Omega's Harem (Feral Wolves of the Arctic Book 3) Page 5

  Finally, her feet were back on the ground. She turned to face him.

  He was tall—perhaps a little over six feet—with sun-darkened skin and curly black hair that fell to his shoulders. She allowed herself a second to admire him.

  In all her fantasies of finding a mate, she had never wasted much time thinking about what he would look like. Looks were secondary, in her mind, to the way they would make one another feel when they were together.

  But now, looking at him, she was struck by how attractive he was. If he had been a painting or a statue, she would still have stopped to admire him.

  So taken aback was she by the beauty of the man before her that it was several moments before she realized that he was staring at her too.

  “What?” she asked him. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.” But he didn’t bother to look away.

  “You’re staring at me,” she accused. “Why are you staring at me?”

  “Because you’re hot,” he said.

  That was certainly to the point.

  But she couldn’t help feeling a bit of a glow. “You’re not so bad yourself,” she said.

  His face registered no response. “Do you want the food or not?” he asked.

  “You in a hurry?” she asked him.

  “I do have places to be.”

  “You told me you could wait all day for me to come down from the tree,” she pointed out.

  “I just said that to get you to come down.” His tone was a bit smug.

  “Seriously?” she asked. “That was kind of a dick move.”

  “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

  “Do you have food or not?”

  He rolled his eyes, but reached for a backpack at his feet, pulled out a granola bar, and handed it to her. “Sit down.”

  “Maybe I’ll just go,” she said.

  “No, you won’t,” the man said.

  She raised her eyebrows. “I won’t?”

  He stepped closer. “You don’t want me to realize it,” he said, “but you’re enjoying talking to me. You’re glad I found you. I think you’re attracted to me.”

  Now they were getting down to it. This was the conversation she’d dreamed of for years. “You’re an alpha, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Nothing escapes you.” He stepped close to her and inhaled deeply, his eyes drifting closed.

  A tremor passed through his body.

  When he opened his eyes, his pupils were dilated. He looked nearly hypnotized. “And you’re an omega,” he breathed.

  “You can tell?” She felt strange. It was as if the woods around her had fallen away. The only thing in the world was this man whose name she hadn’t yet learned. Gravity seemed to have shifted slightly, and she found herself swaying closer and closer toward him, unable to resist his pull on her body.

  He lifted a hand slowly and ran his fingers down her cheek.

  She closed her eyes, feeling herself submit almost without thought to his touch. There was nothing in the world that felt as good as his hand.

  What will it feel like to have that hand on my body?

  She couldn’t wait. She wanted to rip off her clothes right now, to climb his body, to invite him to take her. They didn’t need to go back to the cave right away. They could live on their own in the woods for a while, at least.

  “I’m imprinting on you,” he said, his voice soft and musical. The aggression with which he had spoken to her at first was gone, and yet somehow his tone had lost none of its power. She felt sure that if he gave her a command, she would follow it without question. She wanted to follow it without question.

  Command me.

  What would his first order be? No doubt, he would want to see her body. She felt the heat rising within her at the thought of putting herself on display for him.

  “What’s your name?” he murmured.

  “Lily,” she said quietly.

  “I’m Victor.”

  “Victor,” she repeated. Alpha.

  She opened her eyes and looked into his. They were bright green, and she suspected they would have been hypnotizing to her even without the current of attraction that was shooting back and forth between them like a live wire.

  He took her in his arms, pulling her body close against his, and she had a moment to realize that her first intimate physical contact with her alpha was about to take place before his lips found hers.

  She felt like a flowering vine, rising to meet him, wrapping around his body, opening under the touch of his lips.

  “Do you know which way is west from here?” she murmured when they finally parted.

  Victor pulled back slightly, allowing him to look at her. His expression was one of confusion. “West?” he asked. “Sure, I do. Why do you want to know that?”

  “I got turned around in the woods,” she explained. “But I need to go west to get home. Since you’ll be coming with me, you’ll be able to help me find the way, right?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “My family will be excited to meet you,” she said. “I mean, I’m sure they’ll be surprised at first. They’re probably really angry with me right now, actually. I’m not supposed to go off on my own. But when they find out I found a mate, they’ll be glad. They’ll realize I did the right thing.” She couldn’t wait to see the look on her brothers’ faces.

  “Hold on.” Victor held up a hand. “We aren’t going west.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “Of course we are. That’s where my pack lives.”

  “Your pack?” Now he looked really confused. “We’re above the sixty-sixth parallel. There’s only one pack—”

  His jaw dropped in sudden realization and horror. “Oh, no.”

  “What?” Lily asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “You’re one of the Arctic Wolves. You’re part of that abnormal pack of feral shifters that banded together.” He shook his head. “How could you not have told me who you were?”

  “You didn’t ask me who I was,” Lily pointed out. “Besides, I’m not feral. I grew up in a pack. You’re the one who’s out in the wild on his own, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m not on my own,” Victor said. “I mean, I’m on my own right now, but I have a pack too. A normal pack, down south, where shifters live the way we’re meant to.”

  Lily felt a sudden chill. “You’re from the south?”

  “You couldn’t tell by looking at me?” he asked. “Honestly, you can’t see the difference between the two of us?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “When was the last time you had a haircut?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. She reached behind her head to feel the length of her hair. It wasn’t too long—just past her shoulders. “My brother hacks it off whenever it starts to get in the way.”

  “Using what, his claws?”

  “That would be dangerous,” Lily said. “We use a sharp rock. Obviously.”

  Victor shook his head. Then he stroked his smooth cheeks. “How do you think I managed to shave my face so closely?” he asked her. “With rocks?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about it,” she said, feeling her face grow hot with embarrassment. “I wasn’t analyzing your appearance. I was just happy to have found my mate.”

  “I can’t be your mate,” Victor said. “We live civilized in the south. We don’t just run around like wild wolves, the way you do up here.”

  Her embarrassment turned swiftly to anger. “We don’t run around like wild wolves,” she protested hotly. “Just because we know how to take care of ourselves, that doesn’t make us beasts.”

  “That isn’t even the biggest problem,” Victor said.

  “Then what is?” Lily demanded.

  “Our packs are rivals,” Victor said. “You and I—we’re natural enemies. We can’t belong together.”

  “We’re not enemies,” Lily said. That was the most preposterous idea she’d ever heard. “I’ve never even heard of you. And I don
’t have any enemies.”

  “You may not have heard of me, but you do have enemies,” Victor said. “I’m the alpha of the Vancouver Wolf Pack. My father fought your pack twenty years ago.

  Lily sucked in a breath. How many times had she heard her parents tell the story of that battle? “You’re from that pack?”

  “That’s right,” Victor said.

  Belatedly, something fell into place in her head. “You’re the spy. The one my brother told us about. You’re the one who came up here to get information about my family and report it back.”

  There was a long, uncomfortable silence.

  “They know about me?” Victor asked.

  Lily could have bitten her tongue off. How could she have been so stupid? She had given away her family’s only advantage!

  She forced her fear not to show on her face. The only way to salvage the situation now was with bravado.

  “That’s right,” she said. “They know you’re coming, and they’re ready. They’ll take you hostage as soon as you arrive, and they’ll get information from you about your pack instead of the other way around.”

  “Then we’re definitely not going west,” Victor said.

  Lily felt a moment’s relief. He’s just going to go away.

  Then, to her surprise and consternation, she felt a pang of heartbreak. Of something deeper than heartbreak. She didn’t think she could survive without him. He can’t leave! I’ve only just met him!

  If he went away now, he would be leaving her in the desert without hope of anything to drink.

  But what choice did she have? She wasn’t going to lead Victor back to her family. Not now that she knew who he really was. He would put them all at risk.

  I’ll just have to hope that I can find someone else, she decided. More than one alpha imprinted on Mom, after all. The same thing could happen to me.

  After all, this guy couldn’t possibly be her mate. He was the alpha of the Vancouver Wolf Pack. He wasn’t meant for her.

  She backed away from him. “You go south, then,” she said. If she waited to see which way he went, that would let her know which way west was. She would be able to make her way back home. Though she had left hoping to find a mate, right now, she wanted nothing more than to be safe in the cave with her family around her.

  They were right, and I was wrong. I should never have tried to go off on my own. It was a terrible idea.

  He stepped closer to her. “You mean we go south,” he said, baring his teeth.

  Her heart beat faster. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I thought you said you and I couldn’t be mates.”

  “We can’t be,” he said. “That would be an abomination.”

  “Then why would I go with you?”

  “You don’t have a choice,” he said.

  Lily was having trouble catching her breath. “What?” she managed.

  “I’m not taking you as a mate,” he said. “But I’ve still imprinted on you. You’ve submitted to me. My guess is that if I give you an order, you’re going to have to obey.”

  “No,” she said, backing away again. “No, I won’t.”

  He advanced on her. “Stop.”

  To her horror, her feet froze in place. She felt as if she was glued to the ground. She tried to take a step, but it was as if the neurons that connected her brain to her body were asleep.

  “I’m not letting the Arctic Wolves have their omega back,” Victor said. “This is better than any revenge I could have organized. You’re coming back to Vancouver.”

  “No,” she breathed.

  “Follow me,” Victor said, and he turned and walked away without even looking over his shoulder to make sure she was behind him.

  She followed. She had no choice.

  Chapter Six

  PAX

  The day of the fight dawned, gray and drizzly, and as he got out of bed, Pax couldn’t help thinking that the rain had arrived late for Josh’s funeral.

  It wasn’t going to do him any good today, that was for sure. Fighting in the rain would be twice as hard. Visibility would be poor, and they would no doubt be slipping all over the place. It would be hard to get a grip on anything. It would be hard to get any traction in the mud that was sure to develop.

  At least Donovan will have the same disadvantages.

  He wished that fact gave him more confidence than it did. But the fact was that Donovan was a practiced fighter. He was probably used to all kinds of conditions. Pax was willing to bet that fighting in the rain would be no problem for him.

  As for himself—he usually went out of his way to avoid fights altogether. He would have been at a disadvantage in any weather simply because he didn’t have as much combat experience.

  The one thing that might have stood in his favor today was that he was much more self-reliant than Donovan had ever been. Pax knew Donovan well enough to know that he was used to having a pack of soldiers around him. Pax, on the other hand, was used to being alone.

  But Donovan had been the one to challenge Pax to this fight. He had been the one to decide the terms, to tell Pax that they would be fighting one on one. He wouldn’t have done that, Pax knew, if he hadn’t felt confident that he could win.

  All he had to do was submit to Donovan and the battle would be over. He knew that.

  But could he even submit to Donovan?

  There had been a time in his life when Pax had wanted nothing more. When he had been young, he had longed to fit in with the pack that had taken him in and raised him. He had known that the only way that could happen was if he recognized the authority of the young man who would grow up to become his alpha.

  He had tried. When Donovan had given orders to the group, Pax had cooperated. He had played along.

  But it had always been an act. He had known it, and on some level, he was sure that Donovan had known it too. Eventually, there had been no hiding anymore that his will was too strong to be dominated. From the moment that had become clear, he had known that he would have to go out on his own.

  Now, years later, he was glad for it. He liked being alone. He had no desire to be a member of a pack, and certainly no desire to submit to another alpha’s leadership.

  But he had to wonder whether such submission would even be possible for him. If he wanted to call a halt to the fight this afternoon, would he even have the ability to do what Donovan wanted?

  He sighed and got out of bed. He was determined not to spend the day brooding about it. Whatever happened would happen, and there would be nothing he could do about it.

  He opened the door of the bedroom in which he had been permitted to stay while in Vancouver.

  But he was stopped almost immediately. Gabby, a member of Donovan’s pack and the closest thing Pax had ever had to a sister growing up, was waiting for him in the hall. She grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back into his bedroom, shutting the door behind them.

  “What’s up?” Pax asked, blinking at her in surprise.

  “You don’t want to go out there,” Gabby said.

  “I don’t?”

  “No. Donovan is in the kitchen, and he’s got the whole pack with him.”

  “I’m not afraid of Donovan, Gabby.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” she said, sounding exasperated with him as if she thought he was being foolhardy. “But they’re all riled up in there. If you go that way, it’s likely that the fight will start early, and if it does, it’ll be ten against one instead of a fair matchup.”

  “You really think they’d gang up on me like that?” Pax asked. It was hard to believe. He knew he had never been well-liked among the Moose Jaw Pack, but they had still been raised as brothers and sisters. Of course, they would support Donovan over him, but he had hoped that some of them would at least be sympathetic to his situation.

  But it didn’t sound like it. It sounded like they were all too eager to see him get his ass kicked.

  “You should probably go out the window and into the woods,” Gabby said.

 
“What, run away?” Pax shook his head. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Of course you can,” Gabby said. “Donovan isn’t going to follow you. If you run away, it’ll give him the satisfaction he’s looking for. He’ll feel like that proves you’re afraid of him and he’s stronger than you.”

  “I’m not afraid of him.”

  “God, Pax. I know you’re not,” Gabby said. “Do you need to get yourself killed to prove it? Just leave. What’s keeping you here?”

  “I promised Victor I would stay,” Pax said. “I told him I would help defend his pack.”

  “You’re not going to be any help to them if Donovan kills you.”

  “Donovan isn’t going to kill me,” Pax said, though he couldn’t suppress a flutter of nerves at the thought. “He doesn’t want me dead. He just wants to prove that he’s the strongest.”

  “You’re not at all concerned that he might get carried away in the heat of the moment?”

  “He can’t afford to,” Pax said. “If he kills me, he runs the risk of the Moose Jaw Wolves turning on him. You’re not the only one who would prefer not to see me dead, are you? I know the pack doesn’t like me that much, but I’m not your enemy.”

  “Of course you’re not,” Gabby said, her eyes filling with tears. “I loved you when we were kids, Pax.”

  “Past tense?”

  “You turned on us,” she said. “You abandoned us.”

  “You know that isn’t true,” he said. “I had to go. I tried to belong to the pack, but I couldn’t. I was never going to fit in.”

  “Donovan isn’t a bad alpha, you know,” Gabby said. “I know he can be an asshole sometimes. But he really does care about us.”

  “I know that,” Pax sighed.

  The trouble was, he did know that. It would have been easier to go into this fight if Donovan had been someone he could really hate. Though Pax wasn’t a fighter by nature, he had held his own in the wild against true wolves more than once. If he had been able to disassociate his thoughts and emotions from the task at hand, the way he often did when he was in wolf form, the fight would have been simple.

  But he wouldn’t be able to forget that it was Donovan he was facing. The two of them didn’t get along, but Pax still had respect for Donovan. He didn’t wish harm upon him.