When he continued to hold it out, she begrudgingly accepted it, hunger winning out over pride.
“I’ll give you part of my portion tomorrow,” she promised, though her wolf sniffed loudly at the notion.
Sten’s lips slanted. “If I’m hungry, I’ll go cut more for myself.”
Sylvestre laughed. “Taking more than what was rationed to you? That would be anarchy.”
They shared a grin, and Sten patted Indigo on the head. “Have as much as you want. I’m going to scout. I’ll be back later.”
Indigo was disappointed, a feeling that was compounded when Sylvestre said that they’d be leaving at first light, which could not have been more than three hours off. The journey had been hard, and with few breaks. All she wanted was a full stomach and a long night’s rest. She wasn’t sure how the betas did this every other day.
She hadn’t realized how much heat the fire had been generating until she crawled under her pelt alone. While most of the others fell right to sleep, Indigo tossed and turned, tired, but restless.
After witnessing how the Amarok wolves had struck, silently and near invisible, it was hard not to be afraid to fall asleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she imagined being set upon by bears, giant, hulking masses that reared up from the snow with teeth bared and ready strike. As such, her eyes refused to shut, other than to blink.
At one point, she’d witnessed Kya trying to coax Sylvestre into kissing her. It had been painful to watch as he’d all but pushed her away, glaring coldly at her until she’d gotten up and gone over to rest by herself.
Not long after that, Indigo slipped away to find Sten. With a full stomach, her wolf stubbornly refused to shift, and she left walking on two legs to track him.
His trail was easy to follow, but he’d gone far. When she finally caught up to him, he was sitting at the top of a hill, his silvery fur billowing in the wind. She stopped for a moment to admire him, and then waited as he descended to approach her.
He shifted as he neared her, and steam rose from his human flesh. She braced herself for him to lecture her on wandering from the camp, but instead he cupped the back of her neck and pulled her up for a kiss.
It was over too quickly. She tried following his lips as he pulled back, but his hand on her neck held her firmly in place.
“Come for a run with me?” he asked.
She gave her wolf a tug, but it ignored her. “Can I ride on your back? I’m really tired.”
Sten eyed her thoughtfully, but then nodded.
Indigo actually was tired, she remembered as she was climbing onto his back a moment later. She had no business wasting her precious few hours of rest running around with Sten, but it wasn’t as though she’d been getting much sleep on her own.
The run wasn’t aimless; Sten seemed to have a destination in mind. He carried her into the foothills of the mountain, his long legs clearing the terrain in less time than Indigo could have managed even without someone on her back.
Snow covered most of the peaked ground, but she could see ridges engraved in the sloped earth. In late spring, much of the snow would melt and the water would flow down those channels, filling the valley below and turning it into a shallow lake. Her wolf told her that there would be plenty of prey then, and seemed insistent that she remember that for later.
They stopped at the bottom of a cliff. Sten waited for her to climb down, and then he shifted and approached the flat wall of the mountainside. Abruptly, he raised his leg, giving the wall a swift kick. Indigo heard ice crack, and the thick sheet of ice collapsed inward, revealing a dark passageway.
“Is this a cave?” she asked, seconds before she heard the telltale sound of a faraway draft.
Sten took her by the hand and led her in. The entrance was much wider than the hole he’d made for them to climb through. Fifty paces in, icy stone gave way to hard soil beneath her feet. Another fifty, and she could feel springy lichen. It became brighter as well, with moonlight filtering in through overhead ice sheets.
“How big is this place?” Indigo asked.
“I’m not sure. I’ve been exploring it for years, and every time there’s always a new tunnel or cavern that I didn’t notice the last time.”
“Why didn’t we all sleep here tonight?”
“Because I’m the only one who knows about this place.”
They passed through several wide chambers all clustered near one another and separated by short tunnels. Indigo could easily envision her pack living there, and she mentioned that to Sten.
“I considered that as well,” Sten said. “But this region would never be able to support Siluit through the winter. It’s more suitable for a smaller pack. Thirty to forty adults and a dozen pups could live comfortably here, more than comfortably if the summer herds are favorable.”
He stopped at a chilly room with an opening in the ceiling. She went in ahead of him, peering through the hole in the mountainside to take in the view of the night sky. Her pulse quickened as Sten came up behind her, resting his hands on her hips.
“Is this where we’ll be sleeping?” she asked.
He kissed the side of her neck, his lips grazing the mark. “We won’t be sleeping.”
She arched into his touch, eager to submit to him. But there was something else she had to clear up first.
“When I said I was sorry today, it was because I came between you and your brother. He’s your alpha, and I shouldn’t have done that.” She turned to face him, her heart pounding as though to burst from her chest. “I’m not sorry for barging in though. I’d do it again. I know you’re going to think I’m naïve and probably crazy, but I’m in love with you. I won’t accept you being with another female.”
Sten didn’t appear startled, or even put off by what she said. He gave her a slow smile, and then bent to give her a passionate kiss. Relief and desire had her slumping against him, and Sten gathered her up into his arms.
Within moments, they were on the floor, forgoing all foreplay in favor of a quick, aggressive claiming. He bit her again, and she knew it was on purpose when he didn’t apologize later. She wanted to bite him back, and she almost did, but something kept her fangs in her mouth.
They laid together afterwards, her head on his chest and his arm encircling her waist. They only had her pelt, and it barely covered her, let alone Sten, but she was the one shivering.
“You’re terrible at holding body heat,” he remarked, putting his other warm arm around her.
“Can we stay here and sleep for a few hours? I’m so tired.”
Cold as it was, she’d rather be there in Sten’s arms than out running in the snow and wind.
“We leave at first light with everyone else,” Sten said firmly. “It’s not safe for us to be on our own out here.”
“Are there bears?” she asked, propping her chin up on his chest.
Sten ran a finger between her eyes and down to the tip of her nose. “It’s unlikely this far north, but a few extra hours of sleep is not worth the risk. I plan on getting you home safely.”
She crinkled her nose. “Why did you bring me in the first place?”
“Because it’s hard for me to be apart from you.”
Indigo carefully maneuvered her arm so that she could hide her smile. “Are you in love with me?”
Sten’s face was stoic. “Possibly.”
“Possibly?” she repeated. She’d expected him to say no, and wasn’t sure what to make of his response.
“Would you believe me if I said I was in love with you?” he asked.
She chewed her lip as she considered the question. “I think so.”
His fingers combed her tangled hair. “The day I say that to you, there will be no doubt in your mind that I’m sincere.”
“So you’ll say it one day?”
“Possibly.”
Now, she did want to bite him.
“Were you in love with Halley’s mother?”
The room grew silent. Even the wind outside seemed to stil
l. Indigo would have thought she’d gone deaf, if not for the sound of his heartbeat. Sten stared through the hole in the ceiling, quiet for so long that she almost took the question back.
“I loved her very much.”
Indigo swallowed. “Will you tell me about her?”
His amber eyes met hers. “What do you want to know?”
“How did you meet? She was human, right? Was she from a town near here, or did you travel south?”
She had to stop herself from asking more. Sten rarely answered more than he was asked, and it was difficult to get information out of him without making it an interrogation.
“I didn’t live here when I met her,” he said. “It was over a decade ago, shortly before Erik came to power. I was in a different pack at the time, and I’d recently had a…falling out with its alpha. I’d been wandering alone for weeks when I met Elizabeth.”
“There’s a queen with that name,” Indigo said.
“No relation.”
He gave her a fond look that almost made her forget the jealousy that brewed in her stomach. She knew that she had no right to be jealous of Sten’s former mate, but it still bothered her to know that she wouldn’t be the first love of his life.
“The night I saw her, she was alone in a clearing. It was strange enough seeing a human female alone in the wilderness, but she was looking through this odd cylinder of metal and glass. She stared through it for hours that night, and the next night, and the next. Every night for a week, she stared through it, while I stared at her.
“One night, my curiosity finally got the better of me. I approached her and asked her what was in the cylinder and why she found it so fascinating.”
“What did she say?”
Sten grinned. “She screamed.”
“Why?”
“Aside from being accosted in the wilderness, at night, by a strange male? I suppose it didn’t help that I was wearing furs, or that my beard was rather unkempt.”
Indigo made a face. “You had a beard?”
“It does not suit me,” he admitted, rubbing his chin.
A light snow began to drift down through the opening in the ceiling. Indigo watched the flakes steadily accumulate as Sten recounted a story that was worthy of any of her romance books. How Sten had charmed Elizabeth into believing he wouldn’t kill her, and how she had convinced him to look through her telescope, giving him his first glimpse into the cosmos.
Elizabeth had been an astronomer, doing field research for a personal project. Sten had visited her every night for a month, sharing her telescope and exchanging stories of the worlds they came from. They’d fallen in love quickly, and when it came time for her to leave, Sten had gone with her.
“It made sense at the time,” he said. “I had had no pack or territory of my own, and it was a bad time to try to build either. I was curious to see the way humans lived, and more importantly, I wanted to be with her.”
“How did you fit in? Couldn’t the humans tell what you were?”
He fingered his silvery hair. “I dyed my hair at first, and we experimented with lenses that changed the color of my eyes, but I could never keep them in. After a few months, we gave up. We lived in a large city, where few humans had ever seen a shifter. Humans see what they expect to see, and they didn’t expect a wolf in man’s clothing eating lunch at a café or hailing a taxi cab.”
“Were you happy?”
“I was miserable,” he said bluntly. “The smells, the constant noise, and not being able to shift. It was easily the worst few years of my life, and that is saying a lot.”
“You stayed because of Halley?”
His eyes went distant as he thought back. “Elizabeth was not supposed to be able to have children. It was one of the reasons I felt comfortable being with her. There was no warning. She went away on a trip, and when she came back, her scent had changed. I wanted to believe it wasn’t my pup, but only because it would have made things easier.
“Everything collapsed after Halley was born, but it took a while for me to realize it. Elizabeth was depressed for the entire pregnancy, and when Halley was born, she didn’t bond with her. She wasn’t cruel, just detached. She only held Halley when she had to and she never played with her or sang to her. It wasn’t until Halley learned to shift that they developed any sort of relationship, and even then she treated Halley more like a pet than a daughter.”
Indigo didn’t notice that her nails were digging into Sten’s chest until he gently lifted her hand. He threaded his fingers between hers to still them.
He went on, explaining the difficulties of raising Halley in the city, and how the stress of it had put further strain on his relationship. Sten wanted to leave and go to the countryside, while Elizabeth insisted on staying in Ontario.
“Everything came to a head when she became pregnant again.” Sten paused, giving Indigo time to process what he’d said. “We argued for a full day, and by the end of it we’d both said the kinds of things that are very difficult to come back from.”
Indigo had a sinking feeling. “What happened to your other pup?”
“She got rid of it the following week, and shortly after that was when I left with Halley.” Another pause. “Elizabeth was not a bad person. There are two sides to every story. I was not easy to be with. I’m still not.”
Indigo felt incredibly humbled. If she’d gone through half of what Sten had, she didn’t think she’d be willing to entertain the possibility of loving someone again. How could something with such a beautiful beginning turn out so sad in the end?
“I’m sorry for making you drudge all of that up,” she said quietly.
“I wouldn’t have told you if I hadn’t wanted to.”
Chapter 24
Indigo should have wanted to pass out the moment they returned to the den. Sten hadn’t budged in his resolve for them to leave at first light, and the trip back was even more arduous. It now made a lot of sense to her, why Sylvestre had chosen sleep over being intimate with Kya, and Indigo almost wished she’d done the same.
They were greeted by a swarm of wolves, Siluit and Amarok alike, everyone eager to nab a share of fresh meat before the carcass was taken away to be portioned and cured. The Amarok wolves tore off pieces with claws and fangs, while the Siluit wolves waited with knifes and plates.
Roch kept them entertained while they waited, regaling the females with tales of the hunt. He put his own spin on the attack, giving himself a much bigger role and minimizing the part that the other males played in the kill. The girls were enchanted by his story, but the spell was broken when Sylvestre came over. He told the girls how Roch had saved his life, killing the second bull before it could tear him apart. The outright lie left Roch flustered, and funnier still, the females proceeded to ignore Roch completely, all of them gathering around Sylvestre to admire his partially healed wound. Sylvestre cast Indigo a sly smile.
Roch was made to haul the carcasses away from the room, a task made twice as hard by the stone floor. Sten went with him, not to help, but to ensure that the prey was passed through the proper channels for storage.
The Amarok betas invited Indigo to sit with them for the meal. The offer was hard to pass up. She still wasn’t sure if she liked them, but her wolf told her that keeping close to them would be good for her position in the pack. She almost agreed, but then she spotted Kya on the far side of the room, her head in her hands.
Indigo picked at her food as she weaved her way through the crowd. She hadn’t realized how much she’d eaten until she sat down next to Kya and saw that her plate was almost empty. She noticed Kya’s untouched plate of food, and her wolf started nagging her to take it from the other female.
“You all right?” Indigo asked, putting a hand on Kya’s shoulder.
Kya pulled her hands away, revealing dark-rimmed eyelids. “I don’t know why I bother with him.”
Indigo wasn’t sure either. She’d seen Kya reject the feelings of numerous males. Kya had very nearly broken Kuva’s
heart, and Roch had even asked Kya for a monogamous relationship once. By Kya’s own admission, she’d laughed in his face. If Kya could do that to so many males, why did it surprise her that one could do it to her?
“There he goes again,” Kya said bitterly.
Indigo followed Kya’s gaze, to where Sylvestre was approaching Coral. She was busy with her usual hobby of staring at the floor, and seemed startled when his shadow fell on her. He crouched down, setting a tray of meat in front of her. Coral frowned at him and pushed it away. He pushed it back towards her, grinning that sly smile of his. He said something, and Coral blushed and pushed the tray away with even more force, causing some of the meat to fall onto the floor.
All that perfectly good meat, Indigo thought.
Kya misinterpreted Indigo’s mournful sigh. “That’s the way it always goes for us. All of the strong males, they always end up wanting a mate.” She put a disdainful emphasis on the word, and then spat at the ground. “There’s nothing to even like about Coral. She has the personality of a wet sock. She wouldn’t know what to do with a male like Sylvestre.”
Indigo watched as Sylvestre finally stood, leaving Coral fuming. She half-expected Coral to hurl the tray at his back. With nothing else to watch, she finally looked at Kya, who was wiping at the corners of her eyes.
She had always been one to avoid drama, and this left her feeling exceptionally conflicted because she felt bad for her friend, but she also didn’t agree with her. She tried to think of what she would do in the same situation, if Sten were interested in another female. Just the thought of that made her wolf freak out, she quickly snipped that line of thinking.
Kya spared her from having to come up with something to say. “I’m sorry. I’m being such a bitch about this. He’s not mine and I need to get over it.”
“I think that’s best. There are plenty of other males here that would love your attention,” Indigo said, biting her tongue before she could warn Kya away from Sten.
“You’re right,” Kya said, smacking Indigo’s back and forcing a cheerful smile. “I think I’ll start with Ciel. I know he’s interested, and when Sylvestre sees us together he’s going to regret ever rejecting me.”
Chasing the Alpha: Shifters of Nunavut, Book #3 Page 21