Desired by the Pack: Part Two: A BBW Paranormal Romance (3 page)

They weren’t one hundred percent tears of relief.

January was drawing the tines of a fork through a puddle of condensation when a waitress approached and politely asked her to give up her table to a large party that had just entered. Flushing, she muttered an apology, gathered her coat and bag, and headed out.

The parking lot was moderately full but she saw no sign of Cross’s truck. Releasing a pent-up breath, she zipped her coat and reached into her
bag to find her keys. A shadow fell across the pavement at her feet. Not wanting to catch anyone’s eye, she side-stepped and kept rooting through her bag even though her keys were in her fist.

A few minutes passed and the shadow didn’t move. The back of her neck started to tingle. January peeked sideways through her lashes and gasped, her head jerking up as her gaze connected with Anders’ golden eyes.

Swallowing hard, she drew herself up and frowned at him, waiting for him to speak first. She couldn’t imagine what he, of all the Guardians, would want from her.

Or maybe she could imagine, and that was the source of the sudden nervousness fluttering in her stomach.

Anders stared into her eyes for so long, she started to squirm and had to fight not to lower her gaze, not because she felt cowed by his pack superiority but because she felt exposed. And he seemed to be searching instead of trying to intimidate or dominate.

Anders can see her.

The memory of Beck’s words did her in, and she broke. With a sigh, she asked, “What do you want?”

His eyes sparked. “The she-wolf you have locked up inside.”

January bared her teeth as anger flashed through her. “You think I’ve trapped her on purpose?”

So quick she didn’t have time to react, Anders caught her face in both hands and pressed his thumbs against her upper lip, physically forcing her to hide her teeth. Once her mouth was sealed, he stroked her bottom lip, back and forth, and stared at her lips.

“I think,” he said, halting words telling her he didn’t spend a lot of time shaping the human language, “you keep her inside because you do not share her with pack.”

Puzzling through his meaning distracted her for a minute, but she was fully aware when his fingertips trailed down her throat and rode the rise and fall of her swallow.

Her lips parted again, this time so she could draw a strangled breath. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Pack thrives together. She-wolf would come out to play with others. Be with us and she will come.” His hands encircled her throat, the fingers long enough to overlap at her nape while his thumbs met over her rapid pulse.

His touch ignited a fire inside her. She swallowed again, felt like she was incapable of anything except breathing, and that took all her concentration. Her body switched over to governance by something besides her brain. Anders flowed toward her, so close they touched at chest and thigh, and she didn’t know what to do.

It was different with Beck and Cross because Beck was
there
. Faced with Anders’ obvious desire, and her wanting response, uncertainty spun her head. How could she belong to Beck, but want Anders?

“No,” she whispered, and brought her hands up to push at Anders’ chest. She didn’t belong to Beck, she wasn’t indulging her lust for Anders,
she wasn’t setting her wolf loose with their pack. Anders’ theory of her wolf’s oppression was just that. Theory. He had no idea what she—woman or wolf—wanted or needed.

At first, Anders resisted her effort to put space between them. His hands tightened briefly, not enough to constrict her breathing but enough to remind her he was still the big, bad alpha wolf. January thought she would have to grab his forearms and break his hold on her—if she even could break it—when he loosened his grip and instead wrapped her braid around his fist.

“Beck is right about this,” he said, voice bordering on a growl. “You and your wolf do belong to us.”

Her mouth fell open and Anders ducked his head to slant his lips across hers. His kiss was hard and clumsy, like the concept of a French kiss was foreign to him. Something he’d witnessed but didn’t fully understand.

January flexed her fingers against the muscles padding his chest, then cautiously slid her hands higher until she felt skin, smooth and hot with none of the stubble most men sported. She should have pushed his head away but found herself cradling his jaw instead. Anders stabbed his tongue into her mouth with rough, untried motions. She countered by sucking gently, showing him the way.

As the kiss went on, her body heated and the world came down to the rub of his thigh against hers, the press of his erection against her belly. January was blindly reaching for the tail of his shirt, desperate to touch him, when four car doors slammed and high, young voices exclaimed with giggles and loud, pointed comments like “get a room”.

Anders stiffened, but January was the one to break their kiss. With his ragged breath at her temple, she closed her eyes and gathered the shreds of her reality, holding them close.

“Run,” he said roughly, backing away from her. “We will chase. And when we catch up, she-wolf, you will take us.”

She was still trying to find words when he reached the edge of the lot and faded onto all fours in the tall grass.

2

Beck and Cross didn’t immediately follow her into the truck. The red-head had reappeared while she was crawling inside. Before Beck shut the door behind her, she heard him call the newcomer Maverick. Alone, January fished her phone from her back pocket and texted Prince.

Where r u? Need reality check. Ride home. Sign u r alive. ???

Outside, Beck stood with his back to her. The rearview was just as nice as the front. For a man who probably spent more time in fur than denim, he wore his jeans well. As he shifted his weight and angled to say something to Cross, the owner of the truck, his muscular ass flexed against faded, threadbare pockets. A pulse throbbed between her thighs, begging for a little attention. January slid her hand over her mound and squeezed, but forced herself to stop there.

Doing her best to ignore her rising body temperature and raging hormones, she swallowed to clear her drool and checked her phone even though nothing buzzed, blinked or chimed.

“Where are you?” She whispered, peering out the windows. The parking lot was still bright despite the late hour. Nothing moved in the shadowy corners.

The passenger door creaked open. Beck stuck his head inside, lips parted to speak. Whatever he meant to say got pushed aside by the long, deep breath he drew through flaring nostrils.

Yeah, she could spend all night sniffing him, too, but she shouldn’t. In fact, she should be booking it out of that truck, into a taxi, and home to the safety of locked doors, battery-operated relief, and zero risks to her heart.

A life without sexually compelling werewolves who oozed alpha authority the way this one did.

Beck drew another lungful of her before speaking. His voice dropped to a low, hungry rumble, but he didn’t reach for her. “If you’re looking for someone to save you, don’t. You’re safer here than anywhere else.”

Hah. Like he knew the danger she was in just being in his and his pack’s hemisphere. And speaking of danger… “I’m looking for my friend. We came together. I haven’t seen him in a while and he’s not answering texts or calls.”

“Friend?” Beck’s eyes narrowed to glittering slits.

She rolled hers. “
Friend
.”

Thumbing through the gallery on her phone, she brought up a selfie Prince had texted that afternoon.

“Since you guys don’t seem to be in a hurry, maybe one of you can look around for him.” She pushed the phone at Beck.

Their fingers brushed as Beck took it from her. Just like that, the deep physical yearning cramped her uterus. She clamped her teeth together and breathed through her nose. Heat wasn’t a pleasant experience for a female left to face it on her own. Her body seemed hell-bent on reminding her she had willing aides right there in arm’s reach.

Beck’s gaze seared her but she stared at her knees. Eye contact would only make it worse.

Three separate packs made up the Peace River Guardians. Beck only led the alpha pack, which was ultimately responsible for the well-being and safety of the Moon gate shimmering behind the waterfall roaring at his back. Most days, their work was as peaceful as the river’s name promised.

This wasn’t most days.

By the time Beck and his
packmates returned from their meet-up with January, dark had fallen and all hell had broken loose at the waterfall. They arrived in time to plunge into the fall and gather the dozen wounded werewolves who’d spilled through the gate. Beck had gotten a few words from the injured pack’s alpha, an enormous wall of a man who identified himself as Ingar, from Norway, before Ingar passed out.

“They’re a long damn way from home.” Cross dropped onto the ground beside Beck, who was staying out of the Guardians’ healer’s way.

“Maps don’t mean anything in the Light Realms.” A man could step through a gate in Australia and emerge in France.

Beck watched Cleo, their only Moon-blessed healer, work over the worst of the burned, writhing Vikings, while two youths she’d taken as assistants treated less life-threatening injuries. And then there were the bodies of the werewolves who hadn’t survived the shock of coming out of
Solaine. Fury whipped through him, strong and sharp like the late winter wind blowing through the valley.

Anders joined Beck and Cross. Beck’s nostrils flared but the scent Anders had brought back with him—January’s scent—was gone now.
Like she would be if he allowed her to refuse him much longer.

“We should be battling the enemy,” Beck growled, “not supervising the care of the injured.”

Anders connected with Beck via the telepathic link they shared as pack.
You have the power to change our part.

Beck did have the means to change the pack’s status, to take them back into battle. All they needed was a mate bond strong enough to spread to the entire pack. With her alpha sigil, January could supply that bond. They were bred as warriors, they belonged in action. Guarding the realm portal was an important role, an assignment that carried great honor, but it wasn’t for men who had known the bloody victory of battle the way he and Anders had done under the leadership of their former alpha.

“Power is a tricky word,” Beck finally said.

January’s wolf-spirit eluded her, leaving her unable to shift. She rejected the pack because she feared she wouldn’t be adequate, but she was wrong. Fears weren’t without grounds, though. He couldn’t work out how to take her with him into the Light Realms, where he and the pack might live and fight for years. The mate bond would withstand the distance of worlds but only in spirit. They wouldn’t have the physical and emotional connection they needed to turn a bond into a relationship if they were worlds apart.
Thinking through the problems pushed his anger back from the edge.

“I won’t take her against her will,” he said.

Then let me take her. Winter-wolf needs a pack. Your woman deprives her wolf.
Proving the depth of their mental connection, Anders added,
Winter-wolf might come out if she has a pack to run with.

“Not going to happen,” Cross murmured.

Beck couldn’t formulate a response around the possessive urge that had a sudden stranglehold on his throat. The hurricane of emotion must have whipped around Anders even without words, because he lowered his head and tucked his tail in.

Cross waited until the tension eased before speaking again. “Anders isn’t wrong, though. Jan’s afraid of demons of
her own making. She’ll never just let us prove ourselves. And maybe Anders has something in that pack theory. How long has she been a lone wolf?”

“She left the packs years before she would have had her first change,” Beck said, privately recounting the information he’d unearthed and January had flung at him.

Anders shifted his weight impatiently. Beck knew the wolf’s restlessness. He wanted to bind her, too.

But he hadn’t forgotten January’s confession. He didn’t know what she’d done--couldn’t fathom how giving her wolf away was even possible--but he didn’t doubt she believed in her sin. He couldn’t ignore the possibility Luna might have punished the deed by suppressing January’s change.

The only way he could know was to claim his mate bond. If Luna accepted the claim, Anders’ theory might be the right one.

If Luna rejected the claim…

Never in his life, before that moment, had Beck considered walking the rogue’s path.

“Gather the others,” he said, turning away from the river. “We’ll go tonight.
Before she’s gone.”