Claimed by the Pack: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance

by Jade Alters

  “Yes,” I said. “He's on the prowl out there somewhere.”

  Poor Chase didn't have much luck with women. He was a good-looking guy, I guess, but he had no idea how to talk to a woman. I was just winging it myself most of the time, but it seemed to work for me a lot more often than it did him.

  Cheyenne's eyes scanned the crowd on the dance floor and I felt a tickle of jealousy, thinking she was looking for him. The sudden loud burst of laughter from a table behind us prompted her to smile herself and say, “Hopefully he's careful. It sounds like the hyenas are out in full force.”

  I laughed too.

  I loved that she had a sense of humor. I loved that she was just so real, and I told her so.

  “You're not just another pretty face. You have wit as well.”

  I watched the color rise in her cheeks. “Sure, whatever you say,” she said, picking up her drink and hiding her face behind it for several seconds. I watched her eyes scan my face. It was like she was always trying to figure out what I was thinking...or why I was with her. I couldn't figure out how she didn't know how incredibly beautiful, and sexy she was. When she was mine, I would spend the rest of our lives proving it to her.

  “So there's a question I've been wanting to ask you, Cheyenne. Why don't you have a boyfriend? You're much too wonderful to be alone.”

  Another blush and then a slight roll of her eyes like she thought I was simply using my lines on her. “I haven't had the best of luck with relationships,” she said, leaving it at that.

  “Hmm, sounds like you've been looking for long-term in temporary people. Some men have no idea how lucky they are to have a beautiful, sexy, funny, smart woman, until it's too late.”

  Her blush grew darker and she said, “You don't have to say things like that. I'm happy to just sit and talk to you, about real things.”

  I raised an eyebrow and said, “All I ever talk about are real things. You, Cheyenne, are the realest thing I see in this club and I meant every word I just said.”

  She was fidgeting with a straw with both of her hands and not looking at me when she said, “You could have any woman you want in this club...any woman on the island. You can't expect me to believe that you look around this room and see all these gorgeous women and truly believe that I'm the most beautiful.”

  I reached over and put my fingers underneath her chin and tipped her face up so she would be forced to look at me.

  “I do expect you to believe it, Cheyenne, because it's true. Take a walk with me, Cheyenne, in the moonlight. Let's get out of this stuffy place and get some fresh air.”

  Her eyes widened and I saw her scan the room for her friends. This was the part about that old fashioned way, that annoyed me. I was too impatient to wait until she began to believe I genuinely had feelings for her, and she ran it by her friends and her family. I wanted her...right now. “Um...I'm not sure that's such a good idea.”

  I covered her hand with mine, stopping the fidgeting, and looked into her eyes and said, “Cheyenne, you don't think I'm going to hurt you, do you? I would never hurt a woman, especially not you. You would be safer with me than anywhere in the world, I guarantee you that. Did I tell you that I work for The Pack?”

  The Pack was the name of our security company, and it was quickly gaining a sterling reputation on the island. We didn't have police of our own. They had to come over from Bali or Komodo and sometimes that took too long. The citizens had begun to turn to us for many of their safety needs. The alphas, Courtney's mates, had begun installing security cameras in some of the darker places in town where crime had increased in recent years and so far in the short time we'd been there, our pack had been responsible for the apprehension of over a dozen criminals who had been terrorizing the locals for a long time before we even got there.

  I could tell by the look on Cheyenne's face that she knew exactly who The Pack was.

  “Your company does a lot of business with the company I work for,” she said. “My boss used to have a company come over from Bali to install the security systems on the new properties he built, but he's been using your company almost exclusively for months now.”

  “Awesome,” I told her with a wink. “So see, there's a connection between us that should make you feel more comfortable with me.”

  She smiled. “And...that could be just your angle...getting me to feel comfortable with you and let down my guard.”

  I laughed. “I guess you could be right, but you're not. I just want to get to know you, Cheyenne. I want to spend some real time with you.”

  “Then maybe,” she said, still not looking like she believed me, “Maybe we could go on a date or something.” I resisted the sigh I felt inside. Dates are fine and once she's my mate I'll take her on as many dates as she wants to go on. But, no matter how pissed Chelsea and the alphas are going to be with me...I had to have her sooner, rather than later.

  “Okay,” I said, pretending to be placated with that. “We'll go on a date.” I wasn't lying exactly, we would, eventually go on many dates. “At least let me buy you a fresh drink,” I said, looking at her almost empty glass. She'd never let me buy her a drink before, but I hoped she was finally comfortable enough with me that she would tonight. She looked at the glass like she was contemplating it and then at last she said,

  “Okay, sure. I'd like another. I'm driving tonight though, so that'll be my last for the night.”

  “Perfect,” I told her. “I'll be right back.” I made my way through the crowd and to the bar. I asked the bartender for a beer and a Cosmopolitan when I felt someone standing way too close. I turned, almost ready to fight, and came face to face with Chase. “Damn it, Chase. Don't sneak up like that.”

  “Feeling guilty about something?”

  “I don't feel guilty a bit. She wants me too.”

  “Don't do this, Ridge.” Poor Chase worried all the time, about everything. I don't know if he had always been that way, or if his time alone on that island, always looking over his shoulder had done it. Sometimes I thought he could use a good dose of something just to calm him down.

  “It'll be fine,” I said, picking up both drinks. I had the pill in my right hand and as I pulled the glass off the bar, I squeezed it, forcing the drug out through the tiny little hole I'd made with a safety pin. It wasn't anything that would hurt her. It would simply make her sleep until I could get her into the woods, and she and I could spend enough time alone for her to realize I was her mate and agree to becoming one of us. I was confident that she would and Chase was worrying for nothing. “Go enjoy yourself,” I told him.

  “And when I get back to the compound what should I tell the alphas about where you are?”

  “If they ask, and it's unlikely that they will, just tell them I met a girl. It's not a lie.”

  “Ridge...”

  “Beat it, Chase. I mean it. Don't screw this up for me.” I left him standing there and headed back over toward my beautiful mate, drinks in hand...ready to begin our life together.

  Cheyenne

  I couldn't believe that he finally asked me out...well, sort of.

  He said we could go on a date, but he didn't say when or where. Maybe he was still just messing with me, still trying to get me to agree to leave with him, thinking he was going to get an easy piece of ass. I can't deny that those feelings were raging inside of me. I wanted him...who wouldn't.

  He's hot, he's funny, he says all the right things.

  But, I wasn't willing to sacrifice all I had gained in the past year, and by that I mean the confidence that the last boyfriend I had took away. He stripped it day by day...slowly chipping off a piece every day until I was left believing I was everything he said I was, and what he said I wasn't.

  He told me I was fat, unattractive, not smart...all the things that Ridge was telling me just the opposite about.

  But, the old boyfriend had said all the right things in the beginning too, and he wasn't half as got as Ridge. Where the old boyfriend could have had half the women in this
room, Ridge could have all of them if he wanted, and then some.

  “Here we go.” Ridge sat the drink down in front of me. I automatically looked into it. I'm not sure what I thought I'd be able to see...pills floating in it or something crazy obvious. I smiled at Ridge and said,

  “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, sitting back down on the stool next to me and picking up his beer. He held it up and said, “To us spending much more time together...soon.” I assumed he was talking about the “date,” but thought that was a vague way of putting it. My suspicious mind was working overtime. I picked up my glass and said,

  “To getting to know each other.” He smiled and gave me a little nod before tapping his mug to my glass and taking a long drink of his beer. I did the same with my drink, noting that it tasted exactly the same as the last one, and I was entirely silly for worrying.

  “So, how did you get into the security business?” I asked him.

  “Well, I've always thought about becoming a police officer...but, I'll be honest with you, I'm not the most patient man in the world. The police academy is nine months long and I didn't want to wait nine months. I needed a job, but I like immediate gratification.”

  “So you got a security job?”

  “Yes, but not just any security job. The Pack is run by a group of men who are ex-military special forces. They were willing to train me, and in the year that I've been with them, I've probably learned twice or even three times as much as I would have in the police academy.”

  “Well that's...” a sudden wave of dizziness almost knocked me off my stool. My head spun so hard that I actually put both of my hands on the table in front of me and held on tightly.

  “Cheyenne? Are you okay?” I looked at Ridge and realized my vision was weird too. I could see him, but nothing else around him. It was like his beautiful face was at the center of a clear prism. He was framed by a blur of lights and color. “Cheyenne?” He said my name again and I heard it, but inside my head, not through my ears. All that I could hear in my ears was the relentless pounding of the blood flowing from my head to my rapidly beating heart.

  “I-I'm not feeling so good,” I said, as the dizziness and the other weird stuff was joined by a bout of nausea. I saw Ridge come out of his seat and felt his arm go around me.

  “Let's get you some air.” He was sliding me off my stool and into his arms.

  I felt like I was going to vomit all over him and I panicked.

  “No Ridge...I'm okay...” The edges of my vision changed again, and everything was gray. I could still see his face, but the gray fog that surrounded it blurred his features. I felt my legs giving out. I couldn't stand on them...but then I realized they hadn't given out, Ridge was holding me around my waist, and up off the floor about an inch, and he was carrying me through the crowd toward the back door. Once again I panicked as he pushed through it and took me with him. I felt the rush of cool ocean air and I couldn't hold back the vomit any longer. I doubled over, emptied my stomach and I felt myself begin to cry. I couldn't stop. I was shaking all over and I realized that Ridge was stroking my hair and telling me everything would be okay. I thought he was so sweet, to stick by me the way he was. And then just as everything around me was fading to black I heard him say,

  “You'll sleep it off quickly, and the rest of the night will be ours.”

  3

  Chase

  “What do you mean, you don't know where he is? Chase, you know the rules. Our hard and fast rule is that no one disappears without telling someone where they are, where we can find them.”

  “I know, I'm sorry. Did you try calling him?”

  Chelsea frowned at me. “Of course I called him. I've called him a dozen times over the past two days. And you want to know something, Chase?”

  “What's that?”

  “I would be really worried about him...but since you're our resident worrier, and you don't seem to be worried about him at all...”

  “I'm worried,” I told her. “Look,” I held up my hand. “It's shaking.”

  Chelsea looked like she wanted to smile, but she didn't. She kept the stern look on her face and said, “I see that, but you see Chase, I believe you're worried...about yourself. You're worried about how mad I'm going to be when I find out you're covering for him. It's not like Ridge to disappear, so either something happened to him, or he's up to something that he shouldn't be. Which is it, Chase? Talk to me.”

  I reached up and wiped the sweat off my brow.

  The rest of the pack was busy, the other alphas out on a new assignment, protection duty for a visiting politician...I was glad that none of them were there. As intimidating as Chelsea can be on her own, the idea of Titan glaring at me, or Will sitting there with an eyebrow cocked, or Clay or Manny, interjecting while Chelsea berated me would have pushed me over the line from nervous into nauseous.

  I hated how nervous I was.

  It wasn't natural for a wolf, I knew...but, I wasn't quite sure what to do about it either. Telling the truth usually helped.

  I hated to lie.

  But telling the truth in this case would get my best friend in trouble and he would likely kick my ass when it was all over.

  “Chase,” Chelsea said again.

  I sighed.

  “He's with a girl, like I told you. He took her into the woods. She's his mate, he says.” I frowned at myself for adding the “he says.” It was just strange, when I met Cheyenne, I'd gotten a crazy strong feeling, a desire to kiss her. I'd met a lot of women I wanted to kiss in my life...but that feeling with Cheyenne was different. It almost drove me to just do it without thinking. The more I thought about that, and from what I remembered growing up in the pack, that was one of the signs of meeting your mate.

  Between Ridge and me, I'm sure Cheyenne would pick Ridge anyways. I just needed to control my impulses once he brought her back to the compound, both out of respect and for my own safety. Ridge loved me, but what was his, was his. He didn't share, and if he cared about something or someone, he'd fight to the death for them.

  “In the woods? Is she a wolf?”

  My stomach felt like someone was stabbing a knife into it and I felt acid rising up in my throat as I said, “No. She's human.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Chelsea said. “Did he drug her, Chase?” The “drug” was a light sedative, derived from a plant in the forest. Us shifters had used it to help with sleep or anxiety for years, eating the leaves right off the plant. Somewhere along the way, one of us figured out how to extract the drug from the plant and encase it in an edible capsule and it had been used to “capture” human mates for years. Ridge had sent me to pick it up the last time I went into Bali for supplies. I felt like a criminal, meeting with the seller in a dark alley. The drug wasn't exactly illegal, but not exactly legal either. It wasn't on any kind of FDA or pharmaceutical data base...but they could figure out what it was and where it came from if they tried, and Chase was sure he'd be charged with something if he was caught with it. But for Ridge, his best friend, and his hero most days, he'd do anything.

  “I didn't see...”

  “Cut the bullshit Chase. Did he drug her? I saw a poster at the post office in town today. There's a girl who has gone missing. Is it her? Is her name Cheyenne?”

  I couldn't keep it in any longer. Chelsea would figure it out anyways and then I'd be in deeper shit. “Yes, he drugged her, and yes, it's Cheyenne.” Just saying her name tickled my core. I had to get over that for sure or when Ridge did come back, he'd sense it. He had better senses than any wolf I'd ever known, even the alphas. That's why when he said Cheyenne was his mate, I didn't doubt him, despite my own feelings otherwise.

  “Shit!” Chelsea jumped to her feet, reached down and picked up the carrier seat that her baby was sleeping in and headed for the door of the meeting room. Their compound had one large cabin with a meeting room, a kitchen and a guest room. The alphas and their child had their own little cabin, Ridge, me and Grayson shared one, and th
ere were a dozen or so more, shared in different ways among the rest of the pack. I continued to sit there after Chelsea left, wondering how much trouble I was in. I figured it was pretty deep shit, and that's when I decided since I was already up a creek, I'd take it further and just throw the paddle over myself. I walked over to the back door of the cabin, cracked it open and sniffed the air. There was no scent of a wolf or a human and no sounds that anyone was around. I quickly stripped off my clothes and shifted. With the pup, Chelsea would have to drive up to the cabin in the woods. I could get there faster the back way, on four legs. I was a fast wolf, one of the fastest on our compound. It was really the only thing I had to offer...but at least it was something. I knew Ridge was going to be pissed at me, but no more so than Chelsea was and I'd survived that...so far.

  Cheyenne

  “Let me go!” I had been alone with Ridge in a small cabin in the woods for at least two days. I was a little disoriented, since he refused to let me go outside. I'd tried to run, more than once. I was halfway out one of the narrow windows one day when he caught me and another time, while he was sleeping, I'd stolen the key to the door. At least I thought he was asleep. He let me get the key in the door before he grabbed me, put me back in my room and locked me in. He was so maddeningly polite about it all too...at least most of the time.

  I kicked him once, pretty hard in the chins and he growled at me. It was a literal growl, like an angry dog. That scared me, but not enough to lay down and be docile. If he was planning on raping or killing me, I would fight to the death. And if he was planning on any of that, I wished he'd just get it over with. Being locked up and not knowing what might happen was the worst kind of torture...at least that I knew so far.

  “I'll let you go, if you promise to stop trying to run every time I open the door.”