Unleashing His Alpha (10 page)

“So, I set out to be a blogger and I traveled from town to town, setting up shop for a week and waiting, hoping that my mate would show up and confront me. Lots of women had come up to me and a lot have flirted with me, but there was never anything special in it. I had never felt that powerful urge my friend had told me I would feel.

“Until, of course, the day that I met you. The moment you asked if you could sit down next to me, I looked up and I knew that you were the one I was destined to be with. You were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen and I knew that you were destined to be the woman to give me the strength and the power that I was going to need.

“Sure enough, the moment we kissed, I felt the power running through me again and I almost transformed right there in front of you. I had to excuse myself to try and get it under control. It was the most powerful sensation I had ever felt and I knew that you were going to save me from the loneliness and isolation I felt. When I saw you again and we had sex last night, I could feel the power rushing through me, surging through my limbs and through my veins. You are my everything, Katie. You’re my mate.”

Katie understood. This was everything she had been feeling when she was with him. There was something spiritual happening between the two of them and though it was hard for her to put her finger on it, she knew there was nothing in her life she wanted to do more than be at his side, no matter what.

If that meant they were going on a crusade to reclaim his lost pack, then she was going to do everything in her power to make sure it was going to happen. She was his the moment she set her eyes upon him. There was nothing that could have ever stopped her.

“Do you know where your pack is now?” she asked him, feeling that this was the natural next step. They needed to go back and face these three men who had brutally killed his parents. There was no way that he or she could let this injustice stand one moment longer. They were going to get their revenge and they were going to get answers for him and the people he had lost.

Shane would have been a brilliant leader for them. He was smart, wise, handsome, charming, and he was honestly the one person she knew who had the most good inside of him. Everything about him screamed leadership and she knew that this was now her mission in life. She was going to get him back to his people.

“I do,” Shane said with a nod. “I ran into them a few years ago and I have been tracking their movements ever since. It’s hard to give up on the ones you grew up with, but they wouldn’t have recognized me even if I had a sign around my neck telling them who I am. They’re completely enthralled with their new leadership structure and I don’t know how I’m going to ever convince them that I’m the person that they should follow.

“But, truthfully, since I met you, you’re the only person that I really care about. I was told this would happen when I met my mate, but I can’t imagine finding anyone else I could possibly care about more than you.”

She looked at him, wondering what she was supposed to say to that. It was the sweetest and the kindest thing that anyone had ever said to her, but she knew she couldn’t encourage this sort of thing. His destiny was to go out there and take control of the world that he had lost. His rightful place was at the head of his pack and if she deterred him from that, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. In fact, she would feel worse and worse with every passing day.

“But this is what you’re meant to do, right?” she asked, shaking her head. “This was what you were always meant to do. It’s not like you can turn your back on this.”

“Maybe,” he said with a shrug. “I have a good life right now. I don’t have any real responsibility, I make good money, and I’ve finally found the one person that I’m supposed to spend my life with. I don’t want to ask too much of you, anyway. We should be able to spend this time getting to know each other and making sure that this is actually what we want before I ask anything serious of you, right?”

“Shane, I need you to understand something,” Katie sat up and let the sheet fall from her chest. She didn’t care if she was naked and his eyes were straining against their desire to look down at her breasts, but they were locked on hers regardless and she was grateful for that, because this was going to be very hard to say to him if he wasn’t paying complete attention to her.

“I want you to know that right now, I’m all in. You’ve just told me that you can turn into a werewolf and that you’re going to try and reclaim your father’s lost position as the alpha of your pack. I’m still here, I’m not running anywhere, and I don’t have a glamorous life that I’m clinging to. I have yet to find one thing indicating that this might be too much for me. Do you get that?”

He looked at her with an expression of such gratitude and love that she found it next to impossible not to lean in and kiss him. God, she wanted to kiss him on the lips and hold his face close to hers. There was so much tender love and compassion in him and she wanted to tap into it and just feed off it for the rest of her days.

She wanted to become one with him. That was the kind of depth to the feelings she was having right now. Once upon a time, there was a thing like this in most people. It was called true love. She knew this was what she wanted and she wasn’t going to let it slip through her fingers.

“I am so lucky to have found you,” he said with such awe and wonder in his voice that she felt truly honored to have him say something like that to her. No one had ever said anything like that to her in her life. “Thank you for being who you are. I know it’s strange, but you’re easily the best thing I’ve ever experienced or had the fortune of finding. Let’s just take it slow for now.”

“So long as that means you not leaving my sight,” Katie said, kissing him on the lips and making sure that he felt her breasts against his bare chest, softly brushing against him.

“That’s the idea,” he said with a wry grin on his face.

She liked that. She didn’t want him to spend another second away from her and she was willing to be madly obsessed with him in person. It was hard for her to explain how she felt. It was like she knew she would die if she tried to leave him or go somewhere without him. There was no way she could even live. It would be like someone coming along and cutting her in half.

The bond was digging in and anchoring into her like a thousand tiny grappling hooks. She wanted to spend every waking moment with him and even when she was asleep, she wanted him next to her in the darkness of her slumber.

“If we’re going to do this,” she said to him with all of her confidence and determination, “then I’m going to need to make some changes.”

“Like what?” he asked her, lifting an eyebrow.

“Well, I’m going to need to quit my job,” she said with absolute certainty.

“Good,” Shane said with a supportive squeeze on her ass. “You’re better than that place and you’ve always been above it.”

“You’ve only just met me,” she shook her head with a grin frozen on her lips.

“I knew it the moment you told me,” he said with absolute confidence in her. “You’re something special, Katie. You always have been.”

* * *

There was something about being home again that made her feel like she was living in some kind of fantasy. It was amazing how the real world didn’t feel like the real world any more. It felt like she was living in some kind of program, some kind of illusion that she didn’t want to have any part of now. It was a strange sort of blur, like everything around her was a lie and she was the only person in the world that knew it was true. She looked at her living room, her kitchen, and the hallway past the door, wondering if it was all some kind of trap.

She was paranoid. She knew it without having to be told. As she looked at everything, all she could think about was the face value of things in front of her. Was it some kind of trap that she could get sucked back into? Everything last night might have been a dream. Maybe she didn’t stick to her plan. Maybe she ended up drunk and never even made it to the Valdez Lounge. Maybe all of this was happening in some bar or at Sarah or Faith’s apartment. What if all of this was some kind of mass illusion and she was going to wake up and realize that everything she thought she knew about her life and the world around her was a lie.

What was she going to do? Shifters, true love, leaving her life behind—it was all the kind of stuff a child dreams up, not that you actually get to experience. She felt a cold chill run down her spine.

Reaching her hand back behind her, she was grateful when she felt Shane’s hand against her own, their fingertips brushing together and their fingers entangling like vines, symbiotic beings, determined and destined to be together. She loved the feeling of his soft hands, the hands of a man who took care of himself, who was above all of this. She squeezed his hand tightly, fearful that if she let go she would lose everything. She took a deep breath, trying to get a handle on her nerves, trying to tell her body that everything was going to be okay. This wasn’t a lie. This was the real world. This was the world that she was going to be a part of now.

Crossing the threshold of her house and stepping into the dining area and the kitchen, she looked at everything and knew that it was time to get rid of everything. She was wearing a Santa hat, red stockings, and black pumps, all wrapped up in a black pea coat. That was it. Her heels registered as she walked across the floor, clicking as she turned and looked at Shane who stepped foot inside of her home for the first time in his life. God, she hoped it wasn’t too messy for him. She hoped it wasn’t a pigpen in his eyes. He was used to staying in fancy hotels and living life like a rich nomad. How was he going to take all of this now?

“Well,” she said nervously. “This is it.”

“It’s nice,” he said with a genuine smile and soft laugh. “When you’re always on the road, living from hotel to hotel, you tend to forget how nice it is to have one place to call your own. It’s great to have a piece of land that you can actually have an influence over and take care of. I like it.”

“Well, it’s definitely not a palace,” she said with a smile, unbuckling the belt around the waist of her coat and then unbuttoning it. She put it on a hanger and stood in front of him, practically naked. She noticed that his eyes weren’t as chivalrous as they had been before. They looked at her with ravenous delight and she smiled at him, shaking her head.

“What? You want another go?” she asked him, more than willing to accommodate him.

“You know that I’m more than willing to have sex with you every second,” Shane said, shaking his head. “Katie, I am literally hardwired to want to fuck you every second of the day. So when you ask that question, you know I’m going to say yes.”

“That’s why I ask it,” she said with a mischievous smile on her lips, a smile that she could tell was driving him crazy.

She let out a little squeal as he chased her down the hallway to the bedroom.

Her house was small and narrow, built ages ago when they were trying to cram as many people into the city as possible. It was a narrow, simple home that was squished next to other homes that had paper-thin walls, heated by decades old furnaces.

One thing Katie knew for sure was that there were a lot of things she could hear her neighbors arguing about. She could hear the neighbors fighting and shouting even as she felt the hot water running over her body while she and Shane took a shower together.

She felt his cock inside of her, thrusting deep inside of her, as she felt his soapy hands lathering her naked breasts. She didn’t care if the neighbors heard her as she screamed, feeling his cock deeper and deeper inside of him. She closed her eyes and moaned, begging him for more and more. She wanted everything he had inside of her to be there forever. It was like his cock was a part of her body now and she couldn’t handle it being outside of her. As she moaned and screamed, it was something she never wanted to be without. As she felt everything expanding and pressing against her, she knew that this was the life she wanted.

In the end, when the shower was over, all she could think about was how lucky she was and that the lust was becoming uncontrollable. There was something inside of her that needed to be satisfied, but there was nothing she could do to keep it from coming over her and consuming her completely.

This was where she needed to be and as she dried her body off, she could feel the loneliness of being without him. She could feel the power of his body absent from her. Without being able to find the right words, all she could really know right now was that this was where she needed to be. This was real. This was the world she was a part of.