Page 13 of The Alpha's Mates
My heart thundered in my chest as though it was reminding me that this was the first time any of my species had shown an interest in me. Not just an interest, but they wanted to claim me. Could I trust them? Did they really want me for who I was? Or were they trying to fool me for some unknown reason. Having three captors was hardly better than having just one. For all I knew this pack was hardly an improvement over those I grew up around.
Studying the room, I tried to relax. They promised they’d let me go. Honestly, if I didn’t have my own pack to protect, I might consider staying with these men. That was how conflicted I was. Something about them kept drawing me in and I wanted to find out what. Why was I feeling this way? Emma’s face flashed inside my mind, reminding me of why I couldn’t stay. Shaking my head, I shoved aside all thoughts of finding mates. I couldn’t afford to think about myself at a time like this. The others needed me. I couldn’t abandon them.
Emma had run away with me, catching up to me a week after I’d left our pack. No matter how I’d begged her to go back, she’d refused. She’d told me she’d rather live on the run with me than back home with our pack.
It hadn’t taken long to start picking up stray females as we traveled the coast. Some were alone, like us. Others had been in danger. One was only thirteen years old and had presented early. She’d run from her pack when her step-father had been ready to auction her off to the highest bidder. Revulsion spread through me at the thought of a full grown alpha taking advantage of a child like that.
The more we traveled the more it became clear that the seaside packs weren’t the only abusers. In fact, it seemed that all shifters were losing their minds. So desperate for mates that they would do anything, including auction a thirteen-year-old. We couldn’t turn the women away. So our pack grew.
When I first ran away, I’d only been thinking of myself. I had no idea that I wasn’t the only female in danger. With every omega that joined us, I realized just how bad things were getting. It wasn’t just my pack that was dying. It was all packs, all over Elaria. And not just dying, but falling towards degeneracy and decay. Our entire species was destroying itself. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the thousand-years long war with the humans was further depleting our numbers. We’d been fighting since thedawn of man itself. The difference was they had the ability to repopulate at an astonishing rate. It didn’t matter that they had a much shorter life span, they were winning this war by sheer numbers alone.
As time passed my pack had grown, gotten smarter, stronger. I was almost twenty now and after a year and a half of surviving and leading my own pack I’d become stubborn, and perhaps a little arrogant. Or maybe I was just born that way. My alpha designation also made it so I didn’t back down. In wolf form I was bigger than any female, and most males, faster, stronger, and other than rumors, not much was known about my kind. While human, I towered over the tiny omegas and my full hips, thighs, and breasts caught males’ attention wherever I went. It was the last thing I wanted.
There was no hiding my height or the womanly body that shifters and humans alike lusted over. Just as there was no hiding my omegas’ pheromones. They affected human men differently, but still encouraged human and shifter both to pursue them. Only weeks after narrowly avoiding capture during a brawl in a pub, I’d decided to stick to living in the wilderness. Emma would head into towns for supplies, while the rest of us remained hidden.
I refused to be a lab rat for my own species or the humans, and I refused to die by the hand of my sire, so I stuck to myself, other than my friends. My new pack was full of the only people I trusted. We’d known each other long enough now that we were friends and had managed to squeak out a life—one on the run—but it was better than being forced into mating a cadre who’d abuse them and cast them aside. No pack would ever mate me. Who would want a headstrong alpha female to contend with? They all wanted omegas—soft, pliant, sweet omegas. At least until now. Now I had a cadre saying they wanted me.
We’d seen the abuse happen too often and I was convinced the wholeworship their female matesthing was a scam. A myth, the same way fated mates were nothing but a fairytale. These days the Moon Goddess didn’t designate mates who were destined to be together like all the stories of old relayed. Gifts from the Sky Goddess hadn’t been received. The Sun Goddess seemed to be the only one left and she heaped blessings uponherpeople, the humans.
Cadres bound females to them with mating marks, but they never glowed with the Goddess’s blessing. They were a ball and chain to force a woman to serve her cadre and provide them with children. The Goddess had abandoned us, and rather than fight for her love, we spited her by abusing our own. No wonder she left us. No wonder she and the Sky Goddess were nowhere to be found.
The door opened and Calder stepped into the room. I sat up straighter on the bunk and watched him as he crossed the space. He leaned back against the footboard on the bed and stared at me. His muscular arms crossed over his chest.
“Our scouts haven’t been able to find your pack.”
My grin was sharp and quick. Emma had followed the plan and it worked. Too bad we were too far from the bog for me to make it there with them. Then I wouldn’t have to decide whether I wanted to be mated or not. I’d have slipped into the dark acres whose stench covered our tracks.
Even now it was like there was a piece of me waking up. Something inside I never knew existed, but I’d heard plenty about. Mom had taught me and Emma everything she knew about fated mates, mating claims, alphas, betas, and omegas, once we’d gotten old enough, of course.
The longing in her voice and sadness that overtook her gaze was all I needed to hear and see to know she wished for adifferent life. One where she hadn’t been forced to mate with a bastard like my father.
“They may as well stop trying,” I told him when he continued to watch me in silence. “Your alpha promised to let me go as soon as darkness fell.” His eyes followed me as I stood up and walked toward the bars. Careful to avoid the silver, I bent my head and looked toward the right. “That should only be another few hours,” I commented, jerking my chin toward the window where the weak sunlight shone in through the glass.
“I’m aware.”
Straightening my head, I focused on him. His pale blue eyes were narrowed on me. He didn’t sound thrilled about the plan. Soren wasn’t either, but for some reason Atlas had talked him into it. I didn’t need to hear their conversation to know that was the way of it. I wasn’t sure why the huge shifter had convinced his cadre mates to let me go, but I wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. It would be selfish of me to choose to stay here instead of going back to my small pack. I wasn’t even sure staying was what I wanted. Everything was all jumbled. I didn’t know what I needed.
“Why are you here?” I asked. Speaking with him was better than thinking about my childhood. It was definitely preferable to trying to sort out the emotions knotting up inside of me.
Calder shoved away from the bed and began pacing between it and my cell. His hands were shoved in the pockets of his pants as he moved, but I could still tell they were balled up.
“Wound a bit tight, aren’t you?” My mouth had gotten me into more trouble growing up than anything else. Mom’s sharp looks and lectures hadn’t been able to keep me from spouting off after the age of ten. It was the only kind of control I had, so I used it.
Calder gave me a sidelong glare, but didn’t stop moving. “Why do you want to leave?”
My brows shot up. I wasn’t sure what his objective was, but I didn’t see any harm in answering him. “Because I don’t belong here. I should be out there, with them.”
“You should be here, with your mates.” He stopped in front of me, his chest heaving. “Your pack of females belongs here, too. We can keep all of you safe.”
Oh, how badly I wanted to believe him. A place where we could settle down? Be able to stop running and be somewhere safe? Where we didn’t have to worry about abuse at the hands of the men who were supposed to protect us? It sounded like heaven. It was too good to be true. I cocked my head and studied the downward pull of his mouth. “Why should we trust you?”
That seemed to shock him. “Becausewe’re the alphas of this pack. No one would touch you without our decree.Becausewe’re your mates.Becauseyou’re ours.” He held up a new finger with each comment.
In a rare moment of self-control, I decided not to argue. I was too close to being released. Nodding in agreement, I smoothed my hands over the pants I’d confiscated. The scent of pine and citrus filled the air telling me that it was his bedroom I was in before and his clothes I wore now.
My wolf stirred in the back of my mind, urging me to snuggle into the clothes.If you’re not going to help me, then you don’t get a say in what I do,I reminded her. She’d been all too happy to obey Soren’s order and refuse to allow me to shift. I wasn’t thrilled about that.
“When I was twelve, my oldest brother Batu took a mate. He snuck into a neighboring pack’s village and stole her away in the middle of the night.”