The Virgin Goddess and the Alpha

by Rita Stradling

  Damn it. I could still smell her lingering heat from where her body had rubbed all over my shirt. Just inhaling her scent and remembering her soft skin against mine made my jeans uncomfortably tight, and I had to adjust them.

  The moment I moved, her eyes opened and found me. Fucking hell, she was beautiful. Her complexion was a deep olive. Big, dark, wide-set eyes and full lips set in an almost elfin-shaped face. Indeed, I’d thought we’d entered the fairy realm and she was some fae creature before she told me her name. She brushed one of her long dark curls away from her face, her gaze going distant before fixing on me again. A barely there smile skipped across her lips, and then she reached up and pulled what looked like a baby rabbit from her hair. It still had a clump of her midnight hair in its mouth, and it sucked at it like it could produce milk. She untangled it from her hair and set it down beside her. It took her a few minutes, but she untangled herself from the many animals around her. She did it in a way that made me think this was routine for her. Wake up, pull the birds and mice from your hair, and brush your teeth.

  “Why are you smiling, Jackson Hunter?” she asked as she stepped over Aiden and Luca’s still-sleeping forms to stand a few feet from me.

  I sat up all the way, still unable to hide my smile. “You can just call me Jackson.” I blinked a couple of times after I said it. I was planning to say she could call me ‘Hunter’ as that’s what everyone but my packmates called me. My first name had just slipped off my tongue like it already belonged to her.

  “Jackson,” she said with a nod and a small smile.

  “Good morning, Artemis,” I said.

  Crossing over to me, she took a seat beside me on the dew-soaked grass. Slowly, she looked around the clearing. “Yes, the morning is good. Though, all mornings are very similar in this forest.”

  I could feel the warmth of her so close to me. My wolf was demanding I close the distance and at least brush my skin against hers. My wolf was liable to get us killed. I felt my t-shirt clinging to my chest and arms, wet with the dew. I kept my gaze away from where I was sure the morning dew did the same to her and wet her dress into clinging to her breasts. The sky was clear of clouds, but a fine layer of fog clung to the long stretching meadow, sending up tendrils of mist to dissipate in the air. The sun peeked over the high pines, painting the ever-present moon golden.

  “Should I wake my brothers for your test?” I wanted to get it over with. Time was wasting, and even though my wolf was demanding I stay by the goddess’ side, my pack needed me—what was left of my pack needed me. I would never forgive myself or my wolf if another one died while I was playing this goddess’ games.

  “No.” She gave me a look that was hard to read—playful, perhaps. She wrapped her arms around her knees and leaned back to regard me fully. “You’ve already passed the test.”

  “I have?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief off my face. “Was this a sleeping test?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly. Look.” She pointed out toward the wood that surrounded the meadow.

  I followed her gesture and squinted at the trees. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was seeing at first. Just under the canopy of the pine boughs, something was moving. At first, it looked like the trees itself were shifting, the trunks bubbling out, but those morphing trunks separated from the tree. Figures peeled away, their skin rough like bark or spongy and green as tree-moss.

  There were hundreds of them, tall and lean like the trees the pulled away from. More figures joined then, all of them women. Many had skin the bright aqua of the ocean on a sunny day; others had fur covering their face and bodies with horns jutting from their foreheads. I even saw a few human women interspersed with the others—or at least I thought they were human. The one thing they all had in common was the bows they held at the ready, an arrow notched and waiting to be loosed. There were hundreds of them—hundreds of arrows pointed at my brothers and I while we slept unaware.

  As one, the women lowered their weapons to their sides and replaced their arrows into their quivers on their backs. One by one, they slipped into the forest, until only one of the willowy tree-looking women remained. She nodded slowly, to which Artemis nodded back. The last woman melted into the forest, and then we were again alone.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered.

  Artemis looked at me quizzically, her head tilting just the slightest amount like she was considering my words. When she caught me looking at her, the expression dropped off and she regarded me with what could be sympathy, or perhaps regret.

  I squinted to where I now only saw trees again. “What exactly was the test we passed?”

  Artemis didn’t answer me for so long that I thought she wasn’t going to. “A long time ago . . . when I was much younger.” She smirked over. “Only a few centuries old, that is. When I was much younger, raping me was a favored quest for a certain type of hero and immortal.”

  “The fuck?” Without warning, my wolf rose—and he was terrifying. For the first time in a very long time, he was fighting for control, and he wanted blood.

  “Be calm, Jackson.” She touched my arm. “They never succeeded, and most died in the quest.”

  The moment her soft fingers wrapped around my arm, the wolf subsided. It was like one moment he was filling my body, ready to make a kill—without a target, and then the next moment he was curling up, closing his eyes.

  She took a long breath, as if steadying herself, and then explained, “Back when I moved among mortals, I stood for something rather provocative: the idea that a woman can provide for herself and not need a man in any way. A few men and immortals wanted to destroy that idea—violently. While others just wanted to go after what everyone knew to be impossible. I never took it personally, but I did what I had to do so that women who wanted to live independent of men believed it was possible.” She drew her hand away, as if she knew touching me had calmed me, and it was safe to pull away now. “Now, tell me of this beast,” she said.

  Where did I start? Looking back at it all now, the whole thing felt like a distant, fucking nightmare. Part of me just wanted to stay in the forest forever. “I guess I should start with the fact that my pack was the one in the show “My Pack Life” . . . where we announced to the world that we were werewolves,” I added because her expression hadn’t changed, as almost everyone’s did when I mentioned My Pack Life. “There’d been werewolf sightings in neighboring cities caught on video. In an age where everyone has a video camera in their pocket that they can use to stream video onto social media, it was impossible to keep the secret contained.”

  I looked over at her, to see her forehead wrinkling just the slightest bit as her hands gripped her knees.

  “Am I confusing you?” I asked.

  Her brow smoothed, and she waved a hand at me. “Of course not, please continue.”

  “Well, the alphas in the surrounding areas and a few from across America got together—something we rarely do. We decided that it would be great publicity for the werewolves to have a reality TV show featuring a pack that would make humans feel safe. We had a vote, and my pack drew the short straw.”

  Her brow puckered again at that, and I started to suspect that she didn’t get American idioms but wasn’t admitting it. The idea made me feel like an ass. She spoke perfect English with a very slight accent, so I just assumed she knew American English.

  “They chose us—is what I mean,” I said. “Actually, I was the only one who voted against it. The pack leaders all agreed. We were already located in Los Angeles and had ties with the entertainment industry, and I had the financial resources to assume the responsibility.”

  “How did it go?” she asked, but from her grimace, my guess was she already knew.

  “It was a nightmare. We hired cameras to follow us around for about a month, showing us being normal—acting like regular people, going to our jobs. Then, we showed them us turning into wolves and playing with each other. We didn’t show hunting—or anything whatsoever aggressive. My brother Aiden, who
was doing some acting at the time, went onto a popular live TV show and turned into a wolf for them. At first, the media were calling us brave and heroes, but it took them less than a minute to turn on us. As soon as the first episode aired, everywhere we went we were getting shot at. Our fans were practically rabid—they tried to break into our house almost every day. The ones who weren’t fans were worse. We were under contract, so the network aired the whole season even though I took them to court over it. The cops were more likely to arrest us than the people who shot at us. Thankfully the money was flowing in, because I made our lawyer a very rich man in the past two years. And all this was before that—thing—whatever it is, started picking us off one by one.”

  Her lips parted like she was hesitating in saying something. But she did say it, “Are these other packs targeted?”

  “No, not that I know of. No packs I’m in contact with.”

  She nodded, slowly. I was pretty sure I knew what she was thinking. My decision to bring my pack out into the open and the way I did it was getting my people killed. She didn’t have to say it, but after I saw her army surrounding us, I could guess she thought like a military leader. Sure, I was acting on the wishes of other leaders, but the responsibility to keep my people alive was my own. In that, I was failing.

  She leaned in a little, grabbing my attention. “Tell me about these attacks. Are they during the day? Night?”

  “Both. It began about six months ago; our submissive wolves started vanishing off the street. The scenes held no evidence but an unfamiliar smell that neither led in or out of the area, no clues we could follow except a few drops of our wolves’ blood at the scenes. Two went missing from their work, and then seven went missing all at once from a pizza restaurant. We thought it was humans. After three more disappeared, we ended up sending the rest of our submissive wolves to scattered allies across the country. The dominant wolves stayed so that we could show whoever was after us that we wouldn’t be intimidated out of our territory. That’s when our dominant wolves started being picked off. It was about two months ago.”

  “The submissive wolves that you sent away?” she asked.

  “Are all fine.”

  “And the ones that went missing?”

  I sighed. “After what we’ve seen, I can’t believe that they’re still alive. My guess is that they were simply taken without a fight and suffered the same fate as our dominant wolves but in the creature’s home base.”

  “Ah. What do the execution scenes look like?”

  I blinked at her wording, but continued with, “We found the remains of my wolves in alleys or abandoned buildings—places they had no business being. And what's left of them . . .” I swallow hard, unable to describe it. “It’s clear that whatever is killing them is eating them as well—almost entirely.”

  “It’s not other wolves?”

  “We know it’s not wolves. It leaves a strong scent in the kill scenes—but it’s nothing we’ve smelled before.”

  She rubbed her thumb across her lower lip, her dark eyes going distant. It was probably just an involuntary motion she made while thinking, but it was damn distracting. “Could they have had some entanglement you’re not aware of?”

  “It’s possible—” I shrug, “But I seriously doubt it. Most of us have been around each other for over a century. We’re used to each other’s routines; hell, we’re even used to each other’s breaks in routine. I could believe that we missed the signs with one wolf, but over ten? Nah, it’s improbable.”

  Her dark eyes landed on mine, brimming with intensity. “And you believe that your creature is one of ours?”

  I couldn’t help but regard her with a confused expression. “Ours?”

  She gestured out to her forest. “A monster of the gods and heroes, a creature of mythos?”

  Ah.

  “What makes you think that?” I asked.

  “Why else would you go to an oracle? I’d assume if you thought the creature came from another religion you’d have gone to their prophet.”

  I hesitated for a second. If she was the daughter of Zeus, I could very well be accusing one of her siblings of the crime.

  She leaned in just a little, filling my senses with her wild, fresh scent. “I can hunt this beast with or without your help, Jackson, but it will be much faster if you tell me all you know.”

  I hesitated only for one more second. It was risky—but this whole quest had been a big desperate risk. Reaching over, I pulled my leather jacket into my lap and extracted the one piece of evidence I had from its pocket. I glanced at the twisted piece of metal once before setting it in her outstretched hand. “I took it to an expert; she did some tests on it and estimated that it was from about two hundred BC. Greek was just one of the possibilities for that period, but Greek or Roman was our best bet.” The last part wasn’t exactly true; we’d gone to a witch who had tracked exactly where and when it was from. But I stayed vague. If I was going down for implicating her family, I was going down alone.

  She lifted the twisted piece of metal to her face. It was a small strip of pure gold, smooth on one side and smooth on the other. “This gold is new,” she said.

  “She said that too—there’s no sign of corrosion or restoration. She was very excited about it. Actually, that’s grossly understating the expert’s reaction. She offered me a million dollars for the piece, even with not knowing what it truly was.” I paused, and then just decided to go for it, “Do you know what it is and where it’s from?”

  “No. It looks very much like a piece of the Golden Fleece, but I can’t be sure.” Artemis shot an almost coy look at me. “Can I have it?”

  I snorted out a laugh. I couldn’t help it. And, damn it, I wanted to give it to her. Obviously, this place was making me lose my fucking senses. I wondered if she just had this effect on me, or if this was what it was like for every human who got close to a goddess. I held out my hand. “I’ll let you see it whenever you like,” I said.

  She examined it once more and then handed it over. “I’ll likely need to take it while I hunt.”

  I leaned in. “No problem, I’m hunting with you.”

  “No, that won’t work. I travel much faster alone.”

  After stowing the piece back in my pocket, I shrugged on my jacket. “No offense, but I doubt you would in Los Angeles. I’ve been living there since before the roads were paved. How well do you know the city?” I glanced over at her.

  She looked away. “I have been around Iberia before, some time ago.”

  I leaned back on my arms. Talking people out of bad decisions was my main line of work. After being off kilter for a full day and a half, finally, I was in my element. “Iberia, where’s that?”

  She still didn’t look at me. “West.”

  I leaned into her line of vision. “West of what?”

  Artemis gave me an, ‘are you stupid?’ look. “Rome.”

  Huh. I guess it made sense that she based all of her navigation on the last place she held real power.

  “How west of Rome?” I asked, just to make sure.

  The look she gave me was almost annoyance, but I thought there was a trace of amusement there, too. “That would depend on if you were walking or riding.”

  Holy. Shit.

  I had a strong suspicion that she’d been away from the world for a very long time, but I wasn’t stupid enough to just blurt it out. If I was right, for some unfathomable reason she wasn’t just coming out and admitting she had no idea what I was talking about.

  “So . . .” I rubbed the back of my neck, hiding the grin that wanted to escape, “Do you have a car?”

  Her eyes went distant again for a second, and then she focused on me. “I have feet; I don’t need a personal vehicle.” She said the words as if they were strange on her tongue.

  “Los Angeles is 503 square miles,” I said. She obviously knew what that meant because that slightly confused look touched her brow again. “And there’s a lot of traffic.”

  “All right,
you will loan me a personal vehicle, then.” She nodded as if it was settled.

  “Yeah, I’d be happy to. You’re here to help us out, right?” I paused, mostly for effect. For some reason, I found this game we were playing hilarious. “You . . . have your driver’s license, right?”

  Her lips parted, and she looked like she was about to answer with something when she was saved by the yowls from my brothers, waking up cuddling with a reindeer.

  Chapter Five

  Artemis

  The woods sighed as I passed with the three men, I could feel their grief. It was the grief of the nymphs who lived in their hearts. So used to my presence here, they were afraid I would never return. I had suspected that the creature was likely an immortal one from my pantheon as soon as Jackson mentioned the oracle. Often these things worked out this way if there was a Greek monster; the Fates would choose a hero and a god or goddess to guide him. Or that had often been the way so long ago.

  I ran over the ground for the sake of the men, I usually used the tree boughs as my roads, but I doubted it would bear their weight, and now that I had decided to go, I was impatient to begin my quest. The men ran in their human forms, which I had advised against. But to my surprise, they kept up. Fallen trunks held no impediment to them; they hopped over them as easily as their animal counterparts.

  There was the distinct shushing sound of a wood nymph separating from a tree, and I felt Algea approaching from the west.

  A word, Goddess, she spoke into my head.

  “I need to break!” I called to the men as I slowed to a stop.

  They had a harder time stopping, and all of them ran some distance on before circling back.

  It was hard to miss that only Aiden, the smallest one, was out of breath. Jackson and Luca had bright eyes and a sheen of sweat on their brow, but otherwise, the thirty-two-mile run did not affect their appearance. A mile was perhaps the easiest new word for me to interpret, as it was so close to the Roman milion, which was still used to quantify distance when I was last among mortals.