Mated To The Alpha: A Standalone Wolf Shifter Romance

by JM Klaire

  "Protection, at the cost of our people. You take our females as slaves when they are young. You take them from their mothers in exchange for this protection. We needed protection from your kind more than we needed you to protect us from outsiders. The world is changing. Your kind became our greatest danger."

  "I agree that the world is changing. Our pack does not take humans for slaves, although I understand that some packs still do. You attacked first. We came for retribution, but we will not kill women and children, even if it is our right. As Alpha of my pack, I offer a truce. You leave us alone and we will leave you alone. If any human breaks this pact, we will kill every last one of you. Do you agree?"

  "You say your pack does not trade children for protection? We are now only women and children, it seems. Can we work out a protection agreement that is fair to both sides?"

  "You wiped out an entire pack of my people. No, we will not protect you. But we will ignore you. That is as much as I can give you. You are on your own. Do you agree, or no?"

  The villager nodded.

  "We agree."

  With a nod of acknowledgement, Reine shifted back into her wolf form and led her new pack into the woods once again.

  They came across Ziva on their way back to take care of the dead. She was on her knees, rocking herself in grief, beside a small group of both dead villagers and wolves.

  Thomas went to her, and shifted to hold her and speak to her.

  Reine watched as Ziva let Thomas comfort her. Reine heard Ziva cry out, "They were all my people, the villagers first, and then the pack. Whether I liked them or not, I now have no one left!"

  Thomas rocked her sobbing body in his arms, murmuring to her that he was here for her now, and always would be.

  "You belong in our pack, with us. I'm sorry for your loss, Ziva, I truly am. It is our loss as well. But you belong with me, now. I will take care of you. I will always take care of you."

  "This was not how it was supposed to be!"

  Reine nodded at Thomas, offering to leave them alone for a bit, and she continued on to organize some wolves to take the human bodies back to the village, for them to bury or burn their dead as they saw fit, and to begin to take care of their own kind's bodies as well.

  As Reine walked away she heard Ziva carry on, "She wasn't supposed to be Alpha, you were. I've never even heard of a female Alpha before. I thought you were next in line. Wait! Were there any survivors at all? Young or old?"

  Reine shook her head as she walked away, thinking the stress of losing her pack so shortly after being claimed into this one must be affecting Ziva's thinking. Why else would her only thoughts after everyone she'd ever known had been killed be about Thomas losing Alpha?

  Grief affects everyone differently, she thought with a sigh. She didn't know Ziva very well yet, since she'd only recently been claimed, but surely it must be grief, and her fully human blood, making her act so oddly.

  The pack had only recently gotten back into some semblance of order after adjusting to the Alpha outcome, and cleaning up after the human's attack, before Ziva and Thomas announced that Ziva was with cub.

  Reine's memories flashed to a celebration feast thrown for the pack to blow off some much needed steam. No one cared that the cub was half-human, since most of the pack's cubs were so. The pack rejoiced and celebrated their newest, unborn member with abandon.

  The pack was overjoyed, using the feast to not only celebrate new life in the announcement of Thomas and Ziva's upcoming cub, but also to honor and celebrate their new Alpha, and using the feast as a chance to morn those they had known from the adjoining land.

  Everyone partook but Ziva.

  Ziva wasn't thrilled to be carrying another baby, since this cub would not hold the honor of being the Alpha's cub. She also felt that her own cub news was more of an afterthought, tacked on to honoring Reine and mourning the adjacent pack.

  Ziva felt like Reine had stolen her thunder, somehow, yet again.

  23

  Emma continued to 'see,' through Reine's eyes, how Ziva slowly started to break apart, bit by bit.

  Ziva was full and ripe with Galen when Reine announced that she was also with cub.

  Reine was thrilled beyond belief to be carrying Henry's baby. She 'saw' immediately that she was carrying a girl, and that her name would be Emma.

  Emma, still unconscious, felt Reine's joy in carrying her before she had been born. She somehow knew she was experiencing all of her mother's memories while wounded badly from her gunshots, but she couldn't feel that pain here. Here, sharing her mother's memories, she only felt joy and love as Reine conveyed to her how much she had wanted and loved Emma from the very moment she'd known of her existence.

  Ziva, though, was not happy at all.

  Ziva had already lost a lot of herself when she was raped by some unknown mist-man shifter and left carrying Elam, but Reine hadn't known any of that when she and Ziva were both pregnant together.

  Ziva also lost a bit more of what little sanity she had left once her clean start as an Alpha's wife had been dashed when Reine became Alpha instead of Thomas, and now Reine's cub would hold the prestigious spot in the pack that her and Thomas's cub, in her opinion, had been destined to have. All of that, plus pregnancy hormones again, so soon after carrying what she'd considered a 'Devil's spawn,' only sped up Ziva's crazy.

  One day, Reine was coming back from an unsuccessful hunt, and had taken a moment in the bushes just off a well-used path to throw up.

  Reine was still bent over, her first trimester hormones making her throw up daily, when Ziva stopped near her on the path.

  "Morning sickness is a bitch, is it not?" Reine asked as she stood up, trying to use the moment to bond some with Ziva, her brother's mate.

  "How the hell would you know? Your wolf blood protects you from most of it. I threw up way more often than you do." Ziva said, as Reine straightened up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  "Ziva, look. I'm not sure how it is that we've gotten off on the wrong foot, but you are my brother's forever mate. We are about the same age, newly mated, and both carrying our first cubs. Surely we can start over, become friends. If there was anything I did to make you dislike me, I do wish you would tell me. I'm sure I meant no harm."

  "Our first cubs? Right. Our first cubs."

  "Are you all right?"

  "How did you manage to beat Thomas in the challenge?"

  "I'm sorry?"

  "It has never happened before, ever, in our history. You had to have had help. Did the mist-man come to you? Is it his child you carry? Or are you one of his children? That would explain everything, wouldn't it?"

  "Ziva, what are you talking about? Are you feeling all right? Let me take you back to your den."

  Reine reached out, taking Ziva's elbow and aiming her toward the pack.

  In a quick flash of movement, Ziva pulled a knife out from some pocket of her skirts and managed to cut Reine across her forearm before Reine could react.

  Ziva's knife was aimed at Reine's midsection, with Ziva thrusting and stabbing the air in front of Reine. Ziva was off balance and bulky from being heavy with child herself, and trying to plunge the knife into Reine's stomach.

  With a loud growl Reine shifted into her wolf form and threw herself at Ziva, knocking her down into the bushes, pinning her there with her wounded forepaw, and growling and snapping her jaws just millimeters from Ziva's face.

  Her brother's pregnant mate or not, no one was allowed to treat Reine that way. If Ziva had been a wolf, Reine would have torn her throat to shreds, and no one, not even her brother, would have been able to say anything about it.

  But Ziva was human, and pregnant, and brand new to this pack. She'd also recently lost everyone she'd ever known, and was surging with hormones.

  Reine decided she would spare Ziva's life, this time, but wanted to teach her a lesson so that Ziva learned exactly how her new pack's Alpha would be treated.

  Reine shifted her weight, intending to
claw Ziva and leave a scar she would carry with her forever as a reminder of Reine's generosity in letting her live.

  As Reine moved to mark Ziva, something shifted deep down behind Ziva's eyes.

  Reine thought she saw insanity there. Fear, rage and more than a touch of desperation rolled off of Ziva, filling Reine's snout with the sour stench of it a second before Ziva started to speak.

  "Kill me, Reine. Kill me and this cub, or I will kill you! One way or another, only one of us can stay here. You would be doing me a favor, really."

  Touching Ziva as she spoke so fiercely made Reine's 'sight' kick in.

  Two possible outcomes flashed, as usual, through Reine's vision.

  In the first, Reine saw Ziva coming after her again, scar notwithstanding. But this time, Ziva would go after her by attacking Emma instead. Emma was a young cub in Reine's vision, so young that she was no match for Ziva. Ziva killed Emma, in flashes so grotesque that even as just a possible future, it made Reine sick to watch.

  She saw the pack not being entirely sure it was Ziva who did it, even though her scent was on Emma's body, because Ziva swore she was trying to protect Emma, not hurt her. But Reine knew differently. Reine saw herself going after Ziva then, ripping her throat out right in front of the entire pack in a murderous fit of grief and anger.

  She saw doubt in Thomas's eyes at Ziva's guilt, and a wedge being driven between brother and sister. She saw Thomas fading to nothing, grieving his mate, and some of her pack doubting her actions as an emotional, protective new mother, tearing her pack apart from the inside.

  The second possible outcome followed quickly on the heels of the first. She saw herself leaving this pack, with Henry and her unborn cub. She saw Emma being raised human, and even noticed that all of her visions down this road included Henry and Emma, but not herself. She wasn't shown when, or how, she'd die, but she didn't see herself in her cub's future.

  But she did see Thomas being a good Alpha after she left, her pack staying intact even if angry, confused and unforgiving of her for leaving. She saw Ziva pulling herself somewhat together, once she'd left, and Emma eventually returning here, to find happiness and peace as an adult wolf with a family of her own.

  She made her decision, standing there in the woods over Ziva. It wasn't even a tough decision, in her eyes.

  Stay, and live to see her cub die, her pack divided, and her brother eaten by grief. Or go, and know her family would be safe, even if she herself wasn't a part of it.

  In that instant, Reine chose her cub's life over her own.

  She never told Thomas, or anyone else, why she left. Henry tried to get the information out of her, but she didn't have the heart to tell him that in one future he lost his child, and in this one he was destined to lose her. She just didn't have it in her.

  She briefly thought of staying, and trying to change the future, but she knew she just couldn't gamble with her cub's life like that. She'd rather gamble with her own.

  24

  Emma woke, her mother's visions still fresh in her mind.

  She stretched her body tentatively, to help wake herself up, and was rewarded with dull aches and pains. She glanced around, groggy, to realize that she was in her own cabin, tucked into her own bed. Elam was beside her, propped up on his side, watching her wake.

  "How do you feel?" He asked.

  His face was full of love and concern, with no sign of being pissed at her for killing his adopted mother.

  Emma realized that he probably had no way of knowing that she was also his real, biological mother, born from a rape by a shape shifting mist-man, and that outside of insanity-laced ravings, Ziva had never admitted that to anyone outside of her original pack, before spilling her guts to Emma and Kate just before trying to kill them. That was assuming that her ravings could even be trusted as truth, Emma thought.

  "Honestly, I don't feel too bad. Wasn't I shot? Twice? Am I on some really good drugs or something, not to feel like hell? Or am I still dreaming all of this as well?"

  "As well? What have you been dreaming about?"

  Emma wasn't quite ready to talk about that, she wanted to mull everything her mother had shown her over in her mind before exposing everything to the light of day. She had no interest in everyone thinking she'd lost her mind in addition to being shot.

  "How did I get here? Did Ziva really shoot me?"

  She asked as much to change the subject as to find out the answers.

  "Yes. According to the images you were rapid-firing at me, she did. According to Kate, as well. I carried you here, on my back. You gave me quite a scare, you know, passing out at my feet like that, covered in blood."

  "I'm sorry. Ziva. Is she...?"

  "Dead? Oh, yes. You took her down just like I taught you when we were hunting."

  "Elam, stop. That sounds so... Don't you care that I...?"

  "That you defended not only yourself, but Kate too? From an insanely mad woman who admitted everything from being raped and abandoning me to killing the people who took me in? The same crazed woman who was determined to kill you both as well? Emma, I can't be angry about any of it. You saved Kate. And more importantly, to me anyway, you saved yourself. Ziva was right, it would kill me to lose you. I love you, Emma. More than anything."

  "I love you, too. Wait, how did you know? I didn't even start trying to throw visions at you until right before Ziva tried to kill Kate."

  "That can't be right. I started getting images right before you were knocked out in the hot springs. Talk about an attention-getter, Galen and I were preparing for the pack meeting when I saw you and Kate in the spring, and then boom, I saw Kate's face in alarm right before your mind went blank. Damn Em, I was so grateful when you opened your eyes again. I was able to see where you were then, and Galen and I headed toward the cave instead of the hot springs."

  "How is that even possible?"

  "I don't know, the pack connection, I guess. I saw a lot after that. Things you couldn't have known about. I saw Reine and Thomas's Alpha Challenge. I saw Ziva growing up, getting raped. I saw her order Kate to kill you, and Kate refuse. I saw everything."

  "So you know that Ziva..."

  "Is my real mother? Yes. And that she doesn't know who my father is, except for seeing him materialize out of nowhere? Yes. I'd imagine that he was a shape shifter, like me. Our history's stories don't often have anything nice to say about their kind. About my kind."

  "But I still don't understand how...Oh! I got all of those images from my mother. She must have thrown them at you, to get you to come help us. Or from Ziva, when she touched me."

  "However they came, I am grateful. We never would have known what happened, or where to find you, otherwise."

  "I thought you were angry, finding us like you did. You two were growling so fiercely. I shifted to tell you, to explain, but that is all I remember."

  "We were growling to threaten Ziva since she held our mates in danger. I passed what I could onto Galen, with our pack connection in our wolf forms. He just followed me, he had some idea what we'd be walking in on inside that cave, just not every detail about everything. You shouldn't have shifted into human form. That was why you passed out."

  "Does Galen understand? That I was protecting his mate, not attacking his mother?"

  "Yes, Galen knows everything. Between my connection and Kate, he had no real chance to misunderstand. He is grateful to you, for saving Kate. I'm sure he will be by once you have fully recovered to tell you so himself."

  "Why don't I feel worse? I'm sore, but I don't feel anything like I'd imagine someone who's been shot should feel. You said I passed out because I shifted?"

  "Shifting from wolf to human compresses everything you are. When you shifted all that wounded wolfness into your smaller, less capable human form, it was like squeezing out a sponge. When you squeezed yourself like a sponge, so to speak, you lost a lot of blood, very quickly. So you lost consciousness. Your wolf blood helps you to heal, though. That is why you don't feel as badly a
s you think you should. Plus Ziva was only carrying a .22 derringer. It only held two small bullets, although you took both of them."

  "How long was I out?"

  "A couple of days."

  "Mom showed me why she left. She left for me. Did she send you those visions, too? While I was unconscious?"

  "I saw some of them. When I checked in with our bond to make sure you were all right."

  "Ziva attacked her. Did you see that part? Way back when they were both pregnant. Reine with me, and Ziva with Galen. Reine almost killed Ziva back then, but she saw those future possibilities, and she left instead. Ziva accused my mother of carrying the shapeshifter's child, too. Or of being one of his 'spawn' herself. Ziva was already crazy, even back then. She saw Ziva killing me, and dividing the pack. She also saw that by taking me away, by raising me human, that everything would work out, but that she wasn't in that future. My future. She saw a future where she survived and I didn't, and she chose the future where she didn't exist, but I did. She saved me, before I was even born. And then she saved me by sending you to me."

  "You saved yourself that time, Emma. You saved yourself, and Kate. You saved me, too. If anything had happened to you, if Ziva had killed you instead of the other way around... Ziva was right about that. Losing you would have killed me. I know we've just started, and I know our bond is still young, but I love you more than anything, Emma. I've loved you since the moment you crested that cliff with your dad and Kate, and tried to protect them from Galen's wolf by putting yourself between them and ordering them not to run.

  I loved you even then, before the first time we touched at that bonfire and I watched images of us, together, flit across your face. I couldn't see what you 'saw' back then, but I knew it had to be good. Your eyes glowed with heat, and you blushed red hot. I wanted to claim you as my mate right there. When Galen and Kate mated so quickly, I was jealous. I wanted that to be us."

  "I wasn't ready then. I was still getting used to finding out werewolves were real. But I will admit that those flashes at the bon fire were hot."