The last few days, she’d had to follow them up the mountain, and then up again. This late in the season she thought pickings had to be awfully scant if they were ranging above the tree line, but she was starting to wonder if, for whatever reason, they hadn’t just chosen to keep their den this high.
She turned in her hiding place among the bushes, and kept her eye on the pair of wolves she could see now. One of them, the Alpha, was chasing the other—running him down as he tried to slip in and out of the trees. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen this behavior, though it was usually one of the other pack members who was being chased. This one…she wasn’t sure she’d seen this one before.
The one she called Moon because of his lighter fur, the one the Alpha was usually chasing, was nowhere in sight. This one had markings and striations in his fur almost identical to another of the wolves she’d seen, the one she’d labeled King. King had an attitude even with his Alpha, but this one—
He was growling, lips drawn back, and fangs clearly visible. Otavia shifted forward a little closer, picked up her camera and held it on the two as they backed across the narrow strip of a clearing only ten yards away from her. She jotted quick notes with her free hand, eyes locked on the two wolves through the video lens. The Alpha paced around the smaller one, though he wasn’t smaller by much.
Emperor. A good enough name, since he looked like King. Still defiant. More directly confrontational than the other pack wolves. The Alpha leapt forward, and Emperor retreated, then rushed him, mouth open, fangs snapping—the Alpha moved slightly to one side, got his shoulder under the other wolf’s charge, and flipped him. He was over Emperor in a flash, pinning him to the ground, holding the back of his neck with sharp teeth, but Emperor wasn’t having any of it.
She’d never seen a wolf defy his Alpha like this, was it a challenge for dominance? Emperor turned, struggling, trying to get free, and she revised her hypothesis. Maybe Emperor was trying to leave the pack, and the Alpha didn’t want him to. Every movement the smaller wolf made was to escape, and when he got free he darted toward the edge of the clearing rather than turn to confront the Alpha again.
It did him no good. The larger wolf was on him in a minute, and this time when he had Emperor by the back of the neck, the Alpha mounted him, growling, showing his dominance in the most primal way. Emperor squealed—and then Otavia almost dropped her camera. The wolf started to change, becoming not-wolf and then human faster than her eyes could track.
The Alpha over him changed almost as quickly, becoming a blue-eyedman, but he didn’t stop what he’d been doing. Sharp teeth still held the other man at the back of the neck, and the Alpha held his thighs open with his own thighs, kept thrusting into him sharply, again and again until the man under him tossed his head and whined.
It was a wolf noise she’d heard before, but never from a human man.
“Damn it, that fucking hurts!”
“Then submit.”
Otavia dropped the camera slowly and just stared as they spoke to each other. Wolves. They were. They had been. Wolves.
Now they were definitely not.
Alpha & Omega: The Complete Collection Page 25