Enslaved by the Alpha: Part One (Shifters of Nunavut Book 1) (3 page)

Then, her eyes locked with his, and she became their prisoner.

His gaze, which up close looked like twin orbs of broken ice, inspected her. They roamed over her face, her neck, and her collarbone. His free hand came up from beneath the pelt to grab a few stands of her hair. He rolled them between his fingers, then brought them to his nose and sniffed. His expression went from blank to guarded.

“How old are you?” he asked, breaking the silence.

“Twenty-eight.”

She was used to men not believing her, and half expected him to follow up with “Nuh-uh” or “Really? What year were you born?” But Erik just gave a slight nod in response.

Without warning, he lowered his head. Astrid barely had time to tense, instinct telling her she was about to be bitten. Instead, she felt something warm, wet, and a little rough sweep across the curve of her neck.

He
licked
her.

His mouth moved to her ear and she heard him sniff twice, before licking her again. Her entire body was rigid, first with fear, and then with…something else. His mouth closed over the bottom of her ear, fangs pressing into the soft pad of flesh. The hand that had been tightly clutching her chin had somehow settled on her jaw, cradling the side of her face in a gesture that felt almost gentle. Most perplexing of all was his scent—a smell that rivaled even the most alluring of colognes. She couldn’t discern a single element of that intoxicating aroma, and her efforts to do so only increased the tension that was growing in the pit of her belly.

Squeezing her eyes shut, Astrid recalled the sight that lay only a few meters behind her. The dying campfire, the dismembered bodies, and the bloodstained snow. The effect was instantaneous. Whatever warped arousal had been brewing within her, it was immediately squelched in favor of disgust.

Erik pulled back, and when she opened her eyes, Astrid was greeted by his smirk.

“I will accept your offerings as payment for trespassing in my territory,” he said, amusement lightening his accented voice. “You will be gone by the next sunset. If you’re not gone by then, you will join your friends.”

He let her go and turned away, making a quick whistling noise. The wolves gathered around him and began funneling into the tent, one by one carrying out the bags from within. Astrid watched, feeling numb. Once again, she felt as though she were outside of her own body.

“I came here for my sister,” she finally said. “And even if I was willing to leave without her, you killed my guides.”

Ignoring her, he continued to walk away, past the tent and heading back towards the tundra. Astrid looked from him to the wolves, who held her in the same disregard.

She was being spared from the jaws of a wolf, only to be left at the mercy of the tundra. Without Gerald and his men, she had no concept of how to get back to civilization. If Erik didn’t help her, she would die.

It was that knowledge that had her stalking after the alpha. He must have been able to hear the snow crunching loudly beneath her feet, but he didn’t turn back until the moment her hand clutched his pelt. He whipped around, and she had just enough time to suck in a breath before his large hand was wrapped around her neck.

“You can’t leave me out here,” she said, trying not to show how terrified she was. As soon as the words left her lips, it occurred to her that this alpha male was not accustomed to being told what he could and could not do. This became all the more evident by the mocking grin that slowly spread across his face.

His grip on her neck tightened, and for a moment she was certain he’d strangle her. But, as Astrid was beginning to learn, nothing about Erik was predictable.

“All right. I will help you find your sister,” he said. “But not for chocolates.”

He waited for her to ask.

“Then for what?” she choked out.

“You,” the word echoed in the tundra’s sound void. “You will be mine. Mine to do whatever I please with. Do we have a deal?”

“And you’ll help me find my sister?” Astrid confirmed, her tone remarkably even despite the bizarre turn their interaction had taken.

Erik nodded.

“How do I know I can trust you?” she asked.

The alpha ran his thumb down her throat. She winced as it scratched the fragile skin, and a second later, she felt the trickle of blood.

He gave her a dark, predatory look. “You do yourself no favors by playing the fool. We both know I do not need your permission. So, I ask one final time. Do we have a deal?”

She said not to let his implacable mask fool me.

There was no mystery to Erik.

Behind those glacial eyes was nothing but a cruel, pitiless psychopath.

“Yes.”

Hands bound, Astrid was thrown over Erik’s back like a sack of flour. She lay on the wolf’s back for what felt like hours, trying to ignore the pain in her spine and struggling to breathe. The air felt thinner than ever before, and anxiety made her breaths come quick and shallow.

With plenty of time to consider her circumstances, Astrid had come to the conclusion that she didn’t regret her decision to surrender herself to Erik. There had been no other choice. But every decision that led up to becoming the alpha’s prisoner—yeah, she regretted those. If she had never gotten it into her head to rescue Ginnifer, she could have been back home in Miami, relaxing on the beach with an ice-cold beer. Or, more realistically, staring longingly at the beach from the crack in her cubicle, drowning her sorrows in diet soda.

For once in her life, she also didn’t blame Ginnifer for her problems. Astrid could have taken her sister’s money and paid off her credit card debt. Or at least part of it. Why had she felt the need to squander it all on an arctic expedition through werewolf territory? It certainly wasn’t out of love. What, then? Familial duty? Or had she just wanted to see the look on Ginnifer’s face when she came to her rescue?

The sun was rising when they reached their destination. From her awkward position, Astrid wasn’t able to tell where they were at first, but rather was able to sense a change in altitude. When she managed a glimpse at her surroundings, she almost screamed.

Erik was walking on a narrow pathway that had been carved into a sheet of ice. Said sheet of ice happened to be a sheer cliff that dropped down what looked like hundreds of meters into a rocky basin. One wrong move and she would fall to her death.

Presumably sensing her apprehension, the alpha began to toy with her. He went out of his way to make absurd jumps and unnecessary twists, nearly dropping her each time. When he leapt from one carved pathway to another, the momentum sent Astrid flying forward and into the air. This time, she did scream. Erik caught her before she fell, his jaws locking on to the back of her coat. He let her dangle in the air for a few seconds, and she could have sworn she heard the wolf make a noise akin to laughter. Instead of yelling at him, she promptly passed out.

When her knee hit a rock a short while later, Astrid came to. Erik was still holding her in his jaw, and appeared to be dragging her through a frozen tunnel. Despite being surrounded by ice, it felt warmer in there than it had outside.

They passed through a wide cavern. It was dimly lit by a few oil lanterns, giving Astrid a glimpse of the den’s residents. There were wolves of all shapes and sizes—nearly all of them white or gray in coloring. Those that had shifted into human form had long white hair and skin that was either eerily pale or the deep tan of an ethnicity she couldn’t place. Most of the wolves were males, which she found strange. According to
The Wolves of Nunavut
, packs were predominantly female, as most alphas weren’t tolerant of male competition. She wondered if Ginnifer had gotten that detail wrong, or if all of the females were simply the ones in their wolf forms.

It appeared that a few of the wolves they’d travelled with had arrived before them, because she could see several of the pack members passing around M&Ms and small bags of potato chips. Those that weren’t fixated on the sweets were staring at her and Erik, varying degrees of scrutiny on their faces. None of the wolves approached them, and a few seconds later, Erik was dragging her down yet another tunnel.

The tunnel was pitch black and grew colder the deeper they went. Before long, Astrid’s impatience with the alpha outweighed her fear of him. She began to squirm and struggle against his hold.

“I can walk, you know.” Her voice was tired and a bit scratchy.

Astrid was surprised when the wolf abruptly dropped her. As she fell, she braced herself for the hard impact of the icy floor. Instead, her face came in contact with something soft and fuzzy. She rubbed her cheek against it, puzzled.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. “Um, can you untie me, too?”

“Perhaps,” came his offhanded reply.

He must have shifted
.

She heard the sound of a match striking, and a second later, warm light filled the tunnel. No—it wasn’t a tunnel at all. He’d brought her into a room. Unlike the rest of the cave, this room didn’t appear to be made of ice, but of stone and quartz. The light bounced off the crystals, casting a multi-chromatic illumination around the room. From what she could see, the room was quite large and she had been placed on a small pile of white furs.

Astrid was still taking in the gorgeous sight when she sensed a presence behind her. She felt something glide across the top of her head and down her back. She swallowed hard, and then breathed a small sigh of relief when she felt him cut the bindings around her wrists.

On instinct, she moved to sit up. The alpha placed a hand on her chest, forcing her onto her back. Though she made no effort to get back up, his hand remained between her breasts. Even through the layers of clothing that she wore, Astrid could swear that she felt heat radiating from his touch. She stared up at him, trying to mirror his stoic expression and failing miserably. He was just too overwhelming.

She had never given much thought to what her ideal man would look like. As Carmen, her best friend in middle school had once said, “girls like us don’t get to be choosy.” Back then, Astrid had secretly rejected Carmen’s philosophy. She’d been certain that in high school, boys would be able to see beyond her curly hair, braces, and round face. They’d be able to see her inner beauty, falling hopelessly in love with her charming personality and her quirky laughter.

But as it turned out, high school boys were not so enlightened, and so, she waited until college. Surely in college, her acne would disappear, she would lose her baby fat, and her vague ethnicity would make her exotic and mysterious.

None of that had happened either, though she had left college with a boyfriend—the first average-looking man to give her the time of day.

His psychopathy aside, Astrid had never before met a man of Erik’s physical caliber. With perfectly chiseled jaw, broad cheekbones, ethereal eyes, and long, inky black hair, his face was a work of art. Coupled with his massive, yet remarkably proportioned body, and with its heavy muscles and rugged scarring, he looked like some sort of ancient deity.

As she stared up at him, Astrid realized that he was so impossibly good-looking, that it was somewhat of a turn-off. He was nowhere near her league. The idea of him being from the same planet as her was ridiculous. He was the sun, and girls like her knew better than to play with fire.

“Are you going to rape me?” she asked, and she realized that she was probably the first woman in history to utter that phrase following a snort of laughter.

A brief flash of confusion marred his face, but it was followed immediately by annoyance. “You think I would have to?”

The question sobered her. “You’re attractive, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a stranger. A stranger that just killed my friends.”

“Those men were not your friends,” he said. She thought that he’d seen through her bluff, but his next words made her blood run cold. “They were planning on murdering you. Perhaps raping you as well. There seemed to be some indecision on that part, though I am not sure why. If they were already going to kill you—”

Astrid tried to sit up, but Erik’s hand remained firm. “Did you hear them say that? Is that why you killed them? To protect me?”

Now, it was Erik’s turn to snort. “I killed them because they brought guns into my territory.”

“Oh…” she said, her face heating. “So, why didn’t you kill me then? Because I’m a woman?”

“You think I was being chivalrous?”

It surprised her that he even knew that word. “I was thinking more for, um, sexual purposes. I know that chivalry is a foreign concept to werewolves. Your females are usually larger than your males. Also more prone to aggression. I guess, what I mean to say, is that they’re no damsels in distress.”

Curiosity glimmered in his gaze. “And how is it that you know so much about my kind?”

As he spoke, Erik extracted a thick curl from her frizzy mane. He twisted it around his finger, gave it a gentle tug, and then released it and returned for another lock.

“My sister Ginnifer, she did a documentary on wolves.”

He gave another one of her curls the same treatment. “Documentary?”

“It’s an informational movie.”

“Movie?”

Astrid bit her lip, eyes fluttering upward in thought. She remembered that most shifters had only limited exposure to humanity. Erik had probably spent his entire life in the wilderness, cut off from most of human culture. Beneath his smooth accent and alluring flesh, he was truly a wolf.

“Basically, Ginnifer studied werewolves, then brought the knowledge back to her people. Earlier this year, she lived with the Siluit pack for a few months.”

He arched a brow. “And they let her leave?”

“They did, but she went back to them. This time, they didn’t let her go.”

He was still toying with her curls. “Why did she go back?”

“Why are you evading my question? I asked why you decided to spare—”

Her words died in her throat as Erik took a fistful of her hair, his grip tight enough to make her cringe. “I am not evading the question. I am…
making conversation
. This should please you. Unless you’d rather be fucking.”

The word jarred her, and Astrid could only gape up at him.

He released her hair and then began to stroke it, his gaze distant. “You did not have a gun.”

“Huh?” she asked, baffled by the non sequitur.

Slowly, as though speaking to a child, he said, “That is why the men died and you did not.”

“They just brought guns to protect themselves,” she said. Only after the words were spoken did it occur to her that she was defending her would-be rapists and murderers. That was, if Erik could be believed.

The alpha smirked at that. “This logic did not seem to work in their favor.”

Erik dipped his head down. Astrid thought he might be about to kiss her, but instead he all but buried his face in her hair. She heard him take a long drag of her scent, before proceeding to nuzzle her neck. Her body tightened with incredulity.

“Your kind is inherently greedy,” he muttered, and she could feel his hot breath against her skin. “If they did not try to kill my wolves tonight, they would have come back to try to kill us later.” He ran his tongue across the juncture where her neck met her shoulder. “Can you honestly tell me that your
friends
weren’t planning on killing us?”

“They weren’t,” she said, on reflex. She cared less about the reputation of the dead men, and more about her own standing, as she’d been part of their group.

She felt his lips curve against her flesh. In a velvety voice, he said, “You lie with such conviction, little human.” Then, he nipped her neck.

What should have been a painful gesture sent shivers of pleasure down her spine. Her toes curled and her fingers clutched at the fur bedding. For some reason, feeling the fur between her fingers only served to heighten her arousal.

Either she had completely taken leave of her senses, or this entire experience was some screwed up, alcohol-induced dream. The latter would make much more sense, considering that in reality, a man like Erik wouldn’t be cuddling with her and trying to seduce her.

She did her best to remain still while his hands roamed over her body, steadily working through the many layers of her clothing. His mouth continued to lavish the flesh of her neck, as his skillful fingers unzipped her jacket and unbuttoned her cardigan, and then her blouse. He hadn’t struck her as a patient creature, so she found it strange how he methodically undid each button at a languid pace.

When he reached her innermost layer of clothing, a thin cotton tank top, the alpha paused. Not taking his head from her neck, he ran his index finger down the center of the tank top, as though searching for a hidden clasp or tie. She bit her lip as the long finger coasted between her breasts and past her navel, stopping at the seam of her jeans. His thumb grazed the button that held the pants closed. He drew a claw around it in lazy circles, deliberately teasing her.

Astrid grit her teeth. “Quit stalling. Just do what you’re going to do and be done.”

He gave a low chuckle. “You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

“You think I want to be raped?” she asked, her cheeks burning.

Faster than she could blink, Erik was on top of Astrid, his massive body casting a dark shadow over her. He placed a finger over her lips and clicked his tongue. The human gesture clashed with the feral heat in his gaze.

“You want me to tear your clothes off, push your legs apart, and force myself inside of you.” He cocked his head to the side, his lips curving into a mockery of a smile. “You want me to bite you, scratch you, and take you like the animal we both know that I am. Do you know why?”

Astrid stared up at him, eyes wide and mouth agape. “What the hell are you talking about? I don’t want
any
of that!”

“Such conviction,” he muttered. He placed a hand around her throat, just tight enough for a fresh wave of adrenaline to spike her blood. “I will tell you why. You want me to hurt you so that you can tell yourself that you are a victim, that you do not want me to be fucking you. Because it is much harder for you to lie to yourself if I seduce you until you are shaking, crying, and begging for my cock.”