The Alpha's Mage

by Claire Cullen

  “No one ever said wolves were smart,” the mage threw back. “Everyone knows you think with your… stomachs… and not your heads.” His gaze was very firmly fixed on Knox’s crotch, telling him exactly what shifter ‘appetite’ Lorcan had heard about.

  “Enough talking.”

  If they kept this up, the sun would be long up before they had a chance to close their eyes.

  He dropped to his knees behind the mage, slid a hand into his hair to hold his head steady, and then took a closer look at the bite. It was deep enough to break the skin but not enough to penetrate the mating gland nestled underneath. The bite was known to be exquisitely painful unless it was given the traditional way, during sex. Done right, it was rumored to be the most pleasurable sensation for both giver and receiver.

  With a sigh, he leaned in, inhaling the mage’s scent and getting the acrid smell of the wolf who’d marked him. Knox didn’t like that one bit. His wolf reared its head at the affront of another wolf biting his mage. He opened his mouth and licked a long stripe across the nape of Lorcan’s neck, ignoring the mage’s jolt of surprise.

  “What— What are you…?”

  Knox licked him again, covering every inch of the mark with his own scent and removing all trace of the interloper.

  “It’ll heal faster this way.”

  He stuck his thumb in the jar, coating it with the salve, and then spread it carefully over the bite. He took the time to work it into the wound, drawing little sounds of almost-pain and not-quite-pleasure from the mage.

  “There. Done. Time to sleep.”

  He got up, pulling the mage with him and shoving him toward the bed. Halfway there, Lorcan began to resist again, pushing back against him.

  “Wait— I—”

  “We’re sleeping,” Knox told him, leaving no room for argument. “You can sleep in my bed, or you can sleep on the floor. Your choice.”

  Steely eyes met his.

  “I’ll take the floor.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Knox gave him a little shove toward the corner he’d been sitting in earlier and turned toward the bed, shedding his clothes and letting them fall in a heap on the ground. He climbed into bed and turned his back to the mage.

  “Try to leave this hut, and I will drag you back and hogtie you.”

  There was no reply to his warning, but he decided it couldn’t hurt to balance his threat with a little kindness. He tossed a pillow Lorcan’s way and followed it up with a blanket.

  “Sleep. Tomorrow, I’ll show you around.”

  He regretted giving Lorcan the choice to sleep on the floor. It would have been easier to watch over him from the bed. That, and Lorcan wasn’t exactly unpleasant to be close to. Gage was right—something about Lorcan’s magic called to him, pulled him in. It was a pity his wolf seemed to have the opposite effect on the mage. They’d learn to live with each other, in time.

  3

  Lorcan didn’t sleep, not at first. He sat upright, not taking his gaze from the wolf on the bed. The alpha was facing away from him, so all he could see was dark hair even more unruly than his own. This was Knox. The wolf who’d grabbed him at the edge of Maken Pack’s land. He’d stolen him from right under Colt’s nose. Colt was the alpha Lorcan had been assigned to for training. He’d been too busy with his girlfriend to notice the wolves sneaking into pack territory. That was the one positive about being abducted—not having to listen to the two of them going at it like rabbits. He’d heard that wolves’ appetites were insatiable. Knowing was one thing. Having it rubbed in his face day after day while he cut his fingers to shreds with pieces of flint trying to do magic ‘the sorcerer way’ was another.

  The wolf rolled over in the bed, and Lorcan froze. Nothing happened, Knox’s breathing still deep and even. Lorcan wanted to run, but where his mind was willing, his body was tired. He hadn’t slept since his abduction, too on edge surrounded by a new pack whose rules he couldn’t even begin to guess. Things hadn’t gone the way they’d said, either. Gage had told him that once he settled in, he’d meet all their alphas and bond with the most suitable one. All that had been thrown by the wayside in the wake of his escape attempt. He thought he’d have more time, but now his chosen wolf was literally feet away from him. Though Knox was asleep, there was a tension in the wolf’s body that told him he wouldn’t get far without the alpha taking notice.

  The mark on the back of his neck tingled, reminding him of its existence and the speed at which it was now fading. At most, he had a few days before it was gone. Then Knox would…

  It didn’t sound as if the pack was planning on a temporary bond to train him in. They seemed to badly need another mage. Not for the first time, Lorcan wished he understood more about the wolves and their hierarchy. And that he hadn’t had such a sheltered upbringing. His family had never hidden the truth of his curse from him, but there was knowing he would be in danger if he was ever found out, and then there was being in danger. All of this had happened because he was valuable to powerful people who weren’t above selling their own blood kin. And that was before he’d been abducted by Knox’s pack. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just been thrown from frying pan to fire, and all he knew about wolves and packs could be summed up in a few sentences. He was in over his head and days away from being bonded to a feral—

  Knox’s voice cut across the room, loud in the quiet of the early morning.

  “Sleep comes easier if you close your eyes.”

  How…? Knox wasn’t even looking his way. Grumbling under his breath, he tugged the pillow closer and laid his head down on it, drawing the blanket over him as he stretched out. When he woke, it would be another day, another chance to think of an escape, a way to slip past his newest guard dog.

  “Eat,” Knox grunted. “We won’t stop again until dinner.”

  It was midday, the sun bright overhead, but Knox acted like it was normal to wake at lunchtime instead of dawn. Maybe, for him, it was.

  Lorcan was still sitting in ‘his’ corner of the hut, a plate of scrambled eggs and a slice of toast balanced on his thighs. It wasn’t much, and it didn’t look particularly appetizing, but Knox ate the same food, chowing down with gusto. Well, if he was planning to escape again, he’d need magic. Magic required energy. Scrambled eggs and toast weren’t the worst he’d been fed.

  Knox finished while he was still eating, the alpha getting up to stare at himself in the cracked mirror hanging crooked on the hut’s wall. He had a serious bed head going on, his hair sticking every which way. He ran his fingers through it in an effort to tame it. Lorcan swallowed a snort of laughter at the alpha’s futile attempts. Every time he flattened a strand, it bounced right back up again.

  The alpha’s gaze flicked his way, and Lorcan dropped his eyes, focusing on his food.

  “Finish up. We need to get going.”

  Lorcan ate one more forkful of egg, chewed the last burnt corner of toast, and washed it down with a few mouthfuls of water. Then he stood, straightening his wrinkled clothes and trying to pretend he looked presentable.

  “Let’s go.”

  Knox walked out without another word, leaving Lorcan to scramble after him.

  “Where are we going?”

  He didn’t think Knox was going to answer as the alpha strode through the trees ahead of him while Lorcan rushed to catch up. Knox slowed his pace only slightly.

  “Walking the boundary.”

  “Why?”

  He probably shouldn’t be asking so many questions, but he was nothing if not curious. The more he knew, the better his chances of escaping.

  “I’m the watcher.”

  Three wolves appeared from the trees, padding alongside them.

  “And them?”

  “My betas.”

  “Your betas?”

  Knox gave him a flat look that spoke volumes. His lack of knowledge was impressing no one.

  “The beta watchers of our pack. They follow my command.”

  “But I thought
Gage was the alpha.”

  “He is Alpha. Our alpha leader. His word is law.”

  Twenty lashes. The echo of the words in his head made him shiver.

  Knox didn’t seem to notice as he continued his explanation. “Every other alpha in our pack has a different jurisdiction. As watcher, it’s my job to guard our boundary.”

  “And the others?” He’d counted at least two more alphas besides Gage the previous night.

  “Ro—Ronan—is our enforcer. He’s in charge of discipline within the pack. Makes sure things work as they should. Declan’s our hunter. He and his betas hunt for what our pack needs—food, mostly. They also defend the pack and lead attacks on our enemies, backed by the enforcers. Not that we do much attacking these days.”

  Lorcan thought he’d glimpsed a fifth alpha, back when he’d first arrived in the pack. Knox didn’t mention another, though, so maybe he was mistaken.

  “Your territory must be large.”

  They didn’t appear to be a small pack, though Lorcan had seen far more wolves than people.

  “We don’t have as much space as Gage would like. It gets encroached on more and more as the years pass. But then, that’s the tightrope we walk between the wolf and human world. Being close to town is a necessary evil, but it comes with constraints on our territory.”

  Town? He’d lost some time between being taken from Maken Pack and brought here, but could it be…

  “Hartstown?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  He almost laughed.

  “You make a habit of stealing from your neighbors?”

  The sharp look Knox sent his way nearly made him stumble.

  “Our need is greater than theirs.”

  “The refrain of thieves throughout history.”

  Knox just grinned.

  “So we’re… southeast of Hartstown?”

  Maken Pack’s territory was west of town, which left only one possibility.

  “You’ve heard of our pack, then.”

  “Hartstown only has the two.” Maken Pack was the biggest and the most well-known pack in the county. Samhain Pack didn’t have much of a reputation, at least not that he’d ever heard his family mention. But if he was in Samhain Pack, that meant he was practically home. If he’d run north instead of east last night, he might have made it…

  “Fuck.”

  Knox’s curse distracted him from thinking about how close he’d come to escaping. In front of his eyes, the alpha transformed. He’d never seen anyone in Maken Pack shift. Shocked, he found he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the visceral spectacle. There was magic there, sure, but it was primal, born of blood and beast. A hundred questions skittered through his mind—did it hurt? Was it always that much effort? Where the heck did Knox’s clothes go? And then it was over.

  In place of the lean, broad-shouldered man was a huge wolf, his coat dappled gray and white. Lorcan hung back, watching as Knox moved forward with purpose, nose to the ground as if tracking something. At some unseen signal, his beta wolves spread out through the trees. Their fur stood on end, their ears perked. Something had them rattled, and it was rattling Lorcan in turn. Wolf magic wasn’t druid magic, so the most Lorcan could sense was that they were near the magical barrier he’d approached the previous night. The pack’s boundary. He made to follow Knox, but the wolf turned back and growled at him, the sound rooting Lorcan’s feet to the forest floor.

  “I’ll just wait here, then,” he muttered.

  The wolves moved beyond his view, though he caught sight of them through the trees now and then. He had the sense they were communicating on some level beyond what he could see and hear, and he added that to his growing list of questions. At least Knox might answer a few. Colt had ignored any word out of Lorcan’s mouth that wasn’t ‘yes, alpha.’ Bastard.

  Knox returned after a while, only one other wolf trailing him. He paused in front of Lorcan, and then he was shifting again until a barefoot, jeans-clad alpha stood facing him.

  Lorcan stared, wide-eyed, and blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

  “How come your clothes don’t… you know?”

  Knox raised an eyebrow, unimpressed by the question. “Some wolves can incorporate them in their shift if they concentrate. Beats tearing everything you own to shreds when you forget to undress. Besides, it’s a bitch to get tattered jeans off with your paws.”

  Lorcan pictured Knox’s wolf struggling with the remnants of his clothes and stifled a laugh. The sharp look aimed his way said he wasn’t all that successful at hiding his amusement.

  Knox turned away and started walking. “I need to go talk to Gage. Keep up.”

  Lorcan decided to stow the rest of his questions for later, hurrying to catch up with Knox. The alpha strode quickly through the trees, a wolf on his heels. A second wolf emerged from the forest and joined them. Its unusual red fur stood out. It wasn’t one of the three who’d been with them earlier. Had Knox left some at the boundary?

  The wolves’ earlier reactions—their fur standing on end, their ears pricked—suggested that something had been wrong, but he was at a loss as to what. Then again, Maken Pack had been obsessed with their boundary and the magic that sustained it. Was it really a surprise that Samhain Pack was no different?

  4

  It was the third break in the boundary in less than a month. There’d been no denying the problem they faced after Joel, but Knox thought they’d at least bought themselves some time with the reinforcement Orion had put in place after the last full moon. The two-foot gap said it hadn’t secured them as much time as they’d hoped. And the traces of magic nearby said someone or something had already taken notice.

  Lorcan lagged behind as they made their way to the center of the pack. Knox kept one ear on him, his mind preoccupied with the boundary. They needed it whole, but the magic required was beyond Orion’s abilities these days. He couldn’t blame the old mage. Orion had been holding the pack together with the magical equivalent of duct tape for far too long. This wasn’t his fault. It was theirs. They’d had a responsibility to bring other mages into the pack’s fold. That they’d failed miserably at that in the past five years was a shame that weighed heavily on his shoulders. Gage’s, too. Declan still wasn’t over Jasper, or so Athena had hinted more than once. But the rest of them had no excuse.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. All that had happened before Gage became leader had left the pack’s reputation in tatters. That, and you couldn’t bring back what wasn’t there to be found. Mages weren’t exactly growing on trees these days.

  He stopped outside the main pack house, turning to wait for Lorcan to catch up.

  “Stay here. Don’t wander. If I look out, I better be able to see you.”

  “Look out from where?”

  Knox glowered.

  “Don’t be a smartass.” He pointed to an old tree trunk that had long ago been carved into a seat. “Sit down and don’t move.”

  “What if I need to stretch my legs?”

  “Then do it sitting down.”

  He crossed his arms and waited Lorcan out. The mage finally shrugged and stomped over to the trunk, lowering himself to sit cross-legged on it.

  “Happy now?”

  “Ecstatic,” Knox said flatly. He nodded for Lee to keep an eye on Lorcan. Once the wolf had settled down in the long grass nearby, he headed inside.

  The temperature dropped a few degrees now that he was out of the sun, but it didn’t do much to soothe his frayed temper. He found Gage in his office, surrounded by paper. The place always looked like a bomb had hit it.

  “The boundary’s fucked. A gap out near the otter creek. Something’s already found it,” he said.

  “Something?”

  He almost jumped at the sound of Orion’s voice and glanced over his shoulder to see the old mage sitting in the chair by the window, his eyes closed.

  “Couldn’t tell what. Its scent was masked, and it had hidden its tracks.”

  He only knew it had
been there because he knew the boundary like the back of his hand. The trail had been wiped clean, but he could sense the magic that had been used to hide it.

  “How wide?” Gage asked.

  “Two feet.”

  “Put a guard…”

  “Already done.”

  Gage glanced Orion’s way, but the mage shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do about it now. At the next full moon, maybe…”

  That would take too long.

  “What about Lorcan?” Knox asked.

  “What about him?” Gage was still watching Orion, something indecipherable on his face.

  The old mage spoke.

  “Lorcan’s magic won’t be any use to us until he forms at least a temporary bond with you or another alpha.”

  Orion wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know.

  “Isn’t there some way to speed up the process?”

  “You mean the healing of the previous bite? The salve I gave you…”

  “That’s still at least three days before he can take my bond bite. A lot can happen in three days. That may not be the only weakness in the boundary.”

  And whatever had found it might not be the only predator watching them. They were like vultures circling a dying lion. Their pack was vulnerable—and worse, outsiders knew it.

  “The limitation isn’t just the physical healing, it’s the bond magic,” Orion explained. “Biting him now won’t do any good.”

  “What about the other way?”

  Now he had both Orion and Gage’s full attention. Huh, he’d finally said something truly interesting.

  “Sexual contact will form a temporary bond, with or without a bond bite,” Orion agreed.

  “How much sex are we talking about?”

  It wasn’t that Lorcan didn’t hit all his buttons because the mage definitely did, but so far it was hard to tell if the attraction was mutual.

  “There must be skin to skin contact. You’d both need to find release. A full bond needs… well, we all know what it needs. But a temporary one just requires mutual satisfaction.”