Becoming the Alpha Read online

  So that meant that Lukas had to beat the sheriff into submission. But the threat of what the sheriff represented would still linger. That was why Lukas needed me too. He would be surrounded by people who didn’t want him. He could earn their trust and respect over time, but only if given a chance. As I watched him beginning to falter in the arena, I knew somebody had to believe that he could do it. I had to believe he could do it.

  I let my face tighten in a cruel grin. I twisted my arms up and showed him my fists. Then I jabbed one first hard into the air as I mouthed three words to him.

  Kick. His. Ass.

  His eyes narrowed. I wasn’t sure if he understood me. I wasn’t sure what could be understood when he was in his bear form. But my gesture should have left him little doubt about what I was telling him to do.

  One of Lukas’s heavy paws came up, and I saw the flash of claws as he awkwardly swiped in the air behind his head. I heard the first squeal of pain from the sheriff, but I couldn’t see what damage had been done before the sheriff’s lock released. Lukas was free. He shot into the middle of the arena and turned back toward the sheriff. He went up on to his hind legs and then let out a mighty roar that sent shivers down my spine again.

  It was a signal to the sheriff and everyone in the arena who had gone quiet. Lukas Kasper wasn’t giving up. The sheriff’s paws covered his face, and I could only see blood seeping through the fur and onto the ground as he squirmed in pain. Lukas had gotten his claws into one or both of the sheriff’s eyes.

  Lukas moved back toward the sheriff’s prone form, but Doc Walden moved between them. The sheriff hadn’t moved yet.

  “Yield or kill?” Doc Walden looked at Lukas. Lukas snorted and twisted his head up into the air. He came back down onto his haunches. Doc Walden nodded. I wasn’t sure if there had been some kind of bear telepathy that had just gone on, or if Lukas’s snort was some gesture that I was supposed to understand.

  Doc Walden moved closer to the sheriff. “Do you yield?”

  The sheriff howled. I shivered. I couldn’t understand if he said anything at all, but there was a clear mingling of frustration, anger, and pain underlying the noise.

  Doc Walden shook his head. Then he threw his hands up in the air and yelled, “Continue!”

  Lukas shot across the arena floor in an instant crossing the distance between him and the sheriff. He barely missed knocking Doc Walden out of the way. As soon as he was within striking distance, his claws were back out, and he swiped his paw across the sheriff’s exposed chest.

  The brutality of the action took my breath away. Lukas hadn’t even hesitated to do further damage knowing the sheriff was already injured. But what I gathered from Doc Walden’s brief intervention was that the sheriff had been given the chance to stop the match and chose not to.

  The sheriff’s paws came away from his face, and then his jaws snapped in the air. He went for the wounds on Lukas’s shoulder, but Lukas didn’t give him time to find purchase before snaking away from him. Their paws locked on each other’s shoulders, and they danced an awkward dance on their hind legs pulling and pushing at each other trying to draw the other off balance.

  When their bodies turned so that I could see the sheriff’s face fully again, I felt a small pang of guilt for wishing him harm. One side of his face was open and raw, and I couldn’t even see his eye through all the blood matted in his fur. I wanted Lukas to win, but I still wasn’t a person who delighted in seeing anyone else in pain. It was necessary; the logical part of my brain understood that. But seeing the reality of it caused my humanity distress.

  Lukas put his head down, and it appeared as if the sheriff thought for a moment he was going to gain the upper hand again. Then Lukas released him, and his head became a battering ram pounding squarely into the sheriff’s upper chest. The sheriff went flying backward, and that was when Lukas pounced.

  I heard the crack of bones this time when Lukas landed heavily on the sheriff’s body. Then everything went still. Lukas roared into the air, and I felt sick when I saw his powerful jaws bite into the sheriff’s neck. The sheriff’s body jerked once and then twice. Then he went still.

  Doc Walden stepped back into the arena. The expression on his face was stormy.

  “Lukas Kasper! Return to the center!”

  Lukas bit into the sheriff’s body again, and Doc Walden hollered his name for the second time. I wondered where Lukas had gone in his head. There was a zeal about the way that his teeth worked into the sheriff’s body that made me think that he was enjoying himself. Doc Walden yelled his name a third time, and slowly Lukas turned his head in that direction.

  I was on the other side of the arena, so I couldn’t see what it was that Doc Walden saw, but the man took a step backward. His face paled. “The council asks that you return to the center of the arena, Lukas.”

  Something had passed between them. I wasn’t sure what it was, but there was a shift nonetheless. Lukas puffed a loud exhalation of air and then slid off of the sheriff’s body. I didn’t know if the sheriff was alive or dead, but all eyes were on Lukas now. He lumbered across the arena in the exact opposite pacing as crossing to attack the sheriff just minutes before. When he reached Doc Walden, he snarled.

  “Yield or kill?” Doc Walden said. His voice carried a note of uncertainty that it hadn’t the last time he had asked Lukas the question.

  There was a long pause. I felt a faint tendril of fear that despite everything, Lukas was going to choose kill. His bear had taken over completely in the last few moments of the match. He wanted to kill the sheriff. I had to hope that the man still existed inside of him enough to answer the question correctly.

  Lukas growled and then threw back his head with a huff. Doc Walden looked visibly relieved, so I could only assume that Lukas’s answer had been that he would allow a yield. Doc Walden gave him a brief nod and then stepped around him, although I couldn’t help but notice that he kept a wide berth.

  Doc Walden moved across the arena floor and stopped over the sheriff’s prone form. He knelt down and touched the sheriff’s neck. I saw the brief closure of his eyes, and then he gave another short nod. This time it was to no one in particular. He stood.

  “The opponent to Lukas Kasper’s claim is unable to advise on his wishes, and thus per the clan’s guidelines this is an automatic forfeiture of any further claim. The victor is Lukas Kasper; the new alpha of the Greyelf Grizzly clan.”

  My eyes swept back to Lukas, and my mouth fell open again as I saw that he had phased back to his human form. He stood tall and proud in the middle of the area. I couldn’t help but notice that he was also very naked.

  A chant began somewhere behind me.

  “Lukas! Lukas! Lukas!” More voices joined in, and within moments the arena walls were shaking with the strength of the cheers.

  He made a slow turn in a tight circle. His eyes locked on mine again, and I felt a flush crawl up my cheeks at the intensity of the heat that I saw there.

  Lukas had gotten his wish. He was the alpha. Now I was about to find out what that meant for both of us.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lukas’s jaw was covered in blood, and it made me queasy to think about the fact that it wasn’t his blood. His left shoulder looked torn up, but it isn’t as bad as I would have expected given the way the sheriff’s teeth had been ripping at it. Other than the sweat and dirt, he looked fine. My heart beat painfully inside my chest though. I felt the tight binds of stress finally releasing from around my mid-section. He was alive, and he was okay.

  A small smirk pulled up the corners of his mouth as his eyebrow rose in a mocking expression. It was almost as if he could read my thoughts, and he was giving me a hard time for even thinking that the match could have turned out any other way. Just like that, he got my gall up, and I wanted to smack him. I crossed my arms and glared at him.

  A pretty young woman appeared at Lukas’s side with a blanket in her hands. I felt a bolt of jealousy as I noticed the way that her eyes traveled up a
nd down his body as he took it from her. I cared even less for the way he smiled at her. Lukas wrapped the blanket around his waist and knotted it on the side. The brazen display of his virile manliness should have made me uncomfortable, but instead I felt heat building in my core. No matter what they said, every woman in this arena right now wanted him, and every man wanted to be him. He was the center of attention. This was Lukas’s element.

  The cheering hadn’t stopped since the moment Doc Walden declared him the victor. Lukas smiled at the crowd and put his arms up gesturing for silence. It still took a few more moments before the crowd settled down. Something epic had just happened in front of all of us, and I think it was just sinking in.

  Once the crowd finally quieted, Lukas’s voice filled the air. “I know that many of you are uncertain about the future. My brother was a shining beacon of light in the night so many years ago. What he did for all of us will never be forgotten.” Several cheers went up at those words, and Lukas paused as he waited for them to settle again.

  “What he did for me personally is something that I will never forget either. He led a country of shifters and shaped the lives of each and every one of us. But to me, he was most often just my big brother. He allowed me the freedom to fail and fail on a massive scale in the role of becoming a man and a shifter in this world of ours, and I tell you all that was the most humbling experience of my life. He gave me the room to discover my own voice and find out what I was really made of by challenging me to live outside the walls of White Oaks. Markus didn’t believe in special treatment or coddling. That’s not the way of the Grizzly clan. We have to be strong and focused, otherwise there are those who would take away everything we’ve built and achieved.”

  I was shocked. I had never seen this side of Lukas before. As I glanced around, I saw every eye was focused on him. He had the crowd mesmerized. Truth be told, he had me mesmerized too.

  “I can only hope that today, as I begin the journey of following in my brother’s footsteps, you will see that his legacy lives on through me. This is a new day and a new time for our clan. There are different enemies that plague us today than when Markus brought us together all those years ago. I am confident that you will see that I continue to have only the clan’s best interests at heart, and I will uphold our values and beliefs until the day that I no longer draw breath in this life. I am a proud member of the Greyelf Grizzly clan, and today I am honored to become your alpha.”

  The crowd erupted all over again, and I drew out my phone. No one was paying attention to me, and I burned Lukas’s words into my mind even as I opened the camera app and started to take pictures of him. Then the people around me pushed forward, and Lukas disappeared from my sight as members of the clan surrounded him.

  “You shouldn’t be here, Maren.” The voice next to my ear startled me. I stepped away from it. Billy was in my space in the most uncomfortable way.

  “And you should have told me that you were a bear shifter,” I retorted. I was still trying to process everything that I had just seen and what it meant for me and my relationship with Lukas. “We’ve been to second base. That seems like an important thing to relay before we even go to the ball game.”

  “I’m not much for analogies,” Billy said. His expression was unreadable, but I saw his long appreciative look up and down my body. “I didn’t want to keep it from you, but the sheriff thought it best to keep my true identity to myself around town, especially since I was on the council.”

  “So all that talk about law enforcement running in your family and keeping your nose clean?” I couldn’t help but wonder how much what of Billy had shared with me over the course of the last few months as we explored the idea of dating had been real.

  “All true,” he said, slinging his fingers into the belt loops of his jeans. Billy had always come across to me as a genuinely nice guy; albeit a bit simple. He had an easy smile and a relaxed attitude that, while nice, had bored me to tears. He was physically attractive, but I hadn’t felt the necessary spark of chemistry between us to think that it was a relationship that could go anywhere. If anything, I had been humoring myself with him trying to appear normal.

  But the man who stood next to me now only bore the slightest resemblance to the man that I thought I knew. There was a knowing gleam in his eyes that told me he had been noting everything, cataloging it all away for some other purpose down the road. He was a council member too, which meant that the entire encounter with Lukas at the restaurant the evening before had been nothing but a show. A show for my benefit.

  “I never lied about anything I told you,” he said with a small shrug. “I omitted one detail.”

  “Omission is a lie’s best friend,” I said, shaking my head.

  “I honestly didn’t expect you to agree to go out on a date with me to begin with,” Billy said. “But then you did, and then you accepted a second date, and we started to get to know each a little bit better.” He gave me a wink that told me exactly where his mind had wandered.

  I flushed. I wasn’t a prude, but I didn’t care for Billy’s reminder of our previous romantic history either; especially when I still felt the burn of Lukas’s bite on my shoulder. My mind latched onto something he said. “Why did you even ask me out then if you thought I was going to say no?”

  Click. Whirr. Fit into place. The gears of my mind were working overtime, and the information they produced couldn’t be true, but it made perfect sense. “You wanted to find out about Lukas.”

  Billy had the decency to avert his eyes. “I was asked to check into it. Find out if you were still in contact with him. That’s it. I kept asking you out because I liked you.”

  I took a step backward. “I don’t think I know you at all.”

  Billy pursued me. “Look, you might not agree with the methods, but I didn’t have any ill intent. And now you know everything, so I was hoping that we could start over. Hell, you know more about me now than any woman I’ve ever been with.”

  “Over is the operative word in that sentence, Billy,” I said. “And there was no with. We went on a few dates and fooled around. But I can’t trust someone who isn’t honest with me.” Even if I wanted to see Billy again, I had a feeling finding out that I bore Lukas’s mark would put the kibosh on that whole idea.

  “But you are willing to trust a guy who never appreciated you and then took off without even saying goodbye?”

  Shit, what had I told Billy about my past with Lukas? I had gotten a little drunk during our second date, and I had to admit some of the details of our conversation later in the evening were a bit fuzzy. I had woken up the next day on my couch half-dressed with one hell of a hangover.

  “I trust myself,” I said carefully. There were verbal landmines everywhere. “Look, I should have said something long before now, but whatever it was that we were doing wasn’t a long-term thing. It was fun, but we’re just too different; even more so than I even realized apparently.”

  “So I’m a bear shifter. So what?” Billy stepped closer to me. He reached out to touch my face. “We both know that you don’t have a problem with that kind of thing.”

  Billy’s hand was caught mid-air before it fully crossed the distance between us. I didn’t know how I hadn’t felt Lukas’s approach. Back when it seemed like he spent every waking minute with me, I innately felt his presence everywhere. I guess ten years apart had made me rusty in that department.

  Lukas twisted Billy’s hand, and then he dragged Billy forward until they were only a few inches apart. “I believe Maren has made it clear that whatever tenuous relationship you think the two of you had, it’s over.”

  A tightening of the lines around Billy’s eyes was the only indication he gave that Lukas’s grip was affecting him at all. “I’d be careful, Lukas. I am a council member, and you don’t want to get on the wrong side of a council member mere minutes after assuming the alpha role.”

  “I am the alpha,” Lukas said as if that explanation covered everything. He released Billy’s wri
st. “Take my advice. Keep your paws off things that aren’t yours if you know what’s good for you.”

  Lukas moved so that he stood mostly blocking me from Billy’s view. I wasn’t a bear shifter, but even in human society the gesture was meant to prove a point. Although Lukas had yet to openly acknowledge what was going on between us, he was letting his feelings on the matter be seen. But based on what I had learned from Marilee so far, I didn’t think that was necessarily a good thing.

  The Greyelf Grizzly alpha’s mate had already been chosen by the council. She was supposed to be mated to Markus in the fall, but then Markus had met an untimely demise last week. From what Marilee said, it fell on the new alpha then to take Markus’s intended mate. But so far, Lukas wasn’t having any of it. He said he wanted me, but the reason had everything to do with who he felt he could trust, and nothing to do with anything remotely romantic.

  And yet I had thrown my lot in with him anyway, just like I always did. Something new was simmering between the two of us now though. I felt it in the parking lot, and I felt it in the woods during our short hike to the arena. Something had shifted in our relationship, but I felt foolish even contemplating or looking forward to what that might be. Because Lukas had disappointed me before thinking there was something more between us. Look where that had gotten me.

  Doc Walden and Mr. Bennett joined our small circle. I couldn’t help but notice it seemed as if all eyes were suddenly on us. I moved to stand beside Lukas so that it looked less obvious that he was trying to protect me from something.

  “The opening gala for the Summit is this evening,” Doc Walden said.

  “I am aware,” Lukas replied. He cut a glance across the arena. “What’s the verdict on the sheriff?”