Sebastian snorted but relaxed, his ears popped back up and his tail rose as he cautiously took a bite from the hash in my hand. His tail wagged a little, and he leaned in for another bite with a satisfied groan.
"Not bad, right?" I helped myself to another bite. "It travels better than I'd hoped."
Amused that he preferred to eat from my hand instead of from the bowl, I continued to alternate bites with Sebastian until we were both sated.
"You done?" I asked when he laid his head on my thigh with a sigh. A slight nod of the head. "Good. Have a little more water and then I'll pack everything up."
By the time we had eaten and were ready to leave, the moon was just beginning to rise. Sebastian surprised me by licking my face as soon as I'd shifted.
"Thank you for the food," he whispered in my mind.
I started to huff it off – he knew it was an Alpha's job to provide – but I stopped myself, turning instead to nuzzle my cheek to his, marking him with my scent.
"You're welcome," I said, scenting the night air. It was crisp and clean, nothing to indicate any predators larger than us in the area. Sebastian's scent seemed a little stronger than usual but it smelled amazing, so I was perfectly fine with that. "Are you okay to start?" Sebastian nodded, but I pushed. "What about the pain?"
"Just a little stiff," Sebastian assured me. "It doesn't actually hurt anymore."
I chuffed my satisfaction and started off down the trail, setting a pace that was a little faster than when we'd set out. Wolves can travel up to fifty miles in a day, but if we made it twenty without stressing Sebastian's still-healing body, I'd count it as a success.
Chapter Eleven
Sebastian
I was equal parts relieved and ashamed when Alrick pulled the large container of leftover venison hash from the bag he had carried when we left the house we'd been imprisoned in. I know it's stupid – really, I do - but I absolutely detest eating raw meat, no matter what form I’m in. I love to hunt, but you better believe that I’m roasting my prey before I eat. When he asked if I was hungry, I'd admitted I was only because I knew my body needed energy to continue recovering. I was so sappily grateful that he had brought cooked food that I'd eaten it from his hand before I thought better of it. Luckily, Alrick hadn't seemed to mind. In fact, during our entire ordeal, he had yet to lose patience with me even once.
He'd taken care of me when I was injured, catered to my comfort as I recovered, and even on the trail, he was continuing to be considerate and solicitous – he was everything I could want in an Alpha. I swallowed a sigh. He really was perfect, but I was just setting myself up for disappointment by focusing on all of the traits that would make Alrick a perfect mate. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and was surprised when Alrick circled around, drawing up alongside me and burying his nose in the ruff of fur around my neck, never breaking his stride.
I waited for him to tell me why, but instead, he just pulled slightly ahead again and continued to lead the way.
We ran on through the night, only stopping to dodge miniature icebergs in the rivers as we drank. Each time we resumed our travels, Alrick circled back to sniff me, sometimes rubbing his body against mine and making soft growling noises deep in his throat. His body language was relaxed – soft ears, a gently lolling tongue, his plush tail at a jaunty angle – so I knew he wasn't angry; still, I didn't know exactly what he was doing.
When dawn began to threaten, Alrick led me to a dense thicket of underbrush a few hundred feet away from a gently rolling brook. We fought our way into the opening in the center – a challenge as the pack my Alpha carried repeatedly caught on the thorns in the bushes – and, again, Alrick told me to stay as I was when he began to shift. Different, though from the night before, instead of a human form, his werewolf clawed its way out. I drew back a short distance and watched, but there was no difference in the gentleness he treated me with.
He wrapped in the wool blanket from the pack and wandered down to the creek to refill our travel bottle of water. Then he pulled out the hash container and coaxed me to his side, alternately feeding us bits from his twisted, sharp-clawed hands. When we were done, he packed everything away and his full wolf reappeared, snuggling against me as the sun continued to rise.
When I woke in the thicket, I was warmer than I expected. I started to stretch but the giant nearly white wolf who was curled over me, nuzzling into my fur and making light, almost purring noise, made that impossible. Alrick was rubbing his face through my fur, biting lightly on the folds of skin around my neck, as his body rocked rhythmically against me. My arousal skyrocketed as I realized what he was doing, my Omega instincts kicking in to prepare my body, to ease his entry with copious amounts of sweet smelling slick. I groaned under my breath as my dick rapidly hardened; this entire situation was…fucked up.
The change in my scent did nothing to calm the Alpha above me who, I finally realized was just as deeply asleep as I'd been a few nights earlier. He continued to hump against my flank, his impressive length both too close to -and too far from - where I desperately wanted it. I knew the moment that he woke up; his body froze and a ragged breath tore through him. I forced myself to breathe rhythmically, faking sleep, as he carefully pulled away from me and, rising silently, worked his way free from the thicket and headed deeper into the forest.
The sun had been just about to set when Alrick had left meand now, with the moon rising on the opposite skyline, he still hadn't returned. I wasn't worried, exactly. That is, I knew that he could take care of himself. The niggling fear in the back of my mind that he had tired of playing protector to a useless Omegaand moved on, leaving me behind, however, was one that I couldn't quite escape. When he finally returned, he was panting hard, the snow melting instantly in paw prints as each overheated limb extended. Whatever had happened, there was no doubt that he'd been running hard for quite some distance. I stepped forward cautiously, my body lowered and my eyes on the ground, to nuzzle against his cheek and lick under his chin, offering my submission.
As he had many times in the previous hours, Alrick buried his face in my ruff, inhaling deeply without speaking. This time, though, I caught a deep growling groan that escaped as he scented me and there was an obvious flood of territorial pheromones overwhelming me. I stood passively as he rubbed against me, dragging our bodies against each other, marking me as he would a member of his own pack. Then, I had a thought. A very personal, very unwelcome thought. It had been over a week since my last dose of heat suppressants. If I was coming into season, so to speak, that would definitely explain why an Alpha who disliked me was treating me like a treasured mate. I swallowed the frustrated cry that tried to escape my lips and continued to stand still as Alrick scented and marked me repeatedly until he was satisfied with the results.Regardless of my personal views on the matter, I was hardlyin a position to go tilting at windmills.
Once Alrick was satisfied with my scent, he quickly loaded up the backpack and we struck out into the night. We'd only been traveling for a few hours when the large wolf in front of me slowed from a lope to a trot and then to a walk. He finally came to a full stop in the shadows of an ancient, towering pine tree. Alrick took a few tense, stiff-legged steps forward, throwing a growl over his shoulder when I started to follow. Taking the hint, I melted back against the rough, sweet-smelling bark of the tree. Alrick disappeared from sight only to return several minutes later. His body language had relaxed slightly, but he was still noticeably tense. Silently, he herded me back the way we had come, stopping after a few hundred feet.
"Humans," his thought came clearly through my mind. "Lots of them. We need to shift and mingle; see if we can find out where we are."
I nodded my agreement and threw myself into my shift; I must have taken Alrick by surprise because it was the first time that I had finished first. He followed quickly, rummaging through the bag to pull out a set of clothing for me and then one for himself.
"No sense in leaving what we needed for the dead men," he explained, seeing my confused look. "They'll fit well enough."
He was right, of course, and, once we were dressed, he tossed the backpack over one shoulder, clasped our hands together, and led me out of the forest and into the village that we had stumbled on to.
I like humans; really, I do, but the stench of so many in such a small area was beyond overwhelming to our sensitive noses. Compounding that discomfort was the fact that every time another male got too close to me or – Gods help us, bumped me – as we worked our way through the crowd, Alrick began snarling. Something about the busy streets in the quaint village struck me as odd, but between the overwhelming chemical scents that always accompanied humans – bath gels and soaps, shampoos and conditioners, styling products and deodorants – and Alrick's unusual behavior, I wasn't able to immediately put my finger on it.
"What are we doing?" I asked quietly as Alrick hustled me toward what seemed to be the center of town. "Where are we going?"
He stopped in his tracks and turned toward me, but instead of answering, he dragged my body flush with his and bent to bury his face in my neck, huffing and snarling. A full-body shiver raced through me as his fangs scraped along the tender skin.
