Bride of the Alpha (12 page)

Maxwell pulled up minutes later, parked, and ran over to me. “Jesus Christ, are you okay?” he

demanded.

I stood there rubbing my arm. “I’m fine,” I said. “What are we going to do, though? He’s going to be

looking for Camille now.”

Did that mean the marriage was off? I wondered. Supposedly, we’d been carrying on this charade so

that Kray wouldn’t know to look for Camille. Now what?

“I have a feeling that we’ll be resolving this issue one way or the other very soon,” Max said calmly. “I can’t tell you any more than that.”

As soon as we got back to the compound, he walked outside to make a phone call. I went inside,

scowling. He was gone for a long time. I poured myself a cold beer to steady my nerves, and sat at the

kitchen table, and waited. And waited.

He came back in. “I have to go up to the lodge house,” he said. “My father and I need to hash things

out.”

He came back about an hour later.

“What happened? What did you work out?” I asked.

“We had to report matters to the Elders,” he said. “Kray called here demanding that I end the marriage, deliver you to him, tell him where Camille is, and marry a female of his choosing, or he’d issue a death challenge.”

My heart dropped to the bottom of my stomach. “And?”

“I told him to take his demands and shove them up his ass, and I’d be waiting to receive his death

challenge. Then I hung up.”

Chapter Twelve

I barely slept that night. Max acted as if he wasn’t worried, so I tried not to worry either. I kept

reassuring myself that from what I’d seen, Kray wasn’t anywhere near as tough as he thought he was.

Would he even dare to follow through with a death challenge? If he was as weak as he seemed to be, that would be suicide.

When I woke up the next morning, Max wasn’t there. I got up and walked outside to find Max standing

on the front porch, on the cell phone, again. As soon as I came outside, he hung up.

Frustration boiled up inside me. “Max, I really can’t take any more of this secret squirrel stuff,” I said.

“Who are you talking to?”

To my surprise, he held up the cell phone and showed me the last number on the phone. Battle

Construction Company.

“Huh? Why were you hiding it then?”

“I wasn’t hiding it, you’re just being paranoid. Come on, let’s go for a drive. It’s a beautiful day,” he said.

“Coffee. I need coffee,” I protested. “I’m a beast without my first coffee cup.”

“I know that’s right,” he said, and he followed me inside so we could brew the precious nectar that

turns me semi-human every morning.

After coffee and a blueberry muffin, he dragged me outside in my pajamas and urged me into the

pickup truck. As we drove, his fingers skimmed over the inside of my thigh. I bit back a whimper and

squirmed in my seat. I’d been too distracted and worried for sex the night before, and now I found myself craving Max more than a chocolate sundae. And I love chocolate sundaes.

“I will molest you right here by the side of the road if you keep teasing me, Mr. Battle,” I said.

“I will gladly let you molest me, and then I will molest you right back, Mrs. Battle,” he said.

I have to admit, I was starting to love the sound of that. Mrs. Battle. It felt so right. So homey and

comforting.

“By the way, what’s up with Flint Battle and women?” I asked him. “He seems like he’s had some secret

heartbreak. Is there anyone you could fix him up with?”

“He doesn’t need any help in that department,” Max said. “I know what you mean, though. For the last

year he’s barely dated. He went on vacation somewhere, came back, and he’s never been the same when it

came to females. He doesn’t want to talk about it though, so not much I can do to help.”

We drove for miles and miles, the truck bumping along a dirt road that was hemmed in by pine trees so

tall that it was like driving through a green tunnel.

“Mr. Battle, are you taking me deep out into the woods so you can take advantage of me?” I demanded.

“Mrs. Battle, I’m wounded that you would accuse me of such a thing. As if I need to get you out in the

woods to do that.”

We finally stopped driving, and he climbed out of the truck. I climbed out too.

“Now, we shift,” he said.

We stripped right there and folded up our clothes, and tossed them in the bed of his truck. Then we

shifted and ran through the woods. We leaped through berry bushes and over fallen, lichen covered trees, weaving through the Aspen and pine. We ran for miles. Finally, we stopped by a crystal clear lake, and

shifted back into human form, standing there naked on the mossy ground.

“This is the location of the future Battle compound,” he said. “This is where the new pack will live.”

Max’s father was an Alpha, and so was Max. Max, in his late twenties, had reached the age where he

needed to leave and start his own pack. There couldn’t be two Alphas in one pack; a pack could only have one leader.

The area was so beautiful, deep in the forest of Ponderosa pines, with the mirror-glass of the lake spreading far off into the distance. It was also forcing me to think of the future, a future that might not include me.

He pulled me up against him. “Why so quiet? Don’t you like it?”

I took a deep breath. Time to stop hiding from the painful truth. “Maxwell, I’ve got about a week and a half left,” I pointed out to him.

“What do you mean?”

“A week and a half until the full moon, and Camille can mate and then she’ll be carrying her mate’s cub and nobody can force her to go back. What then?”

He looked puzzled. “Well, I thought I would keep having lots of hot sex with my wife, while we

planned out our new compound. I was going to leave you in charge of the interior decorating, unless you start getting too frilly on me, and then I might have to put my paw down. What were your thoughts?”

“You want me to stay? Even though I’ve bought nothing but trouble?”

“Trouble with Kray’s group has been a long time coming,” he said. “You weren’t the one to bring it.

What you did was very courageous. And of course I want you to stay, or I wouldn’t have introduced you to my family and the whole town. Don’t you want to stay?”

“I…I haven’t let myself even really think about it,” I said. “I thought you were just letting me stay

because you were trying to help Camille.”

“A woman I’ve never even met? Josephine, you’ve got to stop underestimating yourself. You are a

wonderful woman. A hot, sexy, smart-mouthed, strong, kind, wonderful woman. I want you to stay here

with me, but only if you want to.”

“I do,” I choked out. “I really, really do.”

“Really?” He looked at me searchingly, as if the answer was terribly important to him.

“Yes,” I said, suddenly realizing that I felt as if a hundred ton weight was lifted from my shoulders, a weight I hadn’t realized was even there. I was really staying?

“I’ll show you how much I want to stay,” I said, and sank down to my knees in front of him. I could

smell his musky scent, that smell of arousal and masculinity that I’d become so familiar with. I could scent him from fifty feet away, these days, and every time I scented him it sent a thrill of arousal shivering through my body.

I began kissing his flat stomach, and he moaned aloud, and tangled his fingers in my hair.

His cock stood upright, thick and hard. There was a gleaming pearl of pre-cum on it.

I grabbed the base of his cock in my hand and ran my tongue over the head of his cock, lapping it up,

and he caught his breath. Then I moved to take him in my mouth. He tasted salty and sweet at the same

time, and he let out a low groan as he slid into my mouth and down my throat.

“Baby,” he moaned. “You’re so good.” He pumped into me, his breaths coming harsher and faster and

his fingers tightening in my hair. When he exploded, rivers of thick come flowed into my mouth and down my throat, and I greedily drank it all.

As we drove back, I found myself idly thinking about the future, and how one mating during a full

moon could fill me full of cubs. Good God, this man could father quintuplets. Birth control, I reminded myself firmly. It was way too soon to be thinking cubs.

Later that day, he insisted on dragging me in to town to the Mercantile, so I could start picking out

fabrics for the new house. The whole time, he was chatting about what buildings we’d need, and which of the younger members would be coming to join us as part of the new pack.

I was standing outside the store in a haze of domestic bliss, and I paused when a text message from

Aunt Prudence came through. “Are you all right?” it said. I texted her back “Never better! Max and I are planning out our new compound, we’ll be starting a pack together,” and then I looked up to see that Max had walked over to the truck.

Something was resting on his windshield. An envelope. He opened it, pulled out what appeared to be a

photograph, and I saw his expression turn dark and angry. He ripped it to shreds and stuffed it in his pocket.

I walked over, staring at him. He scowled, and opened up the passenger door.

“What was that?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

I was stunned into silence. Really. He didn’t want to talk about it. There was a mysterious photograph

on the windshield of his truck, and he didn’t want to talk to his wife about it.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what kind of picture it was. If there were any kind of innocent

explanation at all, he’d have told me.

He was quiet as we drove back to his house.

I couldn’t go on like this, with him keeping secrets from me.

When we walked into the living room, I stopped and put my hands on my hips.

“Listen,” I said. “I know something is going on. On the one hand, you’re telling me that you want me to stay here and you want this to be a real marriage. On the other hand, you’re getting these mysterious phone calls, and someone left a picture on your car that you’re hiding from me.”

“You’re my wife. You should trust me,” he said stubbornly. “As an Alpha, I am the one who runs the

pack and makes the day to day decisions for the pack. You don’t need to know every detail of the pack

business.”

I couldn’t believe it. He was trying to put this back on me, as if it were my fault.

“We barely know each other,” I said. “Trust takes time. It comes when somebody behaves in a

trustworthy fashion. I’m asking you, Maxwell…what was in that envelope?”

“I can’t discuss it at this time,” he said.

Tears pricked my eyes and terrible sorrow swelled up inside me, choking me. This was how my mother

let herself be treated. With every miserable, failing relationship she had, she clung on to hope and let herself be humiliated as men used her, and then cast her aside. It broke her heart, it wrecked her life, and mine.

I wouldn’t live like that.

“We can’t go on like this,” I said, not even trying to hide the tears running down my cheeks. “I’m going to go take a walk, and when I come back, I’m moving into another bedroom. We’ve got like a week left; we can re-evaluate things then.”

“So every time there’s a problem you’re going to just turn and walk out?” Max said furiously.

“Oh, drop dead, Max,” I snapped. “I’m not the one who’s having an affair and refusing to admit it!”

“No, you’re the one who’s falsely accusing your husband!” he shouted.

I stomped out, and ran away from that house as if it were on fire. For once, I ran in human form,

jogging down the road until I found a spot near the main family compound. I sat down on a sawed off log by the edge of the woods. There were people on the front porch, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk.

I could scent Virginia coming. I turned to see her walking over. She plopped herself down on the bench

next to me.

I glanced up. “Hello,” I sighed. I could see two guys lurking a few hundred yards from us. Virginia

smiled ruefully. “Welcome to my personal hell,” she said.

“You pretty much brought that on yourself,” I pointed out.

She stared down at the ground. “I know. And I’m sorry I got you in trouble with my brother. I should

have told you the truth.” She glanced up at me. “He’s crazy about you, you know. I’ve never seen him act like this with anyone else.”

“He is?” I said, startled.

“Of course he is!” She looked amused. “How could you even question it? Well, I guess you don’t have

anything to compare it to. He was always pretty casual with everyone else he dated. Didn’t care less if any other guys checked them out. With you, my God, if someone says how hot you are, he’s practically ready to Death Challenge them on the spot.”

“People say I’m hot?” I said, ridiculously pleased at that.

“Smokin’.”

“Do you…do you think he’d ever cheat on me?”

“No way,” she said fervently.

“There’s stuff that he isn’t telling me,” I said. “I don’t know what to think.”

“That’s typical Battle behavior,” she said. “If he’s not telling you something, it’s because he thinks he’s protecting you.”

“I appreciate that,” I said. “I guess I should go talk to him.” Maybe I should have cut Max some slack.

Then again, he was hiding a frickin’ picture from me and taking mysterious phone calls that I wasn’t

supposed to listen in on. I didn’t know what to think.

Heavy hearted, I got up and started walking back to the bridal house.

As I walked, I called my Aunt Prudence. Normally, I’d call Bess or Cowin, but given how much they

hated Max, I didn’t think they were the best people to turn to for advice.

“Josephine! So good to hear from you. Are you all right?” she said.

“Prudence, is everyone in my family cursed to be treated horribly by men? Do we drive men to cheat?”

I asked.