Page 23 of Claimed By the Rival Alpha

NIGHT

Iwas already awake by the time the sun began to rise.

I took the last watch of the night, so I had the treat of watching the golden sun spread across her face.

She slept curled in a ball on top of her pallet, her hands resting beneath her ear.

Her chestnut brown hair fell gently across her cheek.

My fingers itched with the urge to brush the hair off her face, a desire that confused the hell out of me.

She—Bryn—was my prisoner, my pawn in a war that had officially started last night. I ought to know better than to allow myself to feel anything for her—especially when I fully intended to let her go once I’d carried out my plans.

The rest of the pack arose shortly after me. Bryn was the last to wake. When she did, her eyes parted slowly as if she were waking from a long dream. I was the first person to meet those light blue-gray eyes, and my wolf was practically purring inside me.

I ignored the wolf and got brusquely to my feet. “Today we cross the river,” I announced as Bryn sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Redwolf is going to be pursuing the girl, so we should try to keep moving.”

After we’d put out the fire, taken down the pallets, and eliminated any other evidence of our camp, we began to trek down to the Kootenai river.

We needed to cross it to return to Warg territory.

When we reached the river, my pack removed their clothing and shifted into their wolf forms because it was easier to traverse the water.

I opted to stay in my human form. I threw Bryn over my shoulder, ignoring her flailing arms and stammering protests, and trudged through the cold water.

She called me any name she could think of, including “kidnapper” and “overgrown asshole,” but none of them fazed me.

“If you keep talking to me like that,” I said when she stopped yelling long enough to let me get a word in, “I’ll drop you in. I don’t think I’d mind watching you turn into a sopping wet rabbit.”

“Go to hell, Night,” she snapped, panting from all the unnecessary movements she was making.

She was weaker than she’d been yesterday. I knew this because there wasn’t as much power behind the blows she delivered to my back or her attempts to kick free of my arm, which held her legs.

When we reached the clearing on the other side, I set Bryn down on the ground. Despite my efforts, she had been splashed with water. She stood in her oversized clothes, trembling in the cool breeze of the spring morning. I stood near her and called for my pack to take a break.

Dom, still in the light brown fur coat of his wolf form, tilted his head. “We could keep going,” his voice entered my mind.

“Not with her like this, we can’t,” I replied. “We should let her get warm and dry before we go on.”

“Understood.”

The wolves shifted back into their human forms and dressed in the clothes they’d tied in bundles to keep with them.

They stretched and talked amongst themselves while I found another stash of my clothes for her to wear.

I handed them to her, and she accepted with a brief nod.

I turned my back to allow her to change, and I stood in front of her so that none of the men nearby could sneak a peek at her body.

After she’d changed, I found a felled tree to sit on. I patted the spot next to me for Bryn to sit.

She wore my dry clothes, practically drowning in them because they were so big. Her body swayed a little with fatigue, and I could hear her heartbeat racing. Though she was clearly unwell, she raised a haughty brow as if to say, What? I’m fine.

I sighed. “You’re obviously still in shock and exhausted, unsurprising given last night’s events. Let me help you.”

She frowned, shifting from foot to foot.

I thought she would resist me further,r but to my surprise, after a sigh, she came willingly. She sat next to me, and I wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her flush to my chest. She fit nicely against me as if she was meant to be there.

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” she muttered under her breath.

“Because you need to rest.”

That seemed to be enough of a reason for her. She leaned against me, and with another sigh, she nuzzled into me.

Concern twisted in my gut, and I felt an answering whine from my wolf. She’s yelling at me one minute, practically cuddling with me the next. The trauma of Redwolf’s treatment of her…She’s clearly confused. We need to get home as soon as possible so she can be somewhere warm. Safe.

Of course, I needed her to be healthy if I was going to use her to get to Troy, but more than that, the idea of her being so upset made my chest ache.

But I didn’t have time to look into those sorts of worries.

I needed to keep my mind on my goals, namely, to end the Kings’ reign and take over the pack that should have been mine all along.

It was so hard to keep my mind focused on anything beyond Bryn.

I put on a show of not caring what she did or said or responding to her when she spoke, but in truth, she was impossible to ignore.

Every move she made, every sound that slipped past those plump, pink lips had me riveted.

And her smell…she was so sweet, so intoxicating.

It took everything in me not to press my nose into her hair and inhale deeply.

I couldn’t do this. The urge to be intimate with her, to hold her with both arms and to taste her lips the way I had in so many dreams was maddening. When the urges became too strong, I pulled away from her despite my wolf’s protesting whine.

“You feel better now?” I asked.

She looked up at me, blinking slowly as if she were coming out of a dream. Her hair had fallen into her face again, and she brushed it behind her ear.

“Y-yeah, I think so.” She nodded.

“Great.” I sat up too quickly, almost knocking her off the trunk. “Dom, I’m going to scout ahead for a few miles.”

Dom met my gaze across the clearing. “Got it. Let me know if you need anything.”

I nodded. I would have shifted right there, but given the way Bryn looked away from my pack when they were nude, I decided to do it behind tree cover. I jogged away from the clearing. When I was a few yards away, surrounded by trees, I stripped off my clothes and shifted.

In my wolf form, I shook out my thick, black fur and stretched.

My senses were heightened now, and my reflexes were sharper.

The air was a vector for smells and sounds and tastes.

I pawed at the ground, scenting the soil to orient myself, and then I began to run.

I wove between the trees like a shadow and ran a few miles ahead to check out the path home.

The run allowed me to relax. By the time I returned, I felt I had finally gotten rid of the pent-up emotions and impulses after twenty miles (ten toward the camp and ten back) of running.

But after I’d shifted into my human form and gotten dressed, I emerged from between the trees to find Bryn talking to Dom.

They weren’t standing close to each other, there were still a couple of feet between them, but he’d managed to put a slight smile on her face—the first one I had seen from her since I saved her from Troy.

My heart began to pound at the sight of her face—the way her cheeks lifted, the slight spark in those beautiful, gemlike eyes—but my wolf growled at Dom’s proximity to her.

In that moment, my wolf almost saw Dom as an enemy, someone who could never be near her like that.

Fortunately, the run had tired my wolf enough for me to take control.

Instead of going over and pulling Bryn to my side, I made a brief, sharp whistle, calling my team to attention.

Dom immediately jogged from Bryn’s side to mine.

Good, I thought, my wolf calming. It was a much more diplomatic solution to the issue than snapping at my beta in front of my pack. “The path ahead is clear,” I announced. “Let’s get moving.”

The group trudged onward. After a few hours, we decided to set up camp a few miles from the river.

I could still hear the sound of the river rushing.

I directed my team to begin setting up camp and instructed Jasper to kill a rabbit and set it up to cook by the fire.

My team could go longer without food while remaining strong, but I’d heard Bryn’s stomach growling as we walked.

I heard it growling again as my team got to work on the camp, but she was further away from them—already almost a mile north, following the flow of the river rather than trying to cross it. She was trying to escape. Again.

I sighed as Dom came to stand near me. “I’ll give her this,” I said, listening to the crunch of branches underfoot and smelling her sweet scent on the wind, “she’s resilient.” And stubborn.

Dom chuckled. “She’s a spitfire, for sure. Should we send someone for her?”

“Not yet. Let’s let her run for a little while longer just to tire herself out.”

“Understood.”

I continued to feign disinterest around Dom and my people, but I never stopped listening to her footsteps.

I heard when she stumbled and when she coughed.

She’d made it a decent distance away despite the rough terrain and her oversized clothes—almost two miles from the sound of it—but when her pace began to slow, I had Dom bring her back.

I knew that Troy would send his men to get Bryn back.

They would likely try to intercept us before we reached Warg territory.

We needed to pick up the pace, but there wasn’t much we could do about Bryn.

She was much slower, and carrying her was out of the question given the way she fought—just as she was fighting Dom as he dragged her back to camp.

“Damn you!” she seethed, turning her glare from Dom to me. “Why can’t you just let me go, you asshole?”

I rolled my eyes. I wished I could duct tape her mouth shut. “You already know why.”

Dom set her down, glancing at me over her head.

I didn’t need to telepathy to know what he was thinking.

It was a look that said, “Don’t be too hard on her.

” I almost rolled my eyes a second time.

As Dom walked away to oversee Jasper as he prepared the rabbit, Bryn marched up to me—her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

There were small sticks and pine needles attached to her sleeves.

She was panting as she stormed toward me, but her eyes blazed at me, almost gray in the shaded light of the forest. She was so upset that I doubted she even realized how disheveled and exhausted she looked.

“Why don’t you go and warm yourself by the fire instead of trying to get yourself killed?” I asked. “There’s a rabbit roasting there with your name on it.”

She scoffed at me. “You think food will get me in your good graces? Hell no. I have zero interest in participating in your game with Troy,” she raged. “I don’t want to be used for your or his benefit. You don’t own me. No one does.”

I scoffed at her. “And what do you think will happen when you go home? Do you think you’ll be able to return to whatever shitty life you had with the Kings?”

“I—”

I didn’t let her speak. “Troy will tie you up again. He’ll drag you back to his bedroom, and then he’ll own you, whether you want him to or not. That’s what you’re trying to get back to?”

I expected more of a fight. I expected her to continue to rage. But instead, her lower lip wobbled. To my horror, her eyes again filled with tears, spilling over onto cheeks reddened with emotion. It seemed her fear was finally catching up to her.

I took her wrist and pulled her against my chest without thinking, eager to calm her down, to stop her from crying.

Immediately, I sensed my annoyance lessening the longer I held her to me.

Her tears were wet against my chest, and I slightly tightened my hold as if I could force some comfort into her traumatized body.

I felt her heart beating quickly and felt an answering quickness in my own chest. I could have held her forever.

But as soon as her small sobs subsided and her body calmed, she pushed at my chest. I let her go immediately, startled by her desire to get away.

She teetered for a moment on her feet, her head lowered toward the ground, her hair covering her face.

She turned away from me quickly, but not before I caught a glimpse of her face in the firelight. Her cheeks were bright red.

I watched her walk over to the fire and sit down next to it, hugging her knees to her chest. She reached for the rabbit, fully cooked by then, and took a few nibbles.

I let out a long breath and turned away from her.

I put a hand on my chest, where my heart still beat almost as quickly as it had when I’d gone on my run earlier.

I was grateful for the distance from her; I needed to get a handle on my emotions and impulses concerning this woman.

But there was a tiny, sweet thrill in my chest accompanying my thunderous heartbeat.

I refused to read into it, forcing myself to focus on the path ahead.

Deep down, I understood that I was far too pleased to see her calm, eating, and warming herself by the fire—I was happy that she was safe.