All Chapters of The Tyrant alpha: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

Apparently, Darragh Ryan does talk to females. Older, powerful witchy females. God, my stomach doesn’t like that. When I think of him and Abertha even drinking tea together, the flips and tingles begin to flop and slosh. Good thing I don’t eat breakfast.Kennedy sidles up beside me and pretends to hack at a row she’s already dug. “What’s he doing?”“Watching the sunrise?” I hazard a guess.“The sun’s already up, and he’s facing west.”“I don’t know. Enjoying a cuppa?” He’s not sipping anymore. He’s just holding the cup midair in a death grip.“It’s coffee,” Kennedy says. “Well, mostly. Coffee and hair of the dog.”“You can smell that?”Kennedy wrinkles her nose. “You can’t?”I draw in a breath. My lungs fill with that earthy, horsey, straw-in-sunshine smell. It swells in my chest, and suddenly, my eyes prickle like I’m about to cry, and my breasts grow heavy. I cross my arms to cover my nipples as they bead into hard points. Kennedy’s eyes narrow.“What’s wrong with you?” she asks.“C

While I’m literally holding myself together, Darragh Ryan raises his eyes to the distance again, furrows his brow, grunts unintelligibly, and without a backwards glance, strides off across the clearing, past the bee yard, and disappears into the woods.My heart drops like a stone, and my wolf freezes mid-frenzy.Kennedy’s hoe hits the ground again with a thud. A crow caws high in an oak tree.For a long moment, the witch, my wolf, and I size each other up. Magic crackles in the air. I sniff the breeze. Darragh’s scent is fading. From the direction of the witch’s cottage, I smell coffee. Beer. Whiskey. Pot. No sex, I point out to my wolf. Grudgingly, she shakes out her bristled fur and stalks back to her corner.Kennedy, Annie, and I exhale in unison.The witch raises her hand in an awkward wave. “Planting rhubarb, eh, girls?” she says.“Yes, ma’am,” Kennedy answers her.Annie ducks her head and hunches her shoulders. The familiar stench of Annie’s chronic fear mixes with the odor of s

She shrugs. “Here. I’ll show you.”She cracks her neck, does a quick quad stretch with both legs, and then that weird, shifter-life thing happens when your eyes and your brain lose sync, and one moment, your best friend has arms and legs and a face, and then there’s a glitch in the matrix, and he’s a big-ass wolf with a silky black pelt, his head cocked like okay, your turn.“You know that didn’t help at all, right?” I say.Kennedy’s pointy ear flicks. I sigh and shake my arms out again. I want this. The rest of it—Darragh and mates and nests and all of that—I don’t know if I’m ready for that quite yet. But this, I want. I want to run free for the first time in my life.I squeeze my eyes shut and reach deep inside. My wolf is there, so close.“Come on,” I mutter, and I don’t know what to do next, so I just want as hard as I can, focusing with all my effort on her royal highness, the dainty wolf standing expectantly at the border between us, waiting on tenterhooks—waiting for what?I d

I bet he doesn’t have indoor plumbing in a shack like that, but I hope to hell he has water. I emptied my bottle a way back. Darragh’s place was a lot further than I’d thought.It’s a good thing I brought Kennedy for her nose because the vague directions I got from Old Noreen at breakfast would’ve never been enough. We’re at least three miles from Quarry Pack camp, and this place is tucked in a hollow surrounded by a thick stand of sycamores and tall pines.At least it’s shady. As Kennedy trots off, I take a moment and fan my face. I’ve looked better. During the hike, I sweated my ringlets into a wild dandelion fluff and discovered that my new whimsical sheer white blouse sucks. The elastic in the puff sleeves cuts into my upper arms, and the fabric doesn’t wick or breathe—it’s sealed my perspiration against my skin like a rubber suit, and yet, my pits are somehow wet.I’ve definitely felt prettier, but I don’t need to worry about that. Mates find each other irresistible, and besides,

I take a few steadying breaths and the constriction in my chest eases. Contrary to what you’d expect, it smells nice in here. Well, that’s not exactly accurate. It reeks of old woodsmoke, metal, dirt, and dried blood, but there’s a good smell, too, a flipside to the bad ones—campfire, freshly-churned earth, and pennies warm from your hand.The scent is coming from Darragh, and it’s disorienting because it’s a complete contrast to his psycho-loner-who-lives-in-the-woods vibe. It smells like what happy childhoods must.He’s not staring at the floor anymore. He’s tracking what I’m looking at with those molten metal eyes. Because I have no game, I feel compelled to thrust my shoulders back and cock a hip like I’m just low-key hanging out against the wall of his dank wilderness shelter.My wolf watches this unfold from her catbird seat, fascinated by it all—me posing over here, him looming over there, both of us grasping for something to say while his wolf rumbles in the background like ro