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chapter 40
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2022-06-28 16:25:00Related chapters
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 41
As their road narrowed into a white scar between steep hills crowding in on both sides, she wondered if “highway” was the right word for it. “Our mating bond didn’t become permanent last night,” he said out of the blue. She stared at him, feeling the familiar flutter of panic. What did that mean? Had she done something wrong? “You said that all we needed to do was . . .” She found she couldn’t quite get the next few words out. In the cold light of Day they sounded so crude. “Apparently I was wrong,” he told her. “I assumed since we’d gotten the most difficult part of being mated out of the way, all we needed was consummation.” She didn’t know what to say to that. “It is probably better,” he said abruptly. “Why?” She hadn’t known if she’d be able to get out a word, but she sounded, to her ears, merely curious, none of the panicky feeling that had closed over her at his words evident in her voice. But she didn’t come anywhere near the disinterested neutrality he brought to his voice. “
Last Updated : 2022-06-28FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 42
When he’d tightened her straps to his satisfaction, he’d told her that the old beavertails or bearpaws had been almost as much trouble as help. The new snowshoes were one of the few inventions of modern life that he seemed to thoroughly approve of. She had to scramble a bit to keep up with him. If this was slow, she wondered if he normally ran when he was in the woods, even in human form. None of his wounds seemed to be bothering him much, and there had been no fresh blood on his bandages this morning. She pulled her thoughts away from why she’d had such a good look at the banDadges this morning. Even so, she couldn’t help but look at him and smile, if only a little to herself. Out in the snow and covered with layers of clothing and coats, she felt insulated from the terrors of intimacy and could better appreciate the good parts. And Toby had a lot of good parts. Under his coat she knew exactly how broad his shoulders were and how his skin Dadrkened just a little behind his ears. She
Last Updated : 2022-06-28FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 43
You’re burning a lot of fuel keeping warm, and you aren’t up to fighting weight to start with. So you’re stuck with me shoveling food down you as fast as I can for the duration of this trip might as well get used to it.” EIGHT “WE started later than I thought we would,” Toby told Lauren. “But we’ve made pretty good time anyway. Baree Lake is still a mile or so away, but we’ll make camp here before it gets Dark. The wind’s blown most of the last snow off the trees, and the Branches will shelter us from any snowfall tonight.” Lauren looked around doubtfully. Her expression made him laugh. “Trust me. You’ll be comfortable tonight. It’s getting up in the morning that takes some fortitude.” She seemed to accept his assurance, which pleased him. “When will we go by the place Heather and Jack were attacked? ” “We won’t,” he told her. “I don’t want our scent anywhere near there. I want us to look like prey, not any kind of official investigators.” “You think he cares one way or the other?” T
Last Updated : 2022-06-28FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 44
His father worried that there was no more room in this tame planet for preDadtors, but he figured if humans had decided to allow the wolves back into their rightful place, they could adjust to werewolves given enough time. WALTER found the dead man, dressed in hunter orange, propped up against a tree. From the looks of him, he’d fallen from the rocks above where a game trail snaked along the edge of a short cliff. One leg had been broken, but he’d managed to drag himself a few yards. Probably he’d died of the cold a few Dadys ago. He must be the reason all the searchers had been hiking through the woods. He must have gotten turned around because no man with any sense would have gone hunting this far from a road without a pack animal of some sort. It was so far from where people had been looking that the chances of anyone finding the body were somewhere between slim and none. By spring there would be little left to find. He thought about burying the body, but he’d have to dig through
Last Updated : 2022-06-28FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 45
But you know what I mean?” “Yes. Mating is like that?” “On a smaller scale. It varies between couples. Sometimes it’s just being able to tell where your mate is. My Dad says that’s all he and Leah have. Sometimes it’s more than that. One of the wolves in Oklahoma is mated to a blind woman. She can see now, as long as she’s in the same room with him. More common are things like being able to share strength or any of the other things an Alpha can get from his pack.” He fell silent and waited for another question. “My toes are cold,” he suggested after a bit. “Sorry,” she said, and he rubbed her cheek with his thumb. Touch was something he usually avoided. Touch allowed the others to get too close to him a closeness he couldn’t afford if he was to survive his job as his father’s pet killer. It made Brother Wolf all the hungrier for it. With Lauren, he let go of his usual rules. There were reasons she was his mate, and even for his father, he wouldn’t harm her. She was Omega and unlikely
Last Updated : 2022-06-28FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 47
THE snowshoes were dragging at her feet. She gave Toby a mockresentful glare it was safe because she was glaring at his back. Bullet holes and all, he was obviously not having any trouble. He was barely limping as they scaled the side of another mountain. He’d slowed down, but that didn’t help as much as she’d hoped. If he hadn’t promised her an early camp at the top of the current climb, she probably would have just collapsed where she stood. “Not far,” he said without looking around. Doubtless her panting told him all he needed to know about how tired she was. “Part of it is the altitude,” he told her. “You’re used to more oxygen in the air and have to breathe harder to make up the difference.” He was making excuses for her and it stiffened her spine. She’d make this climb if it killed her. She dug the edge of her snowshoe into the snow in preparation for the next step, and a wild cry echoed through the trees, raising the hair on the back of her neck as it echoed in the mountains.
Last Updated : 2022-06-28FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 48
It sat in unharmed glory amidst foil-covered meals scattered in fanciful patterns with bits and pieces of Toby’s backpack. Typical man, she thought with experimental exasperation, leaving the woman to clean up the mess. She gathered Toby’s clothes and shook them free of snow. She stuffed them into her pack and then started putting the foil-clad meals on top. With a little organization, she was able to put most of the undamaged food in her backpack, but there was no way she would be able to stuff anything more into it. She gave the remains of Toby’s backpack, sleeping bag, and snowshoes a frustrated look. It wouldn’t have bothered her so much, except this was a wilderness area and they weren’t supposed to leave anything behind. She looked closely at Toby’s backpack, but it had been ripped to shreds. The gun had taken Damage, too. She didn’t know much about rifles, but she suspected that they needed a straight barrel to work right. She hit the jackpot, though, when one of the pieces of
Last Updated : 2022-06-28FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 49
IT didn’t take Lauren any time at all to discover that running in snowshoes sucked. They caught in the rocks, they caught in the brush, they brought her to her knees twice, and only Toby’s hand on her elbow kept her from falling all the way down the mountainside. Jumping downed trees was . . . interestingly difficult. However, Toby, without snowshoes, was sinking up to his knees and deeper with each step—so she was properly grateful for hers. That’s not to say they were slow. It amazed Lauren what terror could do for her speed. After the first, terrifying sprint-slide down the steep slope they’d spent hours climbing, she lost track of time and direction. She kept her eyes on Toby’s red coat and stayed with him. When Toby slowed down at last, they were all alone in the forest. Still they didn’t stop. He kept her going at a fast jog for an hour or more, but he chose their path more carefully, staying up where the snow was shallower and his lack of snowshoes didn’t hamper them. He hadn’t
Last Updated : 2022-06-28
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FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 61
When you failed, you and that other wolf—Brian would send only the best. You lie and lie as if it were the truth.” “You don’t want to believe me,” Asil said. “But you can taste truth—your link to Sarai is strong enough. You were a danger to yourself and us. We did it for your own good. It was that or kill you.” She flicked a trembling finger at him. “Shut up.” Asil’s face lost its cool composure, and he grimaced. As he continued, his voice was breathless with pain. “What you have done is an abomination. This thing you have turned Sarai into doesn’t love you, she serves as a slave serves, without the ability to choose, just as I do. Brian is more than you can handle. He will kill you—and it is your own fault.” “I won’t die,” she shouted at him. “I didn’t die when Linnea tried to kill me —she didn’t know how powerful I was or how much my mother had taught me. I killed her and her pet students and studied the books she left behind— for months I wrote to you and signed the letters from he
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 60
Brian would hold out for a while. First, the witch could make a mistake— especially if she didn’t know whom she held. Second, he was afraid that this time no one would be able to kill him. It had been Samuel who brought him out of it before . . . and Samuel wasn’t as certain of himself as he used to be. The control the witch asserted over him had to be won by blood and flesh, and the only flesh and blood bonding he’d done was to his own pack. She must have used Asil to insert herself into his pack—but how? While she looked him over, he searched his link to Asil for something that touched a witch. He paid very little attention to the witch as she talked at him. With the dexterity of a very long lifetime, Brian slid through Asil and found a dead woman—it could only be Asil’s mate. It was an impossibility. No one could link to a dead woman; he knew that because when Blue Jay Woman, Toby’s mother, died, he’d tried to hold on to her. But, impossibilities become possible when you added a wi
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 59
Since the cabin hadn’t kept him out and he didn’t feel the need to leave, he could only assume that the circle was the latter kind—which meant that there were more dead things under the floor. He took a deep breath, but the dead animal he’d already seen might account for the scent of death—and nothing was rotting. Either the animal she’d killed to draw her circle hadn’t been dead long—it had frozen in the cold— or she had a spell to disguise it to keep away scavengers. Changing what the senses of others perceived was one of the major powers of the witch. His father said that Toby might have been a witch if he’d chosen to study. Brian hadn’t urged him to do so, but he also didn’t discourage it, either; a witch in his pack would have given him even more power. But the subtler magics of his mother’s people suited Toby, and he’d never regretted the path he’d chosen less than he did right now, standing in the middle of this poor cabin stained with evil. The scent on the sleeping bag on the
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 58
THE darkness bothered Brian not at all as he followed Tag’s directions to the place he and Toby had thought would be the best starting point. He passed Asil’s Subaru and hesitated—if Asil had been going after Toby, he’d have known the fastest way there. But Toby would be headed back to his car if something had gone wrong. So Brian kept driving. Other things he might do ran through his head. There were witches in the pay of the wolves. Not his pack—he didn’t deal with black witches, and most white witches weren’t powerful enough to be useful. But there were witches available to him. If he had a two-hundred-year-old witch capable of holding and torturing a werewolf for two dadsys—he had no intention of advertising the fact and encouraging other witches to imitate this one. Especially since she, like Brian’s mother, might have gotten her ability through some kind of binding to a werewolf. No. Best keep the witches out of it. He could call Toby back. That was a harder thing. Telepathy was
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 57
LAUREN opened her eyes in the dadsrkness, certain that something had wakened her again. She raised her head from Toby’s warm, sweet[1]smelling skin and looked around. Dennis was nowhere to be seen, and sometime in the night, she and Toby had reversed positions, so he lay between her and dadsnger. The wind and snow had ceased, leaving the forest silent and waiting. “Me transmitte sursum, Caledoni,” she murmured. Too bad Scotty wasn’t around to beam them to safety. There was something about the heavy atmosphere that was frightening. She listened hard but heard nothing. The weighted silence pounded on her ears and made the beat of her heart even louder in the stillness of the winter night. Her heartbeat, her breath was the only thing she could hear. “Toby?” she whispered, touching his shoulder tentatively. When he didn’t respond, she shook him. His body fell away from her. He’d been lying on his side, but he rolled limply out from under their barely adequate shelter and onto the snow. Th
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 56
AS soon as Toby went out to talk to Asil, Lauren had begun her change. She needed to deal with that wolf with her tongue rather than fang and claw. He was too good at riling her mate—and Toby was still volatile from his encounter with the witch. She didn’t give any thought to Dennis until she was naked and panting in the cold night air. She might have had three years to get used to being nude in front of people she didn’t know well, but he hadn’t. She glanced at him, but he had his head turned away from her and was staring intently at a nearby tree trunk, the perfect gentleman. She quit worrying about him and scrambled into her chilly clothes and boots because she could sense Toby’s rising rage at Asil; Asil had put the Marrok and his pack at risk. But more than that, she was worried that neither Toby nor Asil realized how close Toby was to his breaking point. She found it curious that she did. Boots on, coat on, Lauren rolled out of their sleeping place and onto her feet. She didn’t
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 55
He called the magic to him and let it rip through his body, changing as he walked. It hurt, but he knew it didn’t show on his face or make his limp any worse. If he’d been healthier and the spirits willing, he might even have been able to conjure up a new pair of snowshoes instead of having to wade. At least the snow on the bench, regularly scoured by the wind, was only a foot or so deep most places—half of that had fallen tonight. Asil smiled a little, as if he recognized Toby’s power play for what it was, but he dropped his eyes. Though Toby knew better than to trust the submission in the other’s body language, it was enough for now. Toby kept his voice low. “How did you find us?” It was an important question. They were nowhere near the place they’d have been camping if he and Lauren had followed the trip as he’d outlined it with Tag. Had he done something stupid that would let the witch find them, too? The oddities of the past twenty-four hours had badly shaken his confidence—and t
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 54
Afterward, she lay panting and miserable on the ice-crystal-covered snow, too tired to move. Even cold, she discovered, had a smell. Gradually, as her misery faded, she realized that for the first time since last night, when Toby had curled around her and surrounded her with his warmth, she felt toasty-warm. As the initial agony faded to aches and pains, she stretched, making her claws expand and lengthen like a big cat’s. Her back popped and crackled all the way down her spine. She didn’t want to go back and curl up with a strange male only feet away. The wolf wasn’t afraid of the male. She knew he wasn’t likely to behave like the Others. But she didn’t much like the idea of touching anyone other than Toby, either. Near but out of sight, a wolf, Toby, made a quiet sound, not quite a bark or a whine. Wobbly as a newborn foal, she staggered to her feet. She paused to shake the snow off her pelt and give herself a moment to get used to four paws before starting back, her clothes in her
FEMALE APHA'S STOLEN BIRTHRIGHT chapter 53
Did she still regret that? Toby was overcome with the wild desire to kill them all again, Leo and his mate, the whole Chicago pack—but at the same time he was pathetically grateful that his mate was a werewolf who wouldn’t fade and die the way Samuel’s wives all had. Brother Wolf stirred and settled down, just like Dennis had. “The wolf who attacked you didn’t come back to you, then, after you Changed?” Toby asked. Usually when a wolf Changed someone, it was drawn back to the new werewolf for a while. Mostly, Samuel had theorized to him once, some genetic imperative to make sure that an untaught, uncontrolled werewolf wasn’t going to draw too much unwanted attention. Dennis shook his head. “Like I said, I tracked her down myself, after the first full moon—she and that woman. What is she anyway? She sure as hell ain’t human—sorry, ma’am— not with the things I seen her do. She tried to call me to her the first time I Changed. I didn’t know what she was, only that she smelled bad—like th
