Alpha Underground Trilogy

by Aimee Easterling

  Although I was both terrified and angry, I liked Chase on sight. He was the kind of male werewolf who didn’t have an alpha bone in his body—the golden retriever of the lupine world. He was also handsome, but not full of himself, and I could tell that this one werewolf was friend material. In fact, if there had been more Chases and fewer Wolfies in the world, I might have tried to join another pack after fleeing mine, but werewolf packs were inevitably run by alphas, and every alpha was like Wolfie...or like my father.

  Okay, maybe not just like Wolfie. As ebbing adrenaline let rational thought once again fill my mind, I realized that it was decidedly odd for the alpha in question to be walked around in wolf form on a leash. But for all I knew, the two were tracking something that required the wolf’s superior senses. In human form, we could sometimes use our wolf brain to boost our sniffing power, but the effect was nothing compared to how in tune we were with the world when entirely wolf.

  Fur aside, Wolfie had the arrogance of every other alpha I’d ever met. After forcing me to stop running against my will, he was now sitting at Chase’s feet and looking up at me with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth in a doggie laugh. Once he was sure he had my attention, Wolfie reached up one paw as if to shake...then winked.

  “I don’t think she thinks you’re as cute as you think you are,” Chase warned his friend when I looked pointedly away from the raised paw. Despite myself, I smiled at the beta’s words, amused that a lower-ranking wolf could yank the alpha’s chain, even metaphorically. “Like I said, I’m really sorry,” Chase continued his earlier apology to me. “But Wolfie is pig-headed and I’m afraid he’s not going to give either of us any peace unless you agree to talk to us, just for a few minutes. Maybe you’d let me buy you a coffee?”

  As I said, I liked Chase, and his words were perfectly polite, but I was 100% sure that spending another minute in the alpha’s presence was the last thing I wanted to do. I closed my eyes in an effort to collect myself, hoping this was just a hallucination brought on by my pack craving. But when I looked back down the street, Chase and Wolfie were still waiting expectantly in front of me...along with a kindergarten-aged kid who was pulling away from his mother’s hand in hopes of petting the huge, terrifying beast sitting beside me.

  “Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite,” Chase said to the mother, who had taken in the situation just as the boy’s hand landed squarely in Wolfie’s eye. She had more sense than her son and seemed poised to yank her offspring to safety, but to my surprise, the alpha wolf put up with the mauling good-naturedly before offering the child the same paw trick he’d pulled on me. With the complete lack of self-preservation instinct typical of a human child, the kid took Wolfie’s paw and shook it adamantly, before being pulled away by his mother.

  Greetings complete, Wolfie looked back up at me and tilted his head to one side, the meaning clear—he wasn’t a monster who ate small children. But I didn’t allow myself to be impressed. So what if an alpha wolf had let a human child manhandle him? That didn’t counteract the same alpha’s freeze-in-your-tracks command just minutes earlier. On the other hand, I hadn’t come up with any way of wiggling out of a meeting during the unusual interlude, so I shrugged my acceptance and allowed Chase to lead us across the street to a sidewalk cafe.

  “Coffee?” the beta asked, handing the wolf’s leash over to me as I stood beside an empty table outside the door. I nearly dropped the tether in surprise, the rough fabric feeling like a poisonous snake in my hands as I considered the repercussions of my situation. No way did I want to be in charge of an alpha’s leash if the wolf suddenly decided that the restraint was beneath his dignity, but I realized we had to keep up appearances for the sake of the humans around us, so I kept my eyes averted from the alpha on the other end of the line and nodded stiffly. In light of the leash issue (and being dragged to the cafe against my will), it seemed like a small matter that I didn’t drink coffee, having found that stimulants were one of the danger points for a female werewolf struggling to control her shifts. But no one said I had to consume the beverage Chase would put in front of me. I probably would have choked on any drink given my current state of mind, so the flavor was irrelevant.

  But the wolf disagreed with my unwillingness to state my preferences. Before his beta could leave to collect our drinks, Wolfie nudged Chase’s hand to attract his attention, then firmly shook his head. “You’re hungry?” Chase asked the wolf, surprised, but Wolfie only huffed in disgust. Then, just as I realized what the alpha was communicating, understanding came into Chase’s eyes as well. “You’d prefer hot chocolate?” the man tried again, returning his gaze to me, and I nodded despite myself.

  And that’s how I ended up in such a ludicrous situation. After spending half my energy over the last ten years hiding from the merest hint of werewolf presence, I was sitting at a cast-iron table of a sidewalk cafe, clinging to the leash of an alpha werewolf while his beta headed inside to buy me a hot chocolate. I wasn’t even surprised when the wolf rested his chin on my thigh in search of an ear scratch, but I was surprised that I allowed my hand to drift over his soft ears. The fur was every bit as silky as it looked.

  “YOU KNOW, IF YOU’D just put these on, you could ask her yourself,” Chase told Wolfie, exasperated as he shook a backpack full of men’s clothing under the wolf’s nose. Despite myself, the two were growing on me as I sipped my hot chocolate and watched them carry out a seemingly coherent conversation...despite the fact that one was a wolf. After the bark that froze me on the street, Wolfie hadn’t said another word, but he was quite adept at making his meaning clear, to Chase at least. While taking in the show, I had even started drifting into wolf brain, where Wolfie’s nonverbal language was more understandable, but I had quickly pulled myself back to the safety of the human world. The middle of a city was no place to turn my wolf loose, even if we had been on speaking terms.

  “What does he want to know?” I asked, when a stalemate appeared to have been reached by the opposing forces across the table from me. Wolfie, for some unknown reason, preferred to stay wolf, Chase was unwilling to continue being his mouthpiece, and I was starting to get curious about the alpha’s question.

  Only when Chase turned to me with a huge smile on his face did I realize that these were the first words I’d spoken in the pair’s presence. So much for the cold shoulder. But I shrugged internally and decided there was no point in freezing out Chase anyway, since he seemed to be a nice guy. I was reserving judgment on the wolf.

  “Wolfie just wants to know your name,” Chase answered. “But I can tell you aren’t comfortable sitting here with us, and I didn’t want to pepper you with questions until you had time to see we were harmless.” In contrast to his alpha’s demand for information, Chase’s strategy for putting me at ease seemed to involve talking until the cows came home. So, with an effort, I pretended he wasn’t a male werewolf and interrupted the monologue.

  “I’m Terra,” I answered, looking straight into the alpha’s eyes rather than at his beta. It was strange to be chatting with an alpha werewolf as if he were the guy down the street, but the wolf merely nodded his appreciation of the information then peered at Chase as if to say, I told you she wouldn’t mind.

  I felt okay parting with my given name since I figured neither Chase nor Wolfie would know the first name of the second daughter of an alpha from out of state, but I was careful not to offer a surname, which would have instantly linked me to a pack. Wanting to stay as anonymous as possible, I decided some misdirection was in order to turn the conversation away from a potentially tricky topic, so I shifted my eyes back to Chase. “And his name really is Wolfie?” I parried, hoping Chase would be willing to play along with my obvious attempt to talk about something other than myself.

  “Well, Wolf actually,” Chase answered. “But I always figured ‘Wolfie’ made him seem a little more human....” The alpha in question snorted, which sent a tremor of fear running through me until I realized the wolf was laughing, at which poin
t I started breathing again with a jolt.

  “That’s very...literal...of his mother,” I said after a minute. Once my heart rate had slowed back down from the effects of Wolfie’s laugh, I could feel my brow wrinkling as I tried to imagine naming a werewolf “Wolf.” We did tend to gravitate toward nature-oriented names, but this seemed more like the kind of appellation a two-year-old would give his pet.

  “Well, it was my mother, actually,” Chase said, turning his attention back to me. “We’re milk brothers.” The old-fashioned term suggested Wolfie had been nursed by Chase’s mother, and probably raised like his brother. It also explained why the less-dominant wolf was able to hold his alpha on a leash, and why the two could communicate without words. Despite myself, I was becoming intrigued by the two werewolves in front of me, but Chase’s next words pushed away my false sense of security.

  “So, which pack are you from?” the beta asked, and my jitters returned full force. Without meaning to, I stood, my chair screeching against the pavement as it was abruptly pushed backwards by my motion.

  Chase’s words were enough to remind me that I was packless by choice and could easily be drawn back into this or another wolf’s pack, which made my slowed breathing begin to race once again. What would prevent Wolfie from asking around about a twenty-something werewolf named Terra, and what would happen when his words inevitably reached my father’s ears? I would end up right back where I started, and all because I’d been stupid enough to imagine I was simply chatting with two strange werewolves whom I’d met in a bookstore.

  All of those thoughts zipped through my mind in the span of time it took to rise from the table, and by then the adrenaline had really kicked in. Fight or flight seemed to be my only options, so I fled.

  But I wasn’t far enough away to miss Wolfie admonishing his friend. The wolf’s easy-going demeanor disappeared in an instant as the alpha bared his teeth at Chase, who quickly averted his eyes in submission. If I’d needed any proof that Wolfie was just as overbearing as every other alpha werewolf I’d ever run into, this was it. Not that I’d thought otherwise...well, not for long.

  I almost expected there to be other werewolves in the wings, just waiting to rope me back into the pack life from which I’d escaped. Instead, there was just Wolfie’s commanding bark, ordering me to stop. But I wasn’t a member of his pack, and I didn’t have to obey. I ran down the street, and this time I didn’t look back.

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  Did you love Alpha Underground Trilogy? Then you should read Wolf Rampant Trilogy by Aimee Easterling!

  USA Today bestselling author Aimee Easterling's Wolf Rampant series has racked up over 500 five-star reviews! Meet Terra Wilder, a shiftless shifter uncomfortable in her own animal skin. Throw in a healthy helping of Wolfie Young, a bloodling alpha who's more wolf than man. Mix with a dash of Terra's controlling father and Wolfie's sadistic brother. Then fold in a heaping handful of unconventional outcasts. The result is a unique werewolf world that has been described as a "good choice for Patricia Briggs fans." This box set contains the full text of Shiftless, Pack Princess, and Alpha Ascendant.

  Also by Aimee Easterling

  Alpha Underground

  Dark Wolf Adrift

  Half Wolf

  Lone Wolf Dawn

  Wolf Landing

  Alpha Underground Trilogy

  Dragon Mage Chronicles

  Incendiary Magic

  Verdant Magic

  Cerulean Magic: A Dragon Mage Novel

  Dragon Mage Chronicles

  Moon Marked

  Wolf's Bane

  Wolf Legacy

  Huntress Born

  Huntress Bound

  Rogue Huntress

  Huntress Unleashed

  Wolf Legacy Quartet

  Wolf Rampant

  The Complete Bloodling Serial: Episodes 1-5

  Wolf Rampant Trilogy

  Shiftless

  Pack Princess

  Alpha Ascendant

  Standalone

  Jaguar at the Portal

  Moon Magic

  Shifter Origins

  Street Spells: Seven Urban Fantasy Shorts