Claimed by the New Alpha

by Candace Ayers

  When we reached the top of the mountain, Chase slowed. At the base of the steps that led up to the fire tower, he said, “I need you to listen very carefully to me. I smell something that I need to check out. I need you to climb up the stairs to the fire tower, and stay out on the top. Do not go anywhere else. Please, promise me Kelsey.”

  I nodded, unable to find my voice for a long time. Then I said, “Yes, I promise. Chase?”

  “Yes?”

  “Be careful.”

  Chase as the wolf looked up at me, and I could see the man I had instantly fallen in love with deep in his eyes. He nodded his great furry head, and even though I knew that everything happening to me seemed ridiculous, it also felt completely natural.

  As Chase loped off into the brush, I took a deep breath, telling myself that all I had to do was climb a set of stairs. That was it. I began to climb up the stone steps as they curved up toward the looming stone fire tower. My shoes slipped on a patch of ice, and I crashed down to the hard edge of the stair directly above me. I yelped in pain as my knee began to throb.

  I waited for the pain to subside, and then climbed back to my feet, moving more slowly again. By the time I reached the top of the fire tower, I was huffing a little, my lungs aching in in the cold air at such a high altitude. Chase still hadn’t returned, and I was starting to get scared. There seemed to be noises coming from every direction, unnatural noises that made my skin crawl.

  A noise from the stairwell that led down to the interior of the fire tower made me jump. I pressed my back against the wall, and tried to make myself blend in to my surroundings. The sound of heavy breathing reached me just about at the same time as the smell of wet dog. I knew that one of the men from Rapid City was there. I didn’t know how I knew that, but I did. I squeezed my eyes shut, and hoped that Chase would burst up the staircase now.

  “Well, well, well. What do we have here?” The voice was heavy, dripping with saliva. I could hear the spit sloshing around in his mouth. When I cracked open my eyes, I wanted to scream, but I didn’t. The large black wolf loomed above me, spittle hanging off of his jowls. Before I knew what had happened, the wolf had clamped his jaw around my wrist and dragged me down the stairs into the bowels of the fire tower.

  CHAPTER 5

  My wrist throbbed. I could still feel the place where the wolf’s teeth had sunk into my skin. At least he had gone back out the door to patrol, though I suspected he was waiting for Chase. All I could do was wait. I hated waiting. The inside of the fire tower smelled like urine and something more putrid. I shuddered to think what I was sitting on, and was disgusted to think of the way tourists used this place as a bathroom.

  I knew that the only choice was to try to get away, to get to Chase, even though the wolf was far bigger and faster than I was. The only two exits didn’t offer me many choices. The one closest to me led out to a small plateau with absolutely no hope of escape. If I went back up the steps to the top of the fire tower, then I might be able to make a run down the steps to find Chase. Though, I knew that with my flats made it hard to run on the ice, and getting to Chase would be a long shot. Still, I felt like I needed to try.

  Climbing to my feet, I winced at the ache of all of my muscles. My wrist throbbed from where the wolf had bitten me. I limped over to the stairs, but just as I was about to go up I heard footsteps. Making a split second decision, I hurried out to the small plateau outside the fire tower. During the summer the area had grass and a small pool of water from the frequent afternoon showers, but in the middle of February, the area was nothing but a sheet of ice and snow. There was nowhere for me to hide, but I went out anyway.

  A moment later the wolf followed me, but he didn’t even pause near the spot where I had flattened myself against the wall. When I saw the flash of Chase’s coat as he streaked past me, I felt weak with relief.

  Chase leaped at the wolf, and sent the creature sprawling. The other wolf regained its’ footing quickly, though, and crashed into Chase, nipping at his ear. Chase yelped in pain, but charged the other wolf again. He hit him hard, knocking the other animal back. Chase hit him again. Both he and the other wolf let out a spine chilling howl. All the hair on my neck stood straight up.

  The wolf fell into the dark abyss over the edge of the cliff. Chase in his wolf form was still crouched down on the rocks, his sides heaving from the exertion of the fight. I blinked, and suddenly he was back in his human form. I ran to him, and threw my arms around his still shuddering form. He turned in my embrace, and pulled me close against his chest.

  I settled into his embrace, and we sat in silence for a long time, everything else seemed to fall away when I was in Chase’s arms. His body was still radiating heat from his wolf form so even the snow around us didn’t penetrate our bubble.

  Tipping my head back, I looked up at the moon, which was full and bright, glowing above the clouds that still littered the night sky. From our height we could see the vast starscape that stretched in every direction. My Valentine’s Day had started out rough, and was ending with the craziest, most perfect love I could imagine.

  “So what happens now?” I asked Chase, holding my breath while I waited for Chase to answer.

  “Honestly? I don’t know how this works,” he admitted.

  “You don’t know? But you said it was important for us to get up here so that you could attain the moon’s maximum effects.” I turned in his arms so that I could look up at his face.

  Chase flushed, and gave me a sheepish smile. “I know the power of the moon,” he said. “I grew up with my mother and father telling me about it. There are so many tales that any number of things could happen tonight. I know that somehow a person suffering from lycanthropy can use the moon’s rays to be healed.”

  “Do you want to be healed?” I asked quietly.

  “Me being a lycanthrope will put a serious damper on our relationship,” he said.

  “It’s amazing how fast it happened,” I said before I could stop myself. A cardinal rule of my dating life had always been to play my cards close, not give out too much information at any time.

  Chase shrugged. “That’s how it happens for lycanthropes.”

  “I feel weird,” I said suddenly as my bitten wrist began to throb. We both looked down at it as I held it out in front of me. The bite marks had begun to glow silver. “Everything is tingling.”

  Chase’s eyes widened. “Oh no,” he said in a whisper.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, alarmed.

  “I’ve heard of this happening, but it’s so rare. I’ve never actually met anyone that it’s happened to,” Chase said.

  “Chase, what’s happening to me?” The tingling had become a burning sensation, and I could feel a glow coming from deep inside of me. I wondered if Chase could see it.

  “You’re becoming a werewolf,” he said so quietly I almost didn’t hear him. “The bite.”

  “I thought you said that’s not how lycanthropy was transmitted,” I said, feeling stupid for saying the first thing that came in to my mind, but I had so many thoughts racing through my head that I latched on to the first one I could.

  “Not normally,” Chase said. “But with the full moon…” He trailed off as I realized what it meant. A huge smile split my face.

  “Well I guess this is the solution to our relationship dilemma,” I said. “Maybe you can’t be normal, but now at least I’m a lycanthrope too.”

  Chase studied me for a long time. “I love you,” he said, “and I always will.”

  “I love you too,” I said as I stood up, and pulled him to his feet. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on shifting in to wolf form. I suddenly just knew how to do it. Nothing hurt as I shifted, my wolf body was just a natural extension of myself. I opened my wolf eyes, and I could see things in sharper relief than I ever had before. I could even see in to the shadows.

  I glanced over at Chase, who had also shifted in to his wolf form. “Come on,” I called. “I’ll race you down the mountain.”

&n
bsp; THE END

  LOVING THE ALPHA

  STORY DESCRIPTION

  Curvy Kira Bentley is smart, beautiful, frightened and alone. She is a freshly cursed werewolf, and clearly ignorant on the subject of what's happening to her. As if that weren’t bad enough, she can’t seem to avoid her sexy English professor, either inside or outside of the classroom, and not only does Professor Sawyer Donovan have looks to die for, he also invokes feelings in her unlike any Kira has ever experienced before.

  The last thing Sawyer Donovan expected was to find a pretty she-wolf in his English class. A ruggedly handsome young English professor at a prestigious university, the solitary werewolf has enough trouble dodging the unwanted attention of his female students without deliberately seeking one out. Yet, Professor Donovan’s sense of honor demands he shelter and guide his student in the transformation that she’s experiencing.

  When he vows to reach out to her through any means necessary… even calling her into his office at inconvenient hours and detaining her after class, what he isn’t planning on are his wolf’s strong insistence on his young protégé being his mate.

  As the full moon draws nearer, and student and professor find themselves reluctantly drawn to one another, can Sawyer fight his growing attraction to the one woman he knows he can't have? Can Kira, convince Sawyer to give in to forbidden passion, if only just this once?

  What will happen when Sawyer reveals the secret he has been guarding - that the date Kira was mysteriously bitten aligns a little too perfectly with his last blackout?

  CHAPTER 1

  There were certain students who attracted notice.

  As a young male professor at Rider University, he had expected, even prepared, for this. It was something advisors went over discreetly, and something that was brought up again and again in staff meetings, though never expressly named. There will be students, went the school of thought, who you will want to look at more than the others. Don't look at them more than the others.

  Sawyer Donovan was looking at the girl strategically stationed in the back of his classroom toward the window. He had seen her around campus before now, in snatched moments when he shouldn't have been looking, but a man would have to be dead not to notice her: she was a natural blonde of average height, with long, loping legs and a devastatingly athletic body. She was a freshman, he knew, otherwise she wouldn't be in his class. He had noticed the way the male students perked up when she entered, late, and took a seat alone in the back. He had noticed the way they deflated, too, upon being passed over.

  There was no denying that the girl—she had responded to the name Bentley, Kira when he had read it off his chart—was beautiful. Donovan was certain he was the only (relatively) young male in the classroom glad to have her sequestered in the back. It meant he wouldn't have to look at her as often. It meant he wouldn't have to notice.

  Because there was something else about Kira Bentley that drew his attention to her, something that he wanted to ignore, desperately. Feelings of sexual attraction he could deal with, had dealt with, before—but what attracted Professor Donovan to his student was something very different. Something horrible.

  He recognized the bags beneath her eyes. He recognized the weight loss; the unwashed hair; the woodland scratches she tried to conceal beneath her sweatshirt, but made themselves apparent every time she shifted and her sleeves rode up her wrists or her hood fell back from her neck. If he hadn't noticed the little details already, he would have sensed her in an instant: her pheromones were, to him, nearly overpowering in the small room.

  He didn't remember this about her before the break. When he had passed her then in the cafeteria, or on the footbridge as strangers, he had not smelled a fellow wolf.

  She had been bitten. Likely in the past month. The physical signs seemed to indicate that she had already undergone her first change.

  The timing was too perfect, and dread pooled like cold standing water in the pit of his stomach. But Donovan had a class to teach, the subject of which was decidedly not werewolves. He turned from the rows of expectant eyes to write his name on the board.

  "I'm Professor Donovan," he introduced himself to the class. "And this semester I'll be your guide through English 101."

  "Aren't you a bit young to be a professor?" a female student more toward the front asked without putting her hand up. It was usually the first question to be voiced.

  "If you'll turn to page two of the syllabus," Donovan continued. "You'll find that I have already addressed this concern. I turned twenty-eight in December, for those interested. Belated birthday presents are welcome, though they will have no effect on your final grade."

  A few of his students groaned, at least half of them in response to his deliberately lame attempt at humor. Donovan had a great sense of humor, he just enjoyed hearing their vocalizations of pain more.

  Kira Bentley said nothing.

  "You'll notice on that same page that I outline my philosophy on tardiness," Donovan continued, raising his eyes from beneath his brows as he continued to track the girl's nonresponse. "Lateness by my students will not be excused. Starting today."

  Bentley raised her brown-gold eyes from a continued spot of interest on her desk to meet his stare; when she saw the direction he was gazing, a muscle in her face tightened almost imperceptibly. Her look of veiled distress her cheekbones more pronounced. Leave it to the young and beautiful to make the effects of the curse look good.

  Donovan spent the remainder of the hour going over the rest of the syllabus. It was an easy first week for his students; it should have been an easy first week for him. But nothing about English 101 was going to be easy now that there was another wolf in the room. He would have preferred the proverbial elephant at this point.

  The analog clock wound down the hour, and his students rose, grappling with their books and backpacks and putting out hands to introduce themselves to one another. Kira Bentley didn't take part in the overtures, and instead moved along the back wall in an attempt to slip quietly out the door.

  He was half-tempted to ignore her. He should just let her go, and figure things out on her own the way he had. He could be lenient with her attendance, even her grades, to help make navigating her newfound shifterhood easier; he could remain a removed presence all the while. He should just stay out of it.

  But he couldn't. He had pursued a career as an educator because he believed in taking a positive, active role in the development of his students' lives. He couldn't let the one who might need him most slip out of reach because confronting her would be uncomfortable.

  He put up a hand to her, and Bentley froze in the doorway as if she had been expecting it. He feigned interest with his seating chart as she approached his desk.

  "Miss Bentley, I believe I mentioned my policy on tardiness?"

  "It won't happen again, professor." She cast her eyes from him and looked longingly toward the exit. Donovan sat back and removed his glasses, retiring them to the far corner of his desk.

  "Rough night?" he asked her.

  The girl bristled, before shooting a quick glance around her to see if anyone had heard him. With the exception of a few stragglers, the classroom had nearly completely emptied by this point. "Excuse me?"

  "I'm intimating that you were out all night," he said patiently. Kira Bentley's eyes narrowed, flashing at him like twin burnished coins, and he thought he could see some of the wolf rearing up inside her.

  "I don't smoke. I don't drink. And I would appreciate it if you kept your baseless accusations to yourself," she said. She was more articulate than he had expected for a freshman, and completely justified in making her preferences known; her confidence was on par with that of other, older gorgeous women he had met, but he knew what she was feeling on the inside. She was terrified. English 101 was a core requirement, and she needed to do well in his estimation for him to open the door for her to more advances courses.

  "Let's not start this semester off on the wrong foot," Donovan suggested. He r
ose from behind his desk to collect his things; Kira Bentley didn't budge from where she stood, evidently waiting for him to show her where to put the right foot. "Come by my office tomorrow with lunch and I'll forget all about it."

  "Excuse me?" Bentley demanded again.

  He could almost find it in him to feel sorry for the additional toll this interview was taking on an already sick and stressed-out young woman, but he alone knew how necessary it was. He needed to establish a connection with her immediately, and the only way he was going to manage it was outside of a classroom. His office was the perfect place: it wasn't as off-putting as suggesting some place outside of campus, and he was almost always in there, anyway. They needed a scene change to get familiar, and fast, if he stood a chance of helping her at all before her next full moon phase. They had less than a month.

  "See you at noon. Don't be late," he added as he brushed past her. While his hearing was preternatural, Donovan couldn't claim to have heard the internal scream that Kira Bentley was surely emitting. He contented himself with imagining it all the same.

  If his occupation prevented him from flirting with the pretty girl, making her life miserable would have to be second best.

  CHAPTER 2

  "This isn't quaint or quirky. This is blackmail."

  Kira Bentley was standing in the doorway of her least favorite professor's office. While she wanted to make her opinion clear, she was also holding a takeaway bag from one of the sandwich vendors in the quad.

  Professor Donovan—as if she knew, or cared to know, his first name—glanced up from grading a stack of papers, although she couldn't shake the distinct impression that he had known she was there all along. She supposed it was possible he had heard her coming down the hallway. He was wearing his glasses, although he never seemed to wear them when he was addressing the glass, leading her to believe that he was farsighted. Kira hadn't been farsighted herself until very recently, but she was afraid to go to the optometrist to get a prescription. She didn't know what an eye doctor might do if he suspected she could now see half a mile in every direction.