“So what do you plan on doing about it? Giving me a beatdown?” She glared at him. If he tried, she’d shift and draw blood. Of course he’d totally kick her ass, but she didn’t care.
Maddox looked highly amused at that. “Me, hit a lady? Or you, for that matter?”
Katrina tried to slap him and he caught her wrist in a steely grip. “Only if she asks very nicely, and only under certain special circumstances. I’ve got a better idea.” In one swift motion he grabbed her and slung her over his shoulder, and one of his pack-mates slapped a copper collar on her neck. Now she couldn’t shift.
Carver had opened the van’s back door, and Maddox dumped her in there and slammed the door shut with a clanging sound.
“You son of a bitch!” she shrieked. “You mongrel! Your parents have fleas! You have a fake pedigree! I will kill you, I swear to God!”
The van started up and drove off. She was actually being kidnapped. She, Katrina Hager, was being kidnapped.
Damn it to hell and back again. She was supposed to be helping one of her aunts with a catering job tomorrow – to say nothing of how her mother was going to react. She’d be furious about the embarrassment to the pack and blame it on Katrina.
She clawed at the door; there was no lock on the inside. They drove for about twenty minutes. She tried without success to pull the collar off her neck. She screamed, she kicked the back door, she kicked the walls. Then she got tired of it and her feet started to hurt, so she sat down and imagined all the ways her pack was going to get revenge on Maddox and his crew.
Oh, Maddox was going to get the Death Challenge to end all Death Challenges.
Chapter Two
Maddox swung open the door to the room where they’d put Katrina, and a heavy hardcover book went flying at his head. He caught it, walked in, and shut the door behind him. He didn’t bother to lock it; he knew she couldn’t get past him.
He glanced down at the book. “So, you recommend James Rollins?” he said. “I haven’t read him yet, but I’ll give him a try when I have some free time.” He set the book down on a small wooden table and sat down.
Katrina was sitting on the bed, her shining hair rumpled, brown eyes blazing with rage.
He still felt that sharp stab of longing deep inside, the one that he’d felt since the first time he’d seen her back in high school. It was like a strong magnetic pull.
Katrina was the main reason he’d screwed around so much in high school and then college, always trying to sate a hunger that could never be satisfied. She was the reason he’d stayed single, hadn’t bothered to claim a mate yet despite everyone’s urging. It wouldn’t be fair to whoever he mated with. Until he banished this ridiculous fixation, the only thing that made sense was to stay single and keep his relationships brief and no strings attached.
With Katrina being a member of the Mordhaus pack, he’d never even tried to act on his attraction, and he wouldn’t now. He was an Alpha, and his responsibility to his pack came first. Mating with the enemy? Never.
In fact, when he’d seen her and Joy in town, he’d almost debated pretending not to notice them and letting them both escape. Having her here so close to him would be incredibly distracting.
So why had he ended up letting Joy go and just taking Katrina? Well, Katrina was the Alpha’s stepdaughter, so that would make the biggest statement. Or that’s what he tried to tell himself, anyway.
She glowered at him and yanked at the copper collar.
“Take this damned thing off of me.”
“Here, let me help you with that.” Maddox walked over, pulled the key out of his pocket, and unlocked it. His fingers brushed against her warm, velvety skin, and he felt blood rush to his groin. Her scent was intoxicating; he could smell her musky arousal mixed with honeysuckle shampoo. He fought the urge to lean in and inhale deeply. Instead he moved away from her quickly.
She ripped the collar off and hurled it across the room as Maddox walked back to his chair.
He’d had Katrina placed in a room at the end of a wing off the pack’s main house. The house was a sprawling thirty-room structure where Maddox and many of the other single males of his pack lived. The room where they’d keep Katrina was sparsely decorated, and secure. There was a wooden framed bed. There was a table and chairs. There was a small bathroom with a cast iron tub and basic toiletries – toothbrush, shampoo and conditioner, soap. Towels. Toilet paper. He wasn’t a complete savage, after all.
The windows had bars on the outside which could swing open in case of fire, but they were locked up tight.
There was a bookshelf full of books and magazines, so she’d have something to do. He didn’t expect her to sit there and stare at the four walls while she was there.
“So. Comfortable?” He gave a lazy smile, easily hiding his raging arousal. He was a master of stuffing his feelings down and putting on a poker face when he needed to.
“You son of a bitch!” Katrina let loose a stream of curses.
He waited for her to finish. It took several minutes.
“I’m going to kill you!” she shouted. “I’m going to rip your throat out!”
“Based on past performance, I tend to doubt it. You’re welcome to try, however.”
Fur rippled across her face, and her jaw lengthened. White fur, he noticed, as her ears sharpened to points and laid flat back against her skull. Black claws shot out from her fingertips, and her fangs descended. She didn’t shift fully, only her head. Probably didn’t want to ruin her clothes.
He didn’t even bother to shift. She’d make a cute little wolf, one he could bat aside easily with one swipe of his paw if necessary. He just sat there and stared into her caramel brown eyes without blinking.
After a minute, she growled and shifted back to human form.
“Now here’s what’s going to happen,” he said calmly. “Your pack has been playing dirty with our pack’s property lines. I assume that you know about their challenge to the Council of Elders?”
“What challenge?” she scowled.
“They’re trying to annex a large section of our property. Pulling some crap about how we falsified the property lines a century ago and our land belongs to your pack. They tried to appeal to the state council, and were smacked down, so now they’re taking it to the Council of Elders. Kind of a cowardly little bitch move, whining to the council about something like that. I was surprised that Roman didn’t just issue a challenge if he wanted to steal our land so badly.”
She let out a low, rumbling growl at the insult to her pack’s Alpha.
“And this affects me how?” she asked sullenly.
“Keeping you here lets Roman know his place. Which is beneath me.”
“So what happens now?”
“I send a message to Roman that you will be staying here until after we’ve resolved his property dispute, and if any male members of his pack set a paw in town, we’ll kill them. Basically, there’s no way that he won’t issue a Death Challenge at this point.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Why don’t you just challenge him if you’re so eager for a fight?”
He shrugged. “I’m never eager for a fight, Katrina. I just do what has to be done. I don’t issue Death Challenges lightly, because I always win. There’s the possibility that your stepfather will regain his senses, back down, and start treating the people of Greenville with respect.”
“And if you don’t succeed in bullying him into submitting? Which you won’t.”
“Then pretty soon I’ll be the one issuing the challenge. He’s left me no choice.”
“I see. My condolences to your pack, in advance.”
He just grinned at her.
“You’re cute when you’re mad.”
She curled her lip in scorn. “You’ll be cute when you’re dead.”
Damn it, why did he keep provoking her, when he got more turned on the feistier she got? He had a raging hard on and it was all he could do to keep himself from pouncing on her. Yeah, that wou
ld go over real well. Him molesting a hostage. He imagines his parents spinning in their graves at the mere thought.
He stood up abruptly. He had to get out of here. He should have sent someone else in the first place; something about Katrina seemed to fog his brain and steal his common sense. “Someone will be by with dinner later.” He’d have one of the other pack members bring all of her meals. It was hard to think when most of the blood in his body had left his brain.
She stared at him, and he could see the bones in her face ripple as she forced her wolf down.
“One favor, before you go?” her voice had gone saccharine sweet.
“What?” He grinned at her, baring some fang. “Rip my own throat out?”
“I was just wondering if you’d mind shifting,” she said in a saccharine sweet tone. “I want to remember what color your pelt is, to see if it’ll match the décor in my room.”
“Is that right? You want to rub yourself in my fur while you lie in front of your fireplace?” He heard his voice go low and seductive. Damn it – he’d just done it again. He was an idiot. Why couldn’t he stop himself from flirting with her?
“No. I want to step on your stuffed head every day on my way out the door.”
He burst out laughing at that. He had to say, he admired her. She was strong. A definite Alpha. He loved a woman who didn’t take any crap. Although she was short, a good five three, and maybe 130 pounds, there was something about the way she carried itself that said “Mess with me and I’ll chew your face off.”
He was about to walk out when the door flew open, and he turned towards it with a growl. Nobody was supposed to be here.
His eight year old niece Heather was standing there, with a woebegone look on her little face. He felt anger and frustration welling up inside him. Who had let her wander over to this side of the house? And why wasn’t her father watching her?
Because Bruce was still drowning in drink to dull the sorrow of the loss of his mate, that was why.
Before he could growl at her to leave this part of the house at once, she announced loudly, in a deeply wounded voice, “Nobody will French braid my hair! Everyone says they’re busy! Tara and Emma have French braided hair, and nobody will French braid my hair.”
“Oh, that’s easy. I’ll do it,” Katrina called out, and Heather ducked under his arm and ran over to her, beaming.
Maddox could have easily stopped Heather, tucked her under his arm, carried her off and sent her to sit in her room for the rest of the night, for coming into an area of the house where she was forbidden to go.
With any of the other cubs, he would have. They needed to learn early on that the Alpha’s word was law.
However, with Heather, he tended to cut her some slack. She was basically a good kid, never openly rude or disrespectful. She lost her mother a year ago to a hunting accident, and now she’d pretty much lost her father, too, because of the drinking, which was going to need to be addressed sooner rather than later.
He watched as Katrina knelt down next to Heather and skillfully wove a braid, her slim fingers skipping over Heather’s long blonde hair.
She paused. “Got a brush?” she asked Maddox. “There’s a few knots in there.” She said it politely, with a smile, but Maddox picked up on the faintest hint of reproach in her voice. He glanced at Heather’s hair and saw that there were more than few knots in there. And he could see grime on the back of her neck. Katrina slid behind Heather so the little girl couldn’t see his expression, and shot him a look that had more steel in it than he’d seen in the eyes of Alphas coming at him in the Death Arena.
“I know,” he said to her unanswered question. “Yes. It will be dealt with.” He glanced at Heather, who was leaning in to Katrina.
“I’ll be right back with that brush,” he added, and headed out. He shut and locked the heavy door behind him.
He knew Heather was perfectly safe here with Katrina. If anything, he hoped she didn’t latch on to her too much. Katrina wouldn’t be staying, and the last thing that Heather needed was to get too close to someone who was going to disappear from her life again.
He returned a few minutes later with the brush and a can of no-tangle spray that one of his cousins found for him, and sat there and watched as Katrina carefully detangled her hair.
When she was done, he said sternly to Heather “You know I told you, and all the other cubs, to stay out of this end of the house.”
Her face fell, and he caught Katrina giving him the stink-eye.
“What does B U L L Y spell?” she said, her tone sweet but her gaze sharp with annoyance at him.
Too bad. He was the Alpha, and his rules were made to be followed.
Heather waved her hand frantically in the air. “I know! I know! I can spell! It spells bully!”
“Very good. I knew you were smart. You must be adopted.”
Heather looked puzzled. “What’s adopted?”
Maddox interrupted. “Go find Aunt Caroline and tell her that I want you to spend the night at her house tonight.”
“Okay,” Heather sighed. Then she asked hopefully “Can Katrina come with me? She’s my friend.”
Katrina leaped in and gave him a graceful out. “Oh, I wish I could, honey, but I have some work to do.”
“What kind of work? I could stay and help. I’m a good helper.” Heather shifted from one foot to another, twisting and untwisting her hands.
Katrina favored her with a gentle smile. “Oh, boring grownup work. Homework. Experimental quantum mechanics with a theophysical application.”
Heather’s little face screwed up like she’d just sucked a lemon. “That sounds hard. I’m going to go find Aunt Caroline.”
She left the room.
“Experimental what?” Maddox asked. “I thought you worked for your pack’s catering company.”
“I do. Totally pulled that out of my butt. I figured it would send her running.”
“That was nice of you,” Maddox said.
“I’m always nice to cubs, unless they need their butt swatted. She’s a lovely cub. Surprised that she came from your pack. I’m sure you’ll ruin her soon enough.”
He didn’t bother to respond to the insult. He’d almost certainly be killing her stepfather some time soon; that was response enough. “Need anything while you’re in here?”
“A set of skinning knives.” She gave him a fierce grin and let her fangs descend partway.
He found himself ridiculously turned on. Damn. What a feisty little fireball. If she’d been a member of any other pack but the Mordhaus pack…
Well, his life would be very different.
“Nothing, then. Hope you get lots of reading done.” He turned and walked out of the door, shutting it behind him and sliding the massive deadbolt into place. He heard something thud against the door, and suppressed a smile.
He walked down the long hallway, and through the doorway that led into the main house. The floors were flagstone, and the enormous living room had a huge fireplace and several groupings of leather sofas and chairs. Two story floor to ceiling windows opened out to views of the dense green pine and fir forests that bordered their lands, and the looming Gore Mountain range in the distance. The sky was the clear blue of the ocean, and strings of white cotton clouds floated around the mountain’s saw tooth peaks.
Maddox waved at several of his pack mates who were playing a game of pool, and headed towards the front door. He need to find Bruce and put his paw down once and for all – stop drinking and take care of his daughter, or he’d be out of the pack.
It might sound harsh, but shifters lived a harsh life. Everyone had losses; you grieved them, and honored your dead’s memory by living an admirable life and contributing to your pack. You didn’t drown yourself and drag your family under with you.
As Maddox stepped outside, he scented Lula before he saw her, and stifled a growl of impatience. Several months ago, they’d had a few brief dalliances. Before they’d mated, he couldn’t have been more clea
r about the fact that he had no interest in anything permanent. He’d found out quickly that she only heard what she wanted to hear – which was apparently imaginary voices in her head telling her he wanted to marry her.
She was standing on the front porch, wearing a cleavage-plunging halter dress and sandals. She’d gone heavy on the perfume and makeup today. She’d clearly been standing there waiting for him. He kept walking without acknowledging her.
She turned and scampered after him. “Maddox! Wait!
“Sorry, Lula, I’m busy.”
“I thought you could take a little time off. To relax.” She quickened her stride to keep up with him.
“Lula, I’ve told you. I’m not interested.” Tact had gotten him nowhere; he’d have to be more forceful.
She let out a tinkling laugh and put her hand on his arm. “Now I know you’re lying. I smell your arousal.”
He cursed silently and wondered if Katrina had scented it too.
With a shrug, he shook her hand off. “It’s not for you.” Harsh, but necessary.
She broke into a trot, sniffing at the air, then stared at him. “What do you mean, it’s not for me? Who is it for? I scent another woman on you. Who is it?” Her voice rose in anger and dismay
He didn’t answer, just gave a growl of impatience as he headed in the direction of Bruce’s cabin.
“I don’t know that scent. Oh my God. Is it the hostage? That Mordaus bitch?” Lula stared at him in astonishment. “You can’t be attracted to her! How could you? I’m right here.”
“Yes, I see you. I’m not blind.”
Tears filled her eyes. “You are if you prefer her over me. I am absolutely perfect for you. I’d make an amazing Alpha mate. I’m an Alpha myself, after all.”
He restrained himself from saying what he thought – that she wasn’t an Alpha, she was a bully who backed down whenever she came up against real strength.
Instead he stopped walking, and leveled an ice cold glower at her.
“We will not be mates. This has nothing to do with our hostage, who will be returning to her pack shortly. You and I are not compatible, and this is the last time we’re having this conversation. I can have you moved to another part of pack property and ban you from the main house if I need to make my point any clearer.”
Taken By The Alpha (Timber Valley Pack) Page 2