Chapter 05

KARA

"Someone's close," Lex murmured quietly in my mind.

I wasn't sure why she whispered when no one but me could hear her but it somehow felt like a sin for my thoughts to be at a volume above that. The forest blanketed in thick shadow had fallen eerily silent over the last thirty minutes as if it waited with bated breath to crown the victor of our first game.

We had run laps around the area to throw off the two participants in tonight's game. If they were tracking my prints, they were going nowhere slowly. And, if they were tracking my scent, it would take them a while to realize I had planted my scent in almost every direction I could in thirty minutes with the help of Denver.

He had found more pieces of clothing and scattered them around the forest, rubbing the fabric against trees to leave a lingering trail behind at my behest. We had even gotten the wolves running border patrol to spread my scent around which led to us covering more ground. They'd be out here all night and I'd be right behind them, tracking their progress without them knowing.

"Can you tell who it is?" I asked Lex as I purposely lowered my paw to avoid any sudden sounds.

"You avoided them so much that I can't even register the scent. They at least had your clothes, we're going in blind," Lex grumbled. She was still pissy about the whole mud situation that was now hard and had crusted onto our fur like a clay mold.

I hid in the thicket, adrenaline electrifying my body, "Maybe we can get a better view from up in the trees," my suggestion was met with silent agreement.

The shift which rippled through shook most of the drying mud off. I stood in my naked, human form caked in dirt and unfazed by the need to cover up. A pup learned at a young age that modesty wasn't a part of our life, not when clothes seldom survived longer than a few days because of wolves bursting out of them.

Gripping the scaly bark of a nearby tree, I began scaling it. I was sure-footed, never missing a beat as I ascended toward a thick branch hidden by a canopy of leaves. My breaths condensed in the air, white clouds forming with every shallow exhale. It didn't take me long to perch myself in a position that gave me a satisfactory view of the ground far below me. With a blink, my eyes shifted from my usual dark brown to Lex's golden orbs which brought startling clarity.

A howl reverbed from somewhere southeast of me and a victorious smirk found its way to my face. Along with masking my scent and throwing the two alphas off by spreading my scent all over the pack, Denver had helped to set a few traps for them. It sounded as if one of the Alphas had been snared in a net that was disguised under fallen leaves. He must have set the trigger off unbeknownst to what would happen and was now dangling in a net eight feet off the ground.

The foliage below rustled and I sucked in a breath so, whoever it was, wouldn't even hear me breathe. A whiff of what I could only describe as freshly mowed grass and something spicy scratched my nasal passage, begging me to release my pent-up breath in exchange for the delicious flavor that demanded to caress my lungs. I had a feeling that I'd be able to taste the scent if I only allowed myself to drink it in.

Why I hadn't registered such a tantalizing aromatic scent tainting the atmosphere before was beyond me. I chalked it up to being surrounded by too many people all the time. But then, I should have caught it when I showed them to their rooms last night. Maybe I purposefully ignored it because I'd want to investigate more of it if I had acknowledged it.

The rustling paused and out trotted a white wolf a few inches larger than my own.

No.

Not just white.

The wolf's thick fur was white with spirals and tendrils of black illustrated along the expanse of its body and legs.

Holy shit!

Miles wasn't tattooed. There were the markings of his wolf which he somehow retained in human form. That shouldn't have been possible and yet here he was. Maybe he had tattooed the designs on his flesh in the same pattern as the ones on his wolf but I somehow didn't believe that.

"Lex, what the fuck? You're usually able to explain these kinds of things," the panicked tenor of my voice through our Mind Link had her snapping her jaws at me in my head.

"I have no explanation. Why don't you ask him yourself?" A purr laced her otherwise gruff words

"That would mean me exposing myself and him winning by default. No thank you," curiosity killed and I wasn't about to cut my nose off to spite my face, "at least we know it's Orion stuck in that trap. No one's going to help him until tomorrow morning." I fought to suppress my snigger.

"I did say Alpha Miles is the better tracker between the two," Lex huffed in that know-it-all-all tone most teens constantly wielded against their parents.

My attention dropped to Miles who forced a shift until he stood at his full height of 6'2. Muscles rippled beneath pale flesh which flushed in the streaks of moonlight beaming through gaps in the canopy.

A hoarse sound caught in his throat, forcing him to clear it before casually uttering, "I know you're here."

"He's bluffing," I muttered to Lex.

"Don't think he is," came her sharp response.

"I can hear your heartbeat," his thick fingers sliced through his shaggy hair, "and one more thing Red wolf, fucking breath before you pass out from up there," his silver eyes—the eyes of his wolf, crashed into my figure with the heat and force of a fireball.

Panic. The icy, unforgiving, venomous kind injected into my bloodstream. It froze my limbs in place while simultaneously sending my heart into something close to cardiac arrest. The breath I held whooshed out of semi-parted lips as my breathing went from non-existent to rapid and alarmed.

How did he find me? It had barely been an hour and he found my exact location. He won. Miles won. My plan was tossed out the window with flippant ease.

"Get down from there before you pass out and I have to catch you," he ordered, his voice taking on an irritated note, "you've made your aversion to touching us quite clear. I don't wish to overstep that boundary."

What? Was he seriously talking about overstepping boundaries when he won the first game and probably would win the rest which would force me to marry him?

I clamored down, free-falling the last few meters until I landed skillfully on my feet. To Miles' credit, he kept his gaze on my face, never once allowing it to track heat across the rest of my body. With a blink, his irises returned to their usual green and mine to my usual brown.

"Don't expect me to congratulate you," I bit out with a snobbish rise of my chin.

He cut me a curt nod, "Don't want you to. Don't expect you to. But it rather me than him."

I arched my eyebrow in question but Miles didn't seem inclined to elaborate so, instead, I quizzed, "How did you find me in the first place?"

"You've had about four years to train. I've had eighteen," he supplied, facial muscles scrunching and growing taut as if this topic pained him.

"Eighteen?" Confusion weaved into my thoughts, scrambling them as I attempted to work out his age. If he was sixteen when his wolf emerged and eighteen years passed, "Wait, you're thirty-four? You don't look thirty-four."

He offered me an upturn of his chin, gesturing for me to follow him in the direction of the pack house where my father and the rest of the spectators were surely waiting, "I'm not thirty-four."

Following him on his flank with my guard up and my mind shields solid in place, I said, "Well that doesn't make sense."

"My wolf emerged at the age of ten."

I stumbled.

A shriek emitted.

Miles turned with his arms extended.

And I caught myself by clutching a nearby boulder, avoiding being touched by a hair's breadth.

Heat prickled up the side of my neck and, if it weren't for the crusty mud on my skin, I was certain my body would be a stunning hue of red.

"Are you okay?" For once, he wasn't irritated or bored. He sounded genuinely concerned and that rubbed me the wrong way.

Huffing, I straightened and gathered my bearings, "Just fine," then I returned the heat to where it belonged as I made him the center of attention once more, "what do you mean ten? Your wolf shouldn't have emerged so early unless something..."

A growl that had my soul levitating from my body extinguished any chance I had of completing my sentence, "Twenty-eight. That's how old I am. That's how old we are."

"That's still far too old for me," I muttered begrudgingly. Could my father not find someone closer to my age?

"Eight years isn't that big of a difference, Red wolf," he was now amused.

Was he only a stoic bastard when his brother was around?

"You'd be surprised exactly how much eight years is," my retort only had smile lines bracketing a scary grin, "you're creepy when you smile."

What the fuck!

Did I actually say that out loud?

Someone needed to stuff a sock in my mouth so I wouldn't repeat any of the other stupid thoughts in my head.

At my words, Miles' mouth pressed into a thin line, "I can't say that I'm used to smiling just because something is genuinely amusing."

"Oh, your life sounds sad and miserable and if I end up with you my life is going to be sad and miserable..."

Tears welled but I blinked in quick succession to prevent a spill. My life wasn't a bed of roses here but it was everything any wolf could have hoped for. I had a family and friends and purpose here. My life was filled with laughter and happy memories, even a few teary memories sprinkled in for good measure.

"I was hoping you'd change that," Miles informed, glancing at me over a muscle-corded shoulder.

My fingers inched to trace the ridges and valleys of his body, stroke along the lines of every intricate tendril and swirl of ink.

"Pull yourself together before you do something wildly stupid," Lex shouted a warning growl that rattled my skull.

"Right, sorry," my half-assed apology didn't fool her.

I probably sounded like the most indecisive individual on Earth right now. On one hand, I didn't want him to touch me, on the other, I needed to feel what his abdominal muscles felt like under my palm.

Miles's confession rang in my ears like a sick taunt. How dare he expect me to change his life when he was basically putting an end to mine?

I scowled at the spot between his shoulder blades where the ladder of his spine created three bumps, "I'm not going to help you feel better about yourself Alpha Miles Kessler."

"Did you ever imagine what it would be like to be called Alpha Kara Sommers?"

The abrupt change of topic gave me whiplash.

"No," that was a lie. I had envisioned myself as the Alpha of the Blood Wolves from the moment my parents found out that I would forever be the only heir. And, I worked my ass off to be deserving of the title only to be told I would never have it.

"I never wanted to be an Alpha, Red Wolf. All my life, I never trained for it, I never felt deserving of it. But here I am. Sometimes we all have to do things we don't want to when there's more than your life on the line."

I wanted to pry. Too many questions sat at the tip of my tongue. However, if I pried that would mean I was getting to know him and I vowed that I wouldn't get to know either of these two men. Because getting to know them meant forming a relationship with them. It meant I could fall for them.

I was starting to learn whatever I wanted was not what fate had in store for me, though.