Curse of the Alpha: The Complete Bundle (8 page)

A
t about 2
:00 AM, she woke with her heart pounding.

Sometimes this happened. It was her wolf. She had restrained it too much tonight. The wolf always liked to run in the night and now it was insistent.

Ainsley eased herself out of Julian’s embrace and pulled a scented note card and pen from her purse.

Thank you for a lovely evening
, she wrote neatly.
I’m sure we’ll see each other around town sometime. –Ainsley Connor

It was a non-committal note but she didn’t want to show her hand too much. And besides, something about all this felt like it was too much, too fast.

She slipped out of his T-shirt and shorts and put on her own things. Her poor dress. She was really going to have to go shopping tomorrow.

She headed out into the woods at a swift walking pace. By the time she got close to home she was trotting. Once the wolf got going it liked a long, loping stride.

Ainsley was a little worried about what that might look like if she bumped into anyone in town in the middle of the night. Though what anyone who wasn’t a wolf would be doing out at 2:00 AM in Tarker’s Hollow she could not begin to imagine.

As she pulled out of the woods behind her parent’s house she immediately sensed that something wasn’t right.

Then she saw it.

The back door of the Connor house was wide open. Ainsley Connor did
not
leave doors open. A shiver went through her and her wolf’s hackles lifted.

She slowed her pace and her inner wolf pricked up its ears and lifted its nose to the breeze.

From inside the house, she heard a tremendous howl.

A
insley sprinted
across the open space between the woods and the back of her house, following the sound of the howl. Anger ripped through her body, bringing her wolf dangerously near the surface.

Who would dare invade her family home in the middle of the night?

The howl told her it must be a wolf. Given their obsession with lineage issues, maybe it was finally time for her to pull rank.

Someone was going to be sorry.

She bounded up the back steps two at a time and burst through the open kitchen door.

A familiar smell hit her nostrils as her feet touched the linoleum floor. Before her eyes could adjust to the deeper darkness, she felt the presence of a wolf. She froze in her tracks and let her eyesight shift, the wolf’s form taking shape before her.

The creature was enormous, even on all fours it was almost as tall as she was, and black as night. Heat radiated off its form in waves, along with an ineffable, spicy scent.

Behind him a second wolf, nearly as large, had startled at her entrance. It crouched, chest near the floor, silvery paws splayed on the linoleum. The muscles in its legs coiled like steel springs, ready to launch the beast in her direction.

Fuck.

Ainsley’s breath caught in her lungs, her anger giving way to fear. Maybe this was a mistake. She had expected normal, dog-sized wolves. These must be something different. They made the dire wolves on
Game of Thrones
look like lap dogs.

She wouldn’t get this big if she changed, would she?

She locked eyes with the magnificent black wolf. Their amber depths enveloped her; they seemed almost familiar.

Who was he?

He blinked and stepped toward her. The gorgeous mantle of his ebony fur was almost hypnotic as it shone and winked in the moonlight filtering in the kitchen window.

Before she could take a step backward, he began to change. In one fluid motion his hindquarters dropped, his neck lifted, paws and tail disappeared, and before her stood a man.

A naked man.

The dim light played off his chiseled body, accentuating the contours of each muscle. Though he was smaller than his wolf, he was enormous. Again, Ainsley’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes moved back to his.

Fuck again.

It was Erik.

Erik Fucking Jensen.

Erik Fucking Jensen
in her house
.

“What the
hell
, Erik?”

“Ainsley, thank god,” he took another step toward her. His expression was awash with relief.

Ainsley’s whole body shook. Anger at the intrusion was layered with sudden arousal from the sight of his glorious naked form. Her wolf was very close to the surface. Just under her skin, ten thousand cells hummed and prickled dangerously.

Erik’s eyes went from relieved to hungry in an instant. His lips parted. The golden haze began to form around him.

She shook her head and tore her gaze from his to prevent calling his alpha. As she lowered her eyes they dragged over his stiffening cock, which was pointed at her like an arrow. She didn’t know they even made them that big.

He lifted his nose in appreciation.

Then he recoiled.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Had he smelled Julian on her? She froze.

“Ainsley, Jesus. How could you?” He sounded utterly betrayed.

She couldn’t respond. Her head was pounding. Her senses were still filled with his scent and his warmth.

“You have
one
responsibility - to mate with a male from the pack. That’s IT. The whole town is full of good men, men who care about you. And you choose to fuck around with a goddamned
human
?”

His words hit her hard. He wrung each one from his mouth bitterly.

She bristled. She could understand why he would be upset if she was out chasing a husband. Maybe. But she was just a young woman, enjoying herself – it was none of his business. Why was he so upset?

Oh god. Was he jealous?

She sought his eyes again without thinking and found them burning in accusation and something else.

Erik’s closeness and nakedness hit her again. His smell was intoxicating, and he was warm as the sun. His dark, too-long hair dripped with sweat. Again, she felt a primal pull and his skin began to glisten.

Not again.

Before Ainsley could tear herself away, the silver wolf was between them and the contact was broken.

Erik snarled, but the silver wolf only butted its massive head against his shoulder and continued to pace.

Ainsley shook the cobwebs out of her head.

“Other than breaking into my house and nosing around in my personal life, what do you want?”

Erik drew in his breath with a hiss.

“We were going for a night run – just like you. We saw your door open. But there were no fresh tracks or strange scents. We thought something might have happened to you.”

Oh.

“Do all wolves run at night?”

“That’s the first thing you’re worried about?”

“I, I was never sure why I wanted to run at night.”

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Ainsley, you really don’t know what’s going on here, do you?”

She shook her head.

“Cressida, check out upstairs, just in case.”

The silver wolf growled and trotted away.

A
insley kept her gaze averted
. She couldn’t afford to take any chances now that their chaperone was gone. It seemed she was developing a hair trigger with this alpha drawing thing.

“May I?” Erik gestured to a box of her father’s old jeans on the table, waiting for GoodWill.

Ainsley nodded and smiled to herself. When she heard the hiss of his zipper she looked up carefully.

The jeans hung low on his hips. Her father’s physique had been quite different from Erik’s. She tried and failed to ignore his rigid abs, bulging biceps and the wide planes of his chest. There was something to be said for manual labor.

“Tea?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“So what’s really going on? Please enlighten me. I don’t see how an inn and a highway are really going to change the way of life in a town as old as Tarker’s Hollow.”

She busied herself washing out the old copper kettle.

“Do you know how the pack works?”

She shook her head and waited for him to get sarcastic.

“Okay, well, the alpha is the leader,” he began softly. “He sorts out minor disagreements within the pack, monitors concealment within the greater community and plans the future of the pack. More importantly, though, he protects the pack.”

“What do you mean protects?”

“I mean he protects the pack – he has to be strong enough to fight off any threats.”

Wow. She tried to picture her dad fighting anything more than a stack of books. There really was a lot about him she never knew.

“Is that why Mr. MacGregor told me he wouldn’t be a good alpha?”

“When did he tell you that?”

Ainsley was instantly embarrassed.

“When I was home for the funeral he came over to talk about buying the hardware store. He told me he was the beta and he asked me to stay here and choose an alpha…”

Oh god, she couldn’t.

“What did you say?”

“I told him that I chose him.”

Erik made a choking sound. Ainsley whipped around to see him hiding a smile behind his hand.

“Did he..?”

“Yes, he did,” she said crisply, turning on her heel.

Erik began to laugh. It was genuine, without malice. Ainsley focused primly on filling the kettle.

“Then what?”

“He stopped it, thank god, I didn’t know what was happening. He told me that I’d have to mate for life for it to work and that my father had someone else in mind for me.”

Shit. Double shit. Triple shit. Fuck.

“Who was that?”

She couldn’t admit that it was him.

“What kind of tea do you want?”

“Whatever you’re having. So who did your dad want you to choose?”

“Erik, I don’t think it matters, seeing as I’m not going to do it.”

“If it doesn’t matter, then tell me.”

“Clive Warren,” she said before she could stop herself. She turned to see if he would believe her lie.

“Clive Warren, really?” Erik looked disappointed. “I guess he’s a nice enough guy. He certainly is strong.” There was a faraway look in his eye.

Ainsley almost felt guilty.

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter how nice he is because I’m not going to,” she forced herself to say it, “
mate
with him. End of story.” She turned and reached for the mugs.

He laughed again and the warmth of it was comforting.

“Anyway, Ainsley, the beta assists the alpha and also keeps an archive of the pack’s history and bloodlines. He’s generally not an alpha-type.”

“So pick someone else!”

“The alpha’s leadership has to be absolute. This isn’t like voting for president and choosing someone else in four years if you change your mind. The drawing of the alpha is for life, and packs are torn apart if an alpha is displaced. It needs to be done the right way – so that it feels right and smells right and
is
right.”

He paused, and she knew there was more. She placed an Earl Grey in each mug and turned to him again.

“It seems to me, that the wolves of Tarker’s Hollow are more than capable of making a good decision and sticking with it. There must be something else.”

“Ainsley, you’re in real estate. What do you think will happen when the Inn comes, and the bookstore, and the highway?”

She leaned back against the counter, finally in her element.

“At first it will be messy – like it is now – dirt everywhere and neighbors complaining.”

He nodded, “And then?”

“Then the property values will increase: once for the downtown area and again – much more – for the highway. Center City will be thirty minutes by car, twenty minutes by train, and you’ll be able to have wine with dinner and walk home.”

“How much land do you think the pack owns?”

“You mean individually?”

“Well, yes, we do own a fair amount of the village individually. But I meant the pack itself. Do you know about the land owned by the pack?”

Ainsley shook her head slowly.

“To begin with, we own the woods on the south side of town, and the apartments on Drexel.”

Nice.

“We also own the apartments on Princeton, and a majority share in the Co-op grocery. We own all seven parks, though we lease them to the town for $1 per year. And we own the woods,” he paused.

“You already said the woods,” Ainsley’s head was spinning.

“I mean the college woods… and all the college property.”

What?

“That’s impossible,” she murmured, grasping the counter behind her with all her strength.

“It’s not impossible. Your great-great-grandfather bought the college out of ruin during the Great Depression. But he made them sell him the land. He gave the college a 75 year leasehold.”

Ainsley’s knees felt weak. She gulped air.

“I’m going to wager that you would say that the pack has some pretty impressive assets, correct?”

“Yes,” she nodded, relieved to focus on trying to figure out how to go about calculating the value of all those acres. Anything to distract her from Erik’s own impressive assets. The college literally occupied a third of the town’s land. And the woods went on for miles.

“Did you know that there are wolves in other places?”

“I never thought about it.”

“Well, there are. As a matter of fact, there’s a Federation that the packs from all over the country report to. There are bigger, stronger, richer packs than ours. But with our land rising in value and that leasehold coming to an end, we’re becoming more interesting.”

“So?”

“So if we have no alpha, we become vulnerable. Young wannabe alphas from all over will come to try their hand at taking us. The Federation will step in to ‘protect’ us.” A dark look crossed his face.

“Isn’t that a good thing?”

“By protecting us, I mean that they will send in new leadership.”

“But that’s perfect!”

“I told you, wolves don’t work with assigned leaders and the Federation doesn’t take chances. They will break up this pack and scatter us so we don’t rise up. They will raze our land and turn Tarker’s Hollow and the college into new construction and strip malls. Then they’ll lease it out or sell it off and it will all be gone.”