Her Alpha Mismatch

by Emilia Hartley

  “I reached out to another fox shifter in the area. She’s coming along to help forge a bond with the shifter.”

  “You aren’t worried this shifter is going to steal away the wild one?”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to Oscar. He sat up, a little proud of Jorge for considering it. Perhaps Oscar’s attraction to Regina had clouded his mind. There could be a chance she was coming along to find a shifter to start a family with. From what she’d said, that was how fox families worked, insular and bound to rules.

  His gut—or rather, his beast—told him that wasn’t right. Oscar wasn’t the kind of man to go on gut feelings. He liked to unravel the challenges put before him. He used wit and tact to accomplish what needed to be done. To listen to his gut and blindly trust Regina would be to ignore his fundamental self.

  “I’m going with a woman. If I’m duped by her, then I deserve to be duped.”

  Jorge’s grunt came off as a laugh. Oscar desperately wanted to send him home. His head throbbed in the shifter’s presence. The beast inside of him offered images of Regina. It fed him her smile, the swing of her coppery red hair. He groaned at the bear’s attempts to press the issue.

  “Are you alright?”

  Oscar tossed his hand in the air. Physically, he was fine. His mind, on the other hand, was a mess of urges and thoughts, most of them coming from the wild beast inside him. He thought he’d tamed the thing ages ago. There had been a time when Oscar and the bear had been at war. It had thirsted for blood and violence when Oscar was a man of tact.

  While the war had built his reputation as an undefeatable man, it had left its scars. Their balance had been stable. Both man and bear had relished their position at the top of a Pack that had once been ruled by a less than noble man. Now, without their mate, he wondered if he was finally falling apart.

  “That isn’t an answer,” Jorge continued.

  Oscar opened his eyes to narrow slits and curled his upper lip in a snarl. Jorge took the hint and stood from his chair. Oscar could see the small beads of sweat breaking out over Jorge’s forehead. Still, the man lingered.

  The bear pulled Oscar to his feet. A growl slipped through him, shaking the room. “Get out.”

  Jorge jerked straight. “Yes, sir!”

  Oscar’s head throbbed, and a question hit him. “Wait.”

  Jorge looked as if he was about to be split in half. His brows were arched in worry, sweat slipping down his temple. This wasn’t how his Pack was supposed to look. This wasn’t protection. This wasn’t love.

  It was fear.

  Oscar hated himself. What was he building? What was he even trying to do? Still, one question sat on his lips.

  “Did you reach out to that damn matchmaker with my name?”

  Despite everything, Jorge smiled. It was closed lipped, but there all the same. His brows lowered and the tension in his shoulders lessened.

  That was answer enough.

  “Just go,” Oscar said, waving his hand.

  Oscar watched the shifter run out of the room. The sound of his truck firing filled the air while Oscar tried to gain control of himself. The bear raged. It knew what it wanted, a desire so strong that it had overpowered the human part of him. It thrashed, wild and untamed, beating him from the inside out until he gave it one of two things.

  Sex or violence.

  Oscar clenched his fists and lurched toward the basement door. After fumbling down the steps, he found a patch of cold cement to lay on. His skin ached as he lay himself down, but the beast quieted. He hated having to do this. He hadn’t had to use the set up in years.

  When the bear struck, sending pain down Oscar’s spine, he rolled onto his side. As much as he wanted to curl around the sensation and drown in it, he needed to get to his feet. The cement was cool beneath his hands. It was at odds with the sting of the silver as he pulled the gate shut.

  It was a typical dog fence, meant to be used outside for your family pet. He’d taken pains to weave the chain link fence with threads of silver. It filled the air and, once locked in, Oscar could usually find a moment of peace. Even if his skin burned. Even if he would later puke his guts in the toilet upstairs.

  The bear was a wild beast, willful in what it wanted. He’d gotten it from a man who hadn’t tried as hard to temper his urges. Sometimes, he wondered if the man who had attacked him had been Nikolai’s father. He’d heard, through the rumor grapevine, that a shifter had appeared claiming to be Nikolai’s brother. The man had, in fact, been changed by Nikolai’s father.

  From what he’d heard, the similarities were strong. Both beasts craved bloodshed. Alex had lost himself in the bear’s demands, but Oscar had used them to his advantage. He’d used the beast he’d been given to clean the trash from his Pack, from his neighborhoods. Then, once there were no more targets, he’d crafted the basement cage to teach the bear to behave.

  His Pack knew about the things he’d done, the rivers of blood he’d filled. None of them knew about the cage in the basement. His mate had, always shaking her head and dragging him back to bed where she held him through the night. She had been his rock, the thing that the beast hadn’t fought against.

  Although, as he lay on the cement floor, he remembered the bear’s reaction to her. It had been pleasant, patient, but not consuming. The bear had loved her. It had wanted to be near her, wanted to bask in her presence. Yet, it’d been nothing compared to the obsession his beast had for Regina. It’d never filled his mind with images of his mate, never demanded he run to her when they were feeling weary.

  Oscar rolled over and pressed his head to the floor. He wanted sleep. He wanted to stop picking apart the confusion roiling inside his mind. Dread filled his stomach, knowing that at the other end of this train of thought was an epiphany he wasn’t ready for.

  Finally, his mind settled. He packed away everything that had happened and everything he felt. It would be saved for another time. Perhaps he would open it years from now, when the beast was slow and tired, and he wouldn’t have to fight it so hard.

  Chapter Five

  She was still brushing her teeth when she heard the car pull up outside. Regina clutched her silk bathrobe and ran to the window with a toothbrush hanging from her lips, peeling back the curtain to see that Oscar was already waiting. As she cursed, a spray of toothpaste fell from her lips. She shook her head and wiped it off the window.

  Oscar saw her and waved, as if she’d been waving all along. Her cheeks warmed. Every little thing she did around him was embarrassing. She wished she could continue being the emboldened woman she’d been when she approached his car the day before. Now, she was half undone and rushing to catch up.

  She spit out the toothpaste, rinsed, and ran a brush through her matted hair all while trying to decide on which dress to wear. Her fox was strangely jumpy. It leapt this way and that inside her, making the whole world sway around her. She scowled at the nervous creature and reached for the nearest dress.

  It hung a little low, creating a deep V between her breasts, but she didn’t have time to grab another. As it was, Oscar was being patient and not honking his horn at her. She wished she’d had more time for make-up, but she’d made a promise that she’d do this. She only wished she’d set an earlier alarm.

  She jammed her feet into a pair of flats, grabbed her satchel, and darted out the door. At the sight of Oscar’s tight jaw, the fox yipped inside her head. She couldn’t decipher its cries, but at least it’d stopped jumping around long enough for her to walk to the car without tripping over her own two feet.

  While the fox yipped with what could have been joy, alarms went off in the back of her mind. She glanced over her shoulder. There was nothing more than the California landscape. Still, a familiar scent haunted her nose. It wasn’t as strong as it had been on the pier, but it lingered in the air and left prickles along her skin.

  Another fox had been outside her home. It knew where she lived, but hadn’t reached out to her yet. Worry filled her stomach as she climbe
d into the passenger seat.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she said, breathless. Once more, she glanced out the window. There was nothing to see, and so she shook her head and tried to focus on the task at hand. She’d agreed to help another fox shifter.

  The car smelled of Oscar through and through. His scent filled her, reached inside her and gripped her core. She found herself short of breath and tried to smile to hide it.

  “Don’t worry about it.” His voice was low, almost a whisper.

  Regina caught the faint bruises beneath his eyes when he tried to sneak a glance in her direction. She would have been stunned by the hungry look on his face if she hadn’t been drowned in guilt. She knew the wild fox shifter wasn’t her fault, she’d had nothing to do with it, but she somehow felt guilty that Oscar had lost sleep over it.

  At least, she assumed that was why he had the dark circles. She couldn’t think of any other reason why an Alpha like himself would lose sleep.

  “Are you ready?? About how far do you think it will be?”

  He poked the GPS on his dashboard. “This thing says the trip should take less than an hour.”

  “Oh, well, that sounds great.”

  She adjusted herself in the seat, reaching for the seatbelt behind her. Unfortunately, the belt sat between her breasts, making them even more pronounced than before. Her cheeks warmed, and she turned her head away from Oscar as he pulled the car back onto the road.

  The first ten minutes of driving was quiet. Neither said anything to the other, and it made Regina squirm in her seat. She wanted to fill the silence but didn’t know what to say. She was in the presence of an Alpha, not her own. With Nikolai, she would have ragged him for being unkempt or for the mess on the floorboards of his car—not that either was too bad since he mated Monica.

  With Oscar, she found herself sneaking peeks in his direction. The strong profile of his face caught her and made her heart thump. She wanted to trail her fingers along the shape of his jaw and the arch of his nose. When he caught her looking, she jumped and quickly looked away.

  “So, why do you think Nessa wanted to match us?” he asked.

  His question filled her with cold dread. She didn’t want to talk about this. Regina would have been happy ignoring it for the rest of her life. What was the point in talking about things that were useless and embarrassing?

  “No idea.”

  “I learned last night that one of my shifters gave my name to the matchmaker. I’m assuming he paid for the service, too.”

  “Seriously? So, you weren’t looking for a mate?” Regina studied his face once more, trying to find clues in his expression. He kept everything rather guarded behind a practiced poker face. She could catch the barely perceptible movements, the quirk of a lip or the confused blink, but it wasn’t enough.

  She wanted to peel back the layer he wrapped around himself. There was a man beneath the vision of a warrior, but she wasn’t sure it was her right to find him.

  “I, uh, had a mate already.”

  His confession made her stop. “You said that in past tense.”

  His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. The air was filled with an electrical charge that prickled over her skin. She knew she should back down, should have left the subject alone, but he’d brought it up.

  A layer had been peeled away to reveal a man with old wounds. There was vulnerability in him, a broken heart he’d hidden. She wanted to reach through the space between them and touch him. It didn’t seem right. It wasn’t her place.

  So, she clasped her hands in her lap and waited for him to speak, her chest growing tighter by the minute.

  Finally, glassy eyes on the road, he let the story unfold. “Her name was Tonya. We got married when she was still in college, working on her PhD. I couldn’t believe how smart she was. She made everything look effortless. We had a lot of late night conversations about her studies and I even got to have some input on her dissertation. There was a short time when everything was right in the world.”

  Regina swallowed. She knew how Monica had felt about Oscar. Everyone around Monica knew because she’d been horrible at hiding it. It made her think this mated relationship had happened long before Monica arrived in the Pack. If she’d known about it, surely Monica would have had reservations about her affection.

  “She was on her way back from defending it. We didn’t have cellphones at the time—couldn’t afford them while paying student loans—so I didn’t find out that she’d aced it until after the crash.”

  Regina had no voice. She wanted to ask a million questions, but nothing would come out. Instead, she lingered in the silence and waited for Oscar to find the strength to go on. She watched his face become drawn. Tears slid down his cheeks.

  Finally, she moved. Regina reached across the space between them, the endless length of baggage they rammed up against one another, and grasped his hand. Suddenly, the space didn’t seem that great. It was nothing more than the width of the center console.

  “Okay, I’ll trade one hurt for another.” She didn’t want to let it out. This was her secret, the one she’d kept buried deep, but Oscar had shared a piece of his pain and she could, too. “I was born into a fox family, but my father thought he could fix everything with a fist. Dinner wasn’t on the table? He hit my mother. I cried after stubbing my toe? He hit me. The first eleven years of my life were one bruise or another.”

  Oscar’s hand tightened on hers. She could feel the rage rising to replace his sorrow, but she plowed forward.

  “Mom finally got the courage to leave. She slipped away and came to California to find a relative. While she couldn’t find the relative, she found Nikolai’s Pack. He was young, having just taken over after his father’s death, but he promised her safety.

  “You know what she did after that? She met another fox shifter who came to California through Nevada. She claimed he was her mate and when he wanted to leave, she didn’t bother arguing. I was seventeen, and she left me alone.”

  Oscar growled. She could see his bear pushing into his eyes as they swirled with gold. She pulled her hand away, patting his as if that was some sort of punctuation. He didn’t need to feel bad for her. There was nothing he could do to change what happened. No one could travel back in time, and she wasn’t sure she would take either of her parents back if she could.

  Both of her parents had betrayed her in one way or another. She left no room in her heart for them.

  “This is a box of feels on wheels,” Regina muttered under her breath.

  Oscar’s laugh was broken by the tears he’d shed. “What did you just say?”

  “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

  He cut a sidelong glance at her, a small smile taking over his face. The air cleared, becoming bright. It seemed as if they’d gotten the shadows out of the way and had made room for better conversation. It was cathartic, in a strange way.

  Regina hadn’t opened to anyone about her anger and pain toward her parents. She’d kept her chin high and gone through life with the truth buried somewhere inside so that no one could see. It was in the back of her mind when she looked at Lia and Miles, in the back of her mind when she had drinks with Nessa. But, she’d never mentioned it.

  “Why do you collect shifters like puppies?” Regina blurted. The word entered the space, as if they might be barbed, but Oscar shrugged.

  “That’s a bit of a strange question.”

  “You’re the one who said you liked talking about things.” She didn’t mention that it had been with his mate. “Do you only talk about things that don’t have anything to do with yourself? Should we talk about the weather or astrophysics?”

  His lips tightened, and he sent her a narrow-eyed glare. She didn’t shrink beneath his gaze. Here was the strongest Alpha in the area and she boldly demanded to know why he wouldn’t talk about himself. He’d already revealed the worst, his greatest wound.

  “How often do you psychoanalyze yourself? There are somethings we know as truth, facts
of what has happened in our lives. Then, there are other things that have dug their claws into us. Sometimes, we don’t have the strength to dig them out and investigate them.”

  “Touché.” She shifted in her seat. “But my question still stands. Why do you feel the need to seek out a wild fox shifter?”

  Oscar sighed. “You are determined.”

  She bit her lip, trying to take it as a compliment rather than anything else.

  “Can’t I want to protect people? What’s wrong with that?”

  “Why meddle in lives if they don’t need your protection? This shifter might, but what if he doesn’t? Will you walk away? As far as I’ve heard, you’ve never forced anyone to join your Pack, but you’ve never come up against resistance before, either. Foxes can be… difficult.”

  So, saying foxes were difficult was putting it lightly. Fox shifters could be obstinate, single-minded, and feisty as all hell. Once they got a thought into their mind, it was difficult to change them. Regina had watched her mother prove that over and over. First, when she left Regina’s father and second when she ran off with her supposed mate. Regina had seen other examples, but her mother proved it best.

  “I’m not used to being denied,” Oscar admitted. His voice was strong and gruff, as if he were already preparing to fight back.

  Regina laid her head against the seat as she took him in. His hands tightened and twisted on the wheel, knuckles flashing white as he moved.

  “If this fox thinks you might hurt them, that you might strip their freedom away, then they’re going to run. Away from you and straight into actual trouble. I want to see you succeed, but you are going to need to warm up, dude.”

  His brows furrowed. “Did you just call me dude?”

  Embarrassed and slightly nervous, she pressed her lips together. There was an urge to smile and laugh at herself, but she didn’t know what Oscar would do. He’d been nothing but nice to her, but how far would that pleasant demeanor stretch before it snapped, and he turned into the man the packs knew him as?