Filed to story: The Alpha She Chose Instead (Serena & Ethan)
I’m almost back to camp when another scent stops me in my tracks. It’s rich. Delicious. I bound off through the underbrush, and it doesn’t take long to discover the source.
Darragh Ryan is hauling a fresh kill on his shoulders. A buck. Eight points.
Before I shift, my wolf leaps up and snaps a chunk off the haunch. So fresh.
When I rise to two feet, I wipe blood from my mouth. “What are you doing down here?”
Darragh’s twisting his neck to check out the damage. “Did you really have to? Couldn’t wait for me to dress it for you?”
“You don’t do it for me. You do it for Mari.”
Mari’s the mate he avoids claiming by living feral in the foothills. He says it’s ’cause of the age difference-he wants her to have the chance to grow up before taking on his old ass-but it’s something else. Don’t know what, and since he keeps shit secure in our western territory, I don’t care.
“She doing well?” Darragh schools his weathered face like he ain’t transparent as hell.
“She is.” I don’t mention her squeal when she caught sight of my cock last night. That wouldn’t go over too well. “What are you doing so close to camp?”
“Cutting through. I was following my nose. Took me out by the old dens.”
“You smelled that buck all that way?” It’s big, but it’s not that big.
Darragh shakes his head, and his salt-and-pepper beard brushes his equally hairy chest. “Something else. Something unfamiliar.”
My adrenaline kicks up. “Like what?”
“Dirt. Leaves. Pine needles. Not ours. From another territory. Baking soda.”
“Like hunters covering their tracks?” It’s rare, but occasionally humans are stupid enough to track an animal onto our territory.
“Yes, but I didn’t scent human.”
“Wolf?”
He shakes his head. “Once I got out there, all I smelled was this fella here.” He resettles the buck’s weight.
“Should I send a patrol out?”
Darragh snorts. “I don’t know. You willing to waste good training time based on the overactive imagination of a wolf almost gone feral?”
“Hey, patrols are cardio.”
“True enough.” He sighs, his gaze turning toward the direction of the old dens. “I think it was a fluke-some strong scent carried on a strong wind. I tracked this big fella a few hours, covered a lot of ground, didn’t scent anything out of place.” Darragh pats the deer’s haunch. “I’ll bring this down later. Let Old Noreen know to expect it.”
“I will.” I clasp Darragh’s hand and fake like I’m going in for another bite.
“Fuck off, man.”
I chuckle. I made him flinch. I miss Darragh around camp. He taught me a lot of what I know. “You know we keep a seat open for you in the lodge.”
“So you tell me.” He jerks his chin and strides away, blazing his own trail through the thicket on a path toward the ridge. Anyone who saw him would mistake him for a member of the Last Pack. Long, snarled hair and beard, claws that never quite recede, ears that come to a point.
If he doesn’t come out of the hills soon, he might not ever be able to. That’s his choice, though. Every male is entitled to his own. I don’t know how Mari handles her heat with him gone, but she does. It’s a messed up situation, but they can do as they see fit-and if they don’t want the rest of the pack to know, I’m not a gossip.
I shift back to wolf and lope back to camp. First, I swing by the lodge and tell Ivo to take a group up and comb the northeast quadrant, and then I head straight for Serena’s place.
Gael isn’t where I left him. Jaime’s there. He’s wandered up on the ridge behind the cabin, squatting on a rock, playing on his phone. I leap and knock it from his hands while I shift back to my skin.
“Where’s Serena?”
Jaime scrambles to his feet. “Down there.”
“No, she isn’t.” I smell Mari. Annie. Kennedy. That’s it.
“I swear, Alpha. I’ve been here an hour. No one’s left.”
“Where’s Gael?”
“Lochlan wanted him in the gym to spar with Finn. He sent me to take his place.”
What the fuck?
Jaime bends to get his phone, but before he can, I stomp it with my heel. It cracks. Doesn’t make me feel better.
Where the hell’s my mate? And what the fuck is Lochlan playing at?
I trip down the incline, cross the deck, and fling open the female’s back door. There’s a scream. I take a breath, slow my roll down the narrow hall. Serena’s not gonna like it if she comes home and her place reeks of female fear.
Mari and Annie are huddled on the couch, Kennedy standing in front of them in a defensive stance. They’re all baring their necks.
“Where is she?”
“Don’t tell him,” Kennedy says at the exact same time the other two sob, “Chapel Bell.”
I roar, the wolf coursing up my throat. I swallow him down. There will be time for rage. Later. After I have my mate in hand.
There’s a footstep behind me. The females peek up. Jaime clears his throat.
His scent is in my female’s space.
Oh, hell, no.
I barrel out the way I came in, seizing Jaime and hauling him out the back door, hoisting him into the sunflowers growing around the deck. There’s a satisfying crunch.
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?