The Alpha's Mate
Authors: Jacqueline Rhoades
Tags: #paranormal, #mountains, #alpha male, #werewolves romance, #wolvers
By
Copyrighted 2012 by Jacqueline Rhoades
Cover Art: Georgianna Simpson
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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To my children,
not one of whom laughed when Mom said she
was
writing a book.
God bless them, every one.
Welcome to Rabbit Creek....
City girl Elizabeth Reynolds hopes to find
peace and contentment in the small Appalachian town of Rabbit
Creek. Okay, so the bucolic cottage she’s rented turns out to be a
dilapidated cabin without phone service, but the people she meets
are wonderful. Friendly and down to earth, they welcome her with
open arms. It’s just like moving to Mayberry… if Andy and Aunt Bea
were wolves.
Only an outsider would call them werewolves.
They’re wolvers, a community of man/beasts that have lived in these
hills since their ancestors emigrated from Scotland three hundred
years ago. And that gorgeous Chief of Police, Marshall Goodman, the
guy she met while covered in mud and wearing granny underpants? The
one who sends her heart spinning? He’s their Alpha and his pack is
under attack from outside forces.
Elizabeth, being a sane and reasonable woman,
wants no part of any of this, but if she refuses to risk her life
and her heart, the people she’s grown to care about will lose
everything and she’ll lose the one man she was born to love.
Table of Contents
Okay, so it wasn’t exactly a dark and stormy
night, but it was as black as pitch. The massive trees looming
overhead, their branches swaying and dipping menacingly in the
bubble of light provided by the car’s headlamps, were worthy of the
Master of Macabre. Alfred Hitchcock had probably driven these back
roads in the middle of the night to come up with those spooky
ideas. Elizabeth had thought of several possible plots over the
last few miles, including a murder mystery that starred Mr. Begley,
her realtor, as the corpse.
“I wonder if I could write a first person
account from the murderer’s point of view?” she asked aloud.
Of course, no one answered. Asking questions
aloud was bad enough. Thank heavens she hadn’t yet succumbed to the
spinsterish habit of answering herself, although the temptation was
there.
“You either have to find a man or buy a pet,
dear,” was her mother’s helpful solution. “Neither will answer your
questions, but it won’t be as obvious you’re talking to
yourself.”
It was a great suggestion, except Macy’s
Men’s Department didn’t sell men and she wasn’t likely to find one
walking into the library with a sign around his neck reading ‘Take
Me I’m Yours’. No one questioned talking to a pet, at least not
other pet owners, however the image of a librarian, grey haired and
dowdy, living with a house full of cats was always in the back of
her mind. In her mental picture, she wore a man’s frayed and
oversized cardigan and sturdy, sensible shoes. Thick glasses
perched on the end of her nose.
It was a ridiculous image based on fear, not
fact. Her body might be a little plumper than was fashionable, but
it was well toned and compact thanks to a daily exercise regimen.
Her hair was shoulder length and glossy, dark brown without a speck
of grey and Lady Clairol would keep it that way. She had better
than twenty-twenty vision and there wasn’t a sensible pair of shoes
in her closet. Still, at thirty-two…
The windshield wipers shifted from their
lulling and rhythmic thump to the squeal that indicated there
wasn’t enough water for them to clear. The rain had stopped hours
ago, but the leaves had gathered all the water they could only to
drop great blobs of it on her car. She imagined that above the
thick cover of trees, stars were shining, maybe even the moon.
It was obvious the map makers who supplied
her auto club hadn’t been down this way in a very long time. This
hadn’t been a two lane road since the days of Henry Ford and if she
met another car coming from the opposite direction, one of them was
going to be in trouble. And she wasn’t moving.
She should have taken the advice of the
friendly store clerk and back tracked the fifteen miles to the
Starlight Motel, spent the night, and finished the last short leg
of her trip in daylight. But no, why listen to sage local advice
when you’d read all the books, studied the maps, had a set of
handwritten directions and knew so much better. After all, these
weren’t real mountains. Compared to the Rockies, they were mere
foothills. How bad could it be?
“Oh, honey, these hills might not be as big
as some, but those roads up there are twisty and there’s no place
to pull off if you got trouble. Whose place you say you’re looking
for?” The clerk seemed genuinely concerned.
The woman was tall, storklike, with a dress
of tiny floral print cotton and a butcher’s apron wrapped around
her middle. She was turning the sign on the wooden door from OPEN
to CLOSED as Elizabeth pulled in, but she beckoned to Elizabeth and
welcomed her with a smile.
“My place,” Elizabeth said proudly, “At least
for the next year. I’ve rented it. Mr. Begley called it the Connor
place. Do you know it?”
She set a bottled root beer on the counter
along with a bag of chips and glanced around for a restroom, her
real reason for stopping. There wasn’t one.
“No I don’t, and I don’t know Eugene Begley,
neither, but I do know there’s been lots of unsuspecting folks sold
a pig in a poke. You seen this place?” the woman asked
suspiciously.
“No, but Mr. Begley described it in detail.
It’s just what I was looking for, somewhere quiet, surrounded by
nature.”
“Hmm.” And that was when the woman suggested
the Starlight Motel. “It’s not fancy, but it’s clean. You ought to
see your new place in daylight just in case there’s any
problem.”
“I’ll be fine,” Elizabeth assured her and
patted her pocket. “I’ve got my trusty cell phone if I run into
trouble.”
The woman laughed at that. “Up in those
hills, that thing’s good for nothing but a paperweight. You want
that bottle opened?”
Elizabeth was beginning to think she’d missed
her turn when, around the next curve, she saw the partially
collapsed barn with the almost invisible Mail Pouch Tobacco sign on
the side. She took a left and checked her odometer. Mr. Begley’s
directions were somewhat vague with no road names or compass
directions, only landmarks which was fine unless the old barn caved
in completely or someone cleared away the fallen oak. And
surrounded as she was by forest, how the heck was she supposed to
recognize that one tree among so many. In addition, he must have
calculated his mileage based on a crow’s flight because she’d
already traveled a good deal farther than his estimate and still
had a ways to go.
This road was even narrower than the previous
one and its uneven surface was more potholes filled with loose
gravel than blacktop. She slowed to a twenty-five mile an hour
crawl in fear of bottoming out her overloaded car.
Elizabeth laughed with relief when she saw
the fallen tree and stopped the car to take in the sight of the
leafless monstrosity spotlighted by her headlights. No way could
you miss that! It had to be a hundred feet long with a trunk so
large it would take two of her to wrap arms around it. It had
fallen into the woods and taken down a dozen more trees in its
wake. The jagged stump, still rooted to the ground, stood at the
very edge of the road, its rotting center clearly visible.
Her new life was just up the road. Two more
turns and she’d be there. In her excitement, she plunged ahead, saw
the turn and snapped the wheel to the right. She screamed and
slammed on the brakes as a black shadow leapt from the darkness of
the trees into the path of her headlights. The car fishtailed in
the gravel. She overcompensated and the car swung the other way.
Her left front tire slipped from the road and the car went bumping
down a slope. It stopped with a jolt. Her body, however, kept going
and her head smacked the steering wheel.
“Dammit!” One hand went to her bleeding
forehead and the other punched the center of the steering wheel
sounding the horn. The airbag went off. The horn didn’t.
She fought her way free of the bag using
words she’d never used before and turned the car off. The lack of a
running engine didn’t affect the horn. Her hand wasn’t doing much
to stem the flow of blood so she reached for her handbag and the
wad of tissues she always kept inside. It wasn’t there. Everything
she’d piled on the front seat was thrown forward and jumbled atop
the things she’d crammed into the floor space. She managed to find
a crumpled fast food bag with a half dozen napkins still inside and
slapped half of them to her forehead while using the rest to wipe
the blood out of her eyes. The lights went out. The horn
didn’t.
In the utter darkness, she fumbled for the
dial to the left of the steering column and pushed upward until the
interior lights came on again, tilted the mirror and took stock of
her battered face. It wasn’t as bad as she expected from the amount
of blood. A one inch cut was centered in the growing lump over her
left eye. That was it. She shifted her shoulders, moved her legs
and unbuckled her seatbelt once she was sure all her parts were in
order. Easing her head back against the headrest, she closed her
eyes, took a deep breath and tried to ignore the blare of the
horn.
What the hell was that thing? It was smaller
than a horse. A pony maybe? It didn’t move like one. It moved like
a dog; the biggest damned dog she’d ever seen. Wolfhound? Mastiff?
Newfie? None of them fit the shadowy shape. German shepherd? Maybe.
Wolf crossed her mind, but that was ridiculous. There were no
wolves in this part of the country and from what little she knew
the average wolf wasn’t all that big.
Whatever it was, it had to be gone by now.
Surely the crash and the horn had scared it off. She needed to
assess the damage to the car and find a way to stop the damned
horn. She flipped the lock, lifted the handle and pushed. The door
opened about six inches and stopped with a thunk. She tried again
without success. The bottom of the door cleared the ground so there
had to be a rock or tree stump blocking the way.
In the confined space, it took another
fifteen minutes to stow the things from the passenger seat
elsewhere so she could crawl across the console to the passenger
side door which opened enough for her to crawl out on her belly.
She almost wished she hadn’t. The rain sodden ground squished
beneath her palms and soaked a cold wet streak up the front of her
t-shirt. Once she was standing, her pretty leather sandals with
their row of white daisies made sucking sounds when she turned back
to the car.