Taken By The Alpha(5)

“Who put a bug up your ass?” she snapped.

“Your stepfather and his entire family, and every member of the Mordhaus pack, for that matter. Fortunately, your pack will be a thing of the past any day now.” Carver picked up the empty tray and turned and left.

She hurled a hardcover book at his head as he walked out, just barely missing.

She slept poorly that night, tossing and turning. She kept waking up and wondering what was happening back at her pack’s property. She imagined she’d wake up to news of a death challenge.

In the morning, a shifter named Michael brought her breakfast, and a change of clothing – jeans and a t-shirt. Michael was one of Maddox’s cousins, a few years older than him. Half an hour later, he came back.

“You ready?”

With a scowl, she followed him out the door and let him lead her through several hallways and out a door. She made careful note of where everything was in case she got a chance to escape.

The grounds were typical of shifter properties – houses built in harmony with nature, nestled in among the lodgepole pines. Paths led through the trees leading to the various houses.

As she followed him, her gaze swept the area as she quickly oriented herself. The mountains were to the East. When they’d entered the pack property in the back of the van, it had taken about two minutes before they’d stopped at the big house where she was being held. She noted where the underbrush was thickest; it would provide her with decent cover if she could escape and make a break for it, heading for Rural Route 270. From there she could run all the way back to her pack property. Ten miles of running. Piece of cake, if she could just get off the property in the first place. She knew that, like all packs, the Killingworth pack would have shifters on patrol at all times. The property wasn’t fenced in, though; if she could get enough of a head start, she might be able to make it.

She’d checked her window last night. There was an alarm system, and the sensor was on the outside of the window. If she opened the window it would set off the alarm, and then there were the bars.

She’d have to start investigating the room in earnest to look for things she could improvise into weapons or tools. The mattress was made of down and had no bedsprings. It rested on wooden slats. No sharp metal that she’d been able to locate.

Michael led her into a clearing, where various picnic benches and chairs were scattered about. There was an area with a firepit, there was an outdoor kitchen next to some sheds and a big building that looked like a rec center, a covered pavilion with rows of seats in front of it…the pack’s common area, then.

A couple of dozen women were sitting on both sides of a long picnic table. She strolled past them, not paying attention to Michael. He followed close behind.

She didn’t bother to try to say hello to them, figuring they’d be as bitchy to her as everyone else had been lately, but to her surprise, one of them looked up and smiled at her. “There you are!” A middle aged woman with carrot colored hair and freckles moved over on the bench to make room for her. “I’m Caroline. I wanted to thank you for being so nice to my niece. You really made her day; she couldn’t stop talking about you.”

“Of course,” she said. Privately, she thought, Jeez, why is everyone surprised that I was nice to her? I’m mad as hell that I’m here, but I’m not going to take it out on a cub.

Michael sat down cross legged in the grass near their table, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

There were spools of burlap ribbon on the table, and glass mason jars, and glue, and oval paper labels, and baskets of arts and crafts supplies

“We’re making favors and decorations for my daughter’s bridal shower,” Caroline said.

Katrina perked up. This was right up her alley.

“I help run our pack’s catering business. You know what we did for my cousin’s bridal shower?” she said.

“What?” a pretty redhead who looked like a much younger version of Caroline looked up with interest. “Yoo hoo, I’m Peony. I’m the bride to be.”

“We made lace garters that had little tiny holsters on them – with mini bottles of liquor.”

“All right, she’s definitely coming to the wedding. I want a garter for each leg,” Peony said eagerly.

“That’s horribly inappropriate for a bridal shower,” an older woman who was sitting near the end of the table chided, her forehead wrinkling in distaste.

Peony bit her lip and her face fell.

“Then don’t wear one, Myrtle,” Caroline said, and icicles were dripping from her voice.

Myrtle, a stout blonde with a frosted helmet of hair, made a tsking sound and went back to curling ribbons with a pair of scissors. She reminded Katrina of the women her mother associated with; women who all kibitzed about each other behind each other’s backs, and lived to find people to look down on.

Mother-in-law to be, Katrina was guessing.

“What else ya got?” Peony said to Katrina.

Katrina started reeling off lists of bridesmaid’s activities.

As she spoke, she suddenly felt as if waves of hostility were radiating at her. Her Sensitive side. Why couldn’t her psychic powers pick up on happy emotions, for God’s sake?

Glancing around, her gaze lighted on a slim she-wolf with flat-ironed golden hair who was sitting at a nearby table, flanked by two other very pretty women, and all of them were shooting looks of disgust in Katrina’s direction.

Katrina ignored them. She hadn’t expected everyone to be delighted by her presence.

“So where is Heather?” she asked Caroline.

“We brought her back to her father’s house this morning. Maddox tore him a new one last night, and he swore he’d lay off the booze,” Caroline said. “He was sober, and cleaning up the house when we left, but we’ll check back on them today.”

She began introducing Katrina to the women around the table. Maddox’s great grandmother Violet was sitting next to Katrina. She was a woman in her late nineties. There were various Killingworth family members, and some from smaller packs that were under the Killingworth pack’s protection.

Katrina realized with a start that one of the women at the table, sitting at the far end, was Teresa – formerly from her pack. Teresa, a pretty young widow, had packed up her two sons and left the Mordhaus pack a couple of months earlier. Katrina had been surprised; she’d never seen any indication that Teresa was unhappy. Maybe she’d been keeping it bottled up.

“Hello, Teresa,” she said, nodding. Teresa nodded back, a little hesitantly, as if she feared Katrina would hold a grudge.

A woman brought out a tray with jugs of iced tea and frosty iced glasses. Katrina drank tea with them and shared recipes and ideas for the shower.

She’d been sitting out there for about an hour when she felt a sudden warm, tingling feeling, and looking across the yard, she saw Maddox standing under the spreading branches of a huge oak tree, talking to a few of his pack mates.

The sun was shining behind him, bathing his perfectly muscled body in its glow. She felt her skin tingle, and a rush of moisture dampened her panties. Her breath hitched in her throat.

Ugh. Why did her body have to react like that? She turned away, picked up a mason jar and, copying what the other women were doing, cut a length of burlap ribbon and tied it in a bow around the jar.

She could feel Maddox walking towards her. The closer he got the more flustered she felt. She’d never really noticed his scent before, the masculine musk that he exuded, but now it was all she could smell.

“For the cubs in the wedding party, we had them sitting at tables with chalk board tops, and we gave them all bags of colored chalk,” she told the other women, although she was mostly speaking to distract herself.

Maddox was right behind her; his shadow fell across the table. She could feel her cheeks flush and her breathing quickened. She hoped he wouldn’t notice.

“Good morning. Fancy meeting you here,” he said.

She twisted around to look up at him and flashed a feral smile. “Haven’t seen much of you. Scared?”

He returned the smile. On him it was more of a smirk. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d miss me so much.” Ooh, she wanted to smack that smug look off his handsome face.

She snorted in contempt. “In your dreams. And my nightmares. Run along now, Fifi, I think you’re overdue at the groomer.”

He threw back his head and laughed, then walked off.

Katrina turned back to cut another ribbon, and realized that everyone was staring at her.

“What?” she said. “Something in my teeth?”

“The way you talked to him…” Caroline marveled.

She snorted. “What about it?”

“He never lets anybody talk to him like that.” Caroline shook her head. “I mean…he’s the Alpha.”

Teresa nodded, and glanced at the woman next to her. “I swear, Susie, it was almost like…”

Susie nodded vigorously. “It was exactly like.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, nothing.” They both pretended to be very interested in scribbling names on labels.

Before Katrina could push them on it, the woman who’d been glaring walked over with her friends, and they made a big show of sitting down at the table.

“I went into town to get some new lingerie,” the woman said loudly. “I don’t even know why I bother with it, since Maddox is going to rip it off me in two seconds.” She shot a significant look in Katrina’s direction.