Alpha's Fate: A BBW Wolf-Shifter Paranormal Mystery & Romance (Arcane Affairs Agency)

by Nora Ash

  “It wasn’t on purpose. I swear, it wasn’t. I know what you must think, but I… my magic misfired. That wasn’t what was supposed to happen.”

  She sounded so quiet, like a girl much younger than she was, and when I looked at her, her eyes were wide and filled with shame.

  “Then what was your magic supposed to do?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her. “’Cause if it wasn’t getting my pants off, then I sure as fuck hope you’re getting a refund on whichever witch college you went to.”

  “There’s no such thing as witch colleges,” she said, wrinkling her nose at my apparent insult. “I told you already, my magic isn’t exactly reliable. But I… I never thought something like that could happen, or I would have never—”

  “What magic did you mix in?” I interrupted her. I didn’t want to hear her tell me how much she would have never done something that would have landed her in bed with me.

  “You were supposed to trust me more,” she muttered, and I couldn’t hold back a snort of dry amusement.

  “You wanted to get my trust by tricking me to eat one of your cursed cookies? How about just telling me the goddamn truth? Would have been a hell of a lot simpler.”

  Poppy grimaced and looked away.

  “Really? After everything, you still can’t tell me what the fuck your connection to that demon was? And don’t tell me ‘nothing’ again. I’m not dumb—the way it spoke to you, there was history there.”

  She bit her lip and avoided my eyes, and I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Fucking great! It’s a miracle that thing didn’t kill you, you get that, right? If it hadn’t been for your amulet, you’d likely have been dead now because you were too stubborn to tell me why it was after you in the first place.”

  “It’s not that easy,” she said, her voice only a little more than a whisper.

  “Not that easy,” I repeated, gritting my teeth to stem the flood of frustration and bitterness. “But lying to your own Fated Mate? That’s easy? Pushing me away when all I was trying to do was save your fucking life—that’s the path of least resistance, is it?”

  She turned around to stare at me, her eyes wide and her mouth open. “W-what?”

  I clenched the steering wheel harder and breathed deeply through my nose, not willing to repeat myself.

  “What did you say? Jackson?” Her voice turned sharper when I didn’t respond, and she grabbed my arm again. Her touch pulled me back from the brink of despair, and I slowly turned to look at her. Really look at her.

  She was so fucking beautiful, her green eyes reminding me so much of home that I couldn’t bear it. And that soft little body of hers… all I wanted to do was press myself against it, suckle on her magnificent tits and make her tight, wet heat fit over my already throbbing length. To be inside of her, breathing in her essence… start my own family, my own pack with her. One that’d never send me away.

  Flashes of disgustingly sweet, family bliss tortured my mind’s eye, and I knew with every ounce of my being that all I wanted in life was to be with Poppy. Raise a family together. Hear her tell me she loved me.

  But therein lay the fucking problem, didn’t it? Because she never would. I might have claimed her as my mate, she might even be my Fated Mate, but we weren’t a couple. She hated my guts, like all her kind hated shifters, and she didn’t even trust me enough to tell me what had made a fucking demon track her down.

  “You’re my Fated Mate,” I said, my voice as hollow as my chest felt. “I’m guessing that’s why your cookie magic worked the way it did. And why my Wolf claimed you as my mate when we fucked.”

  Her mouth closed and opened again, but no sound came out. Her fingers left my arm to trace over my bite mark once more, and I saw comprehension dawning on her pretty face.

  “You… I… Why would you do that?”

  She sounded horrified. I couldn’t fault her for it, even if it stung.

  “Fucking cookies,” I muttered.

  Her cheeks flushed red. “I… you’re saying my cookies made you…? What does this even mean? Am I turning into some fur-sprouting half-beast come the full moon? Are we married?”

  It means you’re the only woman for me for the rest of time. It means I’ll rather die than ever see you hurt.

  “You have to be born with at least some shifter blood to ever turn,” I ground out, choosing to ignore her last question. “Don’t worry, I haven’t tainted your fancy fucking witch bloodline. And at this point, I don’t think it means a fucking thing, cupcake. Mates are supposed to trust each other, and you clearly don’t. So let’s just chuck it up to some bad fucking magic—I won’t make any demands on your precious fucking life. You don’t want to open up about that demon? You don’t have to. It’s gone now. My job here is done.”

  Please don’t send me away. Please don’t, please don’t, please don’t. I ruthlessly squashed the desperate inner voice chanting in my brain and my Wolf’s pathetic whining. It might feel like I’d keel over and die if she rejected me, but I knew that wasn’t true. I’d gotten along just fine in life before her—there was no reason why I couldn’t continue that way now. I’d gotten over being rejected by my entire fucking pack—I’d get over losing my mate, too.

  “I… You’re leaving, then?”

  The look on her face was guarded, and my heart tightened in my chest until it felt like nothing more than a shriveled-up piece of jerky. She didn’t care that we were fated to be together. That look said it all—she wasn’t interested in anything with me, let alone a lifetime together.

  Which meant I had to go. I wasn’t about to beg for her to keep me around, like I had my pack and my old alpha.

  “Yeah. No reason to stay. Got a job to do, more bad guys to capture.”

  “Okay.” For just a moment, I thought I detected the slightest quiver in her voice, and my heart lurched with wild hope. But her face never betrayed a thing, and she turned away from me to look out the windshield, her arms crossing over her ample chest. “Will I know when whoever’s checked in with Jade?”

  “I’ll tell them to stop by and update you,” I said, turning the key in the ignition and starting up my car. There was no reason to wait any longer—nothing was going to change no matter how much some stupid, nostalgic part of my wished it could have been different.

  We drove to her place in silence, and I stopped next to her café even though every part of me was screaming to just keep going.

  “Well… thank you for… everything.” Poppy said, giving me an awkward little smile.

  “Just doing my job,” I said, no longer able to look at her. If I did, I knew my Wolf would leap out and throw itself at her feet.

  “Right,” she said. I heard the clasp of her seat belt being undone, and then she was out the door. “Bye.”

  I didn’t answer, and then the passenger side door slammed and she was gone.

  Out of my life forever.

  16

  POPPY

  I should have been happy.

  The demon who had haunted my every nightmare was dead, my family was avenged, and the Arcane Affairs Agency hadn’t found out about my connection to the whole, wretched affair.

  And yet, I’d never felt more miserable in my entire life.

  You’re my Fated Mate.

  Who just dropped a claim like that and then left?

  I knew about Fated Mates. Any paranormal knew about them, though I’d more or less written them off as a myth. I’d never met anyone who was with their Fated Mate, and since when could a witch and a shifter belong to each other like that? Share an eternal bond greater than any other force in the universe?

  But if he didn’t believe it, why had he said it?

  My fingers found the bruise left behind by his teeth. A mate claim.

  I knew enough about shifter lore to know the truth about that part, at least. It just hadn’t clicked before he said it, because the idea that he and I… As far as I knew, it was to shifters what marriage was to the rest of the world.

  Some part o
f me knew I probably should be offended that he’d tried to lay claim to me like that, but the rational part of me knew he’d been high out of his mind and not really responsible for his actions. High on my magic.

  And then there was the other, much more shameful part of me, that couldn’t help but picture what it would have been like if… if he’d meant it. If he was my… my mate. Partner. Husband.

  I scoffed at the ridiculous notion, but my heart ached so much it came out like a sad, agonized moan instead.

  But he’d left. He’d left me without a second thought, and that was that.

  He tried to get you to open up, a small voice said from the back of my mind. Wanted you to explain your connection to the demon.

  I shook my head and hid my face in my hands to push it away. He’d been asking as an agent. Not as a man who was trying to understand the woman he thought was his Fated Mate.

  Even if the night we’d spent together had been the most loved and protected I’d ever felt in my whole life.

  AN INSISTENT KNOCKING on my front door ripped me out of my fitful sleep.

  I stared groggily up in the ceiling for a moment, trying to regain my bearings. The light in my bedroom indicated that it was at some point after dawn, but I felt as though I’d hardly slept.

  Another knock, five hard raps against my front door, made me jolt upright before I rolled out of bed and halfway ran out to open it.

  It was only when I was greeted by Jade’s smiling face that I realized I’d been hoping it was Jackson.

  “Whoa. No offense, but you look like shit, Poppy,” Jade said as she pushed past me with an air of self-assuredness, as if she came into my home every other day.

  “I just woke up,” I croaked, closing the door behind her. “What time is it?”

  “Just past nine,” she said, walking to my kitchen and casting a glance around before she turned around with a big smile and headed into my living room.

  I followed her, trying to shake the foggy dreams out of my head. They’d been dark and scary, but without any tangible reason.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked as Jade leaned up against the windowsill, her finger drumming against it. I plopped down on the sofa myself and covered my legs with a quilt and rubbed my hair. As tired, heartbroken, and out of it as I was, I couldn’t leave Jade to fend for herself. She hadn’t known anything about the paranormal world until she got kidnapped by a demon yesterday, and I was really the only person she could talk to about it until Jackson’s agency connection showed up. “Wanna talk about yesterday?”

  “Yeah, if you don’t mind.” She gave me that same, wide smile as before. “I was wondering how a witch like you ends up in Thompson Mill.”

  “Oh. We generally live among humans.”

  “But why specifically here? You didn’t grow up here, did you?”

  “No, I grew up on the East Coast. I…” I grimaced. She wasn’t an agent, but I still couldn’t get myself to admit the full truth. “My parents died, so I wanted a change of scenery. Get away from it all, you know?”

  “Sure,” she said, flicking my grandmother’s amulet absentmindedly with a finger. I rubbed at my chest where its familiar weight had hung for so many years, feeling naked and vulnerable. I kind of wanted to ask for it back, but figured I’d wait until she’d talked to the agent. Right now, she probably needed the sense of protection more than I did. Even if she seemed a lot calmer than I’d have anticipated.

  “So why did that demon go after you? What did it want?”

  I sighed, unease and guilt welling up in my chest. “My magic. Some demons suck witches’ magic to grow stronger. I’m so sorry you got mixed up in all this, Jade. I… I’ve tried so hard to keep everyone at a distance, so no one would get hurt because of me, but then… then it came here and killed poor Molly Perkins. Tried to hurt you, too.”

  “Maybe she brought it on herself,” Jade said, and her expression was so calm I had to replay her words in my head a couple of time to make sure I’d heard her right.

  “Huh?”

  “Maybe she was snooping where she shouldn’t have, trying to send it back when she wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to play with that kind of magic,” she said, smiling that wide smile at me.

  “I don’t think it’s fair to blame Molly for getting killed,” I said, frowning. This was certainly a side to Jade I hadn’t seen before. “Wait, did Jackson tell you that she was a witch, too?”

  “Oh, Poppy,” she said, shoving off my windowsill with a lazy stretch. “For someone with such delicious Rose-Witch magic in her veins, you’re pretty dim, aren’t you?”

  I gaped at the brunette, my brain refusing to understand. “I don’t…”

  “You don’t understand? Like you didn’t understand how your mother could summon a demon in an attempt to improve your pathetic magic? She was so worried, you know. Thought the only way to help you was to make a deal with a demon. Tell me… I was always so curious—how does it feel, knowing you were such a disappointment to your mother that she ended up getting herself and your dear old father killed just to not have to live with the shame of knowing her own daughter couldn’t even light a candle?”

  “You’re…” I grasped at the quilt as I tried to push myself up from the sofa, but my muscles had frozen solid from shock. “You’re the demon! You—”

  “I killed Mummy and Daddy, and that poor old fool Molly Perkins? Yes. Bravo, Detective Poppy.” Jade brought her hands together in a slow clap. For every time her palms connected, her features contorted, changed before my very eyes, until the creature in front of me had very little in common with the girl I’d worked beside every day for the past month. In her place stood a monster.

  “When that shifter agent walked into your shop, I thought for sure he’d see me for what I was, but he was too busy sniffing after you to see what was right underneath his nose. Too thankful you were still alive to realize he killed poor old Don so easily because he was nothing but my meat puppet. And then you went and sent your faithful protector away, didn’t you? After you finally gave me the damned talisman that’s kept me from ripping your throat out and sucking you dry like I’ve ached to do since I tasted your mother. I’d tell you you made it too easy for me, but I’ve been searching for you for five fucking years.” Her upper lip pulled back, revealing a row of sharp teeth. “I hope you scream like Mommy.”

  I finally regained control of my body then. I lurched off of the sofa, only one thought hammering through my brain: I’ve got to get to my phone, I’ve got to call Jackson!

  I didn’t make it more than two steps before I felt the demon’s weight on my back, pushing me to the floor as its claws dug into my flesh.

  17

  JACKSON

  The morning after I left Thompson’s Mill, I already had my next assignment: some rabid vampire up in Maine who seemingly had decided to not only feed off unwilling humans, but also kill off his victims without hiding the evidence.

  There wasn’t anything unusual in it, really—me getting a new assignment straight after finishing another, that is. Rabid vampires weren’t all that common, or the general population would probably have clocked on to our existence by now.

  And yet, for every mile I put between myself and Thompson’s Mill, my chest felt heavier and heavier, and my mood as grim as a warlock’s ass crack.

  My Wolf, which had been fighting fiercely to break free from my human constraints the first couple of hours after I left Thompson’s Mill, had receded like a wounded animal hiding from the world. When I carefully prodded the place in my mind that was connected to my Animal half, I got nothing but a deep ache in return.

  I’d left my Fated Mate.

  But what else was I supposed to do? Turn back? Throw my career away? Beg her to love me when she so clearly wasn’t interested in anything I had to offer?

  If that’s what it takes.

  I grunted and rubbed my face with both hands, shielding my eyes from the rising sun. This was ridiculous. I was a trained agent. My
entire adult life had been spent honing my skills until I was one of the best assets the Arcane Affairs Agency had. I’d pushed any notion of pack and family away, found comfort in being a lone wolf without any lasting responsibility to anyone.

  And yet here I was, yearning for a mouthy little witch and everything that came with a mate. My own pack, my own family… staking out and defending a territory for them, like an alpha should.

  Fucking hell.

  Poppy wasn’t a wolf—she’d have no interest in pack life, wouldn’t care if I secured her a nice territory. Wouldn’t care for me. She’d displayed that with impeccable clarity when she’d refused to tell me why that demon was after her, even after we’d defeated him. Even after I’d marked her as the one person I’d die to protect. Told her I loved her.

  The mixed rush of pleasure and pain at the memory of gasping out those words while being balls-deep in her tight little snatch made me groan again.

  She’d said it back.

  She’d fucking said it back.

  A part of me wanted to dismiss it as meaningless words spoken in passion, but despite everything else, I knew that wasn’t true. She was my Fated Mate, and in those hours in her bed, we’d both felt the soul-deep connection that could never be broken.

  She was my Fated Mate.

  “Fuck!” I rolled over, kicked open the backseat door, and stumbled out of my car. The pale light of morning warmed my face as I stared up at the sky. I’d spent the night in my car on the side of the road, not in the mood to find a motel and have to deal with people in any capacity.

  It was nothing but me and empty road for miles and miles. Like it’d always been.

  And it wasn’t enough. Not anymore.

  Fuck.

  I WAS about twenty miles out from Thompson’s Mill when a sharp pain in my gut nearly made me crash my car. I hunched over with a grunt, clutching one hand against my midsection as a sickening fear threaded through my veins until it reached my heart.