Under the Alpha's Protection (Steamy Werewolf Shifter Menage Romance)

by Willow Wilde

  “Holy shit,” I murmured as he set me down against the ground. “That was fucking incredible…”

  “How long did you say you will be in these parts?” Brad asked, stroking my hair aside as I struggled to stand up straight. “We would love to see you again sometime…”

  He turned to the others, and I noticed them nodding with restrained enthusiasm out of the corner of my eye.

  “Oh, I’m going to be here all summer,” I grinned, digging up my clothes from the dirt. Luckily, my uncle was already asleep…I had no idea how I was going to explain all of this to him, if he saw me creeping back inside, dripping with crumbled dirt. “Good thing that Uncle Jack isn’t awake,” I spoke aloud. “He’d probably pitch an absolute fit if he knew I was fuckin’ the help.”

  “Oh, I think your uncle knows,” Brad answered with a smile, pushing aside a thick bush ahead. Scooping up my last few things, and grasping my boots between my fingers, I peered out from behind him to the house. There was a second-floor light on, and if I was judging correctly, it was the one to his bedroom…

  “Aw, fuck,” I murmured to myself.

  * * * *

  Sheepishly, I closed the front door as quietly as I could. Sneaking into the house was pretty much an exercise in futility, as I knew he was awake and probably well aware of what I had been doing.

  “Late night for a walk,” I heard from the living room.

  DAMMIT.

  “Yeah, you could say that,” I answered, kicking off my boots and sauntering towards the flickering light from around the corner. Popping my head in, he was watching his big screen television again. This time, it was a monster truck show of some sort. Looked like a rerun.

  “Listen, Uncle Jack, I just—“

  “No need.” He turned away from the television, but I couldn’t see his exact expression in the light. “Go on then, have a seat, darlin’. Grab a beer. Hell, grab me one, too. I’m runnin’ low on mine.” He lifted his can, sloshing it quietly.

  Confused, I did as I was told, and tossed him a refill. He swigged down the remainder and set it aside on the end table, before popping the lid on the fresh one. “Go on, then,” he murmured, and I popped the top on my own.

  “Uncle Jack—“

  “What you do is none of my business, darlin’. Just don’t get me in any trouble with your folks, okay? I know the ranch-hands are attractive, and they won’t hurt ya. Their kind have been friends of our kind for some time. Goes back a few generations.”

  “I…wait, their kind?” I asked, flummoxed. “You mean you knew?”

  “Know what? That the hands on my ranch are werebear shifters? ‘Course I know! What the hell kind of ranch owner would I be if I didn’t know the help!” He gave a riotous laugh before sucking down another swig of beer. “Hell, your grandfather even got one of their women knocked up, long time ago. Not sure your daddy knows he’s the youngest of three.”

  “I…wow.” I dropped into the comfort of the leather sofa. “They never said anything about you knowing. Seemed to indicate the alternative, actually.”

  “That was Brad doin’ that, right?” He chuckled. “Brad’s sorta like that. Like to fuck around with people. But no, your great grandfather was tight with the shifters. Runs in the family. Only, your father didn’t stick around the ranch long enough to figure it out. Probably wouldn’t have handled it well, in hindsight…”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “No, he doesn’t seem the type…”

  “And yet, here we are,” Uncle Jack smiled. “The shifters have always taken a like to us. You see, your great-grandpa saved one of them. The alpha male. Leader of the whole pack. And I’ve had the luxury of helping a few of them out in a bind myself. So they’re real honorable-like, those folks. Most of ‘em, they’ve moved on for different parts, but those three come by to help out sometimes. Didn’t really occur to me that they’d be sniffin’ around you, but they have a blood oath sort of thing…it’s complicated. All you need to know is that you’re safe near them, and they’ll make you happy.”

  “How long are they going to be around?”

  He scratched his chin. “Long as you are, I imagine now…and probably every time you come back. You’ve done fine work so far, and you’re free to visit whenever you’d like. Keep me in the loop, and I’ll get in contact with ‘em…Hell, I don’t have any kids, maybe one day this ranch’ll be yours. You like that idea? Ownin’ yourself a shifter ranch?”

  A goofy smile crossed my face as I took a deep gulp of the beer. I DID like the idea. I liked it a LOT…

  More from Willow Wilde

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  Here’s a sample of “Five Alphas Loving Curves”

  Five Alphas Loving Curves

  Ever since we had moved to this boring little mountain city, the only thing of any real fun had been the Snowpine Resort. It was our private little Disneyland – tucked away up in the mountains, it was the badge of honor to any worthwhile winter to have spent at least a weekend up there. Most of the kids in my classes learned how to ski or snowboard at an early age, hitting the carefully-groomed trails and coming back occasionally with a broken bone but always with a good story. The richer kids practically lived up there during the seasons, coming back down for classes and spending their Fridays blowing through the classes and planning their festivities.

  If I sound a little bitter, it's because I had to watch that crap my entire adolescence. Not once did I ever get to go up there...not until a particularly life-changing weekend during my single year of college.

  * * * *

  After blazing through our finals, my best friend Jenn and I saved up enough money to finally scrap together a weekend. As we drove up to the resort, we commiserated over the endless late nights of waiting tables at the borderline awful steakhouse in town. All those side salads whipped together in the kitchen, those soul-wrenching Kids Eat Free Tuesday nights, and enough indecent tippers to practically bankrupt us outside of paying our bills and incrementally adding to the collective “Ski Resort or Bust” pot…

  As we stood in line that Friday afternoon, finally ready to hand over our hard-earned cash, we knew the weekend was going to be fucking amazing. Jenn had already been once, when she first moved to town for college. I wasn't much of a drinker, which was pretty much all that there was to do here. Jenn didn't mind so much, and dragged me along to the occasional club during the summers, while I'd drink a virgin coke while she slammed down mixed drinks and danced with the guys.

  This year's fashion? Lumberjacks, apparently.

  I didn't get the aesthetic at first, but I had to admit that there was something primal in it that appealed to me. Those rugged jaws and thick beards did something fierce to me, or at least they did when I was home alone with my hand down the front of my pajama pants. In all honesty, the actual guys never really turned me on. They always seemed to act their age, which was apparently twelve. Catcalling and whooping after the women, they didn't have a single bone of respect or appreciation for a real woman between them.

  And I, of course, was all “real woman.” With curves that wouldn't quit and a nice, thick body, I was eager to give my pillowy body to the first true gentleman who wooed me.

  But I found out the hard way that I was surrounded by a bunch of mountain hicks. They were all idiots, the lot of them. It took me a while to understand that they were just animals, really, but a bunch of stupid ones at that. The primal needs that I felt were r
elegated to my alone time, and I set aside any hope that a real man would ever whisk me off of my feet.

  I said before that we knew the weekend was going to be fucking amazing. And it was...but for reasons I would never have guessed. And at first...it was looking pretty freaking abysmal.

  * * * *

  I glared out the windows into the dead of the night, cursing my luck. The weather was supposed to have been fine for this weekend, but the freak snowstorm had inexplicably come out of nowhere. Jenn and I had barely made it back from the trails in time.

  “C'mon, Jess,” she told me. I hadn't heard her approach, and I whipped my head around to scowl at her. “You've been over here for, like, twenty minutes. Glaring at it isn't going to make it go away, you know.”

  “I'm willing to try.” My sarcasm bitterly dripped from my voice as I crossed my arms, facing it again. Just my rotten, fucking luck. “I mean, the forecast said everything was fine! Where the hell did all of this come from?”

  “I don't know,” she conceded. “We're lucky we got in when we did. I think we're pretty much the only ones here...besides our heroes, of course.”

  “Did somebody call for me?” The burly man asked, suddenly appearing behind us. As he glanced upon us, there was a twinkle of a mischievous smile beneath his thick beard.

  “Oh, nothing at all Ben, you've already done enough for us!” Jenn gushed, giggling nervously. “I mean, you already pulled us from the storm with your big, strong arms...”

  I stifled a groan, but Ben briefly shared a knowing smile. Jenn liked to think that she was an expert player in the “hard to get” game, but that was only in some weird parallel world where “hard to get” meant “let's fuck on the first date.” For all of her attempts at being coy, in actuality she was about as hard to read as a freaking billboard.

  Ben took the high road. “It was nothing,” he responded humbly. “And it wasn't just me, my brothers were with me out there...five of us...looking for anyone caught out in the storm.”

  “Yeah, what happened out there?” I suddenly asked, glancing out the window again. “I mean, we checked the Weather Channel like our lives depended on it for the last week...it was supposed to be sunny skies all around.”

  Ben stood closer to the window, following my gaze. Losing himself in thought, his fingers found their way into his beard, scratching softly against his hair. “I'm going to be completely honest, I have no idea,” he finally answered. “Up in the mountains, we sort of expect this weather sometimes...but there wasn't a cloud in the sky a couple of hours ago. Wonder if it has anything to do with the legend...”

  “Legend?” Jenn and I asked in unison.

  “Oh, it's silly,” Ben told us, shaking his head with a grin. “Just some old story.”

  My gaze flew over the otherwise abandoned lobby. His brothers were upstairs, and we were the only other guests around. A cursory look out the window showed that the storm wasn't letting up anytime soon.

  “I...think we have the time,” I slyly told him.

  “Yeah,” Jenn answered quietly, a tinge of dejection in her voice. “This whole trip just became a big bust. Let's at least get a little fun out of it.”

  “Well, alright then,” Ben conceded. “So, as recent as a century ago, these mountains were the lands of a very spiritual Native tribe. The word goes that they've been in these peaks for a thousand years. Very tied to the land. Nobody even knew they were here until this region was settled and scarce on unclaimed land.”

  We both nodded as he continued.

  “So, I don't know if it was the high altitudes fiddling with their brains, or all the herbal concoctions they were undoubtedly taking, but they got it into their heads that there was a man up in these mountains who could become a bear. This man apparently offered them protection in exchange for women, who he promptly returned...pregnant, every time. The women who pledged themselves to him would conceive normal boys, but around the age of puberty they would gain the power to become bears as well...and so it goes on.”

  “But what does this have to do with the storm?” I asked.

  “Right, the storm.” He glanced out the window at the harrowing snow for a moment, with a brief flicker of tenderness across his face. “The storm was a punishment. This bear-man was what translates roughly into a “shifter”. This shifter, the legend says, was very powerful. He was the god of the forest, and it bent to him – even the weather. When he came for women and the tribe didn't pay tribute, he would inflict a savage snowstorm on the peaks. It would come completely out of nowhere and thrash itself wildly across the land, a lot like this.” He indicated outside, and our gazes were pulled to the swirling madness just feet from us. “Not only did it trap them where they were, but something about the storm inspired a mating frenzy in the shifters among them. They would find their primal instincts overwhelming them, and the women...well, whether it was some sort of weird bear pheromone or not, they would willingly give into their needs. The bears would mate, and the storm would pass.”

  “That's such crap,” I told him. Jenn turned to look at me while Ben tilted his bushy head. “Shifters? Native tribes? I'm guessing this resort is built right where their settlement was?”

  “Not this resort, no,” he smiled. “More like this particular building.”

  * * * *

  One of Ben's brothers wandered into the room with a tray of hot chocolate and some sandwiches. We gratefully sipped at our drinks and chewed on the food while Ben wandered towards the counter for something.

  “Did he tell you that damned Native story again? I swear, he should just write some damned books and get that out of his head,” his brother told us. He was just as burly as Ben, although a little shorter, with a thicker beard and a tuft of chest hair bursting from below his V-cut shirt.

  “Aren't you cold in that?” Jenn asked him.

  He glanced down at the shirt quizzically, then smiled warmly. “Nah, it's plenty warm in here. I've got all the insulation I need right here!” He heartily slapped his chest and let out a roar of laughter.

  Jenn and I couldn't help but smile at each other.

  “Alex, hush it!” Ben laughed as he came back over. “I don’t need you butting in about my shifter legends.”

  But I noticed the way they were looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes…as if there was another layer to their banter that we weren’t getting. It was the look that people shared during an inside joke. Wonder what’s going on?

  I was ripped from my thoughts as they wandered away, lost in conversation, leaving me with Jenn. We curled up in front of a television and put some cable. If we’re trapped up here, we might as well do SOMETHING, I thought to myself. And the boob tube sort of qualified.

  The time started to fly by as we watched re-runs of old sitcoms, finishing our hot chocolates and trying to salvage the trip. At least the view was a little different.

  * * * *

  “I think I'm going to turn in for the night,” Jenn told me sheepishly after a couple of hours.

  “Oh, come on! Isn't this just so exciting, though?” I asked sarcastically. My attention still wandered back to the storm – I knew it would be morning at the earliest before it broke, but I was still dedicated to dissolving it with the power of my icy stare.

  “Jess, it's...it's already 11:30,” she mentioned to me, following my gaze. “I don't think there's anything that can be done about that mess tonight. Maybe we should just turn in early?”

  “I would, probably, but I'm just not too tired,” I told her. Strangely, it was true. Normally, I'd be all tuckered out right about now, given the type of day we'd had. For some reason I was as awake as ever, and the idea of SLEEP? There was nothing really to do here this late, but I couldn't help but feel like I should stay up.

  “I'll go to bed later. You go get your rest.” I got up to wander back to the window again, settling down in the chair.

  “Alright,” she reluctantly told me. “Don't stay up too late. If this is gone by morning, I don't w
ant you exhausted and bitchy all day.”

  “I'll be bitchy whenever I damned well please. Now scram!” My devious smirk made her shake her head with a smile, and she disappeared around the corner and upstairs.

  My gaze returned to the window. I couldn't help but think about Ben's story...I mean, it was totally irrational. That kind of stuff, the whole “shifter”, “natives up in the mountains” thing...I'd stopped believing in crap like that when I grew up. The most spiritual experience I'd ever had was getting my hands on a vibrator. But I couldn't get the thought out of my head...how cool would it be if that was the case? An old tribe with a bunch of paranormal bear dudes around, fighting the mountain lions and lording over the peaks.