by Jade Allen
The two Alphas separated themselves, following the elementals to the center of the clearing; Keira saw the loathing in both men’s faces, the determination and the bitterness. Maybe if the two of you hadn’t been such goddamn idiots, we wouldn’t all be here, Keira thought grimly. She knew—she couldn’t help but know—that she and Raul might both meet their death in a matter of mere moments.
“The elementals have decided,” Tara said, as soon as the milling, murmuring shifters fell silent.
“This war cannot go on,” Fintan added. “We are ending it tonight. Raul and Keira will face off against Harold and Reginald in challenge.”
“The battle will be to the death,” Tara said, her voice slightly sad to Keira’s ears. “If Raul and Keira win the challenge, they will assume leadership of the Clan and the Pack jointly.”
“If they die,” Fintan told the assembled group firmly, “Reginald and Harold will be held to account for their behavior separately.”
“Standard challenge rules apply, with one exception,” Tara said. “There will be no seconds—the Alphas will be each other’s seconds, just as Raul and Keira will be each other’s seconds.” The two elementals stepped back, and Keira felt a thrill of bitter amusement at the shock on the two Alphas’ faces; they hadn’t expected to have to work together, clearly.
“Let the challenge begin,” both elementals said at the same time. Keira went to her hands and knees immediately, willing the change that she had barely managed to restrain while she waited to work its way through her body. She groaned as her bones transformed and shifted inside of her, as her teeth sharpened and lengthened, and her fingers shortened, forming into paws, claws pushing through her skin. Next to her, she heard Raul’s moan of discomfort transform into a low, throaty howl.
In moments, they had both transformed; Raul’s wolfish form looked more gaunt, and hungrier, than his human shape, and Keira felt a surge of protectiveness for her mate. The two Alpha males announced the completion of their transformation, howling and snarling. Keira pushed back her fear and the sense of self-preservation that came with her pregnancy, and sidled closer to Raul.
For what seemed like an eternity, Keira and Raul circled Harold and Reginald, watching them. Keira could feel the pulse of her mate’s thoughts more strongly than she could the miasma of complicated emotions rippling through her clan, or the veiled, violent impulses in her Alpha’s mind. She felt the push of Raul’s mind, the subliminal hum breaking in a sudden jolt. Now.
As one, she and Raul launched themselves at the two Alphas; Keira lunged at Harold, growling low in her throat as she pressed the attack. She was both aware of and oblivious to Raul’s attack on Reginald; the connection between her mind and her mate’s lingered, a peripheral noise, important but not enough to distract.
Keira lost herself in the battle, biting and clawing, sidestepping and slinking, darting out of Harold’s range and pressing the attack again. She feinted, she parried, she lunged and clawed; a raking flash of pain lit along her side, but it was unimportant. More pressing was the sudden sharp prod at her hindquarters; Keira twisted and kicked out, breaking Harold’s cowardly hold on her.
Keira had no idea how long the battle raged; at some point, she and Raul switched positions—with her attacking Reginald and him going for Harold—and then they switched back. Searing, fiery pain cut through her animal thoughts, and in what felt at the same time like an instant and an hour, Keira knew she was becoming exhausted; the two Alphas had to be exhausted as well. Harold made one last, desperate lunge at her, coming in low. Keira ducked under his attack and upended him, knocking the older cat onto his back and pinning him by the throat, growling.
In the same moment, Raul finally brought Reginald down, and Keira reached out with her mind. We have to end this. She felt Raul’s agreement, but nonetheless, something inhibited her from biting down, from taking the deathblow and ending Harold’s life. For several long moments, she and Raul kept the two Alphas pinned; they both knew that they needed to finish the challenge—but neither of them was quite willing to kill the two Alphas.
Keira felt the impulse from Raul’s mind, and echoed it back to him. They each, at the same moment, disabled their opponents, and then pulled back. Exhausted, Keira let the change flow through her once more; claws retreated into her skin, fur disappeared, and her mouth took on human shape once more as she groaned. Unconscious, Reginald and Harold both slowly assumed their human forms, sprawled on the ground naked, and Keira and Raul slowly rose to their feet as the last parts of their animal forms melted away.
“There has been enough killing,” Raul said.
“Raul and I have proven our point,” Keira added, looking at the man she had come to love. Both of them turned to the elementals governing the fight; Fintan looked almost equally disappointed and intrigued, while Tara looked faintly hopeful.
“We’ve disabled both of them. We could have easily killed them,” Raul told the elementals, turning his gaze onto the Pack and the clan. “If that doesn’t prove our fitness to lead the groups, nothing will.”
“It was a challenge,” Fintan said firmly, crossing his arms over his chest. “You have not finished the challenge.” Keira glanced at Raul and felt his support in her mind.
“This whole mess between the clans erupted because of wolves and panthers killing each other,” Keira told the elemental.
“We agree on this: it is not the time to kill more of either of our kind,” Raul added.
“That’s all well and good,” Fintan said, his lips twitching with something that Keira thought might be amusement. “But our terms to you both were clear.” Keira looked at the two groups, holding each member’s gaze until they looked away. Next to her, she sensed Raul doing the same.
“Do any of you, in either group, want to challenge us?” Keira asked.
“The point of the challenge is to determine who is strongest,” Raul said—though Keira wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to the Elementals or the clans. “If a single one of you doubts that Keira and I are stronger than any member of either group, speak now or hold your peace.”
“Do any of you require the letter of the law to be followed?” Keira glanced at Fintan as he asked the question. No one in either her clan or Raul’s Pack spoke up. “Very well then. No challenge is forthcoming.” Fintan shrugged, looking disappointed.
“How will you handle the two disgraced Alphas?” Keira looked at Tara.
“They are exiled,” Keira said. She took Raul’s hand in her own and gave it a squeeze. “They will have exactly two days to leave town. A second past that deadline and they will be killed on sight without hesitation.”
“How are we supposed to bring the groups together?” Keira noticed that the question had come from a member of Raul’s Pack; Raul’s mind, mingled with hers, identified the source as his second, Cam.
“That is for Keira and Raul, the new leaders of the combined group, to decide,” the Elementals said, speaking as one.
“We’ve had too much distrust between us for too long,” Raul told the group. “Too many secrets, too much hatred. Keira and I are calling a new law right now: the next person to raid a panther or a wolf will be brought to justice.”
“If anyone kills or injures any member of the other clan, they will be challenged,” Keira said. She flashed her teeth in an expression that wasn’t quite a smile. “If you’re going to come up against us, you’d better find a damn good second to do it with.”
“Keira and Raul have proven that they are stronger than the strongest members of their respective clans,” Fintan told the two groups.
“If anyone goes against their rule without following the proper channels, they will be punished,” Tara added.
“We will hold the allegiance ceremony in three days’ time,” Raul told the two clans. “Keira and I both expect to see every one of you there. If you will not give us your allegiance, you will leave this town.”
The two groups looked uncertain, and unsettled, but Keira knew tha
t she and Raul had made the right choice; she looked out over the assembled group of shifters, and held each gaze in turn, asserting herself over every member of the community that had come to the challenge. She knew that there would be more battles to come—that there would be unrest from both groups as she and Raul brought them together—but Keira knew that she and Raul could handle anything that either the clan or the pack could dish out. They had survived, and stayed bonded, in spite of such long odds that it seemed to Keira that nothing would ever separate them; in the back of her mind, she felt the pulse of Raul’s agreement.
That was all she needed.
THE END
Claimed By The Werebears Of Green Tree
PART ONE
Claimed By The Wild Alpha Werebear
Story Description
Sasha, Alpha of the Nita Werebear Clan, is in the midst of a quandary; his brothers are becoming restless in the absence of mates, and he himself knows that he needs to find a woman to claim soon. One night as the clan is foraging in the forest outside of their hometown, Green Tree, fate brings a strange opportunity to work towards solving the thorny problem.
After her car breaks down, Alexandra soon finds herself lost deep in the woods. Her predicament rapidly grows dire when a pack of wolves decides that she is prey and descends upon her. She awakens in a daze in an irresistibly handsome stranger’s home. Her host graciously introduces himself as Sasha and fills her in on some of the details of her rescue, all the while seemingly withholding key pieces to the puzzle.
What really happened the night her car broke down? Will she be able to resist Sasha’s charms and convince him to reveal the truth?
Sasha’s nose twitched as a foreign scent caught his attention. He looked around the woods, grunting to himself as he tried to identify the person that the scent belonged to. Female, human, fertile; the thoughts were more impulse than thought in his ursine brain, and Sasha struggled to bring his human consciousness to the forefront. The scent did not belong to anyone he knew from the town of Green Tree; that much Sasha was able to bring himself to think. He opened his mind, finding the warm and comforting presences of the rest of his clan, scattered through the woods on their own solitary errands—hunting, enjoying the cool, moist air of springtime or the glowing moon, some of them foraging. Stranger, he thought—the one word a huge effort. As his human consciousness began to assert itself, Sasha found thinking in words easier. Stranger—in the woods. Steer clear. The Nita clan had managed to avoid detection from both the town itself and the people of the area—hikers, conservationists, and loggers—by avoiding them; it was one of Sasha’s many responsibilities as the Alpha of the group to warn his clan brethren whenever something like this happened. With any luck, the stranger was simply lost, would find her way out of the woods and into town, and that would be the end of it. Someone just passing through; that was the hope that flickered in Sasha’s mind.
He went back to foraging, thinking in the human part of his mind about the state of his clan as a whole. Bears—of all of the types of shifters—had special problems; they didn’t breed quite as ably as the wolves, or as plentifully as lions, who seemed to constantly be bearing twins. While they were human, or at least half-human, it seemed to Sasha as if some of their trouble was the fact that their animal natures were not as easily reconciled with human living. Bears in the wild were solitary creatures, males mating with females and then leaving shortly afterward, the young going off on their own after a few seasons. Werebears like himself and the other men of his clan were much more social than their strictly-animal counterparts; but they were still insular. We will have to reach out to other clans, Sasha thought. Fights had started to break out amongst his brothers—it was time for many of them, particularly for Sasha, to find a mate, and tensions were high, especially now that spring had arrived. Sasha had had to send away the few females born into the clan over the years since he had assumed the Alpha title; they were too closely related to the other members of the clan, and if mating urges held sway, they would have a high rate of miscarriages and birth defects in the offspring. Where wild bears mated in a system of serial monogamy, werebears mated for life, bonding with their mates. It would have been a disaster for the clan as a whole if Sasha had not sent the women away as they reached the proper age for mating.
He wandered through the woods, sniffing and snuffling, considering the problem even as he contemplated what he wanted to eat. If he wanted to keep the clan stable, he would have to find mates for his brothers; and in the back of his mind, Sasha knew that some of his temper in recent weeks had come from his own need to mate. The spring brought it on in all of them—the drive from their animal minds to take advantage of the lengthening days and the safety that summer and autumn provided. It wasn’t something that anyone could avoid, and Sasha knew that sooner or later he would come up hard against the realities of the situation, if he didn’t take action now.
As he was contemplating which of the other clans to approach, the foreign scent filled Sasha’s nose again—stronger this time, with an undercurrent of fear like burned gunpowder. The scent disrupted Sasha’s thoughts and he looked around in the darkness. If the woman had come this deep into the woods, she was lost indeed; he would have to take some kind of action, and perhaps steer her in another direction, back towards the town. Has anyone seen the stranger? Sasha called out mentally. He needed to place her—whoever she was—in order to know how to handle the situation. The fear that Sasha could smell on the woman’s scent was more intense than the simple anxiety of being lost in the woods, and Sasha had run afoul of wolves in recent weeks, taking advantage of the improved weather and the better hunting. No wolf pack would challenge a bear without good reason, but a human was another thing entirely.
Flickers of thought reached him; Sasha realized that he had to be the closest to the woman of the members of his clan. He felt a rising sense of irritation that his time in the woods would be marred by the necessity of attending to a human woman who didn’t have the sense to avoid getting lost and exposing herself to the dangers that wild animals presented. Sasha lumbered in the direction of the scent, grumbling to himself in little growls as he made his way through the thick underbrush and tightly packed trees. The last thing he needed on a night like this was to have to steer some woman back to the road—she’d probably be frightened and scream at him the moment he showed up. In the distance, Sasha heard the telltale sound of a howl carrying through the air; the local wolf pack was nearby. He had to get to her quickly. She’s about to blunder on wolves, Sasha thought, projecting his mental voice to the other members of his clan. I need some backup. Armand, James, Holt—fall in with me. Sasha hurried his movements, torn between the impressive presence that his bear form would make—a better guarantee of deterring wolves—and the nimbleness and speed of his human form. Even if the human stranger irritated him, he didn’t want her to be attacked.
****
“Good God, could I be any stupider?” Alexandra looked around in a state of barely-suppressed panic at the anonymous woods that loomed around her. She no longer had any idea whatsoever of where her car was; the light of a nearly-full moon had seemed enough to guide her steps through the thickly-wooded area back to the town, but somehow, she had managed to thoroughly lose herself in the black-green depths. Right, great idea, talking out loud where the wild animals can hear you, she thought, staggering to a stop on the clinging, draping underbrush of the forest as she thought she heard something like movement. Alexandra turned in a slow circle, thinking fretfully that even if she wanted to get back to her broken-down car, she wasn’t likely to be able to retrace her steps.
It had seemed so straightforward when she had left home that afternoon; Alexandra found an uprooted tree in the silver-tinged light of the moon and sank down on it, sighing. She had decided that instead of paying the obscene rate for a train ticket, she would just drive. Her car was only a few years younger than she was—but it had been behaving itself well, and it wasn’t as though the
drive was across state lines. Alexandra had noticed the old Volvo beginning to run a little hot in the stop-and-go traffic a few towns back; but she had hoped when she stopped for dinner that the cool-off time would help it get through the trek.
She had a job interview in two days’ time; she had already called ahead to the hotel to let them know that she was running late, but Alexandra was now feeling as though the possibilities of even getting there were completely hopeless. The car had overheated right in the midst of the woods, just a mile or two south of the closest town. While Alex had not been exactly thrilled at the idea of walking two miles or more to get to the nearest gas station—and therefore arrange a meeting with a roadside assistance guy—she had decided that there was nothing else for it, and that she would rather not spend the rest of the night locked in her car in the middle of nowhere.
Alexandra shivered in the slight chill of the air as the light breeze dried the sweat on her arms and legs. The woods looked—and felt—so very forbidding. Every few moments, it seemed, there was the sound of something moving, and in the distance, she had heard the unmistakable howls of a pack of wolves. As she sat, attempting to figure out what she should do next, Alexandra heard the sounds of the forest around her starting to rise up a little more: creaky chirps and buzzing of bugs, an inquiring hoot from an owl—and in the distance an air-splitting shriek from another nocturnal bird. She swallowed against the tight dryness in her throat, looking around in the gloomy, pale light. If I tried to get back to my car, I’d probably only get even more hopelessly lost, Alexandra thought bitterly. But if I keep going forward, I’m only going to get more lost, too. Congrats, ‘Lex. Your options are: lost or lost. She hugged herself, trying to find something—anything—she could use as a landmark.
