by Tasha Black
FATE OF THE ALPHA: EPISODE 1
A TARKER’S HOLLOW SERIAL
TASHA BLACK
13TH STORY PRESS
Contents
Copyright
Foreword
Episode 1
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
Afterword
Also by Tasha Black
Copyright © 2014 by 13th Story Press All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
First Edition: December 18, 2014
13th Story Press PO Box 506 Swarthmore, PA 19081
[email protected]
Cover design 2014 by Cormar Covers
www.cormarcovers.com
FOREWORD
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-Tasha
Episode 1
CHAPTER 1
A insley Connor ran through the college woods, her wolf form moving so fast it felt more like flying.
Smooth pine needles tickled at her paws, and the scents of Tarker’s Hollow filled her nose. Ainsley still struggled to master her wolf abilities, and since becoming alpha, her already heightened wolf senses were off the charts. She inhaled deeply and practiced differentiating the myriad of smells.
She could pick out the subtle metallic tang of the nearby train tracks going all the way to Philadelphia. The denizens of the forest all had their own unique aromas. The scents of squirrels, assorted birds, raccoons, a family of deer, and a lone fox danced across her muzzle. There was even the sweet woodsy aroma of the chipmunks living in the abandoned terra cotta gutter drain of the Hooper’s Victorian a mile away in town.
And of course, she thrilled at the deep, spicy musk of her mate, Erik Jensen, as he ran just ahead of her. She could also pick up on the smells of other wolves who had recently run these woods. She immediately recognized whiffs of Cressida and MacGregor, but the others eluded her for now. She would have to learn them all, eventually.
The scents of the woods intrigued her, but they were overpowered by the full-out assault of the campus cafeteria, now in full swing for fall semester. Even before the first rays of dawn had dared to peek over the horizon, the air was filled with the aroma of bacon and eggs and hot fluffy pancakes.
But still no sign of the intruder.
There had been several reports of a rogue wolf in the college woods, but so far, no one had actually seen anything outside of some vague hints and tracks. Ainsley and Erik had come to investigate for themselves, although she honestly had no idea what she was meant to do if she found an outsider wolf trespassing on pack lands.
Erik, in the form of his giant black wolf, spread his paws and skidded to a stop in front of her. Ainsley barely reacted in time to avoid a collision.
Erik’s body slid gracefully upward into human form.
Even when she was a wolf, Ainsley loved looking at Erik. And right now he was naked, which enraptured her.
Silky black hairs kissed his long legs. His buttocks swelled to perfect globes. A satisfying inverted triangle formed from his narrow waist to his wide, muscled shoulders. And he smelled like heaven.
Ainsley rose into human form before he could turn around. As she reached out to wrap her arms around him, she realized he was deep in thought and dropped her hands to her sides.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Tracks.”
Great. She hadn’t even noticed the tracks. One more example of what a crummy wolf Ainsley was.
“Is that why we were running?”
“Of course,” he said. “Why did you think we were running?”
“Because we can?”
Erik’s deep laugh put her at ease, as it always did.
Good thing too, because Ainsley was surely one of the worst wolves to ever trot through the woods of Tarker’s Hollow College. If she weren’t the alpha, it probably wouldn’t bother her. But as things were…
Well, Ainsley was going to have to learn to be a better wolf quickly.
The problem was that she had left Tarker’s Hollow when she was only seventeen, immediately after learning she was a wolf. And she’d spent the years in the interim denying the change.
The first four years she’d passed primarily in the library at college. After that, she went straight to Manhattan and dedicated her time to selling luxury co-ops in the high-rises of the city, as far from nature as she could get.
Now she was back in her childhood home. Not just a wolf, but the alpha of the whole pack. It had taken the tragic death of her parents to bring her back, and without their loving guidance, she had a lot of catching up to do on her own.
Thank god for Erik.
“It’s tracks, and fresh ones too.”
“Whose are they?” she asked.
“You tell me.” His voice took on the serious tone he got whenever he was teaching her a lesson in How to Be a Wolf 101. “They’re not from an outsider. It’s a Tarker’s Hollow wolf. Can you figure out who?”
“You recognize all the Tarker’s Hollow wolves’ tracks, just like that?”
“Yeah.”
“All of them?”
“Sure.”
Ainsley sighed.
“What?”
“Would every wolf in this pack besides me recognize all the other tracks?”
“I’m a pretty good tracker.” Erik smiled modestly.
Ainsley tried not to voice the question that was in her head all the time these days.
Why wasn’t Erik the alpha?
Unlike Ainsley, Erik had been excited to discover that their small college town was home to a small pack of wolves who lived among the human population. He had been an integral part of the pack since puberty. Erik was strong, and smart, and everyone in town loved him. He would have been the perfect alpha.
But for some reason, she was.
When they had finally gotten together, she assumed she was choosing Erik as the new alpha. That was the way it was supposed to work - when she chose a mate, she would draw the alpha. But when the deed was done, no one was more surprised than she was. The alpha she had drawn was herself: Ainsley Connor, prodigal daughter, ersatz witch, and all-around terrible wolf.
As one, they squatted to study a single track that was perfectly preserved in the mud.
Ainsley saw paw pads, claw marks - a bog standard wolf print.
“How big is it?” Erik asked.
“Not as big as ours.”
“How deep?”
“Not very.”
“What does that tell you?”
“The mud is pretty wet, so it must not be a very heavy wolf. Is it a female?”
“Yes, very good. What else do you notice?”
Ainsley looked at her own tracks and Erik’s, then back at the one in question.
“Looks… furry compared to ours.”
“Yes, she’s pretty shaggy. What else?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re ignoring your most powerful sense.”
Ainsley dropped to her knees and lowered her nose down to the track.
It was no use. She could smell about fifty different wolves from here, as well as a town full of humans, and even the sleeping students in the dorms. As usual, she was a slave to her heightened senses, not the master of them.
“I feel like I can smell the whole world. How do you separate it?”
“I’m not sure, Ainsley.” Erik shrugged, and ran a hand through his too-long dark hair. “It’s like asking how you tell one color from another. I just do.”
“The Inner Game of Tennis, right?”
He laughed again. And again she felt the tangle of worry in her belly loosen a little.
“Just relax and try again. Try shutting your eyes this time.”
Relax.
Easy for him to say. Standing there, naked, he looked like a statue of a greek god. Ainsley’s own image resembled artwork that was slightly more Rubenesque.
There was a time she would have been terrified to stand completely naked in front of any man, even in the pre-dawn gloom. But she only had to look at the expression of adoration on Erik’s face, more naked than either of their bodies, to forget her inhibition.
Plus, you ruined a lot of good clothes if you were a wolf who didn’t like being naked.
Ainsley exhaled and closed her eyes. She lowered her head to the ground again and inhaled deeply.
In her mind’s eye, a figure appeared. An older woman, in a smart pantsuit, pulling up to the college to her old Volvo.
“Carol?” Ainsley asked, thinking of her father’s longtime colleague. It had to be her. Ainsley’s confidence strengthened. “Definitely Carol Lotus!”
She opened her eyes and looked up. Erik was smiling down at her, his dark eyes crinkling.
“Very good.”
She grinned back at him.
The breeze pushed her hair forward over her face and in an instant she could see his face transform. His gentle smile was gone, in its place an expression of desperate hunger. Her scent must be overpowering.
The moon.
Its pull was so strong. She wasn’t sure how they’d survived her first full moon. Now the moon was swelling for the second time since she’d come home.
Mating during the full moon thrilled and excited Ainsley. But it was hard to get anything else done. She knew they’d come into the woods with a task to complete, but she couldn’t be bothered to care about that right now.
There was only Erik. Her tall, dark, handsome, warm, naked mate.
Before she could process what was happening he had thrown her to the ground and pinned her down on her back, covering her with his hard body. As the pine needles tickled her shoulder blades, he fed on her mouth. She could feel his swollen cock pressed against her thigh and her whole body tightened with longing.
Her mate did not deny her. With each lovemaking he seemed to refine his study of her pleasure. As wild as he had been for her in the beginning he seemed even more desperate to please her now.
Ainsley gasped as his hot mouth found her breast. He licked and teased at her nipples until she let her nails sink into his arms. Then he latched onto one firmly.
Just as Ainsley felt her hips lift involuntarily into his, he froze.
Always a step behind, she heard it right after he did. College students, jogging on the path past the woods.
“Shit!”
There was just enough time for them to dash into the underbrush before the entire Tarker’s Hollow Men’s Soccer team breezed past. Most of them were shirtless even in the cool fall air.
Ainsley’s inner wolf pricked up its ears. With the moon swelling and her libido in this state, she would have devoured them all.
Ainsley wished she could swat her on the snout with a newspaper. Pay more attention to tracking and less to boys, you furry slut! But she was pretty sure it was a lost cause.
There was a snuffle behind her and she whipped her head around to see Erik try to hide a half-smile.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing. You want me to jog a little too?” He demonstrated, and managed to look hot and ridiculous at the same time.
Ainsley looked away.
“Aren’t I supposed to be learning wolf skills or something?”
“If that’s what you want, you’d better shift before we get any more ideas.”
Ainsley sighed. It wasn’t what she wanted at all, but she was never one to shirk responsibilities. And right now, it looked as though they were piling up.
It seemed that every moment that wasn’t spent sorting pack business had to be spent catching Ainsley up on some aspect of her unconventional abilities. At least when she’d been this busy in New York, she was earning piles of money.
Regretfully, Ainsley let herself slip into the slender form of her russet wolf. Erik dropped into his enormous black wolf again and trotted into the woods.
The crisp autumn breeze was delicious and Ainsley drank it in deeply. In wolf form, she felt like she was just a pair of giant lungs with legs. She drew in air almost to her hips.
Just as Ainsley found her stride, Erik took off at an incredible speed.
Joyfully, Ainsley opened up. Once again she felt the ecstatic bunching and loosing of her muscles as she soared through the forest. She was enjoying the sensations and really hitting her stride, when Erik stopped in front of her again. She coiled the muscles in her rear legs and leaped, sailing cleanly over his head to avoid smashing into him.
She lifted into human form immediately and turned back to face him.
“You have to stop doing that!”
Erik didn’t change, instead he froze in place, massive muzzle hung low, snuffling and tasting the scent of a single paw print.
“Erik?”
He turned and gazed at her, intelligent eyes glowing in the fading dark. In a heartbeat, he stood tall as a man again.
“Look at the size of it,” he said gesturing to the print.
“That is big. Whose is it?” Ainsley sunk to her knees to find out.
“It’s not one of ours.”
“It isn’t?”
“And I don’t get it.” He shook his head. “Why would there only be one?”
“One print?”
“No, one wolf. Wolves don’t travel alone. We need to get back.” He turned, scanning the woods. “We need to get back now.”
Erik changed back into his wolf form, amber eyes gazing at her expectantly, black fur shining where the rising sun reached between the trees.
Ainsley shut her eyes and dropped back into her red wolf. They dashed through the woods in the direction of town.
When they reached the edge of the woods, they shifted again. Erik grabbed his leather backpack off the tree where he’d left it and threw a bundle of clothes to Ainsley.
She snatched it easily out of the air. At least her reflexes were getting better. She wondered absently if her metabolism might speed up now that she was a wolf.
Funny thing was, she didn’t care anymore. Ainsley had spent her adult life fighting off the curves that now drove her mate mad with lust. All those calories counted and rationed just to lose a few pounds he would have missed if she’d succeeded. Classic.
They dressed quickly. Erik held his gaze away from her. She knew he was fighting against the draw of her body.
“Let’s move. I’ll explain on the way.”
He held his hand out to her. She
took it and they half-jogged into the village. As the tangerine sun began to light the sky over the quiet town, Ainsley wondered what the lone wolf might want that had her mate so concerned.
As usual, Ainsley was the one off-balance. And she was supposed to be the alpha. She gave Erik’s hand a squeeze.
Trouble was headed for Tarker’s Hollow.
At least one of them was wolf enough to lead this pack through the coming storm.
CHAPTER 2
Grace Kwan-Cortez looked on as Landon Shepard surveyed his lunch with the kind of unspoiled delight reserved for men under thirty.
Good old-fashioned Pennsylvania fare covered the entire plate. Buttermilk pancakes, swimming in golden syrup, rose to a four inch tower. A slab of greasy scrapple sidled up to the stack, and a Spanish omelet oozed gooey cheese to compete for Landon’s satisfied gaze.
Grace glanced down at her own plate. Fluffy yellow scrambled eggs looked back at her placidly.
“How can you eat plain scrambled eggs?” Landon asked, mischief sparkling in his pale blue eyes.
“Believe me, I get enough food adventures with my abuela.”
She grabbed a half-empty bottle of Sriracha and squeezed the hot sauce liberally onto her eggs.
“Everything okay with your meal?” Their waitress, Cressida, managed to sound bored and rushed at the same time.
“Um, fine, thanks,” Grace said.
It was odd to have Cressida wait on them. Grace knew that Cressida was one of Ainsley’s Lieutenants, and a trusted companion. Few wolves held a higher place in the Tarker’s Hollow pack.
