The Alpha's Daughter (39 page)

Jazz closed her eyes and whispered
pleadingly, "Michael Goodman, please make me your mate," and then
added, "Now, damnit!"

Griz laughed and sat back long enough to seat
himself inside her and begin the rocking motion that had aroused
her before. This time, he didn't toy with her. He didn't speak
until he'd plunged into her enough to have them both seeking the
glorious end.

His body came up over hers, trapping her
beneath him while his mouth moved along her shoulder to the base of
her neck.

"Jasmine Phillips, you are mine," he
whispered hoarsely and in the time honored tradition of his
species, he bit her.

Jazz had expected it to hurt, expected the
pain to be somehow symbolic of the commitment she was making. She
had not expected the violent explosion of her senses. Lights burst
behind her closed eyes. Every sound of the surrounding forest
bombarded her as her blood boiled over and sizzled against every
electrical nerve ending in her body. She had never had an
out-of-body experience before, but she was pretty sure she was
having one now.

Her awareness of the wolver reaching his
climax inside her awed her with its clarity. She felt him within
her. She heard him in her mind. He was calling her name over and
over as if the sound of it gave him nourishment and life. Her head
was thrown back and her arms were extended, lifting her toward the
sky and the full moon above. Silently, Jazz called to it and to her
mate.

"
Michael! Griz! My grizzly bear, my Papa Bear, my
mate!
"

She collapsed onto the downy comforter,
thoroughly spent. It was a wonder she could even draw breath. Griz
collapsed on top of her and rolled to the side taking her with him
to spoon against his body in the same position in which they slept.
He didn't speak and Jazz didn't think she could. She closed her
eyes, safe in his arms and passed into the comforting darkness of
sleep with the words, "I love you" on her lips.

The moon was already beginning its descent
when Jazz finally awoke to Griz's nuzzling at her neck. The wound,
if there was one, didn't hurt at all. The only thing she felt from
the spot was an inviting tingle when Griz's lips touched it.

"I thought you were going to sleep through
the whole night," he whispered when he felt her stir.

"Uh, and whose fault would that be if I had,
you beast." She turned in his arms to face him.

"I had to. It's tradition. A wolver must
dominate his woman when they mate," he told her smugly.

"Bullshit. You just like it that way." She
kissed his nose.

He kissed hers back. "I do," he admitted,
"And it's so damn hot when you let me."

It was her gift to him. With the exception of
that last beating by her father, Jazz had never allowed herself to
be dominated by anyone, but particularly by a man in her bed. Griz
knew this and she loved him all the more for understanding the
importance of her gift.

"So how do you feel?" he asked.

"Like Michael Goodman's mate," she giggled,
"Though I'll probably never hear the end of that!"

Donna had cackled the loudest when the Alpha
said Griz's given name and Jazz, surprised, looked around to see
which of Griz's relatives had made the trip. Logically, she knew of
course that Griz hadn't spent a nameless life waiting for her to
christen him Grizzly, but she hadn't really thought about it.

"Would you like me to call you Michael? Mike?
Mickey?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No one's called me that
for a long time. Doc is fine. Griz is better. You gave me a new
life, Jasmine Phillips. That gives you the right to name me."

"Jasmine Goodman and I'll thank you not to
forget it."

Neither tradition nor law said a wolver woman
had to take her mate's name though most women did. Phillips was her
father's name and Jazz hadn't the slightest attachment to it.

"Jasmine Goodman it is. AKA Baby bunny,
Hellcat, and my mate." He kissed her again. "What would you like to
do with the rest of your night, Jazz Goodman?"

Normally, this was the part of the mating
night where they would run together as wolves, but Jazz had made
her wishes known to Griz and he'd wholeheartedly agreed. None of
the women were going over the moon tonight, nor would they again
until the Hunter's Moon when they could run without the Alpha's
aid. Jazz would find no pleasure in her mating run if it meant
sapping one iota of what little was left of the Alpha's
strength.

"You can run if you want to, Griz. You know I
don't mind. The others are out there hunting and playing. I can go
back with the women and eat more cake and tell them about my lovely
night." All except the bite. No one ever spoke of that and Jazz now
understood why. It was something sacred between mates and not to be
giggled at over tea.

"What kind of a wolver would I be if I ran
with the wolves and left my new mate to cackle with the hens?" Griz
reached across her and picked up the pile of filmy white silk.
"Here," he said, thrusting it into her hands, "Get dressed. We'll
go for a walk in the moonlight."

If Jazz had been fully human, she would have
dragged Griz off to the nearest Justice of the Peace, grabbed two
witnesses from the street and married him in a pair of jeans and a
tee shirt. She wanted him as her mate. She didn't want all the fuss
and bother that went with it.

As seemed to happen a lot in Gilead, things
were taken out of her hands and her wishes were ignored. No fewer
than six cakes arrived that morning along with an assortment of
gelatin molds and enough meat to feed the pack for three days.

Gifts, small and large and all very touching,
began to appear on the dining table. The twins gave her a beautiful
coverlet for her bed. They'd quilted it themselves in what they
called a wedding ring design. Miz Ezzy brought a box of worms.

"I saw how you'd taken an interest in their
raisin'," she told Jazz. "I figured it's time you had the chance to
raise some boys of your own."

Donna brought her a narrow string of pearls
to wear for the day. "Ellie and I both wore them for our matings
and Livvy will do the same. You wear them today for good luck."

A gown appeared out of nowhere; plain white
silk without ruffles or beading or trim of any kind. It was just
what she would have chosen if she had wanted to choose one.

"I can't wear this," she told Ellie when she
saw the garment had been lovingly stitched by hand. "It wasn't
meant for me. Some woman put a lot of time and effort into this for
someone they love dearly."

"Then I guess it came to the right place,"
Ellie said gently, but she wouldn't say who that woman was.

It was a lovely day with music and dancing
and the whole pack dressed in their best. Their doctor was being
mated and everyone wanted to share in his happiness. A cloud had
been lifted from him and they all felt it. It was so heartfelt and
so beautiful that Jazz had to hide away several times so no one
would see her tears.

She wasn't sentimental. She wasn't! This was
all for Griz. But no one had lovingly sewn him a white mating gown
and no one had fashioned a wreath of roses for his head. It wasn't
all for Griz and she knew it. She just had a hard time believing
it.

She held the little wreath up to her nose and
sniffed loudly.

"I hope those are happy tears," Griz said
from behind her.

"They aren't tears at all," she said and
surreptitiously wiped her eyes. The rose wreath went back on her
head like a crooked halo. She smiled and sniffed again.

Griz laughed at her, not fooled a bit. "I'll
tell you what brought tears to my eyes. These." He held her purple
panties in front of her nose. They were his favorites. "When you
ran off into the woods and turned and lifted that dress to show me
these, I'd like to have fallen to my knees and offered tearful
thanks that I'd been blessed with a woman who had the nerve to wear
these under that white gown. I'm still trying to figure out how you
pulled that off."

Her tears forgotten, Jazz laughed. The gown
was sheer enough to show off the bright color. "Ellie shed a few
tears over those, too, when I insisted on wearing them. She said
they'd stand out like a white church cross in a red light district.
She finally found two of your white handkerchiefs and tucked them
in. I'll bet she spent the whole day with her fingers crossed that
those hankie's didn't shift."

"God bless the woman." Griz held out his
hand.

They walked without speaking up one trail and
down another path. Moonbeams skittered over the bristling leaves of
the trees overhead to leave dancing pools of faint light at their
feet. The occasional small clearing gave them a view of the stars
twinkling overhead. Crickets sang and tree frogs peeped in harmony.
The occasional beat of an owl's wings kept them in time.

Jazz wasn't a fanciful creature by nature,
but tonight it seemed that even the forest and its creatures
conspired to make her mating perfect.

The perfection shattered when they heard the
Alpha's call for help and a gunshot splintered the quiet of the
night.

Griz shouted her name and threw himself into her as the shot
rang out. He spun like a ballet dancer and fell at her
feet.

"Griz!"

Jazz hit the ground beside him, tearing at
his shirt where the blood was already seeping through fabric under
his arm. A deep wound slashed across his side. His eyes were
closed.

"Jazz, run." he hissed in a whisper. "That
shot was meant for you. Don't let them get you. Go!"

He was right. They were sitting ducks if she
stayed.

"I'll go, but I won't leave you," she said
even as she crawled away from him into the brush.

She scrambled through the trees, raising her
nose to the wind, but all she could smell was the acrid odor of
gunfire and dozens of wolvers. She wasn't familiar enough with the
pack to distinguish one from the other or from a stranger.

Jazz hunched down and scanned the trees in
the faint light of her night vision. To her wolf's eyes, the night
world was painted in shades of gray and she realized that her white
dress, meant to be easily spotted by her pursing mate, now worked
against her. The sparkling white that could be so easily tracked in
the playful tradition of the mating chase, now made her an easy
target. In the mating chase, she was meant to be found. It was a
game representing long ago matings where wolvers sometimes stole
their mates. This was real. If those were wolvers out there, they
could see as well as she could in the dark.

Laying as close to the ground as she could,
she wriggled it up to her head. Then she backed up, letting it
slide up over her head and along her arms.

The dress meant nothing. Her flowered halo
even less. She should have known better. She was meant for one
thing and that wasn't Griz's mate and now he was going to die for
her mistake. Her father's hired thugs would see to it.

"
No
!" Griz's strange mental voice
shouted over her thoughts, "
No one's going
to die if you do as you're told
."

Her wolf snarled at her,
chastising her doubt. Her mate was not dead
.
She was cunning. She was clever.
She was strong. Kill the predator. Save your mate.

Jazz tossed her rose crown like a backyard
plaything. It sailed through the trees, missing several it should
have hit. She saw movement, both off to her left and straight
ahead. Two round heads, rising like Whack-a-moles in an amusement
arcade. She needed to find a whacker.

She drew a picture in her
mind and hoped Griz was set up for head-mail. "
What's the plan, Griz
?"

"
Go! They'll kill you
."

Jazz shook her head. In her
initial panic, she'd thought so too, but it didn't make sense. Her
father didn't play I-can't-have-her-no-one-will. He played
kill-the-competition and Griz was the competition.
"
They want to kidnap me
!"

"
Then let them think I'm dead and run.
"

"
No
!"

She started to make her way along the left
and thought again of the dress. A white flag was what she needed.
When she was far enough away from Griz, she spread the dress over a
low growing patch of brush and hoped it gave the impression of a
woman in hiding. She then crept away to a spot where she could
wriggle out of her panties and drop them in her stalker's path. She
was in estrus. He would follow the scent.

Moving along, no more than a foot at a time,
she found what she was looking for and waited. Crouching low and
down wind, she bent her knee and dug her toes into the ground, like
a foot racer ready to sprint. Her cudgel of wood rested on her
shoulder. Her hands gripped it tightly. She was a statue waiting to
come to life.

Her stalker found the panties as she knew he
would. He bent and put them to his nose. Jazz's muscles tensed.

Her wolf's voice was no more than a whisper
on the wind. Wait. Wait.

It was a good thing she listened. Her
attacker glanced up and looked directly at her, but his mind was on
her scent and the silky scrap he held to his nose. He looked right
through her. If she'd moved…

His head came up as he caught the glimmer of
her silken dress and he smiled and started to rise, panties still
held to his nose, his gun held lax at his side.

Now!

With her wolf's command, Jazz leapt and
struck. The echo of two shots sounded in the distance bracketing
the sickening thud made by her cudgel as it connected with the back
of the attacker's head. The gunfire's echo faded and repeated and
faded again. The man fell forward onto his face, sighed once and
was still. She rolled him to his back and recognized him at once as
one of the younger members of Cho's crew.