Filed to story: Mated to the Alpha and His Beta Novel Free >>???
One by one, they started up a chorus of wailing. Gabriela hurried from the room to calm them.
“Xander-” Zane held up his hands, but Xander wasn’t having it. He tossed away his Beta’s attempt at a grip, his own big fists clenching.
Mason stepped between them, a hand on each of their chests. “Calm the f uck down. Xander, step back, or I’ll have to make you step back. Zane, you too.”
Zane shook his head, panting and fists clenching, as his wolf glared out of his eyes. Xander snarled and whirled to give us all his back, then stalked to the other side of the kitchen.
I wasn’t sure what to say or how to react.
“Please, explain this to me. To us,” I added quietly. When Zane only shook his head without looking at me, I stepped in front of him. “Zane. You have to tell us what’s going on. We’re your mates. Your pack.”
Zane raked both hands through his hair, standing it on end. He took in a long, slow breath, visibly forcing himself to calm down. When I touched his arm, he flinched. My stomach sunk.
“Do you…you can’t have…feelings…?” I began haltingly, not sure I could even say the words out loud without puking.
His eyes flew open wide even as Xander growled and tossed over a chair. Mason picked it up and put out a hand to hold Xander back, but he didn’t say anything.
Zane pulled me against him in a hug that pressed my face against his chest. I closed my eyes, letting him hold me for the few seconds before he gently pushed me back far enough to look into my eyes.
“I could never have romantic feelings for her, and I would never, ever betray you or Xander like that, Lanie.”
Relief soared through me. I shook my head, my throat closing with the rush of emotion. “I didn’t think so.
She asked you to do this because of the potion, right? You have to do what she asked.”
soothing them one ata time.
I pulsed out a calming counterpoint as best I could. It took more out of me than I expected, but I could see Xander visibly relaxing. He still looked angry, but it was under control.
“I needed to do whatever it would take to make sure Lanie and the twins could get out of the facility,” Zane said as Mason let go of Xander. Both Alphas moved closer to us. “The witch was insisting that Lanie be the one to put herself in danger, so I knew I needed some help to be sure that if things went wrong, we’d have some help. When she gave me the potion that turned us invisible, it saved our lives…so I’m not sorry I agreed to do what she asked. Without that potion, Lanie and the twins wouldn’t be here. I did what I had to, so I told her I would give her a baby.”
“We aren’t giving her one of our children,” Xander snapped. “I don’t give a f uck what the witch wants.”
“No,” I said slowly, watching the flurry of expressions twisting Zane’s face. “She doesn’t want one of our pups.”
Zane shook his head and drew in a breath. I should’ve been furious with him, as angry and upset as Xander, but my heart swelled with wave after wave of love for the man in front of me. He’d been willing to sacrifice anything to make sure I was protected. That the twins were safe. Even if it meant having to disappoint his Alpha and his mate.
Zane straightened and faced his Alpha. “She’s not going to take one of our pups like some kind of fairy tale, no. She wants a child of her own. She wants me to get her pregnant.”
Zane–
“You fool. Yo have no idea what you’ve done.”
Gabriela spoke from the doorway in a cold, horrified voice. She bounced Alaina on her hip while the baby gnawed a fist.
In all the years I’d been Xander’s Beta, there’d been a few moments, here and there, when his mother and I hadn’t seen eye to eye. She’d always been looking out for him in one way, and sometimes, I’d been looking out for him in another. We’d found ways to agree or agree to disagree, but this time, the spark in her eyes told me she was definitely not agreeing.
“It’s not like I want this,” I said in a low voice. “I don’t want to sleep with her-”
Xander growled, and Lanie pulsed out some Luna energy to all of us. I could feel her hurt, though. She was keeping a brave face, and her voice whispered to me through the mind link.
“I don’t want that, either.”
“Nobody wants it,” I put in harshly, hating that I had to hurt any of the people I loved. “I don’t want to go to bed with her even once, not to mention however many times it’ll take before she gets pregnant. And I don’t want any pup of mine out there in the world connected with anyone else as its mother.”
I was being purposefully blunt about all of it, braving myself to face whatever they threw at me. Only Mason didn’t glare. He put a comforting arm around Lanie’s shoulders, drawing her close. She leaned into him, and another pulse of that soft, feminine strength filtered through me, boosted by a similar surge from him.
Xander, on the other hand, was a bundle of tension. His wolf kept rising, flashing in his eyes and rippling her his expressions.
Every time he forced the beast to quiet, my own wolf responded.
“This is all a f ucking mess. I get it. I’m sorry,” I told them all. “But any one of you would’ve done whatever you had to do to keep our Luna and the twins safe. I don’t want to fight you over it, Xander, but if I have to, I will, F uck, come and beat the s hit out of me if itll make you feel better. But I gave her my word, and I’m going to have to do it.”
He was across the room to me in a few long strides, and I braced myself for that first punch. Instead, he took me by both shoulders and gave me a single, hard shake.
Xander’s gaze bore into mine. “You should have talked to me first.”
I shrugged out of his grip and took a step back. “There wasn’t any time. I did what I thought I had to do.”
“I’m the Alpha!” He growled.
Mason snorted. “Me too.”
“And my job as your Beta,” I said to Xander, “is to do what I feel is necessary to support you, and our pack, so that you can continue to be the Alpha.”
that Xander knew I was right, though. He didn’t like it, but he knew I hadn’t acted out of scope.
“I’m your Beta, Xander,” I said in a low voice. “You have to trust me.”
“I trust you. I know you would never have agreed to any of this if you didn’t think you had to.” Lanie spoke up, still encircled in Mason’s embrace. Her voice was strong and firm, even though tears glistened in her eyes.
I hated seeing them there. “I love you. Both of you.”
Her Luna light swelled all around her. Xander backed up a few steps, his fists clenched. His shoulders sagged as he faced away from me. He wasn’t happy, but at least he wasn’t going to punch me in the face.
I put my arms around him from behind in a hard embrace he could have jerked out of, but when he didn’t, I kissed him between the shoulder blades.
“I don’t want to share anything with that witch,” he muttered, half-turning. “I don’t want her to become part of our family, and if you father a pup with her, that pup will be part of our family.”
Mason let out a strangled noise and shook his head. “Having been the son who belonged to a father that had an entire other family, a brother he never knew, I have to agree with Xander. Knowing there’s a child out there who should be part of our pack, I couldn’t stand for not including it and its mother, no matter how much it sucks.”
Through it all, Gabriela had been studying us all. The baby had quieted in her arms and now slept.
Gabriela rocked slowly back and forth. When at last she spoke, she kept her voice pitched low so she didn’t wake Alaina.
“It has nothing to do with being part of a family,” she said finally in a low, strained voice. “It has everything to do with what Rhiannon will be able to do once she’s pregnant with your pup, Zane. You should never have agreed to this.”
Lanie–
Gabriela and I had taken seats at the table with mugs of hot tea her one of us had touched. Xander paced. Mason stood at the counter, tipping a bottle of beer to his lips and not saying much, while Zane had taken up position in the doorway. All of us tried hard to keep from shouting, since the babies had all fallen asleep, but was hard not to raise my voice at what Gabriela was revealing.
“You can’t hold back, Gabriela. You have to tell us everything you know.”
“I wish I knew more. Rhiannon is a powerful witch, and there’s really no limit to how much stronger she can get, under the right circumstances.” Gabriela rubbed the spot between her eyes with a fingertip.
She looked tired. Worn out. That’s how we all seemed to feel.
When I sensed a surge of self-loathing swirling around in Zane, I countered it.
“We’ll figure all of this out together,” I sent to Zane. His tension and anxiety were like a swirling cloud of darkness I was doing my best to dispel.
“Once she gets pregnant, she’ll be able to tap into the powers of her child,” Gabriela continued. “Or, Goddess forbid, children, if she has twins.”
I thought of my own belly, swollen with Xander’s pup. Instinctively, I put my hands over the flatness, but my palms remembered how it had felt when the baby kicked and squirmed inside me.
“The only power I had when I was pregnant with Stella was napping,” I said, trying to keep things light.
“And revisiting my lunch, sometimes.”
I was happy to hear Zane’s soft snort of laughter. Not that he was happy about any of this or that it was funny or anything, just that he appreciated my efforts at keeping us all from losing our s hit.
His gaze flashed from across the room, and his voice nudged my mind. “You are a natural Luna.”
I didn’t feel much like it right then. I wanted to scream and yell, to throw things. The thought of Zane putting his hands on Rhiannon made me physically sick. The image of him naked with her, kissing her, was even worse.
“It won’t be like t that,” he shot back at me immediately. “I swear by the Moon Goddess, I won’t make love to her. It’ll be utilitarian. That’s it.”
“Okay, so what does that mean?” Xander asked his mother. “A child doesn’t really have any powers, right?”
“Strengths. Talents. Abilities,” Gabriela said in a short, sharp tone. “That baby will be half wolf, which means Rhiannon will be able to access all of her child’s abilities, including those granted to us by the Moon Goddess, and only to us. Abilities and talents witches are traditionally never able to gain.”
We all fell silent at that. My throat clogged as I tried to think of what that all meant. It had been hard enough to figure out what being a hybrid meant for me, and of course knowing a baby created by Zane and mingled.”
“And it’s because witches can get their powers from their babies in the womb?” Xander shot at her. “That seems like a pretty f ucking important thing to know, Ma.”
She gave him a look that should have made him take a step back, but Xander stood his ground.
“There is another war coming. That is something I am sure of. And if Rhiannon gets pregnant with Zane’s child, she will be able to use that child’s blood to create spells.” She looked around at each one of us. “Spells against wolves.”
Lanie–
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?