The Alpha's Mate (4 page)

All four wolves were pacing back and forth in
front of the barn doors, snarling at each other as they passed and
yipping pitifully at the doors. Elizabeth raised the gun to her
shoulder with her finger on the trigger and moved closer. She
couldn’t remember how far these things shot and she had to make
this look real. She didn’t want to hurt them. They were a part of
nature that should be preserved. She only wanted to scare them
away.

The wolves were concentrating on the door and
paid no attention to her. When she thought she was close enough,
she took her stance, left foot slightly forward, butt snug against
her shoulder seam. She aimed above the center of the pack and
pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

“Shit, shit, shit.” What did she do wrong? In
the safety class… The safety! Her fingers scrambled over the
trigger area until she found the button and pushed. She felt more
than saw it poke out the other side.

The wolves must have heard her swear because
now their heads swiveled from the door to her and back again as if
they weren’t sure where their attention should lie. She thought she
saw the barn door begin to open, but she clearly saw two of the
wolves turn and take several steps in her direction.

With their wild eyes glaring and sharp pointy
teeth jutting out from jaws large enough to make a snack out of her
arm, she decided they were a part of nature she could do without.
She swung the gun back to her shoulder, all thought of preserving
life forgotten, and fired.

She had no time to appreciate the cries of
the injured wolves. She was flying backward, the ground scraping
the skin from her bare rear end. Her shoulder felt broken. She
wanted to do what she always did when she was hurt; run around in
circles yelling, “Ow! Ow! Ow!” until the pain went away, but the
animals didn’t give her time. Two other wolves were coming at her
and behind them a dark upright figure seemed to waver and fold in
on itself in a strange play of firelight and shadow.

She pumped the gun, ejecting the spent shell
and loaded another into the chamber. This time, she didn’t aim. She
fired blindly. Pumped and fired again. Pumped and fired again.

A series of sharp howls behind her made her
turn. Three more wolves charged directly at her from the curving
drive in front of the house.

There wasn’t time to reload. There wasn’t
time to scream. They were on her before she could draw breath.
Elizabeth Reynolds raised her arms to cover her head and closed her
eyes against the snarling faces of death.

Chapter
4

Elizabeth felt the soft brush of fur as the
three newcomers flew past her. She watched wide eyed in amazement
as they attacked the wolves beyond. Like a practiced battle
maneuver, the two outside wolves flanked right and left while the
larger, central wolf, its silvery coat gleaming in the faint light,
leapt with a tackling blow to the center. The yard was suddenly
filled with a snarling mass of fang and fur. How the beasts knew
friend from foe was beyond her.

One, with a darker saddle over its grey
sides, broke from the melee and slipped around the side of the barn
nearest to where she still sat in the dirt. It stopped, facing her,
and curled its lips back over vicious looking teeth. The animal
seemed to grow before her eyes, broadening its chest and raising
its tail in a low arc. It stared at her with bright, piercing green
eyes.

Elizabeth reached for the shotgun that lay on
the ground beside her. Slowly and deliberately she pumped the
action, ejecting the last of her spent shells. She raised the gun
to her shoulder and took aim. She knew the chamber was empty, but
she remembered reading once that wolves shied away from hunters.
They recognized guns. She hoped this one had read the same
book.

The animal curled its lip and coughed almost
as if it was laughing at her, turned away without fear and trotted
off behind the barn and into the woods.

The fight in front of the barn suddenly broke
apart with animals running in all directions and much howling from
the woods.

She struggled to her feet, her shoulder
aching in a painful throb and ran to the barn. Smoke billowed out
the partially opened door, but the fire seemed contained to the
right front corner by the window. She couldn’t see for the smoke
and when she began to cough, she dropped to her knees and crawled
to the nearest stalls. The horses were screaming and whinnying and
the barn shook as their bodies rammed the sides of the wooden
boxes.

She inched her way to the first stall door
and reached for the latch. The door swung open with an easy push
and she hugged the wall, her back against it and knees pulled to
her chest, waiting for the frightened animal within to burst forth.
She could hear it whinnying and stomping within, but nothing
emerged. Taking as deep a breath as she dared, she stood and
entered the doorway of the stall.

A huge grey mass confronted her as she looked
up and up. The creature’s neck and head towered above her. The head
alone looked as big as the upper half of her body. Big black eyes
rolled back in that head as the horse rose up, its front hooves
pawing the air.

A huge arm swept about her waist and lifted
her into the air. She screamed and kicked as she was thrown toward
the door.

“Get out! Help Henry!” It was Marshall. He
turned back to the horse. “Whoa there. Take it easy girl.” His
voice was gentle but firm when he spoke to the panicked animal.

She watched for a moment as he threw a
blanket over the horse’s head, grabbed the halter beneath and
pulled. The horse pulled back and Marshall was lifted off his feet.
He didn’t let go, but used the momentum to kick off the side of the
stall and twist himself onto the horse’s back. Elizabeth didn’t
wait to see what would happen next. She ran for the door. Horse and
rider thundered past as she stepped aside.

Another man ran past her into the barn while
a third was screwing a garden hose onto a spigot at the side of the
yard. He kept losing his grip because he kept looking back at the
open doors behind him. Elizabeth ran to him, grabbed the hose and
pushed him aside.

“Get the horses. I’ve got this.”

She didn’t wait for his answer, but quickly
went to work setting the hose in place and turning the handle as
far as she could. Water spouted, soaking her face, vest and bare
legs as the stiffening hose whipped about in front of her. She
wrestled with the errant hose until she had the nozzle firmly in
her hands and then she was running back to the barn. She paused
long enough for another horse to pass, dragged the hose inside and
sprayed the flames now creeping along the wall toward the
stalls.

More men ran into the smoke filled barn and
left on the backs of horses. More followed. Another came to stand
next to her and beat out the small pockets of flame with a soaking
blanket.

“I think you got it all, darlin’. Why don’t
you quit and let me finish up here. You look beat.” He smiled and
took the hose from her hand. “Go on, now. You go let the ladies
take care of you. You done enough.”

She nodded gratefully and shuffled out the
door, wiping the soot off her face with the grimy sleeve of
Marshall’s t-shirt and following the movement of her bare toes in
the dirt. The edge of the t-shirt, hanging just above her knees,
was black. She’d never been so tired in her entire life.

A stout woman in jeans and a pink smock came
hurrying over to put her arm around Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Come
here, you poor sweet thing. You let me get that.” She began to wipe
Elizabeth’s face with a damp cloth. “You’re gonna be fine,
fine.”

Elizabeth looked up. The yard was full of
people. Cars and trucks formed a half circle around men, women, and
a few older children.

“Shouldn’t we call someone? Those wolves
don’t belong here,” she mumbled.

“Sure as hell don’t,” someone agreed.

“They were too big… too…”

“Don’t you worry about it, hon. The proper
authorities have been called and it’ll be taken care of,” the pink
lady assured her. “Somebody find something for her to set on before
the poor little thing falls down.”

“Welcome to Rabbit Creek,” someone
called.

“Why, I think once she’s cleaned up some, she
might be kind of pretty,” said another.

“Of course she’ll be pretty. You know Eugene.
He don’t hold truck with no ugly women.”

There was general laughter.

“Pay them no mind,” her kindly caregiver
said. “We’ll get you cleaned up and in some fresh clothes and then
you can come back out and meet some of the neighbors. Once Harmony
put out the call that Marshall Goodman had a woman living out at
his place, they all couldn’t wait for an excuse to come say hey.
That fire was as good as any.”

“I-I don’t have any clothes.”

Elizabeth stopped at the edge of the crowd
gathered by the stairs. Her knees began to knock and her chin began
to quiver. She hadn’t cried when her car went off the road or when
she got caught by the handsome Chief of Police in her granny
underwear. She hadn’t even sniffled when he had to wrap her in a
blanket because she was too filthy to sit in his car. She hadn’t
blubbered in fear when she was attacked by wolves or when she was
almost trampled by a monstrous horse that looked like something out
of Greek mythology. But here, confronted by a dozen of her smiling
new neighbors, standing bare legged and bare assed in Marshall’s
filthy t-shirt and a ratty old plaid vest, dirty and smudged and
stinking to high heaven, she just couldn’t take any more. She
bawled. Bawled until she was gasping for air and the snot was
running from her nose.

The next thing she knew, she was being
scooped up into Marshall’s arms and he was carrying her into the
house and up the stairs. It felt so good to be held safely in his
arms, so right.

“Whoa there, take it easy now girl,” he said
to her just as he’d said to his horse. “It’s not as bad as all
that.”

But it was. It was. And Marshall was part of
it. The guy who could have been the man of her dreams was gay!
Welcome to Rabbit Creek indeed.

He set her down in the bathroom. She didn’t
move. He started the water running and pulled the stopper up for
the shower. Then he turned and bent down until they were nose to
nose. His hand rested on her shoulder.

“You’ll be all right once you’re clean.
Right?”

She sucked her lips in between her top and
bottom teeth, squinched her eyes shut and nodded.

“That’s my girl.” He kissed the top of her
head and gently ruffled her hair. “You did a brave thing tonight,
Lizzie. For a city girl, you did all right.”

She nodded her head again, but didn’t release
her lips or open her eyes. If she did, one would release a fresh
wail, the other a flood of new tears. He was so gentle and kind.
The kiss had reached from the top of her head down to her toes,
sending an aching tingle to all the right places or at least they
would have been if the sender hadn’t been gay.

When the door closed behind him, she stripped
off the filthy garments and stepped into the shower. Like an
automaton, she started to wash away the grime for the second time
that night. She shampooed her hair and shampooed again, silently
blessing the creator of the cream rinse that would keep her hair
from turning to straw. Her right shoulder was a muddied blotch of
purple and blue and black.

“It’ll feel better in the morning,” she
mumbled.

“The hell it will,” she answered back, which
brought on a new bout of weeping. How far she had fallen in just a
few hours. She was not only talking to herself, she was
answering.

She covered her mouth and sucked in her
breath at the ra-ta-tat of someone knocking at the door. Was there
no peace in this place? The door clicked open.

“Don’t panic,” said a high feminine voice
with a distinct southern twang, “I brought you some clothes. No bra
though. I mean I brought one, but you’re way bustier than me and I
figured it would be like pourin’ a gallon into a quart jar so I
threw it back in the truck. The sweatshirt’s thick enough so
nothing will show. I didn’t know if you wanted shorts or longs, so
I brought them both.”

“Thank you.” Elizabeth was surprised at how
steady her voice sounded. “Would you hand me a towel?” She finished
rinsing her legs and turned off the water.

“Oh, sure,” the girl said and passed the
towel around the curtain. “Here’s another for your hair. I’m Max,
by the way. Marshall said you needed something to wear.”

Max was a girl. Elizabeth snorted, half
laugh, half sob. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? The whole village
has seen everything I own and then some.”

Max giggled. “It wasn’t that bad, just a
little bit of butt when Marshall picked you up. GW said it put a
whole new spin on the words sweet cheeks.” She giggled again at
Elizabeth’s hiss of embarrassment. “Don’t worry, I smacked him a
good one for you. Good thing Marshall didn’t hear him. He’d have
sent GW home with his tail between his legs, let me tell you.
Marshall doesn’t hold with disrespect for women.”

Elizabeth stepped from the shower with her
hair and body wrapped. “Who’s GW?” She pronounced both letters
properly and then decided Max’s Gee Dubya was easier to say.

“My man,” Max said proudly. “We’ll be married
three years come July.”

Elizabeth stared at the girl. She was taller
than Elizabeth, but not by much, with a slender build and long,
strawberry blond hair that didn’t come from a bottle. Her skin was
pale, her cheeks rosy and there was an adorable sprinkling of
freckles across the bridge of her nose. She belonged on a poster
advertising good health and she couldn’t have been more than
sixteen years old. Max must have recognized the look. She rolled
her eyes.