Her Arranged Alpha Husband by Alicia Banks
Chapter 10
Teri
Ben’s words annoyed Teri. When he basically told her that he was looking for a real wife, Teri wanted to hurl words and insults at him. He was taking her from her family, never to go back home again, losing everything and everyone she had ever known. Why couldn’t he see that it was a lot and Teri was hurting because of it? She didn’t want to leave with him, but she had no choice.
Teri watched Ben with his people, and they all deferred to him, even though he was younger than many of them. He was Alpha’s son, soon to have the same title, and they treated him like he was already the leader. Why did Teri like the way they looked at him, like he was going to fix things? She wanted to believe that he was an honest man, her husband, and by the way his own people reacted to him, there was hope that it was true.
She couldn’t show him that she wasn’t anything but annoyed though. Even when Ben had all of her things picked up by others and gave her the space next to him in the front of their entourage, Teri still fought it. She didn’t want to be happy, not until she was done being sad. At the moment, it would appear that she was almost done, because she smiled his way when he asked how she was doing. Teri was having a hell of a time, but she didn’t want to say anything out loud.
“Why aren’t we shifting?” Teri asked. They had a long way to go and if they weren’t going to take regular vehicles, the least they could do was turn into their beasts so that they could go faster. It wouldn’t look any worse than what they all looked like in the woods at the moment. People would wonder what was going on if they were seen.
“We will. I am just waiting to make sure that no one is following us. I don’t want people knowing where we live.”
Teri shrugged. “Who would care?”
Ben grinned. “There are many people that would love to find my location to sneak in at night and start slitting our throats. You are lucky to have lived in Death Valley. No one wants this place. In Divule, it’s different. We have stones and everyone wants them.”
Teri didn’t understand. “Don’t you live in the tundra? Who would want to live there?” she asked, trying to hide the disbelief that anyone would want to live where he was. Maybe they didn’t have enemies, but a leader that was paranoid.
“You would be surprised who wants to live near the Pearls.”
“Pearls?”
Ben agreed and Teri was lost. She had heard stories of ancient artifacts that still held magic and could make everyone around it stronger, but she had never believed that they were real.
“We keep things safe away from the rest of the shifters, to keep the magic and the rest of the world safe. Some tribes don’t like that. They want the power and fighting them off is a full-time job.”
Teri wasn’t sure what to think. It didn’t sound safe, even though she did feel safe when she was around Ben. She didn’t even know him, hadn’t even kissed but once during the service, but she felt like he would keep her safe if it was in his purview to do so. It made Teri feel good in one instance, but all of the chaos she was walking into sounded like more than she’d bargained for.
A man came up to Ben. He was introduced as his friend Mark, and Teri couldn’t take her eyes off of him. Mark was handsome, but that wasn’t why her eyes kept going to him. Instead, it was the way he was looking at her. He looked at her like he didn’t like her, that she was the enemy.
After the two talked and Ben came back to her, she wanted to know why he didn’t like her.
“He doesn’t feel one way or another about you, Teri, I assure you. He just doesn’t like us being in the open. He agrees with you and thinks that we should make our way home in due haste.”
Teri wasn’t in the mood to get to her destination any faster, not after what she had learned about her new home. None of it sounded very good, and she worried about what that was going to mean for him.
“Why would you want to get back home, if that is what we have to look forward to?”
Ben paused and touched her cheek lightly. Teri’s breath hitched in her throat, and she wasn’t sure what to do. “You said we.”
Teri wasn’t paying attention to her words. She was paying attention to the place they were going to. No one in their right mind would want to go there any faster than they already were. Now, she wanted to drag her feet, though Ben informed her that they were safer behind their walls.
Teri hadn’t lived behind walls, and she couldn’t imagine anything that didn’t look like a prison. Her mind was going out of this world and the apprehension was rising. Ben was handsome, kind, but the life that she was walking into sounded scary, really scary.
He must have picked up on something because he pulled her in close and told her that everything was going to be okay before he shifted. It was an intimate moment, so close they could have kissed, but he turned away and instead shifted into a large, brownish-blonde wolf that was twice as big as any other shifter she’d seen before. Who would have known that he was so big and intimidating? Teri was learning more about her husband and her new life and while some of it was hard to take, other parts of it sounded rather nice.
The rest of the pack quickly shifted, following their leader in a quick pace that had Teri breathing hard. She was used to the heat, but that meant she was used to moving slower to conserve energy and breathe. Now, the air was lightening up and so was her desire to go fast. Ben had to come back to her side and encourage her to go faster. When she couldn’t, he slowed down the progression of all of his people, and it made Teri embarrassed. Her man was thoughtful to a fault, and Teri didn’t want his people to hate her. She had to live amongst them after all.
***
They made camp for the night, hundreds of miles away from her home. She was already cold most of the time, and it wasn’t even really cold yet. If it wasn’t suffocatingly hot, Teri didn’t know what to do with herself. She didn’t want to burden her new mate with her problems, but she didn’t have a choice. Teri said nothing to him, and it was like he knew that something was off. Teri didn’t like how observant he was. Nothing was going to get past him.
The tent that was set up for them was cozy, and she didn’t have many places to go but the big bed of furs that occupied most of the surface area. She sat at the edge of the bed, shivering.
“Why don’t you get under the covers?”
Teri shrugged, no real answer. She was nervous about what would happen to her if she got in the bed. Her fear was winning out from the facts and reality that she knew. There was nothing she could do about it.
Ben didn’t wait for an answer. He moved toward her, pulled her into bed with him and spooned her slight body against his larger one. Teri could have sworn that she was instantly heated up. He was like his own source, his own sun, and Teri nestled in against him, content for the first time in a long time. She could feel his hard body, his hard need, but he just growled when she moved, and Teri was asleep moments later.
