CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The next day, I'm sitting beside the lake with Regan.
She's back from town since the dog she said nearly died giving birth to a litter of puppies is recovering at home, so her boss has given her an extra day off work as it's so quiet at the clinic.
With the mild weather and a burning desire to stay away from Dayne, when she suggested coming to the lake, I jumped on it.
Seeing as we're away from the farmhouse, and Regan is a friend, I'm happy to take advantage of the opportunity to get her talking about Dayne, his wolf tattoo, and what he's like as an alpha.
But after what happened last night, I decide not to ask her whether Savannah and Dayne were a couple. I figure I'll wait until Dayne isn't so angry at me since I have a feeling Luka might have told him about my questions.
Except, right from the get-go, it's clear she's not eager to talk about him at all.
"He's cool," she murmurs vaguely and looking uncomfortable.
"But that doesn't tell me anything. What is he really like? I mean, I don't think he can be all that cool after what he did to me at the meeting, do you?"
Although I try hard to keep my tone mild, revealing none of my lingering fury at how he treated me at the pack meeting, going by Regan's darting glance and her wide eyes, I doubt how successful I am.
Flushing, she tears her gaze away from me. "I can't talk about it."
"What do you mean you can't-"
"I just can't."
"Not even about his tattoo? Surely you can-"
"Please, Talis," Regan says, turning begging eyes on me. "Don't ask me about that."
After a long moment of staring into her eyes, I sigh and turn away. "Okay, fine."
We sit there, staring into the water for several seconds.
"About your pack," she finally says, breaking the silence in a way that makes me wonder how long she's been waiting to ask me about this. "Weren't your parents…"
"The pack alphas? Yes. They were."
This question is the one reason I'm glad Uncle Glynn made sure I didn't socialize with shifters from other packs. I'm a curiosity, a thing that doesn't make sense.
"But shouldn't you be…" Again, Regan's words trail off as if she can't quite bring herself to ask me the question she's desperate to know the answer to.
Instead, she waits for me to both ask and answer it.
"Higher up in the pack hierarchy?" I guess.
Clearing her throat when I turn to her with a raised eyebrow, she looks away. "Well, yeah. I mean I thought it was genetic, being an alpha."
Lifting my knees to wrap my arms around my legs, I rest my chin on top of my knees and stare off into the distance as a cooling wind whips my hair up around me.
I should tie it up, or braid it since it'll be a tangled mess by the end of the day if I leave it loose. But like always, I don't move. There's something I find relaxing about the wind playing with my hair.
"Not always," I say.
What Regan says is true. The probability of a child being born an alpha, particularly if both parents are alphas themselves, is high. Very high. But as with most rules, there are exceptions, and in this case, I'm the exception to the rule.
When I was ten, a couple of years after my parents went for a run and didn't come home, I started lashing out at everyone around me.
I became convinced Uncle Glynn was wrong about where I fell in the pack hierarchy. I was getting into fights a lot, trying to dominate everyone around me, and was so sure I was an alpha, I just had to make Uncle Glynn see he was wrong about me being a submissive.
That was when it started.
He took me out into the forests, far from the rest of the pack to, as he put it,
"Tell me the way things really were, away from prying ears."
He told me my wolf was trying to assert herself the same way all other pre-shifting, kid's wolves did. What I was going through was no different from everyone else. All except one thing; the only alpha thing about me was my parents, and they were dead.
Even though I hadn't had my first shift yet, and my wolf wouldn't make her first appearance until I was sixteen, deep inside me, I could tell she didn't like that. Not at all.
I was going at him with clawless fingers before I could stop myself. But I was only ten, and Uncle Glynn was a fully grown adult shifter. The force of his attack knocked me out cold, and when I finally opened my eyes, I found him standing over me, waiting for me to wake up.
He asked me if I'd learned my lesson, and although I told him yes, I could see he didn't believe me.
"You may not be the lowest of the low," he growled. "But you are no alpha or beta, or anything near it."
"And how would you know," I interrupted, "when I haven't had my first shift yet."
Picking me up by my hair, he held me there just long enough for me to know there was nothing I could do to free myself.
When he finally released me, my scalp burned, and my eyes were full of tears I refused to shed.
"I know."
Back then I still had fight in me, and Uncle Glynn had been right not to believe that I'd learned my lesson.
Scrambling back to my feet, I glared at him through eyes blinded with tears. "I am alpha. And when I change, my wolf is going to kill you."
Which, with the benefit of hindsight, threatening the new alpha of the pack-the alpha who is your guardian and legal caretaker? Not the smartest thing I could have done.
He was on me in a second. "You forget, niece," he sneered, leaning close enough for me to see his wolf peering down at me as he pinned me down easily, despite all my struggles to free myself. "I see your wolf, and she is nothing. Weak. Pathetic. You think I don't know an alpha when I see one?"
His certainty, his utter confidence made me doubt myself for the first time.
"You're lying."
He smiled, and I didn't trust it. It warned me he was about to tell me something I wouldn't like.
"Did you know Maria was much the same as you?"
Shaking my head, I refused to accept what he was telling me. "No. No, she wasn't. She couldn't be."
Grinning, he released me. "Believe me. Don't believe me. But go ask her. Go see what she tells you."
And so, I went to speak to Maria. Not the lowest member of the pack, but close enough to the bottom for there to be no real difference in my young eyes.
She confirmed what Uncle Glynn said, that before her first shift her wolf started acting out and she was getting into a lot of fights. That it was like that with all shifters, even submissives.
But even though I believed her, something inside me-my wolf, refused to accept this as true. I couldn't be a submissive like Maria, and I fought Uncle and kept on fighting him.
Then the punishments started.
Every fight I got into, every attempt I made to assert my dominance in any situation, meant instant punishment for attempting to claw my way to a position in the pack that was not my own.
I was disrespecting the pack and my packmates by trying to show myself as being better than them, Uncle told me.
The punishments started small. He cut me off from the rest of the pack, left me to play alone, learn alone, be always alone. Given how sociable we wolves are, now that I think about it, the punishment wasn't that small at all.
With every birthday, Uncle grew more hurtful, more spiteful, and still whatever he did to me never seemed to be enough. Nothing ever satisfied him, which was when he started getting the rest of the pack to join in his cruel games.
On and on it went, for years. And then finally, on my sixteenth birthday and my first change, when everybody looked at me, when I looked at my reflection in the mirror, we all saw the same thing. Talis Merrick, pack submissive, and dud.
"Are you sure?" Regan draws me from my memories and I blink to bring the lake into focus.
"What?" I ask, turning to her.
"That you're not an alpha, only-"
"Talis."
At the sound of Dayne's voice, I jerk around to find him standing on the edge of the clearing. Naked. He must have been out running.
I forget Regan sitting beside me, much less what we were talking about. My entire focus is on keeping my gaze on Dayne's face instead of letting my gaze drift lower.
"Yes, Alpha?"
Since Uncle Glynn never let me call him anything except alpha, this tendency has naturally shifted to how I address Dayne.
"I have a name," he snaps, "use it."
The longer I'm in the Blackshaw pack and no one hurts me, the more my fear of him is fading. It's only when he says something that triggers a memory of Uncle's many cruelties that the fear comes rushing back.
Increasingly, when I'm around Dayne, some unidentifiable emotion is rising to take the place of fear. But since all I've felt is terror, and pain, and shame for so many years of my life, it's hard for me to identify what this new emotion is.
Only that something about it-or something about Dayne makes me want to push back at him. And it's getting more intense as time goes on.
"Yes, Alpha Dayne."
Regan makes a choked sound, a sound that's quickly cut off when Dayne narrows his eyes and stalks toward us. I'm not alone in scrambling to my feet when I see the look in his eyes means trouble, for me most likely.
After muttering something about needing to be somewhere, or do something, Regan takes off, but I don't turn to see where. I'm too busy trying to read his eyes to gauge how much I've pissed Dayne off as he closes the gap between us.
Also, I'm wondering why he's shaved.
He was gone early this morning, probably with Luka though I have no idea where he went.
I'd just made breakfast with Regan, and when I mentioned the fridge was starting to look a little empty, she told me to tell Dayne and he'd send someone to go into Hardin and pick up more.
The pack has a standing weekly order, and it's about time to pick it up at the grocery store.
Dayne wasn't at breakfast, otherwise I'd have mentioned it to him, and I didn't think it would be a good idea for me to share a breakfast table with Savannah who was looking as beautiful wandering into the kitchen at six-thirty, as any other time I've seen her. Especially after what nearly happened after the pack run.
Dayne backs me up against a tree, but when he does nothing else, I peek up at him to find him gazing down at me, I raise my hand up to his face.
"You shaved," I murmur, not sure if I like it.
Maybe it's the thought he shaved it to please her-Savannah-that I don't like.
But it has me feeling possessive, and fills me with a desperate need to touch him. To claim him. To remind him he's mine, and I'm his, even if he doesn't want me.
Since he's not shoving me away and demanding to know what I'm doing, feeling brave, I brush my fingers against his bare jaw.
"I think I prefer the beard," I admit, keeping my voice soft.
"Is that right?" His voice is gruff.
Leaning forward, I give into my curiosity and my need to touch, and slowly, I rub one cheek against his jaw with gentle but insistent pressure, the way I would if I were in my wolf shape.
It feels strange since I barely know Dayne at all for me to have such a preference over him being shaved, or with a beard.
But I do.
I much prefer the brush of his stubble and the burn against my cheek. Clean-shaven Dayne just feels weird.
"Yeah, definitely the beard," I admit, pulling back.
Only he surprises me by curving his hand around the nape of my neck and halting my retreat.
"Do that again." He makes it an order, of course.
As if it could be anything else from an alpha.
After making me sit at his feet at the pack meeting? I don't have to think twice about what my response will be.
"I don't think I want to."
He forces me to meet his gaze, and like always I can't read him. "You do realize that was an order."
"And an alpha always gets what he wants, is that it?" I ask, only half-serious.
Instead of responding, Dayne leans his hips more firmly against me, and I feel the hard ridge of his erection sinking into my belly. He's fully aroused, and I swallow hard at the thought of all that hardness sinking into me.
"Do it," he commands, "again."
But I don't.
Tipping my head back against the tree, I meet his eyes. "And what do I get if I do?"
Because he's pressed so tight against me, and standing so close, it's impossible to miss the flicker of surprise in his eyes.
He's not the only one shocked by the words that just came out of my mouth. But it's too late for me to take them back, so I don't bother to even try.
I know I'm not behaving much like a submissive, but like all my oddities, it's just another sign that what I've done to my wolf has made me crazy.
"Depends what you want," he says, his eyes intense.
We both know what I want since it's not like it's easy to hide the scent of my arousal in response to his closeness, but clearly, he wants me to say it. Out loud.
I gulp.
Then I think of how I can avoid having to admit something I'm not ready to. And since I'm feeling an overwhelming need to leave my scent over Dayne, I decide to kill two birds with one stone and lean in close to brush my lips against his jaw.
Jeez, my wolf must be feeling all kinds of possessive for me to be this territorial.
The hand on my neck tightens in response to my soft kiss, so I take it he likes it, and I plant more soft kisses along his jaw.
"Talis." His growl is low. It's more of a groan than anything else.
"Should I stop?" I murmur against his skin, dragging the scent of him deep into my lungs. A scent I could easily become addicted to if I'm not careful.
Dayne leans closer so I can reach more of him. But instead of doing what he wants, I shift away to rest my head against the tree.
His eyes are burning as he stares down at me. "You stopped," he says, his tone accusing.
"Yeah. So, whatcha gonna do about it?"
He narrows his eyes at me, and I smirk since I know he can't force me to do what he wants.
A smirk that he wipes off my face when he lifts me and wedges his hardness at the junction of my thighs, flush against my core.
"Now," he says, once I've lost the ability to speak with him pressed so intimately against me. "You were about to tell me what you wanted."
All I'm thinking is he needs to tear my jeans away, like right now. Yesterday, even.
Licking lips that have gone dry, the heat in his eyes when his gaze dips to my mouth has my arousal spiking.
I wrap my legs around his waist and clutch at his shoulders for balance as one of his hands massages my ass. Then he grinds his cock against me. "Tell me."
I whimper.
We're going to fuck against a tree at the lake. In daytime. I can see it in his eyes, and I get so turned on by the thought, going by Dayne's flared nostrils he scents just how much. And all I have to do is tell him I want him inside me.
I open my mouth, "I want-"
Luka bursts through the forests and skids to a halt when he sees Dayne has me pressed against a tree. "Dayne. You have to come quickly."
For a single second, just before he slams his eyes shut, I see so much fury burning in Dayne's eyes that I'm shoving at him to release me before I even realize what I'm doing, not caring if I end up on the ground in my desperate attempt.
But Dayne keeps a tight hold of me, and only once I've got my feet under me does he let me go and turn to Luka.
"Luka, we really need to talk about your timing." His voice is so mild that if I hadn't seen the look in his eyes, I would believe Luka's interruption hadn't bothered him in the least.
But I saw it.
And seeing the way Luka blanches he recognizes Dayne isn't as calm as he pretends to be.