Fated To The Alpha: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (19 page)

They stayed with me for another hour or two. It was the least they could offer. They finally left when Dad came down with my food, and suggested that they should leave now, reminding them that I was down here for a “reason.” So then they left, casting me knowing looks as they walked up the stairs.

Then the door shut behind them, and I had nothing to do but wait.

*

Waiting sucked.

That’s all there was to it. I was glad that there was a plan in place to get me out of there, but I couldn’t stand that there was nothing I could do to contribute to it. Down there I was completely cut off, with no way of knowing how things were going. I didn’t know if the plan had been put into motion yet, or how far along it might be, or if anything was going wrong. And of course, as I had pointed out, there was no end to things that could go wrong.

Hell, I wouldn’t know anything until that door opened and Jeremy came in to whisk me away, by which point the plan would already have been completed. Or until someone else came in, like Dad or Leon. At which point I could probably assume it had all gone to hell in a hand basket.

I ended up spending several long hours doing nothing but nervously pacing. All the things I didn’t know were driving me out of my mind. Had Charlene already forced Jeremy to “attack” her? Had she already done the same to Andrea? Were the Morgandorfs on the way? Would Mom be able to stop them when they got here? What if the hunting party picked up Jeremy’s actual scent trail, and followed him back here? Or what if they realized Charlene was leading them the wrong way and turned on her?

God dammit, I’d have given anything to be able to know what was happening outside!

The only thing that had a chance of telling me anything was that little window, which only afforded me a slight view of the village from an odd angle. It was still hard to make out anything that was going on in the village from it, which was all the more frustrating now.

But thankfully, I was soon given a little bit of insight. As I stood on my tiptoes to look out that window, straining to see anything interesting, a pair of feet stepped up to the window. The figure knelt down, revealing my mom’s face. She looked around, checking for any witnesses, and bent forward.

“We’re ready,” she said. “Charlene is on her way back to the village now to show off her wounds, and Andrea is on her way back to the Morgandorf village. Just sit tight.”

Then she walked away. I relaxed my stance, dropping my heels back to the floor. Okay, that was helpful at least. A little. But there was still plenty of room for everything to go wrong.

And once again, I was back to waiting.

I’m sure I was only waiting a short while after that; maybe ten minutes at the most. It felt like a lot longer, though. But I heard a howl off in the distance, and peeking out the window, I could make out the indications of some kind of commotion going on. Many members of the pack were crowding around what presumably must have been Charlene, and while I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying from where I was, I could tell there were a lot of loud words being exchanged. Some of them particularly loud.

There was discussion and argument, which from where I stood, unable to hear them, seemed to take forever. But after an agonizingly long wait, I could see a large group of them branching away, shifting into their four-legged forms as they headed off into the woods.

Okay then. It looked like that much had worked. So far, so good. Fingers crossed.

So then I waited some more. I went back to pacing, wishing I could be out there, seeing what was happening, or helping to make it happen. But of course, if I’d been out there we wouldn’t have been doing this in the first place, so wishing for that was pointless.

A while later, I heard some more howls, the kind meant to be used as a battle cry. It sounded like the Morgandorfs had arrived. But this time I couldn’t see anything from the angle of my little window.  But there were some loud voices carrying through the village; from where I was, I could make out that much.

I went and stood near the bottom of the stairs. If the Morgandorfs were here, and if everything had gone right, then Jeremy should be coming through that door any minute.

Any minute…

Any minute…

Come on, door, open!

Seconds ticked by. Then a minute. Then another. The door remained shut. Every muscle in my body held tense, ready to spring forward the second someone came through it… the very second…

Finally I did hear someone moving up there. I allowed myself to become excited; Jeremy was coming. I was finally getting out of here! I was finally going to be free!

I heard footsteps coming up to the door. I heard the latch unlocking.

The knob turned.

The door swung open.

And I staggered back, falling backward onto the floor as Dad came marching down the steps.

“Dad!” I gasped. “What are… why are you…?”

“Expecting someone else, Evelyn?” Dad probed.

That shut me up quickly.

Dad ducked down and snatched me up by the wrist, pulling me up to face him. “Do you know what’s going on here?”

“Dad, please… you’re hurting me!”

“Do you know why an attack party of your precious Morgandorfs is in the village, demanding blood?  Or why your mother is out there now, trying to stop us from driving them out?”

“Dad…”

He pulled me right up to his face, which began to shift slightly, his eyes turning yellow and his teeth growing long and pointed, with some fur growing from his face.
“What did you do?”
he growled.

I had seen my dad’s fury before. I had definitely been on the receiving end of it enough times. But I had never seen it rear its head like this. I honestly couldn’t answer him, purely because I was too terrified of him to say anything.

But then we heard another growl. Turning around behind him, another wolf was poised with tail up and fur bristling, showing his teeth from the top of those stairs.

Even if I hadn’t recognized him by sight even in his lupine form, his scent would have identified him for me immediately. Jeremy had come for me, just like we planned. It was just our bad luck that someone else was here first.

Dad whirled around, throwing me behind him. “Get out of my house, Morgandorf scum!”

Undaunted, Jeremy advanced down the stairs, continuing his threatening growls. I jumped forward, grabbing onto my dad’s arm and looking around his shoulder. “Jeremy, please don’t hurt him!  He’s still my dad!”

But apparently, Dad wasn’t going to brook my involvement. His arm snapped out and shoved me roughly back down to the floor, where I landed with a grunt. When I looked up, Dad was quickly stripping his clothes off as he started to shift. The next moment, two angry and ferocious wolves faced each other, baring their fangs and trading fierce growls.

If the two of them came down to it, one of them was likely to kill the other. If that happened… not only would I lose one, but I’d never be able to look at the other the same way again.

No. I couldn’t let this happen. I couldn’t allow anyone I loved to die on my account, least of all at the hands of someone else I loved.

I sprang up onto all fours as I shifted to my lupine shape, and forward I charged, barreling into my dad and shoving him out of Jeremy’s way. Dad lifted his head from where he’d tumbled to the floor, and stared at me with his wolf’s eyes in disbelief. I only spared a momentary glance down at him, before I turned my gaze to Jeremy, and nodded to the open door behind him. Our way out was there, and I wanted to waste no more time down here.

Apparently, neither did he.

Both of us turned and started bolting up the stairs for that door—to which I made it all of two strides before I felt Dad’s jaws close around my right hind leg, yanking me back and dropping me flat down on the stairs. Looking behind me, Dad was pulling down at my leg, desperately trying to keep me down here in his personal dungeon, his eyes turned up to me with a burning determination.

Jeremy’s fur-covered shape went flying over my head, pouncing on Dad and pinning him down, forcing him to release me. I took only a moment to nurse my leg; the wound wasn’t that deep anyway. 

I was much more concerned about what was happening below. The fight that I had just tried to prevent was breaking out right in front of me. Trying to get them apart from each other before they came to blows was one thing, but now that they were actually rearing up on their hind legs, fighting tooth and claw, there was little I could think to do to pull them apart.

Other than to take a side.

So I rushed in beside Jeremy, rearing back on my hind legs and clawing at my father, baring my teeth to him. Once that happened, Dad suddenly had much less will to fight. The fact that his daughter was actually fighting him, physically, was a bit too much to deal with. Jeremy and I stood there, staring him down, and all he could do was bristle.

This time, when Jeremy nodded back to the door, and we again made a break for it, Dad didn’t stop me.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I didn’t spare a glance back at the house, or at the confrontation happening out in the village. All my attention was focused on the forest ahead of me. All I could see were those trees, and the freedom they offered.

Within seconds, the open world around me had given way to the shade of trees and foliage. After all that time in that basement, it was like diving into a swimming pool after weeks in the desert. And still I continued to run. The village was always too close behind me; I wanted—no, needed—to put it as far from me as I could. That place had become my prison, and as far as I was concerned at that moment, I wouldn’t have shed a tear if I never saw it again.

So we just ran, until we couldn’t run anymore. We stopped in the middle of a clearing, no longer with any idea of where we were in relation to either village.  We paused a moment to catch our breath—and then I looked up to Jeremy. Simultaneously, we shifted to our two-legged forms.

And then we
launched
ourselves at each other.

A part of me kept expecting to wake up from this. I thought at any moment all this would crumble away, and I would be back in that basement again. But as my tongue probed Jeremy’s mouth and my hands roamed all over his body, every sense I had told me that this was all completely real. He was really here. I really had him again. 

“Don’t ever go away from me again!” I pleaded with him between kisses.

“I was going to say the same to you,” he said. “All those days I spent hovering around the village, just hoping I might catch a glimpse of you, not knowing where you were or what they were doing to you…”

“You think you had it bad?” I said. “I damn near lost my fucking mind in that basement! I mean, can you imagine, being locked down there with barely any sunlight, surrounded by nothing but four walls, with only a bucket to go in? I couldn’t even keep track of time in there, let alone reality!”

“Here’s reality now, Evie,” Jeremy smirked as he grabbed a handful of my ass and yanked me against his crotch. I yelped and giggled, and kissed him deeply.

After that, I turned and slowly slipped out of his grasp, staring up at the sky with a big smile, holding out my arms and twirling around. “Sky!” I cheered  “I can actually see the sky! I never thought I’d miss the sky!” I inhaled a deep breath through my nose, savoring the good, clean forest air, after spending so long with the only air I had to breathe being stale and suffocating. I twirled around some more, collapsing down in the dirt, and sighing contentedly, wanting to roll around in that dirt, perhaps even to take a bath in it. “Soft ground!” I hummed loudly. “I never knew how much I loved dirt! I want to sleep in this dirt every night! Forever and ever!”

Jeremy smiled, and knelt down over me. “How do you feel about doing it in this dirt every night?”

I grinned from ear to ear. “That’s pretty good too.”

My hand came up to stroke the side of his face, still delighted by the mere feel of his flesh under my fingers. He bent down, bringing his lips down to mine, and my arms arose to wrap around his neck. After all the days I had spent dreaming of this moment, all the nights I had lied awake wishing he were with me again, everything I had longed for was finally here. I had him in my arms, his kiss on my lips. And for once, I knew this was no fantasy.

Especially after someone else came along to confirm it.

“Whoa! Okay! I know I just saw something I’m too young for!”

I lifted my head to see Andrea standing among the trees a few feet from us, dressed in shorts and a tank and shielding her eyes. “Andrea!” I beamed, pushing Jeremy off and scrambling to my feet so I could rush forward and embrace her.

“Ow!” she gasped as soon as I grabbed her. 

I instantly recoiled, suddenly remembering the part of the plan I’d never particularly approved of. “Oh, god, I’m sorry!” I said. “Are you okay?”

Andrea turned and lifted her shirt, showing me the bandage on her back along her side, just below her arm. “Charlene has one hell of a bite,” she said. “But I’ll recover. I agreed to it, anyway.”

I immediately felt terrible for her. “I’m so sorry about this,” I said. “I told Charlene and my mom I didn’t like this plan! I never wanted anyone else to suffer for me!”

“But you’re out of there, aren’t you?” she said. “And all I had to do for it was endure a little bite.”

“Which you just called one hell of a bite,” I reminded.

“The point is, compared to what you’ve been through, I think this is a fair price, don’t you?”

“How did it go with the pack?” Jeremy asked her.

Andrea shrugged. “About like we expected. Tell the truth, it was kind of scary how easy it was to get them riled up. All I did was show them the bite once and they were practically howling for blood. Literally. I thought they were gonna trample Ricardo to death when he tried to get them to calm down and think this out. But we got the kind of attack party we were going for without too much trouble.”

“How did you find us here?” I asked her. “I kind of thought we were running pretty aimlessly… in fact, I don’t even know where we are now.”

“I followed your scent from your village,” she shrugged.

“So you did go along with the attack party?” Jeremy asked. “I thought we agreed that was a dangerous idea?”

“Oh, I didn’t go along with them. Exactly. I mean my dad wouldn’t let me go with them anyway. So I just snuck away after them once they got me bandaged up. I went as fast as I could walk on two legs—which, I gotta say, I never knew how much traveling on only two legs sucks. But I can’t shift form without tearing my bandage off. But I got to the Caldour village just in time to find the two of you sneaking away, so I just kind of snuck after you. Which, again, would’ve been a lot easier if I could’ve shifted form. That’s the worst part about this whole deal,” she continued, lifting her shirt again to look down her back at her bandage. “For the next few days I’m stuck with two legs. But I guess after what you’ve been through I can’t complain.”

“Wait,” I said. “If you saw us, and you could follow us, couldn’t somebody else?”

“I don’t think so,” Andrea said, turning her eyes up in thought. “I was the only one looking for you. Everyone else was too busy yelling at each other.

“Her father will be looking for us,” Jeremy pointed out. “If you could track us, you can be damn sure he will.”

I frowned. Jeremy was absolutely right. “We’ve gotta keep moving,” I said. “Find a stream somewhere we can lose our scent trails.”

“I think I know where to find one,” Andrea said. “This way.”

We followed her for a short distance, clambering over logs and brush, before coming to a trickling stream where Jeremy and I ducked and began washing ourselves. We then waded upstream, letting it carry our scents away, getting a good distance from where we’d gone in before we stepped out and wandered aimlessly away.

Once I was confident that no one who was looking for us would be able to track us, we relaxed against the base of a tree, where I curled up against Jeremy once more. “Can you find your way back home from here?” Jeremy asked Andrea.

Andrea scoffed. “Please. These woods are my playground. I could find my way back with a bag over my head!”

“Glad to hear it,” I deadpanned. “You should get back there before you’re too badly missed.”

She nodded, becoming more serious. “I’ll make my appearance. But as soon as it’s clear, I should meet up with Charlene to touch base. You two should lay low in the meantime.”

I nodded. “Yeah.  We’ll wait here for you.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t stay in one place,” Jeremy suggested. “Last time we tried that, we woke up to find someone dragging you away.”

“Okay,” Andrea said, turning her head down in thought. “What about… that little grove south of the Morgandorf village. Remember the one, Evelyn?  We used to sneak away there to gossip in private.”

“I remember it,” I said. “But don’t the Morgandorfs know about that place?”

“The Morgandorfs aren’t looking for us,” Jeremy pointed out. “It’s only the Caldours we’re worried about right now, and even if they did manage to track us there, I doubt they’d want to come that close to the Morgandorf village unless they were looking for trouble.”

“Knowing my dad, I don’t think that would stop him,” I muttered.

“You go ahead back,” Jeremy said to Andrea. “We’ll find our way there. Later.”

Andrea’s mouth turned up in a smirk. “Yeah. I’m guessing there’s only so much longer you guys can keep it PG-13.”

Damn. The kid needed to stop talking; she was giving me ideas!

She started heading off then. “I’ll give you two your privacy now. I’ll catch you later.”

As she scurried away into the brush, I turned my attention to Jeremy, who was sporting a pretty heavy look, aimed off into the distance. “What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I’m thinking, we got you out of there, you’re finally free, and we can do what we want and go where we want again. But I’m just wondering what that’ll be. Do we run away like we were talking about before? Do we keep trying to make peace? Do we dare take any kind of chance that they might catch us again? And even if we do run, who’s to say we’ll ever be safe?”

I climbed onto his lap, taking hold of his face. “Hey. We can worry about that later. We’re here now. We’re together.”

“We let our guard down before,” he said. “Look what happened.”

I yanked his face to look me in the eye. “Jeremy, listen. I’m free. I finally have you again. I don’t want to think about our problems right now, not after I spent over a week with nothing to do but think about them. So can we please just worry about this later?”

“Evelyn, if we get complacent—”

“Jeremy, please! Just shut up and fuck me!”

When I pulled him to my waiting lips, he stopped trying to fight me. My tongue reached for his, finding it not quite matching the hunger mine had. At least, not at first. After a minute or two, he started to get with it, and I started to feel how much he had missed me.

And he had missed me. A
lot.

His arms engulfed me, trapping me in his constricting grasp. Even if I wanted to, I would be going nowhere. I gasped as he began kissing my neck, pressing my chest against him as my fingers stirred about through his hair. With my crotch grinding against his lap, it didn’t take long before I started to feel him swelling to full hardness, his shaft rising up to press into my mound.

I very slowly began to lean backward as he took my tits into his mouth. His head rotated about, his tongue making lazy patterns around my nipple, making me moan loudly. God, I had missed this. So many times in that basement I had dreamed about being back with him, feeling him pleasuring me like this. Sometimes I had even let myself believe I really was with him again, imagining it almost as vividly as if it were really happening. But nothing could ever compare to what I was feeling now. No fantasy could come close to replacing Jeremy’s actual lips on my breast.

Or, for that matter, his lips on my clit, once he finally laid me down on my back and got his head between my legs. He slowly lowered me down, bathing my belly in his kisses, until I was flat on my back, squirming on the ground and clawing at dirt and leaves around me as he expertly tongued my sopping pussy.

When he brought me to orgasm, it was like suddenly tasting a favorite meal again after a yearlong fast. I honestly couldn’t believe how much I needed that. He paused in his ministrations after I stopped screaming and thrashing, and I just lay there panting for a moment, staring up at the sky—that beautiful blue sky, not a ceiling, see through that rustling canopy of vibrant green leaves bathed in golden sunlight…

Life was truly wonderful!

I determined to make life wonderful for Jeremy too, by sitting up and taking hold of his cock, giving it a few strokes before I ducked my head and took him into my mouth. Good god, I even missed this! I never knew how much I loved sucking Jeremy’s cock until I’d been denied it for so long! I found myself involuntarily moaning happily around that big thing filling my mouth, running my tongue languidly around the spongy crown, savoring it as if it were a favorite treat. And for all intents and purposes, it was.

He lifted my head to look up at him, and then lowered me back down again as he knelt above me, positioning himself between my legs. My whole body quivered, panting with arousal. “Put it in me!” I pleaded.  “Please! I need it now!”

Thankfully, he didn’t keep me waiting another second. The feeling of his cockhead parting my wet lips, pushing into me and steadily sliding inside was the greatest relief I could have imagined. At that moment, I wasn’t sure exactly how I’d managed to not kill myself in that basement, being forced to go without this for so long. I felt like I wanted to live the rest of my life with him inside of me. Why did I never know until now just how unbelievably wonderful sex with Jeremy was—and we’d barely gotten started!

I reached my hands up to wrap around his shoulders as he leaned down over me, meeting my eyes with his own. Those big, beautiful eyes of his. My hands stroked along the muscles of his arms, feeling the curves of his biceps, and then went up again to feel the tones of his back… there was literally nothing about him that I wasn’t in love with.

He thrust into me deeply, eliciting a loud grunt from me. He lowered himself atop me, letting me wrap my arms around him fully, digging my fingers into his back. I started moaning loudly as he built up a rhythm, fucking me slow and steady, nestling his face into the crook of my neck. My legs came up along his sides, hooking themselves over his thighs.