She gasped when she saw what it said. “Welcome, Queen Caitlin!”
“No. Way.” Her eyes felt as if they were going to bug out of her head as they drove past the cheering crowds, who were hurling confetti at them.
“But of course. This is an exciting moment for them. By taking a bride, I have ensured a new generation of Alphas.”
People were waving signs with her picture on it. What was next? Werewolves begging for her autograph? Where had they gotten her picture from?
“You will, of course, have a lady in waiting, and the wardrobe of your choice, along with your own personal dressmaker,” Kristofer continued. “It’s quite common for the Alpha queen to wear each outfit only once, and then donate it to charity. Our chef will prepare all dishes to your liking, and of course you will be decorating our home. Does this meet your approval?”
This was like a modern-day fairy tale – for anyone else but her.
An image of her mother’s dazed face flashed through her mind, and she forced herself to banish visions of floating down the aisle in a frothy white dress with a flowing train. “This is amazing, but it’s wasted on me, Kristofer,” she murmured. “There are plenty of women who would love to have all of this. You should share it with one of them. This marriage isn’t going to happen.”
“By the time that our wedding day arrives, you won’t want to leave.”
She couldn’t help but laugh at his sincere tone of conviction. She looked away, staring out the window. “And what makes you think that?”
In answer, he cupped his hand under her chin and tilted her head up so she was staring straight into his eyes. At his firm, commanding touch, a hot wave of arousal swept through her, sending flames sizzling down every nerve in her body.
“Because you want me just as much as I want you, my beautiful prisoner. You always have.”
Chapter 5
They pulled up in front of a massive white building with a huge brick circular driveway. In the middle of the circle was a stone fountain ringed with flowers. The landscaping had a lush cottage garden feel to it, wild and brightly colored. It made her heart ache to look at it. What it would be like to live in this magical place…
“Is this the town hall or something?” Caitlin asked. It looked too big to be a town hall. Three story massive brick building, spread out all over the place…
“Why would I bring you to the town hall on our first day?” Kristofer asked, opening the limo door. “That’s tomorrow. This is our home. Time to introduce you to the staff.”
Caitlin climbed out after him, staring open-mouthed. He gestured towards the massive front doors of his home, and she followed him, walking slowly towards the front steps.
There were two long rows of formally dressed servants standing on either side of the steps. Next to each servant, a massive wolf stood at attention. The men were dressed like English footmen, and the women wore Empire-line dresses with elaborate embroidery and ribbons.
A beautiful, blade-thin blonde, who’d been standing in line with the women, strode over to them and dipped down in a curtsy. She wore a white Empire line dress with lace trim, and low-heeled satin pumps. Werewolves generally dressed as if it were a hundred years ago when they were on their own lands, but dressed up in more modern fashion when they hung out in human towns and cities.
“Greetings, milady. My name is Elzbetka. I will be addressing you as your highness once the wedding takes place. I am your lady in waiting.” She had a strong Kerslavian accent but spoke English perfectly. One of Kristofer’s retinue who’d come to America with him. Her tone was formal and correct, but there was an odd tension behind it.
“Oh, Caitlin is fine. You don’t need to call me milady. And I don’t need a lady in waiting.”
Elzbetka’s blue eyes’ sparked with a brief flash of anger and her smile tightened a notch for just a second, and then she glanced at Kristofer and quickly resumed a polite, respectful expression. “All Alpha Queens have ladies in waiting. It’s traditional.” She managed to put a fair amount of bite into that last word while still maintaining her deferential smile.
Caitlin decided she didn’t like Elzbetka any more than Elzbetka liked her.
As if sensing Caitlin’s discomfort, Kristofer rested his hand on the small of her back ever so lightly as he guided her up the stairs towards the huge doorway. Little thrills of sensation rippled outward from where he was touching her. She should have slapped his hand away, or at least moved away from him. Yep, she sure should have. And she would. Any minute now.
He stopped at the top of the stairs to introduce her to a man of fifty or so, in topcoat and tails. “This is Taddeus, who is my Beta. He runs the pack’s business affairs.”
She knew who Taddeus was. He had been the former Alpha’s son, and for some reason, he had been passed over as pack Alpha. He was a big, imposing man with a barrel chest and broad shoulders. He certainly had the physique of an Alpha; she’d always wondered why his distant cousin had been chosen instead. She had heard he had a reputation for being abrupt and unpleasant, and rumor had it that his personality had a lot to do with his rejection by the National Alpha Congress, who had final approval over all Alphas.
Taddeus nodded at her, expressionless.
“Milady.”
Ack. He said Milady. To her.
She’d heard tales of what life was like for the bride of the Alpha, but she’d always thought they were wildly exaggerated.
This was really freaking her out. Last night she’d stood there at the sink in her family’s kitchen, washing dishes while Hailey dried them; now people were curtsying and milady-ing her. She wondered if all Alpha Queens felt this bizarre sense of displacement, of having been dropped off in another century. Then again, in modern times, most human women were here because this was the lifestyle they wanted.
Kristofer introduced her to half a dozen more people, including her personal maid, Twyla Ritter. Twyla was a slender, pretty young girl with shiny brown hair flowing down her back in gentle waves. Caitlin couldn’t help but notice that she had an iPod tucked in the pocket of her frilly apron, a bizarre juxtaposition of 21st century and 19th.
“It’s an honor to be serving you, ma’am,” Twyla said, her eyes huge. “I’ve never been in the Alpha house before.”
“Honestly, I’m not hard to clean up after,” she assured Twyla as they walked up the marble steps. “I can do most of it myself. All of it.” The idea of someone else cleaning up after her when she was perfectly capable made her feel a sharp stab of guilt.
“The Alpha Queen does not do any cleaning. That’s the maid’s job,” Elzbetka said in a sharp, reproving voice.
Taddeus flicked her a disapproving glance.
“Actually, it will be up to her to decide how she wants to run things. This is her house,” Kristofer said. His tone of reproof was mild, but Elzbetka’s mouth tightened for a moment before she nodded respectfully.
“Of course, sir.”
“I am sure that our new Queen-to-be will be mindful of protocol and of the highly public nature of her position.” Taddeus’s expression betrayed a faint veneer of distaste now.
Don’t be so sure, Caitlin thought, but replied with a polite smile.
Clearly Taddeus and Elzbetka were stamped from the same mold. A mold that had been rigidly crafted in the Victorian era or earlier, when everyone knew their place and kept to it. This should be fun.
Kristofer proceeded to introduce her to a group of men he identified as Clan Chieftains. Caitlin was vaguely aware that there were different clans in the pack, but she didn’t know anything about what that meant.
As she shook hands with the Chieftains, Caitlin glanced back over at Kristofer, and realized with shock that he was stripping his clothes off and handing them to a waiting servant.
She dropped a Chieftain’s hand and took a step back, staring at Kristofer. “What the heck are you doing?” she squeaked, alarmed. Elzbetka sucked in a sharp breath of disapproval; she ignored it.
“It
is tradition that I turn into my wolf form before we walk inside. Don’t worry, I’ll turn back as soon as we’re through the door.”
“Oh. I see,” she said, desperately looking anywhere but at Kristofer. He was like a magnificent Adonis, and from what she could see out of the corner of her eye, he was very happy to see her. His thick cock stood proud and erect, jutting from a thatch of curly hair. Nobody else seemed to be surprised that he was now butt naked.
Suddenly, he began changing. The very air around him seemed to ripple, and he fell down to all fours. The bones in his face shifted, and gray and white fur sprouted from his skin. He seemed to melt before her eyes, smoothly flowing into his wolf form, which was enormous. She resisted the urge to reach down and run her fingers through that silky fur.
He glanced at her and grinned, his black lips stretching in a smile that looked shockingly human. His eyes gleamed with intelligence.
He threw back his head and howled, and all of the other wolves there joined him in a long, baying chorus that lasted almost a minute.
Then he began walking up the steps, and she followed him, as if in a dream.
They walked through the massive, hand carved double doors. The doors were perhaps 15 feet high, and had elaborately carved scenes in their panels, mostly of men hunting and packs of wolves howling at the moon, from what little she could see at her quick glance.
The foyer was as big as the entire first floor of her house, and on the other side of it, facing the doorway, were two huge spiral staircases. The floor was marble.
The shifting process reversed itself. He melted again, the fur sinking back into his smooth skin, ears shrinking and rounding, tail vanishing, and then he was a tall, handsome human again.
“Are you hungry or thirsty?” Kristofer asked as they walked through the foyer. “I can have a meal prepared for you at once.” He inclined his head at a handsome young man with dirty blond hair, who wore a white chef’s coat with two rows of button down the front. Caitlin thought he’d been sneaking looks at Twyla, but now he was totally focused on Caitlin, with a polite, attentive look on his face. “Pierre is our chef.”
“No, thank you, Pierre, I’m fine right now. Are you going to put your clothes back on?” she asked, still avoiding Kristofer’s eyes.
“Why? Am I distracting you?” She didn’t have to look at him to know he had that amused smirk on his face.
“Hardly,” she said huffily, folding her arms across her chest to hide her swollen nipples.
He leaned so close she could feel his warm breath against her ear. “Liar. I saw that. And we werewolves are very comfortable with our bodies. You can strip down too, if you like. I know I’d enjoy it.”
She could feel her cheeks flame with embarrassment. “No, thank you anyway.”
“Whatever makes you most comfortable. Let me show you our room.” He glanced at Elzbetka, Twyla and Taddeus, who’d been trailing along at their heels. “You won’t be needed for now.”
She followed him up the stairs and to the left, and then down a long hallway. Her feet sank into thick, rich carpet. Ancestral paintings in rococo-style gilt frames lined the walls. “Good lord. I could get lost walking to our room. Your room.”
“Our room.”
She stared up at the high doorway as they walked through it. “Why is everything so tall here?”
“I must confess that the Alpha’s home is fairly showy and is considered a representation of his pack’s prestige,” he said. “All Alpha’s homes are rather ostentatious.”
Well, at least he didn’t take the whole thing too seriously. She liked that about him.
No, I don’t, she reminded herself. I don’t like anything about him.
“And in keeping with that, we have a suite of rooms, not just a bedroom,” he said as they stepped through the door, gesturing at what looked like the living room of a huge luxury apartment. “There’s half a dozen rooms. Some Alpha Queens have a nanny sleep in a separate room in the Alpha suite, with their children.”
“Oh, I’d never do that,” she said without thinking. “The babies stay with me.”
“Good,” he nodded with satisfaction. “That’s how I feel too. Although I’d volunteer to sleep in the separate room with our babies if you wanted me too.”
“I didn’t mean that we – oh, never mind.” She stopped and put her hands on her hips. “Listen, Kristofer, I simply can’t stay here. I will lose my job if I stay here. I need to work.”
“You don’t need to work,” he said, looking puzzled. “I will provide for you. You have all the money that you’ll ever need.”
“My family needs the money from my job. You made sure of that. You’re why I had to drop out of college and have a full time job, or we wouldn’t ‘t be able to make ends meet.” She’d been a year away from her fine arts degree. Glancing around, she had to admit that she was dying to have her camera equipment with her, or a canvas and paints; there was so much beauty and strangeness her that she’d love to capture.
He sighed heavily. “I am sorry about what happened to your land, Caitlin, I truly am. But our research showed that your great-great uncle obtained that land illegally. There is no copy of the deed anywhere.”
“You deny that you pumped me for information that you could use against us to get our land?”
“At the time that I spoke to you I wasn’t even aware that there was a land issue. I was notified about the fact shortly afterwards. I was sorry to have to reclaim the land, but an Alpha lives for his pack. If it weren’t for the property dispute, I would have bridenapped you much sooner. I suspected that it wasn’t appropriate for me to take your family to court and bridenap you at the same time.”
“Really. You think.” And who the hell had told him about the deed? How had that even come up? Nobody had questioned their ownership of the land in all the time her family had owned it. She’d have to ask her aunt and uncle about that.
He grinned at her. “You’re adorable when you’re sarcastic. Something to drink?” He gestured at a mahogany bar across the room, which had wine glasses in a latticework rack and a gleaming black refrigerator tucked behind it. There were four bar stools arranged in front of the bar. “Alcoholic, non-alcoholic…”
She was sincerely tempted, even though it was right after breakfast. Man, if there was ever a time she needed a triple shot of tequila…
Then again, getting tipsy and being in the same room as this incredibly sexy, naked man…perhaps not such a good idea.
She cleared her throat. “Don’t try to change the subject. My family needs the money from my wages.”
Kristofer shrugged lightly, in dismissal of her concerns. “I will of course support your family and give them anything that they need. They won’t want for anything.”
Caitlin sighed. Oh, she wished that could happen. She’d stay married to him just for that. But her family would never go for it.
“Here’s the thing, Kristofer,” she explained patiently. “That is actually a generous offer, but my family doesn’t take charity. Ever. They work for their money. They would not accept money from you. They’d rather be crammed into a one bedroom apartment eating ramen noodles and working around the clock than take money from you.”
“So they have a strong work ethic. Admirable. If they will not accept my gifts, then we could hire them and pay them a very generous salary, much more than they earn now,” he suggested. “Plenty of work to be done around here.”
Damn him, did he have to sound so reasonable and helpful? What a jerk.
“They would never work for you. They regard you as the devil. As do I. And I don’t trust you worth a damn anyway. Even if they would work for you, which they won’t, once you’ve gotten whatever it is that you want from me, you’d boot me out of here and they’d be out of a job.”
“Why would I do that?” He looked astonished.
“Oh, I don’t know…why would you talk to me and ask me all about my land, and get every last bit of information about it, and its history, and
then use that information against us in court? Because you’re a conniving greedy bastard.”
He wasn’t the slightest bit phased by her anger or her insults. “I talked to you because I was instantly attracted to you, and you were the one who brought up your land. You talked about it a good deal, and I was charmed by it, by your passion for your beautiful forest.”
She frowned, trying to remember. Had she been the one to bring it up first?
Then she shook her head in frustration, trying to clear the clouds from her mind. The more time she spent with him, the harder it was to concentrate. Especially when he was buck naked. “I need to know where I’m sleeping. Find me another bedroom, until I find the loophole that lets me escape your furry clutches?”
He laughed. “There is no such loophole, and pack custom dictates that you sleep in my chambers from now on. You may have the bed in the room that connects to our bedroom, if you prefer.”
He kept saying our. “I do prefer.”
She turned to go, then hesitated. “What if I went out and worked during the day, and then came back here at night?”
“Ah, about that. Until the wedding, pack custom dictates that you may not leave the grounds. And you will be accompanied by a guard at all times when you are not in my presence. I know, I know,” he said, waving his hand. “It’s a very old custom. Basically it’s all about protecting the Alpha’s honor, ensuring that the bride saves herself for him and doesn’t dishonor his name, and yes, it’s foolish.”
“You do know I’m not a virgin, right?”
“You do know I’m not either, right?” His eyes glinted with amusement. “It’s a tradition left over from medieval times. We have plenty of those.”
“Fine.” She bit the word out, boiling mad.
He led her through several rooms, and they finally reached their bedroom. His bedroom, she reminded herself firmly.
It was indeed massive, with a bigger-than-king size canopy bed and huge floor to ceiling windows with blue velvet curtains flowing down and puddling on the floor. There were several sitting areas, with plump velvet furniture arranged around wooden coffee tables. There was a large room connected to the bedroom. He gestured at it.
Bridenapped: The Alpha Chronicles Page 4