Love Thy Alpha Book 2

JENNESSA

I was driving home alone, cranking up the radio volume to drown out my thoughts. But it wasn’t working.

Could it be that I’m jealous of my best friend finding her mate?

That’s absurd! I’ve already found my mate, who just so happens to be the alpha of the largest pack in North America. I love him and I’m in ~love with him.~

So why am I feeling so low all of a sudden? It’s not like I’m missing out on anything.

Could it be that I’m scared Hunter will take Lindsey away from me?

No, that can’t be it. I know Lindsey too well. She wouldn’t stand for that, just like I wouldn’t. Besides, I’m the luna of this pack. If he tried to take her away from me, I’d just assign Lindsey to “work” at the alpha headquarters, and we’d hang out all day instead.

I was struggling to understand my own emotions, and it was causing me a lot of stress.

I was lost in my thoughts when suddenly someone jumped out from the forest and in front of my car. I gasped, swerved hard to the right to avoid them, and ended up in a ditch.

My head hit the steering wheel hard, and for a moment I saw double. Thankfully, as wolves, we heal quickly, and my vision corrected itself after a couple of seconds.

I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a gash on my forehead, blood streaming down my face. I quickly grabbed the light jacket I had with me, balled it up, and pressed it against my head.

“What the fuck just happened?” I muttered aloud, just as my car door was yanked open and a stranger stood beside me.

I wasn’t sure why, maybe it was the adrenaline, but I screamed as loud as I could.

“Shit, Alpha, are you okay?” The man looked at me with genuine concern in his dark-brown eyes. The sun had already set, and the only light on the street came from my headlights, which were unfortunately smashed into the ditch.

“It’s the alpha!” he yelled over his shoulder to who knows who, before reaching into my car and around my body. I screamed again, terrified, and started hitting the stranger anywhere I could reach.

Another person appeared behind the first stranger, a woman with short, dark hair. “Shit. I think she might be in shock, Lucas. Get her out of there!”

“Don’t touch me!” I screamed, and the man immediately backed away. The man and woman exchanged a glance before looking back at me, concern etched on their faces.

“I was just trying to help, Alpha. I’m sorry if I overstepped,” the man said, baring his neck in a show of submission.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I blurted out, surprised by his action. I’d seen others do this to Clay, but never to me. “I’m the luna. Clay is the alpha.” I paused, checking the bond. “And he’s on his way to us right now.”

“Shit,” the woman cursed, looking at the man for something. “Then we don’t have much time.”

The man nodded at the woman before they both turned their attention back to me. “You are our alpha. You killed Andrew.”

I was stunned. What did he just say? No way. Maybe the woman was right, and I was in shock, because there’s no way he said what I think he said.

“What? No. You’re mistaken,” I said, shaking my head and pressing my jacket back to my head. “There’s no way I’m… No, just no.”

“You killed our last alpha, didn’t you?” the woman asked, looking at me expectantly. I bit my lip, considering her words. Technically, I had killed an alpha, although I really hated giving Andrew that much credit. If he was considered an alpha, he was the worst alpha ever.

But facts were facts. If you kill an alpha, you become an alpha to that pack. “But I’m a woman.”

“A she-wolf, I presume?” the man asked. I nodded silently. “Then congratulations. I think you just became the world’s first female alpha!”

“What. The. Hell?” I muttered, resting my head back on the steering wheel. I felt dizzy and nauseous.

“I think she’s about to pass out,” I heard the woman say, but her voice seemed distant. My eyelids felt heavy, and I couldn’t keep them open.

“What do we do?” I heard the man ask.

“We can’t touch her, Clay will kill us all,” the woman answered as if it was obvious, which it was.

“So then what?”

“We wait?”

“For what? Clay?” The man almost shouted, making my head throb even more. “Are you out of your mind, Casey? I’m sure he’s already been alerted to intruders on his lands. We can’t just stand here and wait for Clay to come and kill us!”

“We can’t just leave our alpha on the side of the road, injured, either, Lucas!”

I heard Lucas huff, but he didn’t argue anymore. I guess they were waiting for Clay with me. For some reason, even though they were strangers, I felt better knowing I wouldn’t be alone.

I was just starting to doze off, Lucas and Casey hadn’t stopped arguing since I closed my eyes, and my head felt like it was being repeatedly hit by a brick when I heard Casey gasp, and a dangerous growl filled the air.

Clay was finally here. I could feel his proximity through our bond.

I groaned, trying to lift my head and open my eyes. It felt like a ton of bricks was pressing down on my neck, keeping my head down, and my eyelids were still too heavy to open.

I tried to murmur Clay’s name, which probably came out as a garbled groan, but nonetheless I felt Clay’s strong hands on me. He unbuckled my seat belt and lifted me out of the car. My head was throbbing, and the movement only made it worse. I whimpered into Clay’s bare chest, feeling weaker than I’ve ever felt before.

“What happened!” Clay growled at someone while I heard another car door open and close. “We were looking for her, our alpha—,” Casey started, but Lucas finished the sentence for her.

“We must have scared her. She swerved and hit the ditch.”

“Shit, Clay,” I heard Brice, Clay’s beta, exclaim. “Is she okay?”

“I don’t know,” Clay growled back. “Help me get her into your car. We need to get her checked out.”

“Wait!” Casey yelled, causing me to wince and squirm in Clay’s arms. “We need to go with you!”

“Like hell you do!” Clay yelled right into my ear, causing me to cry out. My head felt like it was splitting in two. “Get the hell off my land!”

“We can’t!” Casey and Lucas said in unison. “It’s been too long. We need to be near her. The whole pack does.”

“What are they talking about?” Brice asked right next to me. I was being jostled around, I assumed from Clay’s large frame trying to fit into the back seat of Brice’s car.

“She killed Andrew, our alpha,” Luke answered for everyone. “She’s our new alpha.”

“What?” This time it was Clay and Brice who spoke in unison, obviously as shocked as I was when I heard it for the first time.

“Our pack needs her,” Casey repeated, sounding desperate now. “We’ll die soon if we’re away from her for too long.”

We all knew lone wolves didn’t survive on their own. I could feel Clay weighing his options for a moment, and his rational side won out.

“Fine,” he huffed, obviously not pleased by this news, though I could feel his confusion and shock through the bond. “Get in.”

“There’s more than just us,” Casey stated, sounding a little relieved but still apprehensive.

“How many?” Brice asked before Clay could.

“In total? Maybe around one hundred, give or take a few wolves,” Lucas answered nonchalantly.

“What? That can’t be right,” Clay responded quickly. “There weren’t that many wolves the night of the attack.”

“He was too cocky, he thought he could beat you with a sneak attack and a few good fighters, really,” Lucas explained, resentment in his voice as he spoke of his old alpha. Obviously, he did not like Andrew, which I’m not surprised since no one liked him.

“One hundred wolves?” Brice echoed, his voice a mere whisper in the distance. “Men, women, and children,” Casey affirmed.

“Where are they?” Clay’s voice was suddenly tense.

“They haven’t crossed the border, they’re just outside the eastern edge of your territory,” Casey assured him, easing Clay’s anxiety. It’s one thing to let a couple of strangers into our territory, but a whole different issue if all one hundred wolves slipped past the border. That would mean our border control was seriously flawed.

“We’ll dispatch cars to bring them in,” Clay resolved, his empathy and curiosity getting the better of him. He couldn’t stand by and let one hundred wolves perish if he had the power to save them, whether they were his pack or not. He was a true alpha, through and through. “For now, you two are coming with us.”

***

Upon reaching the alpha headquarters, Clay whisked me off to our bedroom, laying me gently on the bed. I knew it was our bed without even looking because the infirmary bed could never be this soft and plush, and the scent of Clay and me was unmistakable.

Dr. Levi was with us in no time after Clay settled me down. “What happened?” He inquired, already beginning to assess my condition.

“She crashed into a ditch,” Clay informed him, his voice a mix of frustration and worry. “I suspect she has a concussion. I arrived minutes after I sensed it, but by the time I got there, she was almost entirely unresponsive.”

“What do you mean ‘almost’ entirely unresponsive?” Dr. Levi sought clarification.

“Every now and then she’d stir, or whimper as if in pain,” Clay elaborated. “But she hasn’t opened her eyes or uttered a word since I found her.”

“She was conversing with us for a bit before she laid her head down,” Lucas chimed in. I hadn’t realized that Lucas, and presumably Casey, had followed us all the way to my bedroom. I was taken aback that Clay allowed it.

“Since then, she hasn’t fully awakened,” Casey completed Lucas’s sentence.

It was strange, I was fully conscious, alert, and in considerable pain, but I couldn’t communicate that to them or show them in any way. My body wasn’t obeying my commands, which scared me. I paid close attention to the others in the room, hoping to glean some sort of answer or relief from the doctor.

“She’ll need stitches on her head to aid the healing process. The wound is quite deep, and with a concussion on top of that, her body might be battling one injury at a time,” Dr. Levi explained.

“She’s in pain, doc,” Clay informed him. “I can sense her discomfort through our bond.”

“I have a dose of morphine I could administer for now,” Dr. Levi suggested, followed by the sound of someone rummaging through what seemed like the noisiest case. My head pounded even more until the noise ceased.

I felt a slight prick on my arm. “There, that should make her more comfortable.” After that, darkness engulfed me.