Torment (Dark Alpha #1) (2 page)

Arianna had sobered with his words as well and now gazed at him with those big blue eyes. “Can I tell you something, Jak?” She was only twenty-one, a few years younger than him, but in that moment, she seemed much older… yet still innocent at the same time. She was as winsome as a barely-grown girl, yet already burdened by the many things life had thrown at her.

Jak understood that feeling. “I am an excellent keeper of secrets.” His mouth twitched with a repressed smile. If she only knew how many times she had filled his nighttime thoughts… and not always in an innocent concern for her safety.

Some of the glow left her face. “I haven’t felt this alive since…” She blinked. “Since my alpha claimed me.” And like
that
she was a ghost again, an empty shell where life used to be.

The lump in Jak’s throat refused to budge.

A stray wisp of cloud drifted over the sun, and a shadow fell on her face. It was as if the light had gone out of the world. Arianna shrunk back a little and glanced at the red-bricked buildings encircling the central plaza.

“Mace doesn’t really want me here.” Her shoulder twitched.

Jak swallowed the lump and reached out to her, gripping her shoulders with both hands. He could feel her quake through the thin jacket she wore, and his inner wolf growled: not at her, but at the idea that anyone would make her feel afraid. Least of all, her own alpha.

“Everyone in the pack is expected to contribute,” he said, “and the best way to do that is to join the company. Your alpha knows that. And you won’t be much use to Red Wolf, Inc. until you have a degree in
something.
It’s only logical for you to go back to school, now that you’ve… settled in.”
Given up running away. Become used to being a captive. Had your spirit broken.
Those were the words he wanted to say… but he never would be able to, no matter how many times he pictured himself sneaking over to Mace’s house and wrenching her free of his magical hold. Like that was even possible. Jak had managed to free one girl from Mace’s grasp—all without Mace ever realizing Jak helped her escape—but that was
before
she became his mate. Mace still blamed his betas for the loss of the Sparks pack female. But Jak knew he was beyond lucky to have gotten away with something like that. The universe wasn’t kind enough to let him get away with it a second time. Besides, Arianna was beyond saving: the mating bond was for life.

You can’t save them all,
he told himself. Again and again. It really didn’t help.

Arianna’s face remained clouded. “What if I can’t… what if I’m not good enough? UDub is so much
bigger.
Bellevue was just a community college. And I didn’t even finish my second year before… before coming here.”

Before being kidnapped.
Jak’s inner wolf growled, and this time it almost reached his lips. “You’ll do just fine.” He tipped his head to the nearby buildings. “Although not if you don’t attend your classes.”

She gave a short nod, and he could see a steely resolve take hold as she squared her shoulders and marched off toward Kane Hall. She only had Business Finance today, but it was an upper level class. One he’d taken and passed easily, in spite of his major being in technology… but he hadn’t been ripped from his home and essentially imprisoned for half a year, like Arianna had. Although Jak did know something about being uprooted and thrust into the middle of a new pack. Only in Jak’s case, his alpha was saving him, not stealing him away. He owed his life to Gage Crittenden, and not just the part where Gage rescued him from being torn into small bloody pieces in the Olympic mountains. His alpha had welcomed him into the Red pack and put him through school. If only Mace Crittenden were half the wolf his brother was, maybe Jak’s inner beast wouldn’t bang against his skin and fantasize about saving Arianna from her fate every time Jak looked her way.

He watched Arianna ascend the broad, concrete steps of Kane Hall, her jeans hugging low on her hips as they swayed in a dance that spoke directly to his cock. Who was he kidding? He and every other wolf in the Red pack fantasized about Arianna’s curves in exquisite detail, including how and where they’d like to put their paws on her.

It was the idea of
Mace
putting his hands on her that brought Jak’s snarling wolf to life.

She’s too good for him.
And Mace was no good for any female.

Jak sucked in a breath and tried to rein in the slow-boil anger that thought raised. He and Arianna passed through the tall concrete pillars that lined the boxy modern building of Kane Hall. Inside was a little warmer than the cool fall air. Arianna shucked off her gray jacket and held out a hand for her backpack. He gave it over.

A tiny frown wrinkled her forehead. “Sorry you’re stuck babysitting me while I’m in class.”

Jak slipped his phone from his back pocket and wagged it at her. “I’ve got plenty of work to do, no worries.” He lifted his chin toward the classroom door where students were already filing in. “Go kick some ass in there. Show them UDub’s got nothing on Bellevue.”

A smile burst onto her face, and it stirred something around inside him that almost hurt. Like a physical ache, a pressure that needed release. It made his smile in return falter.

She turned and disappeared inside the lecture hall. Her sudden absence from his view left a weird kind of hollowness in his chest, a deepening of the ache that had sprung up from nothing more than her smile.

Goddamn Mace.
The fact that a female like Arianna was mated to a dark alpha like him was proof that the world was essentially cruel.

His steaming hatred was jarred by a soft giggle down the hall. A trio of college girls—all bared legs and revealing midriffs even in the cool weather—strolled down the corridor, biting their lips and running appraising looks over him. He smirked and raked an appreciative gaze over their toned bodies and perky breasts. He could have all of that he wanted—human girls responded to his inner wolf without even knowing he was a shifter, and his wolf had a taste for the doe-eyed brunettes that Seattle seemed to possess in abundance. 

But tasting was all he could have with them. Shifters mated with shifters—Jak may have come from a small pack in country, but every pack-raised wolf knew that much. Which was great, except for the fact that female wolves were relatively more rare than males. A lot of wolves like him would forever be living in bachelor pads… or have to settle for marrying humans. 

Even marrying outside their breed didn’t help—other shifters didn’t experience the same magical bond that wolves did. It was like nothing else. Jak felt a shadow of that bond each month when he submitted to his alpha. The magic of their blood linked in a way that went beyond brotherhood. Beyond love. It was an unshakable force that bound them together.

It made them
pack.
It was the sense of
belonging
that every wolf yearned for from the time he was a pup. And it was a bond he could never share with a human or non-wolf shifter.

But Jak was only a beta and could never compete with an alpha like Mace for a mate—especially not anyone near the caliber of Arianna—a fact that only twisted the knife a little more. His inner beast whined at the injustice, but his human side really couldn’t complain. He had a fantastic job as tech analyst at Red Wolf, one of the fastest growing dot-com investment companies in the Seattle area. He had quickly risen to become beta to Gage Crittenden, an alpha second only to Mr. Crittenden Senior in the Red pack hierarchy. And he was free to screw any woman in Seattle who chose to join him in his bed. And there were plenty who chose that on a regular basis.

The Ariannas of the world were simply never meant to be his.

She’s not meant for Mace, either.
Jak backhanded that thought to the dark recesses of his mind. It had no place in his world. He pulled in a breath and leaned against the cool stone wall opposite the classroom door, dragging his mind away from all the flavors of temptation of Arianna and focusing on his phone. A dozen messages and fifty new emails fought for his attention, and he was soon immersed in them. 

Gage had a line on a new tech startup—something in data storage on quantum chips with some new laser accessing that looked promising. Jak set up an appointment to meet with the founders, which consisted of a professor and two graduate students working a side business. But that was often where the best startups came from. Scanning their bios he saw the professor had done time at Google, so there was even more hints of promise there. He would definitely have to dig into the tech, see if they really had the goods, but there was a reason Red Wolf had doubled their portfolio every year for the last ten. The Crittendens were keen investors and quick to jump on promising leads. And the strength of the pack helped keep smaller investors, at least ones run by shifter packs like Red Wolf, out of the running. The Sparks pack were the only ones who gave them any competition at all, and since the run-in over the summer, even they had been keeping their distance.

Jak was buried in spreadsheets and halfway through a fifty page report thick with graphs and mathematics, when movement at the periphery of his vision caught his notice. He dragged his attention away from his phone only to find the hallway was
filled
with students. His heart spasmed as he flit his gaze across the moving sea of backpacks being slung and jackets being donned… but he didn’t see her. Then, at the very end of the hallway: Arianna was standing at the corner, staring right at him. Then she slipped out of sight.

Oh shit.

He took off, shoving his phone in his back pocket as fought his way past the mass exodus from the classroom. He muttered apologies but picked up the pace further until he was practically running when he reached the end of the hall. His boots screeched on the polished wooden floor as he took the corner. He barely saw her curvy rear end before it disappeared around another corner.

Goddamit.
He couldn’t believe he had let her slip past him. If she made a run for it while he was supposed to be watching her… Mace would literally have his throat for it. Although, honestly, that wasn’t what really concerned him. He was more worried about what would happen to
her
if she escaped… only to be caught again. He couldn’t let that happen—he couldn’t let whatever punishment Mace might dish out be
his
fault. He would much rather have Mace’s fangs sunk into his neck than see him lay a hand on Arianna.

Jak dashed down the hall, rounding the second corner, only to see she had doubled back… he barely caught the flutter of her gray jacket slipping out the door of Kane Hall. His heart rate skyrocketed. She was outside. There was no end of places she could run, hide… hell, get lost for all he knew. She was a shifter: he wasn’t concerned about anyone in the human population giving her any real trouble. UDub students didn’t exactly pack concealed weapons. But she was young, inexperienced, and on her own completely. And UDub wasn’t Bellevue, where she likely had friends and family watching out for her most of the time. If she wandered off campus she might find trouble in the shape of something more sinister than a frat boy trying to make moves on her.

Jak burst out into the sun-drenched Red Square. It was crisscrossed with students traveling and lunching and strolling, but it wasn’t hard to find her. She was the thin girl with long brown hair hauling ass across the plaza. Breath heaving, he hesitated on the outside steps. One lone girl sprinting across a plaza was someone late for class. A girl running like her hair was on fire with a six-foot over-muscled guy on her tail… that was someone being
chased.
A dozen cellphones would document the whole thing before you could say
Twitter,
and campus police would almost certainly reach her before he did.

He kept his gaze glued to her quickly-receding back and strode as fast as he could in her general direction without actually running. She was making a beeline toward the main drag on campus—he judged he could cut through the library and maybe head her off. If he could just get ahead of her, let her know he was on to her, maybe he could keep her from bolting altogether. He hated the idea of losing sight of her, but unless he picked up the pace, he was going to lose her anyway.

She ran pretty damn fast for a girl on house arrest for six months.

He sprinted toward Suzzallo, the gorgeous library he knew intimately well from hundreds of hours spent studying, researching, and on more than one occasion, screwing a hot date in the “access-only” stacks. Jak flew up the majestic stone steps, through circulation and reference, and out the Allen library side door in back. Since he wasn’t chasing anything obvious, he only garnered a glare and a couple of turned heads. Between the two libraries now, he saw her sprint past, still too far away for him to catch her eye, but he was about even with her now.

She was headed for the giant circular fountain in the middle of campus, a hallmark that had to draw her eye if nothing else. He dashed in that direction, all while keeping the commons hall between them, so she wouldn’t see him. He pumped his legs so hard, they were starting to scream… but he rounded Mary Gates Hall and reached the fountain before her. He stood there, chest heaving and arms crossed, appearing casual as she sprinted toward him, throwing looks over her shoulder, where she no doubt expected to find him chasing after her
. When she finally turned to face the fountain, dodging the few people scattered across the vast open area around the concrete-rimmed pool, it still took a moment before she recognized him.

He expected her to screech to a stop. Or dash off to the side. Or at least look surprised.

Instead, she simply grinned and barreled toward him. She didn’t even slow down before grabbing his hand and hauling him closer to the fountain. The plumes were in full spray and the wind was picking up... which meant Jak was covered in a fine mist before he could even begin to think about what was happening.

Arianna laughed in a breathy, hysterical way, doubled over and gulping in air, like being spritzed with pond water was the height of hilarity. When she stood straight, her laughs turned into hiccups. She hit him again and again, dull smacking thuds against his chest. He stood and took it, mostly because he couldn’t think of what else to do.