Fated To The Alpha: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (3 page)

I paused to think of an answer—and I really did not have one.  “Nowhere, I guess.”

He shrugged, and gestured to the ground beneath my feet.  “Right here seems like a good enough place.  I’m here, if you need someone to listen.”

Suddenly I wasn’t sure what to make of the man in front of me.  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Jeremy,” he said.  “Yours?”

Hesitantly I answered, “Evelyn.”

“That’s pretty,” he said.  The step he took then was the first time I actually noticed him moving closer to me.  It was only at that point that I realized he had been slowly coming closer to me the whole time.

A howl rang out in the distance behind me.  Immediately I recognized the voice.  It was Leon calling for me.  “Oh shit, that’s my alpha,” I said.  “I’ve got to go!”

He shrugged.  “All right.  If that’s where you really want to be… I’ll leave you to him.”  He turned around to start walking away.  “Who am I to stand in your way?”

“Wait!” I said, holding a hand out to him. He turned to look at me… and I paused, not certain I really should say what I wanted to him.  After a few seconds, say it I did. 

“Can I see you again?”

His mouth curled into a smile.  “I don’t see why not, if you don’t.  Come back here tomorrow night?”

“I can sneak out after midnight,” I offered.

“Works for me.”

Almost against my own volition, I caught a smile cracking across my face.

“See you then,” he said, before shifting to his four-legged form and loping off into the brush.

I stood there staring after him, until I heard Leon call for me again.  I came back to reality then, and turned and shifted back to my four-legged form to go rejoin my pack.

*

Most of the pack was just getting back to the village by the time I returned.  My pack brothers and sisters were returning to their two-legged shapes and busily retrieving their clothes when I emerged from the trees.

Leon had already redressed when I found him, and he stepped up to me.  “There you are!” he said.  “Where did you disappear to?”

I shifted to my two-legged form again, and carefully met his gaze.  “Well, I… I just…. ran off somewhere else.  I got a little lost and… had to find my way back.”

After I met a Morgandorf wolf and agreed to meet him again tomorrow.
  Yeah, things wouldn’t be pretty if he knew that part.

“Why didn’t you join us for the hunt?” he asked.  “This was our first howl with you as my betrothed, and you were nowhere to be found!”

I wondered if he could sense my nervousness.  “I just wasn’t hungry for deer,” I shrugged.

He cocked his head, studying me.  I bit my lip, unable to guess what he was thinking.  “All right then,” he said, “what are you hungry for?”

“What?”

“If you’re going to be my wife, I have to make sure you’re taken care of, and that means keeping you fed, don’t you think?  I have plenty of food to offer you.  It’s the least I can do.”

“Um… thanks, but I’m not really hungry now.”  I started walking past him to find my clothes.

Leon reached out and took hold of my arm to stop me.  “Oh, don’t be coy,” he said.  “You have to eat something.  The last thing I want is for you to starve yourself out of jitters.”

As lightly as I could, I pushed his hand away from my arm.  “Really, it’s okay.  I’ll get something to eat at home, don’t worry about me.”

When I again attempted to go for my clothes, he suddenly moved in front of me, blocking my path.  “Is there something wrong?  You seem bothered.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong, especially at that point.  I was beginning to lose my patience with him.  “I just want to be alone right now,” I finally said.  “Please.”

This time when I went to retrieve my clothes, he didn’t try to stop me.  I got dressed and headed back to my house without a backward glance at him.

Mom and Dad weren’t back yet when I got home. That was fine by me.  I had meant what I said to Leon out there; I really did want to be alone at that time.  There was no one that I could really talk to, not about what had happened tonight.  If even one person learned I’d spoken to a Morgandorf… I didn’t even want to think about it.

I also meant what I said when I’d told him I’d get something to eat at home.  I actually was a little hungrier than I’d let on; I just wasn’t interested in being fed by him.  I found a can of ravioli in the cupboard, which I didn’t even bother to heat up.  I just opened it, grabbed a fork and started munching it out of the can.

My parents returned shortly after that, coming in the door just as I was tossing the empty can away.  “Evelyn?” my mother called as they came in.

I sighed.  “In here,” I called from the kitchen.

As they appeared out of the entryway, Dad quickly made a beeline for me.  “Leon tells me you gave him a bit of the cold shoulder tonight,” he said.

I rolled my eyes.  Not more of this!

“I didn’t give him the cold shoulder,” I protested.  “He was just kind of pestering me a little.”

“
Pestering?
” Dad gasped, seemingly taken aback by that word.  “Don’t you think your alpha and future husband is due a little more respect than that?”

“I have nothing but respect for Leon,” I said.  “I just didn’t want to be bothered.  I have that right, don’t I?”

“Of course you do, dear,” Mom nodded, putting a hand on my shoulder.  “She does, doesn’t she?” she said to Dad.

Dad swallowed his indignation, rolling his eyes and giving a subtle nod.  “Yes, yes, you do,” he sighed.  “But I really have to say, your whole attitude since Leon made his declaration yesterday has been bothering me.  This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to you, and you’ve been acting like you’ve received a prison sentence!”

Maybe I have,
I thought.

I did not give him a verbal answer, though.  I walked by him, heading for my room.  “I think I’m gonna go to bed.”

“Evelyn!” my dad called.  “Evelyn, come back here!”

Mom intervened, stepping in between Dad and me as I walked away.  “Rene, leave her alone.”

I didn’t see the rest of the exchange, stepping through my bedroom door and shutting it behind me.  I collapsed onto my bed, where I was safe, comfortable, and alone.  There was no one in the room to harass me, to pressure me into anything.  There was no one there, who made it necessary for me hide my feelings. I was still trying to get my head around it.  Tonight I had spoken to an enemy.  And I had asked to do it again.

Was he really an enemy?  He didn’t seem like one.  He was just
supposed
to be an enemy; because he was a Morgandorf, he bore the label. But tonight I’d been able to open up with him like I hadn’t been able to with anyone, even my own pack.

Well, maybe Charlene.  A little.

The point was, the man I met tonight had in no way resembled the bloodthirsty savages and marauders I’d heard about all my life.  He didn’t act like he was trying to steal land or game from me. If he’d wanted to steal me away from my pack, he’d had the perfect opportunity to do it, and he didn’t.

Instead, he’d seemed concerned with nothing more than my well-being.  Nothing about him had said “enemy” to me.

Could I really be betraying my whole pack by opening up to a guy like that?

No, I firmly decided then.  I was not.  Just because my pack wouldn’t have approved didn’t mean I was betraying them.

Besides, the pack seemed to think they needed to make all my life choices for me.  This one choice I could make for myself.  If I wanted to see Jeremy again, I would, and everyone would just have to stay out of my way.

*

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or insulted at how little attention anyone seemed to pay to me the next day.  It was like the whole buzz about me becoming the alpha’s betrothed had already passed, and now it was on to the next thing. 

Even Leon himself barely seemed to notice me.  Apparently, the chase was over, if there had ever been one to begin with, which as far as I knew there hadn’t been.  He had declared me his and that was that; over, done deal.  Apparently in his view, that meant he no longer needed to pay me any mind.

While that wasn’t overly flattering, it did make things easier for me.

The one person who did have his eyes on me regularly was my dad.  All throughout the day, I would keep looking up and finding him watching me, regarding me with his disapproving glare.  It was as if he was studying me, trying to figure me out, wondering what was wrong with me.  Like, could I really be his daughter?

Thankfully, I did get the occasional reprieve when Dad wasn’t around, and I could just talk to someone like Charlene.  I met with her for lunch, when we decided to take a little trip into town for some takeout.

“You made any kind of decision about Leon?” she asked me as we sat over our platters of Chinese.

“Not really,” I shrugged.  “I think I’m more or less in the same place I was when he announced the whole thing.”

“Cause, you know, if you don’t want him, I’ll take him off your hands!” she smirked. 

I wasn’t entirely sure if she was being facetious or not.  It might simplify things if she could really do that, which made it that much more unfortunate that Leon had more than likely irrevocably made up his mind.

So, instead of answering, I just chewed on a mouthful of sweet-and-sour chicken.

“Come on, lighten up,” she said.  “You could be way worse off.”

“Yeah, I could,” I lamented.  “But I still wish it didn’t feel like my life was being lived for me.”

There was a brief pause, before Charlene finally said, “You know, you could always say no.  Leon and your dad won’t like it, but you could still do it.”

“I know I could,” I admitted.  “I just don’t think I’m prepared for the fallout.  Right now, I’m just trying to see if there’s another way.”

“Another way?  Like what?”

I grimaced.  “I’ll let you know when I figure it out.”

Maybe I wanted to see Jeremy again out of a desire to find the answer.

I still didn’t want to mention him to Charlene, either.  I trusted her, but I doubted that even she would respond well to the idea of me meeting with a Morgandorf.

Getting out of the house that night was not the easiest task to pull off.  Not with the way Dad was always on my case, bothering me to accept that what was happening was the best thing for me.  I eventually excused myself to my room, and waited for Mom and Dad to go to sleep.  This, of course, meant waiting a long time with my ear against the door.

Finally, a little while before midnight I started to pick up the sound of Dad snoring.  As soon as I heard that, I slipped across the room, slithered out of my clothes and climbed through the window, shifting to my four-legged shape as I leaped to the ground below.

I ran hard into the dark woods ahead of me.  I rushed through the trees, stirring the animals that slept in them, and scattering the ones that were still moving.  The forest was nearly pitch dark at this hour, but it wasn’t important.   I didn’t need to see where I was going.

My wolf’s nose knew the scents of the forest, the smells of dirt and leaves and grass, and knew just where all of it was.  My wolf’s ears could hear every rustle of the brush, every owl’s hoot, every critter scurrying away.  My wolf’s paws could feel the earth under them, every rock and ditch that I crossed, and I pushed off it all, driving myself forward.