The Virgin Goddess and the Alpha

by Rita Stradling

  A thought rolled through my mind: perhaps I could not test them and just take my chances. It was both a very alluring thought and an unwise one. I would both be giving into my impetuous nature and going against Algea’s council— I did both frequently and gained only grief from it. In the early years of my existence, I had found myself in danger often. Men and immortals alike had taken my pledge to preserve my virginity as a challenge. They treated it as if I had done it for them, a challenge to be won—or stolen. I made my vow for no man’s entertainment, quite the opposite, in fact. Yet they still attempted to violate me and its sanctity and often came close to succeeding.

  No, I needed to be sure of these men’s characters before I went with them.

  The moonlight dominated the sky, nearly as bright as daylight. The ghostly gray light danced over Jackson Hunter’s features as he looked down to regard me. His mouth opened, and I knew he had a ‘no’ on his lips, when one of his brothers muttered, “Can I ask something, Jackson?”

  It was the wary one, Luca. He leaned his bulky frame in toward his brother.

  Jackson didn’t look over to his brother, but said, “Ask.”

  Luca’s gray eyes landed on mine. “How do we know you’re who you say you are?”

  I glared at the mortal. “You don’t, mortal.”

  “Can one of us take this test?” asked the third, Aiden. He stared at me with wide eyelids and sky blue eyes.

  “No, it must be all.” It wouldn’t work to only prove one man trustworthy, not when I would be at the mercy of all of them.

  Aiden stepped forward; he was both taller and leaner than his brothers. For some reason—likely dominance—he had been a step behind both of them. “We’re not afraid to take a test. It’s just that we can’t leave our pack house for too long without the alpha—too many dominant wolves in our pack are dead, and we’re ripe for a takeover—”

  “Aiden,” Jackson said, raising a hand.

  Aiden’s mouth snapped shut and stepped back.

  Jackson reached his hand all the way up, running it over his shorn hair. “I want to believe that there’s an easy solution to this, but I’ll be honest with you—I don’t. You’ll have to forgive me for being mistrustful, we were sent in here to find a magical fawn that would solve our problems—and that was obviously another betrayal. It’s complicated, but I think there’s more at work here than just one beast hunting my pack. Someone sent us in here to die. And now you’re offering us another magical solution—but we have to pass a test to the death to get your help. It all seems a little . . . improbable.”

  “You’re wrong, warrior. You were sent in here to find me. And I can kill this beast—there is no beast that I cannot best.” I stood straight and tipped my chin all the way up so I could look down my nose at him. It was an awkward position, but I held it. “Do you doubt my skill?”

  His hand dropped to his side, and he sighed. “No, of course not,” he said, but I sensed that he did.

  “The gods favored you when they sent you to me through their sibyl mouthpiece. I will even grant you the boon of proving my skills before you agree to be tested. I’ll take you down without weapons or magic,” I challenged.

  Immediately, Algea’s consciousness pressed on mine—along with several other of my maidens. They weren’t happy—they didn’t think I should have to prove myself, they thought it beneath me. They didn’t admonish, but I could feel their emotions, and it was the same.

  They might have been right, but for some reason, standing in the moonlight at the edge of this quest, I felt desperate to prove myself to these wolf-men. I couldn’t exactly understand why I wanted to go on this quest so much, yet I was so hungry for it. It had to be on my terms though. I knew that.

  He might not have directly criticized me, yet I knew this Jackson Hunter doubted my ability to hunt his creature—and this likely was the reason he was going to refuse my test.

  “Do you accept my challenge?” I asked him, giving him a look I reserved for my favored prey.

  His lips twitched, and a smirk almost formed there, but he was wise enough to suppress it. Something sparked in his eyes—making me think that perhaps he held the same love for a challenge I did. He was going to accept, I could feel it. Perhaps this hunter and I shared the same weakness.

  I unslung my bow, laying it on the meadow. The knife I sheathed in my boot joined it. “You’re not the first foolish mortal to doubt my skill.”

  Jackson shrugged off his coat, handing it to his brother Aiden. A smirk did light across his face then. “I do not doubt that you’re skilled—I saw you leap from that . . . bird and shoot me.” He paused before the word, and rightfully so. Even when gods walked freely among mortals, phoenixes were often mistaken for dragons.

  Strangely, a smile fought to make its way onto my face as I straightened into a fighter’s stance. “Change into a wolf and try to flee, and I will show you how skilled I am.” I let my smile show then, but it wasn’t so much a smile as a challenge. “Unless your pride can’t survive losing to a woman half your size—goddess though I may be.”

  Jackson’s hands came down to his sides, and though he was still smirking, his gaze vigilantly studied my stance. “I’m not going to fight you as a wolf, and I’m not running away.”

  “I’ll beat you very quickly then,” I said.

  “Then do it,” he said. To his credit, he widened his stance, bracing for impact.

  Perhaps that was why I made my next move—because he acknowledged me as a worthy opponent. I had been planning to leap off the ground and kick him in the temple and knock him out in one move. At the last minute, I changed my trajectory for his chest. The pad of my foot dug into the dirt, and I launched myself at his chest, my hands held out as I flew.

  He reacted fast, but not fast enough. If he were smart, he would have dodged, not that it would have done him any good as I’d planned for that eventuality. But he didn’t dodge; his arms came out like he was going to catch me. Just before I hit, I thrust my legs up, kicking him in the chest and sending him flying back. He was strong, strong enough that I thought he might not fall, but as my weight collided into his, he gave way and fell back to the ground. I expected him to roll or punch out, but instead, his hands came up in a way that made me think that he was bracing my fall. The fool.

  As his back hit the meadow floor, I slid up his body, wrapped my legs around his neck and began to choke him with his own arm. His eyes locked on mine, and again, he smirked. The man-wolf obviously had no sense of self-preservation. But then the look in his eyes changed to something different, heating and sending a warm tingling feeling low in my belly. When I’d chosen this move to make him submit, I hadn’t thought about the fact that my sex would be so close to his face or that his muscled arm would be nearly touching the juncture between my thighs. If he lowered his gaze and peered up my chiton, he would see what no man had before. His gaze stayed on mine, though, not faltering or drifting from my eyes.

  Even though the exercise had been nothing to me, I found my breaths coming hard and loud. My hands tightened around his wrist, and I pulled his arm tighter against his neck. “Submit,” I told him, though my voice came out raspy—not sounding like my voice at all.

  He didn’t, letting me pull the hold tighter and tighter, his heated gaze fastened on mine. He should have passed out by now, but he stalwartly held onto his consciousness. One of his arms was still free, and I was ready to defend against it, but he didn’t hit me. He hadn’t even fought me as I drove into him; instead, it had seemed as if he was trying to catch me and shield my fall. It irked me and it didn’t all at once.

  He smelled foreign, but not in a bad way. He smelled like a clean mixture of something I hadn’t noticed the first time I straddled him.

  The first time I straddled him? I needed to stop as I seemed to be making a very bad habit out of it.

  A bead of sweat dripped down his face, and his lips pinched together. He would pass out soon.

  “Submit,” I repeated.

/>   Ever so slightly, he nodded.

  Nodding, I released his arm, but for some reason, I had a distinct urge to stay exactly where I was and not break from his intense attention. He looked at me like nothing else in the world existed. I stood slowly, keeping it so he couldn’t get a direct view up my chiton. He rolled up and hopped to his feet as soon as I stepped back.

  “You didn’t fight me,” I said.

  He nodded. “I didn’t need to; I saw your skill.” He looked over to his brothers, and I remembered they were there.

  Obviously, I was unforgivably out of practice in dealing with humans, for I had been so focused on Jackson that his brothers’ existence had fled my mind. My gaze flicked to where the moonlight lighted each of their faces. Like their brother, both of them looked at me with a touch of heat to their gaze. A thought occurred to me—did they have the senses of wolves when they were men? And if they did, could they scent what I had felt as I put Jackson into submission with my legs around his neck? Could they smell the heat that was still pooling there?

  I squeezed my thighs in hopes that it would stop it, but it didn’t.

  Jackson turned back to me, and it was hard to miss how much he towered over me. I was so small compared to him. I remembered mortal men as smaller than these three, much smaller. Back when I walked among them, I was at a height with many of them. Perhaps it was a trait of wolf-men specifically to be so . . . large. The word had my mind going back to places I knew it shouldn’t, especially if the wolves could, as I suspected, sense more than I wanted them to.

  “How much of tomorrow will your test take?” Jackson asked.

  “By the time the sun is fully in the sky, it will be over,” I said.

  He nodded, slowly. “Honestly, do you think it’s something my brothers and I will survive?”

  I didn’t know exactly how to answer him. I felt a small pang of guilt that my test for them was a deception, and that the true test was whether the men would take advantage of me when they believed me at their mercy. But if I told them the nature of their test, it wouldn’t work. I decided to say, “If you are the type of men who deserve to survive, you will survive. I think you will,” I added the last part quietly because it was more that I hoped he would. I did not know him—so I could not truly say.

  The meadow lit around us as I waited for his answer, glowing with its moonlit luminescence. The colors shone out even more in the moon’s glow.

  Taking in a long inhale and seeming to steady himself, Jackson leaned back. “You guys in?”

  “Yep,” Aiden said, right away.

  “I’m in,” Luca added after a second.

  Jackson rubbed the bristles on his square chin. “I guess that means we’re in.”

  “Good,” I said as a wave of relief passed through me. Why did I want this so much? I couldn’t fathom it. “All right then, wolf-men, you are welcome to make yourselves comfortable in the meadow. I sleep here too, but I plan to bathe in my sacred pool. I will return shortly.”

  “Oh, okay, we’ll wait here,” he said.

  “I will not be far, just beyond that copse of trees. If you call for me, I will hear you. But do not follow me there.” I was already moving as I said it, anxious to submerge my body in cold water and douse the fire straddling Jackson had lit in me.

  I bathed in my pool for much longer than I had originally planned, unable to wash away the feel of Jackson’s skin against mine—not sure that I wanted to. But I knew I had to. My maidens had seen me straddle him more than once today, and I was beginning to fear they would have read my expressions and heavy breathing as anything more than an effect from the fight.

  The pool rippled around me. The moonlight played across its surface and reflected strangely across where I knew that Caris, my second attendant, was hiding in her liquid form.

  Colder, please, Caris, I said mind to mind.

  The light danced, and water spouted from the pool and into the air, raining down over my head.

  I gasped and sputtered as the near-frozen water collided with my face and neck. The water subsided, and there was the sloshing sound of her laughter all around me.

  Go back to your wolves, my lady. They’ve already proven that they will not follow you to your pool when you told them not to.

  I sat up straight and rung the water out of my hair. I’ll go in a minute, I said.

  Are you afraid of these men, my goddess?

  “Of course not,” I said, forgetting myself and speaking out loud.

  Her sloshing laughter came again.

  I jumped out of the pool. I’m not, I repeated into her mind. I wasn’t afraid of them. They had a hundred arrows pointed at each of them; they could not hurt me, even in my sleep. I dressed quickly, tying the straps of my boots up my ankle. When I reentered the meadow, I was surprised to find all of the men sleeping. Jackson was still human, but his two brothers were again wolves.

  As far as I could tell, they were sleeping. Moonlight splayed across their bodies and danced over the wolves’ fur. Jackson’s coat was bunched under his head. His boots were still on, one crossed over the other at the ankle. His hands tucked under his face, making him look younger. He looked beautiful lying in my meadow; he looked right there, peaceful and content.

  I shook the thought away.

  Even though I stepped lightly, Jackson’s eyes opened as I approached. He glanced at me once, before letting his eyes drift closed again. Obviously, he dismissed me as a threat. I was beginning to feel a little insulted with how often he did that.

  I stopped a short distance away from Jackson and his brothers and lay down in the meadow. It immediately molded around me, bringing me into its embrace.

  A jay flew down, cutting across the sky and circling once before landing in my hair. Its feathers brushed over my cheeks as it settled down beside me. I felt the presence of a few chipmunks before their fuzzy warm bodies curled up by my feet. A family of rabbits nestled behind my knees. None of my larger creatures joined me; they were intelligent enough to understand the request for them to stay away tonight. But a few more birds and woodland creatures curled up beside me.

  My eyes closed, and I had nearly drifted off to sleep when a large, furry body nestled in beside me. I opened my eyes to find one of the wolves, the smaller one, Aiden, I thought, curl up at my side.

  I rolled over to look at him and found the other wolf had come closer, though he kept a little distance between us.

  Do you want us to shoot them? Algea asked.

  I leaned in to look at Aiden, who was again fast asleep, his breaths whistling in and out in an even tempo.

  No, I returned. They must feel my call when they are wolves.

  Misandria has pulled her bowstring taut, Algea said back.

  Poor Misandria. She would hate the danger I put myself in. But like all my creatures, I found it impossible to deny them the comfort of being close to my magic and safety in the dead of night. Aiden’s fur tickled my arm as I closed my eyes and let my consciousness drift away.

  Chapter Four

  Jackson

  Mate.

  My wolf growled it again the moment I opened up my eyes to find a goddess lying feet from me.

  Mate.

  It wasn’t so much a spoken word as a thought—a knowledge that pounded through my mind as I looked at her. My wolf was silent around thousands of women for over a century, and then when I find the one woman that I could never have, he pipes up.

  It felt wrong to look at her while she was sleeping—she didn’t even know me—but I couldn’t help it. She had an arm slung casually over my brother’s back, and I was surprised to find it wasn’t Aiden. Aiden had been curled up beside her, but Luca had somehow wedged himself between Aiden and Artemis, resting his muzzle on her neck. For eight years, Luca had trusted no one—especially not women—and now he was curled up in her arms like a giant stuffed animal.

  He wasn’t the only one. There were birds and mice in her hair, and what looked like a reindeer at her other side, its antlers
resting on her hip. It was the strangest, most captivating thing I’d ever seen.

  She was such a tiny, fierce woman when she was awake—she looked even smaller in her sleep. Small though she may be, she hit me like a ton of bricks and knocked me on my ass. I had intended to fight her. Well, maybe not fight, but I’d intended to put up some defense when my wolf flat-out refused to do anything but break her fall. He wasn’t sexist; he didn’t object to any worthy opponent, male or female. But he wasn’t going to fight her. If she had pulled out a stashed knife to slit my throat, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to twist her wrist to make her drop the knife—it was that bad.

  My wolf was not docile. He was so fierce and dominant that when my brothers, sister, and I had been infected by the lycanthropy virus, my alpha at the time was afraid that I would lose control and wipe out half of Los Angeles, and no one would be able to stop me. I had been thirteen. I didn’t lose control. My wolf was methodical and vigilant. I got angry, but my wolf got deadly. He never rested, not once since I was attacked and infected. Not once that is, until Artemis barreled into my chest. When her skin touched mine, her bare leg flush with my skin, my wolf all but took a nap. If he was a cat, he would have been purring. That was until her legs wrapped around my neck and my wolf and I scented her arousal.

  He hadn’t been napping then.

  That was the first time he hit me with that word: mate.

  My wolf was just going to have to live with disappointment. It wasn’t going to happen. First, she wasn’t a wolf and likely would never be turned into one. Second, I doubted she was going to stick around very long when she realized how hopeless this hunt was. And last, I didn’t remember all that much of my fourth-grade Greek mythology homework, but I could remember that Artemis was the virgin goddess. Meaning that even if it was possible and no matter how good she smelled or felt against me, she was never going to be my mate. Virginity and a werewolf mating were mutually exclusive.