Fated to the Alpha by Jasmine White

CHAPTER SIX

 

As soon as we emerged, we saw several more of Jeremy’s pack going about their business, many of whom stopped and looked up when they saw me. I suddenly had a very strong compulsion to duck and hide behind Jeremy’s back. “They’re all looking at me, aren’t they?” I asked, looking down at the ground.

Jeremy laughed a little. It was a bit of a dry laugh, but it was a laugh. “Nothing suspicious, remember?” he said. “You’re just a new face to them. Don’t be more than that.”

“Well… can I just be a shy new face?”

He shrugged. “I guess there’s nothing suspicious about that.”

A strawberry blonde she-wolf with her long curls tied back came striding up toward us, her attention definitely on me more than him. “Hi there,” she said. “I’m Tara. You’re Elena, right?”

It took me a second to recognize my fake name. “Uh, yeah, that’s right. Uh, nice to meet you…”  I somewhat awkwardly extended my hand, suddenly feeling like I should have done that in the first place. Tara laughed good-naturedly, and accepted my hand.

“So you’re the one who broke the heart of half the ladies in this pack,” she grinned at me.

That got me feeling a little less timid and a little more curious. I turned and looked at Jeremy with a raised eyebrow. “Is that what I did?”

Jeremy shrugged again. “Well, I didn’t want to sound like I was tooting my own horn.”

“Really?” Tara said. “You never mentioned your track record with the ladies? About how she-wolves in this pack have been throwing themselves at your feet since you grew big enough to howl?”

“I didn’t think she’d find that very endearing,” he defended himself.

I looked at Tara with a tilted gaze. “Did you and he ever…?”

“A few times,” she admitted. “During howls, mostly. But there have been a lot of others along the way. And… I think some of them are still pretty attached.”

I hesitated a moment, before asking, “Should I be worried?”

“Absolutely not,” Jeremy said.

“Maybe a little,” Tara said.

“Definitely,” said a skinny teenage brunette who came walking up to join us.

“Um, hi,” I cautiously greeted the new arrival.

“Elena, this is Maggie,” Jeremy said.

“And I’m the girl who was gonna get that wolf before you came along,” the newcomer sassed me.

Jeremy laughed. “She has a lot of confidence,” he pointed out.

“Bigger confidence than her britches,” Tara smirked, her arms folded.

“Can you back it up, cutie?” I said, lightly taunting Maggie. “You ever get with him?”

“Not yet,” she smirked, looking me in the eye.

I blinked. “You’re right. She is bold.”

“Hey Maggie,” Tara said, “why don’t you go find your friends? Touch up your makeup a bit. You’re going to need to be in top form if you’re going to take her on,” she finished, pointing to me.

Maggie pursed her lips, and starting walking away, keeping her eyes on me. “You watch your back,” she told me, still wearing a slight grin. “This girl doesn’t give up without a fight.”

As she disappeared into the distance, I turned to Jeremy and asked, “You don’t think she’s really gonna try something?”

“Nah, she’s just an infatuated kid,” he brushed her off. “She’s more bark than bite.”

I spat out a tiny laugh. “Does that include when she’s four-legged?” I quipped.

He laughed back a little bit. “Yeah, pretty much.”

“Come on,” Tara said, “let’s introduce you to some of the others.”

She and Jeremy started leading me around the village. “That’s Astrid and Kevin,” Tara said, pointing to a couple who were busy tending to a row of carefully planted crops. “They’re the ones who provide most of our homegrown vegetables. There’s a few others with green thumbs around here, but none that put out as many tomatoes. And then over there, that’s Jason, Samuel and Doug,” she said, pointing to a trio of tough guys in muscle shirts sitting around with open beers by a pile of sawed wood. “They’re the best carpenters we have around here. I think they’re working on building a new garage for Saul’s old pickup.” She turned to me and added, “The old one finally got too many termites.”

We heard the sound of a sputtering engine, and turned to see a rusty blue pickup truck driving in through the trees. “Speak of the devil, there’s Saul now. He was just on a trip into town to pick us up some more food and supplies.” 

Then we came upon a group of kids playing a little game of baseball. It was a simple game with a pretty soft-looking ball and a hand-carved bat, without much protective gear involved, if any. Some of the kids were actually playing in the buff, the better to suddenly shift to four legs and run between the bases (which of course were some big rocks that had been picked up and placed in the more-or-less appropriate places, not always equidistant to each other). They also didn’t seem to have any problem with gender equality in this game, since I saw about as many girls playing as boys. I laughed a little as one of them threw off his hat and shifted to his four-legged shape, and ran up and caught a fly ball in his mouth.

“Who are those?” I asked with a smile.

“That’s Tony, Anna, Becky, Nicky, Jaime, August, Luke, Ginny, Charles, Kate, Bobby and Candice,” Tara rattled off, smiling brightly the whole time. “And that one’s Ricardo’s son, Stefan,” she added, pointing to the twelve-year-old on the pitcher’s mound. “Our little pups. Our hope for the future. And I think some of them are cheating,” she chuckled.

Seeing them made me miss the pups in my own pack. I missed little Mia and her beautiful paintings, which she always wanted to show off to anyone, whether they wanted to see them or not. I missed little Jackson, always nipping at the heels of his brother Grant, wanting to go out on adventures with him. I missed little Wayne, and his endless stories of misadventures with this animal or that or trips down to the river or whatever was chasing what through the gulley and got caught…

I wanted to sigh with homesick longing. But that was one of the things I couldn’t show to my hosts here.

Still, looking around me, I couldn’t help but wonder at the idyllic atmosphere that I could see in every direction. The kids were just the prime example of the simple, happy souls that made up this pack. This in no way resembled the filthy, wanton, scum-filled Morgandorf cesspool that everyone in my own pack had always described. When I took it all in, the years of strife and hostility that had existed between our two packs just made no sense to me. Why would anyone wish harm on the wonderful people all around me? What did any of us have to fight about?

“Ah, there you are,” someone said. I turned to see Ricardo approaching us, beaming at me with a welcoming smile. “I’ve been looking for you all morning. Are you enjoying your stay?”

“Yes, it’s beautiful here,” I said. “Your pack is… very nice.”

“Thank you,” he said. “It sounds like your fears about pack life have been laid to rest. Is it so different from your old pack?”

“Not really,” I shrugged. “Most of my pack was okay… except for not supporting me in trying to get away from my alpha. He was the big problem.”

“Well, you have a much better one here,” said a forty-something woman with red hair who stepped up beside Ricardo, slipping a hand through his arm. “And you don’t have to worry about this one, ’cause he’s already taken,” she added, looking up at him with a schoolgirl smile.

Ricardo smiled back at her before looking to me again. “Elena, this is my wife, Laura.”

“Really curious when I heard Jeremy came back with a stray,” she said. “And a pretty one at that.” She looked up at Ricardo again and said, “If I didn’t already have this one wrapped around my finger, I might almost feel threatened.”

“Um… thanks, I think.”

I heard some more shouts and cheers from the kids behind us, and turned my head to look back at the game the kids were playing as one of the kids came racing toward home plate before Ricardo’s son made a stellar play, snatching the ball out of the air and chucking it hard to the catcher. “Your pup’s got a good arm,” I offered.

“He does, doesn’t he?” Ricardo beamed. “Already flexing his muscles, trying to show he’s got what it takes to be alpha someday.”

“Is there competition for that job?” I asked.

“He has an older sister,” Laura said. “Her name’s Andrea, and she’s fifteen. She’s probably over by the lake right now. There’s some sentiment that the next alpha should be whoever she eventually ends up marrying, instead of her little brother taking the role over her. But it’s way too early to decide that yet.”

I could only hope whoever she eventually ended up marrying was actually someone she wanted. Because I found myself envisioning some strapping hotshot who thought he was God’s gift to she-wolves everywhere trying to marry his way into the alpha position.

“I’m honestly really glad you decided to give us another chance,” Laura said. “Of all nights to show up, you had the rotten luck of picking the night when those horrible Caldours showed up looking for trouble! It must have been terrifying!”

I fought hard not to flinch at the spiteful mention of my own pack. “Yeah… real terrifying…”

“At least you were lucky enough to find your Romeo in the right pack,” Tara said. “You could just as easily have been saddled with those beasts! Then you might actually have had to worry about being snatched up and forced into something.”

This was too surreal. I felt like I was in a mirror universe. This was just the way my pack always talked about this one. And yet, the ironic thing was that Tara didn’t know how right she was.

“Elena,” Ricardo said, “why don’t you join us for a howl tonight?  We ought to give you a proper welcome.”

I nodded. “I’d like that.”

“Wonderful! We’ll have a special howl for you tonight. In the meantime, feel free to go where you please.”

“Thank you.”

As Ricardo and Laura walked away, I turned to Jeremy with an uncomfortable look. I couldn’t say what I was thinking in front of Tara, but I was pretty sure he could read me. After all those days in the woods spending a lot of our time in our four-legged forms, we’d gotten pretty good at communicating non-verbally.

“Would you like to go meet Andrea?” Tara asked. “I think she’d love to meet you.”

“Uh, sure,” I shrugged.

“Come on,” Tara said, “the lake’s this way.”

She started to turn to lead me in another direction—and then stopped suddenly, finding someone standing in her path. The man before us was a large, bald guy with broad shoulders and an ornate neck tattoo, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking at me.

“Oh, I’m sorry Lucius,” Tara said. “You were so quiet, and you’re standing downwind. I didn’t even know you were there.”

“Yeah,” he said in a deep, rumbling voice. “That was kind of intentional. So this is the new girl?”

Tara took a step to the side, allowing him a better look at me. “Yeah, this is her.”

“I’m Ev… Elena,” I said, still having to remember to not give my real name.

“So I’ve heard,” he said, taking a small step toward me. Impulsively I shrunk back, feeling like he was studying me, and not in a nice way. “So you’re supposed to be a runaway? From up north?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Hmm,” he mused, looking at me intently. “Where was that exactly?”

Was I being interrogated?

“Some place I’d rather forget,” I answered.

He didn’t look satisfied with my evasive non-answer. “You said you dropped by the night the Caldours attacked,” he said. “Run into any trouble?”

“A little,” I said. “Jeremy got me out of there before it got too bad.”

“Well ain’t he just a boy scout, then?”

I started growing nervous. This was the first member of this pack I’d encountered who didn’t look like he was buying it. But why, in a whole pack full of wolves, was this guy the only one who looked suspicious?

And come to think of it, why was his scent so familiar?  I knew him from somewhere… but how was that possible?

“Well, hope you enjoy your stay,” he said. “And don’t get in too much trouble with the neighbors.”

With that he walked away. Tara, Jeremy and I stared after him as he left. “What was that about?” Tara asked.

I looked at Jeremy. “Who is he?”

“Lucius? Just one of our resident tough guys. Leads a lot of our hunting parties, and… attack groups.” He turned a look to me, his meaning starting to become clear. “One of the more aggressive in our dealings with… the… neighboring pack.”

I started to get the picture. I didn’t doubt that some of the scars that Leon had likely came from this Lucius guy.

Was that it? Was that how I’d smelled him before? Had he shown up in our village at some time that I couldn’t remember now? I couldn’t imagine when; I hadn’t been present for most of the confrontations that happened between the Morgandorfs and the Caldours. But I knew his scent from somewhere…

 

*

 

Tara brought us down to the lake where we found a small group of teenagers either swimming or lounging about in their birthday suits, with their clothes either casually tossed aside or folded into neat little stacks. A few of them were sitting about in their four-legged forms, too. They all turned their heads to look up at us as we approached, while I raised a hand with an awkward, “Hi.”

“There she is,” Tara pointed to one girl whose head suddenly breached the surface of the water. The girl began climbing out of the lake, wringing out her chestnut brown hair, before she stopped with her ankles still submerged when she noticed me.

“Hi, I’m Elena,” I said. “You’re Andrea? Ricardo’s daughter?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” she nodded, carefully bending down to pick up her towel, never taking her eyes off me. “Did you want something?”

“Just to meet you,” I shrugged. “I’m getting to know the pack.”

The girl looked at me uncomfortably, looking like she was trying to use her towel more to hide than to dry off. “Did my dad send you?”

My brow furrowed. “No, why?”

“I don’t know… he just has my schedule worked out for me a lot of the time. I thought maybe he’d want you to get to know the girl who’s gonna be married to the next alpha or something.”

Now why did that sound familiar?

“Your parents told me that wasn’t a sure thing yet,” I offered. “Doesn’t your brother want to be alpha too?”

“He can have it, for all I care.”

“Come on, Andie,” Tara said. “We’re not here to talk about that. Elena just wanted to be friendly. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

“Sure it is!” one of the girls sitting around said.

“Totally!” chimed in a boy, who rose to his feet and stepped up beside me. “And can I just ask: this thing with Jeremy, is it serious?”

“Hey, hey,” Jeremy objected, stepping in between us and gently pushing the boy aside. “Gear down, Tyler. She’s not on the market.”

Another girl got up and took me by the hand. “You want to come for a swim with us?”

My worried and defensive face brightened into a smile. “Actually, I’d love to!”

“Come on!” that girl chirped, as she and a few others went dashing for the water and dove in.

I turned to Jeremy as I crossed my arms and lifted my shirt up. “Last one in’s a dirty skunk!” I cheered. He didn’t quite match my enthusiasm as I hurriedly stripped the rest of my clothes off and raced after the excited kids into the lake. He eventually did join me, shaking his head and chuckling softly as he shucked his own clothes and followed me in.

I bobbed my head beneath the surface and swam about, goading Jeremy to chase me, before I came up for air again and saw Andrea still standing at the water’s edge. “Come on, Andrea!” I called. “I came down here to meet you!  Don’t be a spoilsport!”

She seemed to contemplate it for a second, and then sighed, having made up her mind. She dropped her towel and dove back in.

One of the boys came up beside me as my shoulders rose above the surface. “That’s a wicked scar, lady,” he said. “Must’ve been some fight you got in.”

I turned my head to look at my right shoulder, having almost forgotten about the nasty bite I’d sustained that night when my pack attacked theirs. “Uh, yeah… real bad fight.”

“Was it a Caldour?” the boy asked. “’Cause you should see the scars some of them have given our pack!”

“No, stupid, it wasn’t a Caldour,” said a girl. “She’s from up north, remember?  She’s never met the Caldours.”

“Hope she never does,” another girl said. “Some of the shit those bastards have pulled… just sick!”

“Seriously,” said another boy. “My dad told me about this time when the hunting party brought down a whole bunch of deer, only to have the Caldours show up, give half our hunting party stitches and limps for a month, and steal the entire kill!”

“How ’bout the time they broke into our food stores and stole the kill we’d made the day before,” said another, “and then tried to say they had the right to it because we poached it from their territory! Like come on! Like our guys are supposed to give up a chase just because the animal crosses some invisible line? Get real!”

“Those Caldours are all so anal about those damn borders!” one of the first girls complained. “It’s like crossing over it is the eighth Deadly Sin!  And they keep trying to push it further back so they can hog more land!”

“They killed my grandfather,” someone said.

Everyone turned to the boy who’d spoken. “Yeah, I forgot about that,” another boy said. “It was like ten years ago, wasn’t it?”

“A raid,” the vulnerable-looking kid said. “Middle of the night. Unprovoked.”

Naturally, by now I was back to being uncomfortably silent. Jeremy swam up to me, putting a comforting hand on my arm below the water’s surface, where no one would see it. I cast him a brief glance, trying as hard as I could not to let my discomfort show.

Unfortunately, my discomfort didn’t go unnoticed, but it was misinterpreted. “Hey, maybe we should change the subject,” one of the girls said. “I think we’re scaring Elena.”

“Hey, don’t worry, lady,” the boy named Tyler said, his grin telling me he still wanted to appear macho in front of me. “We got the best fighters and guards you’ll ever find in this pack! No way any stinking Caldour is gonna get his jaws on you!”

“I don’t think they’d care about her,” a girl said. “She’s not a Morgandorf, right?”

“You think they’d make that distinction?” said a boy. “They’re Caldours. They’d kill anyone.”

Wow. This was worse than I thought. I was beginning to get the real sense of just how deep this feud ran. I always knew there was animosity, but I never got the idea that this was really what the Morgandorfs thought about our pack. If Charlene could hear them now…

“Guys, come on!” Andrea finally spoke up. “Elena just got here and we’re being all doom and gloom in front of her. Let’s stop talking about the Caldours.”

Everyone seemed to agree with that. They went back to swimming around and talking about normal teen things, about what they were planning on doing later, or who was hooking up with whom, or whatever. Normal stuff. A few of them started asking me questions about life with my old pack. Was it very different there?  Were there any guys in my life before I found Jeremy?

My favorite question was from a skinny blonde girl named Corrine, who asked, “Was everyone in your pack a douche, or just your alpha?”

“Well,” I shrugged, “Not everyone was such a douche, but some of them were.” I looked pointedly at Andrea as I added, “My dad was too.”

It was enough to get Andrea’s attention.

“It wasn’t just that my alpha wanted to force me to marry him,” I said. “My dad wanted it too. ’Cause he wanted his grandkids to be alphas. So he arranged the whole thing for me.”

“What a bastard,” a girl named Tammy said. “You didn’t have any say in it or nothing?”

“Most everyone in the pack thought this was the best thing that could’ve ever happened to me,” I said. “Nobody seemed to get that I didn’t want him. Least of all my dad.”

I kept watching Andrea as I spoke. I could see that my words were ringing a chord with her.

“Well, fuck him,” a boy named Michael said. “You’re better off without those guys. This is the pack with the real wolves!”

“Oh, yeah, like you?” a girl named Sandra taunted him.

“Need convincing, baby?” he challenged, before he began swimming after her.

Things quickly devolved to teenage water hijinks from there. I mostly hung to the side and watched the chaos unfold, letting myself be amused by it as much as I could after everything that had just been said. I reminded myself that I couldn’t show vulnerability, but nobody minded if I continued holding onto Jeremy. We eventually decided to climb out of the lake and relax in each other’s arms on a spare towel.

I soon noticed that Andrea wasn’t joining the fun either. She obviously had some things of her own on her mind. Especially since she kept looking at me.

Eventually, after Andrea had toweled off and dressed, she came up to me and said, “Can I get a moment alone with you?”

I spared a glance at Jeremy, who just shrugged. “Okay, sure,” I said. I untangled myself from Jeremy and got my clothes on again, before following her toward the trees, where she found a secluded spot amid the woods.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked her.

She looked at the ground uncomfortably. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was rude when you got here. The first thing you asked me was if I was Ricardo’s daughter, and I thought the only reason someone would want to know that was because he sent you to find me. Like he arranges everything that happens to me.”

“Believe me,” I said, “the last thing I want to be a part of is anyone making a girl’s choices for her. Not after what I went through.”

“I get that now,” she said. “So I want to say I’m sorry.”

“Hey,” I said, reaching a hand out to place on her shoulder. “Nothing to apologize for. If I were in your shoes, I probably would’ve thought the same thing.”

She hesitantly raised her eyes to me.

“Don’t sweat it,” I reassured her. “Just be glad your dad doesn’t already have a husband picked out for you like mine did.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Andrea murmured. “If you ask me, I think he’s already auditioning guys for the part.”

I blinked, and then laughed. And after a moment, she started laughing with me.

“Well, as long as you get final say in the audition, count yourself lucky,” I offered.

“I sure hope so,” she said.

“But hey, let’s not get too stressed about that now,” I said. “You’re still young. You’ve got lots of time. Am I right in guessing you’re still a virgin, too?”

She scrunched her face uncomfortably. “Yeah, I am. I mean I’ve participated in a couple howls, but I’m not quite ready for the ‘roll in the dirt’ part.”

“Speaking of howls,” I said, “your dad said there’s gonna be one tonight. And apparently it’s for me. You think you’ll be there?”

She met my gaze with the most honest smile I’d seen from her yet. “You know, I think I will!”

“I want us to be friends, Andie. Can I call you Andie?”

“Sure. Should I call you Ellie, then?”

I laughed at the irony of her trying to abbreviate my fake name. “Call me whatever you want, I guess.”

Andrea looked toward the other kids still swimming for a moment, her look starting to take a turn for the mischievous. “Well, if you’re gonna be my friend,” she said, “I know something we can do.”

“Oh yeah?”

“That girl over there?” she said, pointing to a raven-haired girl currently doing tumbles in the water. “That’s Lauren. There was this boy I was pursuing for a while, and she knew it. Then the last howl happened, and she went and poached him. I caught her doing cowgirl on him right out in the open. Now it’s like I’m invisible to him.”

“What a bitch!”

“So you know what I’m gonna do?”

“I can’t wait,” I grinned.

“I was thinking about finding some of the ugliest worms and spiders I can dig up and sneaking them into her underwear drawer. Want to come with me?”

I grinned wide. “Sounds like fun!”

 

*

Ostensibly, gathering for the howl that night was no different than the ones I knew from my own pack. A bonfire burned, and the pack gathered around the big rock where the alpha stood above them all. But all the faces and scents were unfamiliar. It was a surreal feeling, entering into this very familiar thing surrounded by very unfamiliar people.

Most of the pack parted as Jeremy and I approached, ushering us to the front of the throng. “Let them through, everyone,” Ricardo said. “This howl is for her tonight.” We reached the front, and I looked up to the top of the rock to see Ricardo and Laura looking down at us. “Welcome, Elena,” he said.

I started to wonder if I was ever going to get used to being called that name.

“Everyone!” Ricardo shouted. “As you all know, we have a guest among us tonight. A lost soul, cast aside by those she once called her family. We of the Morgandorf pack have always prided ourselves on our devotion to family, to friends, and to pack. And if those words mean anything to us, we must be ready to offer them to someone who has lost them. Elena, you avoided us for a long time, despite having found someone in Jeremy. I’m here to say you had nothing to fear from us. And with all of us here, she will have nothing to fear from anything else, will she everyone?”

Everyone raised their fists and howled in agreement. I looked around me at all the smiling faces I saw looking at me. I never could have imagined this happening: I was a runaway, a fugitive from my own pack, being welcomed with open arms by the pack I had always been taught to hate and fear. Just so long as they continued to believe I was someone I wasn’t.

For the most part, the looks on their faces told me I was in good shape on that front. They all were smiling at me, welcoming this “Elena” they thought I was.

But somewhere amid that crowd, I could swear I felt one set of eyes looking at me with something less favorable. I couldn’t quite locate where it was; there were too many faces to sift through. But someone here wasn’t reflecting the same kind of enthusiasm as everyone else.

Ricardo went on, “You all know that our village hasn’t been the safest place lately. Especially after the recent attack we suffered from the Caldour pack. And we all know that an attack like that could happen again at any time. Which is why it’s more important than ever that we stay vigilant, now that this newcomer is among us, who has more reason than most to be afraid of strange packs. The Caldours are ruthless, they are merciless, and they don’t take prisoners. We’ve all seen the kind of fury they have.

“So if we’re going to keep Elena safe, we have to show them that our fury is stronger! We have to make them all see, that the Morgandorf pack does not back down to threats! We do not roll over, or tuck tail and run! If the Caldours wish to threaten us, we will meet them head on! We will fight for what is ours! We will stand our ground, and we will beat them back! And any lost souls who are lucky enough to find their way to us, we will make sure that their home here is safe, secure, and one that they can be proud to call theirs!”

The pack around me erupted in howls, as clothes began dropping to the ground. I wanted to be able to join them, but I couldn’t quite get into the spirit of things when he had just spent half of that speech bashing my old pack. But with a little bit of nudging from Jeremy, I finally let myself go. Dropping my jacket, I threw my head back and howled to the sky with everyone else.

All around me, various members of the pack finally got naked and started shifting to their four-legged forms, changing their howls to a more eerie, lupine sound that echoed throughout the night. More and more started to shift, one after another, before Jeremy and I, too, finally shifted, getting down on all four paws and joining in the song, as Ricardo led us from up on that rock.

A scent I had become familiar with earlier in the day suddenly came up beside me. I looked to see a young wolf had joined me by my side, whom I was able to identify by scent as Andrea. We’d had quite the bonding experience today; we hadn’t actually found many spiders to sneak into Lauren’s drawer, but we found plenty of worms, and even a centipede. Getting into her bedroom undetected had been a bit of a challenge, since her mother had been in the house, and if she’d caught our scent the game would’ve been over. But we managed to pull it off, and a few hours later, we were rewarded with the sound of distant screaming while we relaxed by the rock quarry.

Oh, how long it had been since I’d partaken in teenage revenge hijinks. It was honestly kind of refreshing, in a guilty pleasure kind of way. But the important thing was that I had succeeded in making a friend out of the alpha’s daughter. If nothing else, that could potentially go a long way toward making the kind of peace that Jeremy and I were hoping for.

As she trotted up beside me now, we resumed the howl together, right before several wolves around us started scattering off in all directions. Some of them started fighting and wrestling with each other for fun, while others disappeared into the woods. I looked to Jeremy, who got up on all fours to start towards the tree line, but looked back to me, seeing if I was coming along. I was about to, but looked back toward Andrea first. I wanted her to run with us tonight.

Apparently she got the message, and was more than amenable to it. She got up and started after the both of us.

With that, we dashed off into the woods. I’d almost forgotten how great it was to do this surrounded by a pack. After becoming isolated from my own pack, and after it becoming just Jeremy and me in the woods by ourselves, the feeling of running like this while packmates and friends were all around was… uplifting.

Except that these weren’t my packmates. It was getting harder to remember that.

Andrea mostly kept pace with Jeremy and me, staying just a step behind us the whole way. We didn’t catch the scent of anything we wanted to hunt tonight; we weren’t looking for it anyway. We just wanted to run. We just wanted to be wolves together.

I don’t know how long we ran for, dashing through the trees, leaping over banks and rocks and gullies. But eventually we tired ourselves out, and collapsed in the middle of a clearing to catch our breath.

We slowly shifted back to our two-legged forms as we lay there panting, and I heard Andrea say, “I think that was the best run I’ve ever had!”

“Wasn’t so bad for me either,” I chuckled. “Jeremy?”

“Well, I can think of worse experiences than running with two she-wolves beside me.”

I lifted my head, giving him a mock-chiding look. “Don’t you be getting any weird ideas, mister!”

He just laughed back.

As we lay there, another wolf came trotting up to us. I lifted my head as he neared, and then he shifted to his two-legged form to look down at us. I found myself looking up at the bald head and hard-chiseled face of Lucius, the one who seemed interested in interrogating me earlier in the day.

“Oh, hey Lucius,” Jeremy casually said.

“Getting settled in?” Lucius asked me.

“That’s okay, isn’t it?” I cautiously asked, getting the suspicion he wasn’t as keen as everyone else on me staying here.

“Of course,” he said, not sounding like he completely meant it. As he looked me over, his eyes seemed to zero on my shoulder. “How’d you get that scar?”

I looked to my shoulder again. “Bad fight,” I said, trying not to remember the fight that happened that night when my pack attacked theirs. “I’d prefer not to talk about it.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” he said.

He seemed to study me for a moment more, while I met his gaze. I started to grow very nervous, convinced that at any moment he was going to say or do something more that I wouldn’t like.

“Watch your back,” he finally said, before returning to his four-legged form again and trotting away.

We stared after him as he left, before Andrea finally said, “Did you do something to him or something?”

Did I? I didn’t think so, but could I be sure? I knew I’d smelled him somewhere before, but where?

And why was he curious about my—

All of a sudden the answer hit me.

And a cold shiver ran down my spine as it did.

Jeremy seemed to sense it, sitting up and reaching out to rub my unscarred shoulder. “Hey, are you okay?”

I couldn’t say what I’d realized in front of Andrea. So for now, I just said, “It’s nothing. But I think I’m kind of tired. Do you think we could turn in early tonight?”

“What?” Andrea said. “I thought we were having fun?”

“A bit too much, maybe,” I said. “Nothing we can’t have more of tomorrow, right?”

“But I’m not tired!” Andrea insisted.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You can do what you want, Andrea. I just want to go back to the room with Jeremy for now.”

Andrea looked at me with a furrowed brow. And when I looked at Jeremy, I saw him giving me the same look. “Please?” I asked him.

He finally sighed and shrugged, and said, “Sure, that’s fine.”

Jeremy and I got to our feet, before I briefly looked back to Andrea and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She continued looking perplexed, even as she waved to us. Jeremy and I shifted to our four-legged forms and headed off into the woods, making our way back to the village.

 

*

Not many of the pack were still in the village when we got back, so no one paid much attention to us as we made our way to Jeremy’s house. That was how I wanted it. We returned to our two-legged forms on our way in the door.

Once we were safely inside, I preceded Jeremy into the bedroom, hugging my arms to myself as he came up behind me, rubbing my shoulders. “Hey, Evelyn, talk to me,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

I turned around and looked him straight in the eye. “I finally figured out why I know Lucius’s scent. I know where I’ve smelled him before.”

“Where?”

I hesitated before answering, setting my jaw. And then I pointed to the scar on my shoulder. “He’s the one who gave me this.”

Jeremy blinked as comprehension dawned on him. “So then…”

“The night of the attack, he was the one who attacked me. And he knows it. He remembers giving this scar to me. He knows I’m a fake!”

“Well… we don’t know that for certain,” he said. “He just knows you were there that night. Everyone knows that. We told them right to their faces. If he tries to say anything, can’t we just say he mistook you for a Caldour and wrongfully attacked you?”

I gritted my teeth, wanting to believe it would be that simple. “But it’s not just me,” I pointed out. “You were there too that night. You fought him off of me, didn’t you?  …Come to think of it, why are you only realizing now that was him?  Shouldn’t you have recognized your own packmate from the beginning?”

“Well, I wasn’t really thinking about faces or scents at the time,” he said. “The only thing I knew at that particular moment was that someone was attacking you. I didn’t have much of a chance to think about who it was.”

“You thought about faces and scents enough to recognize mine,” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I did. You’re just special that way.”

Yeah, I won’t deny it was real tempting to kiss him after that. I blinked a couple times and started leaning up to his lips. But then I made myself pull away, turning my back to him. “No!  Don’t try to distract me with sweet talk!  This is serious!”

“So am I,” he said. “Is that still sweet talk?”

I slowly turned back around to him, and this time I let him take me into his arms. “What if he rats me out?” I whimpered against his chest.

“Even if he suspects you, he can’t prove anything,” Jeremy said. “Our cover story will still hold. We have to go on believing that.”

I let out a heavy breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so paranoid in my life!”

“Evelyn, look at me,” he said. I lifted my eyes, which I only realized then were shedding tears. “I am not going to let anyone hurt you. I defended you against Lucius once before. If he tries anything, you better believe I’ll do it again. The same goes for anyone else.”

I smiled weakly, and pressed my face against his chest again, holding him tightly.

We eventually made our way to the bed, where I crawled atop him and made out with him hard, rubbing my crotch up and down against his hardening dick, while his hands roved all over my back and felt up my butt. My stiff nipples scraped along his pectorals, sending tingles of excitement up through my boobs.

He rolled me onto my side and cradled me in his arms, holding me to him by my neck and hip as he devoured my mouth, while my hand stroked back and forth from his hair to the side of his neck. My legs fidgeted about, my upper leg stroking along the length of his. And all the while his cock kept poking into my lower belly.

I arched my back when he slid down lower, bringing his mouth down to my tit. My arm fell back away from him and my fingers curled up, digging into the sheets, as my head rolled back and I moaned. He started moving his body down, keeping his suckling mouth fastened to my nipple until the point when his body had simply moved too low to maintain contact there.

He slowly worked his way down, kissing his way along my belly, while I squirmed and panted beneath him. Finally he reached the point he was searching for, giving me the best kind of comfort he could with his mouth between my legs. I gasped sharply, my head snapping back and my fingers digging into his scalp. My body made waves under him like a rug being shaken out.

I ultimately came twice with him going down on me like that, before he lifted his head and rolled me onto my side. With that he came up on my back, spooning up behind me, gripping his cock to aim it at my entrance. I lifted my upper leg as he enveloped me from behind, and with little resistance he slipped inside me.

We made love slowly and tenderly at first. He thrust into me gently from behind, wrapped about my back, his hand seemingly never coming away from my breast and his lips seemingly never coming away from my neck. It was exactly what I needed at that moment; in his arms, with him buried inside me, I felt safe, no matter what was happening outside.

I don’t know how long we went on like that for. It may well have been more than an hour. As far as I was concerned, it could have gone on forever. The longer it went on, the longer I wanted it to. I wished we would never have to leave that room.

It was made even better by the sweet nothings that Jeremy kept whispering in my ear. “You’re safe with me,” he would say. “I’ll hold onto you forever.” My favorite was “I’ll never let you go.” And then there was even an occasional “You’re so beautiful.” That made me feel pretty good, too.

After he finally came, we relaxed and caught our breath, not bothering to take him out. We just stayed like that with his softening dick still inside me, luxuriating in each other.

We eventually fell asleep like that, with him still buried in me. I remember waking up the next morning, blinking at the sunlight streaming through the window, and finding him still spooned up behind me. He had finally slipped out of me during the night, but I was still enveloped in his arms, and we were still together in his bed. That was all I needed for the moment.

I turned in his arms just enough to reach a hand behind his head and play with his hair until he grunted and blinked awake. He smiled at me, and without a word to each other, we kissed.

As I rotated around to put my front to him instead of my back, I started voicing the thoughts I’d had last night. “Can’t we just stay here?” I said. “I don’t want to leave this room. I like it right here, where there’s no packs, no feud… no guy named Lucius watching me.”

Jeremy chuckled a little. “I know how you feel,” he said. “We kind of had that in the woods, didn’t we?”

“Don’t remind me,” I muttered.

“We can stay here for a little longer at least,” he whispered.

I grinned, getting his meaning completely. I threw my arm around his neck and kissed him deeply.

I bent and started kissing all over his chest. I moved up and down and forward and backward and side to side, not missing an inch of his flesh. He ran his fingers through my hair, caressing my scalp, and rubbing his other hand over my back. I started to move lower, coming down to his already stiff cock, grasping it in one hand and cradling his balls with the other as my mouth wrapped hungrily around the head.

I made slow, languid bobbing motions with my head, lifting my eyes to watch his expression as I did. I also kept humming softly around the stiff thing filling my mouth. “Mmm… mmm… mmm…”  He continued to stroke my hair, and then rolled his head back, grunting in appreciation.

I continued blowing him, enjoying the feel of his cock in my mouth, for as long as my pussy could stand to remain empty,. which that morning was not all that long. Pretty soon my cunt was dripping with anticipation, hungry to feel the thing between my lips parting my other lips again. I sat up, giving his shaft a few more soft strokes, as I climbed atop him, straddling his lap. I aimed him at my opening and lowered down.

I breathed hard as I started to ride him, his hands stroking up and down my hips. My hands felt up his rippling abs as I stared down at his eyes, which looked back at me lovingly. I worked my inner muscles, squeezing my pussy walls around his cock, hugging him inside my most intimate of places.

We spent a good long while with me riding him like that, going a little faster than we had gone the night before, but not by much. We were a bit more energized now, and I felt less in need of comforting than I had, but we still wanted to take our time and enjoy this. So we went slow but hard and deliberate, my hips churning on his lap with steady motions. But while my hip motions were steady and rhythmic, the motions of my head and upper body were more all over the place. When his hands came up to grope my boobs, my head rolled about, moaning loudly. Eventually, I did actually start moving faster, starting to get closer to an orgasm and working to get myself off. Jeremy grabbed my hips again, holding on for the ride as I neared my release, gradually going from slow, deliberate motions to starting to ride him like a bucking bronco.

When I came, my back arched and my head threw back, releasing a loud shriek of ecstasy. I was barely aware of his seed erupting up inside me as I became lost in the moment of my orgasm.

After I came down from my climax, I lay flat atop Jeremy’s chest, tenderly kissing and nibbling his neck. He softly stroked my back, moving his fingers up and down my spine, getting low, happy coos out of me.

“As much as I’d like to do otherwise,” he said, “we do have to step outside eventually.”

“Do we have to think about that now?” I whimpered. “I’m in a good mood.”

“We don’t have to do it now,” he said. “Just eventually.”

“‘Eventually’ can take its sweet time for all I care,” I said. “Right now I want to keep you here until I drain you of all your fluids!”

Jeremy groaned as if exasperated, but smiled while doing it. “Work, work, work,” he grinned, and kissed me.