Filed to story: The Alpha She Chose Instead (Serena & Ethan)
“Come on.” He grabs my elbow and pulls me around the hood of the truck. His grip has no give. I have no hope of pulling myself loose, so I hobble beside him and let him open the door and lift me into the passenger seat.
I’m frozen, not like ice, but like stone. Because if I ease my grip on myself, even the smallest bit, I’ll burst into flames and burn him down. I’ll go for his jugular-and I know I’m no match for him, and I’ll end up humiliated again. Knocked down. Again.
He ruined everything. With one shove. That’s all. He didn’t even notice the crushed mushrooms. For years, I’ve been coming to the market. I learned bees. Jams. Herbs. I learned how to deal with humans, how to deal with the chemical reek of their plastic and Styrofoam and synthetic perfume.
The girls and I have a brand. Cottage Industry. That’s what we’ve decided to call ourselves. Kennedy’s designing us a logo.
We had a purpose and reason to get excited about the day. And Ethan Kelly comes in like a wrecking ball and takes it all away without blinking, and there is nothing I can do about it.
I’m a hostage. He rules everyone and everything I love.
My fists are shaking. He circles the hood and hops in. Somehow, he gets the truck to start on the first try. He puts his arm behind me while he reverses, and it’s all I can do not to rip it off and beat him with it.
What am I going to tell the girls?
No farmer’s market means no money. No phones. No hotspots. No games for Kennedy and Fallon. No music and fancy shoes for Mari. Nothing to make life bearable. Nothing to look forward to.
I hate his guts.
He’s glowering, all put out because I broke his rules. That’s the worst thing that can happen to him. Somebody gets a little out of line. Maybe earns a little something for themselves that he didn’t provide. He’s such a big man, he has to keep everyone else small.
“You got something to say, say it.” His jaw flexes. He doesn’t even look at me.
I lift my chin and turn to stare out the window. The passing fields are blurry. My eyes are still wet. At least the tears aren’t falling.
I make my eyes real wide and blink. He’s not going to see me cry.
“You’re in big trouble,” he says. “You know that.”
There is nothing he can do to me worse than losing the market. Also, fuck him.
He sighs, blowing out his cheeks. “What the hell were you doing? I could have killed that man.”
I didn’t barge into a situation I had no idea about and assault a human. That was him. I’m not taking the blame for his unhinged behavior. I was trying to sell some mushrooms. And I’m not sorry. I’m mad. Furious.
His huge hands tighten on the steering wheel. “You just gonna sit there and ignore me?”
Why shouldn’t I? He’s ignored me his whole life. And I’m grateful for it. He should go back to ignoring me. It’s the best I can hope for in this shitty, backwards pack.
“You’re acting like a child,” he says.
And it erupts, bursts out of me so hot it scorches my throat. “You followed me. You ruined my mushrooms. You ruined everything. You’re a-you’re an asshole.”
There’s a beat of stunned silence.
And then he laughs. From his belly. Like I’m genuinely funny. If I had a knife, I’d plunge it into his throat and listen to him gurgle, and then I’d laugh, too. I’d laugh and laugh.
I clutch my arms to my chest, as if that’ll hold my wolf in. She’s snapping, lunging, bloodthirsty and wild. She’s going to bite his face off.
When he’s done laughing at me, he wipes his eyes and asks, “What mushrooms?”
My wolf surges at the same time I drop the reins. Our switches flip simultaneously, and we go off. She barrels through my skin, embodying me, and I welcome her, let her wiry strength join the fury seething in my veins. My spine snaps. My limbs realign. The sizzle of ozone fills the cab.
I can taste his face already.
Ethan startles, eyes widening in alarm. “What the fuck? No. Shift back. We’re in a fucking vehicle.”
But I’m the wolf, and she doesn’t recognize his authority. We’re tangled in the seatbelt, but that’s not stopping her. She swipes at him, snapping her jaws, contorting her neck to sink her teeth into his thick thigh, ripping through denim so she can gnaw flesh from his bones. Make him sorry. Make him hurt.
What mushrooms? He’s gonna learn.
“Holy crap, Serena.” He jerks the wheel, skidding onto the shoulder, and he unbuckles himself, trying to dodge my muzzle and my claws. I’m tearing up the upholstery. My good back leg nails the window and it cracks like a spiderweb.
“Stop. You’re gonna hurt yourself.” It’s an alpha command. I fight harder, and I manage to rip his shirt, scrape his shoulder and draw blood.
It’s sweet. It’s what we want. We lunge again.
He throws open his door, and as fur sprouts on his exposed skin, he uses his claw to cut me free of the seatbelt, wrestling my writhing body out of the cab and then pitching me through the air. I land wonky, my bad back leg immediately giving out.
My wolf shrieks with pain.
His wolf howls.
Shit.
I crawl away, front legs dragging the back, as quick as I can, so when he bounds out of the truck, six hundred pounds of fur and fangs, he doesn’t land on top of me.
I look over my shoulder, panting, to see how close he is. How angry.
I swear, his wolf smiles. He raises his snout and howls again at the clear blue sky. It’s a warning. A promise. He’s not holding back anymore.
I run.
We’re in a fallow field, and I bolt as fast as I can on three legs, dragging the fourth. There’s a windbreak in the distance, and I head there on instinct, even though it’s not thick enough to lose him, and I’m small and lame and my human mind knows that if he wants to, he can catch me in one modest leap.
My wolf and I aren’t scared. We’re furious. We sprint, tongue out, and the sensation is still so new, and yet so natural, that it almost distracts us from our fury. The dirt is dry and clumpy beneath our paws, and the rich scent of life returning to the earth wafts from the ground.
There are squirrel tracks. A groundhog hole. Crows pecking in the distance. The pain in my bad leg fades as my limbs warm. The world is alive. It’s bright and satisfying and soothes my bitter disappointment, tempers my rage.
There’s a hawk circling high above, and a stream babbles ahead, the wet mossy slickness of it fizzing in my snout like soda pop bubbles.
We’ve been the wolf, but we’ve never run free before. And it’s amazing.
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?