Denying the Alpha: Manlove Edition

by 5 Author Anthology

  EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2018 Evernight Publishing

  ISBN: 978-1-77339-826-6

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Audrey Bobak

  Proofreader: Laurie White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DENYING THE ALPHA

  MANLOVE EDITION

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Tortured Heat by L.J. Longo

  If You Can’t Stand the Heat by Pelaam

  Five Dollar Mate by Angelique Voisen

  At the Edge by Nell Rockhill

  Hunted by His Alpha by Marie Medina

  TORTURED HEART

  L.J. Longo

  Chapter One

  “Don’t speak to the witch.”

  I swim out of consciousness. There’s nothing in the world except those words. Reasonable advice. But … that voice. A wolf’s voice, and warm as cinders. Breath fragrant with lemon tea…

  The whisperer holds my neck. I’m looking down at a puddle of purple and black liquid. It bubbles in magic waves in a shallow trough. Like an unfilled mirror. There’s something distinctly unpleasant about the frame. About the white stone of this room. About the casting circle I’m inside spattered with … is that blood? My blood?

  The wolf steadies me. Oh, I’m too weak to balance. So much blood…

  That’s right. I’m being tortured by a witch. What an odd thing to forget. She’s torn me apart. No, torn is too sudden a word, too final. She unwove the fabric of my body. Which, if I’m not mistaken, was never too tightly knit to begin with. I’m a shifter of some sort. Not a wolf. Not like this man bracing me. What am I?

  The witch has meddled with my body, with my bones and muscles. But I’ve been broken before. Other witches have experimented with me, unmade my shape, gave me coins for my trouble. I had three rings … sealed with a magic.

  They should be around my neck, but there’s nothing but my bony chest.

  What am I?

  The potion—which I obviously rejected—sizzles in its shallow trough. The wolf keeps my head pointed toward the puddle.

  Instinctively, I try to escape. I’m too weak, of course, and the movement jostles my stomach. He clamps my neck and keeps me facing the floor. My body clenches again. He steadies me as I vomit, as the magic violently leaves my body and sloshes into the small pool.

  The wolf whispers, “Trust me. I can help you. Don’t speak to the witch.”

  I try to look at him, but his strong hand keeps me focused on the noxious puddle. I shudder at the next wave of nausea.

  My arms are bound behind my back. The fingers of his other hand tangle around mine. Surprisingly intimate for the situation, if a humble crow may be so bold.

  “Huh…” I’m a crow. Of course, I am. How could I forget? But I’m more than a crow, aren’t I? I’m … special … or someone made me think I am. The taste of magic, overly saccharine, coats my throat, cloying as rosebuds. “Who are you and who am I?”

  The wolf snorts. “Mistress, your potion was too strong. He’s forgotten himself.”

  The man said to trust him. To not answer her. That he would help me. But he is her wolf.

  “What do you mean he’s forgotten himself?” The witch sounds far away. Another room … another world.

  “Who are you?” I wrench away. This time I’m successful at dislodging his hold. Then unbalanced and too weak, I fall forward towards the mess. Shit.

  “Your friend.” He catches me and leans me back into his strong body. “Be quiet. Your name is Aza.”

  No, it’s not. It’s Azatio. I don’t like nicknames. Not from him.

  “Madame Keldrith.” He raises his voice, as innocent as a child. “He doesn’t know his own name. I think he might be dying.”

  Keldrith … was she my witch? Had I displeased my witch?

  “Damnation and spit.” The witch awkwardly carries a cauldron from the other room and the hem of her black dress, slick with blood, nearly trips her. She’s … quite young, actually. Forty or so. She might be pretty if she’d smiled more, if she’d viewed the world less harshly.

  No, she is not mine. Mine is … ancient and kind. I’ve forgotten myself, but I know my witch.

  The wolf lays me on the stones. “Mistress, shall I unbind him? Take him back to the cell to recover his wits? He’ll never remember anything about the book.”

  Madame’s book. Madame Lamrow’s book. The treasure of her coven. I have to protect it from the people and I have to protect the people from it.

  I cling to this knowledge. To my newest memory, which is also, I’m certain, my oldest.

  ****

  At seven years of age, I’d been alone my whole life. Alone inside the horde of the city’s crows. Just one of any number of ghastly pale and angular faces and feathery black hair. Utterly indistinguishable from the others.

  But a man gave me three shinies to steal a book. So, I perched in the rafters of a dusty library while he hid nearby. When full darkness came, as darkness always does, I dove for the book with my eagle talons. Not my little sparrow feet, nor my natural black claws, but talons like knives, like razors. Toward the oak podium and the treasure on top.

  But then … a net. Strong as spider webs and thin as moonlight. It bound me and I fell in a clatter of feathers and breaking bones to the stone.

  A trapped eagle screeches as pathetically as a sparrow. I couldn’t fly free of the net. Not with my tattered wings.

  The librarian had never been asleep at her desk. “Now, you turn back into a person and talk to me—”

  The man emerged to kill her. She beat him without effort. Then, when I thought she’d snare him in her moonlight net, he reached for the book.

  “Don’t!” she shouted. “It protects itself!”

  The man could not resist. I knew more about him than the librarian did. He had real power, but he couldn’t be taught. He claimed they wouldn’t teach him because he was a man, but the older birds cackled that he couldn’t be taught because his heart was blacker than their wings. He wanted that book, the most powerful grimoire in the city, to unleash his full potential.

  So, the book gave him what he wanted and unleashed his potential. All of it. At once.

  What made me stay with Madame wasn’t how she healed my broken arms, or how she fed me or gave me a fine black cloak, nor how she listened when I spoke of being hungry and cold. No, my loyalty came when this witch—who knew me only as a thief—turned from the explosion of magic and sheltered a broken crow with her own body.

  I sat helplessly in her shadow and looked at her face, soft and brown as river clay. She looked hurt. Not injured by the light or heat or the galaxies of power that washed around her spine and left me untouched, but grieving because she had failed to protect the thief.

  Lamrow fixed more than my wings by dawn. Patched pieces of my soul I hadn’t realized were tattered. I’d live the rest of my life to pay back her kindness.

  Chapter Two

  Keldrith took my fine black cloak. She’s burned my black ribbons and melted my silver shifting rings. I am the steward of Madame Lamrow’s library and her personal messenger. Very special indeed for a humble crow.

  The poison lurches in my stomach again. No point in s
wallowing it down. No point of aiming it into the trough to help Keldrith, but her wolf makes me. I don’t fight him. I’m witless and mostly dead.

  “The bird is exactly where I need him to be. Vulnerable.” Keldrith adjusts her black skirt, hiking it higher to keep it from trailing on the floor and mopping up … so much blood. She plants the cauldron and ladles a bit of the brew into the trough.

  The magic hisses into a noxious gray cloud. She watches the smoke and smiles at the shapes it makes. I watch too. Like wings, like clouds, like a smoky map of the city from above.

  I moan weakly. The witch has more than unmade me. She’s separated bits of my mind into piles. Pieces I’ll have to sort out to be whole again. And while I do, the fragments of my desire will play across the air.

  But what she wants is my memory of the book and because of the wolf, she’s been denied.

  “Do you remember Lamrow, crow?” The witch smiles in a bad imitation of kindness.

  I ignore her, trying to see the wolf. The man holds me firmly in his arms. Not only to restrain me, but to keep me close.

  “Don’t look away from me when I’m talking, bird,” the witch commands.

  I look at her, unimpressed with her scowl. She is not my witch. She is too young, unburdened by Madame Lamrow’s power, impatient and cruel. She is beneath my attention.

  “Tell me about Lamrow’s grimoire, crow.”

  I’ve spent years perched above that damned book, flapping at fools who came to investigate its glass case. Years at the librarian’s desk peering over my reading glasses to chastise the curious. “Don’t touch the glass. You’ll leave fingerprints.”

  Keldrith growls. “See, he remembers. Even a crow couldn’t forget something like Lamrow’s grimoire.”

  “You know better than me, Ma’am.” The wolf shrugs and loosens his hold enough that I catch sight of him in the tail of my eye.

  Skin like the first night of the new moon. Short, ruffled hair. A familiar curl, achingly intimate. I’ve seen it sprawled wild and wanton on the pillows of my nest. I’ve seen it swirled over my shoulder while the man bit my neck in ecstasy. I’ve seen it twirled, a spiral of midnight around my pale finger as I’ve pushed it out of his eyes.

  My stomach clenches. This wolf is my lover.

  “Tell me about that book, crow. How does old Lamrow handle it?”

  The sight of the wolf erases all thoughts of Lamrow, of her book, of poisons and potions, and witches with the power to unthread a body with the wave of their hands.

  The wolf—my wolf—Thariff is dark as a midnight jewel, eyes green as summer grass at sunset, fashioned for pleasure. His pack obeys him without question because he’s the cleverest among them and—I must be more dead than alive to have forgotten—I love him.

  Thoughts of him swirl around in my mind, tumbling over each other as I sort them out. He’s the man who destroyed me, even as he brought me to life.

  ****

  I waited outside Charine’s shop. Bored, because the shopping list rolling through my head was beneath my attention. Restless, because Charine sat inside smoking her pipe, unwilling to open her shop a minute early. Not for a crow. Anxious, because Lamrow had ordered lion’s-teeth, an ingredient so rare and in such high demand that carrying even a small jarful would put someone at great risk. I’d carry home a veritable bouquet.

  Then a wolf strolled nearer.

  I tried not to notice him, as if ignoring him would erase his existence.

  He was hard not to notice though, a stunningly handsome man. He zig-zagged nearer, and although he never appeared to walk closer, he somehow ended up leaning beside the door.

  I looked at the sky.

  The wolf dressed like a hunter, with deerskin trousers and an open vest, but he wore a glinting collar. So he belonged to a city witch. The copper did not suit him, though he remained casual in his power. Friendly. While the most dangerous kind of wolf is a frightened one, I took no great comfort in a smiling one. He looked crafty. Probably because he was handsome.

  I fought every instinct to look at him, to hop from foot to foot, to strut and fidget my fingers.

  “Good morning, Master Crow. Good night for spells, do you think?”

  Every muscle in my body tensed at his attention, but I shook my head stiffly, as if noticing him for the first time. “No, sir, I don’t think so.”

  The wolf grinned and scratched his cheek. “Oh, no? Why not?”

  When one disagrees with common pleasantries usually one is trying to make conversation. I was merely contrary by nature. “I think it will rain.”

  The wolf hummed again. “Guess it depends on what kind of a spell she’s casting.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  The man grinned wider, never altering his thuggish lean next to the door.

  The bell tower rang the hour and Charine’s door unlocked itself. Bunch of useless flash and dance. The kind of magic so obvious about itself that it hardly feels magical. I fought my instinct to rustle forward, to approach the door before the wolf. I had no reason to rush. I had an order, after all. My lion’s-teeth were wrapped in parchment and stowed beneath the counter.

  The door swung open and I waited for him. When he gave no indication of moving, only gazed at me with a pleasant openness, I uncomfortably walked past him. He watched with a bald stare. I ducked away from the open space before the counter and into the shelves at once, to fetch the chocolate, the flour, sugar, the shaved mandrake, the other trifles Madame Lamrow required.

  The wolf sauntered in and leaned on the counter.

  “Good morning, Ms. Charine. Is tonight good for spells?”

  “As good as any night,” Charine turned toward her kettle. “The usual tea?”

  I gathered more coffee than I needed—there are some instincts even a civilized crow can’t repress. But the wolf remained lounging in the window seat like an advertisement for lemon tea and chatted with her about … frivolities.

  I lingered by the coffee, unwilling for a wolf to witness me carrying so much lion’s-teeth. Madame Lamrow would call me uncharitable, but I see more clearly than my mistress.

  The wolf moved in slight ways, stirring his tea, looking out the window. He didn’t exactly fidget, just enough movement to keep my gaze darting back to him. I focused on the jar of pickled miniature griffin eggs. Counted the purple flecks on the shells. About eight to a jar, each the size of my fist.

  A man that handsome was hard to ignore. Very dark for a wolf. They usually came in shades of gray and sand, but this one was inky black. Like he was carved from midnight stones. His eyes shone in the dim shop, as the moon had once boldly met his gaze and had been trapped inside him.

  I fixed my eyes on the barrel of unicorn horns in the corner. Charine would sell those in a day, though you could resurrect an army with that many. Generally, if one wanted unicorn horns, one had to go to Madame Aplez, near the Pidgeon’s Paw. As a seer, Aplez had exactly what she needed in exactly the amount her customers needed. I ought to have gone to her for the lion’s-teeth, but all those other crows loitering outside her tower…

  The wolf leaned forward to sip his tea. His eyes—a golden green—drank in the sight of … not me. There was nothing special about me. He watched the store, maybe he was a hired guard. There had been trouble with a wild pack, I’d heard.

  The wolf smiled. Mother’s Tea, his smile was gorgeous. It wasn’t the moon at all, but the sun that had fallen too much in love with this wolf. Now as the sun tried to bring himself back to the Heavens, he burned anyone who looked at his beloved.

  And the wolf, I realized with a start, was smiling at me.

  Fed up with my own foolishness, I grabbed another scoop of the coffee as if I’d been debating, and approached the counter. “Ms. Charine.”

  “Good morning, sir. Bit early for you to be out in the town, isn’t it?”

  It amused Charine to no end that Madame Lamrow, the most important witch in the city, had a crow running her household. A steward ought to be overseeing the
breakfast and the morning chores, but the staff would have things in order when I returned. If they didn’t, there’d be hell to pay. I smiled politely at her statement. “Madame must have her morning tea. And a package, I believe.”

  The wolf stretched and my attention flitted to him and snared again. He arched back, fingers laced together and flexed far over his head. A raw display of his muscular arms, his broad, unclothed chest, his trim waist. Yes, that was what raw sex looked like. Now look away, before he—

  He noticed. He did it to get my attention, the smug bastard. It was written all over his damned handsome face. He could smell my arousal and it amused him. I couldn’t tell if the joke was funny because I belonged to a witch, or because I was a crow who remained uncharacteristically glacial in his excitement. No wolf would make me dance the merry fool. Well, not so anyone else would notice, at least.

  “Oh, indeed.” Charine retrieved the lion’s-teeth, peeled back the brown paper only far enough to show me the sharp yellow petals. “Everything accounted for.”

  We trusted her, and by we, I mean Lamrow had specifically instructed me not to count the flowers. I nodded curtly, took them, and laid them in the basket.

  The wolf moved like ink as he rose and drained his teacup. Made a show of that as well, tossing his head back, puffing out his chest. Damned gorgeous man. Made me want to shred the few clothes he wore. Though I had too much self-respect and dignity to do such a thing. I looked away fast enough to not be caught staring, but only just.

  Charine recorded the contents of my basket. “Master Wolf, when can I expect the pups?”

  “Around five?” The wolf left the cup on the counter. “Plenty of time for the midnight market.”

  She nodded. “I’ll give them a good dinner and the payment I promised.”