Page 37 of The Alpha's Forced Pregnant Mate

None of them moved, and I laughed harshly. “That’s what I thought.” I shook my head, staring down at them. “We’re not the Red Canines, we’re the Reckless Stalkers, and I am not Danny. We are going to become something better than the Canines ever were.”

“What’s your plan for that then?” Tanner asked. “You can’t just tell us that and then not give us any details.”

I looked around at them, letting out a slow breath. “I’m going to convince Whitney to stay here with us permanently, and then I’m going to force the other packs to acknowledge our legitimacy—through violence, if I have to. Once they know not to mess with us, we can expand and build a better pack than we have now.”

Ethan looked thoughtful. “Good. That sounds good to me.”

“It’s a good plan,” Claudio agreed. “Whitney is a good person to start with, given her reputation. But what if she says no? What if you can’t convince her to stay?”

I’d been trying not to think about that since we had the mating ritual. “Then I’ll make sure she doesn’t have a choice. She belongs here, and she needs to understand that. Now…get the hell out of here. I need some time to think.”

I watched the wolves all stand and file out of the room, and then let out a slow breath, running my fingers through my hair. Things were going to work out. They had to. If Whitney wasn’t going to be with me, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.

She was the first person that made me feel…complete. And our mating…it was something I’d never experienced before.

I closed my eyes, recalling the feeling of her soft, plump lips against mine. She’d tasted like sunshine and honey, and I wanted nothing more than to spend all night exploring every inch of her body. But I’d barely gotten the chance to touch her before it was over, and she’d made it clear that she didn’t want me touching her once the ritual was done. It was killing me to see my bite on her neck and know that I couldn’t touch her without it being a fight.

I shook my head. I had to get control of myself. I couldn’t let her see how much she was affecting me. The last thing I needed was for her to think that I was weak. Weak wolves were the reason why packs fell apart, and I wasn’t going to let that happen to mine.

I left the cabin, heading down the porch steps. I didn’t mention it to the pack, because I didn’t want to give them another reason to doubt my decisions, but there was still the underlying worry that Whitney would try to leave when the demon threat was taken care of. I could force her to stay, but it would bring the wrath of her old pack down on us. And just letting her leave would make me look so weak that there would be no recovering from it.

Fuck. I wish I could call…anyone, really. Peter. Danny. Even fucking Hector. Just another Alpha that could tell me what to do. But I’d burnt all of my bridges and I was well and truly on my own.

But it was worth it to stay true to myself and my roots. It had to be.

I paced the length of the cabins, hands shoved in my pockets, thinking. Why did Naomi stay with Danny even though he kidnapped her? At first, it was because of the demons, but she fell for him pretty quickly after that. She stayed because she loved him.

Whitney kept saying she’d never love me, but during the mating ritual, when I was moving inside of her, she’d wanted me. It wasn’t love, but she’d felt something besides hate. She’d wanted me to touch her, to kiss her, to make her come, and she’d softened toward me at least a little since then. I needed to get her back to that place.

That’s when an idea came to me. I stopped, rubbing absentmindedly at my neck as I mulled it over. It might not help my reputation with my own wolves, but if I could get Whitney to return the mating bite, binding us together even more, she’d be well on her way to falling in love with me. It would give me time to figure out the rest.

A small voice in the back of my mind said that I didn’t want to bind her to me that way unless she actually loved me, but I pushed it away. It didn’t matter. This was just about power, about strength, and about keeping my mate.

I’d never been in love before, and I didn’t think I was capable of it, but I still wanted Whitney in my life. That was enough, wasn’t it?

Chapter 15 - Whitney

The days passed more normally than I would have expected. Julian and I were coldly distant with each other, although I caught him watching me more than I’d like to admit. He tried to get closer to me, but with each rejection, he got more frustrated and more short-tempered.

I could feel faint echoes of his emotions through our bond, but when the softer ones came through, I had to force myself to believe I was imagining it.

But I wasn’t. Julian was softening toward me, and I knew that eventually, I’d have to confront that, but I kept putting it off. If I acknowledged it, then I’d have to confront my own feelings, and I wasn’t ready to do that.

Instead, I focused on the demons. Every day we went out, and every night we found nothing. There were no more attacks and no trace of where the demons were hiding or what their plans might be. Julian showed us the places they’d seen the demons before, and the areas where he thought they were hiding out and watching his pack before he discovered them. One site was a cave that had a disturbing amount of bones in it and reeked of rotting flesh, but that was the closest we came.

It was frustrating. Infuriating, even. And my hormones weren't helping.

The clinic doctor had given me some medication to stop my nausea, and I wasn’t far enough along yet to be experiencing any other effects, but I could tell a difference in my emotions. I found myself yearning to be held by none other than Julian Payne, the asshole who had gotten me in this state, to begin with, and the yearning for him became so intense some nights that I had to shift to wolf form and run through the woods until I was exhausted.

Sometimes Julian, also wearing his wolf skin, joined me, though we never acknowledged it during the daylight. It was our little secret, those runs through the moonlight. The first time I tried to lose him, but he kept up with me easily, his coppery coat blending in with the night a lot better than my stark white fur. I was made to run through the snowy expanses of Scandinavia, and it made me stand out like a sore thumb sometimes.

But oh well. He would have found me anyway.

The third night he ran with me it seemed he couldn’t help himself but to touch me. I would have never pegged Julian Payne as anything close to playful, but his wolf told a different story. He was happy when he was running with me, even happier when he could sneak up on me and nudge me with his nose, or nip at my tail. I tried to pretend like it annoyed me, but in reality, it warmed my heart in a way I never could have imagined.

It made me wish that he wasn't such an asshole when he was in human form. Maybe then I wouldn’t hate him so much.

This morning, we were packing my Subaru to drive back to the demon cave to see if any of them had returned to the freshest site and hopefully get some more clues, when my phone rang.

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