by Jade White
THE ALPHAS
MAIL ORDER MATE
A BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance
JADE WHITE
Copyright ©2015 by Jade White
All rights reserved.
About This Book
James Nightsky knows his wolf pack are in trouble. Big trouble.
Their numbers are dwindling and the future is looking bleak. As he is Alpha it is his responsibility to not only ensure the safety of the Pack but also their security for the future. This includes finding a mate and raising a healthy cub.
James hates doing it but he knows he has no choice.
He writes a letter to his old Alpha asking for help. He hopes his old Alpha might be able to spare some numbers from his own thriving pack.
Luckily he was right.
James can not believe it when he lays his eyes on Chastity Fayre. To him, she is beautiful and just the type of mate he is looking for. But how will Chastity cope with being the Alpha's “Mail Order Mate”? And was she really sent to him as a good-will gift or is there more to this than meets the eye?
READ ON TO FIND OUT HOW IT ALL TURNS OUT!
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Table Of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
James Nightsky could hear the old, beat-up truck’s engine from well over a mile away as it chugged along the single, beat-up old highway headed back to their hidden camp. Nick, Dean, and John had been gone longer than usual, but that was probably because Kevin had taken a bullet when they’d last been to civilization. It didn’t kill him since the shooter had no idea of his true nature and the need for that bullet to be silver, still Nightsky – called Night by his pack – had chosen to keep him home on this run, to ensure it didn’t happen again.
He had to be hard on his pack sometimes, but for the most part, they understood this. Without him, they would be a disorganized band of leftover werewolves, being displaced in the Adirondack foothills over the years, as mine after mine shut down, leaving none of them with a convenient place to hide among the humans there.
To be sure, there must be plenty of their kind hidden among humans in the modern cities, and it probably would have been kinder if Night had sent the bulk of his pack to live among them as well, but he had a vision, and he needed the others to help him fulfill it. He truly believed that werewolves could thrive without depending on the humans, yet more and more, as Nick and his team brought in their stories of new technology, he began to wonder if he was right.
Maybe he was looking at things the wrong way. Maybe it wasn’t that he should send his people to the technology, but rather that it should somehow be brought to them. With that in mind, he had sent a letter with Nick to present to Julian Hunter, whom he knew to be a just and capable leader from the days when the pack leader had taken in his mother. He’d been quite young when this happened, so he remembered no home beforehand. All he had was the fond memories of the time he spent there. If anyone would know how to help, it was sure to be Julian.
“Lord Nightsky, Nick’s brought outsiders to the pack,” exclaimed Amos Little as he ran inside the cabin where Night was waiting. The smallish man wrung his hands uncertainly. “Is he even allowed to do that?”
“What do you mean, outsiders?” asked Night, his temper rising to cancel out his shock.
Didn’t Nick know how dangerous it would be to reveal their camp to someone else? Night stormed out with his hands on his hips and headed for the drop-off point, ready to head him off at the pass before he brought whoever was with him any closer to their home.
Nick, as it turns out, was helping out the most beautiful female he’d ever seen. Long, golden-brown hair fell halfway to her knees, and her eyes were a lovely, cerulean blue. Night knew by the smell of her that she was wolf-born, and not some woman he’d decided to turn. He could also smell that she was unmated, and that fact tore at his loins for a moment before he remembered that she was not supposed to be there. Firming his resolve, he stepped up to Nick with a heavy frown.
“A word, Nick?” he asked tersely.
“Let me explain, my Lord,” said Nick nervously. “The young lady and her two companions are in answer to the letter you sent for Julian. This man is Rick Collins; he is supposed to know everything there is to know about building things. This man is Boris Heinrich, and he’s come to help us out with better medical information and such. The girl is his assistant, Miss Chastity Fayre, she’s been sent to teach us first aid, among other things. I do believe Boris has been entrusted with a few other ideas he’s meant to impart to you alone, but we might want to save that for later since I’m sure everyone will be wanting to eat soon.”
“Yes, you’re right about that, at least,” Night agreed. “Well, there’s no sense being offended by such a thoughtful gift, so I will forgive you this time. But in future, I expect you to use that cell phone I gave you for something besides an ornament.”
“I’ll try to remember next time, my Lord,” he said with a bow, and took Night’s hand to kiss the wolf’s head ring that he wore on his pinky. That practice had taken a while for Night to get used to, but the pack had insisted upon including it for the sake of ceremony to indicate business was complete and everyone could behave normally again.
Once they had seen this signal, the thirty werewolves who had been waiting in the trees began to howl and come out from hiding, eager to greet their returning members. Some of them had transformed into wolves, but they all reformed into humans as they came to help pack in the supplies. They were much more talkative this time, of course, but politely so, for they did not wish to incur their lord’s wrath if they should be rude to his new guests.
Most of the wolves present were men, with only one exception among them. Chastity gravitated toward Cookie and smiled, and the woman immediately started barking orders. Although he was supposed to be helping the men organize supplies, Night’s eyes strayed often to Chastity while she pitched right in to help set the table and cut up meat for all the plates.
She went about the work cheerfully, but she must have sensed his eyes on her at one point when she suddenly looked up sharply and sucked in her breath, looking very much like a deer that realized it had just been scented. He could imagine the carnal look she’d surprised on his face might be frightening, but she merely looked away again so fast it was almost as if she hadn’t looked in his direction at all. However, that didn’t change the fact that she had.
“Come, it’s time to clean up and get moving,” said Night after a while. “The campers are due to arrive here within the hour, and we wouldn’t want them to find their destination overrun by unwanted guests, would we? It was a close call last time, so let’s make it quick.”
“Yes, my Lord,”
they all said, bowing even as they scurried to do his bidding.
Chastity looked around at their behavior and strode over to Night with her arms folded over her chest, her disapproval written clearly on her face. “Don’t you think they could do the work faster if they were standing up correctly?” she asked Night pointedly.
“They could, but they never listen when I tell them so,” he said with a shrug. “They seem to think they need to worship me because I saved them from despair. Maybe you should be a bit more subservient yourself, Miss Fayre, if you don’t wish for them to be offended by your slight.”
She turned and saw that some of them were staring at her with a hint of hostility in their eyes. Her own eyes rounded with surprise. “What did I do wrong?”
“Next time, you should at least ‘my lord’ me if you don’t want someone to bite you in the ass,” he smirked.
“They wouldn’t—they wouldn’t really bite me, would they?”
“I couldn’t say for sure,” he said, keeping his face as straight as possible.
“I understood that you were behind the times around here, but this is ridiculous,” Chastity commented dryly as he linked an arm around hers and pulled her behind one of the trees to continue the discussion. She gasped at his effrontery, and pulled free of the grasp with a little frown.
“When I found these people, they were living in the woods like wild animals,” he told her as he reached out to straighten a lock of her hair. “Some of them didn’t even know how to morph into their human forms, it had been so long since they needed to do so. As I understand it, the original wolves had taken over a very small town of only fifty people, eating some and turning some others. But even that didn’t last over time. Their makers grew tired of their folly and apparently moved on, leaving these men to themselves. These woods are vast and spread out, and there’s plenty of game, so food wasn’t the problem. They just didn’t have the tools they needed to become more civilized.”
“And how did you fit into that scenario?”
“I used to work in the iron mines until they went under,” he explained. “The whole town I lived in closed literally overnight. Five of us there were werewolves—myself and my deliverymen. We didn’t know where to go once the power was shut off, so we just wandered off into the foliage instead of returning to the civilized world, where we all agreed we would never fit in with the humans. We found this town, I took charge, and that is how it has been for practically a hundred years, now.
I send my four boys out for supplies from time to time. They go in an old truck that somebody had left behind when the little town got abandoned, and we hope against hope the thing won’t die before they return.”
“How do you buy the goods you sent your men after?” she wanted to know.
“Trade for it, mostly,” he explained. “We’re growing some herbs here that are used in medicine. Some of them, I don’t even know what they are for, but the seeds were sent and we produced the plants. Most of our meat we get for ourselves out here, but sometimes we like to supplement. The real treasure isn’t the meat Nick brought, it was the cutlery and plates he brought along as well.”
“All is ready, my Lord,” said one of the pack members as he bowed to Night.
“Thank you, Seth,” he said to the man. Then he gave Chastity a slight smile and said, “Time to go. I hope you know the journey is long, and we do not take it often. If you come with us now, you’ll have to spend at least three months among my people before anyone will be making the journey back here again.”
“I understand,” she said with a nod. “I’m sure I can handle myself.”
Night smiled at her choice of words, and she blushed.
“You will walk with me,” he said then. “You’ll be safer that way. This group is mostly male, and all of them can smell your—untouched state. They won’t dare to try anything if I am nearby.”
Blushing further, she replied, “Thanks, but I don’t think it will be necessary. If anyone tries to bite me, they would find out I have teeth as well.”
Night found himself wishing she would bare more than just her pretty white teeth when Chastity showed them to him. But he did not try to stop her when she walked over and picked up one of the bags and began to carry it, following the others along the forest path.
*
With the heavy load to deal with, the pack of werewolves was not able to transform into their animal forms as they carried everything back to their lair. This meant that their speed was somewhat decreased, but it was a necessary evil if they wanted to be able to hold onto the supplies.
Chastity was beginning to wonder if the little abandoned town to which they were headed was a fictional place they would never manage to reach, when the faded row of whitewashed buildings finally came into view. Looking the place over, she could see from the remnants that this place had never been especially prosperous even in its own day.
For one thing, it clearly had never had any form of electricity, and for another, the buildings were small and looked as though they’d been slapped together all at the same time. There were ten buildings in all, one which appeared to have been the mercantile, another the mill, one stable to either side of the town, and a saloon that was now in such disrepair they obviously did not use it. On the far end stood two rather large buildings, one filled with beds, and another filled with rows of tables and chairs. Only three actual houses stood, and only two of those looked like they were in use, while the third sported a gaping hole in its side.
“Does your waterwheel not work anymore?” asked Rick as he cast his eyes about with the need to fix something already shining in his eyes.
“Not since I’ve been here,” said Night with a shrug. “I’ve never thought about fixing the thing since they were using it to grind imported wheat kernels into flour, and we mostly eat meat around here.”
“Well, even a werewolf might enjoy a bit of bread now and again,” Rick said. “But anyway, that wasn’t what I was thinking of doing with it. This place does not seem to have ever had electricity, but maybe I could rig up something. Start with the wheel and maybe work my way up from there. You must get tired of finding ways to charge those cell phones you mentioned before.”
“We hauled in a few car batteries and a charging box a couple years back,” Night explained. “We’re almost out of gas now, though, and it was such a hassle to get the last load here I’d almost given up on having any power at all. We don’t really need the things when all of us are here. We only charge them up while the boys are out picking up supplies.”
Most of the men had dropped their burdens in a large enclosure in the middle of town and they were now beginning to disperse, leaving only a very few people standing, the newcomers and those who had brought them, and of course Lord Nightsky, and maybe one or two others. Chastity began to fidget as she waited for someone to tell her where she’d get to bed down.
Night’s eyes shifted from Rick to her as he noticed what she was doing. He tried not to grin as he looked away from her again, pretending more interest in the technological wizard’s words than was actually there. Finally, he took mercy on her.
“Well, I think that we can all agree that you won’t be starting to work on the waterwheel before we’ve gotten some sleep first. There’s not really a place ready to put you, as such, but I suppose you could all bed down in the main dorm with the men, right over there. It used to be a boarding house back in the day. There’s not a whole lot of privacy in there, but I’m sure it’ll do at least for the night.”
Rick nodded agreeably and started walking toward the place right away, not waiting for the others to follow him.
“I can’t bed down in a house full of men!” Chastity gasped with outrage.
“Oh, no, of course you can’t,” Night agreed. “I guess I’ll just have to take you home with me.”
“W-what? What do you mean, with you?” she stammered, blushing furiously.
“As I told you before, it’s mostly men here, and the safest plac
e for a girl like you will be at my side,” he said, clearly amused. “I have a house just over there, and it happens to have a spare bedroom. It’s not very big, but then again neither are you. You should fit comfortably enough.”
“I want my own house,” she informed him. “The very idea of being in there with you alone is completely indecent. How do you expect these men to keep their thoughts towards me respectable if you’ve got them all wondering what sorts of things we’re doing out of their sight?”
“What sorts of things did you have in mind?” Night asked innocently.
“Oh!” she growled. “I’d just as soon sleep out in the woods.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he told her then. “I’ll not allow you to put yourself in danger of being treated indecently in your ridiculous attempt to keep up appearances. Have you no idea how tempting you are to the likes of them?”
“And what about you?” she asked hotly. “Your eyes have hardly left my person since I got here.”
“As to that, I think I am capable of handling myself,” he shot back, making her blush even more at the image his words evoked, especially when she remembered the image she’d probably given him earlier when she had used them herself.
“My dear, I’m sure that Lord Nightsky is correct in this matter,” Boris said gently. “But if it will make you feel any better, perhaps he will allow me to find a spot to sleep in his home as well. They would hardly get the wrong idea about things if they knew the two of you were not completely alone.”
“I suppose you could sleep in the so-called living room, but unfortunately it doesn’t have a bed in it,” Night conceded. “Besides, Nick mentioned that you had something to discuss with me anyway.”
“Yes, but it can wait until no other ears are present,” he said, glancing down at the girl from behind her back.