The Alpha's Mate (8 Sexy, Powerful Shifters and Their Fated Mates) Read online

  “Jenga’s a different breed,” Erik said, a note of disgust in his voice as he swept aside a drapery of Spanish moss. “But he’s not the only one out here. There’s a clutch of were-toads, and Crazy Mary’s house is somewhere around here, in the trees.”

  “Wait,” I said with a grin. “Were-toads? You’re serious aren’t you?”

  A half-smile and a semi-cocked eyebrow told me that yes, he absolutely was. Two years in the place, and some things still managed to surprise me. I shook my head and stepped over the stump of a tree so old it couldn’t even really be called wood anymore.

  “What are you going to do? I mean, he’s got that zombie – er – alpha, or whatever you want to call it. Are you sure he’s not gonna try something stupid?” My foot sunk just a little into a sucking, smelly hole, which luckily was lined with enough moss to keep whatever horror there was under our feet from staining my shoe.

  Erik cracked his knuckles. “I doubt he’ll do anything crazy.”

  “Oh my God,” I groaned. Honestly, the super-macho thing drove me kinda nuts but it was so achingly ‘Erik’ that I couldn’t help but like it sometimes.

  Despite my best intention to keep him from acting like Rambo, I felt a little twinge in the lower part of my stomach. I looked over at him, at his hard-clenched jaws and the slope of his huge shoulders where they joined his tree-trunk neck. The tattooed leaf poking out of his shirt twitched every time Erik tightened and relaxed his jaw, just like the mangroves or banyan trees or whatever they were rustling in the gentle swamp-air breeze.

  Something wooden creaked out past the wall of green in front of us, and then slapped against something else.

  Erik’s hand shot out and pressed against my chest in a silent warning. He turned to me with a finger on his lips and then looked backward, to where the panther police, one of whom was scratching his neck, along with Jamie and Duggan, were standing.

  “Are you sure about this?” I whispered. “What if he’s got the place booby trapped?”

  An awful, almost ghostly squeak started up then, and I felt my heart pound in my chest. The pulse in my temples was going right along with it, almost making my vision throb.

  “It’s not... he’s turning his generator,” Erik hissed. “If he’s really gone broke, then his generator won’t run without cranking, so he’s probably got some kind of, uh, helper out there doing it for him.”

  Looking down, he checked his watch. “It’s just about time for Price is Right. I can’t imagine he’d miss that.”

  I started to giggle, but Erik shushed me with a hand around my mouth and a very stern shaking of his head. “Won’t be booby-trapped,” he said. “But we don’t want to startle him. I’m not in any danger – not really – but the last thing I want is to have my new jacket covered in zombie goo. So keep quiet.”

  Nodding, I looked back at the green wall, trying to make out something behind it, but seeing only vaguely human outlines.

  “That one’s big,” I said softly, looking at Erik who was focused on the figures.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I didn’t want to come up against this.”

  “What is it?”

  “You can see that form through the trees, right? The big one? Going back and forth?” He turned to me, gritting his teeth.

  I nodded, wondering what on earth could be bothering him this much when four seconds before he’d been oozing machismo. “Yeah but... you weren’t worried before.”

  “I guess in the back of my mind I kinda didn’t believe all the stuff about Atlas, even with Leon showing off his finger. But...”

  “That’s him?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Gotta be. There’s no one that big in Jamesburg. He’s the strongest bear we’ve ever had in town, but... I can only hope that being dead has been a serious detriment to his punching arm.”

  A crunching sound made Erik go stiff again. He put his finger back to his lips and crouched, a wolf getting ready to pounce. The figure past the forest wall went still too, and there was an almost palpable tension emanating off Erik.

  His muscles were all rock hard, taut and ready to explode. I saw him clench his fist, then relax it. The only time I ever saw him fight before, it was like this: he got as tight as a coiled up spring and then just exploded. Only this time, there wasn’t anywhere, or anyone, to explode at. Not yet anyway.

  The figure took two halting, semi-shuffling steps toward our position.

  “He heard us, or senses us, or maybe Jenga’s got motion detectors out here or—”

  “I thought you said he wouldn’t have any booby traps,” I offered with a little smirk.

  Erik raised his eyebrows and stifled a grin. “Somehow he knows we’re here and I don’t think this is going to end easy. I wanted to be done with fighting a long time ago, but I guess sometimes you don’t get exactly what you want.”

  At that, he reached out, grabbed the collar of my shirt and yanked me to him, kissing me hard and deep and sweet. I stared into his eyes and realized that there was something else there that he wasn’t admitting – pleasure at what he was about to do. Fighting was in his nature, and keeping those instincts quiet for so long had started to wear him down. No matter what he said or did, underneath it all, the spirit of a wolf burned hot behind Erik’s eyes.

  When he watched my face, gaze smoldering, hands hot on my skin, and his taste lingering on my lips, I realized exactly why I fell in love with him in the first place.

  “What was that for?” I asked, through a soft, surprised gasp. “Not that I’m complaining, but...”

  “In case something happens. I don’t think it will, but you never know. Strong old bears are strong old bears. And I’m sure he’s got a little bit of his instinctual fight left in him, even if his fingers are falling off.”

  I squeezed his hand.

  The figure ambled closer.

  “Hnnng?”

  “What is it? Atlas?” a voice I didn’t recognize shouted from the distance, near where I assumed the witchdoctor’s house was. The voice was jangly and rambling. The words came out in a pattern as stumbling as the figure’s footsteps. “Atlas? Is something the matter? Is someone here?”

  “Woods.” The word came in a sudden boom of sound. “Someone. Woods.”

  “Well take care of it! We’ve got to get to the bank quickly if what that awful old Mary said about telling Leon is true. Someone will expect this! We’ve got to go soon, so take care of whatever it is.”

  Atlas. I looked over at Erik, whose taut muscles had him trembling. All the cords on his neck stood out in ridges.

  “Stay back,” he said, cracking his knuckles again. “I don’t want you hurt if it comes to a fight.”

  Almost before he finished speaking, something burst through the woods and slammed into Erik’s side. He let out a terrible grunt and crashed into a bank of leaves, then bounced off a tree trunk and went to his knees, spraying a cascade of stagnant swamp water all around.

  Atlas took a deep breath, and groaned. Every muscle in the ancient and apparently half-reconstructed body visibly flexed under his skin. The bones creaked as he watched Erik hold his ribs and stand back up.

  A thin tendril of blood ran from Erik’s nose. He wiped it with a quick pass of his hand, and smiled a grin so eager it was a little shocking.

  “I’ve wanted something like this for a long, long time,” Erik growled. He ran his tongue around his parted teeth as his shoulders tensed.

  In the brief burst of excitement, I’d not noticed that the crooked witchdoctor had wandered up to the edge of the swampy area. I could make out his form on the other side of the tree-line. What struck my memory was his hunched, crooked shoulder. I remembered seeing him once and thinking how painful it must be.

  “Atlas! Come back here! Where’ve you gone off to?” Jenga’s rambly, stumbling voice that rattled through the forest. “If they’re that far away you don’t need to chase them. Oh, goodness, he’s probably out after a squirrel again,” Jenga said with a sigh.
r />   The two combatants stood, staring each other down, although one of Atlas’s eyes seemed to like to wander. That’s when I noticed his legs – they were very obviously not his own. The fur on them was a different color completely from the light dusting of hair that covered the bear’s stomach and chest.

  “I’ve got your zombie, Jenga!” Erik shouted. “We know what you were planning. Come down here and do something about him before you get yourself in real trouble.”

  In the exact same moment, the rickety old witchdoctor pushed through the undergrowth, and Atlas lowered his shoulder and charged straight at Erik.

  “Don’t do it too soon though,” Erik said with a grin.

  The giant closed the fifteen feet between them in the blink of an eye, only this time, Erik rolled at just the right moment, parrying the blow and shoving Atlas head first into a tree trunk. A sickeningly heavy thud of flesh and bone hit my ears.

  As Erik approached the prone body his arms swelled and silver hairs sprouted from his neck.

  Turning away – I never could watch him transform... it just looked too painful – I caught a glimpse of Jenga as his mouth fell open and his beard started jingling with all the metal and bits of bone and twigs braided in the tangled mass of hair.

  “Atlas!” he shouted, looking at me. His jaws waggled and his bottom lip seemed to move on its own. “Why are you fighting Erik? Although I have to admit, I didn’t know I’d remade you quite so well. Impressive, isn’t it? So long dead and look how well he moves.”

  I shook my head and turned back to the fight just in time to see Erik catch a huge fist in the jaw. His lupine head whipped around with a force that probably matched being hit by a car. The giant monster stumbled slightly when his foot tangled in a root and in those few moments, Erik managed to lift a knee hard into Atlas’s gut and then drive an elbow into his face, sending a tooth flying.

  “It doesn’t bother him,” Jenga said under his breath, with awe in his voice. “None of the pain is bothering him... I, I finally did it! I made the perfect golem! Isn’t it amazing?” He grabbed my shoulder, spinning me around to face him.

  The man’s yellow teeth and rotten-sweet breath almost turned my stomach. Of course, what I took for breath might well have been the aroma of all the things dangling from his beard.

  “I’m guessing,” I said, “he’ll still come apart.”

  “Wh... what? What are you talking about? Look! He’s so strong!”

  Erik slammed his knee square into Atlas’s face and then slashed his chest with a claw. Anyone else – man, wolf or otherwise – would have been in agony, but Atlas just stood there, a dispassionate look on his face, his eyes glazed over.

  I was thinking on my feet, talking from my toes. I wanted to panic the old witchdoctor and somehow make him call off his monster. Then I remembered something Erik said on the way here: that a lot of times, the witches and warlocks and even this old witchdoctor, had golems or zombies, and they were their only friends.

  “Even if it doesn’t hurt him,” I continued, “what if Erik tears him apart? You don’t want that, do you?”

  Almost on cue, as my gaze darted back and forth from the aged, crooked witchdoctor, and the crazed bear-on-wolf violence in the other direction, Erik took a chunk out of Atlas. A wild swipe from Atlas went wide. Erik ducked and smashed his fist into the underside of the bear’s arm.

  Any normal arm would have shattered, but to my amazement, instead of a crunch of bone, I heard cloth tear, and then the arm sailed free of Atlas’s body. The whole thing surprised Erik enough that he stumbled and sat down hard in a murky puddle.

  The arm flew end over end, in a slow, rainbow-like arc, and then landed with a thump about ten paces from where Jenga and I stood, both of us with our mouths wide open.

  “Didn’t know I could hit that hard, huh? Hey! Hey! Ah!”

  I looked away from the still-clenched fist just in time to see the giant zombie shove two of his remaining hand’s fingers into Erik’s mouth, yanking his head to the side. Erik groaned, and then bit, then spat, and started flailing.

  “Jenga! You have to do something! If he hurts Erik or... or kills him, while he’s under your control, that’s...”

  “Not good,” the old man finished for me, scratching his beard. “But I don’t know how, I mean, I’ve never had to worry about something like this before.”

  “You don’t want this to happen,” I said. My voice was low and slow. “You never meant to hurt anyone. You just wanted money, right? Stop this before you end up in even worse trouble than you’ve already got.”

  Erik rolled left and then right, finally getting up to his knees and taking the pressure off his jaw. Atlas let out a hissing groan when Erik got a good punch in his ribs, and then just as quickly as Erik had been ambushed, he was back on top.

  The first punch sent another tooth flying and the second made Atlas’s jaw go funny, and that was all it took.

  Jenga, bless his crooked heart, went running across the distance and hurled himself on Erik.

  “Please!” he shouted. “Please don’t hurt him anymore! Or not hurt him so much as dismantle him! He didn’t do anything!”

  Erik drew his arm back for another blow that I was sure would dislocate Atlas’s head.

  “Erik!” I shouted. “Listen to him!”

  His fist started to descend, but Jenga grabbed Erik’s muscled, silver arm, and dug in his heels, making the blow go left and slam into the ground instead of Atlas’s nose. Erik turned his head to the side, his yellow eyes and wide nostrils flaring.

  “I give up!” Jenga announced, dramatically flinging himself to the ground. “I can’t watch you do this to my old friend. I just...”

  “What?” Erik snarled.

  The panther police, along with Duggan and Jamie, finally made their way through the dense, smelly swamp to where we were.

  “What happened? Erik? Are you okay?” Duggan ran to Erik’s side, shaking him until he responded.

  “Atlas,” Erik said, breathing hard. “He came through the forest and we had a hell of a fight. God that felt good!” He was shaking the same way he did after we made love, like his entire soul was relieved of a weight.

  Jamie sighed with a grin and helped me to my feet. How she was walking around the muck-pit in stilettoes I’ll never know.

  “You okay kid?” She asked as I steadied myself.

  I nodded. “I’m more worried about him though,” I said tilting my head in Jenga’s direction. “I’m pretty sure that zombie’s his only friend.”

  Jamie blinked.

  “I know it sounds weird,” I said. “As soon as Erik got the upper hand, he punched Atlas’s arm off and Jenga got all upset.”

  “Wait, really? He punched Atlas’s arm off?”

  I pointed with my toe. Jamie turned her head and snorted a laugh, then walked over and picked it up by the wrist. “This is incredible,” she said. “He managed to make an arm. This is synthetic. Here, touch it.”

  Before I knew it, she whopped me on the arm with the, er, arm. It was spongy and gave a little, like normal flesh. Actually, it was exactly like normal flesh, except there was no blood, and it was still moving a little bit.

  “We’re going to have to take you in, Jenga,” one of the police officers was saying. “Conspiracy to commit grand theft, beating up the alpha with use of a zombie, and unlicensed corpse assembly. Seems like we’ve been down this road before.”

  Jenga nodded, then vehemently shook his head. “No! The theft, fine, yes that was me. But this wasn’t unlicensed. Atlas and I were good friends, you remember that.”

  “That’s true,” Duggan added. “I remember you two being close.”

  “And,” Jenga continued, “I have it in his handwriting that I was allowed to reanimate him. And anyway, that’s his brain in that skull of his. He can answer for you.”

  “He... can?” Erik was standing with his hands on his hips shaking his head. “Come to think of it, he did groan something before.”

  �
��Hnnnng,” Atlas said. He pointed in Jamie’s direction and when she delivered his arm, he held it and smiled a little.

  “See? He likes it. He likes the fancy limbs I’ve made. Would you like to see?” Jenga tugged on the arm, but Atlas wasn’t letting go. “Well at any rate, it’s a synthetic! Sort of anyway. It’s made from ballistics gel, cow muscles and—”

  “That’s enough, I think,” Duggan said before turning to Atlas. Duggan’s face was slightly green. “Is all this true? You’re conscious in there? If so, that’s... well this is just crazy is what it is.”

  “...Yes.”

  Everyone took a breath at once.

  Erik rubbed his sore nose.

  Jamie sneezed.

  “Jenga... friend.” His voice was deep and powerful but very shaky.

  Jenga, sensing something was wrong, reached up and popped Atlas’s jaw back into place with a satisfied grin.

  “Much... better.” Atlas patted Jenga on the shoulder, almost knocking him down.

  While I was watching Jenga try to explain himself to the police while his giant friend kept interjecting two word responses, Erik pulled away from the crowd and grabbed my hand.

  “Well,” he said, turning to me and bending down close to my ear. “What say we leave them to it? If they have to take a statement from a zombie, this could be a pretty lengthy process.” He flashed that disarming, heart-stopping grin of his as he pulled me close.

  Say one thing about shifters, they never get embarrassed about showing their emotions.

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean you’re kind of in charge.”

  He shook his head, tossing his brown locks from side to side just a little. “Alphas are just figureheads. These guys are the ones who do the real work.” He laughed. “Anyway, I’ve done what I’m good at. Leave the subtle stuff to those guys.”

  Slowly, we started to back away, toward Erik’s bike, which was somehow still upright, despite all the excitement. As Erik handed me a helmet, Duggan turned. Instead of saying anything, he just smiled and gave Erik a short nod.