Maybe she was getting desperate. It had been almost five years since she’d been banned. She’d taken that long to brood over what had happened. Wolves held terrible grudges because we lived so long. It was hard to let go if you didn’t grow old. Life would always have some sort of quality no matter what. Even if there were grudges.
I was glad Ted had my back. I was glad he would watch out for my family. The run with Kurt had been amazing. I’d never felt so protective and so proud before, and the pack had always been a part of me.
But Kurt really was a part of me, in ways the pack could never be.
And he’d run next to me with the full moon glinting off his coat, and he’d howled with me. He was just a child. When he was in human form he reminded me so much of Allegra it almost hurt. He was a carbon copy of her, the intensity, the strong will, the gentleness. When he was a wolf he was my son. A part of me shone through.
Any father would tell you that means more than anything in the world.
Allegra was in the kitchen making lunch packets for Kurt. She prepared them every weekend so she didn’t have to spend so much time in the kitchen during the week. The sound of the knife hitting the cutting board was rhythmic, and for a moment I just stood in the doorway watching her.
She was beautiful in every way. But there was a tightness to her shoulders. Tension in the way she held herself. The room was quiet besides the sounds of her cutting.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, stepping further into the kitchen. She paused, knife on the cutting board, and took a deep breath. Then she carried on cutting without answering me.
She was upset with me, then. I walked up to her, leaned my hip against the counter so that I was facing her. She stood with me at her side, and her profile was serious.
“What did I do?” I asked. She turned her head to at me and her dark eyes were fiery. The heat in them made my body tighten. She was stunning when she was angry.
“You know exactly what you did,” she said and her voice was low. Quiet anger. It was so much more dangerous than a screaming rage.
“Are you angry about your guard?” I asked. She glared at me.
“You could have told me,” she said. “Do you know what that makes me look like? Do you have any idea what it’s like to hear in front of the whole pack, from someone else’s mouth, that you’ve made a decision without me?”
“I’m trying to keep you safe, sweetheart,” I said. “Sarelle isn’t kidding. She’s promising death and I have to keep you safe.”
“So teach me what to do. Surely there’s got to be something? I can’t just stand here. It makes me a coward, Reid.”
I was suddenly angry. I felt my pulse thudding, blood rushing through my veins. I looked away from her and she turned back to her cutting board. I didn’t want her to see my eyes.
“It makes you alive,” I answered her. “I don’t care how brave you’re trying to look, if you’re dead it’s not going to make a difference anyway. And what about Kurt? This isn’t just about you.”
“No, you’re right. But it’s not about you either, and you’ve made it look like you have a control of life. It’s about the fact that you didn’t talk to me about. You didn’t even ask me.”
I sighed, fought the urge to roll my eyes. When we argued it always felt like I couldn’t get anywhere. There was always a suppressed rage that made me feel like I had to get out and run. If I didn’t do it, or if I didn’t hold on tight enough to it, I lost it.
“I didn’t ask you because I knew you would have disagreed. You don’t understand how serious this is. You don’t see how this can blow up in your face, and then all of us will suffer from it. You’re my mate, Allegra. Second in the pack. You can’t just die on us. If we’re not here to save you, then we’re screwed. And your death with cripple us.”
She looked at me, knife poised on the tip and I was suddenly nervous. The anger in her eyes was enough for me to want to take away the knife.
“So it’s really about the pack? Guard me to save them?”
I groaned, stuck my fingers into my hair. “Why are you doing this? You know that’s not what I meant. But if something happens to you and I’m not here, I don’t know what I’ll do. You don’t know enough.”
She put down the knife and I breathed just a little easier.
“Then show me, Reid. Tell me what’s going on. Explain it to me so that I understand. There’s still so much about the pack, and being part of it, that you’re not telling me. Do you really think this is fair?”
I didn’t think it was fair. But I didn’t know what else to do to keep her safe. I couldn’t be with her every second of every day. And if something happened to her, to Kurt, because I wasn’t here to protect them, I would never forgive myself. I would never survive.
“I think that it’s my job to do what’s right. To protect my own. I will do whatever it takes to do that. I’m the alpha.”
I turned and walked out of the kitchen. I marched through the dining room, the living room, and then through the front door. Only when I was outside did I stop. I sat down on the porch and leaned my elbows on my knees.
I’d sounded like an ass in there. I’d sounded like I was the boss and what I say, goes. I didn’t want to be that person. I wanted to speak to her about these things and come to an agreement.
But I just couldn’t. I didn’t know how to tell her what she was up against. I didn’t know how, and in a way I didn’t want her to know how it all fit together.
Being a werewolf is crossing the line from human to monster. We manage to look human, and some of us can pass for human enough that no one that isn’t a preternatural creature will know. But we’re still monsters.
Allegra was number two in the pack. She was a conductor. She could feel magic and feed it back to me. Every bit of power that flowed through her came back stronger and more dangerous than before, and it was great to have her around.
But she didn’t have her own power. And she wouldn’t understand what it was like to have to control it and use it right until she did. She couldn’t understand what it was like.
I didn’t want to try explain it to her. And I didn’t want her close to Sarelle. What if something happened like she amplified Sarelle’s power and got herself killed that way?
I felt guilty. It was my fault she was in this mess to begin with. I’d pushed her to become my mate in the pack. To accept the role as the pack’s second. I’d been the one to make her choose. Maybe not directly, but it had been because of me.
Now she was in danger because I hadn’t been able to control my pack, and one of them had gone rogue. Even if she belonged to another pack now, she was a problem.
And Allegra just wasn’t ready to start the preternatural battle. I wasn’t ready to lose her.
The front door clicked open, and then slowly closed again. Kurt came to sit next to me. He looked out over the front yard the same way I was. His hair was bright in the sun, lighter than when we were inside, but his eyes were serious.
“What’s wrong, daddy?” he asked. I sighed. There was so much wrong right now, and he could feel it. He could feel emotion the same way I could.
“Dad’s just a little stuck,” I said.
“Sometimes I feel stuck too,” he said. I smiled and looked at him.
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “When I play with Carla at auntie Charlene. She’s nice but she doesn’t know. And then when we play pretend it feels like I’m the one that pretends, not her. Because she’s just one person, and I have to fit because I’m two.”
“When did you get so clever?” I asked.
“Yesterday, I think. Auntie Charlene said I was a smart aleck. That means I’m clever, doesn’t it?”
I laughed. “It does,” I said. “Even more than people think you should be.”
“People always think I should be something. And then I don’t know how.”
“Don’t be anything else than who you are, and you’ll be okay.”
He nodde
d and smiled.
“Is mommy different?” he asked.
“From other mommies, yes.”
“And from us,” he said and it wasn’t a question.
“That’s why we fit. Have you seen your puzzle pieces? They don’t look the same do they? They’re all different, but they have a place where they fit and then they make a picture.”
“Except when I chew on them and mom gets mad. Then the picture is broken.”
I smiled and nodded. He didn’t fully understand, but he would one day. He was so much older in so many ways, it was nice to see him just be a child now and then. I wished I could do the same for Allegra that I did for Kurt. If I could explain things to her the way I could explain it to him, it would be so much easier.
It was ironic that I’d been so terrified of having a child, and now I found it easier to relate to him than to Allegra.
“You know what, daddy?” Kurt said again.
“What?”
“Sometimes mommy feels like you do.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded. “When I close my eyes sometimes,” he demonstrated, “then I can imagine she looks like a wolf. But then I open up my eyes and she just looks like mommy.”
“I know. I feel that too sometimes.”
“Why?”
“Because mom is special.”
He nodded. “She makes better biscuits than Auntie Charlene.”
And that was it. Allegra was special because she was herself. And that was the fact that Kurt followed. It was in all the small things, and love was simple. Life was simple. Mom equaled happiness.
The problem was that it became the big things when you grew up, when you married a werewolf, when you were part of a pack, when a wolf wanted you dead. Wife equaled worry.
Chapter 6
Allegra
I was upset about Reid treating me like he owned me. I knew that there were rules in the pack, hierarchies that had to be followed and the female followed the male’s lead. I got that, and I respected it when we were with the pack. That was my job, to make the alpha look good.
But when it was just us? I wasn’t a werewolf. I was pack, but he didn’t own me. He couldn’t tell me how to live. And he couldn’t pretend to tell me how to die. I was furious that he’d come into the kitchen and told me how it was going to be.
Kurt was already asleep, but he was restless. Only the first night of full moon was a problem, when the moon was well and truly full. But the second night the moon was full enough to have the wolf inside them still awake and breathing, thinking about showing himself.
I didn’t know what last night had been like for Kurt, but it seemed different now. He seemed different now. I was scared I’d lost a part of him. I was scared that little boy that I was supposed to be able to hold onto for a lot longer still, was slipping through my fingers.
Reid finally came back into the house. It was late, but not late enough for him to have been in the forest. He didn’t have that wild smell clinging to him, the smell that came with the change.
I didn’t look up when he walked into the room. I stood by the window and stared out at the dark of night, wondering what was out there. Who was out there.
I stiffened when his arms wrapped around my body from behind, but I didn’t stop him or pull away. His warmth enveloped me, flowed through me, and I found myself leaning in to him.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, mouth by my ear. He pressed his lips against my shoulder.
“I just can’t imagine what I’d do if something happened to you.” He mumbled against me. “This isn’t about the pack, you’re right. It’s about me. I’m not strong enough to lose you and still survive.”
I turned in his arms.
“If we do this together, if you show me everything you’ve been trying to hide from me, you won’t have to,” I said.
He sighed, a shudder against my body. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. He hugged me and I felt small against his muscled body.
He pulled away and kissed me. His lips were soft and there were questions in the kiss. Reid was alpha werewolf, but he was also human. He could feel and fear the way we did even if he was still the purest wolf out there.
The kiss changed. It became urgent. I could feel his power building, a different kind of power. His body hardened against mine. I felt the heat wash over me, and I knew he wasn’t thinking about losing me anymore.
I broke the kiss and let go of him, pulled my own shirt over my head. I wasn’t wearing underwear. I pushed the baggy pajama pants down and I was naked in front of him. An offering of sorts. Myself, his wife. His eyes roamed over my body like hands and I could feel everywhere he was looking like he physically touched me. There was hunger in his eyes, and the power prickled over my skin.
He pulled off his shirt and pulled me against him. His skin on mine was even hotter, almost searing. He kissed me again and hands followed the rise and fall of my body until he came to rest on the swells of my breasts, and then cupping them full. I sighed into his mouth.
There were times when I didn’t have all of him, he was distant and absent, his mind with the pack or on the battle field. But tonight it was just me and him.
I pushed my fingers under the buckle of his jeans. “Take it off,” I murmured. He did as I asked, fumbling with the button and zipper. When he couldn’t get it he just broke it like it was plastic. I smiled, but he was on me before I could finished the thought.
He picked me up like I weighed nothing. There was nothing between us now, it was my skin on his, and the length of him pressing hard and hungry against my hips, leaving a slick trail of lust.
He walked to the bed with me and held me up as he crawled onto the mattress. He was pushing into me before he’d put me down properly, and I cried out. No matter how often we did it, his size and his strength always surprised me.
His body curled over mine and every muscle bulged out. I had my hands on his shoulders, nails gripping into his skin with every thrust and I could feel the cords ripple under his skin.
He looked at me and his eyes were a light blue, burning like fire. The wolf slid behind them. But his face was filled with love, and despite his size he was gentle with me.
He wormed his arm underneath my body and lifted my hips so I lay at an angle. He pumped harder into me, and the way he was holding me, the way his body bucked over me, made me think of an animal despite the fact that I wasn’t on all fours. His power surged through me with every hip movement, and I was getting hotter and hotter.
An orgasm built inside of me, but something else was there, too. Something that I’d never felt before. It felt like part of me wanted to rip out, break free from the confines of this body. It was almost like I had an animal, too. A wolf. I knew what I was feeling had to be Reid, but I’d never felt his animal before like it was my own.
He grew inside of me, bigger and harder still, and then he jerked inside of me. He pulled me body hard against him and his body convulsed. I felt him pump deep inside of me, making me his mate, claiming me as his female. His breathing was hard in my ear.
The power surged through me and it felt like every vein was on fire. I felt like I was going to split open and power and magic was going to pour out. It pushed my own orgasm over the edge and I gripped his shoulders. My nails bit into his skin, scratched lines on his back but I couldn’t stop it. If I drew blood he would heal in a few seconds. I could never hurt him.
I cried out and curled around his body. He wrapped another arm around me and pulled me against him so tight that we were one being. The power built, getting hotter and hotter, until we were inside a furnace of power and sex.
When it felt like I couldn’t hold it anymore, it started dying down. The heat drained away, and the power dimmed to something softer, something almost soothing. The animal slipped away again until it was just me in my own skin. I breathed hard, still clinging onto Reid, and I felt his heart thunder against my chest, echoing my own. He laid me down gently, and lay on his side
next to me. He wiped strands of hair that clung to my sweaty face out of the way, and smiled at me.
His eyes were green again and drowning deep.
“What was that?” I asked.
“What?”
“I could feel your wolf.”
He thought for a moment, then shrugged. He looked into my eyes and I could see his thoughts drift to somewhere else. It wasn’t strange to him to feel an animal. Just to me.
“No matter how difficult things get, I never would have done anything differently. If I could I would choose you all over again.”
I smiled and kissed him. There were times when I felt like maybe he’d just made a mistake. There were times when I didn’t think I belonged in his world. But if this was what he wanted, we would keep doing it. Because I wouldn’t do it differently if I had the chance, either.
“I’m surprised Kurt didn’t wake up from that,” I said. Reid’s face when serious and he looked like he was listening.
“I don’t hear him,” he said.
“Let me just go and check on him,” I said rolled away from Reid. I got up and pulled on my robe, tying it in the front. It wasn’t easy doing it when we had a child that had sharper hearing than a human child, but we managed.
I opened Kurt’s door and tiptoed to his bed. The sheets were thrown back, and in the dim light from the window I saw the bed was empty.
I looked on the floor. It had happened before that he’d fallen off. Or gotten up to drink water and fallen asleep again halfway to the door. But the room was empty.
“Kurt?” I called and walked back to the door. Reid came out of our bedroom, boxer shorts riding low on his hips.
“Kurt’s not in his room,” I said and walked down the passage. I checked the lounge. The television was off. Reid had walked to the kitchen.
“Kurt, get here, boy,” I heard him call.
“This isn’t like him,” I said. “Kurt!”
Reid stopped in the middle of the dining room and looked at me. The green bled slowly out of his eyes until the blue flame of his wolf’s eyes was all that was left. Then he closed them, and I could feel his power. He pushed it out all around us, searching.
BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) Page 125
