Chained To The Alpha: A Paranormal Shifter Romance Standalone Read Free Page B

hole that we had fallen through. We looked up and saw some light was filtering out of the hole. It was time to get out of there. We started, each moving independently, and it wasn’t working.
    He slipped down first. “Damn it.” He rubbed his knee as I came crashing down, flat on my back.
    I had been knocked off balance by his slip. We were on the ground again, his hand bending down toward me as I tried to pick myself up.
    “We have to do this together.” I should have suggested it originally, but it didn’t matter now. I was going to take credit for the idea.
    “Okay, so let’s move our chained arms at the same time. We can do that if we communicate,” he suggested. It was reasonable and I went along with it. It was a long, slow, awkward process. “Now.” It was a command to move our chained hands up to the next level then we made sure that we were both secure. “Now.” Again and again it happened until I managed to climb up to the next floor. It was still shaky and I was forced to stoop as I pulled myself up.
    “Help me.” Devin’s arm was stretched out over his head and I got myself into position, carefully shifting my weight so I didn’t bring the floor and both of us down once again. “This is like a scene from an action movie.” I grunted as I lay on the floor, carefully gripping his chained hand with both of mine.
    “Except, for most of the time it would be me pulling you up. Sexist bastards.”
    I have to admit that I almost dropped him when he said that. I hadn’t been expecting it at all. “What did you say?”
    “Can we discuss this when you get me out of here?”
    He was right. I pulled on him, struggling to get him up to my level. The floor groaned underneath me and I closed my eyes, praying for the first time in what felt like a thousand years, but it couldn’t have been a thousand years. I was only in my early twenties, the right age to be looking for a mate. I shuddered at the idea and started to actually be happy that I was in this position. There was only pressure to survive here, not the overwhelming pressure to have a few litters of cubs and give up my life for a man.

CHAPTER THREE
     
              “I’m starving.” I rubbed my stomach, eager for something solid in it. We had searched the town and found nothing strong enough to break through our bonds.
    “We need to eat something soon.” He was looking at me, carefully examining the way I was starting to shake. The sun was about to go down. It was fall in the mountains. This couldn’t end well. There was a possibility that the two of us could die from exposure to the elements. “Can you hunt?”
    “I don’t think we have much of a choice.” I shrugged, or at least I tried to under my chattering teeth.
    “Let’s go.” He stood and reached down to help me up.
    I gladly accepted his aid, but something about it made me feel indebted to him. I didn’t like that feeling. There was something that was helping me warm up to him. The truth was, I had been doing a lot of thinking about what he had said about action movies lately. I had noticed the severe lack of female heroes myself. It felt strange to hear someone else voice the concerns I had never worked up the courage to speak myself. It was strange to hear them from a man; someone who I thought would never notice the disparity in our society.
    The truth is, I like to think of myself of an activist, something that I was always secretly ashamed of. I could have been better, not sitting there expecting people to stand up for my rights when I couldn’t be bothered to stand up for my own. The honest to goodness truth was that, in shifter society, I was pretty much equal to men in my same position. We were so busy playing dominance games based on strength to worry much about gender. There was an even spread of minority and female alphas and other ranks with in our groups, but the truth was that it wasn’t based on things like skin color or personal plumbing, instead it