Enslaved by the Alpha: Part Six

  ENSLAVED BY THE ALPHA

  Part Six

  Copyright © 2014 by Viola Rivard

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  The slow-locked mountain had a base too steep for even the most agile climber to scale, but it served its purpose just the same, shielding the deep canyon from the knifing wind. Dozens of campfires dotted the basin, spitting smoke into the crisp air.

  On a bluff opposite the mountain, Erik and Sylvestre perched, observing the sight below with grim fascination. Though they were downwind, they kept low to the ground, staying in their smaller and more easily concealed human forms.

  By Erik’s estimate, there were at least three hundred of them, and that wasn’t including the ones in the sprawling, hide-lined tents. There were enough of them to wipe out his pack three times over, though that shouldn’t have bothered him.

  While he’d yet to face worse odds, he had, over the years, led his pack through many battles that they should not have won. This was achieved due to a combination of strong, decisive leadership and ruthless exploitation of his enemies’ weaknesses. He told himself that this time would be no different.

  “They look settled here,” Sylvestre said. Hesitantly, he added, “Maybe we won’t have to worry about them. I mean, I know they’re at our borders, but we never come this far south anyway. We could stand to lose a few kilometers if it means we don’t have to deal with them.”

  Erik listened as Sylvestre echoed his own initial thoughts. When the beta male was finished, Erik said, “You have overlooked something.”

  Sylvestre just looked at Erik, waiting for him to elaborate. His typically clean-shaven face had sprouted almost an inch worth of silver beard growth in the week since they left the den. Despite being rimmed with dark circles, his amber eyes were bright and alert.

  After a full minute of silence, it dawned on Sylvestre that Erik was waiting for him to respond. His eyes widened marginally, and Erik understood why. Even he was surprised at his patience and his desire for Sylvestre to work out the answer on his own. It was, after all, the alpha’s nature to dictate firmly and expect his wolves to follow his logic unquestioningly.

  Erik asked, “What do you smell?”

  He watched as Sylvestre turned back towards the canyon. Sylvestre inclined his head and his nostrils flared. “Burning wood, leather…” he wrinkled his nose, “…wet bears. A few humans as well, females, probably—no, definitely—mates of some of the more dominant males.”

  “And what don’t you smell?”

  Sylvestre’s brows drew together in concentration, and then they rose as the answer hit him. “Food. There’s got to be hundreds of them and there are all those fires, but I don’t smell anything cooking.”

  Erik nodded. “And that is why they will not stay here. This stretch of territory is the farthest from our den. The reason we don’t come out here is the same reason it has remained uncontested since we acquired it from the Tigia pack six years ago. It’s a wasteland. There are no herds for fifty kilometers in any direction, and not enough game to sustain even a small pack.”

  “They can’t stay here,” Sylvestre said, disappointment evident in his voice. “Well then, we’re going to have to fight them, aren’t we?”

  “Even if we could return to the pack now and arrange a force to combat them, they won’t be here by the time we come back. And if, by chance they were, we wouldn’t be able to face them all, even with the element of surprise.”

  “Then, what? We wait for them to come to us?”

  Erik shook his head again. “If they come to us en masse, we will be able to hold out for a few weeks, perhaps a month, but our food stores are insufficient for a prolonged siege. And if we leave the den to confront them, no amount of strategy is going to overcome their sheer sizes and numbers.”

  He let out a huff of frustration. “Okay, so we’re fucked then.”

  “No,” Erik said, clicking his tongue. “You have thought about this for only a few moments and you are already concluding that we’re doomed? Keep thinking.”

  Sylvestre looked as though he was going to protest, but quickly caught himself. This time, as he stared out over the swarm of bear shifters, he thought long and hard, giving the matter careful consideration.

  Slowly, and with considerable uncertainty, he asked, “Do we try to negotiate with them?”

  Erik tilted his head from side to side. “In a manner of speaking.” He decided that he’d had enough of this training exercise—or whatever it was—and was ready to divulge his plan. “We are going to walk down there and ask to be taken to their highest authority figure.”

  Sylvestre’s mouth fell open. “Right now? Just the two of us?”

  Erik placed a hand beneath his jawline and cracked his neck. “Any attempt to negotiate will expose our vulnerability. We need to let them know that we are aware of their presence in our territory and we want them gone. And if they don’t leave, it will be at their peril.”

  As Erik spoke, Sylvestre gradually leaned away from him, as though needing to distance himself from the idea.

  “That… Erik, that’s crazy. You want to go down there and—on the off chance that they don’t kill us on sight—provoke them into attacking our entire pack?”

  “It is not crazy,” Erik said, through his teeth. Sylvestre was taking the small measure of liberty Erik had given him and stretching it to its limits. “It is exactly what we would do if we were capable of combating them.”

  “So we’re going to deceive them into thinking we’re stronger than we are? It makes sense in theory, but the stakes are too high to gamble like that. They could kill us and follow our trail straight back to the den. They would slaughter the pack—your brother, your niece, Astrid…”

  Sylvestre trailed off as he caught the flash of indignation in Erik’s hard stare.

  Of course Erik was thinking of the pack—the pack that included his family, and now, his mate. There had hardly been a moment that he had not been thinking of her since he left.

  The first two nights had been the hardest. Literally. Despite the blistering cold, his cock had remained rigid and there had been nothing he could do to assuage himself. Twice, he had sent Sylvestre off on an arbitrary patrol, just so that he could be alone to pleasure himself. But there was no pleasure to be found, no matter how furiously he’d handled himself, Erik could not find release. His body wanted only one thing, to be back inside of his mate.

  After the first night, it had taken all of his willpower not to turn back and return to his den. He wrestled with the thought of sending Sten in his stead, and at the height of his madness, he had even thought that he would be fine with Sten being killed by the bears, so long as Erik could spend the rest of the thrall with his mate.

  Thinking about that now gave him a chill. He hoped that he had managed to give her a pup, if only so that he did not have to go through the thrall again any time soon. He enjoyed losing control with his mate—biting her, marking her with his claws, and fucking her harder than he should. He knew she enjoyed it, too, but the thrall did not make him lose control, it made him lose his mind.

  “I am well aware of what is at stake,�
� Erik said, his tone measured. “Now, this is the point where you stop questioning me and start listening. And listen carefully, because everything that happens from here, whether we live or die, whether my pack and my mate are slaughtered, it is on you.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Okay, fine, I’ll bite. What does it smell like?”

  Astrid didn’t look up from the gown she was sewing. She now knew how cunning Ila could be, and if the wolf shifter had even the slightest inkling of how much she was getting under Astrid’s skin, Astrid would be screwed.

  “What does it smell like?” Ila repeated in her singsong voice. “Hm… Hm… Hmmmm…”

  “I’m sorry, is that some Inuit humming language I’m not familiar with?” Astrid asked through gritted teeth. She still refused to look up, but she could hear Ila lightly tapping her cheek.

  Pocahontas tried her hand. “It smells…” She let out a puff of air, and from the corner of her eye, Astrid saw her shrug and look to Snow White for support.

  Snow White and Pocahontas were two of Ila’s ‘friends’ that Astrid had made dresses for. They had real names, but seeing as how they were only hanging around Astrid because of some weird, wolf-pack social advantage that she still didn’t understand, Astrid had not bothered learning their names.

  Due to a combination of Erik taking her as his mate and the incident with Sabine, which had been just over a week ago, everyone seemed to want to be her friend. Ila had taken it upon herself to audit Astrid’s new social alliances, basically acting as the gatekeeper for Astrid’s new inner circle. Under normal circumstances, Astrid would have tried making her own friends, but as Ila had so kindly pointed out, Astrid was a horrible judge of character.

  “Fine, go ahead and make friends with every ratty-haired, flea-bitten female that comes your way,” Ila had said. “I’ll be happy to take Erik back when one of them succeeds in killing you.”

  Astrid considered pointing out that she was no longer desperate for companionship. On the contrary, she’d been so jarred by her experience with Sabine that she would have been content to wait out the rest of her time at the den alone in her room, contemplating her own naiveté. But Ila had steamrolled her when she had been vulnerable, and now she was stuck spending her days with Tweedledee and Tweedledumber. Dressing them as Snow White and Pocahontas had been the only thing that had made their company at least moderately amusing.

  Snow White was gnawing on the bottom of her red-lacquered lip. She wore her straight black hair pinned up in a bun on top of her head, and with her big doe-like eyes and full, rosy cheeks, she would have looked adorable if she wasn’t so annoying.

  “Effervescent?” Snow White offered.

  Astrid was mildly impressed by her vocabulary, even if she was probably using the word wrong. “I smell bubbly?”

  Snow White frowned. “No, that’s not it at all.”

  They were sitting in a circle, Ila lounging on an overstuffed pillow between Snow White, who was braiding beads into Halley’s long hair, and Pocahontas, who was painting her nails with Astrid’s bottle of “Point of Blue” polish, which she’d helped herself to.

  Sten’s chambers, which were sectioned off into a lounge room with a bedroom in back, had been Astrid’s home for the past week. She wasn’t allowed to leave the room with anyone, even Ila, unless Sten was present. He had offered to take her to the main room a few times, but Astrid always declined. She did not want to deal with the tableau of expressions that awaited her there—anger, accusation, and derision from Sabine’s former friends, and fear from pretty much everyone else.

  It still baffled her that everyone believed that she killed Sabine. That had been Ila’s idea, which Sten had unexpectedly supported. Ila had simply not wanted to deal with the social repercussions of killing a beta wolf in such high standing, whereas Sten had felt that if members of the pack believed Astrid had killed a skilled fighter like Sabine, they would think twice before trying to cross her. Astrid suspected that the beta males Sabine had been friends with had their doubts, but Sten had been on patrol at the time of Sabine’s death and the idea of Ila managing to take down Sabine must have seemed even more implausible to them than Astrid having secret kung fu skills—or whatever they were thinking.

  “Oh, who cares what it smells like?” Ila waved her dismissive hand at Astrid’s face. “You’re pregnant.”

  Astrid’s hand twitched, and the needle slipped, pricking the pad of her finger. A small dot of blood blossomed purple on the blue fabric.

  “Uh huh,” Astrid said stiffly.

  “You don’t seem very excited,” said Snow White.

  “Why would she be?” Ila cut in. She aimed her finger down her throat and made a gagging noise. “She’s going to get fat—well, fatter—and Erik probably won’t even want her anymore. And then she’ll have a smelly, mewling little pup sucking all the youth right out of her teats.”

  Halley arched her head up to look at Snow White. “What are teats?”

  Ila reached over and smacked her on the side of her head. “Stop listening to our adult conversation.” To Astrid, she said, “See? This is the kind of thing you’re going to have to deal with.”

  “Don’t hit her,” Astrid ordered, with a level of confident authority she thought might rival Erik. She set aside her sewing project and grabbed Halley, pulling the girl into her lap. “Teat is another word for nipple.”

  “You’re going to make milk?” Halley asked.

  Astrid kept her hands busy in Halley’s hair, picking up braiding where Snow White had left off.

  “Women who have babies make milk,” Astrid said evenly.

  “When will you make the milk?” Halley asked.

  “Women usually start making milk a few days after they start breastfeeding.”

  “Can any pup drink it, or only your pup?”

  Pocahontas spoke up, “She’s not going to feed you, kid.”

  “That’s not what I was asking,” Halley said defensively, her cheeks flushing.

  Ila goaded her. “Why would you even ask that, Halley? You’re so gross sometimes.”

  All Astrid wanted was to be invisible and shrink away from their conversation, but she couldn’t sit by while they ganged up on Halley.

  “Will you two shut up? She’s a child, she’s entitled to ask whatever questions she wants.”

  “Aw,” Snow White said airily. “You’re going to make such a good mother.”

  “Why, because I’m the only one here that doesn’t have the maternal instincts of a mop bucket?”

  For a moment, Ila’s face looked pinched. Then, her expression relaxed into demure amusement. “You’re no fun today. It must be your hormones.”

  Astrid glanced at her through narrowed eyes. “I’m not pregnant.”

  Ila rolled her eyes. “This, again?”

  They were now on day two of Ila trying to convince Astrid that she was pregnant. Her first proclamation had come the morning before, when she had brought Astrid’s breakfast. Ila had taken one look at Astrid, wrinkled her dainty nose, and said, “Ugh, you’re pregnant.” Astrid had spent the next hour trying to get her to elaborate on how Ila knew that, but had only gotten the vague answer that her scent was different.

  After almost two years of obsessing over her fertility, Astrid probably knew as much as an obstetrician did about the process of conception. If she were pregnant—which she wasn’t—her future child would be nothing but a few cells lodged in some obscure corner of her uterus.

  There was no way Ila could tell she was pregnant, but despite Astrid’s best efforts, Ila could probably tell how much it was aggravating her when she mentioned Astrid’s changing scent. Astrid knew that this was all a cruel joke, probably aimed at getting back at her for stealing Erik away, the other thing Ila would never shut up about.

  “You don’t think you’re pregnant?” Pocahontas asked, actually looking up from her toenails.

  Astrid tightly replied, “I’m reserving judgment until I have more concrete evidence. You know, so
mething besides a smell that no one seems to be able to describe.”

  Snow White snapped her fingers. “I know! It’s a soft, warm scent.”

  “Neither of those adjectives describe a scent,” Astrid said with a sigh.

  Ila scoffed. “Maybe not to a human.”

  Admittedly, it gave Astrid pause that Ila’s friends seemed to be in on the ruse. Pocahontas was a grade-A bitch, but Snow White was pretty nice. And neither of them seemed all that keen on taking Ila’s lead. Snow White always went out of her way to agree with Astrid, and Pocahontas never looked her directly in the eyes. From the start, they had both regarded Astrid as the leader of their group.

  But she had to believe that they were either conspiring against her, or that they were confused. Maybe she did smell a little different, but it could be for any number of reasons. Her scent had changed during the thrall; maybe they’d forgotten what her normal scent was like. She had also run out of her body soap, so her scent had definitely lost its floral undertones. And if it was neither of those, it could have been that her elusive period was about to make its grand reappearance.

  Halley looked up at her. “I can’t describe it either, but I know you smell like my mama did when she was going to have a baby.”

  Astrid’s throat closed and she fumbled with the bead she’d been threading onto Halley’s braid. It fell and clicked on the stone floor, rolling over towards Ila, who picked it up.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Ila said. “Sten’s mate. I forgot all about her.”

  Snow White winced. In a low, conspiratorial whisper, she said, “I heard she had an a-b-o-r-e-s-h-u-n.”

  Astrid cocked a brow “A what?”

  “That’s not how you spell abortion,” Halley said flatly. The little girl looked back at Astrid. “My papa’s mate didn’t care that he was a wolf, but she wanted a human baby, not pups. That’s why she got rid of the pup and papa took me away.”

  Astrid stared at Halley, unable to formulate an adequate response. The story would have been gut-wrenching coming from an adult, but the fact that she was a child made it almost unbearable.