Why hadn’t Douglas asked Creel for help? Because Creel was an asshole, that was why. Because he’d already told Douglas he wouldn’t help him.
“When?”
“I don’t know, an hour ago? I wasn’t paying attention. Somebody called Douglas up and said there was a huge fight going on at the Mathers property, they were beating up one of their neighbors… Where are you going?”
She was talking to Creel’s back, and he was shifting as he ran.
Chapter Fourteen
The Mathers family, a group of coyote thugs, only lived half a mile from Douglas. Creel ran there faster than he’d ever run, his legs slashing through the air.
Creel was close to madness, consumed by rage. He saw everything in shades of blood red. Who had claimed Miranda? Was Miranda still alive? Could he live with himself if she wasn’t?
He was dimly aware that Hyatt and several other male shifters from the party were running behind him. Far behind him. They’d come to help.
He arrived at the Mathers’ property minutes later. Their homestead consisted of several mobile homes that were in appalling condition. The windows were smashed out and now cardboard replaced the panes. Trash was piled up in heaps that were scattered around the front yard. Hundreds of empty beer bottles and beer cans had been flung across the front lawn.
There was an enormous brawl on the front lawn, and it looked like the Mathers pack was already losing. There were a dozen of them, skinny and mangy and mean. Their neighbors, a pack of hyenas, were physically smaller than them but outnumbered them. The Mathers Alpha lay sprawled in the dirt, his throat torn out, his empty eyes staring up at the sky.
Douglas was fighting off three of them, who were snapping at his back legs, and one of them had his jaws sunk into Douglas’ flank. Sophia, in ocelot form, had jumped on him, and as Creel ran up, she raked his face with her claws and he let go with a high-pitched shriek that sounded almost human.
Miranda was rolling in the dirt with a female member of the Mathers pack. Two hyenas had piled on and were tearing at the female Mathers’ hindquarters.
When Creel ran up to them, the female immediately let go of Miranda and rolled on her back, her paws waving in the air. A pool of urine dribbled from her, and she wailed in terror.
Creel drew back, ready to lunge and separate the bitch’s head from her body.
She’d tried to hurt his Miranda. She’d attacked his Miranda.
Miranda quickly shifted back into human form, her fur melting into her body, her snout receding. Her ears rounded and shrank, and her claws retracted into her fingers.
“Creel, she submits! Don’t kill her!” she cried out, stepping between him and the hyena bitch.
Creel shifted into human form with a shudder. He stepped around Miranda quickly and sent a wave of his fury rolling right over the coyote, who let out a low moan of terror.
“Shift!” he barked at her. With a whimper, she shifted back into human form. She was scrawny and her arms were marred with ugly blue homemade tattoos. A fist with the middle finger held up, the words ‘fuck off’…yeah, she was a Mathers, all right.
She scrambled to her feet, stark naked, eyes wild with terror.
Creel looked around. With his arrival, all of the Mathers clan had surrendered. Douglas stood panting in wolf form with Sophia by his side, and the wound on his flank was slowly sealing itself up.
“Every last one of you Mathers better be gone by morning!” Creel bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Gone from the territory, gone from the state of New Hampshire, gone from the East Coast! The only reason you’re not dead is because my mate doesn’t want me to kill you! Push me one step further, and the ground will be soaked with your blood!”
The Alpha of the hyena pack scurried over to him in animal form and bowed his head in submission. Then he shifted back into human form and stood there, a short, lean, bearded man.
“Alpha Prime,” he said. “We haven’t met before. I’m Thomas. We thank you for your help. We wish to pledge to your pack and pay you for your protection in tribute.”
“I’m no leader and I have no pack,” Creel growled, and the man’s face fell. Creel glanced over at Miranda, who had a look of disappointment on her face, and he realized that he’d rather face down a hundred Alpha Primes with silver machetes then ever see that look on her face again.
“What started this fight?” he asked Thomas.
“They kept coming onto our property and stealing our firewood and our chickens, and then tonight they chased two of our women through the woods. My sister and cousin. They barely made it back to our property unmolested.” Thomas’ brown eyes blazed in anger.
“If anyone in this territory bothers you like that again, call me,” Creel said, and Thomas brightened considerably.
Creel saw Hyatt and the other male shifters from the party hanging off to the side. “Thank you,” he called out to them. “Let’s go back to what’s left of the party.”
They all headed back, several of them men limping, with blood dripping from wounds that would quickly heal.
Hyatt trotted alongside Creel, cracking jokes, and between Hyatt being a smartass and Miranda’s calming presence, Creel felt the dark fury in him subside.
“Good fight,” a shifter named Lou said cheerfully. He was one of the bouncers at the Rotgut.
“Yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye,” his friend Cameron, a bartender, agreed. “Then it’s even funner. More fun?” He glanced over at Creel. “So, uh, if you ever did form a pack…I’m in.”
“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind.” Creel kept his tone civil and nodded at him.
Once they were all safely back at Douglas’ house, he and Miranda got in his car and headed home.
When they got inside, he couldn’t help himself. The question had been nagging at him urgently ever since he’d seen the mark on Miranda’s neck.
“Who put that there?” he demanded, his voice rough, with more than a hint of anger.
She winced. “Ah…Suki.”
“Excuse me?” He stared at her in astonishment. “Is there something you want to share with me, maybe? Because when you and I were together, I could swear that you liked men.”
She burst into peals of laughter. “No, not like that, you dummy!”
She reached up to her neck and dug her nails in under the mating scar. Quickly, in one smooth motion, she peeled it off.
“Suki did it for me,” she said. “It’s theatrical makeup. She came by the shop every morning to refresh it, and I went into the center of town in Granite Flats a couple of times and let everyone see it.”
“That is an extremely weird thing to do. Why would you do that?” Creel said.
She sighed and looked down at the ground. “I wanted to make people think that you had really claimed me, because then my former pack members would stop coming in and trashing my store. I just couldn’t afford to lose any more merchandise. I’m barely holding on as it is.” She hesitated. “Well, now that your brother has sent all that business my way, I’m actually doing pretty well. But I’m going to find him and tell him to stop that, because I don’t want to take his charity.”
“Your pack – I mean your former pack – went into your store and trashed your stuff?” Creel’s voice had gone low and dangerous, and his eyes glowed red with rage.
“It’s all right,” she said hastily. “They haven’t been back since I’ve been showing my fake claiming mark. It might not be a great idea to go to their campsite. They said something to me about lying in wait for you, so I think they’re hoping to ambush you.”
“Believe me, that is what I would expect from a bunch of pussy little bitches like that. They’ll probably try to use silver, which is fine. I can assure you, I’m faster and stronger.”
She nodded, even though clearly she wasn’t happy about it. She couldn’t tell an Alpha Prime to back down from a challenge.
“I understand.”
“Now let’s talk about us, and our future,” he s
aid. “First of all, there are some things you need to know about me. I came up here after my pack betrayed me. My pack and the Sheridan Pack had been at war for decades, almost a hundred years. Started over territory, and kept going. Dozens of people on both sides had died. Five years ago, all-out war flared up with the goal of ending it all one way or another. My parents were killed by the Gray Ghost pack, leaving me and my brother as the Alpha Primes for our pack. My brother actually started talking about having a truce.” The look on his face was one of pure disgust and contempt.
Miranda didn’t say anything. From her perspective, she could see the reasoning behind ending a war that had started before Creel was even born. She could see why pack leaders would want to put an end to carnage that had nothing to do with any of the living pack members. But she could also see Creel’s point of view, and she understood how he would view it as a betrayal.
“Anyway,” Creel continued, “my brother was in favor of the truce. I told him that I would not back him up, and although I would have been within my rights to kill him, he is my twin brother and I just couldn’t make myself do it. Perhaps that was cowardice and weakness on my part. Our pack was divided about what they wanted to do, but they ended up following my brother’s lead. I told my brother I was leaving, and that they were all dead to me. Now, there was a woman named Jazmin, and we were engaged. I expected her to come with me, but she told me that she wouldn’t leave the pack and give up all the pack money and land and houses that she’d expected to get by mating with me. Turned out that money and prestige were more important to her than our mating. She told me that my brother had agreed that they would mate if I didn’t stay. I told her where to shove it, and I left, and I’ve never looked back.”
“I’m really sorry,” Miranda said. “It wasn’t weakness for you to spare your brother. Even after what he did to you, he was still family. But I also understand why you left.”
She grimaced. She understood why Creel’s brother had agreed to a truce, but agreeing to mate with the woman that Creel had intended to claim? That was low.
“Now it’s my turn for a confession,” she said. “I’ve always loved you.” She glanced at him nervously. “That makes me sound like a creepy stalker,” she said.
“A little bit,” Creel said, a look of puzzlement pinching his brow. “But it’s also kind of flattering. Of course, I need you to explain what the hell you’re talking about.”
“When I was little, my pack and I would travel to the Mirror Lake Mating Festival,” she said. “I was never allowed to go to the gathering, because my pack mates said that I would just embarrass them. They said I was too fat and weird to represent their pack.” She took a deep breath; even after all these years, the memory stung. “So I would go into the woods and hide out and watch everybody, and the minute I laid eyes on you, I wanted you. I mean, I was way too young when I first saw you, but I always dreamed that when I was old enough…somehow…we’d meet.”
Anger and disgust sizzled off of Creel in waves. “Well, you’ve given me even more reason to want to track down every member of your pack and kill them one by one. I can’t believe they said that to you. If I’d met you back then, I can tell you a hundred percent that I would have claimed you and my life would have been much different. Much better. I still would have left my pack, but I wouldn’t have left it with the bitterness of being betrayed by the woman I thought would love me for the rest of my life.”
“Do you really mean it?” Miranda said, blinking back tears. She could feel her wounded heart pounding in her chest, slowly starting to heal. All those years of yearning, of feeling like Creel was meant for her. She hadn’t been crazy. She hadn’t been wrong.
“Hell yes, I do,” Creel said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I know that the two of us haven’t really been together for that long, but my parents and my grandparents always told me, when you meet the right one, you’ll know. I’ve known it from the minute I woke up in bed with you, which is why I’ve been trying to run so hard.”
“Keep talking.” She smiled through her tears, and he grabbed her hand and enfolded it in his.
He stared at her, his gaze burning into hers. “You need to understand that I’m a mess, that sometimes my anger burns so big inside me that I don’t know if I can control it. And there will be times that I’m going to be a dick without meaning to, and it might take me a day or two to realize it and apologize. But I want you, Miranda. Only you. I can promise you, I will never look at or be with another woman, and I would lay down my life for you.”
“I want you too,” Miranda said, tears running down her cheeks. “I was twelve years old when I first spotted you. Every year until I was eighteen, I was afraid that would be the year that you claimed a woman before I ever got the chance to meet you. Then, the year I turned eighteen, I was so excited that I would finally get to go to the gathering, and my whole pack laughed at me. Every last one. I should have left right then, but I had been beaten down for so long that I didn’t think I deserved any better. It’s only since I came up here and made real friends that I’ve started to realize they shouldn’t have treated me that way.” She glanced at him. “What about cubs?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Creel said. “When I was younger, I thought that I wanted them, but after Jazmin and my own brother…the idea of family disgusted me.”
“I don’t want to force your decision. I will respect what you decide, but cubs are very important to me,” Miranda said.
Creel pulled her up against him with a growl. “Well, it’s not a full moon right now, but there’s no reason that we shouldn’t start practicing the baby-making.”
Chapter Fifteen
Creel swung her effortlessly into his arms and held her against his broad, muscular chest. He strode into the bedroom carrying her, and placed her gently in the center of the bed. She was already a little breathless just at the thought of having him inside her again.
Creel pulled his shirt over his head without bothering to unbutton it, and discarded it on the floor. Then his hands went to his belt buckle. As he stripped, Miranda drank in the sight of him. His skin was tanned golden from working outside in the sunshine, except where pale scars wrapped around his ribcage. Like the silvery lines on his jaw and cheekbone, they spoke of a hard past. After what he’d told her about the breakdown of his pack, she didn’t blame him for closing off his heart. But she knew that if she loved him enough, he would open it up to her. And she loved him so much she ached.
When he was naked, he crawled onto the bed, his erect penis bobbing against his belly as he moved. He helped her to undress, dropping each discarded garment over the side of the bed, until she was stripped bare.
She’d always felt self-conscious naked, but not with Creel. The way his eyes lingered on her curves made her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that he wanted her just as badly as she wanted him. That they were going to spend the rest of their lives together.
They kissed and caressed each other in a tangle of limbs, touching and tasting, exploring each other’s bodies. Creel gently bit her nipple, making her squirm against him, then he rolled onto his back, pulling her with him so that she was straddling his hips.
She moaned happily as she sank slowly onto his erection, savouring the sensation as his thick cock stretched her pussy. She clenched around him as he filled her, and he groaned in response, moving his hands to her hips to help guide her down until he was fully inside her.
She stayed still for a long moment, looking down at his handsome face and biting her lip as frissons of excitement swirled and played in her belly, and then she started to move. With her hands braced on his chest for support, she rode him, throwing back her head and moaning with pleasure as the first flutters of orgasm pulsed through her. Creel urged her on with his hands on her hips, swearing softly and thrusting up to meet her.
He threw his arms around her and pulled her down so he could kiss her breasts, long lashes fluttering against his
cheekbones as he sucked and licked at the soft flesh.
Miranda moaned as her orgasm built, then gasped as Creel rolled over, pressing his big body on top of hers. He pulled her knees up, opening her more fully to him, and thrust inside her with a series of hard, rapid thrusts that quickly pushed her over the edge and into a fast, clenching orgasm that had her clutching his back and shouting hoarsely at the intensity of the pleasure that swept through her.
As she squirmed beneath him, riding the aftershocks, Creel continued to pump into her slick core. She panted and wrapped her legs around his narrow hips, urging him to push his way even deeper inside her.
Her orgasm didn’t end – it just rolled on into another. And as stars burst behind her eyelids and thrills ran over every inch of her body, Creel sank his teeth into the side of her throat, claiming her. Marking her as his and only his, forever. The pain was sharp but sweet, and Miranda moaned with satisfaction and fulfilment, holding his head against her as he lapped at the shallow wound, soothing it with his tongue.
When Creel pulled back, she was surprised to see a flash of uncertainty in his eyes. A vulnerability she couldn’t quite account for. As he moved inside her, she grazed her teeth against the side of his throat, teasing the delicate skin with her incisors.
He froze for a moment, and tensed.
Miranda bit down, sinking her teeth into his flesh. The groan Creel gave was a mixture of pleasure, pain and relief.
His blood was hot and coppery on her tongue, and she felt a brief surge of animal satisfaction at the fact that she had marked him as her mate.
He kissed her, moving smoothly inside her again, and she tasted her own blood on his lips. There was something profoundly intimate about the moment, and she smiled against his mouth, then gasped as he changed angles and stroked something inside her that had her teetering on the brink of orgasm once again.
Creel thrust inside her harder and faster, rougher now as he lost control over his own rising desire. As Miranda came, her cunt spasming fiercely around his thick cock, he roared with primal satisfaction, finding his release deep inside her wet, clenching body.
His Curvy Mate (Alpha Prime Book 2) Page 10
