Capturing the Alpha (Shifters of Nunavut Book 1) (21 page)

Ginnifer’s mother called her when she landed in Fort Lauderdale, but she let it go to voicemail. There was no way her mother could have known that she was back in the states unless Astrid had told her, which she’d specifically advised her sister not to do when they’d spoken on the phone the previous night.

She stopped at the bathroom to splash cold water on her face, hardly recognizing the pale, haggard reflection that greeted her. Next to her, two teenagers in cheap flip-flops and low cut jeans were complaining about a layover and fixing their makeup. Ginnifer borrowed a bronzer and a lip-gloss that tasted like peaches. The makeup seemed to sit on top of her dry skin, but gave the impression that she was trying to look human, and that was enough.

It had taken two weeks to get out of Nunavut via a series of private aircrafts. She thought she’d be on her way home once she’d made it to Quebec, but due to a misunderstanding with the pilot, she’d been dropped off on the north end of the province of Quebec, and not the city. It had been another week before she was flying across the US-Canadian border, and then two days worth of layovers, during which she’d barely slept.

The trip to baggage claim felt surreal. She’d flown into this airport so many times, but nothing felt familiar to her. She got more than once, in spite of the clearly marked signs to direct her.

Ginnifer’s heart warmed for the first time in weeks when she saw Astrid waiting at baggage claim. Her sister was two years older than her, but was over half a foot shorter with a round face that hadn’t aged a day since she was in high school. After Astrid’s divorce the year before, Ginnifer had tried unsuccessfully to get her and Boaz to go on a date.

Astrid pulled her into a big hug, and Ginnifer wanted to collapse in her arms. She held onto her sister for a long time, letting Astrid be the one to pull away.

“Oh my,” Astrid said, appraising Ginnifer with a sweeping glance. “You are a hot mess. You know what you need?”

Ginnifer didn’t want to contemplate that question, and she was relieved when Astrid produced a familiar set of keys from her pocket.

“You brought my Lexus,” Ginnifer said. Her bottom lip quivered as she reached for the keys, but Astrid held them away from her.

“
I’m
driving. You look like you might fall asleep at the wheel. But please tell me you have an appetite. It’s still stone crab season for a few more weeks and I was thinking that the three of us could go crack some claws and hear all about your latest adventure—your treat.”

“Since when do you like to hear about my trips abroad?” Ginnifer asked. “And what do you mean the three of us? Did you bring mom?”

Astrid stepped aside, motioning towards a row of seats. Aaron sat watching her, a bouquet of flowers and an oversized teddy bear in his hands.

Her sister leaned in to say, “I take it he’s in the doghouse for something? I wasn’t gonna bring him, but he showed up at my apartment this morning with those sad puppy eyes.”

Ginnifer’s lips didn’t move as she spoke through her teeth. “How did he know you were picking me up?”

“You told me not to tell mom that you were back, you didn’t say anything about your fiancé.”

Ginnifer was about to point out that Astrid had also told their mom she was back, but Aaron was approaching and she shifted her focus to him.

“Hey, Ginny.”

Aaron didn’t appear as though he’d shaved since the last time they’d spoken, and he sported a curly brown beard with a golden sheen. He wore tan cargo pants and a polo shirt with the buttons undone, a pair of sunglasses sat on top of his shaved head. Few men could have pulled off the look, but when people looked at Aaron, all they saw were his eyes, a startling shade of ocean-blue, captivating in their color and the depth of their kindness. It still surprised Ginnifer that he’d been so angry with her before, not because she thought that she didn’t deserve it, but because it was the only memory she had of him being cross with her.

He passed the bear to Astrid and then pulled Ginnifer into a hug, the plastic packaging of the bouquet crinkling against her back. She didn’t lean into him as she had with her sister, but the hug was unexpectedly comforting. Whether or not they’d broken up, they had still been close for seven years.

“I thought you were in Edinburgh,” Ginnifer said as he pulled back.

“I took the first flight I could get when Astrid told me you were on your way back. I only beat you here by a day.”

And here you are
, she thought.
With flowers and smiles, like nothing’s changed
.
Everything’s changed.

Ginnifer gave them both a weary smile. “Can lunch wait? I’m really tired.”

“No need to explain,” Aaron said, rubbing her shoulder. “Let’s get you home.”

They picked up Ginnifer’s bags and left for Miami in her Lexus, both Astrid and Aaron plying her for stories of her time in Nunavut. Ginnifer gave vague answers when she answered at all, and when her sister went off on one of her tangents, Ginnifer pretended to fall asleep.

She didn’t open her eyes until they were at her sister’s apartment complex. She tried getting the keys, but Astrid tossed them to Aaron instead. She gave Ginnifer a quick peck on the cheek before telling her she’d keep Noona for the night, that way Ginnifer could sleep in.

When Aaron got into the driver’s seat, Ginnifer said, “I really am okay to drive. Besides, if you take me home, you’ll have to call a cab to your hotel.”

Aaron gave her a funny look. “I’m not staying in a hotel. I slept on your couch last night, that’s where all my things are.”

It shouldn’t have upset her. Aaron always stayed at her apartment when he was in Miami, even when she was away. But this time it felt like a violation.

“Aaron, I really need to be alone tonight.” She hoped he could not hear the quiet desperation in her voice.

He started the car and pulled out onto the street, a frown playing on his lips. “You look like you need someone to take care of you,” he said. “And even if you didn’t, we have a lot to talk about.”

“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“I’ve already waited over a month. Christ, Ginnifer, you tried to break up with me over Skype while we were on different continents and I had no way of reaching you.”

“We’re always on different continents,” she said, though the excuse sounded flimsy. “I’m too tired to do this tonight. You can come up and get your things. I’ll pay for you to stay at a hotel if you need me to.”

Aaron’s lips thinned. “I’m not staying in a hotel and I’m not leaving you until we work this out.”

Her head began to pound. None of this was going the way she’d planned. The only thing that had gotten her through the past three weeks had been knowing that she could come home to her apartment, eat an entire container of ice cream, and turn the volume up on her television until it was too loud for her to think. She felt blindsided by Aaron’s presence, though she knew it was her own fault for leaving things as she had with him.

“I’m sorry for the way I handled our last conversation,” she told him. “But it doesn’t change anything. I’ll always care about you, but I don’t want to be in a relationship with you.”

His grip was white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “Because of Edinburgh?”

“No. Edinburgh was only a symptom of a bigger problem in our relationship. We both have different goals for our lives and—”

She thought that she was on the verge of something very articulate and deep, which was why it pissed her off when Aaron interrupted her.

“I’m throwing away seven years of my life just because you don’t think our goals are aligned anymore. If you want something from me, then tell me what it is and I’ll do it.”

She tried to regain her point, before exhaustion and aggravation stole her eloquence. “You’re not throwing anything away by breaking up with me. We had a lot of good times, but we’ve ended up in very different places in our lives and I think that we’ve both outgrown one another.”

Aaron slammed on the brakes, causing her seatbelt to lock up. Ginnifer wrapped an arm around herself, and when she shot him a glare, she could see that there were unshed tears in his eyes. She felt a sharp stab of guilt, not only for upsetting him, but also because she felt none of his grief.

“We are not breaking up.”

His obstinate tone assuaged some of the guilt.

“Yes, we are.”

He glared at her. “No, we’re not. I’ll let you go home and get some sleep, I’ll even stay in a hotel if that’s what you want, and we’ll talk about this more in the morning.”

“Aaron,
no
. Nothing you say is going to change my mind. Now please, let’s end this on good terms.”

“We’re not ending anything.”

“I’m pregnant.”

A car horn honked furiously behind them, causing them both to jump. Aaron remained motionless for a few seconds, before abruptly accelerating. They drove in silence for a block, until he turned into her parking garage.

Once they’d parked, they both remained in their seats, his hands still on the steering wheel, her hands fidgeting in her lap.

In a voice just above a whisper, he said, “Is this some sort of ploy so that you can blow me off?”

She would have been angry at the assumption, if her anxiety hadn’t gone through the roof. It was the first time she’d said the words aloud and it made everything seem more real.

“No,” she said just as quietly.
I wish it were
.

“Whose is it then?” He shook his head. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. How far along are you?”

She’d almost thought she’d have to tell him it wasn’t his, but realized that much would be obvious. Between the time she’d been gone and the time Aaron had been in Uganda, and then Syria, they hadn’t slept together in over half a year.

“I’m not sure exactly. Five weeks, I think.”

She knew from her exhaustive Google searches during her layover at O’Hare that she was supposed to count from the date of her last period, but she had no way of knowing when that would have been. What she did know, from a missed appointment reminder she’d gotten as soon as she’d bothered to check her voicemail, was that she’d been almost two weeks late in getting her Depo shot.

Without her cellphone, she never remembered the dates of appointments. It wasn’t the first time she’d missed an appointment for her birth control, but she’d never lost track of the date and had always used condoms when necessary. But when she’d been factoring how long before her next shot, her mental starting point had been when she and Boaz had struck out across the tundra. She’d forgotten how long it had taken to get north once they’d reached Nunavut, and forgotten that they’d lost another week when Rita had set them back.

She’d played her last two weeks with Zane over and over in her head, trying to figure out how she could have possibly become pregnant without knowing it. Shifters could smell when a woman was fertile, and at first she’d thought that he might have gotten her pregnant intentionally. But the more she thought about it, the more she doubted that was the case. He’d never openly expressed an interest in fatherhood, but she got the impression that if he’d known that there was even a possibility that she were pregnant, he would have done everything in his power to keep her there.

The only thing that made sense was that she’d ovulated shortly after the last time they were together, which skewed everything in the opposite direction, because she’d been the one to entice him.

Aaron was talking, she realized, and as she tuned in to what he was saying, she was initially confused.

“I know we don’t have to go there, but it’ll seem more convincing that we got caught up in the thrill of the city.”

“What, go where?”

He gave her an impatient look. “To Vegas, to get married. It’s close enough that we can say the baby is mine and no one should suspect…” He swallowed hard, before hesitantly asking, “The father…he’s white, right?”

Ginnifer put a hand over her face, not sure if she wanted to laugh or to cry. Six months ago, she would have been over the moon at the proposition of eloping with Aaron. She wondered if they would have been happy if not for her meeting Zane. Zane, who had made her question everything she’d thought that she wanted.

“I’m not marrying you, Aaron. I’m not even sure if I’m keeping…it. In any case, you deserve someone who will appreciate what a great guy you are, someone who wants to be by your side while you save the world. But that’s not me.”

“Ginnifer…”

She reached up to stroke his cheek, giving him a sad smile. “One day, a woman is going to thank me for letting you go.”

Aaron came up to get his things, but he didn’t linger. Her apartment was spotless, and Ginnifer could tell from the leftover stir-fry in the fridge and the Korean drama recommendations on her Netflix queue that Astrid had been camping out in her apartment.

Lying down on the couch, she put on a documentary about space. Hugging a pillow to her midsection, she allowed herself to cry.

Ginnifer woke to Noona licking her face. The sounds of sizzling and metal scraping against metal came from her kitchen, along with a smell that made her gag. There was a blanket on her that she didn’t remember falling asleep with.

She patted Noona on the head and then sat up, peering past her couch to where Astrid was busy in the kitchen. Her curly hair was tied up into a bun and she was wearing an apron that Ginnifer had long-since given up for lost.

“I’m making omelets,” Astrid called out as she grabbed a mixing bowl from the cabinet beside the stove. “And there’s juice in the fridge.”

Ginnifer sighed as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “If you’re homeless, you can tell me and I’ll get you your own apartment.”

Astrid snorted. “I’m here to take care of you.”

“I’m sure it has nothing at all to do with the TV, the pool, or my fancy cookware.”

Astrid turned to wag a spatula at her. “You spent half a grand on these pots and pans—don’t deny it, I looked them up and I know you never remember to use coupons—and you eat out every day. Someone has to use them.”

Rolling her eyes, Ginnifer got up to pour herself a glass of water. The closer she got to the kitchen, the more her stomach began to protest.

“I spoke with Aaron this morning.”

Ginnifer froze in reaching for a glass. “What did he have to say?”

“What do you think?” Astrid said, not looking up from the pan. “The guy is crushed that you broke up with him. He seemed to think I could convince you to change your mind.”

Ginnifer’s posture slumped with her relief. She’d been on a four-hour layover at LaGuardia when she’d finally worked up the nerve to take a pregnancy test. As soon as the second pink line appeared, pale at first, and then bold and damning, she’d wanted to call her sister, but known that she couldn’t.

Astrid’s marriage had dissolved during her struggle with infertility, and it was still an open wound for her. Ginnifer suspected that the reason she and Astrid had become closer lately was that Astrid wanted someone to nurture. She couldn’t tell her sister that she’d gotten pregnant by accident and wasn’t even sure if she was going to keep it.

“What did you say to him?” Ginnifer asked.

Astrid shrugged. “I told him that he should either start paying me, or go see a therapist.”

Ginnifer laughed, but immediately felt bad. She took a small sip of water, but her stomach wasn’t having any of that.

“I’m going to go take a bath,” she said, heading towards the bathroom without waiting for a reply.

“But it’ll get cold!”

She closed the door behind her and turned on the sink faucet, bracing herself to throw up. Mornings had been rough the past few days. And afternoons, and evenings, too. Her insides continued to churn, but after a moment the worst of it subsided, and she leaned back against the door.

Tentatively, she placed a hand over her abdomen. When she thought of the tiny embryo, she had trouble feeling anything but dread and anxiety. But there must have been a wisp of something more, because for all the times she’d thought about termination, she couldn’t bring herself to so much as make the call, let alone follow through with it.

She sighed. “What am I going to do with you?”

The obvious answer was to return to Nunavut. Just thinking about telling Zane she was pregnant and that she was staying to be his mate made her emotional, but wisdom told her she was tunneling. Once the joy of being back with Zane wore off, she’d be bound to him and Siluit. Living in the den had been an incredible experience, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted that life. Even if she was willing to give up on her career and all of the modern luxuries, life on the tundra was perilous, and not an environment in which she’d want to raise a child.

But raising a shifter in Miami would also be difficult, if not impossible. The only thing she could think to do was move somewhere more rural, where she could raise it away from the confines of human society. Either way would take sacrifice, but at least with the latter option she might be able to live a semi-normal life.

Ginnifer took a long, hot bath, and for the first time since her injury, she undertook the laborious task of washing her hair with one hand. The bathroom connected to her bedroom, and when she walked inside, it was apparent that Astrid had not been using her bed.

Everything was how she’d left it, the surfaces cluttered with books, unopened junk mail, hair pins, and empty glasses, all filled with evaporation marks. She searched the clothes on the floor, until she found an outfit that smelled as though it had only been worn once. She was careful to button the shirt all the way up to its high collar so that it hid the puncture marks on her neck.

As she made her way down the hall, she heard Boaz’s voice. By the time she made it to the living room, she recognized it for what it was, but her heart still continued to pound. Astrid sat on the couch, an empty plate in front of her on the coffee table. She held Ginnifer’s camera in one hand and a mug of orange juice in the other.

“What does it feel like to shift?” Boaz asked from behind the camera.

He was filming Tallow, who was naked, save for a fur pelt across her midsection. “How am I supposed to answer that? You might as well ask a fish how it feels to be wet all of the time.”

Astrid chuckled. “She’s so human, I can’t believe it.”

Ginnifer sat down beside her sister, putting her hand on the back of the couch. “That’s Tallow. She’s a beta female. She comes off like a real bitch but…well, that’s kind of what she is.”

Boaz asked, “How do you decide which form you want to be in?”

Tallow said, “Human form is best for communication, and that is all. But oftentimes it is easier to remain in human form, particularly when you don’t wish to be hassled with undressing.”

Boaz said, “There are…certain activities that happen when you’re undressed, that you still do in your human form. Like bathing.”

“And fucking?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess, but it’s not that I’m interested in that. I’m more curious about whether you—you wolves, like to, you know, do it like that.”

Astrid looked up from the camera, just as a wicked gleam flashed in Tallow’s eyes.

“Is Boaz propositioning her for bestiality?” Astrid asked.

Ginnifer reached over to press pause before things escalated. She’d let Boaz borrow her camera several times, as it took better video in low light than his own. But she hadn’t expected him to fill it with weird things like that.

“I’m sure he was only asking in the spirit of knowledge,” Ginnifer muttered, setting the camera aside.

“Hey, I was enjoying that.”

“You can watch it when it’s finished.”

If Astrid went digging through the video files, she’d inevitably come across something that Ginnifer didn’t want her to see.

“Fine,” Astrid said, gathering up her dishes. “I have to go to work anyway. Do you mind watching Noona until I get off?”

“She’s my dog,” Ginnifer reminded her.

“
Riiiight
. Somehow I forgot.”

When Astrid had left, Ginnifer grabbed her bag from the floor, pulling out the case that held their memory sticks. They’d painstakingly organized over a hundred of them, each with small name labels and numbers that corresponded with the notebook details written for the different scenes.

She ran her finger over Zane’s row, one of the shortest. Boaz had had a difficult time getting near the alpha, and almost every time Ginnifer had filmed him, the intimacy between them was palpable. She wasn’t sure how much of the footage would be useable in the final draft.

Ginnifer skipped over the row, still not ready to see his face. Instead, she went to Boaz’s SD cards, most of which were filled with interviews she hadn’t seen. She recognized the first one that she put in. It was a video he’d taken during their first trip to the inlet. Ginnifer took in the familiar landscape of the nighttime tundra, her heart aching.

When they reached the docks, Boaz asked Tallow to wait while he took out his Bolex. He was starting to explain the differences between the two cameras when the video feed cut out. At the start of the next scene, Tallow was sitting across from him on the boat, her hands on the oars.

“Don’t look so sad,” she told him. “This camera seems much lighter.”

Ginnifer remembered that he’d dropped his Bolex in the water shortly before this scene. She also remembered that this was one of the scenes that Boaz had said was private. She considered fast forwarding through it, but curiosity stayed her finger.

“The picture quality is…never mind.” Boaz shook his head. “So, Tallow, can I ask you a question?”

Her mismatched eyes shifted in his direction.

“Um, are you and Zane, like, I don’t know, are you like, his girlfriend?”

Tallow narrowed her eyes. “Alphas don’t have girlfriends, Boaz. They aren’t teenage boys. Why would you even ask me that?”

“It’s just…you’re very beautiful, and I could imagine a girl—
woman
, like you, being with a man like that.”

Tallow’s expression was unreadable. “What about you? Are you with that female? Her scent is all over you.”

The camera shook. “No, it’s not like that. Ginnifer and I have been friends since we were kids.”

“Oh?” She arched a brow. “And you have never once considered staking your claim on her?”

Boaz laughed, but the sound died off under Tallow’s penetrating gaze.

“I guess… There might have been a time when I thought we’d be together. But that’s over now. She’s with Aaron and there’s no way I can compete with him. It sucks, but she’s my best friend, and that’s enough.”

Tallow was quiet for a moment, her eyes going distant as she stared over the water. When she spoke, the words flowed from her lips with an eloquence Ginnifer had not known she possessed.

“I was ten when my grandmother sent me to Siluit. I was supposed to live there until I came of age, and then Zane—a boy two years my junior that I’d never met—was going to become my mate.”

“That’s…terrible. You didn’t have any say in it?”

She shook her head. “My mother had been a pariah for mating with a human. She died giving birth to me, but my grandmother never let me forget what I was. When Zane’s father broke off an agreement to take my aunt Shale as his mate, my grandmother brokered a new arrangement for Zane and I to become mates.

“It was a blatant insult. Zane was Ephraim’s only son, and he came from a line of pureblooded shifters. Any pups Zane and I had would’ve been tainted by my father’s human blood, our daughters might have been sterile. My grandmother wanted to sabotage Siluit’s bloodline, and I was her tool.”

Tallow spoke in such a matter-of-fact tone that it felt like she was talking about something that happened to someone else.

“The day I arrived in Siluit, everyone was kind to me. No one had ever been kind to me, and I thought they were all pretending, that it was some kind of trick. I snuck out of the den and I ran as fast as I could, until I’d climbed onto a hill overlooking the inlet. When I went to climb down the slope, there he was, sitting there with his pelt wrapped around him, watching the horizon.”

“I knew who he was right away, even though he didn’t look anything like what I’d imagined. He was…beautiful, even at that age, and I was drawn to him.” A small smile tugged at her lips. “But I still hated him.

“I stalked over to him, and when he finally looked up at me, I asked him what he was doing. He told me that he was waiting for his mother to return. I didn’t know much about his mother, only what I’d overheard from others. I called Zane stupid, and I told him his mother was dead. I thought he’d get angry. People usually get angry when I say things like that. Or cry. But he didn’t do either. He just turned away again and told me that she couldn’t be dead, because she’d promised to come back for him.

“I sat next to him, and I listened to him tell me about his mother, and I told him about mine, and we stayed there until the sun set and we were called back in. And that’s how I began to fall in love with him.”

She looked at Boaz again, her lips flattening. “The rest is even more depressing. I won’t bore you with it. All you need to know is that we did not end up becoming mates, but he is my only true friend, and that is enough.”

There was more, but Ginnifer shut the camera off, no longer able to listen over the sound of her sobbing.