Mated to the Pack

by Alanis Knight

  “Ohhhhh-kay…” Logan said. “So, what are the plans?”

  Michael retreated into a dark corner and leaned against the wall. Only a shaft of blue-gray moonlight coming from a nearby window illuminated him.

  “For now, nothing,” Michael said. “It’s up to them to make the first move.”

  “I say we fight!” Logan argued, pounding his fist into his palm. “We should surprise them! Take them out while we can!”

  “No!” Michael snapped. “It’s too dangerous. They could be planning an ambush. Anything could happen.”

  “But, if we take the fight to them…” Logan started to say.

  “I said no!” Michael snarled, his voice almost otherworldly in its viciousness.

  Logan immediately closed his mouth, and his shoulders slouched forward in defeat. Then he looked over at Luke and said, “What do you think?”

  “I think Michael’s right,” Luke admitted. “It’s too dangerous to go after them on their own turf. We’d be at a disadvantage. Plus, they could be just waiting for us to leave her unguarded.”

  Logan frowned at his brother, but then he sighed heavily and groaned, “Fine, I see your point.”

  “Then we stay here and see what they do,” Michael said, ending the matter.

  “Who’s hungry?” Logan asked as cheerfully as he could manage.

  “Me!” Allison gasped, her stomach suddenly gnawing painfully. “Wow, I didn’t realize how hungry I am until you said something.”

  “I think we’re actually running low on food,” Luke commented.

  “Why didn’t you pick any up while you were in town earlier?” Michael growled.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know we were that low,” Logan admitted sheepishly.

  Michael snarled and said, “Get going, and hurry back!”

  “Wait!” Allison said quickly. “Isn’t it a bit dangerous to send Logan out alone in the middle of the night with all this going on?”

  Michael paused, and then asked Luke, “Exactly how much food do we have?”

  Luke shrugged, “I think we have a loaf of bread and a couple of apples.”

  “That’ll do for tonight,” Allison interjected.

  “Agreed,” Michael said. “You and Logan will go into town in the morning at first light. For now, Allison, you should get some sleep.”

  “Um, she should eat first,” Logan reminded him.

  “I’ll just take an apple for tonight,” Allison said.

  “Logan…” Michael started to say.

  “Got it,” Logan said and jogged out of the room. Moments later, he returned with an apple washed and nestled carefully in a paper towel.

  “Thank you, Logan,” she said politely. “Good night, everyone.”

  “Night,” said Luke and Logan. Michael merely nodded from the shadows.

  Allison ascended the creaking stairs, sinking her teeth into the crisp, juicy flesh of the apple. Juice dribbled down her chin, and she licked it carefully away. Her head was filled with visions of fur flying and sharp teeth bared. The thought of the pack being hurt because of her…

  It was then that her eyes turned upward and she saw two gleaming yellow eyes staring menacingly in the darkness on the stairs above her. A lip curled menacingly over two rows of vicious fangs, and a deep, guttural growl rolled out smooth and angry.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but suddenly something closed over it. In a blinding moment, she felt hands grasping her from multiple directions. She was bound, gagged, and a bag was placed over her head. She struggled frantically, but moments later she was being whisked away as she kicked and clawed.

  Eventually, Allison realized that fighting was futile, so she relaxed. She was being carried, and she could hear additional footsteps nearby. This must be Victor and his pack, she thought.

  After a while, she heard the click of a door opening, and then another. Finally, she was placed on a soft surface. Her bonds were removed, but then she felt her wrists being bound again.

  “Victor, I assume,” Allison spat with a voice full of vitriolic disgust.

  “You are our mate,” Victor snarled. “We claimed you first!”

  “I will never be your mate!” Allison shouted, spitting in his face.

  Victor’s hand flew into the air over his shoulder as if to backhand her, but suddenly the sound of splintering wood and shattering glass yanked his attention away from her. His head snapped backward, and in an instant, he shifted right before Allison’s eyes, leaping into the air and twisting his body to face the door.

  Michael stood panting in the doorway, his eyes narrowed and his fists balled beside him. His bare chest heaved, and he gritted his teeth so fiercely Allison could hear them grinding.

  “Not today, Victor!” Michael snarled through clenched teeth.

  Victor lunged, and faster than Allison even thought possible, Michael shifted. Shreds of his jeans flew into the air and began to flutter around him, and he exploded into a raging ball of rippling muscle twitching beneath a blanket of gray fur. They connected, and curled into a snarling, snapping ball that rolled right out the door.

  Victor’s cronies shifted and dashed out the door after them. She could hear the cries of canine pain from outside, and her heart began to pound, nauseating her. She lifted her head, trying to catch a glimpse of what was happening.

  “Shh,” someone whispered, and she quickly glanced to her right where she saw Logan smiling reassuringly as he loosened the ropes that bound her right hand.

  She left someone loosening the other, and she turned her head to see Luke, who nodded a brief hello.

  In seconds, her bonds were released, and she leaped to her feet. Logan grabbed her hand and pulled, and she quickly followed him out the back door, moving as silently as possible.

  Once outside, Logan and Luke shifted. Logan, she noticed, was smaller and pale gray with a snowy white chest, while Logan was thicker and his gray coat was mottled with flecks of white and rust.

  Logan lowered the front half of his body to the ground in front of her, his muzzle resting on the ground with his tail thrust into the air. For a moment, she stared at him awkwardly, and then she realized what he wanted. She swung her leg over him and grabbed two thick handfuls of the fur at the nape of his neck.

  Logan rose and began to sprint, Luke dashing along beside him, occasionally looking over his shoulder. Logan sailed over a fallen tree and ducked under a low branch. Allison’s heart leaped into her throat and stuck there, choking her as she clung fiercely to Logan’s thick fur. They were moving so rapidly she could scarcely breathe, and the forest was a hazy blur of greens and browns. She screwed her eyes tightly shut and buried her face in Logan’s neck, hiding from her own terror.

  Luke growled something and Logan barked a hasty reply. She could hear their paws rustling the leaves as they dashes away, two distinct sets of paws. Two.

  “Michael!” she found herself gasping aloud, her eyes popping open. “Logan, stop! We have to go back!”

  Logan yelped with distress, but he continued to dash through the forest. Her heart had already been pounding furiously, but now it felt as though it were about to explode.

  “Logan, stop!” she demanded, ponding his shoulder with one hand.

  He shook his furry head and continued to run, while visions of Michael being torn apart by Victor and his pack played through her mind like a horror movie.

  Why wouldn’t he stop?

  Luke continued glancing over his shoulder, keeping pace beside his brother as though the two were one. Unable to convince Logan, she shouted over to Luke and said, “Luke, we have to go back! We can’t just leave him!”

  Luke’s ear twitched, and she knew she’d managed to reach him, but he continued to race beside his brother as if she’d said nothing. Defeated, she buried her face back into Luke’s furry neck.

  Moments later, their paw falls began to slow, and they came to a stop. Raising her head, she could see they were outside a small cave. It was mostly hidden by a thick mass of brush and
tree limbs, but the dark entrance was still easy to spot.

  Logan lowered his body, and Allison took the signal, dismounting him. Luke and Logan shifted. Allison flushed at their nakedness and turned away.

  “What’s to become of Michael?” she demanded.

  “Michael knew the risks when we came to get you,” Luke said.

  “So you’re not going back?” Allison shrieked.

  “The plan was for Michael to distract them while we got you out and brought you to our safe haven,” Luke said. “It seems to have worked. I don’t think we were followed.”

  “And you just left him there to die?” Allison shouted. Her rage had overcome her embarrassment, and she wheeled to face the brothers, her eyes narrowed and her body trembling with fury. “He’s your brother, how could you?”

  The brothers glanced at one another, and Logan opened his mouth to speak. He quickly closed it.

  “We had no choice,” Luke said coolly.

  “No choice,” Allison muttered. Then more loudly, “No choice! Do you think Michael would say he had no choice if one of you were back there?”

  “I’ll not discuss this with you,” Luke said. “Get in the cave.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what to do!” Allison shouted. “You have no right to—“

  “Have it your way,” Luke shrugged.

  Then he snatched Allison up and threw her over his shoulder, pushing his way past the brush and branches and into the pitch-black cave.

  “Put me down!” she shrieked, trying to wriggle out of his grasp, but he was much stronger than she. “Put me down right this instant!”

  Luke ignored her, and a little while later, she heard a click and a deep grinding noise like heavy stones rubbing together. Light peeked through a small crack in the cave wall, growing wider and wider until a doorway appeared. Luke carried her through it.

  Once inside, he planted her on her feet and she slapped him. His cheek reddened deeply where her hand had struck, but he said nothing, only staring at her for a moment before turning and exiting the room. The stone wall began to close, and she tried to follow him out, but the gap closed too quickly.

  “Damn it,” she muttered, crossing her arms before her and glowering at the wall.

  She turned to notice a fairly cozy room built within the natural stone of the cave. Clearly, this place was meant for wolves. Though it had beds in the form of creaky looking military cots, and food, and another doorway that appeared to lead to another room that Allison hoped dearly might be a bathroom, the floor was earthen and the walls were bare stone. The room was lit with the golden glow of lighting recessed into the walls.

  “My, you guys are resourceful,” she commented.

  Her irritation was palpable. She began to pace the floor as she waited. For what, she did not know. Would Luke and Logan stay there with her? Would they go back for Michael? She began to gnaw her fingernails as she paced.

  She’d nearly worn a rut in the bare earth when the door began to grind, and she froze with her thumbnail between her teeth.

  Michael, bruised and battered and with dried blood crusted in his hair and wearing nothing but black shorts, appeared in the doorway.

  She twitched, her instinct to run to him, but she stopped herself just in time. Instead, she tilted her head to one side and said, “About time you showed up.”

  “Nice to see you, too,” he muttered, limping into the room, followed shortly by Luke and Logan, also in shorts.

  Michael rolled with a painful grunt onto a cot and stared at the ceiling as the heavy stone closed, sealing them in.

  “Were you followed?” Luke asked.

  “Do you think I’d have come here if I were?” Michael growled.

  “Don’t be a dick,” Luke grumbled.

  Michael shot a warning glance in Luke’s direction and said, “It’s because I’m a dick that you all are alive right now.”

  “Sorry,” Luke muttered, plopping heavily onto a cot across the room, his face taut with frustrated contrition.

  “How long do we have to stay here?” Allison wondered aloud.

  Michael gripped his ribs and grunted as he pulled himself into a sitting position, and he glared deeply into her eyes. “This is our new home thanks to you.”

  “Thanks to me?” she gasped, offended. “You’ve got to be kidding! I didn’t ask for any of this!”

  “No, but we could have just let Victor keep you,” Michael reminded her. “We didn’t need to rescue you… either time.”

  Allison’s jaw dropped, and she started to fly into an indignant rage, but she managed to suppress her rage. He had a point. Instead, she dropped onto a cot and assumed the same defeated position that Luke had been glowering in.

  “Logan, please lower the lights,” Michael said. “I must rest. Stand guard until I awaken.”

  “Got it,” Logan said.

  Moments later the lighting dimmed to near darkness. Allison leaned heavily against the wall, biting the inside of her cheek and glaring at Michael’s bare torso lying on his cot across the room. Soon, her eyelids grew heavy, and eventually she drifted into a fitful sleep.

  Chapter Six

  The room was still dim when she came to, but she noticed it was empty. Her brows furrowed, and she started to call their names, but Michael emerged from the back room toweling his hair with water droplets sliding down his bare midsection. She noticed his wounds were completely healed.

  Allison’s eyes lingered just a bit longer than she intended, and then she quickly turned her attention to the moth-eaten blanket on her cot.

  “Well, look who finally woke up,” Michael commented.

  “Finally? What time is it?” she asked.

  “About noon last time I checked.”

  “Noon! I’ve never slept so long in my life!” she gasped.

  He shrugged and continued to rub his hair vigorously with the towel before discarding it haphazardly across the back of the lone chair that sat in the corner.

  “Pig,” she muttered, crossing the room and snatching the towel from the chair and taking it into the bathroom, which she was startled to see was nothing more than a shower stall devoid of a curtain, a small, rusty sink, and a rather disgusting toilet. She threw the towel over the top edge of the shower stall and quickly withdrew from the musty room.

  “Don’t say a word,” Michael muttered.

  “What?”

  “I know what you’re thinking, Little Miss Priss, and you can stuff it,” he grunted. “If our safe haven isn’t to your liking, you’re free to go check into some upscale hotel somewhere.”

  “How dare you,” Allison growled.

  “How dare me?” Michael returned. “No, no, no. How dare you! I saw the way your stuck up little nose wrinkled when you came out of the bathroom! We risked our lives for you and all you can do is turn up that little nose of yours!”

  “For your information,” Allison snarled, approaching him aggressively, “that isn’t what I was doing! I was actually thinking that I wished I could fix things up a bit and make things more pleasant!”

  He lowered his head until his eyes were inches from hers and said incredulously, “Oh, yeah, I’ll bet that is exactly what you were thinking.”

  “I hate you,” she muttered.

  “The feeling is mutual,” he retorted.

  Then suddenly their lips collided, pushed together so firmly that Allison could have sworn she tasted the pungent bite of blood on her lip. Michael’s body leaned against hers, slamming her against the rough cave wall. His hand wrapped around her throat, pinning her against the wall as his tongue pushed its way between her lips.

  Allison’s leg lifted upward, wrapping around his hip and pulling him firmly against her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he reached behind her, grabbing her bottom and pulling her upward, where she wrapped her other leg around him. She could feel him bulging against the thick curves of her hips.

  His tongue probed wildly within her mouth. She was breathless, her heart pounding
erratically. He took her lower lip between his teeth and nipped sharply, and she gasped.

  “Oh, god, please take me,” she begged him with the faintest of whispers in his ear.

  Then she heard the grinding of stone against stone, and the two of them froze. Panic stricken, the two were unable to react, and the two of them were still tangled together as Luke and Logan emerged through the doorway.

  The color drained from Logan’s face, and he dropped the paper grocery bag he was carrying. Inside it, glass shattered, and some liquid began to leak through the brown paper, seeping into the earthen floor.

  “You son of a bitch,” Luke murmured, shaking his head.

  Michael’s body went limp, and Allison slowly slipped downward until her feet touched the floor. He backed carefully away from her and turned meekly to face the two.

  “Brothers, please, let me explain…” Michael tried to begin, but Luke cut him off.

  “Don’t bother,” Luke spat. “You’re dead to me. I disavow this pack. You are no longer my Alpha, and this is no longer my pack!”

  Logan’s lips parted, and he tried to grab Luke’s arm as he dash past him and out the door, but Luke was too fast. Logan grunted with his mouth agape, and he looked into Michael’s eyes and quickly after his brother, and then back to Michael. Logan shook his head apologetically, and then disappeared, calling after Luke as his voice echoed into the darkness in the cavern outside.

  “Damn it,” Michael muttered. Then, slamming his fist into the stone wall, he shouted, “Damn it!”

  Allison said nothing. She shrank back into the shadows against the cave wall, afraid to speak. What had she done?

  Michael turned toward her with his eyes brimming with fury, and he pointed his finger toward her accusingly.

  “You,” he snarled.

  “Wh-what?” she stammered.

  “You,” he repeated through gritted teeth. He shook his finger at her and muttered once again, “You.”

  Then he turned and struck the wall again… and again, and again until his fingers were shredded an leaving bloody fist prints on the stone.

  “Stop!” Allison shrieked. “Please stop!”