Capturing the Alpha (Shifters of Nunavut Book 1) (17 page)

Ginnifer lay awake under Zane’s pelt. She stared at the dying fire, sleep eluding her. The alpha slept beside her, keeping her close in a possessive hold, his hand splayed over her abdomen.

Thoughts, images, and emotions crowded her head, no matter how many times she tried to make her mind go blank. She kept coming back to the same thing over and over. What would it be like to live like this every day? To go to sleep and to wake up next to Zane for the rest of her life…

You’d hate it
, she told herself.
You would miss your old life, eventually
.

It was more than speculation. She knew from her time in Tanzania that however thrilling an adventure was, there was nothing quite like coming home. She’d spent four summers there, and each time had been the experience of a lifetime, but the best moment had come when her plane had touched down in Fort Lauderdale, and then she headed home to her air conditioned apartment to relax with a movie and Chinese takeout. The only reason she wasn’t already missing all of that was the hormonal euphoria of falling in love.

She turned to look at him, and Zane shifted slightly, tilted his head so that his forehead rested against hers.

Can I really give you up?

Why couldn’t he be human? Why couldn’t she be a wolf?

His golden eyes cracked open, and she almost apologized for waking him, but his head lifted, looking towards the cavern’s entryway. Ginnifer looked as well, but saw nothing.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, sniffing the air. Alert and focused, he didn’t look like someone who had just woken up.

“No, what did it sound like?”

Zane shook his head. “It’s probably nothing,” he said, getting up to stand. He grabbed his pelt, leaving Ginnifer cold and scrambling to grab her clothes. “Stay here and don’t go anywhere.”

“That’s redundant,” she muttered under her breath.

As she dressed, she reminded herself of yet another reason she would hate being with Zane. He was always trying to order her around, like she was one of his wolves. She had a feeling if she actually did become his mate, this aspect of their dynamic would get worse and not better.

Once she was dressed, she went to the fire to warm her hands. The flame was dwindling, and she tore up the last tree branch and added it on top. They were past the forest now, and she didn’t think Zane would be going back to get more wood, which meant they probably wouldn’t be there another day. It was insane that she even wanted to stay there another day. All either of them did was have sex all day, and yesterday’s marathon had already left her feeling raw.

But going back to Siluit meant drawing a line between herself and Zane. It was going to be hard enough to deal with the fallout of what they’d already done, continuing their affair would only make things worse.

Ginnifer realized that she was fingering her mark, and quickly drew her hand away. She’d contemplated taking a picture of it to see what it looked like, but had yet to work up the nerve. From the feel of it, it was going to scar. It should have pissed her off, but in a bizarre way she liked the idea of carrying a piece of him with her when she left.

She blinked a few times, and then sighed. “I need chocolate.”

Crawling over to her bag on all fours, she began digging for the last chocolate bar. She heard Zane returning just as she found the empty wrapper of the Coffee Crisp bar.

Frowning, she said, “If you’re going to eat my candy, at least give me a heads up, that way I don’t have false hope.”

He grabbed her from behind, a hand going over her mouth and another clamping down on her left arm. His scent told her it wasn’t Zane, as did the meaty hands with dirt-crusted fingernails.

“I don’t want to hurt you. Are there more wolves here?”

The voice was deep, and the man pronounced each syllable slowly, in a similar cadence to Kuva’s voice, except he sounded younger and had no discernable accent.

Ginnifer bit down on his hand. He pulled it back with a sharp grunt, and she immediately twisted away from him, tripping over her bag in the process. The man didn’t let go of her arm as she fell, and before she’d even hit the ground, pain shot through her arm. The pain made Zane’s bite feel like a bee sting by comparison, and she was momentarily stunned. Then, she screamed, hot tears filling her eyes.

The man released her with a curse, and then he was picking her up again, this time with his arm around her middle and a hand over her mouth again. She was dimly aware of him talking to her in a harsh whisper, but everything felt secondary to agony.

“It was an accident,” he said. “I’m sorry, but you have to be quiet. Keep quiet, and I promise we’ll let you go.”

Tears were still pouring down her face, blurring her vision, but she saw Zane appear in the entryway. The man holding her went rigid, and she could feel his chest vibrating with a low growl. Through the haze of pain, her mind made the connection that he was a shifter.

Both males stood staring at one another, and when Ginnifer managed to blink away her tears, she saw that there was a gash across Zane’s chest and blood around his mouth. She expected him to look frightened or angry, but his face was an implacable mask, his eyes blank.

If the shifter’s hand weren’t over her mouth, she would have yelled at him, told him to do something. She was in far too much pain to worry about her pride.

It was the stranger who spoke first, a nervous tremor belying his bravado. “Come any closer and I’ll snap her neck.”

“I don’t doubt it.” Zane’s voice was calm, so calm, that it scared her more than the man who was threatening to kill her. “You reek of fear. You would likely do things right now that would surprise even yourself, because you aren’t thinking clearly. If you were, you would take your hands off of my mate and go to your friend, before he bleeds out.”

The shifter took a step back, and she could feel him shaking his head in disbelief. “Zeke is… What did you do to him?”

Zane wiped the blood from his mouth, and then stepped aside, leaving the entryway clear. “Quit stalling and make up your mind. Are you going to leave, or are we going to fight?”

Body trembling, the shifter inched along the wall, bringing Ginnifer with him. When his back was to the entryway, he gave her a sudden shove, and then turned to run. Zane caught Ginnifer, but it was only to buffer her fall because he pushed her aside just as quickly. She fell to the ground, barely managing to brace herself on her uninjured arm.

By the time she was pushing herself up off the floor, the shifter’s body had fallen to the ground across from her. His neck was snapped, and his lifeless eyes stared at nothing. She looked up at Zane. With his back to her, he stared down at the shifter. His entire body was shaking, his fists clenching and unclenching.

“Zane…” His name was a plea on her lips. He turned, and she caught a glimpse of something feral, before his features softened and he strode over to help her up.

“Are you all right?” He tried grabbing her left arm, but she jerked it back, offering the other.

“I’ll be okay,” she said hoarsely. “I think.”

Once she was standing, Zane grabbed their bags and hastily guided her from the cavern. She stepped over the dead shifter, concerned that she didn’t feel any ambivalence over what Zane had done. She realized that she hadn’t felt it before either, when he and the others killed the poachers.

It was us or them
, said a new voice, one she didn’t recognize. It came from a deep recess of her mind, someplace old and primordial.

Outside, she did a double take at the sight of a massive brown bear, sprawled out in the snow. It would have looked like it was sleeping, if not for the blood that oozed from its neck.

“You lied to him. His friend was dead before you came down, wasn’t he?”

Smart
.

“I could smell two of them, but I didn’t realize the other had gone inside until I heard you scream.” He paused, blinking slowly as the muscle in his throat moved. “He should have stayed with his friend. Unskilled as they were, I would not have been able to kill them both at the same time.”

“What do you think they wanted?”

She gingerly pressed her hand to her upper arm, and then grimaced. Nothing felt out of place, but it hurt in a way that told her something was wrong.

“I didn’t ask,” he said wryly. There was a troubled look on his face. “I’ll have plenty of time to think on it on the way to the den, and this time I’m not stopping until we’re home.”

“Yup, it’s broken all right. But you look like you already knew that.”

Ginnifer was biting down hard on her lip as Indigo poked and prodded at her arm, tears mixing with beads of sweat as they ran rampant down her flushed cheeks.

Zane told himself that getting Ginnifer back to the den in a day’s time had been a monumental feat, but it didn’t stop him from feeling utterly useless as he sat beside her on the bed, stroking her hair.

It hadn’t been until they reached the inlet that he’d realized she was badly injured. He’d heard her softly crying for most of the day, but he’d assumed that the shock of the encounter with the bears had finally set in. But when they prepared to board the boat, he’d tugged her arm to coax her forward, and she’d let out a scream that had startled him so badly that he’d nearly stumbled back and tipped the boat.

Since then, her soft crying had turned to uncontrollable sobbing, and he was sure that he’d made her injury worse than it had been.

He’d never had a broken bone himself, but it wasn’t uncommon for one of the wolves to have one after a careless hunt. He’d seen males twice Ginnifer’s size wail like pups over similar injuries, and knowing that she was in so much pain had his stomach in knots and his temper flaring.

Wolves had gathered around when he’d returned to the den, but they’d quickly cleared a path at the sound of his snarl. He’d taken her straight to his room, allowing only Indigo in and issuing threats that surprised even himself, directed at anyone else who thought to breach his doorway. He could still smell them out there, hovering and trying to hear what was going on, but he was too distracted by Ginnifer to care.

“Give her something for the pain,” he ordered his sister.

Indigo pursed her lips. “It’s a little late for that. This needed to be set yesterday. There’s already so much inflammation. I’m not going to wait another hour for pain meds to kick in when it’ll take two minutes to fix.”

“We’ve already been here an hour,” he said through bared teeth.

“We’ve been here ten minutes,
tops
,” Indigo said, before resuming her prodding.

Ginnifer let out a whimpering moan and turned her face into Zane’s shoulder. He hadn’t thought he could feel any more helpless.

“You’re hurting her,” he snapped.

Indigo looked ready to argue with him, but it was Ginnifer who spoke, words coming out between sobs. “She’s…trying to see…where the break is.”

“Thank you, Ginnifer,” Indigo said in a pleasant, conversational tone. She pressed her finger down on a place that had Ginnifer’s nails digging in to Zane’s thigh. “Do you know a lot about mending bones?”

“My sister…she’s always coming over…and watching Grey’s Anatomy on my high definition…tele…tele…” The rest of what she was saying became one long sob, and Zane found himself growling.

Indigo’s lips curved. Zane had never once hit his sister in anger, and he never would, but at the moment he could clearly envision himself smacking the smile from her face.

“What are you so damn pleased about?”

Indigo shrugged, not looking up from her hands on Ginnifer’s swollen arm. “Oh, nothing. I’m just glad to finally have a big sister. Is she carrying your pup yet?”

Ginnifer’s head snapped up, just as Indigo jabbed her thumbs hard into her flesh. There was a soft popping sound, and suddenly Ginnifer let out a short, agonized scream. Zane rushed to gather her in his arms, pulling her tightly against his chest.

“I’m not finished yet,” Indigo said, her hands covering her ears.

“I heard you fix it,” he grunted. “You’re done now.”

Indigo rolled her eyes. “Quit being a bonehead. I still have to bind it, otherwise it’s not going to heal properly, if it heals at all. Geez, I hope you don’t expect me to deliver your pups. I’m not going anywhere near either of you when that’s happening.”

“No one’s having any pups,” Ginnifer said weakly. “Go ahead and splint it, and then give me whatever you have that’ll knock me out for at least twelve hours.”

***

Ginnifer rubbed her cheek against Zane’s warm skin, feeling exceptionally tactile. Sitting in his lap, she’d made it a point to wiggle until his erection was pressed against her entrance, only her clean pair of underwear keeping him from being inside of her. She knew that Zane wouldn’t take advantage of her right now, and that was why it was so fun to tease him.

Indigo had given her a dose of prescription-strength pain medicine that had been taken from Marl’s abundant drug stash, as well as an over the counter allergy med that made her pleasantly drowsy. Her head was almost fuzzy enough to mask her sense of impending doom.

“How much longer do you think we have like this?” she asked, pressing her lips to the flat plane of his nipple. “I don’t think we’ll be able to stay in your room forever.”

Zane’s hand was massaging her scalp. “Would you, if we could?”

Ginnifer wasn’t one to giggle, but the bubbly, high-pitched laugh escaped her lips all the same. “I think we’d get sick of each other after a while.” She paused to flick her tongue over his nipple, eliciting a groan from the alpha. “But it would be nice to freeze time for a couple more hours.”

In a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “Coral could be here any time.”

“I don’t care,” he said in a husky voice.

Ginnifer looked up at him through heavy lidded eyes. She arched a brow, or at least, she thought she did.

“Whether or not I can convince you to stay, I’m not mating with Coral,” he told her. “She deserves a male who could love her, and that will never be me.”

And you deserve to be with someone you love
, she thought, a stab of guilt cutting through the haze.

Ginnifer tugged at a lock of her hair. “What about Sedna?”

He lifted a shoulder. “I’ll figure out a way to deal with them.”

It sounded too vague for her liking, but while her muddled mind tried to formulate a response, Zane leaned down to kiss her, his warm lips gliding over hers with controlled fervor. An ache began to build in her, and she was wondering whether or not she could tempt him further when he pulled back.

Zane tucked a lock of hair behind her ears. “I
will
convince you to stay.”

“You’re putting a lot of pressure on me,” she said, chewing on her lip.

“Is it working?”

Ginnifer hesitated, only a second, but a grin broke over his face.

“I didn’t say yes,” she grumbled, but she laid her head back against his chest.

He tensed a little, and she thought she’d upset him, but a moment later Boaz burst into the room, Tallow trailing behind him.

“I told him he couldn’t come in,” Tallow said airily. “But he insisted that he didn’t care if you mauled him.”

“It’s fine,” Zane said tightly, as Boaz came to a running stop and fell beside them.

Ginnifer climbed from Zane’s lap and threw her good arm around Boaz’s neck to hug him.

“I’m so sorry,” they both said at once.

Boaz shook his head. “No, I was an asshole and I didn’t mean any of it.”

“No, no, it needed to be said,” Ginnifer hastily replied. “And I don’t hold any of it against you.”

“I felt like shit even before you were gone. Ask Tallow, I tried to get her to run after you.”

Tallow said, “But I punched him in the face and he didn’t wake up for an hour.”

Ginnifer looked over to where Tallow sat beside Zane, both of them staring at the humans with displeasure etched on their faces. She let go of Boaz, but remained sitting close to him.

They fell into two separate conversations about the same story, Ginnifer and Zane each telling Boaz and Tallow their own versions of what happened with the bears. As Ginnifer was recounting how Zane tricked the bear shifter, Boaz interrupted her.

“Did the bear do that?”

Boaz reached out towards her neck, but Ginnifer found herself flinching back from his touch.

“I did,” Zane said, sounding irritated. She looked back to see that the alpha was glaring at Boaz.

Boaz looked between them, before his gaze settled on Ginnifer. Hesitantly, he asked, “What about Aaron?”

At the mention of her former fiancé, Ginnifer realized that she’d never told Zane that they’d broken up. He had never asked, and she hadn’t been able to think of a way to tell him without sounding as though she were inviting him to make a move on her.

“I spoke with him in Port Trent, and we, mostly me, okay, pretty much all me,
I
decided to break up with him.”

Boaz heaved a sigh. “
Finally
.”

Tallow snapped. “What the fuck does that mean?”

He held his hands up defensively. “It’s not like that!” To Ginnifer, he said, “I mean, you were horrible for each other.”

Ginnifer wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. “What are you talking about? You were always going on about what a great guy Aaron was.”

“Yeah, he is a great guy,” Boaz said, scratching the back of his head. “You’re great too, but you’re terrible for each other. You’re never in the same country, and even when you are together, you never seem to be on the same page with one another. I think the only reason you lasted this long is because you only see each other twice a year.”

“Why are you just telling me all of this now?”

Boaz’s cheeks reddened. “Come on, Gin. How would it have sounded if I criticized your relationship?”

I would have thought he was just being jealous…

“You’re right,” Ginnifer said, nodding to herself.

She leaned back against Zane and rubbed her temple. Her excitement over seeing Boaz had died down, and her tiredness had returned twofold.

“I should probably head back to my room and get some sleep.”

Boaz cringed. “I’m not sure where your room is. Not long after you left, Breeze came by and dropped all of your stuff off with Tallow and I. She said you’re going to have to find somewhere else to sleep.”

Zane snaked an arm around her waist. “You’ll sleep here. You two leave so she can get some rest. Tallow, I’ll be out to speak with you shortly.”

Ginnifer said her goodbyes. When the others were gone, she let Zane tuck her into his bed. Unlike the other beds she’d been in, his was simply a pallet of furs on the floor, but its lack of structure allowed it to spread out, covering almost a quarter of the large room. There were no pillows, so she rolled up the softest fur she could find and stuffed it under her head.

He stayed with her until she fell asleep, which didn’t take long. The last thing she remembered was him placing a kiss to her neck, right over his mark.