BAD BOY ROMANCE: DIESEL: Contemporary Bad Boy Biker MC Romance (Box Set) (New Adult Sports Romance Short Stories Boxset) (129 page)

Abdul and Carlos arrived the same time. Abdul’s skin was the color of coffee. Carlos was close to that tone, but they looked different.

Charles was the last to arrive. His black eyes missed nothing. They fell on Allegra, and then flitted to mine, and I knew what he was thinking.

We still had a lot of work.

Maria walked in behind him. She was a tall, leggy blond with hazel eyes and an easy smile, and she moved like she fit in everywhere. She was sweet and affectionate. It made her a pleasure to be around, and at the bottom of the pack hierarchy, not only because Charles was last in line, but because Maria was completely submissive and would never challenge her position.

When I introduced her to Allegra, Maria smiled and hugged her. For the first time it looked like Allegra was starting to relax.

We all sat down on the couches. Allegra was next to me, sitting up straight with her hands on her knees. I could feel her uncertainty, and I knew the others could too, but I was proud of her for trying.

“What is she doing here?” Sarelle asked, looking at Allegra.

“She’s my second,” I said, not looking at Sarelle. I’d known since she walked through the door that she was going to cause trouble. She was just submissive enough for me not to kick her out of the pack.

When I looked at Allegra she looked impossibly small. She was surrounded by a pack of wolves and she knew it. I could smell her fear. If she wanted them to take her seriously she had to stand up for herself. Not even Maria would submit to her.

“What are we going to do about full moon?” Sarelle asked. The others nodded.

“We do what we always do,” I said. Full moon was a problem for us when we were home. The base knew what we were, but a lot of the wives and children that lived here didn’t know, and we tried to keep it under cover.

We may have been accepted into society by law, but politics didn’t reach the masses. They were still scared of preternatural creatures. We were still being discriminated against – racism just took on a new form.

Allegra knew what we did during full moon. We couldn’t stop the change, not really. Even I, the alpha, struggled to keep my wolf in check when the moon called to me. It was the time of month that we just made sure we weren’t around people.

But that wasn’t what Sarelle was asking, and we all knew it.

“Allegra will join us,” I said. There was a collective silence, like everyone was holding their breath, and they looked at Allegra. She made a small squeak.

“What?” she asked.

“You can’t stay home. We need you there.”

She started shaking her head. She was going to fight me on this. She didn’t want to come, she didn’t want to have anything to do with the wolves. If only she’d understood what she was doing when she’d ordered my wolves around. She stepped into her role as my second, and she couldn’t just give it up now. Not without me finding a new wife.

And that wasn’t going to happen.

“She doesn’t care about us, Reid,” Sarelle said again. She was the only one that kept on talking, and she was really starting to get to me.

“She’s one of us now,” I said. My voice was hard and I could feel the wolf inside me wake up, fueled by my anger. But behind that was also the knowledge that she was right. It wasn’t that Allegra didn’t care about us as much as it was that she didn’t want to be a part of the monster world. It was one thing accepting it, it was another thing altogether to be a part of it.

And she didn’t want that. But it felt the same. I felt it in the air too. Allegra’s resolve not to be a part of this. And I knew my wolves could taste it at the back of their throats.

Sarelle stood up, her eyes on Allegra, and they’d changed from the light gray that looked like it promised rain, to a deep almost-black that promised a lot worse. Her wolf was very close to the surface. A ripple traveled over her skin, and I felt it in my own body, my wolf mirroring hers.

“Sit down,” I ordered. But she was on her feet, and her eyes bled to a complete black. She pulled her lips back and in a snarl and it was all aimed at Allegra. She was challenging her.

I was on my feet and before she could blink I had her against the far wall with my arm against her neck. She squirmed against me, clawing at my arm and kicking out. But I was alpha, I was much stronger than she was.

“If you challenge her, you challenge me. She is my mate.”

“She isn’t worth this position,” Sarelle sneered at me, and then she coughed. “Look at her. She can’t be a leader the way she should be.”

Sarelle was right. I knew she was. But she wasn’t in a position to challenge Allegra.

“I know you’re taking me on because of pack rule, Reid,” she said. “But we all know it’s convenient because if she had to fight her own battles, she wouldn’t make it.”

I could smell the truth of her words. She really believed it, and it became stronger as I realized the others thought so too. I glanced over my shoulder at Allegra. I expected her to be sitting on the couch, looking lost and scared like she had before. But she wasn’t sitting, she was standing. And she was angry.

The moment I was aware of it I felt her anger, hot and fierce. And it was aimed at me, not Sarelle. It caught me by surprise, and I loosened my grip a little. Sarelle gasped for air in the bit of space I offered her.

“What are you doing?” Allegra asked me. Her eyes were normal human eyes, dark brown and unable to change like ours did. But looking into them they were scary enough for me.

“She challenged you. You’re the alpha’s mate, she was out of line.”

“You’re strangling her,” she said. “Let her go, she gets it.” Allegra was confident and strong, the exact opposite of the person that sat next to me a moment ago. I loosened my grip on Sarelle even more, and then finally let her go. She stood on her feet, coughing, but she didn’t slide to the floor.

“I don’t know how this works, but I’m pretty sure that you don’t have to hurt your wolves to keep control,” she said.

“This is pack, Allegra. There are rules. We don’t play games. There is no compassion. This is how it works.”

Johan spoke up behind Allegra, “He’s right. We don’t do it the way humans would. We’re animals after all.”

Allegra nodded her lips pursed in a thin line. She glared at Sarelle long enough for it to border on a challenge of her own, but she broke the eye contact before it came to that. I wondered if it was coincidence, or if Allegra knew what she was doing.

“Full moon she’ll join us. There’s nothing more to say about that,” I said and dismissed the pack. They filtered out of the room one by one. Each of my men dipped their head when the passed Allegra, looking at her sideways for a moment. Maria did it too. It was only Sarelle that refused. They were all submitting even when they thought it was a bad idea.

When the door closed behind them, I turned to Allegra. She had her head in her hands.

“What was that?” I asked, sitting next to her.

“What was what?”

“You were taking Sarelle’s side? For what?”

“You were hurting her.”

I took a deep breath. “She was challenging you. You’re the alpha’s mate. A fight with you would be to the death.”

Allegra’s eyes widened just a little. I wanted to shield her from the truth, but she had to know if she wanted to be a part of this.

“I can’t do this, Reid,” she said. “All this submitting and growling and hurting each other, and being alpha and being responsible. I don’t know how.”

“There is a part of you that does know how. You did it that time in the office block when we found that kid. And you were doing it now when you told me not to hurt Sarelle. You have what it takes. The pack, most of it, submits to you because of that. But you can’t just show that side of you when someone is getting hurt.”

Her power was fueled by compassion somehow, which didn’t make sense to me. We didn’t do compassion. We did mercy, sometimes. But it was tough all over. Wolves didn’t play nice.

And somehow Allegra had managed to be the boss, twice now.

“If you just get a hang of what they need, you’ll be fine,” I said again.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” she said. I pulled her against me, planting a kiss on top of her head.

“Baby, you don’t have a choice. You’ve taken the role as my mate, once before and now tonight. You can’t let that one slide again. I can’t put John back where he was. The only way I’ll be able to replace you now is by getting a new mate.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand werewolf politics.”

“It’s not really politics with wolves. The vampires are a lot more into arguing and bargaining. We’re just animals. It’s dominance and protection and loyalty.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do it,” she said.

“You can, sweetheart. You already have.”

Allegra

I woke up and the bed next to me was empty. When I ran my hand over the sheets they were still warm. He’d spent the night next to me.

It had been a while since he’d run away from me. A while ago he used to spend his nights somewhere else – with his pack, if I had to guess. But since we’d fixed our relationship he was back home, he’d come back to me and I could spend time with my husband again. I sighed away the panic that had clutched at me for a moment.

Reid was in the bathroom, and I could hear water running in the basin. When he came out he was dressed in uniform.

“You’re leaving again?” I asked, the panic returning. We hadn’t had a date, but usually they warned us beforehand. The notice had never been this short. He ran his hands over his light hair, making sure every hair was in place.

“I’ve been called up to Washington,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. They wanted to talk about a couple of things. I’m team leader. The rest of them will still be here.”

“How long will you be gone?” I asked. When he left on duty he was away for months had a time. Once he’d been gone for longer than a year. But this scared me more than that, for some reason.

“Just a few days. I don’t know exactly, but not more than a week or two, I’m sure.”

He kissed me and I felt some of the tension drain out of my body. Of course, I wasn’t scared because he was leaving. I knew that even though I didn’t want to admit to it. I was scared because the pack was staying behind. I didn’t know as much about werewolves as I’d thought before – meeting the pack had proved that I was being thrown into the deep end. But I knew enough to know that with Reid gone, I was going to be in charge of the pack. As his mate, and therefore his second, that meant that they had to look up to me.

I thought of Sarelle and her hostile reaction to me. And the rest of the back, their disbelief in who I was clear on their faces. I may have been just a human, but I hadn’t needed supernatural senses to know what they thought of me.

“What do I do with the pack?” I asked. I was suddenly upset with Reid for going. He knew that I wasn’t strong enough to deal with this. Not now, and I wasn’t sure if I ever would be.

“John will be here to help you. He knows. I’ll be back before full moon so you won’t have to worry about that. I’ll make sure of it.”

“I can’t do this, Reid. I’ve only just gotten into this, and I’m not a wolf. I can’t be mean and threaten them and force them obey me the way you do.”

He checked himself in the mirror. His head was already in Washington, and I might as well have been pleading with the wall.

“You’re going to be fine, sweetheart,” he said and kissed me again. When he broke the kiss he looked me in the eye. “I know you can do this. I believe in you.”

He walked out of the room and a moment later I heard the front door click shut. His believing in me was all good and well. The problem was I just didn’t believe in myself. If I knew anything about werewolves it was that if I felt it, they could smell it.

I was in big trouble.

Someone rang my doorbell about two hours later, and when I opened it up it was John. He stayed on the porch even when I stepped to the side to let him in.

“You can come in, John,” I said, and only then did he walk into the house. I didn’t like this.

“Reid asked me to check on you,” he said.

“I’m doing okay,” I answered, and immediately I felt like an idiot because I knew he could smell a lie. Spending time with wolves was going to make me change how I spoke.

“Nothing’s going to go wrong unless one of us loses control. The chances of that happening are pretty slim. It’s not close to full moon and there’s no reason for any of us to lose it. We’re all home and safe.”

I tried to swallow my nervousness, and nodded.

“I hope you’re right,” I said. John’s face softened.

“You don’t have to look so scared. Reid wouldn’t have let this happen if he didn’t think you could handle it.”

“But it was because of what I did, remember. Stepping into the role and all that? I’m pretty sure Reid wouldn’t have chosen this if it had been up to him.”

John nodded and looked over my shoulder like he was scared Reid would jump out and catch him with his mate.

“That might be true, but he decided that because he didn’t think you were strong enough. You did take that role, which meant that you were strong enough, at least once.”