Page 7 of The Alpha's Mates

We all paused as our sensitive hearing picked up the sound of a lock being turned. I smiled and leaned back in my chair. “It won’t be long before she’s ours. Let Grams see if she can persuade our defiant little mate to give in.”

Calder snorted again, but he finally sat back down. Atlas took a seat as well. “You think she’ll give in just like that?”

“Probably not,” I admitted, “but there’s no harm in trying.”

She impressed me. She had learned a lot in her time alone. “Did you ever check into her?” I asked. I had tasked Calder with seeing what he could find out about the pack of females. Little did I know its leader was our mate. If I had, I’d have destroyed all of Elaria in order to find her. It wouldn’t have taken us months if I’d realized.

Calder nodded. “Tried. Took me a few weeks of investigating before I figured out the pack likely came from the seasidewolves. The plains wolf packs hadn’t heard anything about them. As soon as I made it down to the coast I began hearing the rumors. Took another week before I tracked the rumors back to the Silvest pack.”

I muttered under my breath. Haron Silvest was more than just a simple prick. He was an enemy. His father had started the pack war fifteen years ago. The same war that had claimed my fathers’ lives. My mother had followed them not long after. She’d made the choice not to live without her mates and ended what would have been a naturally long life. The death toll from the war had forced all of us back into our corners, divided more than ever, but with a tenuous peace agreement. Fights still broke out between packs, or between individual shifters, but we’d all agreed not to repeat the mistake of a war between shifters. The price was still too fresh in many of our minds.

I’d been nineteen at the time and pissed off that my fathers had forced me to stay home with the women and children. Atlas and Calder hadn’t been pleased that they’d been sidelined alongside me, but we obeyed. If they had lost all of us, my grandparents wouldn’t have had anyone to take over our pack. Someone would have challenged my grandfathers and killed them in the process. They were closing in on two hundred years old, past their prime for shifters, and they wouldn’t have been able to defeat a cadre of younger wolves. It would have been the end of our line. Of our legacy. So I stayed. The last words I said to my fathers had been in anger. I regretted that every day.

“Haron wasn’t willing to give much information. Claimed his daughter was dead, along with his wife. At the time, I didn’t have much reason not to take him at his word.”

Calder’s words pulled me from the past and I focused back on him. He’d been on his way back from the seaside wolves’ territory when he’d picked up the female pack’s scent. He’dcalled to me and Atlas and we’d rounded up the troops to go after them.

“And now?”

“Now I know he was full of shit. There were rumors I overheard while staying with them overnight, about his daughter being an unnatural freak. It didn’t make sense at the time.”

He was glaring at the wall that separated us from our mate. An angry growl ripped from his chest. He might not like our mate’s attitude right now—we were possessive males who required submission from our females—but he certainly didn’t like the things that had been said about her either. He was already feeling protective. That was a good sign. The longer the four of us were around each other, the more our pheromones would wreak havoc until we were all forced to give in to the mating bond.

Like most males, we’d wondered if we’d ever find a mate. Soweweren’t going to be hard to convince. We were all ready to take her and claim her now, even Calder. But she was resistant and we needed her on board. It was the easiest way to assimilate her pack into ours with the least amount of injuries. We had no idea what these other females were like, but if they resembled their leader at all, they weren’t weak willed.

My alphas would locate her pack and bring them back to our village. With their alpha bonded to us, it would pave the way for other cadres to mate their own females.

My nostrils flared as her scent wafted around my office. She hadn’t even been in here, but the smell of lemons and sugar, like lemon meringue pie, was permanently lodged inside my nose. She smelled sweet enough to eat in a single bite. Her underlying scent was destroying my willpower. They’d been living out in the forest so I could smell the dirt, pine needles, and other woodsyscents all over her, but that sweetness underneath it all was uniquely her.

My dick was aching as I thought about fucking and claiming her. Gritting my teeth, I tried to shove the images of her curvy body from my mind. Jumping her the minute we saw her again wasn’t going to endear us to her. She needed to learn to trust us. Needed to understand that we belonged together and that she’d benefit from an alliance with us.

A chuckle had me glancing over and I caught Atlas’s eye. There was a grin on his face. “She’s already driving you mad.”

“How are you remaining so unaffected?” Calder asked. His face was a dark cloud of anger. He didn’t like anything fucking with his routine, and though we knew he was just as ecstatic to have found our mate, it would take him some time to adjust.

“I’m not unaffected,” he admitted. It was just his legendary control that was keeping him calm.

Atlas and I had grown up together, but we hadn’t met Calder until we hit thirteen. A few years later our cadre had formed on the night we’d all presented in our designations. That was the night we’d shifted and realized that all three of us had matching wolves. We weren’t related, it should have been impossible, but it was a sign from the Moon Goddess. That was when my grandmother had begun searching through the lore.

Calder had walked into our camp with a swagger that irritated me at the time. We still got on each other’s nerves—often—but I loved him like the brother he now was.

My father had taken one look at the young pup and declared he’d stay, much to my annoyance. It was a good thing he had, since he was meant to be ours. If we’d sent him away I would have had to hunt him down later and bring him back.

Sly little minx.

I doubted Calder realized he was muttering those words inside his own mind and tapping into our link. He shoved outof his chair and paced back and forth. He knew the most about her since I sent him to learn everything he could from her pack. He wasn’t wrong, our mate had proven to be smart and efficient. She’d gotten enough females to trust her that they’d joined her pack and now followed her. If we wanted to set our alphas up with any of the new females, we needed her cooperation.

We could hear the muffled sounds of her speaking with my grandmother. Both Atlas and I sat back in our chairs to wait, while Calder wore holes in my floor with his usual pacing.

CHAPTER 5

Reese

My head snapped up as the door opened and I shoved my hands behind my back, trying to hide the loose chain. A look around at the destroyed bed made me realize that I wouldn’t be fooling anyone. I’d managed to find some pants and a shirt to change into. Even with as tall as I was, I had to roll up the bottom of the pants to keep from tripping on them.

The beautiful woman who walked in had dark hair with gray at the temples. Her smokey gray eyes crinkled at the corners with her smile as she surveyed the damage to the bedpost. It was split in half, with shards lying around the room like it had imploded.

My smile was sharp as I studied her. “It’s not smart to keep an alpha where she doesn’t want to stay.”