Enslaved by the Alpha: Part Four

by Rivard, Viola

  ENSLAVED BY THE ALPHA

  Part Four

  Copyright © 2014 by Viola Rivard

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER ONE

  Even Erik’s furnace of a body was not enough to stave off the cold entirely. Astrid woke shivering, her teeth chattering uncontrollably. She brought her knees to her chest and tilted her head up to peer at Erik. His face was as hard as stone, and if not for the heat that radiated from him, she would have thought that he’d died in the night.

  As she hesitated to wake him, she thought back to the night before. What he’d said to her had come completely out of left field and she was still amazed by how well she’d handled it.

  “I will give you a pup.”

  She’d played dumb when he’d said it, but really she’d been stalling him while her mind reeled at what he’d said. Where had that come from? Had seeing Zane and Ginnifer together suddenly activated Erik’s biological clock?

  In any case, he’d picked the wrong woman for the task, and so long as he honored his end of their bargain, she’d be on her way back to Miami by springtime. And she would have managed it all by herself, with no help from Ginnifer. Who would have thought that her infertility would one day come in handy?

  Too cold to stall much longer, Astrid tentatively began trying to wake Erik. She gently shook his shoulder, all the while mumbling a chant of, “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.”

  The alpha growled and she let out a gasp in response. She remembered that the last time she’d tried to wake him, he’d nearly strangled her, and her hands flew to cover her fragile neck.

  But Erik had no intention of hurting her. While his eyes remained shut, he shifted her in his lap, positioning Astrid over his rigid arousal. He squeezed her rear, his thumbs hooking around her hips to rock her pelvis against his. She bit down on her bottom lip, struggling not to react.

  “I’m hungry,” she said, pressing her palms against his chest. “Can you go find some food?”

  Erik flexed his hips, grinding his erection against her warm center. Voice husky, he said, “Later.”

  Astrid swatted a hand at his bicep. “If you start that, I’ll starve by the time we’re done. It’s been over a day since I’ve eaten anything.”

  He opened one eye, his lips twisting with irritation. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “A lot happened yesterday. Between the bears and Zane and my sister, there was never time. I was going to ask you last night, but then there was the snowstorm and I was afraid you’d get lost while hunting or just decide not to come back for me and then I’d freeze to death—”

  Erik placed a hand over her mouth. “Stop talking about dying. Why do you always think you’re going to die?”

  She pushed his hand aside. “I don’t know, maybe because I’m stuck in the middle of the arctic and being held prisoner by a werewolf.”

  “You are not my prisoner,” he said, scowling. “You are my mate.”

  “God help me,” she muttered.

  He leaned in to nip her neck. Astrid grumbled, feigning annoyance to keep from exposing her arousal. She felt a pang of disappointment as he lifted her off his lap and set her down on the ground, before standing.

  “I will hunt for you,” he said, stretching his arms. “Wait here.”

  She hastily wrapped the pelt around herself before Erik’s heat could escape. “How long will you be gone?”

  But he was already shifting and heading out of the cavern.

  ***

  Even in winter, Siluit territory was ripe with prey. Erik didn’t have to go far to find a suitable meal. He took a few moments to gorge on his kill, before tearing off a fat limb and heading back to where his mate waited for him.

  Mate.

  He liked that. It still surprised him that in the span of two short weeks, he had gone from not wanting anything to do with humans, to now wanting a mate and pup of his own. From the moment he’d accepted responsibility of the human, the leaps had been easy to make.

  First, he’d intended on using her body and then passing her off to another male. But after he’d had her, he had wanted her again. And again. And again. He had not stopped wanting her, and although he’d had her only a short time, he recognized that what they had was not something to be cast aside.

  Once he had decided to keep her, he’d had to accept that she would become his mate. And with a mate would come pups—though ideally, only one. Even with his new predilection for fatherhood, he had no desire to have a pack of wayward pups running around his paws.

  Erik shifted as he entered the cavern. No sooner was he in human form did the human slam into him, wrapping her arms around his chest. He froze, unsure how to react. Did she think that because they were to be mates, it gave her license to be affectionate towards him? Did she expect him to reciprocate?

  He remained tense, two conflicting urges warring within him. Part of him wanted to push her off and explain that such gestures would not be part of their arrangement. The other part of him—his damn wolf—wanted to wrap his arms around her and draw her in close. This would, of course, merely be a segue into fucking her, but it was still at complete odds with his nature.

  “I’m s-so glad you’re back, I’m c-cold. Can you please hold me before I turn into a popsicle?”

  Erik begrudgingly obliged her. She hadn’t wanted to hug him. She was just cold. Why did that piss him off so much?

  With one arm still around her, he motioned toward the meat shank, which had fallen onto the floor when he’d shifted. “There. Hurry up and eat.”

  She glanced down at the shank, but made no move to grab it. Instead, her nose wrinkled. “It’s raw. Aren’t you going to cook it?”

  “If you want cooked meat, build yourself a fire.”

  “I don’t know how to build a fire,” she said, her lips pursing. “And even if I did, there’s nothing here to make a fire with.”

  Erik gave her a pointed look.

  “But…” she looked at the shank, and then back at him. “I can’t eat raw meat. I’ll get botulism.”

  “Botulism?” Erik found himself asking. Then, he shook his head. “No, I don’t care. I spent nearly an hour hunting muskox. Eat it, or it will be the last time I hunt for you.”

  Her eyes widened. “You killed an entire muskox? You must have wasted so much meat.”

  “It was a calf.”

  “A calf?” she repeated, mouth falling open. “You killed a calf? Why would you do that?”

  “Because anything else would have been highly impractical.”

  He didn’t know why he was even answering her. For some reason, it was becoming harder to dismiss her questions, no matter how idiotic they were.

  “Besides,” he said, “it’s far from the first time you’ve eaten a calf.”

  She looked at him as though he’d just slapped her. “You fed me baby muskox?” She brought a hand up to her lips. “Those poor little things… And their mothers—oh my God, how awful.”

  Erik felt a headache coming on. “Either eat it, or don’t. I do not care.”

  “I’d rather starve.”

  “Fine.”

  ***

  After backtracking to
the inlet, Erik spent the remainder of the day and the better part of the night following the near-buried trail of his pack mates. He’d sent Sten, Sylvestre, and Yves back to the den two days ago, and their trail served as an easy marker for the path home.

  Last night’s snowstorm had transformed the landscape, and had dumped a massive pile of fresh snow on the region. Even Erik, with his long, powerful limbs, was tired by the end of the day. He followed the trail all the way back to the large cave that they’d stayed in the night before encountering the bears. Examining the scent trails, he could tell that the others had stopped in on their way back, likely to avoid the storm.

  Typically, he would have shoved his discomfort aside and pressed on, but no sooner had he entered the cave did the human hop down off of his back. In her usual dramatic fashion, she collapsed into a heap on the floor and curled up into a ball.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again,” she moaned. “I hate this.”

  His earlier frustration with her had long-since faded, replaced by a calm determination. He tossed a small bundle at her feet, and then waited for her to open it. She sat up, and unwrapped it gingerly. Her lips flattened when she saw the muskox shank. It was perfectly preserved, and if anything, bordering on frozen after the long, cold trek.

  “I told you, I’m not eating it,” she said.

  This time, Erik was prepared for her unreasonableness.

  “Eat it, or I’ll leave you here.”

  She went still. Quietly, she asked, “What?”

  Erik remained firm. “We’re at least four days out from the den. If you refuse to eat, you’ll probably die anyway. Why should I bother watching you die a slow death when I can simply leave you to freeze in the night?”

  Her expression sobered. “Yesterday, you wanted to have kids with me—and today you’re going to let me die?”

  “Why would I want pups with a female who would sooner starve herself than eat a fresh kill?”

  She was silent for a few moments. Erik watched as she composed herself, crossing her legs and folding her hands neatly in her lap.

  “I’m not going to let myself starve,” she finally said. “No more than you’re actually going to leave me here to die, so let’s quit bullshitting each other.”

  “Do not presume to tell me what I will or will not do.”

  She shook her head. “Why can’t you just take me back to Siluit? At this point, I’d rather be beholden to my sister for all eternity than have to deal with being your slave for another day.”

  “You are not my slave, you are my—”

  “Mate?” she asked, giving the word an ironic slant. “I don’t know a whole lot about your kind, but I’d be willing to bet that they don’t threaten to abandon their mates.

  “I know I’ve been a bitch today,” she said, leaning back against the wall. “I feel like it’s always one step forward and two steps back with you, and it’s exasperating. I get it. From your perspective, I’m weak and pathetic. I can’t hunt for myself, I can’t build a fire, and I probably couldn’t walk a mile outside without getting lost, but that’s all because I’m out of my depth.

  “I’ve never had to learn any of these things, just like you’ve never had to learn how to go to the supermarket, or use a microwave, or GPS something. If the situation were reversed, you’d be just as helpless as I am, the only difference is that I wouldn’t be making you feel worthless or bossing you around all of the time.”

  It was not often that Erik was cornered by another’s logic, and in this case, he could not battle his opponent into submission. Another male may have apologized to her, or at the very least admitted that he had been unfair, but it was simply not in his nature to do either of those things. Instead, he refrained from arguing with her, permitting her to have the final word.

  He expected her to grow angry, but after a brief pause, she patted the floor beside her and gave him a small smile.

  “There’s still a little bit of brush in here from a few days ago. Maybe you can teach me how to build a fire?”

  A strange sensation prickled over his skin as Erik sat down beside her. He felt the need to touch her, to caress and rub her. It was strange because it wasn’t sexual, he just wanted—no, needed—to feel her body against his.

  “There isn’t much here, but I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “I’ll teach you later, when there’s more light.”

  It took a while, but he was able to build a small fire. It lasted long enough for her roast the outside of the shank, and he watched with subdued amusement as she ate and tried to pretend that she wasn’t enjoying it.

  After she’d picked every last scrap of meat from the bone, she crawled into his lap and cuddled up against his chest. Once he was certain she’d fallen asleep, he drew her in close, infusing her with his warmth.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The remainder of their journey was uneventful. Each day was the same. The weather was bitter at best, and they rose just before dawn each morning. Erik was not one to travel in the light of day, particularly because his black fur stood out against the white backdrop of the tundra, but the human was more alert during the daytime, and the night was too cold for him to not take shelter.

  Never in his life had Erik had to be so mindful of another creature’s needs as he was with her. He’d silently counted, and on average, she seemed to need something from him every five minutes.

  “I need to pee.”

  “I need something to eat.”

  “I need to have a drink.”

  “I need to stretch my legs.”

  “I seriously need a nap.”

  “I need a break. Can we stop for like thirty minutes so I can go pee, have lunch, stretch a little, and maybe take a power nap? Aren’t you tired?”

  He had come to learn that she had a very loose definition of “need,” and he often ignored her requests. But he always remained aware of the time and made sure that she ate three times a day and had plenty of water. He sometimes considered allowing her to nap, if only so that he could use the break to slake his desire on her body. However, once they crossed into Amarok territory, adequate shelters were few and far between. While he would have no qualms about taking a female of his own kind out in the open, he could not leave the human so exposed to the elements.

  During the nights, he stayed in his wolf form, keeping her nestled beneath his warm body as the cold winds pelted him. The one time that they were able to take shelter in a cavern, he’d had no choice but to rest for a full night and cast a few meager hours at his growing sleep debt.

  While each day was the same, he could feel something changing internally. His wolf knew that when he got back to the den, he’d be able to properly claim his mate, and the knowledge was invigorating, and at time, agonizing. Although each day brought him closer to home, each step felt heavier than the last. Often he would be on the brink of snapping, veering far off course, and finding a makeshift den to hold up in for however many days or weeks it took to impregnate her.

  Then, she would say something ridiculous, inadvertently distracting him from his spiraling thoughts.

  “Oh man, it’s probably going to be Christmas soon. Do you have a calendar back at the den?”

  “Aren’t there supposed to be penguins up here?”

  “You can run forty miles an hour, right? Four-thousand-ish, divided by forty, without eight hours for sleeping and an hour nap each day—we could be in Miami in a week, you know?”

  As usual, her chattering was completely one-sided. Erik was almost always in wolf form, and more so each day, as they fell into a natural rhythm with one another. Though he couldn’t answer—and probably wouldn’t have if he could—Erik did like listening to her. Her company made the passage of time slightly more bearable.

  They passed several patrols on the final morning of their journey, but Sten was the first to meet them. He approached in human form, less than half a kilometer from the den. The human had just been complaining about her legs hurting, and so Erik had no qu
alms about shaking her off his back so that he could shift. She had been “keeping his pelt warm for him” and he snatched it back from her the moment he had opposable thumbs. The cold air needled his skin, and although she was well clothed, he felt a sliver of guilt when he heard her whimper.

  Sten smiled at the human, but he knew Erik well enough to not bother with greetings. “The scouts haven’t returned yet. Should I make plans for us to go after them?”

  Before they had left for Siluit, Erik had ordered Sten to send two wolves to the south. They were supposed to track the origin point of the roaming bear shifters and report back. It shouldn’t have taken them more than a week, and Erik had been gone for nearly two. Under normal circumstances, he would have been stopping into the den for a brief rest and then heading up a search party in the evening. But normal had taken flight the moment he’d decided to claim a mate.

  “We’ll give it three more days,” Erik said, walking alongside his brother as they spoke. “If they’re not back, then we’ll go after them.”

  Sten looked like he wanted to question this decision, but seemed to think better of it. “All right then. So, how’d it go with Zane?”

  Erik didn’t immediately answer. The snow was past the human’s knees, and she was struggling to keep pace with them. He waited for her to catch up, and then lifted her up into his arms. She went limp against him, her head settling on his shoulder.

  He shifted his attention back to Sten, who was eyeing them with speculation. Erik thought back to the conversation he’d had with his brother when he’d first brought the human back to the den. He’d all but vowed that he wouldn’t take her as his mate, yet here he was, hauling her back to the den with the intent to do just that.

  And deferring my duties as alpha in the process.

  He wasn’t sure how he was going to explain this about-face in attitude. That was, if he decided to explain it at all. After all, he was alpha, and he could do as he pleased.

  Erik carried her the rest of the way to the den. During the brief walk, he discussed with Sten the alliance between Amarok and Siluit. But while he related the details of his discussion with Zane, he could only think of the night to come.