Enslaved by the Alpha (Shifters of Nunavut Book 2)

by Rivard, Viola

  She staggered to her feet, wobbling a little, but managing to hold her ground. Sabine’s pelt had fallen off and her clothes were covered in snow. She was able to find the pelt a few feet away, but by the time she wrapped it around herself, her clothes felt heavy and her skin was growing damp.

  When backtracking proved impossible, she began to call out for the others, yelling at the top of her voice. The air was so cold that it burned her lungs and her voice quickly became small and hoarse.

  If time had felt slow before, it had now petered into a crawl. Lost in a never-ending sea of white, she thought that this must be what purgatory felt like. Or the ninth circle of hell.

  She fell several times. Each time, it was harder to get up and eventually she gave up trying to walk against the storm. She covered herself in Sabine’s pelt, pulling it over her head to use it as a makeshift tent.

  Underneath the pelt, she was spared from the brunt of the storm, but her body still trembled uncontrollably. She remained like that for a while, her thoughts scattered. For once, she tried not to think of what might happen to her, and instead focused on getting through each moment. Anything else would have been too terrifying.

  The wind beat fiercely against her. A particularly strong gust slammed against the pelt, seizing it from the grip of her numb fingers. Astrid watched as the pelt was tossed into the air and then carried away. She tried running after it, but her legs quickly grew tired.

  She bent, putting her hands on her knees and trying to catch her breath. Her lungs were burning, and she couldn’t think of what to do next. She wondered if Sabine had come back for her already, or if she’d still be in the same position if she had stayed put.

  A large shadow appeared up ahead, then several more behind it. Astrid’s heart leapt and renewed energy rushed through her tired limbs. She stumbled forward, weakly calling out to the wolves. They didn’t seem to hear her small voice over the wind and she could only hope that they would catch her scent.

  Suddenly, hands seized her from behind. One pinned her at the waist, pulling her back against a hard body. The other covered her mouth. She tried screaming and even bit down on the offending hand, but they only held her more tightly.

  Her struggling stopped abruptly as the figures came into focus. The shadows she had seen were just that—but not of wolves. No less than two-dozen bears trudged through the snow. Their heads were bowed and they didn’t seemed to notice Astrid. Even so, she broke out into a cold sweat.

  Long after the bears disappeared into the storm, Astrid remained still. When her captor loosened his grip, she slumped against him. He removed his hand.

  “Keep your voice down. They’re still close.”

  She recognized his scent a few seconds before he spoke, and she was already turning to fling her arms around Erik’s chest. He pulled her close, and the hand that had been silencing her now cradled the back of her head.

  “Where are the others?” she whispered.

  “When I find them,” he said in a low voice, “they’ll be dead.”

  ***

  So far as he knew, none of his wolves were dead by the time Erik reached his den. He had not wasted time trying to find them and at present, he didn’t particularly care if the whole worthless lot of them was mauled by bear shifters.

  In the face of an impending storm, he and Sten had decided to return to the den after only a day of searching. Erik’s logic had been that the pack would need his guidance if the storm did not quickly abate, though his wolf had wanted to return for an entirely different reason.

  Half a day out, he had realized that he could be gone a while. He had known this before he left, but after hours away from his den, reality had crashed into him. He could be away for days, or a week, all the while leaving the human’s wellbeing in the hands of Sabine. And what if another male was bold enough to try and claim her for himself while Erik was away?

  While his wolf thrashed within him, Erik had pressed on, if only to prove that he wasn’t prioritizing his need to mate over his pack. But the moment Sten had suggested they turn back, Erik had readily agreed. Now, he could see that his concerns were not at all unfounded.

  Several wolves tried to approach him as he passed through the main room. He warned them back with a growl and headed for his chamber.

  Cloistered in the small, familiar room, he removed her wet clothes and did a quick visual sweep of her body. Her extremities were reddened, but while they appeared painful, it was not a color that was cause for concern. The wound on her head bothered him more. It was obscured beneath her hair and although the bleeding had mostly stopped, he knew that head wounds could be deceptive.

  “I’m really not in the mood right now,” she said, pushing a hand against his chest. It took him a minute to figure out what she was talking about.

  “You think I’m trying to mate with you?” He asked, his lips twitching.

  “Well, you did take my clothes off.”

  Her voice was hoarse and she didn’t open her eyes as she spoke. Erik pulled her into his lap and threw a stitched muskox pelt around them both, encasing her in his warmth.

  “I thought I was going to die out there,” she said, nuzzling her cheek against his chest.

  He combed through her hair with his fingers. “You always think you are going to die, yet here you are.”

  The female had nine lives, to be sure.

  “How did you find me? I couldn’t see anything out there.”

  Happenstance. Pure happenstance.

  On the way back to the den, Erik had caught the scent of another roaming bear tribe, this one headed even closer to the den than the last. He and Sten had split up, with Erik tracking the bears and his brother heading back to the den to alert the others. Upwind of her, he had not even smelled the human until he was nearly upon her, and even then, he’d barely reached her before she’d exposed herself to the bears. They might not have killed her, but they would have killed Erik had he tried to reclaim her.

  In that instance, as he’d held her tightly against him and watched the herd of bears pass, Erik had rediscovered what it meant to be afraid. It had been something he’d thought that he had left behind in his tumultuous youth.

  “It doesn’t matter. What I want to know is how you ended up out there.”

  He’d been so absorbed with getting her to safety that he’d overlooked the obvious question.

  “I went out on a hunt with the betas.”

  What. The. Fuck.

  “In a snowstorm?” he asked, each syllable dripping with contempt.

  She looked up at him through bleary eyes. “It wasn’t snowing that badly when we left.”

  “How did you end up alone?”

  “I wasn’t at first. I was with Sylvestre and Sabine, but they heard a howl and went to meet up with the other wolves. Sabine said she’d be right back, but…” she trailed off, nervously chewing on her lip. “It was my fault. I should have waited for her. I mean, I did wait for her for a while, but… Please stop looking at me like that. I can’t tell who you’re mad at and I don’t think you should be mad at anyone because it was an accident.”

  “I am not angry with you,” he said, feeling the need to reassure her.

  He lay down on the furs, bringing her with him. She turned, so that her back was against his chest. He placed a hand flat on her belly and pulled her close. The feel of her naked body pressed against his made Erik’s cock stir, but he ignored it for now. Once she’d gotten some rest, all bets would be off.

  “Erik… Why are you doing this?”

  “Holding you?” he asked. “So you don’t freeze to death.”

  “It’s the way you hold me…” She paused, and Erik could hear her pulse quicken. “The way you stroke my hair… The way you talk to me now, it’s different than it was before. You’re different than you were before.”

  “Would you rather I treat you as I did before?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I mean…damn, I don’t know.” She rubbed her fac
e. “It’s confusing. You were such an asshole towards me and now you’re taking care of me and being sort of nice. You’re confusing me. I don’t know what you want or what you expect from me.”

  Erik sat up, feeling his temper flare once again. This time, he was pissed with her, but also with himself.

  “I don’t know,” he said flatly. “Every logical part of me wants to drag you across the tundra and drop you at Zane’s doorstep.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  “Because you’re my mate.”

  She shook her head. “No, Erik, I’m not your mate and I never will be.” Her chin was trembling, and he thought she was cold until tears began to well in her eyes. “I don’t even want to be your mate. That sounds awful. I can’t think of anything worse.”

  He kissed her hard on the lips. Her hands flew to his head, but instead of pushing him away, she laced her fingers in his hair and pulled him closer. Her tongue slipped into his mouth, and her tenacious exploration sent hot waves of pleasure undulating through his body.

  Erik flexed his hips against her, and he knew from the way his blood was pounding and his cock was throbbing that he wouldn’t be able to stop. He had to be inside of her, to give her so much of himself that she couldn’t deny him.

  Hours later, she was curled against him like a contented kitten. After everything she’d been through, he expected her to fall right to sleep after mating, but of course, she asked for food.

  “You’ll be asleep by the time I get back with anything,” he grumbled, wanting to rest himself.

  “No I won’t. It’s hard for me to fall asleep when I’m hungry.”

  He put a hand over her face. “Then you should get some practice.”

  “Ha, ha,” she said, brushing his hand away. “Is that anyway to treat your mate?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “So you admit that you are my mate?”

  “No, I’m saying that you think I’m your mate, so you should probably treat me as such.”

  “Hmm,” he murmured in mock contemplation. “So if you were not my mate, I would be under no obligation to feed you and could stay here and go to sleep.”

  She laughed. “Only if you can sleep with me jabbing my elbow into your ribcage.”

  Erik nipped her neck, pressing his canines down hard enough to make her gasp. It was a gentle reminder that he was still in charge.

  He sat up, pausing to appreciate the sight of her naked body. He felt a slight inclination to take her again, but it was easy to dismiss. She was his, and she would warm his bed for countless nights to come.

  “I will get you food, human. You better be awake when I get back.”

  In his room, Erik had been cocooned by warmth and immersed in her scent. It wasn’t until he was out in the frigid tunnel that he remembered how pissed off he was. It didn’t help that he could smell Sabine’s scent up ahead.

  Arms crossed, she was leaning back against the wall where the tunnels forked, one leading towards Erik’s room, the other towards the main room. He wondered how long she’d been there, and if she’d been close enough to listen in on him.

  “Beau went to the den to see if Astrid had made her way here,” she started. “I only came back when he returned to let me know that you’d found her. I searched for hours. You have to know that I didn’t intend on—”

  “But you are disappointed that she’s alive.”

  The words came out calmer than he’d anticipated, and Erik was glad he’d stayed with the human, rather than immediately leaving to confront Sabine. It had given him time to rationalize the situation and plan ahead as to how to handle it.

  To her credit, Sabine didn’t lie. Shrugging stiffly, she said, “You must see how she’s impacting your judgment. And for what? She’s not going to give you offspring. She’ll continue to leech on our resources and it won’t be long before you start compromising the pack for her.”

  Erik placed his hands on either side of her, moving so quickly that she flinched. “You were supposed to be watching her, and instead you removed her from the safety of the den and left her alone in the middle of a storm. If I were going to compromise the pack for her, I would start by ripping your throat out.”

  Her eyes widened. “You don’t mean that. I know you don’t.” She ran a hand down his chest. “This has gone on long enough. Send her away, so that things can go back to the way they were before.”

  Sabine’s hand wrapped around his cock. It instinctively hardened and he pressed his body against her, crushing her against the wall. She lifted one leg to his hip, urging him between her thighs.

  Erik remained still, waiting until she worked up the nerve to meet his gaze. Then, he wrapped his hand around her neck.

  “The only reason I haven’t killed you is because your irresponsibility aside, you are an asset to this pack,” he said. “But I am through with you. Today was the last day I trusted you.”

  He let her go and backed away, serving her a final, cold look, before turning and heading back towards his room.

  Astrid could wait to eat. Right now, he needed to get Sabine’s scent off his body.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Erik had eventually fed her, but not until after a few more vigorous climaxes. She’d passed out shortly after eating, falling into a deep, drooling slumber. He’d lain awake for a while, watching her and trying to figure out what it was about her that appealed to him so much.

  He liked to think that he hadn’t developed such a powerful attraction to her merely because she was the first human female he’d brought back to his den. There had to be more to it than that.

  But he couldn’t pinpoint any one quality of hers that he particularly liked. In fact, he counted more that he disliked. She was often defiant, and flagrantly disrespectful. She lied often and cried far too easily for his tastes. And most offensive of all, she was physically weak.

  By rights, he should not have cared for her in the slightest. But then there were isolated moments, like tonight, where their bodies were spent from mating. She would drift to sleep, clinging to him so tightly, as though she needed to hold onto him to find her way back to reality. During those moments, he felt as though everything in the world was as it should be.

  She claimed not to love him, yet when she had told him that they were not mates and her eyes had filled with tears, they had also filled with a quiet desperation. Was it a plea for him to let her go, or draw her in closer?

  Erik would do neither. For all he had changed to accommodate her, he would never be able to love her, not in any conventional sense.

  The concept of love was too foreign to him. It had never existed between his parents. His father had come from a time when humans had still feared their kind. Back then, it had been both easy and advantageous to take multiple mates and sire many pups. His mother had been incredibly willful—something his father had never been tolerant of. Their clash of personalities, coupled with a string of sickly pups and stillbirths, had made their already poor relationship contemptuous.

  Erik was the only pup she’d ever bore that survived infancy, and in the winter that followed his birth, she’d grown ill. He was told she ran a high fever, which she’d passed on to him. He had survived, but she had not. He had no memories of her.

  He was raised by Sten’s mother, Janne. She had nursed him at her breast until he had grown larger than her own, older son. For a while, Janne treated Erik as though he were her own. But as he grew older, Erik’s father would often ridicule her son, constantly insulting Sten because he could not measure up to Erik. Though Erik had always taken Sten’s side and often challenged his father on his brother’s behalf, Janne had steadily grown to resent him. He could not blame her. She was only human, and as such, ruled by her emotions.

  As a pup, Erik had wondered if his mother had loved him, the way Janne loved Sten. Sometimes, he thought she must have loved him, because unlike her other pups, he had been strong and healthy. Other times, he thought she must have hated him, as he looked so much like
the mate that she had loathed.

  Though he and Sten were far closer to one another than they were to their many other siblings, they’d fought constantly as pups. After the first fight Erik had won, Sten had spit blood in his face and told Erik that his mother had not died of a fever. He said that their father had snapped her neck when he’d caught her trying to smother Erik, as she’d done with the rest of her pups.

  This had stuck with Erik for years, though he’d never asked if it were true, or if Sten had made it up in a moment of anger. By the time he’d become an adult, he had no longer cared.

  Before he fell asleep that night, Erik thought he knew what it was about this human that appealed to him so much. For all her flaws, she had one trait that he admired above all else: she was adaptable.

  The night that he had attacked her camp, she had been paralyzed with fear, but she had recovered quickly and had refused to allow him to abandon her. Despite hailing from a hot climate, she had managed to adjust to an arctic winter, albeit with frequent complaining. And to survive, she had not tried to become stronger. It would have been impossible for her to learn the survival skills that his kind had been practicing since birth in only a few short weeks. Instead, she’d endeared herself to him—the most powerful and capable male she could find. He was, perhaps, the one person whose strength could compensate for her deficits.

  As he lay beside her, listening to the even sound of her breathing, he knew that he could not love her, but he would give her everything he was capable of. It would likely not be enough, and he could never put her ahead of his pack, but he was too selfish to let her go.

  ***

  Erik woke before the human, his cock painfully hard. He tried to go back to sleep, feeling more annoyed than anything. The human squirmed in her sleep, wiggling her body to get closer to him. Groaning as she rubbed against his swollen member, Erik reached between them and grasped his cock. He’d intended on tucking it in and willing himself back to sleep, but the moment his hand wrapped around it, he knew that he needed to relieve himself.