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FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 51
Lauren sniffed the air, too, but she didn’t smell anything. Just trees and winter and wolf. She tried again. “You might as well come out,” Toby growled, looking out into the dadsrkness below their bench. “I know you’re there.” Lauren turned around, but she didn’t see anything out of place. Then she heard the sound of boots in the snow and looked again. A man stepped out of the woods about ten yards down the mountain. If he hadn’t been moving, she probably wouldn’t have seen him. The first thing she noticed was hair. He didn’t wear a hat, and his hair was an odd shade between red and gold; it hung in ragged, ungroomed tangles down his back and blended into a beard that would have done credit to Hill or Gibbons of ZZ Top. He wore an odd combination of animal skins, rags, and new boots and gloves. In one hand he held the bundle she’d made of the things that had been in Toby’s backpack, and her own bright pink backpack was slung over one shoulder. He tossed them both toward Toby, and the
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 52
Lauren brought peace and serenity with her wherever she went—at least when she wasn’t scared, hurt, or upset. Some of her power depended upon her being a werewolf, which magnified the effect of her magic. But a larger part of it was the steel backbone that made the best of whatever circumstances she happened to be in, the compassion she’d shown to Asil when he’d tried to scare her, and the way she hadn’t been able to leave poor Dennis out in the cold. Those were conscious decisions. A man made himself Alpha, it wasn’t just an accident of birth. The same was true of Omegas. “Once,” said Dennis quietly, pausing in his eating, “just after a very bad week, I spent an afternoon camped up in a tree in the jungle, watching a village. I can’t remember now if we were supposed to be protecting them or spying on them. This girl came out to hang her wash right under my tree. She was eighteen or nineteen, I suppose, and she was too thin.” His eyes traveled from Lauren to Toby and back to his food.
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 53
Did she still regret that? Toby was overcome with the wild desire to kill them all again, Leo and his mate, the whole Chicago pack—but at the same time he was pathetically grateful that his mate was a werewolf who wouldn’t fade and die the way Samuel’s wives all had. Brother Wolf stirred and settled down, just like Dennis had. “The wolf who attacked you didn’t come back to you, then, after you Changed?” Toby asked. Usually when a wolf Changed someone, it was drawn back to the new werewolf for a while. Mostly, Samuel had theorized to him once, some genetic imperative to make sure that an untaught, uncontrolled werewolf wasn’t going to draw too much unwanted attention. Dennis shook his head. “Like I said, I tracked her down myself, after the first full moon—she and that woman. What is she anyway? She sure as hell ain’t human—sorry, ma’am— not with the things I seen her do. She tried to call me to her the first time I Changed. I didn’t know what she was, only that she smelled bad—like th
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 54
Afterward, she lay panting and miserable on the ice-crystal-covered snow, too tired to move. Even cold, she discovered, had a smell. Gradually, as her misery faded, she realized that for the first time since last night, when Toby had curled around her and surrounded her with his warmth, she felt toasty-warm. As the initial agony faded to aches and pains, she stretched, making her claws expand and lengthen like a big cat’s. Her back popped and crackled all the way down her spine. She didn’t want to go back and curl up with a strange male only feet away. The wolf wasn’t afraid of the male. She knew he wasn’t likely to behave like the Others. But she didn’t much like the idea of touching anyone other than Toby, either. Near but out of sight, a wolf, Toby, made a quiet sound, not quite a bark or a whine. Wobbly as a newborn foal, she staggered to her feet. She paused to shake the snow off her pelt and give herself a moment to get used to four paws before starting back, her clothes in her
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 55
He called the magic to him and let it rip through his body, changing as he walked. It hurt, but he knew it didn’t show on his face or make his limp any worse. If he’d been healthier and the spirits willing, he might even have been able to conjure up a new pair of snowshoes instead of having to wade. At least the snow on the bench, regularly scoured by the wind, was only a foot or so deep most places—half of that had fallen tonight. Asil smiled a little, as if he recognized Toby’s power play for what it was, but he dropped his eyes. Though Toby knew better than to trust the submission in the other’s body language, it was enough for now. Toby kept his voice low. “How did you find us?” It was an important question. They were nowhere near the place they’d have been camping if he and Lauren had followed the trip as he’d outlined it with Tag. Had he done something stupid that would let the witch find them, too? The oddities of the past twenty-four hours had badly shaken his confidence—and t
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 56
AS soon as Toby went out to talk to Asil, Lauren had begun her change. She needed to deal with that wolf with her tongue rather than fang and claw. He was too good at riling her mate—and Toby was still volatile from his encounter with the witch. She didn’t give any thought to Dennis until she was naked and panting in the cold night air. She might have had three years to get used to being nude in front of people she didn’t know well, but he hadn’t. She glanced at him, but he had his head turned away from her and was staring intently at a nearby tree trunk, the perfect gentleman. She quit worrying about him and scrambled into her chilly clothes and boots because she could sense Toby’s rising rage at Asil; Asil had put the Marrok and his pack at risk. But more than that, she was worried that neither Toby nor Asil realized how close Toby was to his breaking point. She found it curious that she did. Boots on, coat on, Lauren rolled out of their sleeping place and onto her feet. She didn’t
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 57
LAUREN opened her eyes in the dadsrkness, certain that something had wakened her again. She raised her head from Toby’s warm, sweet[1]smelling skin and looked around. Dennis was nowhere to be seen, and sometime in the night, she and Toby had reversed positions, so he lay between her and dadsnger. The wind and snow had ceased, leaving the forest silent and waiting. “Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni,” she murmured. Too bad Scotty wasn’t around to beam them to safety. There was something about the heavy atmosphere that was frightening. She listened hard but heard nothing. The weighted silence pounded on her ears and made the beat of her heart even louder in the stillness of the winter night. Her heartbeat, her breath was the only thing she could hear. “Toby?” she whispered, touching his shoulder tentatively. When he didn’t respond, she shook him. His body fell away from her. He’d been lying on his side, but he rolled limply out from under their barely adequate shelter and onto the snow. Th
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 58
THE darkness bothered Brian not at all as he followed Tag’s directions to the place he and Toby had thought would be the best starting point. He passed Asil’s Subaru and hesitated—if Asil had been going after Toby, he’d have known the fastest way there. But Toby would be headed back to his car if something had gone wrong. So Brian kept driving. Other things he might do ran through his head. There were witches in the pay of the wolves. Not his pack—he didn’t deal with black witches, and most white witches weren’t powerful enough to be useful. But there were witches available to him. If he had a two-hundred-year-old witch capable of holding and torturing a werewolf for two dadsys—he had no intention of advertising the fact and encouraging other witches to imitate this one. Especially since she, like Brian’s mother, might have gotten her ability through some kind of binding to a werewolf. No. Best keep the witches out of it. He could call Toby back. That was a harder thing. Telepathy was
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