Alice's Alpha

by Ann Gimpel

Something about Jed put her at ease. Or maybe she was just too weary to think straight. She slowly dropped her hands. Tethered to her wrist, the ice ax dangled.

  “That’s better, sweetheart,” he crooned. “Follow me. I promise I don’t bite.”

  She trailed after him and climbed the broad steps leading to the cabin’s heavy wooden door. He unlatched it, took the lantern from its hook, and motioned her through. Alice scanned the large room. One end was a stone fireplace; the other held a kitchen of sorts with a pump mounted next to a sink. A curtained alcove probably contained a bedroom. The lower walls were the same large, flat fieldstones mortared together she’d seen on the outside. The upper walls were wooden planks. Alice sighed. It was warm. Truly warm. She hadn’t realized how chilled she was. Her face stung from the sudden temperature shift.

  She took off her headlamp and set it on a table. Next she unbuckled her waist belt and dropped her ax and pack in a corner. The click of a deadbolt falling into its metal hole snapped her to attention. She made a grab for her ax, but Jed beat her to it. “Don’t know about you,” he said, hefting the ax over a shoulder, “but I’m not fond of weapons inside.”

  She’d been right about his eyes. They were a rich, midnight blue. Something about them made her tingle deep inside. Alice pushed the thought away. She was still a virgin at nearly thirty, and likely to stay that way at the rate things were going in her life. Her nipples pebbled into points of awareness. What am I doing? She shook herself back to reality. A stranger she’d just met had locked her into this cabin and taken her only means of defense. Trepidation trumped lust. “Why’d you lock us in?” Because she tried hard, her voice only shook a little.

  He flashed a key in front of her and dropped it into his pants pocket. “Never know who might be by. I wanted to make certain we’re safe is all.” He made a huffing sound. “Most women appreciate that sort of thing.”

  “No one would come up this trail in the middle of the night.”

  “Hey, I’m sort of a city boy. We believe in locking the bad guys out.” He shrugged. “If you want to hang your jacket, there’re hooks by the fire. It looks pretty wet to me.”

  Alice crossed her arms over her chest and stared at Jed. He stared back. Tension sizzled in the air between them. She held out a hand. “My ax.” She gestured to guns on racks along the walls. “Looks as if there are plenty of weapons in here. Besides, my ice ax isn’t a weapon; it’s a climbing aid.”

  “Let’s just say I’m not enamored of watching my back. Look,” he set her ice ax on the floor, balanced it against his thigh, and spread his hands in front of him, “you’re nervous because you don’t know me. How about if I’m feeling the same way? I don’t know you from Adam, woman. For all I know you shoved that poor fellow who’s on his way to medical care off the side of a cliff.”

  Chapter 2

  Earlier That Day

  Jeddediah stood off by the side of a cave deep under the Palisade Range in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Rush torches lined the walls. Stalactites and stalagmites glistened wetly; some were so large they met in the middle, creating twisted pillars. Clan leader for wolves, Jed watched with pride as his shifter pack comported themselves well against bears, mountain cats, and coyotes. Ancient beyond reckoning, their four shifter groups drew power from the four directions and the four elements. Wolves were west and earth, mountain cats south and fire, coyotes east and air, and bears north and water.

  Jed turned his attention back to one of his wolves who’d just bested a coyote. There were a number of contests, requiring both strength and wits. Every gathering closed with them to defray the seriousness of hours of discussion. The last challenge, paw-to-paw combat where the fighters couldn’t draw on their magic, was the hardest of all. Usually the bears won because of their superior bulk and almost impenetrable coats. But this time, it was looking like his wolves just might triumph.

  He sidestepped nimbly out of the way as a coyote and mountain cat tumbled by him locked in a flurry of teeth and claws. The contests ran until first blood stained the ground. He and the other three clan leaders were quick to call a fight if it got too destructive. They needed every single shifter. To lose even one in a mock skirmish would be unforgivable.

  Jed moved farther from the battling pairs. He needed space to think. The last two days had been a special meeting of the clans. Their survival was threatened; it was time to act.

  For centuries, each clan had kept to themselves. As North America filled with people, shifters migrated west in their search for freedom to roam in animal form. When that didn’t work anymore, they spent more and more time as humans to disguise their true natures. Over time it became obvious the clans needed to work together or none of them would survive.

  Much like their forbearers in Europe, humans in the United States had little tolerance for shifters. After the First World War, things escalated dramatically, maybe because the troops in Europe ran into men who shimmered into other forms and used magic to protect themselves. Europe was more compact than the States, with fewer places to hide. Jed snorted. It didn’t matter why, what mattered was shifters had come back into human consciousness and been labeled a problem. Hunters—religious zealots—came after them in droves.

  “Do you think there’ll be any of us left to meet next year?” The leader of the bear clan, Keir, had sidled over while Jed was lost in thought.

  Jed nodded. “Sure, but maybe not a hundred years from now.”

  The man shook shaggy black hair back from his weather-beaten face. He was a couple inches taller than Jed and outweighed him by a good fifty pounds. “We must prioritize mating.”

  “Easier said than done. We must run free to spur the mating urge. When we are locked in our human forms for weeks and months on end, it mutes … everything.”

  “I tell you, we should all move to Utah and Arizona. We’d blend right in with the Mormons and their group marriages. Lots of open country, too.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” Jed blew out a breath. Keir had a point. Shifters formed family groups with two or three males and a female. The male contingent formed first. Friends and companions, but not lovers, they went in search of their mated female to complete the family unit. Of late, there were lots of male duos and trios that lacked females to produce the next generation.

  “I know I am. Only problem is if we all ended up in the southwestern states, we’d be too visible.”

  A growl bubbled from Jed’s throat. He could almost feel his tail swish back and forth. The urge to shift was irresistible, so he did. He was already naked, so ruined clothes weren’t a problem.

  Keir joined him. They switched to telepathic speech. “I may have found a woman,” he confided.

  “Really? One who is willing to join your family group?”

  Keir nodded. “Yes. I explained everything. How she’d become one of us through the mating ritual.” He grunted. “At first she said she had to think about it. But I wasn’t worried. The mate bond snared her. She was so hot she came just rubbing up against me. She stopped by right before we were getting ready to leave.” He chuckled. “Wanted to do the mating ritual right then. Said she couldn’t wait, but the boys and I didn’t have time.”

  Jed laughed right along with the bear, but then said, “Hmph. Chancy to let her leave your side with knowledge that could sink us.”

  Keir scratched deep furrows into the cave’s floor with his long front claws. “I had my lieutenants watching her. They would have brought her to me if she turned into a liability.” He reared back on his hind legs. “I am desperate for a mate for my family group. Willing to take chances I would not have taken a few years ago. If this gathering hadn’t been so critical to our survival, I would have stayed home and made the woman mine.”

  Jed’s heart went out to the bear. He understood, because he felt the same way. Hunters had gotten cagey. They knew more about shifters than they ever had in the past. It was entirely possible they knew about their dwindling numbers. Jed had no doubt they’d stoop to anything
, including using women as bait. All full-blood shifters were male. Human females who mated with them absorbed some shifter magic through semen, but not enough to change form.

  “Oh, look.” Keir dropped to all fours and shoulder butted him. “We need to go to the judges’ table. They’re calling the games for this gathering.”

  Jed shot Keir a wolfish grin, tongue lolling. “Yes, and I do believe we won for a change.”

  “Only because it’s gotten harder and harder to find places to shift. Some of my guys hardly remember what their animal side feels like.”

  Keir spoke truth; it made Jed sad and angry by turns. Anger was easier to manage. Dropping into his wolf form and killing small rodents muted the fury, at least for a while, but now wasn’t the time.

  He reached for his human body and hunted down his clothes: dark wool pants, a tan cotton shirt, and a multicolored woolen jacket. He pushed his feet into socks and well-worn leather boots and gathered his two lieutenants. Both had won awards and beamed proudly at him. The other fifty or so wolf shifters who had attended the gathering milled about. A few of them had mates, but females never came to shifter gatherings.

  “Come on.” Jed walked up the sloping ramp to the cave’s well-hidden entrance. It was still early in the day, not much past midmorning. He pushed magic out, fanning it about. No one. He’d figured the Sierras would be empty this time of year, and they were. He ducked beneath a low overhang and came out into bright sunlight. Jed shielded his eyes with a hand and squinted against the light. He beckoned to his clan members. “Grab your rifles.” He pointed to a group of long guns hidden in the lee of a large boulder. “Until next time.”

  “Until next time,” echoed back to him. The group dispersed, taking off downhill. Soon only Jed and his two lieutenants were left. Like many shifters, they were a femaleless family group.

  “Do we really have permission to kill those who Hunt us?” Terin asked. His lips curled in a feral grin. Amber eyes gleamed.

  Jed rounded on him. “Only if your life is in imminent danger.”

  “Okay, okay.” Terin held up both hands. “I got that part.” A bit shorter than Jed, he had red hair that fell to the middle of his back. All wolf shifters were built the same: tall and rangy with long, lanky limbs and a limber stride.

  “I still say it’s an improvement,” Bron growled. He shoved black hair out of his face. Dark, bottomless eyes masked his feelings.

  “Hurry. There’s time to hunt before the day ends.” Jed bounded downhill with an easy lope. He picked his way through talus blocks and around cliffs. Their special cave was more than a mile from the main trail that wound into the Palisade Glacier. The terrain off trail was rough which was to their advantage. So far no one had stumbled onto their meeting place.

  They could have made better time as wolves, but it was too chancy in broad daylight. If they ran into hunters of any variety, they’d be done for. The common kind would kill them for their pelts. Church-trained Hunters would kill them for their immortal souls.

  “I smell a Hunter.” Terin careened down the steep slope and caught up to Jed, panting a little.

  Jed scented the air. Damn if Terin wasn’t right. He’d been lost in his thoughts again. He needed to mate. The urge was strong now that he’d spent time in his wolf form. He shoved his erection to a more comfortable position and then slammed a fist against his thigh. “Good call. I’m ashamed I didn’t notice.”

  Terin eyed the tented front of Jed’s trousers and laughed. “Understandable. All that talk of mating at the gathering got to me, too. We need to find a woman. It’s been too long since we’ve had someone who liked all of us.”

  Jed eyed his lieutenant. “What we need is a mated one, not casual sex.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.” Terin rubbed his crotch, a wistful look in his eyes.

  “Hey!” Jed snapped his fingers in front of Terin. “Enough of that. You fondling yourself isn’t helping me focus at all. What about the Hunter?”

  “Trail’s not all that fresh, but it’s not all that old, either. I’ll bet he traveled by this spot sometime in the last few hours.”

  Jed’s eyes narrowed. “It could be coincidence. Do you think he was after us?”

  Terin shook his head. “Nah. Scent track follows the trail. If he’d been after us, he’d have been crawling around up here.”

  “Not necessarily—”

  Bron chugged alongside. “I smell—” he began, but Jed waved him to silence.

  “We already know.” He sucked in a breath and looked from one to the other of his lieutenants. “There’s only one of him and three of us. If we run into him, we’re just a bunch of guys out for a spot of early season hunting. If he figures out what we are, we jump him.”

  “And kill him,” Terin snarled.

  “Maybe,” Jed cautioned. “Wait for my command on that. I know the clans are out for blood, but I can’t see where it furthers our cause to engage the enemy in an all-out war. We’d lose.”

  * * * *

  Jed sat in a wooden chair on the generous front porch, which wrapped around Lon Chaney’s cabin; his legs were splayed in front of him. He rubbed a hand over his pleasantly full stomach. Terin and Bron were out back butchering the carcasses of the deer and mountain cat they’d killed. There hadn’t been any sign of the Hunter they’d scented earlier. Maybe he was going across Jigsaw Pass and out over Bishop Pass. It was a popular route.

  Jed let his hand stray lower and stroked himself through his trousers. His cock had been giving him nothing but grief since the up-close-and-personal discussion on mating at the gathering. He shook his head. What a difference a few hundred years made. Before humans decided shifters were a threat, women had vied with one another to see who got to have sex with them. The pairing gave a woman power and status. Not anymore. Mate bond or no, Keir would be lucky if the woman he’d found didn’t turn him in.

  Jed’s cock jumped against his hand. It truly didn’t give a shit about philosophy. It had liked it a whole lot better when it had a woman’s body to bury itself within. He tilted his head and listened with his wolf senses. Terin and Bron chatted while they worked. It was unlikely he’d be disturbed in the few moments it would take to satisfy himself.

  Jed unbuttoned his trousers. His cock sprang out, and he closed a hand around it. He toyed with his nipples, tweaking and teasing them, before he lowered his other hand to cup his balls. He stroked his shaft, starting with a soft, tormenting touch. It didn’t take long before the feathery strokes turned into the firm rhythm he preferred. His heartbeat sounded loud against his ears. He heard himself make a growling, grunting sound and knew it had been far too long since he’d come. He thought he should be quiet, but then he didn’t care. His lieutenants would leave him alone if they figured out what he was doing.

  Jed’s cock swelled against his fingers. His hips thrust hard upward; his head fell back. Bouncing breasts and wet, gleaming pussies half-hidden by curly hair filled his mind. Jed imagined shoving deep inside a woman, taking her from behind. The firm globes of a perfect ass banged against his thighs. He held onto her hips as he drove himself home inside her over and over. His cock bucked in his hand, and then did it again and again. Heat poured through him, setting his nerves on fire. Semen arced and spattered the ground. He stroked himself some more, wondering if he could come again. He was still rock hard. His climax had barely tapped the tip of his lust.

  He panted, breath harsh in his throat, and tightened the hand on his shaft. He worked it some more, swirling semen around the sensitive head. Moving the hand cradling his balls back just a little, he put pressure on the spot right behind them. Yes, perfect! Jed fucked his hand harder and harder until another orgasm roared through him. It was more intense this time; his cock jerked and spasmed over and over.

  He lay in a gasping, quivering heap working at getting his breath back.

  “I thought I smelled sex.”

  Jed’s eyes snapped open at the sound of Terin’s voice. “Show a little respect,” he
growled.

  Terin snorted. “I would, but you’ve got to pull yourself together. That Hunter is closing on us.”

  Jed leaped to his feet. “Tell me.” He grabbed an old towel draped over the chair next to his and wiped himself off before stuffing his cock back into his pants.

  “It’s only been the past couple of minutes. Bron smelled it first. There are two people.”

  Jed’s eyes narrowed. “How come we didn’t sense the other Hunter earlier?”

  Terin shook his head. “Sorry. I wasn’t clear. Only one Hunter, but he has a woman with him. They’re probably still a couple thousand feet above us, but they’re coming right down that mountainside.” He pointed across the river.

  “It’s ridiculously steep and clogged with deadfall. Who the hell would be that stupid?”

  Terin shrugged. “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not. Except if they break their damn necks, it will mean a hell of a lot of trouble for us. This mountain will be crawling with authority figures and search parties.”

  Bron trotted around the cabin. “Finished getting the meat packed away.” His gaze locked with Jed’s. “What’s next, boss?”

  Jed ran options through his mind, grateful he’d had a brief sexual respite. It really helped clear his thoughts. “We stay here, doing just what we’re doing. Unless he bothers us, we ignore him.”

  “What about the woman?” Terin asked.

  “Same deal. Besides, if she’s his girlfriend—” His voice trailed off. Hunters were celibate. They didn’t have girlfriends.

  “She could be like a sister or something,” Bron offered.

  Jed made a decision. “We’re going to go around back. I don’t want him to think we’re staring at him. In fact, if we escape his notice, all the better. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the pair of them will just cross the creek, hit the trail, and head downhill without bothering us at all.”

  “Fat chance,” Terin said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Jed murmured. “If he’s even marginally competent, he’ll smell us, but let’s hope for the best. I’ll spin a bit of a diversionary spell.”