Page 8 of Alpha Claimed

She shoved her phone back in her hoodie and looked around the room. Something was off. It took her a minute, but she realized what it was. She ran to the bedroom on the left side of the house and scanned the room before heading to the other side and scanning the second room.

No television. No radio. No Alexa. No computer. There were no electronics in the cabin anywhere. Nothing.

Well, what the hell did Apollo expect them to do instead? Her cheeks heated at memories of his hard-naked body.

Nope. They werenotdoing that. She'd not even done that with Ares… not really.

The breeze blew through an open window, and the scent of the woods called to her. Her wolf whined, wanting to be let free.

Well… just because she wouldn't fall for Ares didn't mean she couldn't run with him. It was only fitting that she be polite.

Her wolf howled, and River sighed before unzipping her hoodie and dropping it to the floor.

River reveledin the fresh air that trickled over her skin as she sprinted through the forest. It'd been too long since she'd been able to run. Much too long.

The city wasn't a great place to be a wolf. And she'd been too busy to drive out to the pack to run with them. Not that Cherry would have ever let her. So the feel of the dirt under her paws and the crunch of the leaves left her feeling rejuvenated and free.

It hadn't taken long for her to find Apollo. He'd not gone far, and her wolf instinctively ran straight for him. In her wolf form, the pull of the mating bond dragged her closer to him than she wanted, but there was no stopping it. She'd unleashed her wolf, so she had to go with what her wolf wanted, and her wolf wanted to sniff, play, and run- and she wanted to do it with Apollo.

Slut.

It wasn't like she hadn't been allowed to feel the bond between River and Ares growing. Even so, the greedy beast wanted Apollo as well, and there was nothing River could do to stop her.

They spenthours running and romping, and when the sun began to set, he took her out to a cliff, and they watched dip below the horizon. Through it all, he didn't push her, didn't try to dominate her, didn't ask for a single thing from her. He was simply a companion to be with.

As the stars brightened in the sky, they stretched under them and stared at the moon.

"I love it here," Apollo said.

She'd not heard his voice in hours and hadn't realized he'd shifted back into human form, so the noise startled her, making him chuckle. She made sure to keep her eyes trained on the sky.

"Come on. I want to talk to you."

She continued to stare at the sky, though her wolf wanted to take in his naked body again.

"I promise not to look at you. I will be a total gentleman. I will keep my eyes trained on the sky the whole time. Scout's honor."

She glanced at his face. Seriously?

He chuckled. "Okay, maybe I wasn't a scout, but I am a gentleman. Sometimes. Not always, I will be honest, but one thing I will tell you about me is that when I give my word, I never break it. Never."

His eyes grew serious and she knew he meant what he said.

Reluctantly, her wolf gave up control to River, and she shifted to human form.

"Ah, there she is."

She folded her arms over her chest. "I thought you said you wouldn't look."

"I'm not. I can smell you. You smell different in human form than you do in wolf form."

She'd never noticed that before, but he was right. He did smell different in wolf form than he did in human form. His wolf form smelled… wilder. She couldn't explain it.

"Aren't the stars beautiful?"

She sighed. "I miss seeing them when I'm in the city. I grew up in a place like this and used to love laying under the stars."

"Me too."