Bride to the Alpha (The Wolf's Pet Book Two)

by Aubrey Rose

  From the sky, a sprinkling of snow fell. On the ground, wolf prints had already darkened the fallen snow with mud and leaves.

  “Alekk?” I called out. I didn’t know if I would recognize him in wolf form. “Leah?”

  Behind me, two soldiers were dismantling Alekk’s personal tent and packing it up. They ignored me as they worked. I suppose they thought that a human prisoner was nothing to worry about. I couldn’t outrun a wolf, after all, and we were in the middle of the forest.

  Most of the supplies and tents had been packed up. I could see some wolves hitching themselves to sleds with supplies. A sprinkling of snow fell from above in the morning light, but the wolves paid no mind to it. They began to move, the sleds moving bumpily over the frosted ground. The sleds were narrow enough to go through the pine trees, and they moved reasonably well over the icy ground. They would have to leave their sleds behind once we got low enough in the mountains, I thought. Would it take them longer to reach the territory?

  It doesn’t matter.

  I bit back tears as I thought of my mom and dad packing up their things to go. It wouldn’t matter when we reached the territory, because they would be long gone by then. The wolves here thought that they were traveling to war, but I knew the truth. There would be no army there to meet them. There would be nothing there, an empty surrender of all our land and resources. The thought tasted bitter in my mouth.

  Now, wolves were beginning to run around me, their packs piled high on their backs. Even though most of them were burdened down with a heavy load, they bounded quickly over the frozen ground in one direction.

  Towards my pack.

  I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t turn into a wolf to run with them, certainly. I took a hesitant step in the direction most of the wolves were headed. I would soon be left behind, and Alekk—

  “Ahh!”

  I cried out as a line of wolves raced past me. A strong hand grabbed me up and lifted me off of the ground. Even before I saw who it was, I could feel his hand gripping my arm and I recognized his touch.

  Alekk.

  He pulled me off of the ground and into the sled. I fell back against his body as the sled raced forward.

  “Didn’t think I’d leave you, did you?” Alekk said.

  We swept through the camp and quickly past the edge of the last wolves who were packing up. Before I could take another breath, the wolves pulling the sled leapt over a hillside and we were in the forest.

  I gasped. The trees had darkened out the light of the sun, and the dark fir branches swept quickly past us on all sides. Underneath, the sled blades cut through the frosted ground.

  Immediately I began to shiver, my teeth clacking together. Even the extra leather pelts Leah had given me were no match for the chill of the wind cutting across my face. I thought of a poem my mother had taught me once, by Robert Frost. I didn’t remember most of it, but I remembered two lines in particular—

  “The only other sound’s the sweep

  Of easy wind and downy flake.”

  All I could hear was the rush of wind, and as we pulled through the forest, Alekk shifted his weight back in the sled and opened up his robe. I said nothing as he took me back onto his lap and pulled the robe around me. As he did, I caught a glimpse of his scar, running down his neck and disappearing back behind the fabric of his undershirt. Then he had me turned around again to face the front, and I was staring ahead at the line of wolves pulling us deeper into the darkness of the forest.

  The black robes were thick and warm, and I curled up inside of them gratefully, letting my body ease back against his warm chest. The wind still whipped my cheeks until they stung, but I was warm at my core. It was strange, to be pulled along so quickly without exerting any effort. It felt almost like being a wolf—like running through the forest as an animal, wild and alive.

  I’d never been able to appreciate the sensations before as a human, but they were just as powerful now. Maybe more so—in wolf form, I was never so scared at going over a hilltop at full speed or ducking under branches. As a human, this was all so thrilling. I almost forgot what we were racing toward.

  Alekk’s voice whispered in my ear.

  “Kinaya?”

  “Yes?” I said, twisting my head back to see him. His dark hair fell forward, fringing his eyes. In the dim light of the forest, they reflected pieces of light from the frosted ground, but they were darker than before. Dark deep pools of blue that held my gaze hypnotically.

  His hands moved under the robes, and I jerked backwards when he slid one hand on top of my thigh.

  “Alekk!” I cried out.

  “Shhh,” he whispered. I looked to the side. An accompanying wolf was looking over at us as he ran alongside the sled. His bundled packs bounced on his furred back as he ran, but he was still more attentive to Alekk. To his prince.

  “I told you, Kinaya, that I would repay you,” he said. His voice was a low growl that the wind ripped away as soon as he’d spoken the words. Still, they echoed through my body, sending another wave of heat through me that had nothing to do with the thick robes pulled around me.

  “I don’t—I can’t—”

  “Don’t do anything,” he said. He shifted me back so that I was seated completely in his lap, and I felt the thick strain of his erection through the fabric. I bit my lip and stared ahead. The line of wolves pulled us forward through the trees, their paw prints darkening the ground beneath them. The sled’s runners hissed over the icy ground and I swallowed hard. What did he want me to do? Surely he wouldn’t ask me to suck him off here.

  At the thought, I had the strange realization that if he asked me to, I would. I would turn around and bend awkwardly and do whatever he wanted. The idea of having his cock in my mouth again made me salivate. I tried to push back the yearning ache inside of me, but it grew and grew with the thought of touching his bare skin again.

  “Lean back against me,” he said. “Relax.”

  I hadn’t noticed how tense I was until he ordered me to relax. I did. One of his hands was at my hip, his fingers kneading my skin. Did he hate the way my hips bulged out over the leather strap of the pelts? But no, he moved his other hand, and now he was pulling the hem of my pelts up, tugging at the leather strings.

  “Alekk,” I said hoarsely. He was undressing my lower half.

  “Yes?”

  “What—what are you—”

  “You’ll see.” He unraveled the leather cord and then the pelts fell away and I was naked, naked from the waist down under Alekk’s robes. If he pulled his robes back, I’d be completely exposed. But he didn’t. He settled back, his hand stroking my thigh idly.

  I breathed in and out. His touch on my bare skin had my complete focus. I withdrew into myself, noticing only the way his fingertips stroked my skin, pausing for a moment near my knee, then dragging back along my inner thigh, stopping before he touched me there.

  The sled began to pick up speed as we moved downhill. The slope of the ground under us must have grown, but I only knew it because of the way my body reacted to the gravity, pulling away from his hand. I gripped the robes tightly around me, unwilling to let him know how much he was affecting me with his touch.

  He was torturing me. Every stroke of his came a fraction closer to touching me. My core ached with the strokes, ached to push back against his touch. He was so close to touching me, to easing my ache. And yet over and over again, he stroked me close but not quite far enough.

  The other wolves running alongside us were spread out through the trees. They came in flashes of white and gray and black between the branches. I leaned my head back on Alekk’s chest cautiously and he nuzzled my hair. I nearly cried. I wanted him to touch me so badly. This monster, this conquerer. This man who had made me suck him in front of all of his soldiers. I should have hated him, but instead I wanted him too badly to care.

  “Tell me, Princess,” he said, “what would you like?”

  I let out a soft cry as his hand slid up the inside of
the fabric and cupped my breast. The first hand still moved up and down my thigh, up and down. I was already slick between my legs with desire. My heart beat fast as he squeezed my breast at the same time as he squeezed my thigh, just above the knee.

  “Alekk,” I said. “I want…”

  “Yes?”

  A moment of clarity tore through my desire.

  “I want peace,” I said. “Peace for both our packs.”

  Alekk’s hands stopped moving for a second, and a cry nearly burst from my throat. God, I wanted him!

  Then he began to stroke me again, slower than before, as though he was more contemplative.

  “Is that all you want?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  Alekk turned his head, and I realized he was looking around to the other wolves, to see if any of them would be able to hear. He seemed satisfied that they wouldn’t, and he leaned forward, his mouth at my ear. His breath was hot as he spoke to me.

  “You will have your peace,” he whispered. “If it’s up to me, you will have all you hope for, Princess.”

  My heart swelled at his words. Despite his message to us, despite his actions, I trusted him. His hand slid higher from my knee.

  “But now,” he growled, “I will give you a different kind of peace.”

  With that word, he forced my thighs apart with his hand, diving his fingers into my heat. I pressed a squeal into the robes to hide from the guards. His arm came up across my chest, pulling me back against him as he pushed his fingers down against my swollen clit.

  “Ohh,” I moaned. At his touch, a thousand images sprung into my mind. A dark shadow of a man, bent over me from behind. It was Alekk’s breath in my ear. It was Alekk’s fingers sliding into my wet entrance.

  “God, you’re already so ready,” Alekk said, gritting his teeth. I felt his hard shaft twitch against my lower back. Would he take my virginity here, riding in a sled? One part of me hoped that he would, and my hips slid back over his hard cock, teasing him.

  He yanked me back down, and his fingers thrust into me. I gasped as my body clenched involuntarily around his fingers.

  The sensation was too much to bear. Even without him moving, I felt his fingers invading me and my body ached to have more. I tried to twist in his grasp but his arm held me tight.

  Slowly, then, slower than I’d ever thought possible, his fingers slid out of me. I almost cried out with the ache of him leaving me. My body was hollow, empty without his touch. Oh, God, I needed him.

  Slowly, slowly, he slid his fingers back in, and I clenched tight around as he pushed deeper into me, pressing up against my virgin seal. I let out a soft cry as he withdrew his fingers before breaking into me completely.

  “Oh, Kinaya,” he moaned. “You are too much temptation for me.”

  “I was too much temptation for him?” I didn’t understand him, not at all. It was me who felt the Calling, my body who betrayed me by wanting this dark wolf to claim me as his.

  I had told myself when I left that I was ready to sacrifice myself for the pack. Now, though, I knew that this was no sacrifice. I wanted to throw myself into his arms and cry for him to do whatever he wanted to me. I did not know anything but lust, a pure carnal lust that burned through me and left nothing.

  His fingers plunged into me now, and his mouth came down onto my neck as I arched back.

  His.

  I was his, now and for as long as he would have me. His lips sucked at my skin, pressing kisses down to the top of my shoulder and back against my ear. I moaned as his fingers thrust into me, then out again.

  “Princess,” he whispered, and there was a catch in his voice before he kissed me against under my ear. I could not keep myself from rocking my hips forward as he slid his hand between my thighs. Oh, that delicious friction! Oh, the feeling of being filled with his flesh!

  “God, Kinaya, forgive me,” he murmured, and then his hand was working fast and hard, thrusting into me with a quickening rhythm that I matched. I rocked forward against his hand harder and harder, my eyes squeezed shut. I was ashamed of my body’s reaction even as I let myself lose control of it. He thrust his fingers into me and I matched him, my whole body lifting from the seat as we rode over bumpy ground. I could feel the pressure inside of me building and building, but I was no longer in control of my desire.

  “Alekk,” I moaned, feeling the wave rise up inside of me. He said nothing, only sucked hard at the side of my neck, his tongue moving against my skin as his fingers slid over and into me faster, faster. Then I was shaking against him, my back arched back, and I could feel it—

  —oh God, no, don’t shift—

  My wolf was coming out, and I couldn’t control it. As my body slipped and began to shift, I felt the explosion come through me and I rode the wave of my orgasm as it crashed though me. I cried aloud, my body shivering and trembling as his fingers filled me and I clenched around him tightly in spasm after spasm.

  “Kinaya.”

  I opened my eyes and snapped back to human form. I hadn’t shifted. I wouldn’t. But the flash had come through me, the flash that could only mean one thing.

  The Calling.

  “Prince! Sir!”

  Alekk’s head snapped to the side, and I looked over to see a large wolf running alongside the sled.

  “Yes?” Alekk called to him.

  “A strange scent. Did you smell that?”

  “A scent?” he asked casually.

  “Yes. A wolf. Not our pack.”

  Alekk sniffed the air. I pulled myself back into pure human form, pulling every single bit of me back inside. It wasn’t easy. My body was still jumping with the spasms of my orgasm, and I could barely control myself. But I had to.

  “I don’t smell anything.”

  “It’s gone now. It was there, just a flash of it.”

  “I think you’re smelling our farts back there. Stay to the side of us.”

  “Yes, sir,” he said, wrinkling his snout and trying to smell my scent again. I drew back into myself, pulling Alekk’s robes around me.

  “Easy, Princess,” he said, withdrawing his hand. I felt him retying the leather straps around my waist, pulling down the pelts and covering my waist.

  I gulped. I’d almost given myself away. I didn’t know what the result would be if I did, but I knew that Alekk wanted me to stay his secret.

  There was another secret.

  I felt it, I knew I felt it. Even though I had no idea how to describe it, it could only be one thing. The Calling. When he’d touched me, I’d known that I was his.

  But then, did Alekk feel it? It seemed like he didn’t, and as he resettled in his seat, I worried that it was what Dee had called one-sided. Maybe he didn’t care about me in the same way that I cared about him.

  “Faster!” he called out. “Let’s get to the next range before sundown!”

  Maybe he was only teasing me. Playing with me, the way a cat plays with a mouse that it will soon kill. Was that what he was doing? I didn’t know. He hadn’t killed me yet. And despite his army, his reputation… there was something about him that drew me indelibly toward him. I did not know what to do with my desire for him yet. But we still had two days at least before reaching the territory. I hoped to learn more before we reached my pack.

  My pack. Guilt flooded me as I thought about them. Here I was, indulging my stupid desires, when they were all on the run. I bent my head and said a prayer for Dee, and for my parents, and even for Blaise too. I hoped that wherever they were, they were safer than I was.

  Chapter Seven

  We rode for a few more hours before Alekk rose and called for a break. He gave me water and bread to eat, and did not speak to me. When we started again, he left me in the sled alone and threw his robes up into the sled with me.

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “I need a run,” Alekk said.

  He tore off his clothes, and I could not help but watch, fascinated, as he stripped bare.

  I’d known that he was h
uge, but as he took off his clothes, I saw his bare muscles. They pulled his skin taut, and his skin—

  Oh, my God.

  His back was crisscrossed with scars. Deep ones that pulled the skin together in a knitted healing pucker. Shallow scars that ran like light seams over his muscles, rippling even in the dim light under the fir trees.

  And one scar that was not like any of the others.

  In my mind, I saw Blaise standing over the campfire. He spoke in a deep voice.

  —there was one awful, deep scar—

  Alekk took off his trousers, pulling off the leather pelts and leaving his legs bare.

  —it started at his ankle and curled up around his leg, around his waist, around his chest, and up to his neck—

  I bit my lip, trying not to cry out at the sight of the scar. It had cut so deeply that the muscles in his leg seemed to twist and knot underneath it, bulging out in places. It was as though someone had created his body as a work of art, sculpting it in hard marble. And then, then… something else had tried to destroy it. In my mind, I heard Blaise speak

  —he was more scar than skin—

  Alekk turned and caught my gaze. My skin burned red as he saw me looking at his scars, and he frowned. He turned away, and arched his back, his naked buttocks hard and muscled and knitted with scar tissue.

  His shout turned to a howl as he shifted. Fur sprouted along his spine, tufts of it at his knees and elbows. His face morphed, and I could hear his bones cracking as his skeleton changed into a wolf’s skeleton. He fell to his paws, black fur covering his skin all over. He was huge, a beast with eyes that burned ice-blue set deep in his face. He turned to look at me again, and I could see him inside of his wolf’s form. He was still just as powerful, just as in control.

  He barked once, and then the wolves began to pull the sled again.

  We raced forward, and I tried to forget what it was we were racing toward. The ground here was not covered in frost, and the sled did not move so fast when we were going uphill. Alekk kept up alongside the sled, barking encouragement to the wolves running at his side. I pulled his robes around me. They were warm, but not nearly as warm as his body had been, pressed against mine.