Lonely Alpha (9 page)

Jack had said he had an aunt whose husband
didn’t know she was a shifter. How could anyone stand hiding such
an immense secret? Just the idea of it was soul-crushing. Maybe
that was why her father had left her mother. Or maybe he
had
told her, and her mother hadn’t been able to handle it… There were
too many possibilities. Thinking about them made Mandy’s head hurt.
If only she had her cellphone and a signal, she could call her
mother. She groaned as she imagined trying to broach the subject.
‘Hey mom – did my father ever sprout fangs and a tail?’ And if her
mother didn’t know what her father had been, how would Mandy tell
her what she was? Sadness invaded her heart. It seemed the only
person she could confide in was Jack.

She nearly jumped in surprise when something
warm and wet touched her knee. Jack’s blood. She lifted her hand
from his chest and pressed it to his side, applying pressure to the
wound. It seeped out from between her fingers anyway, inciting
worry so intense she shuddered. He shook too, shivering beneath her
palm. For a moment she was lost in a terrifying vision of Jack
bleeding to death as she tried to hold him together. Then she had
an idea, and no sooner had the thought entered her mind than she
transformed, her bare skin replaced with thick fur. She put it to
good use, lying on top of Jack, spreading her body over his. This
way, she’d be able to keep him warm, and her fur would stanch the
flow of his blood – hopefully. Now all she had to do was hold out
until sunset. With a sigh, she pricked her sensitive ears forward,
listening for any sign of danger.

****

It was impossible to tell how many hours had
slipped by in the quiet, darkened den, but by the time Jack woke,
it seemed like a small eternity had gone by. Mandy had spent every
minute pressed up close against him, her thoughts attuned to the
rhythms of his heartbeat and his breathing as she kept him warm.
She’d shifted back into her human form when his eyes had fluttered
open, and was pleased to see that his wound had finally stopped
bleeding.

“Any idea how long I was out?”

Mandy shook her head. “Not really.”

Jack started to get up.

“Don’t,” Mandy said, splaying her good hand
across his chest. “You’ll open up your wound again.”

He nodded toward the entrance. “I need to see
what time of day it is.”

“I’ll do it.” She’d been too afraid for
Jack’s health to leave his side while he slept. Now, she rose and
knelt by the entrance, cautiously brushing aside a thick curtain of
foliage. “It’s nearly evening. I can see the sun setting behind the
trees.” Even so, she blinked against the late-afternoon light. Her
eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness.

“Good,” Jack grunted.

Mandy peered over her shoulder at him and
found that he was taking advantage of the light she’d let into the
den. His gaze was intense and glued to her rear end. A blush warmed
her other set of cheeks – the ones he wasn’t paying any attention
to, and she cleared her throat. Should she shift into her wolf
form? It wasn’t like she had any clothing to put on, and Jack was
looking at her like, well, a hungry wolf.

His gaze finally snapped up to her face.
“Almost evenin’, which means this’ll be gone soon.” He waved a hand
over his blood-stained side, grinning suggestively. “’Till
then…”

“Absolutely not,” Mandy said, wishing she had
something to pull over her naked body for cover. Being alone in the
dark shelter of the cave, naked together, was distinctly sensual,
and she didn’t want to encourage his train of thought. It could
only end in disaster. “You shouldn’t even be considering that in
your condition.” She shot a glance at his groin and was only
half-surprised to see that he was hard. “I can’t believe you have
enough blood left to supply that thing.”

He grinned in earnest now. “Even in this
form, I’m not quite as weak as a real human. So—”

“No.” She scowled at him. “You’re not moving
until that hole in your side heals up.”

His expression became serious. “We’ve got to
leave the den. Neither of us have had anything to eat or drink all
day. There might not be much we can do for food, but there’s a
stream nearby.”

Mandy frowned. She was too nervous to be
hungry, but she’d been trying unsuccessfully to ignore the dull
burn of thirst in her throat for hours. Worry over Jack had proved
an adequate distraction while he slept, but there was no denying
her need now. “Do you really think we should risk it?” she asked,
imagining the two of them limping through the woods together.

“We don’t have much of a choice, do we?”

“What if the hunter is waiting outside?”

Jack arched a dark brow at her. “You’ve been
listening for him, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, did you hear anything?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then he’s probably not waiting outside.
Besides, if he knew we were in here, he’d have smoked us out by
now. No, he doesn’t know about this place. It’s a pack secret.” He
smiled wryly. “Which means that you and I are the only ones in
these mountains who know.”

Mandy shifted uneasily.
Pack secret
.
You and I
. Now that he was awake again, there was the pesky
matter of him thinking that she was his mate. “Jack…”

“Yeah, Mandy?”

The sound of him saying her name sent a
shiver of delight down her spine. There was no question that she
was attracted to him – crazily so. But that didn’t mean she could
just throw the life she’d built away and become the mate of a man
she’d just met. And yet…maybe it would be smarter for her to wait
until he’d healed to discuss it with him. “I’m really thirsty.”

He nodded. “We should shift before leaving
the den. We’ll be stealthier that way.”

She nodded, a prickle of unease chasing the
shiver that had coursed down her spine at the thought of
transforming. Jack could do it at the drop of a hat. Would she ever
be as fast? “You first,” she said. “It makes it easier for me if
you shift first – that way I can look at you, and that makes me
want to be with you, and that usually means transforming too.”

Jack looked at her with a peculiar gleam in
his eyes – something like…satisfaction.

Mandy snapped her mouth shut. God, she was an
idiot. If the look on Jack’s face was any indication, she might as
well have just declared her undying love for him.

“All right,” he said. In the blink of an eye,
he’d gone wolf.

Even as a canine, he still looked pleased and
vaguely smug. Mandy tried to focus on him instead of on what a fool
she was. When she met his eyes, her worries melted away
inexplicably, replaced by the fierce desire to stay by his side –
as a wolf or as a woman, it didn’t matter. She just wanted to be
with him.

Jack nodded, as if in approval.

Mandy looked down at a pair of paws. She
couldn’t help but give her tail a brief wag. That had been her
easiest transformation yet. Maybe she was getting the hang of
this.

Jack shuffled to the entrance and peeked out,
studying their surroundings and sniffing the air for several
moments before striding out of their earthy shelter. Mandy
followed, sure that it was safe if he’d determined it to be. As
they walked, she marveled at how soundless her paws were against
the forest floor. Well-padded and thick with fur, they were perfect
for navigating the forest in silence. She was anxiously eager to
see the rest of her body, which was still a mystery. Did she look
as fierce as Jack? She wasn’t as large, but other than that, all
she could tell was that she had a brownish pelt. Apparently, it
more or less matched her natural hair color, rather than the pale
gold shade she’d dyed it.

It wasn’t long before they reached a nearby
stream. Jack kept watch as she drank first, and after a day of
thirst, the cool mountain water was the most delicious, refreshing
thing she’d ever tasted. After drinking her fill, she stared back
at the animal reflected on the surface of the water. Cocoa-furred,
blue eyed and sleek bodied – it was difficult to believe that the
wolf was
her
. Clearly, that fact was going to take some
getting used to. She still thought of herself as Mandy the human,
the blond Nashvillian who worked in an office. This was drastically
different and more than a little liberating, in its own strange
way.

Jack drank next, and Mandy kept a careful
watch, imitating what he’d done moments ago. She didn’t see or hear
anything, but the hair on the back of her neck stood up
nonetheless. Somewhere out there was a killer. If just one of those
bullets had hit her or Jack as they’d fled the cabin, they might be
dead now. She cast a longing look at the setting sun. When it
finally disappeared behind the mountains, she and Jack would begin
to heal.

Jack raised his head, his muzzle dripping,
and turned back toward the den. Mandy walked slightly behind him,
winding through the narrow gaps between closely-spaced tree trunks
and ducking under boughs for cover. He moved stiffly, limping a
little on the side where he’d been shot. Mandy tried reflexively to
bite the inside of her lip, but of course she couldn’t. She glanced
down at her paws in wonder. This was still so strange. If she
hadn’t had Jack – if she’d somehow managed to transform for the
first time on her own – she probably would have thought she’d lost
her mind.

Jack slipped back into the den and Mandy
followed, eager to be human again. The thought of the lurking
killer was unsettling. She longed to hear the soothing timbre of
Jack’s voice and the easy Southern cadences of his speech. Despite
the fact that she’d grown up in Tennessee, she’d never developed as
strong of an accent. She’d never realized how much she loved
hearing it, either, until she’d heard Jack speak.

He lay down as a wolf, but became a man soon
after. All Mandy had to do was imagine the heat of his skin beneath
her fingertips and the softness of his lips against hers, and she
was a woman again. It was as if he were the link between her two
halves; her desire for him the tie that united them. That fact
probably should have worried her, but she didn’t have time to fret
over it now. She settled beside him, leaning against the earthen
wall. “What now, Jack? I mean, after nightfall.” Right now, their
main problems were their injuries. But after they healed, they’d
have their hunter to contend with.

“Like I said,” he replied, laying a hand on
her knee, “we’ll hunt him down.”

“You don’t think we should head to town and
contact authorities?”

“Well, we’d have to show up naked if we did
that,” he said, his tone pure practicality, “and I’m not so sure
anyone would take us seriously. Besides that, this bastard is
nothing I can’t handle. I still owe him for this.” He motioned
toward the wound in his side. “And he shot at you – that’s
unforgiveable.” The set of his jaw was stubborn, the hard gleam in
his eyes sure and challenging. “He came for a fight with a wolf,
and that’s what he’s going to get.”

If only it wasn’t so easy to believe him. She
sighed as she tipped her head back against the wall, letting Jack’s
hand remain on her knee. His touch felt good, and besides, she’d
decided to wait until after he was better to discuss the whole
actually-I’m-not-your-mate thing. Her stomach knotted with dread at
just the thought. Why had he jumped to such a huge assumption in
the first place?

“Here it is,” he said, taking a deep breath.
“Night.”

A tiny gap had been left in the foliage that
covered the den’s entrance, and it no longer admitted sunlight.
Jack rose and pushed the rest of it aside, clearing the opening. A
faint moonbeam spilled into the den. “Come here, Mandy.”

Before she could protest, he rose onto his
knees and pulled her against his unhurt side, wrapping a thick arm
around her waist. He picked up her broken hand, exceedingly gently,
and held it in his own. Entwined that way, the soft glow of
moonlight bathed them both.

Mandy wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting –
maybe shimmering smoke and a
poof!
that announced their
sudden health, or a long, drawn-out night of recovery, but what
happened was neither. Perhaps half an hour had passed when she
realized that her hand no longer ached. She flexed her fingers
tentatively, and to her surprise, the painful sensation of broken
bone was gone.

Jack shot her a questioning look as she
opened and closed her hand.

“It’s better,” she said, her voice tinged
with surprise.

“Good.” He continued to hold her close in the
moonlight anyway.

“What about you?” she asked.

“I’m gettin’ there.”

She shifted position, pressing her chest
against his as she peered over his shoulder and down at his side.
Both the entrance and exit wounds appeared to have closed beneath a
glaze of dried blood, but that was all she could tell. “It would be
a lot easier to make out if you weren’t covered in blood.”

He grunted a noncommittal response,
tightening his arms around her so that she was trapped against his
chest. “You smell so good.” His lips tickled her ear as he inhaled,
his nose buried in her hair.

“Really?” After over twenty-four hours
without a shower, she would have guessed the opposite.

“Mmm-hmm. You smell like fresh rain and the
little wildflowers that sprout up here in the springtime.” He
threaded his fingers through her hair, combing it out and lifting
it from her shoulders. It had long since fallen out of the knot
she’d twisted it into before leaving Nashville. “When I first met
you I figured it was some kind of fancy perfume, but it’s not. It’s
you.”

A shiver of delight raced down her spine as
he caressed the back of her skull, burying his hands wrist-deep in
her blond locks.

“They say you know when you’ve found your
perfect mate by their smell. They have a scent that just drives you
wild. I used to think that either it was crap, or I was destined to
be an eternal bachelor.”