The male threw his hands up. Tone petulant, he said, “Okay, okay. I’ll go get Kuva and scout the hills. If you don’t hear from us in…”
Sten tuned the male out as Indigo peered at him over her shoulder. It wasn’t until their eyes met that he realized he’d been staring at the back of her head. The lanterns that hung about the room highlighted features he hadn’t noticed about her outside. Her high cheekbones and button nose sported a light dusting of freckles, and her eyes were a unique shade of blue, almost violet. As he held her gaze, the corner of her plump lips curved.
She turned her attention forward as they entered a tunnel. With another command to leave from his alpha, Roch finally peeled away, falling back into the main room. They were only a few steps into the tunnel when they were accosted again, this time by someone Sten recognized.
The tall beta female wore a pinched expression as she approached them, her hands folded beneath her bare breasts. The last time Sten had seen her, he’d been escorting Astrid to Siluit, and had ended up rescuing Tallow from a bear attack. It had not been the first time they’d met, but he doubted that Tallow remembered as much.
“What’s Erik’s brother doing here?” she asked, her lips curling distastefully.
“He’s delivering a message from Amarok,” Zane told her.
Tallow’s attention shifted to Indigo. “Where the hell have you been? It’s almost midnight.”
Indigo rubbed the back of her neck. “Has it really been that long?”
“What, did you hit your head?” Her nostrils flared. “And why do you smell like—”
“Tallow.” Zane spoke the shifter’s name through his teeth.
She gave a haughty shrug, but remained silent as they passed by. Zane hung back with her, gesturing for Sten and Indigo to continue on. He gave Sten a hard stare as he said, “I’ll be right behind you.”
As they walked away, Sten overhead the Siluit alpha inquire about his mate.
“She’s awake,” he heard Tallow say. “Seems comfortable enough, but she’s insisting on seeing you before she goes back to sleep.”
Their conversation faded into the background as Sten observed his surroundings. The tunnel was more like a hallway, with what looked like private chambers branching off on the sides. Most of the doorways were strung with heavy pelts, though he could see light slipping through the uncovered spaces.
Indigo slowed her pace until they were walking side by side. “I’m sorry for…everything. I couldn’t have made a worse first impression if I’d been trying.”
“You weren’t trying?”
She winced, but recovered quickly when she noticed the grin tugging at his lips.
“Ha. So you have a sense of humor.” She gave him a look that was far too affectionate for his liking, and Sten was quick to redirect the conversation.
“Do the wolves in your pack always speak to your brother like that?”
“What do mean?”
“Being belligerent, speaking over him, and ignoring him outright.”
She cocked her head to the side, in what was already becoming a familiar gesture to Sten. His gaze was briefly drawn to the smooth column of her exposed neck, but then he flicked his eyes back up to meet hers.
“I guess I’ve never noticed. Our pack is very different from yours. Zane is alpha, but he doesn’t try to control us.” She gave him a look that was almost sly, at complete odds with her earlier timidity. “Do you do everything Erik tells you to?”
“Erik does not control me,” he conceded. “But I would never speak to him like that in front of others, especially not in front of a member of another pack. It would make Erik appear weak.”
Indigo stopped in front of a doorway, throwing him a look as she drew up the dark furs. “Or, maybe it would make him seem more human, you know, if he actually listened to what other people had to say.”
She was turning out to be good company, he thought. He much preferred this new, combative side to her. “And you think appearing human is a good thing?”
His voice hardened towards the end, as he had to grit his teeth against a rush of discomfiture. An overpowering scent filled the room, a scent that made his mouth run dry and the muscles around his groin tighten. He hesitated in the doorway, placing a hand on the cool stone wall to steady himself.
Seemingly oblivious, Indigo padded across the room. He heard the flicking of a switch, just before light flooded the room. Sten peered around the room, intrigue displacing his unease.
The lighting was electric, with blubs placed in sconces and wired to what appeared to be some sort of generator. Shelves were hewn into the walls from ceiling to floor, all of them crammed with books of different shapes and sizes. On the wall closest to him, Sten could see a small cluster of books on geology stacked beside a dozen thick fantasy novels.
Indigo sat on the edge of her bed, a raised stone platform piled with blankets and pillows. The quality of the fabric and sewing was too impeccable to have been done by anything other than a machine, and he wondered how she’d gotten so many human conveniences back to her den.
Sten watched as she took a pitcher from beside her bed and poured water into a wide rimmed bowl. She bent down, pulling a rectangular metal box from a depression beneath her bed. It contained a basic medical kit, and she took out a needle, thread, and a square cloth, laying them out on the comforter.
“Do you like my room?” she asked, as she drew her legs up onto the bed. Sten couldn’t help but notice that they were smooth and clean-shaven, a rarity among shifter females.
“It’s impressive. Did you do all of this yourself?”
Sten could still smell her blood, and he knew that the wound needed tending to, but he wasn’t eager to close the distance between them quite yet. The scent of the room was still doing strange things to his body, and he did not want her to mistake his arousal for anything that she had done.
“I wired the lighting, mostly so that I could read without straining my eyes. The bulbs can be dimmed, but I’m used to the brightness by now.” She fingered the bedding. “I helped make the mattress, but the blankets were a gift from Zane. A lot of the books were my mother’s, but the others usually bring me back a book when they make supply runs to town.”
“Have you read them all?”
“Not cover to cover,” she admitted, absently tugging at the hairband around her wrist. “Sometimes Kya brings back the most boring books she can find just to screw with me. Kuva even brought me two books that were in French, but he can’t read, so I don’t think it was intentional.”
She gathered her hair up in her hands, tying it into a high ponytail. At the sight of her bare neck, Sten gave up and made his way to the bed. At least her wound would serve as a distraction.
As he sat down beside her, she untied the pelt and pulled it down on one side, revealing the gash. The bloody wound should have held his attention, but his eyes briefly strayed, noticing the stiff nipple on her exposed breast.
“Don’t you ever go to town yourself?” he asked, grabbing the cloth. He had to reach past her to wet it in the bowl, and for a second he was close enough to feel the heat rising from her body.
Indigo scoffed. “You saw how angry my brother was. That didn’t just start when the bears showed up. I’ve never been allowed to leave the island on my own, not even to hunt.” She gave him a mischievous smile. “Of course, Zane isn’t always around to stop me. This past summer, I almost made it all the way to Amarok.”
“Before our alliance?” Sten asked, frowning. “You could have been killed.”
A faint blush crept across her cheeks, accentuating the femininity of her features. Sten redoubled his efforts not to look anywhere but her wound. After cleaning some of the blood, he could see that it was much deeper than he’d previously assessed. How had she not noticed such a serious injury?
“Are Amarok wolves really like that?” she asked. “Would you kill another shifter just for trespassing on your territory?”
“Generally, yes,”
he said, leaning over to rinse the cloth. “Doesn’t Siluit do the same with the bear shifters?”
She still hadn’t answered by the time he’d finished cleaning the wound, and when he finally glanced up at her face, she was staring at the floor, her expression somber. Sten was curious, but he didn’t pry. His betas would tell him everything he needed to know, once he managed to get them alone.
“Do you have antiseptic?” he asked her.
She gave a slight nod. “I usually save it for the pups and the humans. The rest of us don’t have much trouble fighting off infection.”
“Not usually,” he agreed. “But you have lost a lot of blood. Your immune system may be compromised for a few days.”
Indigo blinked at him. “I don’t think I’ve met anyone besides Ginnifer and Bo that knows what an immune system is. Are you a healer, too?”
“No.”
“Then what do you do? Are you a fighter?”
Sten considered the question as he threaded the needle. “Mostly, I spend time doing the things my brother cannot.” Or will not, he mentally added.
“What can’t Erik do?”
Sidestepping the question, Sten said, “You’re young to be a healer.”
“How old do you think I am?” she asked.
Sten knew exactly how old she was. It had been twenty years since he and Erik had crossed the Nares Straight, abandoning the land of their birth in order to capitalize on the upheaval of the Nunavut packs. Long before Amarok rose to claim the west, Sten and Erik had parted ways, becoming beta males in two different packs. Sten’s unique pedigree had earned him a high position in Sedna, which was where he’d been when the late Siluit’s alpha had broken their alliance, choosing to take a human mate over Shale, the daughter of Sedna’s former alpha. That human mate had undoubtedly been the mother of the small female sitting beside him.
But he did not offer details of his past to anyone, least of all those he hardly knew, so he kept that to himself.
“Early twenties?” he asked, making it sound like a guess.
“Something like that,” she said, looking rather pleased.
She hardly seemed to notice that Sten was suturing her wound, not even flinching as the needle wove in and out of her flesh. They fell into a silence that was almost comfortable, despite Indigo’s gaze boring into his skull. He’d never met anyone who seemed so at ease while openly staring at another person.
Sten heard the Siluit alpha approach, first recognizing the hard, deliberate cadence of his steps, and then his scent, a more masculine and less salty version of his sister’s. Sten noticed something else on the alpha’s scent, a floral smell that reminded him of Astrid, and he realized that Zane must have just come back from being with his mate. The alpha came to stand beside them, but Sten didn’t look up until he’d tied off the final stitch.
“I have Henna and my own betas waiting,” Zane told him. “We’ll talk together, that way you don’t have to repeat yourself. Are you done here?”
Sten nodded as he dabbed the cloth over Indigo’s stitches, cleaning up the excess blood. “Be sure to keep it clean and—”
“Don’t shift for two days,” she finished wryly.
He had the sudden urge to lean in and nuzzle the side of her face. Taken aback by the intensity of the desire, Sten abruptly stood and headed for the door without responding. Indigo and Zane followed, but once they were in the hallway, the alpha rounded on his sister.
“Go check on Ginnifer,” he told her.
“You were just with her. Is there something wrong?” she asked.
“She’s fine, as far as I can tell, but you were supposed to check on her hours ago,” he said. “When you’re done, take a bath. And don’t think you’re getting off with a warning this time. I’ve spoken with Kuva and Tallow. You’re no longer allowed to leave the den without an adult, and Kya doesn’t count.”
“I am an adult.” It was more of a growl than a statement.
“I’ll be convinced of that when you stop being impulsive and irresponsible.”
Indigo’s hands were fisted at her sides, but her expression was unexpectedly calm as she spoke. “Well, I suppose you would know a lot about being impulsive and irresponsible. Maybe you should go find an adult to check in your mate. I no longer feel qualified to care for her.”
With that, she whirled around and stormed back into her room. Zane stood glaring at the now covered doorway with his jaw clenched. Sten expected the alpha to drag his sister out and reprimand her, and the thought filled him with a bizarre sense of apprehension. It was none of his business, but somehow he knew that if that happened, he would feel compelled to intervene.
To his relief, the alpha shook his head and sighed, before walking away. With a jerk of his hand, he beckoned Sten to follow. Sten did so, glad to put distance between himself and Indigo.
Chapter 4
Indigo peeked down the hall, stealing one last glimpse of Sten’s tall form and silvery hair as he and her brother turned a corner. She ducked back into her room, placing a hand between her breasts. Even as angry as she was, her body still thrummed with desire.
She wasn’t accustomed to being aroused. There were only a few males her own age in the pack, and they were all too immature and boyish for her tastes. The older males might have been appealing, if she hadn’t grown up with them being like brothers to her. Kuva wasn’t a bad looking male, but the thought of being intimate with him made her queasy.
The one exception was Roch, who was five years her senior. When she’d been a juvenile, she’d had a horrible crush on him, but had dropped any designs on him when he’d started sleeping with Ari, and then Elisa, and then Yakone, and then Kya. Indigo could probably name fewer females that he hadn’t shared sex with, and she wasn’t interested in anyone else’s leftovers.
But nothing she’d felt during the few kisses she’d shared with Roch had prepared her for Sten. Just being in his presence made her ache in places she hadn’t known existed, and made her crave things she didn’t fully understand.
In spite of what she’d said to her brother, Indigo pulled Sten’s pelt around her and left for Ginnifer’s room. The blood on the inside of the pelt had not yet fully dried, but she couldn’t bring herself to change into anything else just yet.
Ginnifer and Zane shared the bedroom that had once belonged to Indigo’s parents. Every time Indigo walked in, a small part of her expected to see her mother propped up on a pillow, running a brush through her light auburn hair. She always held her breath for a fraction of a second, bracing herself for the smell of sickness.
But these days, it was Ginnifer who lay propped up in bed. She smelled nothing like death or decay, only of flowers, her mate, and her impending motherhood. Beside her was a lantern, which lit up the pages of her only book, a guide on parenting, which Indigo was certain she’d read two dozen times so far.
Indigo had skimmed the book herself, and while she was certain that a woman carrying a human child would find it quite useful, very little of it applied to wolf pups. The one time Indigo had tried pointing this out, Ginnifer had looked so distressed that Indigo had immediately dropped the subject altogether. They had so much to worry over these days, and if the book gave Ginnifer even the smallest bit of comfort, Indigo couldn’t help but hold her tongue.
Ginnifer noticed her almost immediately, peering over at her through bleary eyes. She set aside her book to favor Indigo with a small smile. She patted the furs beside her.
“Did Zane send you in to check on me?” Ginnifer asked as Indigo came to sit beside her.
Indigo grimaced. “For the duration of my visit, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say that name.”
“Was it that bad?” Ginnifer asked, cringing. “He told me that you left the den again. You had to know he’d flip out. Just give him a few days to cool off and—”
Indigo waved her hands in front of her face. “None of that is important. Did Zane tell you who I brought back with me?”
“All he would s
ay was that it was an Amarok wolf. I tried asking him more, but he seemed to be in a hurry.”
“He’s Erik’s brother,” Indigo told her. “Sten.”
Saying his name caused a shiver to run down her spine. It was the first time she’d said it aloud, and it struck her that she would probably be saying it every day for the rest of her life. Ginnifer had begun talking, but Indigo only caught the tail end of what she’d said.
“—knew I should have made her stay here. I don’t care what she says, I don’t believe that he’s—”
“What are you talking about?”
“Astrid,” Ginnifer said emphatically. “That has to be why he’s here, right? Something must have happened to her.”
Indigo shook her head. “No, he’s here to talk about the bears, but that’s beside the point. Ginnifer, it’s him.”
Ginnifer didn’t need to ask for clarification. Over the past few months, they’d spoken at length about the mysterious and alluring scent that Indigo had been pursuing. Most of the time, it felt like Ginnifer was only humoring her when Indigo spoke about her mate, but it had been nice to talk to someone who didn’t outright dismiss her feelings as nonsense.
“Are you sure?” Ginnifer asked slowly.
Indigo swallowed hard. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire life. It’s him, and he’s more than I could have imagined. He’s intelligent, and funny, and handsome—so handsome. And his scent, it’s like he’s a walking aphrodisiac. He’s older than me, probably by a lot, but he doesn’t look it. It’s mostly in his eyes, they’re very mature and wise.”
Ginnifer’s tawny eyes no longer appeared sleepy. “What happened? Tell me everything.”
“No way, it’s too humiliating,” Indigo said, her excitement draining away as she remembered their awkward first encounter. “All I’ll say is that I made a complete fool of myself. But still, I know he’s attracted to me.”
That was a bit of a stretch, but Indigo couldn’t fathom the alternative. Twice, she had caught faint traces of arousal mingling with his scent, but nothing he’d said had indicated that he’d had any interest in her.
Chasing the Alpha: Shifters of Nunavut, Book #3 Page 3