AlphavsAlpha

by Francesca Hawley

  But…if he did get her pregnant, she wouldn’t be able to shift in the last three months of her pregnancy. She’d have to assume one form and stick to it. She knew one female who had chosen to remain wolf because she thought the birthing would be easier. It was, but the female was subtly altered after that. It just didn’t work well to remain in animal form for too long a stretch of time.

  Serena surveyed her form to make sure all was well then cocked her canine head at Lea and barked. Lea shrugged, grabbed the pack and helped her into it, fastening it so it wouldn’t fall off.

  “Well, good luck making it home. Will you be going up to see your folks?”

  Serena thought a moment and nodded her head.

  “Okay. I’ll see you Monday. Have a good weekend. Maybe your mom can explain how to handle being Mated to an Alpha.”

  Serena shook her head, licked Lea’s hand affectionately and left. It would take her awhile to run home because she’d have to avoid people as much as possible. She went home this way from time to time, but it wasn’t her preferred method for getting around in Denver. She sighed as she ran. Maybe her mother could explain how to deal with an Alpha male, just in case she ever needed the information.

  Chapter Seven

  The first thing he thought as he slowly surfaced from sleep was that something was missing. Something vital. Damien sighed and his eyes gradually opened. His office was dark and he was alone. That was wrong. He shouldn’t be alone. Despite the darkness, his night vision easily compensated. He rolled onto his back and sat up. The clock on the wall showed 8 p.m.

  He looked down, noting that he was quite nude. He took a deep breath, trying to get oriented and realized what was wrong when the scent of his Mate hit him. He looked around the room. There was no light on in the bathroom that connected to his office. He felt the floor beside him. Her body heat was absent. She’d been gone for quite some time and the bitch hadn’t bothered to wake him up. In fact, she’d probably gone out of her way not to wake him. He started to swear.

  Damien stood and looked for his clothes. They weren’t here. Damn Serena to hell. He went into his bathroom where he kept a spare suit and found that missing too. In its place her bra, garter belt and stockings were hung, with her heels sitting on the floor beneath. He slammed his fist into the door. When he got his hands on her…yada, yada, yada. Suddenly, he smiled. Then he started to laugh. She really was something. God! How completely she’d turned the tables on him, and damn, but he was a lucky wolf. He grinned.

  Chase or Kenyon might still be here, so he tried a joint call to their offices. “Hey, are either of you guys still in the building?”

  “Yeah, we’re here. What’s up?” Chase responded via the intercom.

  “Do you guys have any spare clothes?”

  “Spare clothes?”

  Damien sighed as he heard the barely suppressed laughter in Chase’s voice. They were never going to let him live this one down. “Yes. Clothes. You know those fabric things that humans require we wear in public?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Damien heard Kenyon respond in the background. At least he and Kenyon were about the same size. Chase was a head taller than both of them, and he and Kenyon both stood six-two. Chase also outweighed them by fifty pounds too. He looked as if he’d be more at home in a pro-wrestling ring than a court of law.

  Damien was leaning against his desk, with the light on, when his partners opened the door, bearing clothing. “Gah…” Kenyon paused on the threshold and shook his head. “Jeez. There’s enough musk in here to perfume half of France!”

  “Birds! Too fastidious for my taste. Smells like hot sex in here. Very hot sex. I like it.” Chase took a deep breath to fill his rather expansive chest with the smell of Damien’s mating with Serena. Damien scowled at him. “That’s one hot bitch you found for yourself, my friend. Was the sex as tasty as it smells?” He eyed Damien from head to foot with an insolent grin.

  “It was better. Will you please quite ogling me like an adolescent and hand me some clothes? She ran off and I need to track her.”

  “As strongly as she’s scented, that should present few problems.” Kenyon wrinkled his nose and handed over a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Damien looked at the faded clothes with a long-suffering sigh. Kenyon wouldn’t know fashion if it hit him in the face. If he could get away with jeans and flannel shirts in court, that’s what he’d wear.

  “I need shoes and socks too.” Damien told him while he pulled on the clothes he’d been given. It would have been nice if Kenyon had thought of underwear, but that didn’t appear to be a fashion accessory for the Hawk. Damien carefully eased the steel trap around his cock as he zipped the fly and adjusted himself until he was comfortable. Or at least, as comfortable as he was going to be in Kenyon’s clothes.

  “You could have just shifted. It would have been faster,” Kenyon drawled. Damien glared at the hawk.

  “Right, and have some idiot call the cops because they saw a feral dog? Now that would be smart. It’s easier for a hawk to shift and get out of here with none the wiser, but Chase and I would create hysteria in the streets.” Damien shook his head.

  “Oh…right. You poor, pathetic landlubbers.” Kenyon shrugged with little concern, hiding his smile.

  “Better a landlubber than an airhead.” Chase elbowed Kenyon, nearly knocking him over. The bear rarely pulled a punch with another male, regardless of species.

  “Gentlemen, while I enjoy the Stooges as much as the next man, your entertainment value is rapidly deteriorating.”

  Kenyon rolled his ice-blue eyes at the bear and they turned their gazes back to Damien. “So how are you going to find her?” Chase asked him.

  Damien opened his mouth to respond and found he had nothing to say. He could probably scent her for a while, but he was willing to bet that she’d made a run for it. He might be able to track her back to her office. Possibly even to her home, but he was sure she wouldn’t stay there.

  “Damn. I’m not sure.”

  Chase sighed as he rolled his eyes in exasperation. “She obviously marked you.” He nodded at the scabbed-over wound on Damien’s chest. “By the way, put on a shirt, will ya? Females pant for you, but your hairy chest really doesn’t do anything for me. I’ve seen it before.”

  Damien grabbed the t-shirt and pulled it on. He looked at the front. It was a picture of Pikes Peak and the caption read, Rocky Mountain High. He sighed. He had to go home and get changed before the bad taste rubbed off.

  “So what’s your point, Chase?”

  “Knowing you, and I do, you marked her too. Right?”

  Damien nodded.

  “She’s your True Mate?”

  “True Mate? Whoa…” Kenyon whistled.

  “Yes, she is. Cut to the chase…Chase.”

  “Just for that, I’ll let you figure it out.”

  “Just spit it out, Bear!”

  “If you marked each other and you are True Mates, then you’re going to start sensing each other. Feel each other’s emotions…thoughts. If you focus, you’ll know exactly where your bitch is. If you are very lucky, she won’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late, so you can get to her before she starts focusing on you.”

  Damien smiled. Then he grinned. Finally he started to laugh. She was so screwed and she didn’t even know it! He was going to find her, and when he did, he was going to make sure she never left him again.

  “How do I do this?”

  Chase shrugged at his question. “I haven’t found my True Mate either, you know. I just know my parents never had to talk about anything. They would just stare at each other then look at us cubs, and there’d be hell to pay.”

  Damien tried to reach out for her and picked up a flash of an image. She was grabbing clothes out of drawers and throwing things on a bed. He could see that she was packing an overnight bag. She seemed a little frantic. Almost scared. He frowned as the image slipped away. She shouldn’t be scared of him. Damn it, he didn’t want that even if he did want payback
for her abandoning him without a stitch.

  “Unpleasant thoughts?” Kenyon’s deep mellow voice brought him back to reality.

  “Shit. She seemed scared. I don’t want my Mate scared of me!” Damien frowned.

  “It must have been some seriously hot sex. I’ve known females who can’t deal with the aftermath of hot sex. They get all freaked out and run off.” Damien cocked his head and thought about Chase’s observation.

  Could it be the intensity of their mating she was frightened of, or was it him? He focused on Serena again. She seemed to be done packing and was staring around the bedroom, lost in thought. He tried to focus on what she was feeling. Confusion, he could definitely feel that. Desire, definitely. She was blushing and he knew she was thinking about him. He waited to see if she would realize he was connected with her, but she didn’t. She licked her lips, but then shook her head. Again he felt a wash of fear from her.

  Fuck! Maybe it was the sex that was freaking her out. Yet, it didn’t feel as if it was sex that scared her. It seemed as though there was something significant about sex with him that was the issue, but he’d only caught the edge of it. He reached for her again. She grabbed a purse and went through the front door. She locked it and headed for her car. He could feel a driving need in her to go home and talk to her mother. Somehow, her mother could explain everything.

  He blinked as he felt himself shoved from her thoughts. He reached again but found she’d blocked him. Had she realized? No, there hadn’t been anything like that in her thoughts. He realized that she had focused on driving and it was her focus that had pushed him away from her. All he had to do was give her some time to get out of the city, and he could find her again. In the meantime, he could probably look up the Goldwolf family on the internet and find out where they lived to follow her home.

  “I know that look. He’s got something.” Kenyon nudged Chase.

  “She’s going home to her mother.” Damien told them absently as he sat down at his desk and started his computer. He drummed his fingers as he waited for it to load.

  “She has sex with you and then goes home to her mother?” Chase hooted with laughter. Damien shot him a death look, which he ignored. “Don’t threaten me, boyo. You’d need your whole pack to take me out.”

  Damien growled and shook his head in disgust. He focused on the computer, pulling up the internet, and started to search for an address. He kept running into blind alleys. He found a link then it would be nothing or it would be broken.

  He wished Rosalie were there to do this searching, she was much better at this kind of shit. She always told him that she was underpaid and underappreciated, but cousins are supposed to say that. Apparently, she was correct.

  Just when he was ready to throw the computer across the room, he got a hit. He found an address out in the middle of nowhere for a Dr. Quinn Goldwolf. When he found a listing at the same address for a slew of other Goldwolfs, including Andrew and Ginger, he knew he’d found her lair. He just knew at gut level that Andrew and Ginger were Serena’s parents.

  He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. She had relaxed and her mind let him find his way back. He winced. She was singing along to John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High. Life was not kind. She just had to be a country music fan, didn’t she?

  “What’s wrong?” the hawk asked.

  He looked at Kenyon, looked down at the design on the shirt, and sighed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Chapter Eight

  Serena pulled up to the gates of her clan’s compound with a sigh of relief. She’d gotten here before he caught her. She didn’t know why she thought he was following her. She’d started to feel like that while she was packing to head home. It was as if she’d gotten this emotional flash that she could run but she couldn’t hide. It scared her. She didn’t want to deal with him right now.

  She sighed and drove toward home. It was 9 p.m. and she was as safe as she was going to be. If Damien showed up, her father would hand her over without a murmur, let alone a bark. All Damien would have to say was he was her wolf and she was his bitch. It would be more than enough for her father. Still, she had needed to come home and see her mother. Her parents were True Mates and maybe her mother could help her get used to the idea of submitting to a male, if Damien really was her Mate. She still wasn’t certain, but not being near him hurt…as if a vital organ had been removed. Just fanciful thoughts really, but against all common sense, she missed him.

  Through the years, she’d watched her mother always do whatever her father had decreed, and it bugged Serena. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life living by Damien’s commands. How could her mother stand it? Serena needed to know the answer to that question if she had any hope of surviving this relationship as an independent female. What terrified her the most was that she wouldn’t have a choice. She’d just bow to his orders and lose herself in him and never be Serena again. She shuddered. She’d rather be dead.

  She followed the winding road onto clan lands with a sense of homecoming. As she headed west, she passed various small homes that housed the Goldwolf families who lived here. She waved when she saw those she knew. She reached her parents’ place in the center of what passed for a town out here. It was a large old Victorian. Her parents had hoped to fill it with pups, but there’d been just her. She knew her father regretted not having a son, despite designating her cousin Quinn as his heir.

  She parked and went up to the house. She opened the door and heard voices in the kitchen. She frowned as she recognized Quillen’s whine. She strode through to the kitchen and entered to hear him blaming her for the whole mess.

  “Serena fired me for no reason! It isn’t fair! I’m a good worker and I was doing a really good job this time, Quinn. Really! It’s all her fault that wolf was complaining.”

  “My fault? You lying little worm!” She growled, crossing the room to stand over her cousin, who cowered in the face of her wrath.

  “What’s going on, Serena?”

  Quinn looked tired as he brushed lank dark-gold hair off his forehead with a sigh. Serena frowned because he looked like hell. There were circles under his eyes and he seemed nervous. It was so unlike her cousin that she stopped wanting to kill Quillen and hug Quinn instead, but she paused because she knew he wouldn’t want her to draw attention to him.

  “Your whiny little brother set one of our clients up with…someone completely inappropriate. So, I fired him.”

  “Serena, you gave him a chance before. Can’t you try again?” her mother asked from the kitchen sink where she was calmly washing dishes.

  Serena bit her lip to keep from screeching. She was still too tense for this dramatic crap. “No, Mother. I can not give him another try and I will not.” She turned to her young cousin. “You brought this on yourself with your ill-timed and idiotic sense of humor.”

  “Just because some bitch was inappropriate, doesn’t mean that Quillen should be fired,” Quinn countered as he leaned against the wall behind Serena’s father.

  Serena took a deep breath. She hadn’t wanted to go there because she knew how it upset Quinn, however, it would seem she had no choice. “Inappropriate doesn’t begin to cover it. Does it Quillen?”

  “He’s a prick. He deserved it. Just because he screwed you blind today doesn’t mean anything!” Quillen smirked at her. She was going to slap that smirk off his face if he kept it up.

  “I don’t care if he is the most arrogant bastard on the planet, and he is. That is no excuse for setting him up to go out with Joyce Blackwolf.”

  Quinn stiffened as if shot. The look he shot his younger brother made Quillen cringe and look for cover. “He did what?”

  Serena winced. Quinn hadn’t shouted—he’d gone quiet. That was very bad. If Quinn shouted and blustered, he could be managed. When he went quiet, there’d be hell to pay. Thank God it wasn’t she who would be paying it.

  “He set Damien Blackwolf up with Joyce Blackwolf. They aren’t from the same family clan so
he had no idea what he was getting into. You might have heard of Damien Blackwolf. He’s the Blackwolf from Blackwolf, Goldbear and Whitehawk.”

  “The law firm from hell?” Quinn hissed. Serena nodded. “You stupid, freaking idiot!” He turned on his younger brother. “Why? Because he’s a prick? So what? You’ll be lucky if the bastard doesn’t sue you or get the DA to charge you with attempted murder with a deadly weapon.”

  Quillen looked rather pathetic, and Serena felt sorry for him. “It’s not my fault, Quinn. Really.”

  “What did I do wrong? I tried to raise you right after Mom and Dad died. What more could I have done?” He dropped his head into his hands and pulled on his hair. It was predictable that he would accept responsibility for Quillen, but this emotional behavior wasn’t at all like him.

  Serena frowned. “What more could you have done? Start by letting him take the consequences of his own actions, Quinn. It is time for Quillen to try to fix his own mess. He’s been irresponsible for far too long.” She turned to Quillen. “I gave you a chance when everyone else had given up, and you do this. It’s time for you to go out into the world and try to survive on your own. Go to college. Do something. You’ve been a pup long enough,” Serena told him. He frowned at her.

  “You aren’t my pack leader. I don’t have to do what you say.”

  “She’s my daughter, pup. Give her respect! She’s also right. I suggest you get your things together and start the application process to college. If you’re accepted, I’ll contact a Goldwolf pack to provide you some assistance—but assistance only. You won’t sponge off them.”

  Quillen gasped and ran from the room. She tended to forget he was so young. He was only just nineteen and it definitely showed.

  She sighed and Quinn did too. “I’d better go calm him down.” Her cousin shook his head and went in search of his errant younger brother.