Reluctant Alpha (5 page)

“
Go home, and thank your mother for you even being alive. And this alpha person, I won’t tell him, because I expect you to. And you’d better believe I’ll find out if you don’t. Now, get.” She backed away from them. The one called Phil crawled over to Diana and stroked her leg too before he stood, still bowed at the waist, and took off running, his friend and brother with him.

Diana just stared at her, her mouth opened and eyes wide. Airic glanced to her right and saw that two of the girls from the shop had come out at some point and were staring at her too.

“
What? They were hurting you. Was I supposed to just stand there and let them? Not again.” She didn’t understand why they were so aghast. Okay, she thought, my hand did do that whole claw thingy, but that happens once a month anyway doesn’t it? Maybe it has something else to do with the accident. She mentally shrugged and walked into the shop.

***

“
Hello, Mallory, did the shipment arrive?” Bradley was removing his jacket as he walked to the storage room. His day hadn’t gotten any better since this morning. But he did have a nice new car.

His grandda had talked him into buying a Mustang Shelby GT500 series right off the lot. It was every man’s wet dream and Holy Grail rolled into one, he’d said. He was going to have to have a serious talk with him, he thought again. This car was loaded with every imaginable gadget known to the car industry. The black chameleon paint was a custom job for a buyer that had decided after it was finished that he didn’t want or he couldn’t afford the car. Heated leather seats, leather-wrapped steering wheel, six speed convertible, V8 engine with 550 hp engine and 19-in. painted machined-aluminum wheels.
Oh yeah,
he thought,
very nice car.

“
Yeah. Couple of hours ago, it’s all in the back. Nice wheels by the way.” He glanced out the front window and smiled.

His grandda had been driving when that deer had jumped out in front of them, thank God. At the gas station just outside of town, he had been talking to a pack member about a small issue he was having and Grandda had gotten hot. So he slipped into the driver’s seat and turned on the air. Bradley, distracted, let him drive them the rest of the way into Merchant area. Had it been him, they might have been really hurt. As it was, his sedate driving over Bradley’s pedal to the floor approach had made what could have been a major accident into just what it was, a fender bender, driving into the ditch instead of over the small hill where they had been headed.

“
Yeah, thanks. The other one was really old and Danny said that getting parts for it would be expensive. Grandda talked me into this one.” He began his trek to the storage area again.

The pottery crates had already been opened, having had a few of the younger pack members come in and do that right away. He looked over each piece and noticed a slight difference to the style. Nothing major really, but she was using deeper, richer colors and the scenes were getting more detailed, more colors too. He supposed that came with experience. He really liked them. He marked twenty for the sales floor and the other thirty-two for the show. He decided to buy the other four for his own collection. He had asked Mallory not to open the paintings, as he had wanted to see them first. He had three opened and sitting against the wall when Grandda walked in the back room.

“
Christ! Where did you get those?” He walked closer and knelt down for a better look. He watched as he stroked his finger down the delicate brush stroke along the wolf’s back.

“
They’re part of the show this weekend. The artist that I was suppose to meet here today, well, her assistant anyway. She brought them by for me to look at. I’m supposed to decide if I’d like to put them with the ceramic pieces. What do you think, do you like them?” Bradley moved over to open the next line of six. He liked them; they were powerful and moving. In the three that he had just opened, he felt that she had captured the true shift of the wolf. The colors were dark and almost sinister-looking, but hard and compelling too. He turned to look at his grandda. He was holding one that had been separated from the others and wasn’t wrapped. It must be one of the wet ones she’d told him about.

“
Grandda?” He suddenly noticed that he was pale. Bradley also noticed that the canvas was trembling in his grasp. He moved over to his side, grabbing his desk chair for him as he went. Shoving it under him, he made to take the picture from him when he looked at it himself. “Holy hell.” Bradley felt his knees tremble and he sat down on the floor beside the chair.
No,
he thought,
this can’t be right.
No one knew, no one but him and David. It was a painting of David and him naked, painting the Morgan house robin’s egg blue.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“
Is this it, how you two did it?” Bradley realized that Grandda hadn’t been shaken so much as startled and the trembling was him laughing.

“
Yes. How did it get here? Is this a joke? David! He did this. I’m gonna kill him.” He stood and took out his cell phone to call him. Just then, the door flew open and Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum walked in. “Oh hell no. I’m gonna kill you both.”

“
Alpha, forgive us. Don’t let her…please, we’re sorry. Never. I swear to you, never will we do it again. We would never have touched her if we’d known. Please, Alpha, tell her, tell her please that we told you.” Daniel was sobbing.

“
He touched her, I didn’t. I even told him that we shouldn’t do it, that you’d rip our ears off, but oh no…the other woman, I…she said not anyone, but he touched her.” Phil reached over and hit his brother.

“
I didn’t know. But I swear to you, I will never do it again. Never ever, ever, Alpha, we won’t. We already told our mom, just what she said…”

“
I told her first, you ass. He was too chicken, afraid Dad would make fun of him. I told her we were grateful for her and that…”

“
Enough!” Bradley roared. Both boys dropped to the floor again and curled into tight balls. He knew what they were doing; it was just a reaction to his command, but it startled him all the same.

He didn’t use that tone often and not much in the past several years. It was what set him apart from other males in the pack, the ability to command with his voice.

His grandda stood then, taking the picture with him to the door. He sat the canvas aside, backwards to the room, and assured Mallory that everything was all right, that yes, she could go ahead and lock up, and it was after six anyway. He thumbed the lock on the doors to the room and leaned against it.

“
What did you two do now? And if you lie to me, you will never see the light of day again.” He sat in the now vacant desk chair. He didn’t want to have to kill them, really he didn’t. He liked their parents, they were a nice couple. Their dad was a good man and had his own limo service that Bradley used on occasion. Such a waste if he did end up killing them both, he mused to himself.

“
Just don’t tell the alpha bitch, please, sir. Please?” Phil didn’t even raise his head, neither boy did.

Bradley shot a look to the older man with a raised brow. “You pissed off an alpha bitch? When, today? You fucking left my office and drove to another territory and pissed off someone else’s alpha? Are you fucking nuts? Do you both have a death wish or something? Because if that’s all you want is to be dead, I guarantee that’s a perfect way to go about it.” He was up pacing now and gesturing wildly. What the fuck was wrong with these two?

“
We didn’t leave the pack area. We saw her at Elaine’s on Prospect Street. She was going in when we…” He stopped when Daniel hit him in the head.

“
She was here, in our town? Holy shit, you are both dead. Dead, do you hear me? She comes to go shopping in our town and we insult her! I can’t help you boys. You’ve screwed yourselves royal now. I hope you have nice wills made out, because you’re gonna need them.”
I have to find her alpha and see if I can fix this before we have a bloodbath,
he thought. Her alpha will kill them and will be completely justified in doing so. One did not touch another wolf’s mate, especially a female alpha. She would have been completely in her rights to kill them both without a second’s hesitation. As much as he’d had to fix things for them over the past few days, he was surprised that she hadn’t.

“
She weren’t mated. That’s why we hit on her. She was fresh, you know. A virgin. We could smell her as soon as she got outta the car that she didn’t have a mate,” Daniel confessed.

Bradley sat down hard. He had an unmated alpha female in his territory. Lynne. Another Lynne was back and trying to take his pack, kill him and take what was his. He was dizzy, he realized; the room was spinning. Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands and waited for the room to slow.

He barely heard his grandda escort the boys out with a stern lecture and a promise from them that they would go straight to their home and stay there until Bradley contacted them. And if they even thought of getting into trouble between here and there, well, he couldn’t be responsible for holding the alpha back even if he was his grandson.

“
Come on, son, let me drive you home.” He felt him tug on his arm and he stood up. He was out to the car before he realized it, going through the motions like a robot. He watched without really seeing Grandda lock the front door to the gallery as he sat in the passenger seat of his new car. Then when he slid under the steering wheel, Bradley spoke.

“
Grandda. What do I do now? Am I such a poor leader that even a female thinks she can come in and take my territory?” He jerked back when his head was suddenly forced forward and slammed against the dashboard hard enough to see stars for a few seconds.

“
I hear you say something like that again and I will paddle your ass but good, you hear me? You have the word of two idiots who say she was unmated. Virgin! Ha, how the hell could they tell that, I ask you? And you, you stupid fool, what makes you think she wants your territory? Could be she was just shopping and those dumb asses pissed her off. Like they haven’t done that to damn near every female in the pack lately. What, she can’t defend herself in your territory because you’re the wonderful and infallible Bradley Wolff? Grow up.” He turned to start the car, and then looked back at him. “Where the fuck is the key hole?”

CHAPTER TWELVE

“
I don’t like this. I really, really don’t. What if I throw up on someone, on someone important? And this dress, what was I thinking? Please, John, take me back to the hotel. I’m not going.” Airic was babbling. Anyone within ten feet of her could tell she was either nervous, which she was, or she was nuts, which she was also.

“
We are not going back to the hotel. You won’t throw up on anyone. You didn’t eat enough to make that possible, and you look lovely. Beautiful, as a matter of fact.” Diana had said the same thing to her at least eighty times since they’d left the hotel forty minutes ago.

She had fallen in love with the dress as soon as she saw it. It looked like a plain black silk dress while it was on the hanger. But it wasn’t, not really. When she’d tried it on, a size three believe it or not, she stood under the lighting of the five-way mirrors and saw the black beading. They sparkled and twinkled, and when she moved, it seemed to slide across her body like a silken hand stroking her. The skirt of it was very short, just a few inches below her butt. The bodice was high in the front, covering her breasts and encircling her neck with a choker like collar. The back was amazing; it hung open all the way down to the dimples of her ass, barely covering the curve of her breast at her sides. Her arms and shoulders were completely bare. And there was a small black bow at the bottom of her spine. Elaine had insisted that she wear a string of black pearls backwards so that it hung down the back rather than the front. The effect was perfect, drawing attention to her long, slim spine. Her thigh-high black hose had a seam that had taken her an hour to straighten, and her high heels made her three inches taller than her five-foot-seven frame.

“
Diana, please let me go back and at least change. This isn’t me. I can’t wear something like this.” She leaned over to whisper to her.

“
Nonsense. You went from a size twenty-two to a size three in two years, Airic, so of course you feel as though this isn’t you. But trust me, you look great! Besides, we’re already here.” The door opened and before she knew it, she was handed out of the limo by John and was walking in the front door of Nature’s Eye.

“
Hello, Ms. Lake, Mr. Wolff said to tell you he is running slightly behind, that I was to make sure everything is all right and to make you as comfortable as possible.” The young woman that met them at the door, Diana explained, was Mallory, the woman who oversaw the gallery on a daily basis for Bradley Wolff.

“
They don’t know who I am, right? You didn’t tell them I was coming,” she asked as soon as they were out of earshot of the assistant. Airic had agreed to come on the basis that no one knew who she was or that she was the artist in house. She had told Diana that she would be able to mingle with the people and get a better idea of what they really thought if they thought they were talking to just another patron of the arts. Really, she just wanted to hide in a dark corner and be left alone. As Airic’s picture had never been published, it was easy enough to hide just who she was.

“
No. Although, I know there are a few who would give their right nut to meet you. I kept it quiet to both the press and Mr. Wolff and I promise that I’m only going to call you Airic. No one will be able to associate your name with the artist Alastriona Bennett, I swear.” She had signed all of the canvases simply “AA,” but she wasn’t really concerned with them as she didn’t really think anyone would look at them anyway. She was just glad they were gone from her studio. Besides, they wouldn’t sell, so it didn’t matter.