Bride to the Alpha (The Wolf's Pet Book Two) Read Free Page B

raised her head and sniffed, alert to some unseen threat. I sniffed too, by instinct, but I couldn’t smell anything in my purebred form.
    “Your chance is gone,” she said, turning to me. Her shoulders slumped. “You’re stuck here now.”
    “Stuck,” I agreed. Even if the coast was clear, I was stuck here. Stuck to Alekk.
     

Chapter Four
    It was in the morning when I woke again, this time to a guard shaking me by the shoulder. I jolted upright with a start. I’d been dreaming of Blaise and Alekk fighting, their jaws locked at each other’s throats. An infinite circle of death…
    “Up,” he said, thrusting a clump of fabric at me. “Here. Put this on.”
    “What—”
    “The prince will want to see you,” he said. “He’s been at work since nightfall. Up, I say!”
    He smacked me on my ass, and I yelped as I leapt off of the be of pelts. I clutched the dress to my chest. I wanted to talk to Leah again. She’d helped me understand a few things about the pack. I wanted to ask her about the sisters, if they were as controlling as they seemed.
    “Is Leah—”
    “No questions,” he grunted.
    Fine. Then he would be no help. I quickly put on the dress. It wasn’t even a dress, not by any reasonable definition of a dress. The scraps of fabric—soft pelts, I realized, probably deer—were triangles that covered less of me than it showed. By the time I’d adjusted the strapped leather, I looked like I was wearing a bikini version of a cavewoman’s outfit. Kind of like that old movie with Raquel Welsh. I could barely knot the leather strap around my waist.
    The guard watched as I dressed. I could feel his eyes on my skin, sticky and unclean.
    I walked back to the large tent with the guard at my side. I saw soldiers marching from one end of the camp to the other. They were putting out the fires and packing up the tents. So they would be moving today.
    Moving towards my pack. Where my family and friends had lived. I wondered if they would be scared and running. I wondered what my parents would do once they realized I’d left.
    The guard shoved me forward, and I pulled one of the pelts open to step inside the tent.
    Although the atmosphere outside was one of strict martial obedience, inside the tent it seemed considerably more relaxed. There were a half dozen soldiers milling around, eating over what looked like maps of the territory. Leah was there, too, sitting next to Alekk.
    Alekk. I watched his profile as he spoke to one of the soldiers, gesturing casually with the cup in his hand. He looked tired; lines creased his face as he spoke slowly. Leah’s eyes tracked his every movement. When he finished speaking, her lips curled up into a laugh that did not touch her eyes.
    The fire at the back of the tent was going strong, and I sighed, grateful to be warm even in this skimpy outfit. The soldiers were eating from plates of steaming food. My stomach rumbled.
    “Sir?” the guard ventured.
    Alekk’s head turned and his ice-blue eyes flickered with worry, then turned hard.
    “I brought you your human,” the guard said, pushing me forward. “I thought you might like some flesh before you sleep.”
    He hadn’t slept all night? I wondered what they had been discussing. His sisters weren’t in the tent.
    Alekk looked at me, licking his lips. His gaze was cold, so cold that even in the warmed tent, a shiver of goosebumps rose on my skin. His first glance at me had been kind. Concerned, even. But now there was none of that on his face.
    “Come here, girl,” he said loudly. The other soldiers in the tent turned to look at me. Leah glared hatefully my way. I wondered how much of her jealousy was feigned and how much was real. Alekk curled a finger and I stepped forward obediently.
    “Good. A nice looking one, isn’t she?” he asked nobody in particular. I heard one of the soldiers behind me growl, but that was all. I couldn’t smell anything from Alekk, and his face was so blank that I couldn’t tell what