The hunt took them far from the village, over many miles, and in the course of the journey, Beth figured out it was a stag they were driving on. She caught sight of its antlers shining in the light of the moon which had steadily climbed to crown the navy sky. She growled, sweeping closer, and the stag bolted in the direction of the party to the left, who in turn drove it back to the right, only to be pushed on ever further by the group lagging behind.
Panicking now, the stag rolled its eyes, fast draining its vast reserves of stamina to race further into the night. Beth glanced behind to be sure September had kept up. The girl was a surprisingly adept hunter. Gracefully flying over fallen logs and twisted roots, never once losing her footing once she’d given herself over to the wolf. Felicity, never far behind either, bounded a hair’s breath from the tip of the girl’s tail. An unlikely trio, they drove the beast ever onward.
Spying a large clearing up ahead, Beth guessed they would take the animal down once they reached it. The stag was tiring now, she noticed, its coat foaming, steam rising from its heated flesh. Survival of the fittest, she thought before letting out a chilling howl on the spur of the moment. It was answered almost immediately from the wolves behind and to her left. The only one strangely unaffected was Felicity, who seemed to be in a sulk. What Beth had done to deserve her rancor, she couldn’t begin to guess.
Shrugging the thought off, she leaped faster, longer, closer, and the stag went haywire, emitting short, frightened snuffling sounds, its legs faltering. He was staggering now, but still not out of the game. Beth hung back a bit and let the animal get a second wind, driving it into the waiting jaws of the hunting party ahead.
It was over quite quickly when it all came down to it. The Master of the Hunt came bounding out of the long grass in the meadow, howling and snapping, and the stag faltered in its steps, almost falling head over heels in its effort to abort the forward movement. Too late, he realized his momentum was going to carry him forward like a locomotive, no matter what, and he swung his deadly antlers, crashing into the skull of one of the Master’s comrades.
All at once the stag fell, its legs crumpling from beneath, his proud head diving toward the ground. Beth took her opportunity, darting in to sink her sharp canines into the soft flesh of his belly, ripping, tearing side to side like a dog with a bone.
September, caught up in the spirit of the moment, tried to join in, earning herself a gash along her side, just below the ribs. Dangerous even when down, the stag fought on bravely, striking another of the group before the Master finally managed to get a grip on its throat and tear the front of it away, exposing the spurting artery.
Howls of victory exploded from the throats of the wolves in the meadow, surrounding the growing red stain of the stag’s blood seeping into the earth. Of the Earth, Beth intoned in her mind. To the Earth. It was what her old pack had always said when they’d been successful in a hunt. Everything was born from the earth, and everything rejoined it, sooner or later.
If a wolf could grin, Beth managed, looking around at the members of the hunt. Wallace lapped at the blood still spurting sporadically from the torn throat of the animal, while the rest of the group waited.
Eventually the Master raised his head, signaling for Beth to have a taste. She’d never before been permitted to taste the still flowing blood of the prey of the hunt and she stepped forward nervously, dipping her head toward the steaming gullet. If she’d imagined Alanna’s wine to be delicious, this was ambrosia. Rich and salty, the flavor coated her tongue and mouth, sliding down her throat in a hot rush.
Magnificent. She thanked the Master with a dip of her head and raised her eyes toward September, lying prone on the ground, whimpering. In the heat of the moment, she’d forgotten the girl’s injury. Guilt settling like a lead weight in her stomach, washing the pure taste of the kill from her, she started toward the girl, only to stop short as another reached her first, whining and dropping his muzzle toward the long gash on September’s flank.
Mickey.
With a short yip, September snapped at his paw, but he simply raised his leg and swiped at her muzzle. Wolf-speak for “shut up and let me,” she supposed. He sniffed the wound, before dragging his tongue across it gently, cleaning any grit or dirt from it. Beth sighed with relief as September finally stilled and allowed his ministrations.
Perhaps there was hope for them both, after all. He certainly seemed to care for the girl. And in turn, September didn’t seem as frightened as she had before now that he was up close and definitely in her personal space. Beth yawned, suddenly tired and retreated back to the carcass of the stag to join her fellow hunters.
Wallace and his one remaining un-injured partner had already shimmered and were in the process of settling its dead weight between them to carry back to the village. It would take them a lot longer to get home in human-form, but they couldn’t carry it in wolf-form, so concessions were made, out of practicality.
Beth spared a glance for the two other injured wolves. The first one who had taken the stag’s brute force to the skull was awake and alert, if a bit unsteady and would need no treatment, and the second, with a simple flesh wound had also shimmered in order to heal himself. If September had shimmered, she too would have been healed by now. Perhaps she needed the injury, Beth thought, her eyes once again drawn to the figure of Mickey, still cleaning the obviously clean wound.
And they all lived happily ever after, she thought. Well, almost all, she amended, thinking of the duty she must perform upon arriving home. Her time was up; it was Donovan tonight, or Bradley tomorrow. Shivering in distaste, she loped into the forest amongst the other wolves, intent on getting home as soon as possible. Soonest begun, soonest finished.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Was there ever a better invention than a shower? Beth didn’t think so, standing under its scalding, driving force. She’d arrived home to a dark and empty house and immediately thought of one thing. A shower. The smooth, rich lather slid down her body and pooled by her feet as she scrubbed the day’s events from her body, leaving her feeling delightfully tingly and clean.
Rinsing off, she allowed herself to consider her decision. Was she right to break her Bond with Gareth? The buzzing in the back of her mind told her so. Was she right to feel terrified that it would all go wrong? She didn’t know. If she broke their Bond, and Gareth was hurt because of it she’d never forgive herself. But how would she know?
She hadn’t felt anything from the other pack since leaving the territory, not even in wolf-form. She supposed if the incessant droning of the inner chatter disappeared by the time she got to her creek most days, all the way out here...the pack tie was next to useless.
The only way to find out if her pack tie even existed anymore would be to travel back to the Loam Floor territory – an act she was not willing, or able to do. So she had little choice but to forge ahead. If it were left up to her, she could admit in her deepest thoughts, she’d rather not Bond with anyone else. She would always love her Guardian.
A sound alerted her to the fact that she was not as alone as she’d previously thought. She heard a weary sigh and the thump-thump of discarded shoes hitting the polished wooden floor in the next room. Donovan was home. She finished rinsing and dried off, quickly rubbing a plush, white towel over her body and hair. Not bothering to pull on a dressing gown, she let the door swing open to reveal her damp, naked body to the man lying across the bed.
He lifted his face and his expression, a mixture of lust and weariness made her squirm. Shouldn’t he be rushing over to whisk her off her feet? “Donovan?” she queried, softly.
“I’m sorry I didn’t join you for the hunt,” he replied, and she brushed his apology aside. “I had a meeting with my father.”
His eyes pierced her and she wanted to pull the dressing gown from the back of the door and hide herself from his gaze. Something was wrong. “He explained how the Bond works.”
“Oh?”
“I can’t do it, Beth.” He groan
ed in despair. “I can’t Bond with you. I can’t risk you that way.”
“Risk me? In what way?” Her mind whirled, and she did wrap herself in the gown before seating herself on the chair by the window. She gazed around the lush room, seeing none of the splendid decor. The chocolate brown silk curtains may as well have been sheets of paper, and the massive oak bed, dressed in rich green cotton may as well have been a bed of nails.
She focused her gaze on the face of her mate, and tried to wrap her mind around the idea that he wouldn’t, or couldn’t finish this mating. “Please, Donovan,” she whispered when he made no reply. “Speak to me.”
“I can’t risk you going mad,” he told her on a ragged whisper. “I can’t risk you turning feral and drifting off into the woods alone forever.” He rose from the bed and in one fluid motion dragged her from her seat and crushed her against him. “I’m not that strong.”
“Donovan, please, you don’t understand–”
“I do,” he cried savagely. “I won’t lose you, even if that means never truly having you.” Devouring her mouth in a rough kiss, he groaned and thrust her from him.
“Donovan, please!” she cried in return, begging him to stay. He couldn’t leave her. “I love you,” she whispered, tears welling over.
His haunted expression smoothed and he too welled up, his amber eyes glistening with unshed tears. “I know, Beth. I know you love me. But you’re not in love with me. Not like you are with him.”
She started to protest but he cut her off with a wave of his hand. “I understand,” he croaked. “I truly do. And I love you just the same, but I cannot do it. Please understand, as I do.”
“I’m sorry,” she replied, sobbing. “I’m sorry I can’t be who you want me to be, but please...” she trailed off, hating herself for what she would say next.
“What?” he demanded roughly, hand freezing on the doorknob, steadfastly glaring at the frame.
She sighed at the back of his dark head and whispered to him. “I need you.”
“No Beth, you don’t need me,” he answered, brokenly. “You will always have a place in the pack. But it is no longer by my side.”
“Where, then?” she demanded roughly. “Where is my place?”
“Your place is as it was always intended. By my father’s side.” He pulled the door open violently and strode though it. Beth stared at the empty doorway in despair.
Of course, Beth realized. The sole motivation for the meeting was to hand her over.
The Alpha gets what the Alpha wants.
“Wait!” Beth cried, running so fast she almost barreled right down the stairs. “You don’t understand.”
The sound of his shirt sleeve tearing as she whirled him around seemed unnaturally loud in the empty hallway. “It’s you that doesn’t understand, Beth.” He cupped her cheek tenderly and she frowned, gazing into his sad eyes. “He won’t Bond you. But he will breed you.” Donovan sighed. “It’s the only remaining option.”
“But, how can he avoid Bonding me?” Shelving her imminent status as brood-mare for the moment, she focused on the facts. How could she mate with another without breaking the Bond she had with Gareth?
“Because he’s the Alpha,” he replied harshly. “Because he’s at no risk of becoming emotionally attached. And I don’t think you are, either. Because,” he carried on, shaking her hand free of his sleeve, and turning away once more. “He’s done it before.”
He seemed to hunch in on himself then, as if a great weight rested on his shoulders. Beth put a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, but removed it when he tensed. “If we’re going to have this conversation,” he said, not turning around. “You’re going to need to be dressed for it.”
~~~~
“A long time ago, before my father mated with his first wife, Lissa. There was another.” Donovan’s eyes moved from place to place, never settling on anything for more than a second or two. “My mother, Lenora.” He heaved a great sigh and met her eyes for the first time since she’d pulled on her sun dress and curled up in the bucket chair by the bedroom window. The evening sun was hanging low in the sky, sending dappled shadows to the corners of the room, and as Donovan sat in a shroud of them, his eyes seemed to shine all the brighter.
“My father has always been a man of particular tastes and appetites. He was never content with just one woman, even if she was his destined mate, and while Lissa was busy playing hard to get, Lenora was satisfying those appetites.”
Beth wondered how many people had heard this version of the epic, but ultimately tragic romance of Lissa and Bradley. Not many, she guessed. While Donovan spoke, and the sun sunk lower in the sky, and the shadows deepened, she got a sense of the real Alpha of the Tall Grass pack. Not a man who had lost his mind when his love left him, no. Rather a controlling and angry man who had lost whatever power he thought he had over her, and went mad with rage, not sadness.
“Just before he rose to Alpha status, he told my mother that their arrangement had come to an end and that he had to be seen as an upstanding member of the pack. For her part, my mother begged and pleaded with him not to leave her. She had fallen in love with him, you see, but since it was all one-sided, there was no Bond. I think she knew that it would never result in anything other than misfortune for her, but she had to try, you see?”
Beth nodded. She did see. After all, hadn’t she tried and tried herself with the object of her own affections, even though she knew it would never work?
“He would have none of it. Even the mention of her being pregnant would not sway him, and so he left her, and officially mated with Lissa.” He shook his head, spilling a dark lock onto his forehead. “Soon he had become our Alpha, and though he continued to act honorable, at least outwardly, he quickly reverted to his true nature and began to meet my mother in secret. I was very small, and don’t remember much of those times, but I remember enough.” His face darkened, and Beth got the feeling that those meetings weren’t always romantic or amicable.
“Did Lissa ever find out?” Could that be why such a devoted woman turned her affections to someone more worthy?
“I’m sure Lissa knew before they’d even mated,” he said harshly. “It’s not easy to miss the scent of another on your beloved.”
Beth cringed. “I’m sorry, Beth, I didn’t mean that...”
“Yes,” she replied softly. “You did. But I understand. Go on...”
“Why she ever mated with him, I’m not sure. Maybe she felt threatened, or maybe she just loved him that damn much. All I knew in my child's’ mind is that she took my father away. And I hated her for it. Silly, really. It was only as I grew older that I realized the only one who took him away was him. It was his choice.”
Beth couldn’t take it anymore; she could practically taste his hurt in the air. Quickly rising, she knelt in front of him and took his hands in her own, feeling their soft, un-calloused palms, dry and gentle. “You’re right, Donovan. He decided to miss out on your childhood. But you must have worked things out?”
He snorted. “You mean because here I am, living in the Great House, heir to the Alpha?”
She nodded slowly, feeling less sure.
“Not really, Beth. When it was discovered that Lissa had been meeting someone else in secret - much the same as my father was, actually - he went wild with rage. He damn near tore the entire village apart in his wrath, until he found them both. Declaring them rogue, he attacked them and forced them to flee from the territory, but he wasn’t content with that. He had to run them both down in the many months following, only returning to the pack once his grisly business was finished.” Donovan slipped his hands free from Beth’s death grip and rose, strolling slowly to the window, gazing at nothing but the past.
“By the time he’d returned, I had lost my mother to a fever, and was being shuffled from family to family. He really didn’t have a choice, knowing someone, at some stage would find out I was his son, so he took me in and raised me, which was a mixed blessing, to
say the least.”
Tears had started trickling down Beth’s cheeks at some point, and she brushed them aside quickly. “I’m so sorry, Donovan. She didn’t deserve any of that, and neither did you.” She tried to comfort him, but he once again shook her off and strode to the door, all anger drained from him, leaving him a disheveled and pain-filled wreck.
“So you see, Beth,” he whispered with his back to her. “This is the way it has to be.”
~~~~
Hours later, eyes bloodshot and swollen, Beth lay on the wide bed, wondering how everything had gone so wrong. But at least Gareth is safe, she told herself. The Bond would not break, and he would not be at risk. But what sort of life would she have, now? Much worse than any she could have imagined mere weeks ago. It seemed childish now to worry about which of the two handsome suitors she would pick, when she ended up with neither, and worse, was destined to be a breeding machine for a lunatic Alpha Werewolf in a foreign pack, in a different territory. Quite how things could get any worse, she couldn’t imagine.
“I see you’ve heard the news.” Bradley casually leaned on the jam of the door, watching her with an intensity that was unsettling. He seemed smug and gloating. “I was so hoping to inform you of your new status, myself.”
“New status?” Her mind was numb. How could he just stand there smirking as if he hadn’t just torn her entire world away from her.
“In a couple of days, you will officially become the Alpha Female of the Tall Grass pack,” he told her, smiling. “And you’ll be obedient, and wonderful, and perfect.”
It seemed more a threat than a compliment, and Beth took it as one, meaning if she wasn’t obedient, and wonderful and perfect, she would be dead, just like poor, tragic Lissa and Jake. “I will,” she replied carefully.
“And then,” he growled, his lust scent permeating the air. “You’ll be well and truly mated.”
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