“You’ve been sleeping in my room,” he said, contradicting his plan to not talk to her.
She was laying on his bed furs, his favorite caribou pelt drawn up over her shoulders. He expected her to be startled when she heard him, after all, he hadn’t made a sound. But she didn’t so much as twitch. Her eyes moved to him languidly, to stare at him blankly.
“Not every night. Only the ones I have trouble sleeping.”
He didn’t like seeing her face devoid of emotion, and for once, he knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of the stoic treatment.
“Why?”
“I guess it makes me feel safe.”
Erik felt himself nodding. That made sense. He had chosen this room, with its narrow entrance and compact space, for the very purpose of feeling enclosed and secure. There where no corners where an enemy could be hiding, and only one entrance to watch for intruders.
He sat down next to her, stretching his long legs out parallel to hers. He leaned back on one arm and looked down at his mate. Since she’d first come to his den, her skin had lost some of its bronze luster, taking on a pearlescent hue. Her hair had also changed, which he attributed to her running out of those unpleasant scented chemicals she’d insisted on using in it each time she’d bathed. What had once been a bushy disarray of curls had smoothed out into large and defined coils with a glossy sheen.
Erik remembered thinking once, long before he’d ever thought of taking the human as his mate, that she had looked good enough to eat. Though he hadn’t found her to be overly attractive, her body had held a certain appeal to him. Now, however, she looked radiant, even as her soft lips puckered into a petulant frown.
“What do you want?” she asked. “I told you I wanted to be alone.”
She hadn’t said that, not explicitly, but he wasn’t going to debate that with her now. Her anger, which had once been a source of amusement for him, no longer held the same appeal. It was tiring, and he wanted it to be over.
“I came to tell you that I am sending Sten to get your sister.”
His mate shot up so quickly that her head nearly collided with his chin. Rather than thanking him, she flung her arms around him and squeezed him with a force he hadn’t known she was capable of. The corners of his lips tugged as her head nestled into the crook of his neck, but he didn’t reciprocate the embrace.
“You should know that I am not doing this because you threatened me,” he told her. “And if you try that again, I will not capitulate, no matter what the issue.”
She pulled away from him, and he found himself wishing that he’d waited a few more moments before opening his mouth.
“I wasn’t threatening you, I was—”
Erik refused to be drawn into another argument. “I am not at fault here. Even without my interference, the bear shifters would have moved in on Siluit’s territory, and alliance or no, Zane and I would not have been able to handle them on our own.”
“But you’re leaving Siluit to be blindsided.”
“If they aren’t aware of what is coming, then it is their own fault. I am not their alpha, and I am not your sister’s mate, nor the father of her pup. I am Amarok’s alpha, and my pack, you, and our pup—they are my only priorities.”
She opened her mouth as though to continue, but instead exhaled softly and looked away. Then, she laid her head back down on his shoulder. Her body was slack, as though all of the air had left it in that small sigh.
“I understand that you’re doing what you have to do, and I’m not mad at you, not really. I’m mad at myself, because I can’t do anything. I can’t go save my sister, I can’t even warn her that a bunch of stupid bears are going to come and tear apart her life.
“I hate this… I should be really happy right now, and I’m miserable because I’m so damn worried about her. It’s like last summer all over again. Did you know that two days before my flight to Canada, I was finally offered a promotion? I worked so hard for that, swallowing my pride every single day for years, and I had to turn it down so that I could chase my little sister across the damn tundra.”
Erik allowed her to rant, his fingers compulsively toying with the coils of her hair. Listening to her talk—and he was listening for a change—he realized how little he knew about her life, or at least, the one she’d had before she’d met him. He had never given much thought to it, and even now it was hard to imagine she’d ever been anything or anyone’s besides his.
“Your sister is a fool,” Erik said. “But this is not her fault. It is not the fault of the bears either—they need a territory and food, and Zane’s small pack happens to be situated in the middle of the only one that can sustain them. You cannot blame her for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
She was quiet for a moment, and Erik thought she might have fallen asleep. But when he looked down, her eyes were wide open, though they were unfocused.
Her voice distant, she said, “You know, the first time I saw you, it wasn’t that night at the camp.”
His brows rose.
“Ginnifer filmed you. Only for a few seconds. She was fascinated by your eyes. I was, too, when I first saw it. Zane was incredibly good-looking, but you…you were so stunning. I must have rewound that clip a dozen times, trying to memorize every detail of your face, and that was way before I ever thought I’d meet you.”
Erik tried to pay attention, but his mind had slunk into dark places when she’d mentioned Zane. If getting her to become supplicant hadn’t been such an ordeal, he would have stopped her right there and ordered her never to speak of the other alpha again.
“I think maybe that’s why I tried to find you. There were other shifters on that map that might have been able to help, but I needed it to be you. I needed to see you in person and…”
When he looked down at her again, her cheeks were flushed. He felt his wolf settle a bit, and although he had no plans of letting her comments about Zane slide, he wouldn’t press the issue for now.
She took a deep breath. “Erik, I… You’re…very important to me.”
“Of course I am. I’m your mate.” Erik couldn’t help his clipped tone. He was the most important person to her.
“Um, no, I mean…” she trailed off, appearing flustered, and something else…shy? “If anything ever happened to you, I wouldn’t know what to do.”
You certainly wouldn’t take another mate, he thought bitterly.
He knew there was nothing he could do to stop that, and his mind conjured images of Zane sneering down at his corpse, Ginnifer on one arm, and Astrid on the other. Although it was hard, he dismissed the thought, knowing how wildly improbable that would be.
Then, his mind manufactured another scenario, one that was somehow worse, because it could actually happen. If he died, Sten would likely become alpha—and likely drive Amarok into the ground, but not before claiming Erik’s mate as his own. A growl rose from his chest before he could stop it.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He ignored the question. “There is no point in wondering what you would do without me, because it’s irrelevant. You would be dead.”
While he would never seek to orchestrate their joint passing, he felt secure in the idea of his mate dying at the same time as him. He certainly didn’t want to outlive her, but he also didn’t want to think about another male ever touching her.
“That’s not what I—wait, what? How can you say that with a straight face?”
“Because it’s true. You’d never survive without me,” he said, giving her a smug smile. “And if you think that another male would be able to protect—”
She shoved at his chest. “And what about our baby? Is he going to die, too?”
Erik had not considered that, and felt an odd sensation spread across his face, as though all the blood was leaving it.
What would happen to his pup if he died? Who would protect him, provide for him, and teach him the skills he needed to survive? Again, Erik felt the same rash of selfish
ness he’d had at the thought of another male with his mate, but now, it was different. He didn’t want to think of anyone but himself raising his son, but he also couldn’t stomach the thought of his only progeny dying. His son had to live.
And so did his mother. Who else could feed their pup from her breast? And no one else would be able to nurture him as though he was truly their own. At least, that had been Erik’s experience when his mother had passed.
Erik gave a slight grimace as acid churned in his empty stomach. All along, he’d been dimly aware of his mate, still rambling in aggravated tones.
“—a contingency plan. Your world is so dangerous! There are men with guns, giant polar bear shifters, wolverines, you never know what’s going to happen and I—what are you doing?”
Erik had placed his hand on the back of her head and drew her in against his chest. His fingers massaged the back of her scalp while he waited for her to settle down.
“I won’t die,” he told her.
“You don’t know that,” she whispered, her arms coming up to encircle his waist.
He didn’t say anything else, and to his relief, she didn’t press him. Within seconds, he had come to a realization that had him questioning everything he knew to be true. If the bear tribes did attack Amarok, Erik could not fall with his pack. He would take his mate and his son far away from there, and he would not look back.
CHAPTER THREE
“It f-feels like I have no skin,” Astrid moaned. “It’s like the c-cold air is blowing right into my soul.”
Erik glanced at her over his shoulder. He took in her hunched, shivering form, his eyes sparkling with amusement.
“What are you doing, Astrid?”
For a few seconds, she was no longer cold at all. Heat prickled over her skin as her name rolled off his tongue. He’d been using her name a lot lately, and by a lot, it was more like once a day, maybe. But each time, she’d get a fluttering sensation in her midsection and her brain would momentarily turn to mush. She particularly liked the way he said it, with his alluring accent—Ah-strid.
On several occasions, she had tried to tease out where exactly Erik was from. It was always a vague response, “many places” or “east of here”. None of the other wolves had known him for more than a decade, aside from Sten, and Astrid had made it a point to avoid him ever since his…indiscretion.
Finding her voice, she said, “I’m slowly dying of hypothermia.”
He snorted and turned back around.
“How is your penis not falling off?” she muttered. “For that matter, how can you even pee without it freezing as soon as it hits the air?”
She thought she heard him chuckle, but another cold wind knifed through the tundra, reducing her to a trembling mess.
When he finished peeing, Erik stretched out his arms, and then bent down to pick up their unfortunate prey. She and Erik had been hunting since just after daybreak, although to be fair, it was more Erik doing the hunting and her standing around grumbling.
If it weren’t for the cold, the whole experience wouldn’t have been so bad, at least not as bad as she’d thought it would be when Erik had woken her an hour before dawn to announce that they were going to get some meat. For once, she’d been glad for her violent morning sickness, because she’d thought it would get her out of having to go with him. No such luck. The moment she’d been able to take a step without feeling like she was going to puke up her guts, the alpha was dragging her out of the den.
It was the first time he had left the den in the two weeks since he’d returned from his trip to the southern border. Loosely adhering to his new food regulations, he and Astrid had eaten almost nothing but small portions of bland vegetation the first week. She hadn’t complained, and had been glad to help set an example for the others, but after a few days, she’d begun having dizzy spells. Erik had assumed she was being melodramatic, until she’d passed out and almost drowned in the bath. After that, he’d turned into a meat tyrant, forcing everyone who returned with a fresh kill to give up a portion of their rations in order to feed her. None of them dared complain to Erik’s face, but Astrid had caught more than a few resentful looks thrown in her direction.
“When I said we should stop taking other people’s food, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Astrid said. She followed after Erik, who had started off towards a hill with big rocks.
“They’re not going to like you if you sit inside and wait for me to feed you,” he said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Their approval?”
She pressed her lips together. “Well, I’d like for them to at least respect me.”
Erik laughed at that. “Being liked is easy. I doubt you will ever earn their respect.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said, kicking at the snow. “And if being liked is so easy, how come I’m the only one that likes you?”
He arched a brow. “You like me?”
“Of course. Don’t you like me?”
He paused for so long that Astrid thought he might be messing with her. When he spoke, he was certain he was.
“I will take your question under consideration.”
Asshole.
She way more than liked him, but every time she got close to saying the words, she’d panic and start to babble. They’d been getting along better than ever lately, which was especially surprising considering Erik rarely let her out of his sight. Every day, she was certain they’d start getting sick of one another, but each day they grew closer and became more comfortable together, which paradoxically made it all the harder for her to confess her feelings. The last thing she wanted was to tell him she loved him and receive nothing but one of his amused looks in return. So she kept the feeling bottled up inside, where she was pretty sure it would stay until she was on her deathbed.
Astrid said, “You know, I only like you a little bit. Like a really, tiny bit. And it’s probably just hormones.”
Erik ignored her, and instead pointed towards a gathering of rocks at the top of the hill. “There are lemming tunnels under those rocks. Wait here. I’ll send them in your direction.”
“Lemmings? Like the video game?”
Erik was already shifting. Seconds later, the massive black wolf was dashing up the hill, shimmering snow flying up in his wake.
“Wait, aren’t they rodents? We’re not going to eat rodents, are we?”
There was no answer, but she hadn’t really expected one. Sighing, she flopped down onto the ground. The snow had to be almost a foot deep, and her legs were in desperate need of a break.
Even after her fainting spells, Erik had been apathetic at best to the effects that her pregnancy was having on her body. It was a major point of contention for Astrid, because she’d been looking forward to foot massages, long naps, and generally being treated like a princess. Instead, she had to beg to get him to slow down, plead for even a small break here and there, and yell at him each time he pawed at her insanely tender nipples.
Erik barked in her direction, and she looked up, shielding her eyes with her hand. He appeared to have dug a hole, tearing through the permafrost and pulling up the earth that lay beneath it. She squinted, catching sight of something moving in the snow.
No, not in the snow, under it. The surface of the snow puckered as something small darted below it, heading in her direction.
The lemming, she thought grimly.
Erik barked again, this time more insistently. Rolling her eyes, she pushed herself up off the ground.
“You seriously want me to catch this thing with my bare hands?” She was wearing gloves, but still. Gross.
The wolf barked again and then sat, signaling that his work was done.
Oh, what the hell. Here goes nothing.
She trudged towards the lemming, intercepting its path. Right as it reached her, Astrid bent down and plunged her hands into the snow. Nothing. She tilted her head, watching through the arc of her legs as the critter continued burrowing right past her. Her face heated
, and she didn’t dare look up at Erik.
Now you’re in for it, you oversized rat.
She ran ahead, cutting it off once more. But this time, it forked to the right, and again narrowly evaded capture. This continued on for several minutes, until the once pristine hill had become marred by piles of upturned snow. Finally, the lemming made the fatal mistake of heading back up the hill, where it all but deposited itself into Erik’s waiting hand. Back in his human form, he held up the lemming, which turned out to be quite cute.
“You have to be decisive,” Erik told her. “Don’t hesitate, simply grab it. Once you hesitate, you have already lost.”
Astrid was hunched over again, her hands resting on her knees. Once she caught her breath, she said, “I was just about to catch it. And you only got it because I tired it out.”
“The only thing you tired out was yourself,” he said with a smirk. “Here, kill it.”
It was the only warning he gave her before he tossed the writhing rodent directly at her. She instinctively flinched, but at the last second caught it, knowing that she’d never hear the end of it if she let it get away.
The instant it was in her hands, the lemming bit down on her, its little teeth tearing through her glove and sinking into the meaty flesh at the base of her thumb. Astrid shrieked and flung it away. It went hurtling towards a rock, where it fell to the ground, stunned.
Erik walked over and picked it up.
“Close enough,” he said, before snapping its neck.
Astrid held up her hand. “It bit me!”
She gingerly pulled off her glove as Erik came to stand beside her. He took her hand and held it up, giving it a cursory look.
“It’s only a scratch,” he said, dropping her hand.
“It’s not a scratch, it’s a bite. You don’t know what kinds of diseases that thing has. Please tell me that we have penicillin back at the den.”
“What is that?” he asked, in the offhanded manner that implied he wasn’t really listening.
Enslaved by the Alpha: Part Seven Page 2