Wolf and Prejudice (The Alaska Princesses Trilogy, Book 2)

by Taylor, Theodora

  Her wolf turned over inside of her just remembering that terrible morning. “I told myself I was leaving because I didn’t want to be a pawn, I didn’t want my child to be a pawn in the Game of Wolves. But really, I left because I couldn’t stand the thought of feeling the way I felt about you and you just wanting me because it meant you could be a two-state king.”

  Rafe barely let her finish her sentence before he started shaking his head. “Alisha, no. I know I was an asshole about mating you, but I was fine with just being the King of Colorado—it was never about getting two states. It was about getting you. I agreed to that because your father wanted it in the pledge terms, in case no male heirs were born to any of his daughters before his five-year divestment period was up. I would have agreed to be a three-state king if it meant I could make you mine.”

  The anger and regret… these emotions rose up as one terrible sadness between them, a bitter swirl of thoughts and feelings so tangled, Alisha didn’t know where his emotions ended and hers began.

  But at the end of the dark tunnel was a light she could see burning clearly. “Last night. That feeling you put out after you… that was love, wasn’t it?”

  Rafe nodded, his emotions shining bright in his eyes and her mind. He didn’t even try to throw up a wall this time, and this made Alisha smile.

  “I figured that out when I saw you on the hill, because the same feeling came over me.” She smiled at him gently. “I love you, too, Rafe Nightwolf.”

  And that made Rafe smile back. They smiled at each other for a very long time, both knowing what had been confessed under the clinic’s dim lights was finally the truth…

  …but then a thought occurred to Alisha. “Oh my God, Chloe! She felt so guilty over what she did to you, and now we’re here, so I’ll never be able to tell her she had nothing to feel guilty about!”

  Rafe’s face shadowed. “She knows.”

  “You don’t know that—”

  “Alisha, look at me.”

  She did as he commanded, mesmerized by the way his hazel eyes glittered in the dark room. “She knows,” he repeated. “Fenris guessed how I managed to come back in time and get you and the boys.”

  Understanding dawned so quickly, like a cloud rolling away to reveal the obvious existence of the sun. “That spell you made me chant along with you to get us back… It was a fated mate spell!”

  “Took me a year to find one we actually knew would work. But I eventually got in contact with a great aunt who knew of a hundred-year-old shaman, living in South Dakota. He still knew some of the old magic.”

  “And you just used it?” she asked, hardly able to believe what he was telling her. “How about if I wasn’t your fated mate? How about if that spell landed you somewhere crazy in the past or in the future?”

  He covered her lips with his finger. “Living without you was torture. I seriously couldn’t deal, and I couldn’t go on like that, so I took a chance and it brought me straight to you.”

  She smiled even brighter, for once, warming to the idea that someone else was in charge of her destiny. “I’m your fated mate.”

  “And man, was I pissed when it actually worked. You have no idea how hard it is to keep hate burning in your heart when you know you’re actually meant to be with the woman who jumped back a thousand years in time to get away from you.”

  She inclined her head. “Actually I kind of do. Remember what happened the night you brought us back, how long I held out for my wolf annulment?”

  He laughed quietly. And then gently shook Nago, Rafesson, and Knud awake before standing up, offering his hand to her, and saying the words she’d been waiting to hear for nearly a week now.

  “C’mon, Alisha. Let’s go home.”

  THEY LOVED EACH OTHER. And, that night in the kingdom house’s master suite, Rafe and Alisha healed each other, whispering apologies between kisses and touching each other in all the ways they’d dreamed about while they’d been apart.

  They took turns licking, sucking, devouring. Neither of them wanted the night to end, so they slow-burned the consummation of their mutual desire, bringing each other just close enough to the edge before they stopped and let themselves get tended to in the same loving manner.

  But all good things must come to an end, and when the first rays of morning light stole into the room, Rafe took Alisha’s hand off his manhood, which she had been lazily stroking while they lay facing each other. He kissed her palm and said, “I love how hard you make me.” Then he leaned forward and kissed her shoulder. “I love your body. So soft and beautiful, like a wet dream come to life.” He palmed one of her breasts, appreciating how heavy and plump it felt in his hand. “These—I have no words to describe how much I love your breasts, Alisha.”

  She laughed softly, and rewarded him for the compliment, moving closer, until her ample chest was pressed into his, and he could feel the heat of her core throbbing and hot against his manhood.

  “And I love you,” he told her, pushing her messy nest of curls out of her face, so he could see her clearly when he asked, “How do you want me?”

  “From behind,” she answered. “Like the first time.”

  There was a belief among wolves that sex would and could never be better than on a wolf’s first heat night. Nothing, it was claimed, could come close to that first joining with its attendant biological imperative, but as Rafe pulled Alisha’s hips up so he could take her from behind, he knew this to be complete and utter bullshit. Yes, that first claim had been a relief after so many years of lusting after Alisha from afar, but this… this night’s joining was a coming home.

  He drove into her from behind, treasuring the way she cried out with pleasure, and loving the way her hot sheath enveloped his erection, pulling at him as he pumped into her. And this time, when he fell over her back and bit into her shoulder, it wasn’t his wolf’s primal urge to keep her there while he claimed her, it was because he wanted them joined in every possible way. He slipped four fingers of one hand between her wet folds, stroking the side of his hand over her clit. Then he pressed his other fingers into her mouth, wanting to feel her bite, when she…

  She screamed around his fingers, biting down as she came with a ferocious shudder, squirting her juices over both his sex and hand. It was too much for Rafe to maintain his own control. He released into her, his teeth on her shoulder, his face pressed hard into her neck as he came in great streams inside of her.

  Yes, all good things had to come to an end, but Rafe knew he didn’t have to worry about the sun rising outside of their bedroom window. Their night was over, but he could feel Alisha’s love for him shining large and bright, repairing all the fissures in his cracked soul. It was clear to him that, despite leaps through time, tragic misunderstanding, and inflicted wounds, nothing had ended.

  In fact, it had all just begun.

  EPILOGUE

  Christmas morning in the kingdom house was even more festive than usual that year in Wolf Springs. Wolves had come from far and wide to witness the long-delayed wedding of Rafe Nightwolf to Alisha Ataneq, which would be taking place at the Wolf Springs Resort.

  In one of the kingdom house’s larger guest rooms, the matron and maid of honor were dressed in matching dark red gowns and putting on their make-up. And despite being less than happy that a certain newly appointed Oklahoma alpha would also be taking part in the wedding, the maid of honor plastered on her best game face. Her sister was getting married, she reminded herself, she wouldn’t make waves, even if the thought of seeing the Oklahoma alpha again made her panicky inside.

  Downstairs in the living room, one of the forty-eight-inch-tall ushers sorted the wedding programs with solemn dutifulness while one of his brothers tried to convince their maternal grandmother it would be way more fun if they performed their duties in wolf form. His other brother could be overheard in the kitchen, asking their fraternal grandmother for a pre-wedding cookie.

  However the bride and groom themselves were nowhere to be found in the king
dom house.

  “Where are you taking me?” Alisha asked as Rafe helped her out of his Range Rover Supercharge, which he’d parked in his reserved spot right outside the hotel lobby’s large wood and glass doors.

  She needed his help getting out of the passenger seat. The wedding dress Erylace had picked out for her was a modern take on a Mexican wedding dress, with long bell sleeves and a skirt that fell to her ankles. But instead of the lace features that would be included with a traditional Mexican wedding dress, this one had crystal beads embroidered into its sleeves, neckline, waist, and skirt. It made for a very pretty effect, especially when the beads sparkled in the lights, but it was heavy as hell. Alisha doubted she would have been able to get out of the car on her own if she tried, even with her wolf strength.

  After helping her out, Rafe pulled out a sheath of papers bound together with two thick rubber bands from under the passenger seat and tucked the bundle under his arm. Alisha frowned when she saw what was written on the top sheet in her own large and neat looping cursive. “Is that a photocopy of my Chloe journals?”

  He glanced down. “Yeah, it is.”

  “Rafe?” she asked carefully. “What’s going on?”

  “I thought from now on you were supposed to obey me in all things.”

  This wasn’t the first time he’d made that joke, he’d even campaigned to get it included in their official wedding vows. But Alisha had already let him know she had no intention of honoring that particular vow—she might have mellowed but she was still her own damn wolf. And now, she lifted the twenty pounds worth of dress on her bell-sleeved arm in order to take him by the hand.

  “I’m serious, Rafe. What’s going on? Why did you photocopy my journals?”

  “Okay, I'll tell you as we walk,” he said, guiding her into the hotel's lobby and then toward the first-floor rooms.

  “I cornered Professor Henley yesterday at the pre-wedding luncheon to get an update on your application to have your Chloe biography added to the required Wolf History curriculum.”

  She nodded. Professor Henley had been instrumental in helping Rafe figure out where Alisha had gone and how she had gotten there. Rafe, in turn, had gotten him appointed to the Lupine Council Academic Board, a favor he had apparently decided to exploit.

  “And…” she asked, bracing herself.

  A pained expression came over his face. “He told me in confidence the council plans to approve your biography into the university curriculum, but only at the grad school level.”

  Alisha’s own face fell then. Well, that was a disappointment for sure. While it would be nice to have anyone read her work, most wolves mated before the age of twenty-five, so there were very few wolf graduate students. Maybe a couple hundred in the entire U.S., if that. And only a very small percentage of those grad students were she-wolves.

  “Professor Henley is all for it, but the rest of the board thinks the story’s too romantic. They’re afraid undergrads will read it and start seeking out fated mate spells for themselves. According to Professor Henley, fated mate spells didn’t exactly fall out of fashion. There’s been a concentrated effort to eradicate them for quite some time in order to keep the werewolf ecosystem steady—that’s why most of the wolves who come through the portals aren’t from the current millenium.”

  Alisha nodded, understanding if not exactly loving why the Lupine Council would take such steps. “Well, I guess I should count myself lucky it even made it in at the grad school level. You’ve got to start somewhere, right?”

  Rafe shook his head. “No, that’s not enough for me. You went through a lot to find out what happened to Chloe after she left our time, and I think you’re right. Her story deserves to be told.”

  “But if the Lupine Council is forbidding it...”

  He shook his head again. “They said your planned biography couldn’t be widely published. They didn’t say anything about Chloe’s story.”

  Now Alisha shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  Rafe stopped her in front of one of the hotel doors. “There’s a human writer staying with us right now. She writes contemporary romances in something the humans call the IR genre—.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard of interracial romance novels… but what does that have to do with Chloe’s biography?”

  “Professor Henley got me thinking. He’s right. Chloe’s story is romantic. Really romantic, maybe romantic enough to be a romance novel. So how about if we introduced it to the world that way? The Lupine Council probably wouldn’t even notice a human romance novel. And even if they did, it wouldn’t necessarily be in violation of the rules because it was presented as a work of fiction, not a biography.”

  “You mean give a human my Chloe biography and ask her to write it up as a work of fiction?”

  “As a work of paranormal fiction. This human doesn’t write those kinds of books, but maybe it’s time she branched out.”

  He grinned at her before knocking on the door. And even if Alisha had wanted to protest his plan, it was too late. A short, dark-skinned woman answered the door. Her hair was pulled back into a fluffy afro puff and she wore bright red glasses and a yellow Pittsburgh Steelers t-shirt underneath a velvet jacket with jeans.

  In the background, Alisha could see a thin man with short blond hair and his own set of glasses watching what looked like ESPN SportsCenter on the room’s flat screen. Her mate, Alisha guessed. Despite their vast color difference, they looked like they belonged together. They both had a tweedy quality about them, well-educated East Coast geeks on vacation.

  And there was something else… Alisha sniffed the air to make sure she was smelling the human woman right.

  “She’s pregnant,” Rafe said inside her head.

  “Yes, but it’s early days,” Alisha answered. “She might not even know yet.”

  The woman looked up at them, her face confused. Perhaps because Alisha and Rafe had been so busy with their telepathic conversation, they hadn't said hello or introduced themselves. Or perhaps because she hadn't expected to open the door to a bride and groom already dressed for their wedding.

  “Hi, can I help you?” She squinted at Rafe. “Hey, aren't you the owner of the resort? I saw your picture in the brochure!”

  “Yes, I am. Name's Rafe Nightwolf. Nice to meet you,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” she said. “I'm Theodora. Theodora Taylor.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said with a cordial smile.

  To Alisha he said, “It's your decision. If you don't want to do this, I can tell her she's won a complimentary dinner or something.”

  Alisha made this decision like she made all her best decisions—mating with Rafe, tranqing the Deliverance hicks—in a split second with no time to talk herself out of it.

  She held out her hand. “Hi, Theodora, I’m Alisha Ataneq, and I have a proposition for you…”

  THOUGH RAFE AND ALISHA got to the hotel before anyone else in the wedding party, they ended up being over thirty minutes late to their own wedding. Convincing a human author to write a work of fiction based on the “fictional” travel journals Alisha had supposedly written on a lark wasn’t exactly straightforward. But after reading a few passages in the hotel’s empty restaurant bar—the same one that had to be closed for a week after Rafe “remodeled” the room upon finding out Alisha had gone through the Wyoming time portal—Theodora said she was intrigued. And though she’d made no promises before sending them away so she could finish reading the pages they’d given her, Alisha had a good feeling. The human would agree to write Chloe’s story as one of her novels, and the tale would go beyond a few measly grad students.

  “I need you to come back out to the car with me,” Rafe said, pulling her toward the hotel lobby’s exit doors after they left Theodora reading in the restaurant.

  “What? Why?” she asked as they stepped back outside into the cold Christmas wind.

  “I have one more gift for you,” he said, letting go of her hand. He w
ent over to his Range Rover, opening the door to the backseat.

  “What? No way!” she said. “We’re already late for our own wedding and besides, you can’t top the gift you just gave me.”

  “That was a wedding gift,” Rafe said. He brought a package, neatly wrapped in heavy dark green paper, out of the car’s side door compartment. “This is a Christmas gift.”

  “Seriously, Rafe. We really should go. Your mom and especially my mom are probably losing their collective shit right now.”

  Rafe handed her the present. “Then you should open this as fast as you can, because I’m not going back into that hotel until you do.”

  With a huff, she took the gift from Rafe and tore away the green paper. But then her heart melted when she saw what was inside. “A journal,” she said.

  Rafe smiled. “You’ve written Chloe’s story. Now it’s time you wrote yours.”

  Alisha smiled back at him, her heart warm as an oven despite being outside in a metric-ton worth of wedding dress, without a coat, on Christmas Day. And even though they were already super-late, and even though she promised her mother she would do nothing to ruin her make-up, she reached out to her soon-to-be husband and pulled him down for a very, very long kiss.

  It was true, she had been used as a pawn in the Game of Wolves. But as she kissed her mate, she knew for sure she had come out the winner.

  If you liked this story, check out the other books in the 50 Loving State series:

  THE OWNER OF HIS HEART