Fated To The Alpha: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (2 page)

Oh, crap… I’d just imagined myself actually being married to him.  I didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

I decided not to dwell on it as I saw Mom stack up my breakfast on my plate, topping it with sugar and strawberries and sliding it toward me.  When I dug into that stack, my worries, doubts, and uncertainty were allowed to melt away in the face of sweet, fruity heaven.  They were almost as good as my little run had been last night.

I was able to lose myself in the food until I heard the door open and approaching footsteps, accompanied by my dad’s scent.  I lifted my head to see him coming into the room, looking at me with that same proud grin on his bearded face he had yesterday.  Except now I knew what it was about.  He didn’t say anything; he just stepped up behind me and placed a hand on my shoulder.

“Did he just decide this yesterday?” I asked him.  “Or were you planning this with him for weeks?”

Dad shrugged.  “Well, I may have suggested you’d be a good match for him.  You should be happy, darling.  I put in a good word for you with the alpha, and it paid off.  He picked you!”

I was tempted to say, “Did you wonder if I would’ve picked him back?”  I refrained from saying that out loud.  Dad would have looked at me as if I was from Mars if I said that.  Rene Godfrey’s only daughter not wanting to be married to the alpha?  Just the suggestion would be enough to give him a coronary.

Honestly, the smiles all around were kind of unsettling to me.  Especially Dad’s.  I knew from experience how quickly his happy look could turn to something far less pleasant.  I didn’t dare want to tempt that.

A chance for his bloodline to reach the coveted alpha position had been offered.  To deny him that now would be the worst affront to him imaginable.

It was no secret that Dad had once challenged for the right of alpha back in his youth.  It was years ago, before I was even born, so I’d only heard about it in stories.   The stories all came from other members of the pack who were there at the time; Dad didn’t like to talk about it himself.  It was apparently his greatest shame.

From what I understood, the previous alpha died without an heir, and Leon’s father and mine had each vied for the position.  Or more specifically, they had
fought
for the position.  As in with tooth and claw.  Long story short, Dad lost.  He’d apparently resented that loss ever since, and while he’d eventually made peace with the situation, and accepted Leon as alpha, once he became of age, and took over for his father, Dad had always hoped he could have a descendant take the position of power that he was denied.

So I didn’t say anything more to him.  I stuffed my face with a mouthful of pancake and chewed slowly.

Dad clapped me on the shoulder.  “Come on, you look like you’ve got the world on your shoulders!” he thundered.  “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to you!  Where’s your smile?”

“Rene,” Mom came to my defense, “leave her alone.  This is a big deal.  She needs time to process it.”

Dad apparently still didn’t get it.  “What’s to process?  She should be jumping up and down instead of sitting here all mopey!”

“Rene!” Mom demanded, exercising the one source of authority besides Leon that Dad respected.  “Give her some breathing room.”

Dad grimaced, and walked away.  “Well, I guess I’ll go chop some wood while you process,” he said, and disappeared out the front door.

I turned back around with a sigh.  “Thanks, Mom.”

Mom placed a hand atop mine.  “This is very sudden for you, isn’t it?” she said.  “You’re being asked to take on a big role that you didn’t prepare for.  But you still have a lot of time.  You can get used to the idea.”

I turned a vulnerable look up at her.  “I don’t know if I want to get used to it,” I said weakly.

Mom gave me a look of understanding.  “You don’t love him,” she acknowledged.  “I get that.  You know, love isn’t always like it is in romance novels or John Hughes movies.  It doesn’t happen all at once in some miraculous moment like a fireworks display.  It takes time.  You build it up, day by day.  Like laying bricks.  It took me a while to learn to love your father, you know.”

Why doesn’t that surprise me?

“I know this seems scary to you now,” she went on.  “But you can learn to love Leon if you try.  It just takes time.”

I appreciated what Mom was trying to do. I wasn’t as comforted as she wanted me to be.

“Why don’t you go talk to him today?” she offered.  “Start laying some of those bricks.”

I sighed.  “Okay.  I’ll give him a chance.”

*

After downing my whole plate, which had enough pancakes to feed three, I resolved myself to get some actual face time with the man who had been chosen to be my fiancée.  Leon wasn’t at home when I showed up at his door, but I followed his scent trail to old Tobias’s garage.  He was seated on the workbench with one foot resting on the seat below him, the other hanging free, as he watched Tobias, James and Terry working under the hood of Terry’s rusty old pickup.

James lifted his head as I approached, and whistled to the others.  “Heads up, fellas,” he said.  “Future Mrs. Leon is here.”

Old Tobias slid out from underneath the truck.  “Hey, hey, beautiful!” he chimed.  “What brings you down to the grease pit?”

In response, I turned my attention toward Leon.  “I was hoping I could borrow him for a minute?”

Leon smiled.  “These old ratchet-heads were boring me anyway,” he said, hopping down from where he sat.  “I’m all yours.”

As we walked out, Tobias made the quip, “Not even hitched yet and she’s already got you whipped!  Poor boy!”

“We’ll see,” Leon replied, turning his head back.  “She doesn’t seem so tough.”

“Famous last words, buddy!” Terry said.  “Famous last words!”

Leon and I put some distance between them and ourselves before he finally asked, “So, what did you want to talk to me about?”

I stopped.  By golly, I had no idea what to say to him.  “Well, I, uh… I… I just thought…”

“Yes?”

I shrugged.  “Well, if we’re going to be married, I thought we should have a chance to talk to each other.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” he said.  Then he repeated, “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

And again, I was speechless.

“You’re awfully tightlipped,” he said.  “You said you wanted to talk; don’t you have anything to say?”

He wasn’t being especially helpful.  Searching for something, I craned my neck to look again to the garage in the distance.  “What’s wrong with Susie this time?” I asked, referring to the name given to Terry’s rust bucket truck.

Leon looked back at it with me.  “Tobias just replaced the transmission, and then there go the shocks again,” he replied.

“Think the old girl’s ready to be retired yet?”

“The old girl, I think she was ready to be retired years ago,” he said.  “Terry is just too stubbornly in love with her to know it.”

At least someone around here is in love with something.

“That, and it’s still one of the only four working vehicles we have around here,” he added.

“Barely,” I commented.

“Devotion counts for a lot,” he said.

I wondered if he was referring to me at all.

I decided to come right out and ask him.  “How long were you thinking about this?”

He turned and grinned at me.  “Longer than you probably think,” he said.  “I didn’t choose you lightly, Evelyn.  I honestly decided you were the best choice, and that was after a lot of consideration, believe me.”

I wasn’t overly encouraged.  It sounded like he was thinking of me like a new car that he’d bought.

As I contemplated what to say next, I turned my head to the sound of running feet and panting breath approaching.  Three lupine shapes came bounding up to us, whom I was able to identify by their scents as Marla, Ken and Rudy. 

I also noticed that Ken was sporting a deep, nasty bite in his shoulder, which became more obvious when the three of them shifted to their two-legged forms, and the fur that partially obscured the wound disappeared.  They looked haggard and exhausted, Ken especially.  I could smell the faint aroma of a strange wolf on him.

“What happened?” Leon said.

“The Morgandorf Pack,” Rudy said through heavy breaths.  “They’re getting bolder.  We ran into four of them on the wrong side of our western border.  When we tried to chase them out they attacked us, as if they didn’t care they were in our territory.  Ken got it good.”

Leon’s face looked grim.  “Where did they go?”

“After they took a bite out of Ken, we tried to chase them off,” Marla said.  “We were outnumbered, though.  They stood their ground, but then decided to slink back where they came from before things got too ugly.”

“This won’t be the end of it,” Leon said. “If the Morgandorfs are disregarding our borders and not even trying to hide it, we can expect them to show up again, in numbers this time.”  He looked over the trio and said, “Ken, go get that looked at.  The rest of you get cleaned up, and tell everyone to gather tonight for a howl.”

They all nodded, and headed off.  Leon’s calm smirk was gone, replaced by that narrow-eyed look of venom he always got whenever the subject of the Morgandorfs came up.  He wasn’t alone, either.  Many members of my pack seemed to know only one way to say that name, and that was by spitting it out as if it were a curse.  Dad in particular had always been especially vehement in referring to our neighboring pack.

“Are you planning something?” I asked him with more than a little concern.

He turned to me again, still not regaining his confident look.  “Nothing drastic, don’t worry.  But we do need to prepare ourselves for the possibility of those Morgandorf fleabags trying to move in on us.  Consider this a yellow alert.”

Again, I wasn’t encouraged.

Then suddenly his smirk returned with a vengeance, and he put a hand on my shoulder.  “You’ll be by my side when I address the pack tonight,” he said.  “You should get a taste of being my pack mistress.  I think you will learn to like it.  Even if it is in time of conflict.”

I didn’t say anything.  It seemed like whatever I had to say would not have mattered.   He obviously had everything figured out.

“I promise you, once you’re up on that rock by my side, with everyone in the pack bowing to you, you’ll feel the power.  And you’ll never want to let it go.”

Then he just walked away, not even waiting for a response from me.  I sighed.  That didn’t go the way I wanted at all.

CHAPTER TWO

I always loved the howls, gathering with the whole pack under the moon and stars, howling to the sky with the crackling bonfire lighting up the night.  I loved getting pumped up as our alpha led the cheer, while I hooted and hollered along with everyone around me.  I loved when we all started stripping our clothes off, and then shifting into our four-legged shapes to continue the howl.  And I loved running off into the woods, feeling the wind in my fur, and finding some large animal to bring down, or else finding some random packmate to hook up with, where we would shift back to our two-legged forms and fuck in the dirt.

But that was before I was engaged to the alpha of our pack.

That night, I stood beside him on the big rock, looking down at all the friends and family I’d known my whole life.  The whole situation felt wrong.  I belonged down there, among my pack brothers and sisters, not standing up on a pedestal above them.  Looking down, I saw them all becoming riled and excited.  Any other night I would’ve been right there with them, getting my blood pumping just as they were. 

Tonight I felt no excitement.

Leon stepped forward, looking down over the pack.  “My brothers and sisters of the Caldour Pack!” he called.  “We stand on lands that have been ours for generations!  Every rock, every tree, every blade of grass on this land, we are the rulers of it all!  Our ancestors, our mothers and fathers ruled it just as we do, and I say to you that our children will rule it just as we have!”

The pack shouted and pumped their fists.

“But,” he went on, “we must not drop our guard.  There are those who would take everything we love from us, and if we grow complacent, they will succeed.  Our neighbors from the Morgandorf Pack have seen fit to disregard our borders.  They have crossed into our territory and taken our game, and if we let them, they will surely take our homes too!”

A chorus of canine barks and growls arose from the pack.

“But we will not let them!” Leon shouted as various pack members began shedding their clothes.  “We will make our stand here!  We will not let a single Morgandorf cross our borders, or take what is ours!  And every creature that walks, flies or crawls will know, we are the strongest beasts in these lands!  We will make sure none of them will dare to challenge us again!”

Articles of clothing dropped like snowflakes as the pack erupted in howls.  Leon joined them all, throwing his head back and howling to the sky, as the pack followed along with him.  One by one, members of the pack began dropping to the ground, shifting to their four-legged shapes and filling the night with their eerie song.

Finally, Leon started to join them, throwing off his leather jacket and stripping away his shirt, revealing the many scars that covered his torso.  Scars were not uncommon among our pack; as I said before, many wolves obtained scars from fighting in the ring.

Most of Leon’s scars weren’t from the fights.  At least not from fights with members of his own pack.

Most of them were courtesy of the Morgandorfs.

Just like my dad’s scars.

Leon had a lot of personal bad blood with our neighboring pack.  He’d pretty much been born into our ongoing feud with them, and had carried it on like the dutiful alpha he was.  Of course, I’d only ever heard about these supposed boogeymen who lived a few miles outside our territory, never having encountered them myself.  I never understood what it was we had against them.  I was always told they were the enemy.

Leon turned to me as he started unfastening his pants.  “Waiting for something?” he said.  “You’re an example to them now.  You ought to act like one of them.”

I
was
one of them,
I thought as he shifted to his four-legged form.  When I realized I was the only one still two-legged, I decided I might as well follow along.  I sighed, and off came my clothes.  I dropped forward onto all fours as my fur sprouted and my face reshaped into a wolf’s snout.  But even then, I didn’t find myself joining the howl.

Well, at least not at first.  For a while, Leon led the pack in howling , while I simply sat beside him, idle.  Finally, I realized I was just being obstinate, and let myself join.  Leon howled again, and I finally threw my head back and let the night hear my song.

As they always did, the pack soon scattered, running off into the woods.  This time I didn’t hesitate to join them.  This was exactly what I wanted to do, more than anything.  I wanted to run.  I wanted to run far away, if I could.  The only thing that was different about this than it was on any other howl we’d had was that I didn’t want to run alongside the rest of the pack. 

I wanted to run alone.

As we hurried down off the rock and followed the pack disappearing into the trees, I stayed at Leon’s side just as long as I had to.  I wasn’t sure if he would try to follow me if I tried to go my own way, but I felt it was worth trying.  Besides, it wasn’t like I was trying to escape from him or anything; I just needed some freedom and solitude.

Soon enough, however, the issue got resolved for me as we caught the scent of a deer.  Immediately the whole pack went charging in that direction.  No one noticed when I decided to go off on my own.  I peeled away from Leon’s side as he joined the others closing in on their new found quarry, and I dashed off into the brush.

Thankfully, I neither heard nor smelled anyone following after me.  I was free to run where I wanted for now.  I raced away from all the pressures of my pack’s expectations.  I raced away from the pressures of my alpha wanting me to be his.  I raced away from the pressures of my father having my life already planned out for me.

I’m not sure how long I ran. It was like I intended to keep running until I felt like I’d left all my worries behind, even though I knew I could never run far enough for that.  I finally stopped by a creek, where I caught my breath for a minute, and lowered my head to lap up a drink of water.

I allowed myself a moment to forget everything.  I even let myself forget that there was anything human about me.  As far as I was concerned, at that moment, I was just a wolf out in nature, enjoying the stillness of the woods and the cool water soothing my parched throat after a good run.  I let myself forget that I had an alpha, or even a pack.  I allowed myself a moment to believe there was only me.

That is until I heard something move.

I lifted my head, moving my ears about and sniffing the air.  At first, I detected nothing.  Maybe it had just been a raccoon or something that had scurried away.  I wasn’t hungry enough to go after it.

Suddenly, I looked around me, and realized I no longer knew where I was.  I’d never run this far before; could I have crossed outside of Caldour territory?  I’d never even been beyond the borders of my pack’s hunting grounds.  For a second I started to worry that I might not be able to find my way back… but then, my own scent trail couldn’t be too hard to follow, could it?  I couldn’t have gone
that
far.  I’d be able to find the scents of my pack soon enough; I was sure of it.

Just then I caught another scent.

Whatever it was that had moved before, moved again, and this time the wind brought its scent to me.  The scent was unmistakable.

Wolf.

And not just any wolf.

A wolf like me.

A shifter.

And it wasn’t from my pack.

I tensed up, searching about for the strange wolf I smelled.  I even dared him to show himself, giving a soft but sharp
“huff!”

Finally, a head emerged from around a tree, cautiously moving forward, sniffing the air coming off me.  We spent a moment simply standing there, tensed, regarding each other.  So far, I could tell only that he was a he, and that he was not of the Caldour Pack.  Anything beyond that could only be conjecture.

At least until he finally decided to take a chance on me and shifted to his two-legged form.  A lean, light haired man in his mid-twenties suddenly stood in the place of the wolf that had been there a few seconds before, looking down at me cautiously.  It was obviously a risky move; in my four-legged form, I could easily rip him to shreds, so he was effectively dropping his guard.  I decided to take that as a show of faith.

So I shifted back to my two-legged form as well.  “Who are you?” I demanded.

“A little forward, aren’t you?” he said.  “You’re the one who’s on my turf; who are you?”

“Why should I tell you who I am?”

“I could say the same.  We could go back and forth like this all night, if you want.”

My lip curled up.  “Are you a Morgandorf?”

“You’re in Morgandorf territory, or didn’t you know that?” he said.  “Were you looking for us?”

I didn’t have a sharp retort ready.  “No,” I said.  “I was just running.  I was getting away from my pack.  I guess I got lost.”

“Getting away from your pack?” he said.  “Why, what’d they do to you?”

“It’s none of your business!” I snapped.

“It is if you’re in our territory,” he said.  “Were you looking for a new pack, then?”

“Never!” I declared.  “I wasn’t running away.  I just wanted to get away for a bit.”

He nodded in understanding, but still watched me suspiciously.  “This pack of yours… that wouldn’t be the Caldour Pack, would it?”

I cautiously took a step back.  This had the potential to get really ugly really quick.  “What if it is?” I asked.  “Will you turn me over to your alpha, and have them pass sentence on me?”

“Why should I want to do that?” he said.  “Have you done something to us that needs to be punished?  ‘Cause as far as I can tell, all you did was get a little water from one of our creeks.  Call me crazy, but that doesn’t seem like much of an offense to me.”

For a moment, I didn’t say anything.  “So what
do
you want with me?”

He shrugged.  “I just wanted to know why you’re here.  That’s all.”

“So… you’re gonna let me go back to my pack now?”

“Do you want to?” he asked.  “You’re the one who said you were trying to get away from them.”

I didn’t say anything then.

“What were you trying to get away from?” he finally asked.

I wasn’t sure why, but I felt comfortable enough now to open up a little more. 

“My alpha wants me to marry him.”

He nodded.  “And you’re not too keen on the idea?”

“I don’t know what I am on it.”

“But you say you’re not running away?”

“Everyone I know is there,” I said.  “My family, my friends… I don’t know anyone outside my pack.  Besides, I’m not
totally
opposed to marrying him.”

“But you’re opposed a little, aren’t you?” he said.  “Or else you wouldn’t be this far from them.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“What are you going to do?” he asked me.  “Will you go back to them?”

“I can’t imagine I won’t,” I replied.  “Why, are you offering to set me up with your pack?”

He tilted his head and studied me.  “I don’t recall saying anything like that.  But that’s interesting, that your mind went there.”

“Well, I mean… I wasn’t suggesting…”

“Don’t stress about it,” he said, putting his hands forward in a calming gesture.  “I don’t think accepting a Caldour among us would go over well even if you were asking.”

“Well that’s fine, because I wasn’t.  I love my pack.  They’re everything to me.”

“But your alpha isn’t, is he?  You say you don’t want to leave your pack, but you obviously don’t want to be with them right now.  I can’t take you to mine either.  So where does that leave you?”