The Alpha's Oracle

by Merry Ravenell

  Gardenia limped back to the house just before dinner. Her arm was heavily bandaged in a sling, and her face stitched, and she moved like her whole body hurt. If she felt that tumble down the stairs like I did, her whole body did hurt. Without makeup she looked completely different, although still very pretty.

  When she arrived at the front door the wolf who greeted her made her wait. Then all the wolves in the house filed into the foyer, and Violet retrieved me from the bedroom to join Gabel on the stairs.

  Gardenia seemed very small and frightened as she stood in front of all of us. This was not the sort of attention she wanted.

  She looked up at me on the landing, and through the pain and humiliation, there was burning hatred.

  Gardenia’s spirit wasn’t broken. She still wanted a fight.

  Just as well Romero was dead. They would have been a perfect match, and had many stupid little puppies.

  Platinum’s little cadre of friends clustered in a frightened group, looking nervously between their leader and me. They wanted to go over to Platinum, coo over her injuries, stroke her hair, simper about what a terrible bitch I was. Because that’s what little wolves like them did. Platinum had destroyed my tools in a fit of jealous rage, having a tantrum because she didn’t have Gabel’s Mark, and yet, self-defense had made me the ogre.

  Gabel had the velvet bags with him. “Gardenia, this morning you entered Lady Gianna’s sanctuary without invitation or permission. You did not leave when she ordered you to do so. Instead you desecrated the room and shattered her tools.”

  Gardenia looked at the pond.

  “You attacked a wolf of higher prestige and challenged her status. That is acceptable in IronMoon. Lady Gianna answered the challenge. You, however, ran like a coward from the fight you started and you begged for someone to save you. Gardenia,“ Gabel moved down two steps, his voice lowering several notes. “Tsk tsk. You know that is not how things work here in IronMoon.”

  Gardenia shifted on her feet.

  “The punishment for such things is death. As this pack knows from recent history.” Gabel’s voice warmed with cruel amusement, and it slid down the Bond between us, the memory of his triumph over Romero, how easy it had been. His authority and prestige shone brighter, the scent drifting through the room, commanding everyone to wilt before him. Except for me. I drank it, dined upon it, relished it.

  “But Lady Gianna does not want you to die. She could have killed you for the offense you have given her. Do you not understand,“ Gabel moved one step lower, “that she outranks you?”

  Oh Gabel, salting wounds.

  Gabel turned to me, “Lady Gianna, having seen her standing here now, you have not changed your mind on the punishment you would see meted out? I think perhaps it is not harsh enough. She challenged your status, destroyed your tools, then dishonored this pack by fleeing like a coward.”

  “Oh, I think it’s harsh enough,” I said. “She craves attention. Put her where not even the Moon will pay her mind.”

  Gabel shrugged. “As you wish. Gardenia, you will spend three days and three nights in the basement.”

  “What? The basement? No!” Gardenia yelped, “Alpha Gabel, please, no, not that! Don’t!”

  Cook turned his head to the side, expression grieved.

  “Please,” Gardenia pled to Gabel, holding her good hand up in supplication.

  “It is not me you should beg for forgiveness. It is Lady Gianna.”

  Gardenia yanked back, face washing over with shocked, horrified realization.

  “Go quietly.” I moved down one step. “Or I’ll take your canines next and have them made into earrings.”

  Gabel grinned at me, his whole presence seeming to brighten another notch, feral hunger lacing it now.

  Cook came forward and whispered to his cousin, pushing her out of the hallway while she whimpered and swore angrily. Cook gave me an apologetic look. Gardenia was always family to him, no matter how stupid she acted. Gardenia was probably the reason they had ended up in IronMoon, not Cook himself.

  The show over, the rest of the pack moved away to sit for dinner. Hix said, “Alpha. We need to continue our conversation. Lady Gianna should be there as well.”

  “Master of Arms,” Gabel told the lingering Flint, who had already figured out what we were going to talk about, “we won’t be at dinner.”

  Flint nodded once, half-bowed to me, and left to oversee dinner.

  Gabel ushered me to his office with Hix looming behind us.

  Told you so, Gabel’s glance said.

  Hix waited until I was seated on the couch. Hix looked at the nasty gash on my shin and told me, “I suppose all that training I’ve endured with you went to some good use.”

  “Your generosity is astonishing,” I said sarcastically.

  In classic Hix fashion, he did not mince words. “When will you be taking the vows?”

  Ton.

  Of.

  Bricks.

  “We haven’t talked about it.” Gabel went for pure honesty.

  Because we hadn’t talked about it.

  That didn’t put Hix off, and Hix didn’t take the hint even though he recognized there was a hint in there. “The Bond has obviously been consummated. You treat her as your Luna. I see no reason to delay. The pack is expecting the announcement soon. Late-night trysts in the courtyard don’t go unnoticed.”

  “It wasn’t a tryst. It was just a kiss! Since when is a kiss a tryst?”

  “That’s what everyone else might think. I am not an idiot. I understand if you wanted to keep it private for a short while before making the announcement, but with recent events, the time has simply come. Don’t you agree?” He sounded like a school marm asking a basic rhetorical question.

  We didn’t answer.

  Hix dragged us forward with his logic. “The Solstice Moon is three weeks away. It is the best time of year to do it, and since you two are ready, we should take advantage.”

  Ready? Who said anything about being ready?

  Gabel was waiting for me to say something, I was waiting for him to say something, and neither of us had anything clever to say.

  The Solstice Moon was the luckiest time of year to have a vow-taking, and many Alphas and Lunas planned their mating around it.

  “That feels sudden...” I managed to mutter.

  “It is not sudden at all. It is just a formality.”

  “I suppose...”

  “Excuse us a moment.” Gabel stepped between us. “You’ve caught us off-guard, Hix.”

  “How have I caught you off-guard?” Hix’s low tone bordered on a growl.

  “As you said, a great deal has happened recently. We haven’t had time to speak about trivialities like this.”

  There was nothing trivial about it. But it got through to Hix. He nodded, gave each of us a meaningful look that said he’d wait exactly five minutes, then stepped outside.

  Gabel said, “It would seem we have both lost to the Bond.”

  I touched the Mark still on my arm. It had not festered or rotted. The Bond between us had tightened and hungered. Even now, it hungered for Gabel, and his hands on my flesh. Did I love Gabel? Was I even fond of him? Would the vows be a lie? Would they be a truth I didn’t want to speak even to myself?

  Could I be a Luna and an Oracle?

  I would never escape Gabel. There was nowhere to run. There was nowhere to hide. Even his authority and command didn’t affect me. It just pleased me, and I drank it up, I basked in it.

  There might be other Alphas like him, but they would kill me on sight. They wouldn’t take me to their side. Even if I found another partner, I’d never bow to another Alpha.

  “You could persuade me to try to break the Bond,” I ventured, knowing it was a worthless suggestion.

  “No. You say those things just to hear me refuse? Neither of us would survive. Even now, even fighting as we do, we are bound too tightly. Say those things if you just want to try on the words, but you know it’s not an option.”r />
  I mumbled an agreement.

  “Then there’s only one thing left for us to do.”

  Perhaps, but there was one thing I wanted to know.

  “How does defeat taste, Gabel?” I whispered.

  He ran his thumb over a light scratch on my cheek. “It tastes of you, buttercup. There is no longer any reason to resist. Tonight, I am going to taste all of you. Again. And again. And again. We will see how tight that Bond will twist.”

  Claimed

  The Bond pulsed like a soft heartbeat, warm and content, as if it had baked all night in the warmth of a fire.

  It sort of had. A fire named Gabel, who burned hot and dark when determined to indulge his carnality.

  And explore every corner of mine.

  For the first time in... a long time... I did not feel torn apart.

  My nervous shock, dismay, confusion and everything else that went with my impending nuptials was still present.

  But the whole torn-apart-from-the-inside-feeling was absent.

  “Why are there no windows in this room?” I always had to walk out into the hallway and look out the large windows overlooking the stairs to actually see what the weather was like. Considering there had been snow on the wind again, I wanted to know how to dress. When your mate preferred you in skirts and dresses, it mattered.

  Gabel leaned over my back and kissed my shoulder blades in turn. “They make me nervous.”

  “You. Nervous.”

  “It is not a good den if anything can peer in. I have never understood why anyone would want to sleep with windows open to the world.”

  He gently bit the point of my left shoulder blade, and his fingertips traced curling patterns along the back of my right thigh, teasing higher and and higher. I squirmed.

  “The maidenly act doesn’t suit you,” he growled under his breath. “We both know your desires.”

  His fingers moved higher, teasing the softness of my inner thighs. I squirmed a little more and tried to turn over. He pressed me into the sheets with his chest and laughed, very softly. “Your mouth can lie all it wants, but your skin doesn’t. Why do you make me work so hard to convince you that you want everything I can give you?” He moved across me and bit down gently on my shoulder. I gasped and squirmed, and yelped again as his fingers slipped to the apex of my thighs.

  His words sent a tremor of pleasure so intense down the Bond that I mewled and my spine arched.

  “If you are going to play the maiden,” Gabel said as he inhaled my scent, a new growl in his voice, “I am going to play the lord who expects what he is entitled to.”

  Gabel’s wandering hand clutched my hip and yanked me to him. I squeaked in shock, torn by old fear and desire. He growled in my ear, looming over me, moving faster than my not-so-well-rested-brain could process.

  He took what he wanted, a crazed, carnal desire flooding through him. The Bond twisted tighter within us. As I drowned in the pleasure and panted as his rough hands held me delightfully pinned, I wondered just how tightly a Bonded pair could be bound.

  I swear our souls fused. Was that even possible? Was that how it worked?

  Gabel’s hands released me, and I crumbled, panting, sweaty, damp and flushed, back into our abused sheets.

  I needed a shower.

  I crawled out of bed.

  Fresh wetness slid down my thigh, poking me with anxiety. “We should be more careful, Gabel.”

  “Why?” he asked, arm behind his head. He was magnificently naked on the sheets, not a stitch of cloth upon him. By the Moon, he was a creature of glory, especially with a thin sheen of sweat on his slightly bronze skin. Even when he said crazy things.

  I ignored temptation and pointed out the obvious instead. “Why? You know how puppies get made, don’t you?”

  Gabel chuckled.

  “Is this your new game? Get me pregnant as fast as you can?”

  Gabel smirked. “Let the Moon sort it out.”

  “Now you surrender to the Moon? Or is this just an excuse to not use a condom every time?”

  “A King needs his heirs,” he said lazily.

  “You’re not a King, Gabel.”

  He sat up. “So you’re saying I have to become a King before you will give me my heirs?”

  “Your heirs? They are my children, too. I’m not your goddamn baby-mill.”

  Gabel’s devilish smirk widened.

  I sniffed, not interested in dancing on the end of the string that morning, “They don’t have a crown to inherit, Gabel. Just a pack of questionably behaved mongrels.”

  Gabel’s ocean-blue eyes ignited with a terrifying brilliance. “That sounds like a challenge laid at my feet.”

  I fled to the shower.

  “You know, buttercup,” Gabel said as he shaved, his reflection in the mirror eyeing me as I emerged from the shower, wrapped in a towel. “It might take me a little longer than is practical to achieve my goals. You may have to reconsider holding out on the pups.”

  I swear he did this just to see me cringe and pale and squirm. “Maybe I will. But not if you ever use them as a toy, Gabel. The pups aren’t a toy for your games. You even nip them, and I will kill you. I will rip your throat out and eat it in one gulp.”

  I knew in that moment I not only would kill him, but that I could. All the maternal rage and snarls slid down the Bond, pouring into him, branding itself against him.

  Gabel actually stopped shaving.

  I curled my lips and growled at him.

  Gabel broke eye contact first. “Noted.”

  We had an understanding on that, at least.

  Breakfast was the usual affair. Hix had only told Flint and Eroth that we’d make the announcement that evening before dinner. Cook had been told to prepare something festive for dinner and dessert. Cook was resigned to his cousin’s antics, which (as it turned out) was the entire reason they were in IronMoon, and he was grateful there was anywhere in the world that would put up with her.

  I did admire his loyalty to his family, and I turned a blind eye when I saw him disappear while holding a plate of food.

  “I don’t approve,” Gabel growled.

  “You didn’t say she couldn’t have visitors or had to starve. Let Cook see his family.”

  “Are you going down there?”

  “Why should I? I have other things to do.”

  Like the depressing work of purifying my work room. It kept me occupied until the early afternoon, and my mind firmly not on Gabel, the Bond, these vows I still wasn’t sure about, and the life that was taking me with it.

  But it was all too late now.

  That evening the whole of IronMoon gathered in the expansive courtyard. Gabel had summoned them, and attendance was not optional.

  There were so many of them. Even more than had been present at the trials for the Second Beta slot.

  Gabel and I stood on the top patio. The night was freezing cold and clear, with only a tiny sliver of Moon in the sky. I licked my lips in the frigid air, wishing this announcement came under a brighter portent. Everyone knew what announcement was coming, and the anticipation was thick.

  I better get used to standing in front of a sea of wolves. Lunas tended to do that.

  Gabel was in just a kilt, and I wore a blue dress, with nothing under it. In the darkness of the near-moonless night the yellow light of the house gave his skin a dusky gleam, and the shadows seemed menacing and close. I expected to see the yellow-fire eyes of Hounds staring back at me, here to watch one of their own claim a mortal mate.

  “Wolves of IronMoon!” Gabel raised his hands and the crowd settled. “For a pack such as this, you know I have searched long and carefully for a she-wolf worthy of being your Luna.”

  All eyes snapped to me.

  “A she-wolf strong enough to suit my... tastes.” Gabel’s voice filled the air, smug and triumphant. “One wise enough to understand a Luna is not only a crown, one proud enough to bow to no insult, and one brave enough to run at my side on the Hunt.”


  He made it sound like everything up until now had been some kind of series of tests to prove to Gabel I was worthy of him and his pack.

  No way, Gabel. Don’t try to make yourself look so good.

  “She has fought hard to show me how much contempt she has for all that I am, and that she would not be easily won over by a strong pack,” he gestured to the IronMoon, “our wealth or our reputation. And why should an Oracle, who dares to venture into the Tides and enter the Court of the Moon, be easily impressed? Courting her has been my greatest challenge so far. But I have finally proven to her that not only am I her Alpha, but I am the one the Moon has chosen for her.”

  Leave it to Gabel to present defeat as victory. Gabel winked at me, then extended a hand. I balked one final moment.

  If you do this, there is no undoing it.

  There hadn’t been any undoing anything from the start.

  Gabel drew me up next to him, our hands raised. “Before the Moon and this pack, I claim Lady Gianna of IronMoon! Under the Solstice Moon we will make our vows, and we shall celebrate the IronMoon Luna, and our new future with her!”

  Flint spun around and raised his arms, howling and encouraging all the warriors to sing louder to the Moon. A few shifted into wolf form and threw their heads back, howling, and several slipped into war-form, offering guttural, rage-filled howls that sent any remaining creatures plunging in a panic through the woods.

  “My Luna,” Gabel said to me, leaning very close so I could hear him over the thunder, “run with your pack.”

  “I am not Luna yet, Gabel.” I chided his arrogance but put a finger over his lips anyway. He bit the tip, and I gasped. The howls rang in my skull, his scent consumed me. The tiny little crescent of the moon watched us from behind slitted eyes.

  “To me you are.” Gabel traded his teeth on my finger for biting my lower lip, his eyes hanging in my field of vision for a long second while my heartbeat increased its pace. “The vows are only a formality. You are mine, Gianna. I have Marked you, I have claimed you, before my pack and the Moon’s Eye.”

  I seized his hair in my hands and yanked myself against him for a fierce, long kiss. “Then, my Lord-Alpha,” I panted around the sudden fervor the howls wove over me, “we should run.”