The Alpha's Mate (8 Sexy, Powerful Shifters and Their Fated Mates)

by Lynn Red

  He turned away, and Clara reached out, helpless as to what she should do. “Lucas—”

  He stopped. “Don’t worry about yesterday, Clara. I understand.” He turned and gave her a shadow of his trademark grin. “I’d thought you were comfortable enough with me from all the time we spent together, but I’m hot blooded and can admit when I’ve jumped the gun. Maybe we can start over when all the dust has settled.”

  He walked away, and Clara was silent, at a loss for words as she watched him go.

  * * *

  Clara returned home, even though she wanted to rush straight to the village and demand an explanation from Kellan. But she couldn’t leave Judy with her aunt all afternoon, and even if she did reach him what would she say? He’d been with her all night, so she knew he hadn’t participated in the attack. It was entirely possible he might not have even known about it.

  And could she really blame the wolves for retaliating in this way? Lucas was responsible for the deaths of many of their members. They could have gone into his house and slaughtered his entire family in their sleep. Instead they’d killed their sheep—as a warning, a statement of what they could do. Perhaps they’d hoped Lucas would take the hint and leave them alone.

  Clara sighed. She should have stayed and tried to explain to Lucas about them. The shifters were good people, and Lucas was a good man as well. She didn’t think he was killing off the shifters for greed or glory; he genuinely thought they were a threat. But what would she have said? How could she have convinced him? She knew from experience that it took more than a few words to convince a man to change his ideals, and this was a very touchy subject.

  “This is such a mess,” she muttered, placing her head in her hands. There was a war about to erupt right outside her doors, and she was stuck here, helpless.

  “Clara?” her aunt whispered, and Clara jerked her head up to see that Eve’s eyes were open.

  “Oh, auntie!” Clara leaned over and gave her a very gentle hug, inhaling her aunt’s lightly floral scent for comfort. “I’m so glad you are awake again. Are you feeling better?”

  She patted Clara’s back. “I am, a bit, but you sound as though something is troubling you. What is it, child?”

  Clara pulled back with a sigh. “It’s... it’s Lucas.” She told Eve what happened—the attack on the wolves, their retaliation against Lucas, and now Lucas’s current plans to initiate a final strike. “It’s just awful, and I don’t know what to do.”

  Eve reached out to squeeze Clara’s hand. “You need to go and warn them, child.”

  Clara looked down at her aunt’s hand. “I can’t leave you here by yourself.”

  “I am but one woman,” her aunt reminded her. “The wolf shifters may not be a large clan, but they’ve many more numbers than I alone. And... and you are more connected to them than you realize.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her aunt blinked. “Your mother... sometimes she could shift into a wolf as well. No one in the past two generations could.”

  Clara’s jaw dropped. “My mother... was a shifter?”

  “It was very hard for her, living so close to the River’s and knowing that at any time they might discover her and kill her. It was one of the reasons she married your father—to get as far away as possible.” Her aunt sighed. “But it seemed that even moving away from the country wasn’t enough. Those rebels... I believe they might’ve found her out.”

  “No.” Clara shook her head. “They killed my parents for being loyal to the regime.” The words sounded more like a denial than conviction, even to her.

  Eve looked at her helplessly. “I don’t know for certain. What I do know is that your mother wrote to me a few weeks before she died, telling me she was worried that someone might’ve seen her shifting. She did like to take risks, your mother.” She shook her head, a sad smile curving her lips. “It seems entirely too coincidental that she died so soon afterward.”

  Clara placed her head in her hands and sat in silence for a long time, simply digesting everything she had just learned. Her head swam, and her heart was a battleground of conflicting emotions. It seemed that everything in her life came back to the shifter clan—which made sense if she had a shifter ancestor, but how could that be? Why was it that her mother could shift and hadn’t been called, but that Clara didn’t have any extraordinary powers and was? There was much she didn’t understand, and probably never would.

  But there was one thing she did understand, and when she lifted her head again her eyes were intense with determination. “All this means is that I have even more reason to go and warn the shifter clan. Too many shifters have died because of this prejudice and misunderstanding between the two races. I...” she looked down at her aunt, who was still so frail. “I have to go.”

  Her aunt smiled. “I will be fine, and if for some reason I am not, the lives of many are worth more than the single life of an old woman.”

  Tears pricked Clara’s eyes. “Don’t talk like that. You’re going to be all right. I promise.”

  Eve patted her hand, and then withdrew. “I’m sure I will be. Now go, child. I will be waiting.”

  Chapter Ten

  “You did what?” Kellan asked through clenched teeth.

  Charles raised his eyebrows. “It was a unanimous decision between the five of us.”

  Kellan shot his Alpha a venomous glare. “A decision you made without me, which I had every right to be privy to! Why did you keep this from me?”

  “We thought it prudent,” Ranulf spoke up, “seeing as how you are intimately involved with a human. Your judgment is clouded.”

  “My judgment has not been affected by this!”

  “Then why are you so angry?” Gabriel challenged. “Before you’d met that woman, you would have had no problem with the idea of giving back to the humans. In fact, you would have been excited about it.”

  Kellan looked away, his heart sinking as Gabriel’s point hit home. “People change, Gabe.”

  “Kellan.” Charles laid a hand on his shoulder. “I understand this puts you in a difficult position because you don’t want your future mate to reject you. That is why we did not ask you, so that you would not need to carry around a guilty conscience when you were around her. And that is why we struck last night, when you were with her and the blame could not be placed on you.”

  Some of the tension slid from Kellan’s shoulders, and he looked up at his alpha to see Charles’ eyes warm with compassion. “I understand,” he finally said. “I just wish there were another way.”

  Ranulf clapped him on the back. “There isn’t. We need to prepare our men.”

  “We are hoping the humans would abandon their thirst for our blood,” Charles said, “but taking into account their history of violence, it would be unwise not to be prepared.”

  Kellan nodded. “I will take care of it.”

  * * *

  Kellan gathered up all of the able-bodied men in the village and assigned them positions. Most he took with him outside the village, but he left a group of them at the village, strategically placed within the maze and at the gates. If the humans somehow managed to make it past them and to the village, Kellan didn’t want to leave it undefended.

  The rest he took away from the maze, stationing the bulk of them in one place and scattering scouts to different areas of the forest. If the humans did decide to come, he wanted to make sure they met in a head-on confrontation.

  Several hours passed, in which Kellan and his men waited, high strung with tension. Many of them kept busy by checking and rechecking their weapons, sharpening blades and adjusting straps. The alpha and the remainder of the council finally joined them after taking care of their business in the village, and Kellan updated them on the locations of his men and the situation.

  “Maybe we should just pack up and head back,” he finally said, a stress headache pounding his temples. “We have given the humans plenty of time.”

  “The sun will not set for some hours yet, K
ellan,” Charles pointed out. “We are in no hurry.”

  Kellan opened his mouth to argue, but the sound of footsteps had him spinning around—someone was approaching very quickly. A familiar scent came to him on the wind—Albert, one of his scouts.

  The scout in question burst through the brush and stopped straight in front of Kellan. “Sir,” he said, lowering his head respectively to acknowledge both Kellan, Charles, and the other council members, “the humans are coming. They have a large force, are heavily armed, and moving at a very quick speed.”

  “How long do we have?” Kellan asked as his men straightened, their hands going to their weapons.

  “Ten, maybe fifteen minutes,” Albert said. “And they look like they are out for blood.”

  Charles and Kellan exchanged grim looks. “I was afraid this would happen,” Charles said, drawing his sword. “It seems that human nature is unyielding. Men, prepare yourselves. We are about to do battle.”

  It wasn’t long before the humans stepped into the large clearing. There was easily two hundred men—some armed with farming tools, others with swords and knives. The man who led them was a tall, strapping fellow with shaggy blond hair and bright blue eyes that flashed with challenge. His mouth twisted into a half-smirk, half-sneer as he scanned Kellan and his men.

  “No crossbow today?” Kellan taunted, recognizing the man’s scent—this was the man whose leg he had bitten.

  “No teeth and fur today?” the man countered.

  Charles held up a hand before Kellan could respond. “It does not appear to matter to you what guise we wear—you see us as beasts regardless. We come before you like this to show that there is more to us than fur and fangs, that we think and feel with the same intensity that you do.”

  The man’s mouth firmed. “You are demons, and we do not negotiate with demons. We have tried to drive you out time and time again, and instead of leaving you came to my farm and slaughtered my herd. I cannot forgive or forget such a thing.” His eyes swept the shifters once more. “Thankfully I don’t expect this to be a very long fight. We outnumber you two to one.”

  Charles drew his sword, and a loud ring of steel echoed off the trees. “You will find that what we lack in size, we make up in strength. Attack!”

  The shifters charged forward with a snarl, and the humans rushed to meet them with war cries of their own. Soon the forest air was filled with the sound of swords clashing and warriors screaming. Kellan soon forgot all about the lead in the pit of his stomach that told him he was betraying Clara as he was lost in the heat of battle—the humans seemed to be especially intent on him for some reason, possibly because he’d verbally attacked their leader. Kellan cut through them, staining his sword with their blood, but it was quite an effort—the humans were more skilled than he would have thought.

  By the time he’d felled his eighth enemy he had numerous cuts and lacerations. Groaning, he wiped the sweat off his face, then kicked the dead body out of his way. He heard a battle cry behind him, and turned just in time to block a downswing from the blond-haired man.

  “It’s time you paid for that flesh wound!” he said, swinging again. Kellan snarled and leaped forward, striking with his own weapon, but the man blocked and countered skillfully. They parried and thrust, blocked and countered, slashed and stuck, but neither seemed to be able to get a hit in.

  “You are very good,” Kellan spat as they circled each other, “for a human.”

  “And you’re not bad for a beast,” the man responded. “But this is no game. Your time is up, demon.”

  “NO!!!” Clara shrieked, throwing herself between them just as the man thrust his sword. Kellan watched in horror as the blade tore through her shoulder, as blood bloomed across the fabric of her blue dress.

  “Clara!” Kellan roared, grabbing her as she screamed in pain. The entire clearing fell silent, both sides lowering their weapons as their heads jerked around toward the familiar voice. The man wrenched his sword back, tearing another scream from her, and stumbled back, a look of horror on his face.

  “Clara? Oh God!” He reached forward, and then flinched as Kellan let out a threatening growl.

  “It’s... it’s okay, Kellan,” Clara said through clenched teeth. “Don’t...Lucas is a friend.”

  “Friend? He just stabbed you with his sword!”

  “I... I can’t let you fight.” Clara struggled to lift her head up so she could look at Lucas. “Lucas... these people...they aren’t the creatures you seek. They’re just like us. Kellan... he is my soul mate. And you... you are one of the closest friends I have ever had. I don’t... I don’t know what I would do if you two killed each other. P-please...”

  Her body started to shake violently, and Kellan lowered her to the ground. He ripped away a piece of her dress so he could get a look at her shoulder, and his heart clenched at the bloody mess of a wound, stark against the paleness of her skin.

  “It looks like he missed your heart and lungs,” Kellan murmured as Lucas and Charles commanded their men to stand down. He pulled off his tunic and started tearing it into strips to use for a bandage. “Why did you do such a foolish thing?” He breathed in deeply through his nose and tried to steady his shaking hands as he wrapped the bandage around her, but a bone-chilling fear had begun to settle into his nerves. “You could have been killed!”

  Clara only smiled. “I’m sorry. I... came to warn you... they were coming, but I arrived too late.” Her voice grew faint, and her eyes fluttered shut. “Kellan... I’m so very... tired...”

  “Hang in there,” Kellan said urgently. “Clara, you’ve got to hang in there!” Her features went lax, and his heart pounded—she’d lost too much blood.

  “CLARA!”

  * * *

  When Clara woke, her shoulder was on fire and her throat felt like a barren wasteland. Her eyes were heavy, but she forced them open to find herself staring at the ceiling of Kellan’s room. What was she doing here? The last thing she remembered was rushing to warn Kellan...

  Kellan. Fear lanced through her as she remembered Lucas thrusting his sword forward—a killing blow. She struggled to sit up, but her shoulder screamed with pain. She opened her mouth to cry out, but her throat was so dry all she managed was a croak.

  “Take it easy.” Kellan was suddenly at her side, easing her gently back onto the bed. He helped seat her up against the pillows, then pressed a glass to her lips. “Here, drink some of this.”

  Clara opened her mouth and allowed the cool water to saturate her parched mouth, drinking greedily. Kellan refilled the glass again before she finally leaned her head back against the pillows, sated.

  “It’s nice to see you’re back amongst the living again,” Kellan told her, sitting back in his chair. He held onto her hand with both of his, as though he were afraid she would float away if he let go. She squeezed his hand reassuringly. “How are you feeling?”

  “My shoulder aches,” Clara replied. “What happened to me?”

  “You threw yourself in front of a blade meant for me,” Kellan said, pulling some dark brown leaves from a drawstring pouch and handing them to her. “Here, chew on these. They will help dull the pain.”

  Clara pushed the leaves into her mouth and bit down—a bitter juice burst from the leaves, and she scrunched up her face in distaste. Kellan laughed.

  “I never liked those much either, but believe me when I say they are worth the pain. I should tell the doctor that you are awake.”

  Clara blinked. “Doctor? I didn’t know you had a doctor.”

  “We don’t,” Kellan admitted. “Your... friend, Lucas, sent the doctor who was caring for your aunt.”

  “Lucas is here?” Clara’s head spun, and she closed her eyes. “How long have I been out?”

  “Only a day and a half,” Kellan assured her. “Did you really mean it back there, when you told... that man... that I was your soul mate?”

  Clara couldn’t help but smile at the mixture of anxiousness and hope in his voice.

&nb
sp; “Yes...I did.” Clara swallowed the lump that rose in her throat at the thought of losing Kellan. She reached out, squeezing his hand tightly. “Kellan?”

  “Yes?” His eyes locked onto her face, unwilling to let go. Wanting...needing to hear the words on her lips.

  “I love you.”

  He gave her a blinding grin, and leaned over to kiss her softly. “I feel like I’ve been waiting forever to hear those words. I love you too, Clara.”

  Clara opened her mouth to say something else, but her vision swam, and she had to close her eyes again. “Why can’t I focus?”

  “It’s a side-effect of the leaves—they cause drowsiness.” Kellan stroked her hair gently. “Get some sleep, Clara. I’ll answer more of your questions when you’re feeling better.”

  Clara wanted to curse him, but she was already asleep before he’d finished the words.

  * * *

  The next few days passed quickly, with regular visits from the doctor as well as several of the village women, including Leah. She didn’t get to see them for very long lengths of time before Kellan would shoo them away, like the protector that he was, claiming that she needed her rest. If Clara hadn’t been so sick of sitting in bed, she would have thought it was amusing. As it was, she wanted to strangle him.

  One thing about getting lots of visitors and being confined to the bed was that she was able to glean a lot of information. Apparently Lucas had called off the attack completely, and had willingly agreed to come in and negotiate a peace treaty between the humans and the wolves. She’d asked several times if she could see him, but Kellan refused to let him anywhere near her—apparently he wasn’t ready to forgive Lucas for running her through with a sword, even if it had been an accident.

  There was also some contention between the wolves as to whether or not Lucas should be executed for his crimes against the Hunters, but Charles had convinced them it would be in their best interests to go with the treaty. Clara could only imagine how the wolves must have felt at having to swallow their anguish and let him live, but at the same time she knew that Lucas had been misguided, not evil. Charles was a wise man—he knew that by killing Lucas it would only anger the humans and cause more bloodshed. Keeping him alive was the best way to ensure peace between the two races.