Fated To The Alpha: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (16 page)

It was a lovely dream. And it didn’t feel out of reach, either. It could be the simplest dream in the world to achieve, couldn’t it?

I wanted to believe. I wanted to think that Jeremy and I could be happy.

And I kept thinking we would be until the moment I awoke.

I was still sleeping peacefully in my blissful fantasy when I was roughly jerked awake by something grabbing me by the arms and pulling. My eyes snapped open, looking up to the faces of my own packmates. Marla and Corey were there, yanking me up to my feet, Marla holding my wrists together and starting to bind them, while Corey held my torso in place. Behind me, Rudy and Jana were busy tying Jeremy by his wrists to the tree.

“What are you doing?” I shouted.

“We’re taking you back where you belong,” Marla said. “And we’re leaving that Morgandorf scum here where he can’t get his filthy hands on you anymore!”

“No! Let go of me!”

“She doesn’t want to go with you!” Jeremy shouted. “Don’t you see that?”

“Hold her!” Corey called. Rudy and Jana finished what they were doing with Jeremy and came to grab me by the arms, holding me steady for Marla to finish tying me.

Once my hands were bound, Corey grabbed me by them and pulled me roughly to him, while Marla marched over to Jeremy with a look of righteous anger on her face. “I don’t think what she wants is what’s good for her anymore, Morgandorf!” she spat. “If what she wants is to run away from the pack that raised her to be with a drooling, pup-eating, sodomizing sack of shit like you, then you’d better believe we’re gonna do something to stop her! Now you just sit there while we take her home, and hope your own kind comes and gets you out of there before some rabid weasel comes along and eats your junk off. And personally, I’m gonna be rooting for the latter option.” And then she spat in Jeremy’s face, making him flinch.

“Let’s go,” Jana said, and they started back home, pulling me helplessly along behind them as I could only look back and watch as Jeremy slowly shrank in to the distance behind me, straining futilely against his bonds.

It took hours of me staggering along behind them before we finally made it back to our village; a lot longer than it would have taken us on four legs, but that would have made it a lot harder for them to drag me there. As soon as we emerged from the trees, Corey threw his head back and howled for the rest of the pack, who promptly came rushing toward us. “We got her,” Marla announced.

As a crowd gathered to meet us, Leon appeared, stepping forward to take me from Rudy. He looked at me with a heavy brow and a hard-set mouth, his disappointment with me pouring from him like smoke from a chimney. “You’ve put us through a lot of grief, Evelyn,” he grumbled. “First we thought you’d run away just to spite us. For a while we even thought the Morgandorfs had killed you.” His mouth curled into a hideous, hateful snarl as he said, “But to find out you’d abandoned us to
be
with one of them… you couldn’t have cut us more deeply!”

I met his gaze with a calm scowl. “I guess that means you don’t want me for your wife anymore. Maybe that was what I wanted.”

Leon’s teeth clenched in anger—and his hand came up and swatted me hard across the face. As I recoiled from the blow and blinked my eyes open again, I saw a flash of remorse running across his face, and he took a step back. “I’m sorry I had to do that,” he said. “I suggest you don’t make me do it again.”

“I didn’t know I could make my alpha do anything he didn’t want to,” I said, undeterred.

I could see I’d ruffled him again, but he held himself back from hitting me this time. “You’ve picked up some sass. Something your Morgandorf hosts must have taught you, I’m betting. I’m going to make sure to fix that.”

I didn’t reply this time, except to continue giving him a defiant glare.

“Where is she?” I heard Dad’s voice then. He appeared pushing his way through the crowd, stopping short when he found me. And he didn’t look any happier than Leon.

“Hi, Dad,” I muttered, sounding bitter.

Without another word, he grabbed me by the arm and began pulling me back toward our house. “No! Dad, let go of me!”

He still said nothing, continuing to yank me roughly along, past the horrified face of my mother, in through our front door and down into the basement, where he shoved me forward, forcing me to descend the stairs. At that point he finally unbound my hands, and shoved me down against the wall.

“I’ve been disappointed with you before, Evelyn,” he said. “And I’ve been mad at you plenty of times. But now… I’m actually ashamed of you! You turned your back on everything your mother and I taught you,
everything
you were brought up to believe in… for a filthy, scum-sucking Morgandorf!”

“It’s not like that, Dad!” I protested. “Jeremy’s a good man! He’s never done anything to hurt me, and he—”

“Now that’s enough!” Dad snapped at me. “You are going to stay down here until you learn a lesson, missy.”

“Dad, please!”

“Don’t force me to chain you to the wall!”

I stopped talking after that.

Dad started marching up the stairs, while I stepped up to the bottom of them, with him blocking the only way I had of getting out. “I’ll bring you something to eat later. You’ll be cared for. But until you remember what it means to be a Caldour, you’re not going anywhere.”

And with that, he stepped out, shutting the door behind him, and I heard the lock latch. In spite of myself, I ran up the stairs to grab the doorknob, already knowing it was useless. I fiddled helplessly with the stubborn knob, and pounded once on the door, before I collapsed to my knees and began to cry.

CHAPTER NINE

The pups were starting to play a little rough. It had been amusing at first, watching them jump and tumble around with that squeaky little rubber alien with the big googly eyes, but now two of them had the squeak toy in their jaws and were playing a little tug-o-war with it, threatening to tear it in two, while the third was eagerly coming up to snatch it away from both of them.

It was at that point that I decided to step in and mediate the game. “Hey, now,” I said, getting up from my lawn chair and stepping over to them. “If you can’t play nice, I’m going to have to take your toys away. No more fighting,” I said as I knelt down and took hold of the little green thing in their jaws, which they calmly released and let me take, looking up at me with meek eyes. “What did I tell you all?”

At that question, the three little furry, four-legged creatures before me rose up on their hind legs, which began extending into human legs. Their shoulders reconfigured to allow their front legs to move to the sides and reshape into human arms. Their fur disappeared to reveal human skin, and their little snouts shrank away, as the faces of three little children emerged on them, standing naked before me with humbled looks.

“Fighting is bad,” said the seven-year-old girl with the little brown curls. “Fighting gets people hurt.”

“That’s right, Lisa,” I nodded. “And what do people who fight get?”

“No dessert,” said all three of them in the same monotone expression.

“That’s right!” I said, pointing a finger at them. “So what are you all going to do now?”

“Play nice,” they drawled.

“Very good,” I smiled. “Maybe I should get some more toys out for each of you, so you don’t have to fight over them. Is that okay?”

The kids smiled and nodded. “I want my sparkly ball, mommy!” said little four-year-old Audrey.

“I’m gonna get my Nerf gun!” said six-year-old Cody.

“Only if you don’t shoot your sisters with it,” I said.

As the pups ran to retrieve their playthings, I lifted my head and sniffed the air, catching Jeremy’s scent approaching. I turned around to see him appearing from around the house, which prompted the youngest of the pups to suddenly change direction and come running for him. “Daddy!” Audrey cheered, opening her arms to him as he bent to pick her up.

“Hey, there!” he beamed. “How’s daddy’s little bumper?”

“Mommy take me swimming today!” she chirped. “I swim better than Cody!”

“You do?” he grinned.

“She’s lying!” Cody protested. “She didn’t want to go in!”

“I swim good!” little Audrey insisted.

“I’m sure you do, sweetie,” he nodded, setting her back down. “Why don’t you go play some more, and let me talk to mommy.”

Our little girl ran off to join her brother and sister, while Jeremy stepped up and greeted me with a short, chaste kiss. “She only got in the water for about two minutes,” I whispered to him. “But she was really proud of herself when she did. I may have let her embellish the story a little.” Jeremy chuckled, and slipped an arm around my waist, pressing himself to my side as we watched the kids playing some more.

Eventually we started up the steps to the back door, while I called to the kids to say, “Keep playing nice, pups. Remember, Mommy knows!”

“Yes, Mom,” they drawled.

We moved through the back door into the kitchen, and I shut the door behind us to say, “My father doesn’t know if he’ll be able to make it to our Thanksgiving feast,” I said.

“Is his health any better?” Jeremy asked.

“Mom says he’s up and moving again, but she’s keeping him on a strict low-sodium diet. And apparently she’s facing a daily struggle keeping him from working himself too hard.”

“You sure he’s not still just trying to spite me?” Jeremy offered, his head tilting. “You know he’s never been too happy about you marrying a Morgandorf, even after our packs made peace.”

I smiled, and shook my head. “Trust me, he’s over that by now. Believe me, I’ve worried about it often enough to check.”

“Well that’s good to hear,” he said, taking me into his arms. “Andrea’s a sure thing, though. She can’t wait to see the pups again.”

I grinned wider. “Oh, and they’re even more excited to see their ‘Auntie Andie.’”

Jeremy rolled his eyes with a dry smirk. “I still think that sounds like a stutter.”

“But the pups just love calling her that,” I said. “And I get why.”

“Well,” he said, getting a wicked twinkle in his eye, “there’s a few things I think I’d enjoy calling you tonight.”

I narrowed my eyes and smirked at him.  “Are you thinking dirty thoughts again?”

“With you? Always.”

I giggled and kissed him.

This was it. This was what I always wanted. Life couldn’t have turned out any more perfect than this. After all the pain we’d endured, all the fear of losing each other, of losing our families to the war between our packs, of being forced into marriages with people we didn’t love, we’d ultimately gotten everything we could have dreamed for.

I had Jeremy. I had my pups. I had my happy life.

I held onto Jeremy tightly as I kissed him, as if I wanted to make sure he never slipped away.

And then in the next moment, he did.

He was suddenly gone from my arms, his body removed from my touch, his lips disappearing from my kiss. I opened my eyes to find him simply gone, leaving no trace. I reached out to grab at the air where he had just been, but nothing was there to grab at but air.  Suddenly panicked, I looked out the window where my pups should have been playing, only to see them fade away like smoke. And then the walls of my house started falling away like the plywood walls of a cheap film set, disappearing into shadows and mist, until all around me was nothing but darkness.

“No!” I cried to the void. “Give them back! Please!”

But there was nothing out there to give a response. My perfect life had simply evaporated, replaced with a great black hole of nothingness.

But no… there was something there.

I heard Leon’s voice echoing in the darkness. “It will never be yours,” he thundered. “You’ll always be mine. The only future you have is what I give you.”

“No! It’s my future! You can’t take that from me!”

I saw Leon’s proud face, with his dark eyes and his slicked-back hair, looking back at me from the darkness, shaking his head. “Nothing you have is yours. I’ll always be there. Everywhere.”

And then he was reaching out to me. But it was like his hand was enormous, getting bigger and bigger the closer it came to me, as if it was all around me, encompassing everything. There was nowhere I could go where I wouldn’t be in his grasp.  No matter what I did, I would always be in the palm of his hand.

And now his hand was closing around me.

My world was encroaching on me with his grip. I curled up, bringing my knees up to my chest, holding my hands up to my sides as my space to move grew tighter and ever tighter. I started gasping for air; it was getting harder for me to breathe. Before long, there was nothing left in the world but Leon’s hand, wrapped around me, and beginning to squeeze…

I heard the sound of a door opening. I blinked my eyes open and lifted my head off the cold floor beneath me. As my vision slowly cleared, my surroundings became familiar again. I was still in the basement where Dad had locked me, curled up naked on the floor against the wall. Soft sunlight was streaming in through the narrow window up at the top of the wall to my right. And I heard the sounds of my dad’s footsteps descending the stairs to my left.

He appeared coming around the end of the stairs, holding a steaming bowl of pasta in his hands. “You hungry?” he said.

I didn’t answer verbally. I just silently glared at him. It was how I had regarded him ever since he put me down here. I’d lost track of how many days it had been by now. There were no clocks down here; the only way to track the passage of time was by the daylight coming in through that little window.

Dad had gotten used to my cold, silent stares by now. He kept hoping I’d open up to him this time, but so far it hadn’t happened. “Still nothing?” he said.

I kept quiet again.

“Fine then,” he said, and set the bowl down in front of me. “I can keep waiting for you to come around. You’re not going anywhere.”

He got up and started back toward the stairs. As I saw his back shrinking away from me, I finally decided to open my mouth and say something to him. “Are you enjoying this?”

With his hand on the rail, he turned look at me earnestly. “Not for a second. Despite what you might think of me right now, you’re the most important thing in the world to me. That’s why your betrayal stings me so deeply. And that’s why I have to resort to these measures.”

“If you really cared about me, Dad, you’d have respected my choices and what I wanted, instead of trying to make all my choices for me.”

Dad frowned at me. “I want what’s best for you, Evelyn. Sometimes that means having to administer some tough love, when your choices are leading you down a bad path.” He started back up the stairs again. “I’ll be back to check on you again later.”

After the door shut behind him, I poked absently at the bowl of curled noodles in front of me with the fork that stuck out the top of them. I wasn’t that hungry just now. I hadn’t felt all that hungry for a long time, honestly. Yes, I ate the food that Dad always brought down to me. Eventually. But in the time I’d been down here, I was guessing I’d probably lost at least three pounds already.

I pushed the bowl aside and got up, and walked to that little window. I had to get up on my tiptoes to see through it, and even then the angle didn’t allow me much of a view. I could see several members of my pack going about their business, some of whom I couldn’t see well enough to identify, and I couldn’t get their scents from down in there either. But I could see some of my old friends going about their day. I saw Charlene talking with Becky and Trina out by the circle, and I could see Terry’s rusty pickup driving through the village, still alive and sputtering as it returned from town. I could see several members of the pack going about in their four-legged forms, sitting about sphinx-like or trotting into the village with fresh-killed meat in their jaws. And I could see Leon leaning against a wall, talking shop with James and old Tobias.

My pack. My friends and family. The wolves who had been part of my life for as long as I had lived.

And now I was a prisoner to them.

A pair of small, feminine feet walked by the window in front of my face, and then stopped. She bent down to look at me, revealing the face of sixteen-year-old Samantha, one of the growing pups in our pack. I smiled softly. “Hi, Sam,” I said.

She looked back at me blankly for a moment—and then hawked and spit a big gob of loogie at the glass in front of me, making me recoil.

Then she got up and continued on her way.

*

Time moved at a snail’s pace in that basement. The only things I had to keep me company were that window, the occasional meals that Dad brought me, and a bucket to do my business in. So long, long hours were spent just pacing around or sitting in the corner.

I slept a lot while I was in there. With nothing else to do, I ended up nodding off pretty frequently, curled up against the wall. And honestly, I liked sleeping down there. Sleep was my only means of escape. For brief periods I could forget about where I was, and I could dream about still being with Jeremy.

I dreamed we were still back in his room in the Morgandorf village, where we had all our best sex in the comfort of his bed, cradling each other in our arms, with four walls to separate the rest of the world from us. I dreamed we were back out in the forest, just the two of us, running about in our four-legged forms, hunting and eating raw meat and sleeping under the stars. I dreamed I was still Elena the stray, living as a guest of the Morgandrof pack, making friends with all of them, swimming in their lake and joining Andrea for more of her teenage hijinks. I dreamed of a time when there was no conflict between our packs, when we could come and go as we pleased, when no one would threaten us and tell us we were wrong. I dreamed I could introduce Jeremy to Mom and Dad, and they would smile and shake his hand and invite him over for dinner and cherry pie. And I dreamed some more about that beautiful house we might have, and those three beautiful pups, and that beautiful life together.

But invariably I would always wake up, and I would be back to that dingy, lonely, stinky basement, locked away from all of that.

When I woke up again, the half-eaten pasta still sat in front of me, having long since grown cold. I had no idea if another day had passed or if it was just later on the same day. I rarely did anymore.

I heard the door open again, and immediately thought that Dad was coming back to check on me again. But the footsteps I heard coming down the stairs were lighter than Dad’s heavy footfalls. And it wasn’t his scent that I smelled approaching.

Instead it was Mom’s. She appeared leaning cautiously around the end of the stairs to see me. “Evelyn?” she said.

I didn’t say anything at first. I blinked a couple of times, not entirely sure at first that she was really there. She hadn’t visited me once in however long it had been since Dad threw me down here; what had suddenly changed?  Or was the isolation finally getting to me?