by R. E. Butler
She’d been disappointed her whole life by her mom’s actions. She’d gotten used to people that she cared about letting her down. But her dad had never let her down, and neither had Mia. The situation with Acksel reminded her a little too much of how she’d waited for her mom to call on special occasions and how often she’d been disappointed. She was no longer the young teen who would cry into her pillow and be upset for days when her mom had missed a birthday or holiday. She was a strong, independent woman about to go out on a date. Pushing the last thought of Acksel into the far reaches of her mind, she headed for the front door when the bell rang, ready to move on with the next chapter of her life.
* * * * *
The sky was beginning to darken on the night of the September full moon as Acksel stood on his back porch and looked out over his pack. They were somber and mostly silent, although some members spoke quietly as they waited. The time between his declaration that the pack laws were changing and the full moon had passed swiftly as he’d thrown himself into restructuring the pack.
He could admit that he’d purposely kept himself busy so he didn’t have time to think about Brynn. The afternoon after their night together, she’d left a message for him. The call had nearly broken him, the way she’d attempted humor at him taking off in the middle of the night without a note. But then her voice had cracked with emotion at the end as she asked him to call her. He didn’t delete the message or any of the other ones that she left. She’d called two more times in the last two weeks. He’d watched her number flash on the screen as he let it ring, tempted to answer but knowing he couldn’t. Telling himself over and over that it was better this way. Better that she hate him and stay safe than for him to gamble with her life.
He was an asshole of the highest order.
Shoving thoughts of Brynn into the dark corners of his mind, he turned his attention back to the pack. His sister and dad were standing in the front, smiling in support. Although Eveny still didn’t trust him completely because of what he’d done, she had forgiven him, and that was a start. Looking over the pack, he was heartened by the people he saw there. He’d lost many in the last few weeks — aside from the four that had tried to attack Eveny, three families had packed up and left Wilde Creek and two protectors who had spoken up against Eveny during the last pack meeting had taken off as well. But there were some younger wolves who could step up into protector roles, and Acksel was determined to see the pack survive this upset.
Acksel nodded to Auro, and his beta called the pack to order. Everyone fell quiet. He didn’t really want to say anything, but he knew he needed to address his people as he did each full moon. Acksel said, “The full moon is a time of celebration for our people, not a time of regrets. As we move forward, remember that we will always be the Wilde Creek Pack.”
He lifted his head and howled, the sound tearing from his throat. The pack joined him, their voices rising with his. When the last howl died, they milled around. Some, like his father, stripped and shifted immediately, going off into the woods to hunt. Some wolves coupled up and wandered into the woods to have sex before they hunted. Unmated wolves didn’t fear pregnancy because a female could only get pregnant during her heat, and that happened in September. There were a few females in heat now, but they were mated and with their mates in the privacy of their own homes. Most of the females in the pack had gone through their heats earlier in the month, including his sister.
He chuckled inwardly as he tugged off his shirt. Before he became alpha he hadn’t cared what was going on with the females. He’d never taken a female through her heat cycle. He’d heard from other males that the temptation to come inside a female in heat was so great that it often drove them crazy to use condoms if the female didn’t want to become mated. He trusted himself, but he hadn’t ever wanted to take the chance of being overcome with primal urges and ending up mated to someone he didn’t love.
He dropped his shirt onto the porch and reached for his belt buckle.
“Want some help, Alpha?” Talia, one of the unmated females asked as she strode toward him, naked. She was pretty, with blonde hair and long legs. He’d spent more full moon nights with her than he cared to remember.
He undid the button and zipper of his jeans and said, “No thanks.”
For a moment, her smiling face slipped into a frown, but then she licked her lips and dropped to her knees on the step below him and reached for the waistband of his jeans. “I don’t mind. I fantasized about you all month long and couldn’t wait to get here tonight to see you.” She tugged on his jeans and they slid down a fraction. “To touch you. To make you happy.”
He brushed her hands away. “You should go shift with your friends and hunt, Talia. I won’t be needing you tonight.”
She gaped at him, her eyes wide. Outrage slid over her features, but she quickly smiled and eased away from the step until she was standing. “If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t.”
She turned and walked away, swinging her hips exaggeratedly.
“What did you ever see in her?” Melanie, Auro’s mate, asked as she stood next to Auro with their folded clothes in her hands.
Auro shushed her gently and Melanie rolled her eyes. “I think it’s okay for me to ask a question of our alpha on our last full moon, Auro. Don’t be such a baby.”
Acksel chuckled. He had always liked Melanie and thought of her as a good match for Auro. She didn’t take any of his shit.
“She’s pretty,” Acksel offered lamely.
“She’s a big plastic bitch. Half the unmated females are scared to death of you and the other half just want to get into your bed so they can be queen bitch.”
“Scared?” he asked.
Melanie shrugged. “You’ve got a reputation for not taking any shit from anyone, Acksel. You’ve never been in a serious relationship, and you bounce from she-wolf to she-wolf each month. The females that are worthwhile are afraid you wouldn’t be able to handle a relationship without straying, and the females that aren’t worth a shit wouldn’t care one way or the other.”
Auro groaned and Acksel frowned. “In other words, you’re saying I’m screwed with the females in the pack and should look elsewhere.”
“Pretty much. For what it’s worth, Acksel, I know that you’re a male of worth and you’d never cheat on a female you took to mate. But that’s because I know you have too much character to be unfaithful.”
Acksel appreciated her candor. And she was right at any rate. Half the unmated females would only come to his bed if he asked them, the other half pursued him with a passion that he found aggravating. His thoughts turned to Brynn. What was she doing? Who was she with?
“I’m sorry,” Auro said warily.
“For what?” Acksel asked, shaking the dark thoughts away.
“You’re growling. I’m sorry for what Melanie said.”
“No it’s okay. I was just thinking.” Acksel shook his head and sat down on the top step. “I need a new fucking council.”
Auro asked. “Have you thought about bringing back the old guard?”
The old guard, as the pack referred to them, were the seven members of the council of the previous alpha, including his own father, Dade. Acksel hadn’t wanted anything that reminded him of the old alpha hanging around, and it was well within his rights as alpha to choose who was in the council. The former alpha had made the council separate from his highly ranked males, choosing those with wisdom and age. Acksel had taken the top six ranked males from his pack and used them as the council. He had confided in them, and it had completely bitten him in the ass.
When Acksel remained silent, Auro said, “You got rid of them because you thought they might be loyal to Willis. But if they were, they would have left with him when they had the opportunity. None of them are against wolves mating with humans, plus your dad is a good guy. The alpha has always had a council outside of the high-ranked. Changing pack law means you need people that have the kind of wisdom that comes from living fo
r fifty or sixty years.”
True.
Acksel cleared his throat. “You’re pretty smart for not being sixty years old.”
Auro grinned. “Thanks, man. You’re alpha for a reason, and it has as much to do with your inner strength as it does with your physical strength.”
Acksel was going to miss Auro.
“Go on and take off, I’ll see you out there.”
Within seconds, the two wolves bounded off together. He scanned the pack members still milling around. Most of them had shifted or headed off into the woods to fuck. He would have been one of those, once upon a time. Any other full moon, and Talia, naked on her knees in front of him, would have had him hard in two seconds. Tonight, though, all he could see was Brynn. No one else would do.
Which meant he was royally screwed.
Standing, he stripped and shifted, letting himself go into the primal thoughts of his wolf, which wanted to hunt and chase and run. It was better not to think of things he couldn’t have than to dwell on dreams that would haunt him forever.
* * * * *
Rufus Eddington stood on the edge of the woods just outside the city limits of Wilde Creek. Taylor and Barry were with him. They’d been banished from Wilde Creek three weeks ago for their part in their friend Vince’s scheme to take over the pack. Rufus missed his friend every day; Vince would have made a great alpha.
He paced in the darkness along the trail that he and his friends had followed. They were banished from Wilde Creek, unable to set foot or paw inside the town under threat of death from the alpha. He didn’t much care for Acksel the Asshole and his decrees; he and his pals had decided to carry on with at least part of Vince’s plan and go after him. Acksel would either reinstate them in the pack and then lose in a challenge for the position of alpha with Rufus, or they would kill him.
They couldn’t use his sister to get to him, though. That human mate of hers was a fucking animal and Rufus didn’t want to tangle with him again. But Vince had been thinking along the right lines — to get to Acksel, they had to find someone close to him, and that meant his mate. Except he didn’t have one.
Barry cracked his neck nervously. “What if Acksel never picks a mate?”
Rufus shrugged and chewed on his thumbnail. “He will eventually. And if he doesn’t, then we’ll use Talia to get him alone and take him out. One way or the other, Acksel won’t be alpha much longer.”
Just as he was wondering where she was, the bitch in question came through the woods. Talia was one of the single females in the pack. She cavorted with any single male that would have her, but what she really wanted was to be the alpha’s mate. That seemed unlikely, though. If Acksel thought that Talia was his mate, he would have chosen her years ago, not just used her every now and then for full moon fucks.
“About time,” Rufus snarled at her.
She bared her teeth. “I was busy.”
He snorted. “Fine. What happened?”
Talia had planned to fuck Acksel that night and feel him out for who he thought he would mate with so she could share the information with them.
She sighed. “He refused me. I stuck around long enough to hear him and his beta talk about how his mate was probably not in the pack.”
His ears perked up. “Yeah? Did he say who she was?”
“No, I don’t think he has a mate, I think that they were just talking. But he wouldn’t fuck me tonight and didn’t fuck any of the females.”
“What’s that mean?” Taylor asked, leaning against a tree.
Rufus hummed in his throat. “I think it means that he has someone in mind that he’s staying away from for some reason. Someone he’s met recently.”
“Why recently?” Talia asked.
“He fucked you last month, right?” Rufus asked. Talia nodded. Rufus said, “Well, between last month when he had you and this month when he had no one, I’m betting he found someone that he wanted to mate with but for some reason he isn’t with her. So she’s either not from the Wilde Creek Pack or…”
“Or she’s human,” Taylor finished.
“Right.” Rufus exhaled in thought and said, “I want you to follow him, Talia.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Follow him around town without being caught, and see what he’s doing. Maybe he’s visiting someone or something like that. Who the hell knows?”
“Why should I?”
His hand shot out and he fisted a chunk of her hair and twisted it until she cried out in pain. “Because you’re already in big shit for talking to us, Talia, and sharing pack business with three banished members. If you don’t want to wind up banished like us, you’ll help us by tailing Acksel and telling us what he’s up to.”
He released her hair and she fell to her knees with a sob, scrubbing at her eyes with the back of her hands. “You’re an asshole.”
“Whatever,” Rufus snorted. Then he grinned. “While you’re down there, bitch, why don’t you make good use of that mouth?”
Her eyes flashed with lust and a little bit of anger. She sighed loudly and reached for his dick. Rufus didn’t much care whether she liked him or not. He and his friends would use her until she had no value and then they’d decide what to do with her. Maybe they’d keep her when they took over the pack, and use her for a fuck toy whenever they wanted, or maybe they’d just kill her and toss her in a ditch.
Chapter 5
Mia joined Brynn in the nearly-empty theater, carrying two sodas, with a small bucket of popcorn tucked into the crook of her arm. It was her turn to buy snacks for their weekly movie night. She accepted the soda with a smile as Mia settled into the seat next to her. She tried not to feel guilty that she was using their movie night as a distraction so she didn’t keep thinking about a certain gray-eyed jerk.
She’d left two more messages for Acksel after her original one, and she hated herself after each one. She was not some lovesick teenager who didn’t know when to take a hint, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from dialing his number and hoping he’d answer or call back. It had been almost two weeks since the last time she’d called him, a full month since their night together, and she was trying to move on, damn it. But her brain — or maybe it was her heart — wouldn’t let her.
Mia nudged her. She startled and looked at her. “I’m sorry, what?”
She smiled. “You look about a hundred miles away, B. Rough day?”
“Not really. I talked to my dad before you came to get me and he said that my mom had called him and given him a hard time because I wouldn’t go with her for the spa weekend. She accused him of turning me against her and all that old bullcrap she shoveled when I was younger.” Although she hadn’t actually been thinking about it when she had gotten distracted, it had been bothering her. And it wasn’t as if she could tell Mia that she was thinking about a certain alpha asshole.
“You shouldn’t let your mom get to you, B. She asked you to come so she could get you to pay for her. That she’s blaming your dad for shit she caused just means she’s as immature as ever and will most likely never change.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s not making me feel any better.”
Mia chuckled. “I’m sorry. I just don’t like to see you get torn up about stuff you can’t control. Next time she calls, just remind yourself that you’re an amazing person in spite of how messed up she was, and she can’t make you feel bad unless you let her.”
“That definitely made me feel better,” she said, smiling.
“Whatever happened to that doctor guy you went on that blind date with?” Mia tossed a few pieces of popcorn into her mouth.
Brynn sipped at the soda. Her stomach had been feeling off for the last week, so although she was hungry, she didn’t really feel like eating anything.
“He’s nice,” she said, thinking about Xavier. He was nice, but there had been zero sparks between them on the date, and although he’d taken her number when it was over, she hadn’t been disappointed when he didn’t call.
&nb
sp; “When is nice a bad thing?”
“When it’s not also accompanied by sexual attraction.”
Mia snickered and tossed her long, blonde hair over her shoulder. “He’s a good-looking guy, he’s a freaking doctor, and he drives a cool car. What’s not to be attracted to?”
Brynn chewed her bottom lip. “I’m not going to go out with a guy just because he’s got a cool car.”
“If he was hot for me, I’d take him out for a test drive.”
“He’s human,” Brynn pointed out.
“I’ve dated humans,” Mia said defensively.
Had she struck a nerve?
Brynn had never really seen Mia angry. Her friend was very even-tempered. But clearly the dating-a-human thing was a sore spot.
“Okay, okay. Sorry. You’re a human-dating machine.” Brynn attempted to take the edge off whatever was bothering Mia with a little humor.
Chuckling, Mia dug her hand into the popcorn bucket. “I didn’t mean to bite your head off. You know that Acksel has changed pack law to allow wolves to mate with humans, right?”
Choosing her words carefully, Brynn said, “I remember you telling me about what almost happened to his sister and the changes he was making with the pack.”
Nodding, Mia told her that some of the males in the pack were starting to get testy about the single females wanting to mate with humans. Unmated males outnumbered unmated females four to one. In some of the males’ minds, if the females started going for humans, then that would make the situation worse. For the first full moon that Mia could remember, no one had held rank outside of Acksel because the ranking fights didn’t occur until two days later. The males, she said, were even more aggressive as worry over their place in the pack, the new laws, and general unease made them act out.
Brynn straightened as worry streaked through her. “Did someone hurt you?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Of course not. I stayed with my cousins, Gavin and Caleb, and they watched out for me.”
“Weren’t they feeling…aggressive?”