Fated to the Alpha by Jasmine White
CHAPTER FIVE
The deer thought he was clever. He knew enough to keep ducking back and forth through the trees to try to elude me, and jumped over every possible obstacle that might slow me down. He jumped a high rock, crossed the stream, and even ducked under a giant root that crossed over a gulley.
He led me on a merry chase, that’s for sure, and if I’d been hunting alone, he might have lost me.
Just as the deer cleared an embankment a good five or six paces ahead of me, Jeremy sprang out from where he’d been hiding, taking our quarry by its throat and bringing it down to the ground in a single deadly pounce. In an instant, I closed the distance, locking my jaws onto the animal’s haunches while Jeremy choked the life out of it.
With the animal down, Jeremy and I proceeded to eat our freshly-killed prey, tearing out chunks of meat in our teeth and munching them in our jaws. I was as much a fan of a well-cooked meal as the next girl, but there’s nothing quite like tasting good, raw meat in your mouth, feeling the blood of your kill dripping from your teeth. There hadn’t been enough occasions, I thought, when I’d really taken the time to enjoy the pleasures of being a wolf.
Jeremy and I had spent the last three days this way, living in the woods, hunting for our food. We’d probably spent more time in those three days in our four-legged forms than our two-legged ones, which was something I didn’t think I’d ever done before. It was getting to the point now that it actually was starting to feel weird whenever we did change back to our two-legged forms; I was apparently getting a bit too comfortable in my fur.
We really shouldn’t have been waiting; we knew that. The longer we stayed out here in the woods, the harder it would be for us to come up with a convincing cover story. The only reason we were hesitating at all was because the prospect of going to meet Jeremy’s pack felt a bit too much like going to face a firing squad.
If they found out I was a Caldour…
After we ate our fill, Jeremy and I relaxed together under a tree, next to what was left of our kill. As we basked in our food coma and the closeness of each other, I contemplated our situation. Living like this was nice, yeah. I wasn’t going to pretend that the prospect of running away with Jeremy and leaving both our packs behind wasn’t still tempting. But I stood by what I’d said before, I couldn’t turn my back on the pack that had raised me while they and Jeremy’s pack fought and killed each other.
I eventually sat up and began to shift. My fur receded into my flesh, my front legs extended into human arms, and my muzzle shrank into my face. My tail disappeared, allowing me to sit back against the tree. “I think it’s about time, Jeremy,” I said.
He lifted his head to look up at me, and began shifting to his two-legged form too. “Are you sure you’re ready?”
“We’ve put this off too long already. Our story is gonna start to sound far-fetched if we keep waiting.”
Jeremy sighed. “Yeah, I know. I’m just not ecstatic about having to face other people again. I’m getting used to it being just the two of us.”
“I know; I’m enjoying this too. We hunt, we eat, we fuck, we sleep under the stars, and that’s our day. It’d be nice if we could just pretend the rest of the world didn’t exist and live like that forever, but… you know we can’t.”
Jeremy grimaced, looking up to the sky through the cover of trees. “So when do we do this?”
“It might as well be tonight,” I said, with no more enthusiasm for it than he felt. At least I was giving us a few more hours alone.
We tried to enjoy those hours while we could. We relaxed together for a while longer, and then spent some time just running through the woods on four legs. I never felt freer than when I ran, and having Jeremy beside me made it that much better.
But eventually night came, and we knew it was time to face the music.
We cautiously approached the Morgandorf village in our wolf forms. As we neared the lights and the houses, I started hanging back, growing increasingly nervous. I eventually came to a complete stop, making Jeremy stop and look back at me. In fact, I think I even started backing away.
I knew all the propaganda I’d heard leveled against the Morgandorf pack all my life was just that: propaganda. Jeremy was living proof of that. Still, it was hard for me not to associate this place with the stories of the den of scum and malice that had been spun by my pack. The name Morgandorf was not one I had ever heard spoken in a pleasant context.
And after all, the one and only time I’d been here before, someone had taken a bite out of me. The wound in my shoulder was still healing.
I knew those stories were all exaggerated, colored mostly by hate and hostility, and a need to demonize our enemies. But what was a fact was that I still didn’t know how they would react to me.
As I slowly started to retreat, Jeremy padded over to me and gently nudged the side of my face with his muzzle. I whined softly at him, not wanting to move further. But he nodded his head in the direction of the village, beckoning me on. Then he continued, while I reluctantly followed.
Several members of his pack were milling about the village, walking around the burning bonfire in the circle when we entered. Several of them looked in Jeremy’s direction as he approached, and when they got a good look at him or caught his scent, a lot of their eyes went wide, and they came rushing toward him. “Jeremy?” “Is that you?” “Where have you been?”
Jeremy shifted to his two-legged form as they crowded around him, while I hung back behind a corner. Jeremy tried to calm his pack brothers and sisters surrounding him, holding his hands up and saying, “Please, please, I’ll explain it all later. Can somebody get Ricardo out here?”
A couple of them ran off to go fetch the person he mentioned. And about then was when they noticed me. A couple of them sniffed the air, catching my scent, and craned their necks to see me shrinking back shyly around the corner.
“Who is that?” somebody said.
Jeremy extended a hand to beckon me forward, and slowly, fearfully, I approached. As I neared him, I rose up on my hind legs as I started shifting to my two-legged form, and took his hand. I carefully looked around at the faces around me, full of curiosity and wonder, and not a small amount of suspicion.
The few who ran off before started returning, bringing with them a man in his early forties with salt-and-pepper hair and a short, grizzled beard. The other members of the pack stepped aside to make way for him, giving him the respect that could only be commanded by the pack’s alpha. His attention zeroed on me as he approached, looking me up and down after he stopped in front of us.
He finally turned his attention to Jeremy and put on a brotherly smile, reaching out to clasp his hand. “We wondered what happened to you,” he said, patting Jeremy’s shoulder. “We were just about to send search parties out to the Caldour village to find out what they’d done with you.”
Jeremy and I shared an uncomfortable look. “Sorry about that,” Jeremy said. “The Caldours actually didn’t have anything to do with me leaving.” Then we exchanged another look, as he remembered the cover story we had agreed to present. “Well, not directly anyway.”
The alpha looked to me again. “So who is this now?”
Everyone else in the pack looked at me or at Jeremy, curious to hear the answer to that themselves.
“This is… Elena,” Jeremy said, giving them the fake name we’d decided on. I didn’t dare want to give them my real name. “She’s a stray from up north. I’ve been seeing her in secret for a while now.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about her?” someone said.
“She didn’t want to be found,” he answered. “She wasn’t exactly well-treated by her old pack. Her alpha wanted to force her to marry him.” We’d agreed our story might be more convincing if we threw a nugget of truth into it. “So she’s been avoiding the pack life for a while. She finally decided to come pay us a visit a few nights ago, but… well, her timing was pretty bad. It was the night the Caldours attacked us. As soon as she showed up, she was attacked. So I took her and got her away from here, and we’ve been living off the land for the last few days until I finally convinced her to come give us another chance. It took quite a bit of convincing, too. She was sure you all would try to kill her again as soon as she set paw in the village.”
They all seemed to study me, especially the alpha. I held my breath, waiting to see if they would buy it. My heart crept up into my throat as the alpha leaned in and got a good whiff of my scent. I kept expecting him to snarl at me and say, “She smells like a Caldour!” or something like that.
But finally he leaned back, and a smile spread across his face. “Well then… I think we should prove you right, shouldn’t we?” He reached out and put a hand on my shoulder. “Welcome, Elena. My name’s Ricardo, I’m the alpha of this pack.”
“Hi,” I said through a weak smile.
“You want to join our pack?”
I grimaced. “I don’t think I’m ready for that. I just want a place to stay for a while. A place with a roof. And a bed. And cooked food.”
Ricardo laughed. “Well, we can certainly give you that much.” Ricardo turned to one of the she-wolves around us. “Gina, you look like you’re about her size. Maybe you can give Elena some clothes.”
“Uh, sure,” the woman said, uncertainly.
“In the meantime,” Ricardo said, “Jeremy, why don’t you take her to your room. I think you two could use a shower.”
Oh, sweet heaven, yes! A shower sounded like a godsend right about then.
*
I could have stayed in that shower for hours, luxuriating under the hot spray of water, letting days worth of dirt and debris wash away. Of course, I knew Jeremy would only have so much hot water, so there was a limit to how long I could lollygag.
Jeremy and I had started out the shower together, but he’d eventually decided to get out first, while I wanted to enjoy it a little longer. I don’t know if I should call that a good thing or not, since without Jeremy there I had only my thoughts to accompany me. And when I started to think, I started thinking hard.
I was taking a shower in the Morgandorf village. I was in supposed enemy territory, under their roof, being treated as a guest. If my own pack could see me now…
What if they did? What if they came looking for me here? What if they found me? What then?
I turned off the shower when the water started to get cold, stepped out, toweled off, and wiped the condensation off the mirror, getting a good look at myself. I wasn’t sure what to make of the girl I saw looking back at me. Was that the face of a traitor to her own pack? In my heart, I didn’t feel like one, but I knew anyone from my pack would call me that now.
I wrapped a towel around myself and stepped out into the bedroom, to find Jeremy standing by his dresser, wearing a light shirt and a pair of pajama pants. I stopped and stared at him for a moment. He looked up and saw me looking at him, and said, “What?”
“I think this is the first time I’ve seen you in your clothes,” I smirked.
He glanced down at himself. “You like it?”
“I think I miss the sight of your naked tush,” I said.
He stepped forward, taking me into his arms. “All you have to do is ask,” he said, and kissed me.
I tried to smile back at him, but it didn’t really take. I slipped away from him and flopped down on his bed. Yeah, it was really good to feel a bed beneath me again, but that wasn’t quite enough to ease my troubled mind. Jeremy sat down beside me and rubbed my back. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Tell me I’m doing the right thing here?” I pleaded with him. “Do I know what I’m doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “I know this was my idea, but now that we’re here, I’m just going out of my mind with doubts. This whole thing has the potential to go horribly wrong.”
“Only if they find you out,” he said. “And I’ll make sure they don’t. For all they’ll ever know, you’re just a stray.”
“It’s not just your pack I’m worried about,” I said, looking up at him. “It’s also mine. By now they’re probably scouring the woods, looking for me. There’s every chance they might come here. The idea that the Morgandorfs might have kidnapped me… that’s one of the first things my dad might think of. If Leon doesn’t think of it first. And if they do come here, and they find me, what will they do to you? What will they do to me?”
Jeremy didn’t have a swift answer to that. He shifted his jaw uncomfortably, and finally said, “If the Caldours did show up here looking for you, I doubt my pack would let them deep enough into the village to find you. I think we can rest easy for now.”
I hoped he was right. I really, really did.
But my ultimate doubt was the thought that we hadn’t really thought this all the way through. We’d come back because we knew we couldn’t abandon our packs to fight and kill each other. But now that we were here, and I had been given lodging in the Morgandorf village, what were we supposed to do now? How were we going to stop more fighting and killing from happening? There were a few dozen wolves in each of our packs respectively, all driven by the prejudice and hate that they’d been taught for generations. We were only two. How much could we really hope to change?
Jeremy rubbed a hand over my head. “I can tell you’ve got a lot going on in that head of yours,” he said. “Why don’t you give your poor head a rest until tomorrow? We’ve got a roof over our heads, a bed beneath us, and hot water in the shower. Can’t we relax and enjoy this? Besides…” he added, leaning in towards my ear, “when was the last time we made love somewhere other than in the dirt?”
Okay, I had to admit, that improved my mood. I turned my head and looked up at him with a smile. “Well, okay. I just have one more thing I’m wondering.”
“And what’s that?”
“Why the hell did you bother putting those clothes on in the first place? Did you just want me to rip ’em off?”
His mouth curled up into a smile. “Maybe I thought it could be fun.”
I rolled onto my back, bringing my feet up onto the bed, as he peeled the towel away from me. As I became exposed to his eyes, he ducked down and began kissing my neck and collarbone, while I rolled my head back with a soft moan, stroking the back of his head. He kissed along the slope of my breast, while my feet came up, kicking back and forth to work those pajama pants off his legs.
When he rose up on his knees and stripped his shirt away, I sat up to wrap my arm around his torso and began hungrily kissing his chest. He ran his fingers through my hair as my lips suckled at his flesh, and then bent me back down onto the bed where he kissed me deep on the lips. His hands pawed at my breasts, and my back arched up off the bed, my feet squirming about below us.
I brought my hand down to grasp his cock, which by now was standing stiff and ready, while his fingers started petting my wet, puffy pussy lips. I pushed my crotch up against his hand, urging him to rub harder.
He moved lower, taking my tit into his mouth, cradling it in his hand as he suckled at it. I gasped, rolling my head from side to side as his mouth and tongue pleasured my nipple. I cradled his head, writhing beneath his expert tongue.
As he kissed his way further down my body, my legs parted to welcome him between them. And when his mouth reached the junction of my thighs, I lit off like a rocket, screaming to the ceiling and clawing at his hair.
He put my thighs on his shoulders and hooked his arms around them, holding onto them like the handlebars on a rollercoaster. And with the way I was bucking beneath him, he might as well have been on one. But he held on for the ride he was on, just as I rode out what he was doing to me.
Before too much longer, I realized he was about to get me off. Hard. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I wanted him to be in me when I came, and I wanted him to know that in no uncertain terms. I sat up and lifted his head up by his hair, pulling him up to kiss me. His lips carried the tangy flavor of my juices on them.
I grasped his shoulders as I lowered back down and he crawled over me, lining his throbbing cock up with my wet, hungry slit. I reached down to take hold of his cock, guiding it into me as he lowered down between my spread legs. I groaned as I felt his mushroom head parting my folds, slowly penetrating into my depths.
I held him inside me once he finally bottomed out. So many times we had done this out in the woods, surrounded by nothing but trees and animals, where any kind of creature could be coming around the pike at any time. And yet I never felt safer than when joined with him like this, buried inside me, his arms engulfing my body as mine did the same to him.
The same still held true now, when we finally had four walls around us, a roof over our heads and a bed beneath us. Ironically, I felt a lot more vulnerable here than I ever did out in the woods. For that reason alone, this was already the best sex we’d had yet. And we’d barely even gotten started.
He started slowly thrusting, looking down at my face as he did. “No one’s going to hurt you here,” he said softly. “Not from my pack, not from yours. I’ll never let them get close enough.”
I brought my hands up to cup his face. “I believe you,” I said. I pulled him down to kiss me, moaning softly into his mouth as he continued thrusting.
He gradually built up his rhythm, groping at my breast and planting little vampire kisses on my neck when my head rolled to the side. I focused on flexing my vaginal muscles, trying to squeeze him inside of me in time with his in and out motions.
When he ducked his head to take my tit into his mouth, I finally let loose with that orgasm I’d been trying to hold back from earlier. Ever since Jeremy had introduced me to the feeling of coming with him inside me, I could never get enough of it. I loved having his stiff shaft there for my walls to convulse around, much better than I ever felt getting myself off with my pussy so achingly empty.
He paused his fucking motions as I rode out my orgasm, and continued to hold still after I came down from it, pausing to catch my breath for a moment. But as soon as I recovered, he started moving again, moving me along my way to another release.
I took charge, rolling us over to put myself on top and pushing myself up on my arms, my hands resting on his pectorals as I stared down at him, my hips moving back and forth on his lap. His hands gripped my hips, holding my upper body steady as I rode him.
I stared down at him, not wanting to think about the heaviness of our situation. For right now, I wanted there to be nothing but him, me, and his cock filling me up. I let myself become lost in his slate blue eyes, in his hands reaching up to cup my bouncing breasts, and the sensations shooting up through my body from my loins.
I leaned forward, draping my body across his and wrapping my arms around his head, kissing his face while he stroked my back. He started to grunt, beginning to thrust harder up into me, signaling that he was nearing his release. I worked my pussy muscles more, urging him along, until he finally exploded up inside of me. As we stopped moving and took slow, heavy breaths, I continued to hold him by the head, and kept planting kisses on the side of his face, more slowly now, but with no less passion.
I slowly rolled off to the side, letting his softening dick slip out of me, but keeping my arms about him as I rested my head on his chest. “I think I needed that,” I said, my fingers lightly stroking his chest.
“You and me both,” he said.
“Really?” I replied, lifting my eyes to his face. “You seem pretty okay to me.”
“Don’t let my calm face fool you,” he said. “I’ve been just as anxious about this whole thing as you are. I know exactly what all your fears are, because I have them too.”
I frowned. “So, all your posturing about how you’re not going to let anything happen…”
“It’s not posturing,” he declared without hesitation. “I meant every word. I’m not going to let anyone hurt you, Evelyn. I’m not going to let them hurt either of us. That doesn’t mean I’m not still afraid.”
“Well,” I sighed, “I guess you’re just a better actor than I am.”
“I hope at least one of us is a convincing actor,” he said. “For both our sakes.”
*
I woke up the next morning to find Jeremy’s bed space next to me empty. I knew he hadn’t gone far; I could still smell him in the house, and I could hear someone moving in another room. I got up, put on a robe, stepped out of the bedroom, and found him hard at work in his kitchen, with cluttered dishes all over the place, and smoke starting to rise from the skillet, as he rushed to lift it off the stove and save the eggs he was cooking. He scrambled—no pun intended—to find a spatula and scoop off what was left of his creation onto a plate.
“I take it you’re not much of a cook,” I observed.
He looked up at me a bit sheepishly. “I’m not used to having company for breakfast,” he said. “My usual breakfasts consist of a bowl of cereal, and maybe some Pop-Tarts.”
I laughed a little. “Well, I’ll still eat your cooking anyway. It’s the least I can do.”
“‘The least you can do?’” he said. “I’m the one making my home yours here. You’re not taking pity on me, are you?”
“Any reason I should?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he said, before getting a look on his face and adding, “Unless you know something I don’t?”
I laughed some more, and shook my head.
While the eggs ended up being a little overcooked, the rest of breakfast came out more or less okay. “This actually isn’t too bad,” I told him around a mouthful of bacon.
“Thanks,” he said. “I was starting to worry for a minute.”
Of course, that only served to remind me that breakfast was the least of our worries. “You realize we’re going to have to go out and face the pack after we’re done here.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “You think you’re ready for that?”
“We faced them all last night,” I said. “That went pretty much okay.”
“That was only for a few minutes,” he pointed out. “The real test is going to be interacting with them, going through a normal day, acting like one of them. We have to be able to keep up the ruse that you’re just a stray from up north for long term. That’s what you need to be ready for.”
I sat and thought about it for a moment. Then I looked up at Jeremy with a weak grin and said, “Well, if I could act like I was happy about having to marry my alpha back in my own pack, then I’m sure I can play the part of being someone I’m not. Shouldn’t be too hard.”
I tried to laugh, even fake laugh at my own comment. It wasn’t funny.
“You’ll have to watch what you say,” he said gravely. “If they start to suspect you’re a Caldour, even for a second, it’s all over.”
“No pressure,” I muttered.
“I mean it,” he said.
“I know you do,” I said, getting up from my seat and walking over to hook my wrists about his neck. “Don’t think for a second I’m underestimating the situation. But the more we stress about it, the guiltier we’ll look.”
He sighed. “Yeah, you’re right about that.”
“I just have to make sure not to say or do anything to raise their suspicions. I don’t mention the name Caldour, or name anyone from my pack, and they shouldn’t have any reason to suspect me, right?”
“I hope it’ll be that simple,” he said.
I kissed him, trying to reassure myself as much as him. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go face the music.”
I started walking toward the door, when he suddenly said, “You’re not trying to get away from my cooking, are you?”
I looked back to my unfinished plate of breakfast, and grinned sheepishly. “Okay, maybe I’m a little scatterbrained this morning,” I said as I returned to my plate.
“I wonder why,” he said.
So we finished our meal, and then, holding hands we stepped out into the village.