in challenge and speaking like I meant it usually did the trick. And, sure enough, the huge wolf slinking through the undergrowth paused and cocked his head in response.
Without the sensory assistance of a rampant inner wolf, I’d just assumed the stranger was an over-zealous drifter trying to decide if our clan was open to new members. We generally were, but we also preferred supplicants to come in through the front door rather than sniffing around behind our backs. So I was terse when I stalked over, grabbing his ruff with one hand and clenching down on the top of his muzzle with the other. “Rude,” I growled, shaking the stranger as if he was a puppy and I was his alpha. “Come with me.”
Hunter obeyed easily enough, letting me drag his furry butt back to my alpha without complaint. Only when I saw the latter’s tense body language did I realize the error of my ways. It seemed I’d misread the stranger’s crooked grin as submission and had invited a predator into our den by mistake.
A den into which a young pup soon ambled, throwing us all into a tizzy of over-protectiveness. Any shifter who got my alpha’s hackles up was one I didn’t want hanging around youngsters. Unfortunately, my weak lupine nature meant that I wasn’t able to physically protect the kid in question or to boot the stranger out the door. So I resolved the issue in the only way I knew how—by continuing to pretend like I was far more wolf than I could ever dream of being.
“Family matters,” I told the stranger as my pack leader turned his attention to the pup. Grabbing the uber-alpha’s newly materialized hand, I pulled him over to a chair in the corner and away from the kid who had caught his eye. Perhaps if I was able to sidetrack our guest for a few minutes, my alpha could shuffle the youngster back out the door and then take this explosive bundle of handsomeness off my hands.
This time around, though, my playacting was a little less confident than usual. After all, if my alpha—who possessed the strongest inner beast I’d ever seen—was concerned about this stranger, then Hunter could likely bark and I’d offer up my finger bones to be used as toothpicks. I shivered, but still put pseudo-command in my voice when I spoke. “Talk to me.”
The uber-alpha feigned obedience once more, but I got the distinct impression that he was only humoring a shifter who he found intriguing. “Talk about what?” he asked. His voice was so deep it seemed to rumble through the air and into my belly like heavy bass, and I had to clench my jaw in order to ignore the tantalizing sensation.
“How about your name?”
I was definitely in over my head but the stranger seemed to enjoy my spunk. He took one of my hands between his much larger paws, sending yet another tremor through my body. “I’m Hunter.”
“Is that your name or what you do?” I couldn’t resist asking. And now Hunter’s smile finally reached his eyes. The uber-alpha was obviously impressed by my perspicuity, even though he really shouldn’t have been. I had no choice but to be alert to the subtle cues of body language since I couldn’t depend on my inner wolf to clue me in. And it wasn’t as if the stranger was trying to hide his thoughts either.
“Both,” he confirmed. “And you’re Lost Wolf.”
“No, I’m Fen,” I answered, ripping my hand out of the stranger’s grasp before my brain caught up with my mouth. I knew I shouldn’t be antagonizing a shifter so strong he gave my alpha heart palpitations, but it offended me that Hunter had so easily seen into the core of my being.
Okay, so “offended” probably wasn’t the right word. It scared me to death. It made me mad as hell. And, yes, it also pleased me no end that someone had finally seen what none of my pack mates had cared to notice during the last twenty-one years of my existence.
While I was trying to work through all of those contradictory emotions, Hunter elaborated on his analysis. “You’re different and lonely. You’re looking for a place to fit in.”
“Oookay.” I did my best to brush off his words even though each one struck like a dart into my soul. “Did I accidentally sign up for a therapy session?”
I feigned checking the planner on my cell phone, but fumbled the device instead since I wasn’t able to tear my eyes away from the shifter in front of me long enough to complete the pretense. The phone hit the ground with a clatter that made me jump but didn’t seem to affect anyone else in the room.
“You’re uncomfortable,” the stranger said after a moment of silence. “You don’t want to talk to me.”
True and true. But the kid who Hunter wasn’t supposed to interact with was still in the room and my alpha continued to radiate distress. So I shook my head. “No, I’m dying to have a pleasant conversation with you.” And that was, unfortunately, true as well. “But we’ve just met. Ever hear of small talk?”
“Sounds trivial and inconsequential.”
“And you sound like you swallowed a thesaurus.”
I couldn’t feel the effects, but I’d gotten used to the glassy eyes and clenched jaw that signaled a shifter exerting his or her alpha dominance. So I wasn’t surprised to see the kid flinch on the other side of the room as Hunter’s gaze bore down on me.
In response, my wolf stirred groggily awake deep within my body. And for the split second that she was less than completely comatose, I was able to fully understand the power of the werewolf before me. My nostrils flooded with the intense aroma of cold, wet sassafras, as if I’d been immersed in a vat of chilled root beer. And I felt an overwhelming urge to lunge forward and kiss the uber-alpha on the lips.
Then I pushed my wolf so hard she was flung backwards into the dark recesses of my mind and washed off her feet by the flood of my subconscious. As her presence faded, so did Hunter’s compulsion.
“You know it’s sexual assault to force a woman to kiss you against her will, don’t you?” I snarled. Then I whispered under my breath: “And pretty darn desperate too.”
What I really wanted was to punch the guy, but I had a sinking suspicion he wasn’t human enough to respond chivalrously to a blow from a lady. And if Hunter decided to fight back, I’d be dead. So I stuck to the defense that made me feel strongest—verbal sallies.
The uber-alpha cocked his head to one side curiously, then responded. “I only asked you to let your wolf do what she wanted to do,” he rumbled, and I flushed beet red. “Surely that’s not against two-legger rules?”
Yep, he’d definitely won that round.
But I wasn’t ready to roll over and show my belly just yet. When in doubt, ignore the facts and go for the jugular.
“You’re a bastard.” I ground out the words while leaning subtly forward and shoving myself into his personal space in a shifter provocation. Take that, you uber-asshole. How often do you get challenged by a wolf you can’t smack down with your voodoo powers?
And Hunter chuckled. In fact, he laughed so long and so hard that tears streamed out of his eyes in rivulets, making his chiseled jawline glisten.
I should have taken the opening I’d been given and run with it. At least the uber-alpha hadn’t immediately responded to my not-so-witty comeback, which gave me a momentary advantage.
But, instead, I found myself using every iota of self-control I possessed to refrain from reaching out and drying my companion’s cheeks. There was just something about seeing the uber-alpha cry that didn’t sit right with me, even if the tears were those of mirth instead of pain. And even if his laughter was, apparently, at my own expense.
But drying his eyes would be nearly as stupid as kissing him, I reminded myself, the latter possibility still niggling at the back of my mind. Actually, swiping my finger across his perfectly proportioned face would be considerably more stupid since I couldn’t chalk the action up to his earlier compulsion. Nope, not gonna go there.
While I’d been squashing my baser urges, Hunter had been getting a handle on himself as well. And now he was the one to reach out and very gently run one calloused finger across my cheekbone and down the side of my jaw in an unconscious mirroring of the gesture I’d just imagined.
“You...are...intriguing.” He paused between each word, so the short sentence lasted until his fingertip drifted across the sensitive skin surrounding my mouth. A fragment of rough callous caught on my softer flesh and pulled my bottom lip very subtly open.
Immediately, my unruly brain offered up the mental image of sucking Hunter’s finger into my mouth to taste. Would his skin possess the same root-beer flavor that imbued the air when my wolf was awake and Hunter was within range? Or would he taste even better?
Let’s not get carried away, I told myself. He’s an uber-asshole. The pup is in danger. Eyes on the prize.
So, instead, I snapped my teeth together aggressively, only realizing after the fact that the missed bite could just as easily be construed as flirting rather than giving warning. In response, Hunter cocked his head to one side again before returning hand to lap without continuing the caress.
And I don’t regret that. Nope, not one bit.
“You’ll never fit in here,” my companion said at last, the words grim and spoken as if from hard-won personal experience. “But I know a place where you’ll belong.”
“This is my pack,” I shot back. Now I wasn’t just pretending to banter. I was honestly angry that this uber-alpha who knew nothing about our clan would insinuate that my friends treated me differently just because I was a half-werewolf instead of a pure-breed.
Okay, sure, so my ex had recently dumped me for that very reason. But it wasn’t as if I’d find a better situation out in the cold, hard world. Former boyfriend aside, most of my current pack mates were willing to embrace my differences and accept me for who I was. That level of tolerance wasn’t the case in 99% of the shifter clans out there.
“You’re willing to throw away the possibility of true acceptance due to fear of the unknown.”
It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “I’m not afraid.” I bared my teeth as if my wolf was rampant behind my eyes and was itching to tear out my opponent’s throat.
Which wasn’t so far wrong, except that my human self was the aggressive one. The uber-alpha didn’t need to know that my wolf was currently and would in the future continue to be nearly always asleep.
Hunter just smiled, this time with his lips alone. “The offer’s open.”
And then the wolf pup we’d been protecting scurried out of the room, allowing me to hand that combination of eye candy and impending train wreck back over to my alpha to deal with. Hunter was far too enticing for his own good, and I was glad to see the back of him even though he seemed to have my best interests at heart.
“Seemed” being the relevant word. Because less than twenty-four hours later, the uber-alpha returned to our territory just in time to cast me out of the only pack where I’d ever felt safe. It turned out that the bastard was not only powerful, he was also an enforcer for the regional governing body known as the Tribunal. In other words, Hunter harnessed enough clout to keep even my scary-strong pack leader in line.
Unfortunately, my entire clan and I had all been knowingly breaking the rules for the past few months. We’d chosen the morally correct decision over the legally correct one, keeping that little pup safe rather than returning her to a sadistic father who—by shifter law—owned the kid as thoroughly as he owned his fancy new car.
The Tribunal was responsible for resolving inter-pack altercations, so they’d sent Hunter out to pass judgment on our sinful ways. And rather than exploring all the shades of gray in the situation, the uber-alpha had decided to stick to the letter of the law. Which meant we got to keep the pup...but either my pack leader or his mate would be put to death to even the score.
So I’d stuck my nose in where it didn’t belong and had caught the backlash in their place. The upshot? My alpha would continue to run his pack as a haven for oddball werewolves like myself...but I would no longer be included in the family photos. Instead, I was set adrift to wander through outpack territory with only my weak inner wolf to protect me.
Or so Hunter had mandated. But my previous pack leader had one last trick up his sleeve. Ripping away part of his own alpha dominance, the shifter who I’d always looked up to presented me with that shred of power plus four underlings to back up my claim to pack-leader status. The thin veneer of danger settling around my shoulders might possibly be enough to keep lawless shifters from chewing me up and spitting me out...or at least from swallowing me whole.
Unfortunately, we all knew my chances of survival as a halfie female in outpack territory still weren’t worth betting on. The presence of companions just meant I’d be dragging more innocents down with me when I inevitably crashed and burned.
And the whole mess was Hunter’s fault. He’d acted so cordial and interested in me when we’d first met. Then, even after ostracizing me from my former home, he’d continued to reel me in. Taking my face between his huge hands, he’d promised: “You’ll thank me later.”
Even then I thought he’d kiss me.
But he didn’t, the bastard. Just left me yearning and lonely on the edge of what he clearly thought was a brave new world and what I knew was a death sentence for myself and for my new pack.
I hadn’t seen him since.