The Alpha's Mail Order Bride (5 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

No one stomped up the stairs after her or pounded on her door while Akala hastily threw her clothing into her bag. She rushed into the bathroom, collected her various toiletries, and then dumped these too into the top of the bag, not caring if they were properly packed or not. Her only goal was to get out of this place that wasn’t even named on a map, and she still had no idea of how she was going to do that.

Akala sat on the edge of the bed and buried her face in her hands. Tears flowed freely and she tried to make sense of everything that had happened. Every one of her senses had told her to trust Nashoba, but he’d been hiding such a big thing and she didn’t know how she could have been blind to it this whole time. She thought about the swimming hole and his lusty looks at her bum where it showed through the wet fabric of her panties. Had this all been about him luring her down here for sex?

It occurred to her then that even Haley might be in on it. For all Akala knew, this was some elaborate plan where Nashoba acted distant and troubled while Haley set the bait with their treasure hunt routine. Had other girls stood in Henry Jr’s darkroom and watched as their clues slowly developed before them? Had dear old Mrs Wilkinson served honey cakes to Nashoba and his other women?

No. Akala shook her head. She had to use her wits at a time like this. There was no way a whole town would work towards something as lowly as letting one man get a few girls in bed. The people they’d encountered on the treasure hunt had seemed genuinely intrigued by the way Haley had set it up for them, and Akala could have sworn that Nashoba had been just as caught off guard by a few of the old memories he’d revisited. If that was him hiding his true self and putting on some false character to lure Akala into his confidences, then she’d fallen into the hands of a dangerous psychopath.

And that was where things fell apart. Akala stood up and went to the window, peering out to see that Nashoba’s truck was still parked where he’d left it. She saw the door hanging open from when he’d rushed to their aid, and she questioned her assessment of Nashoba’s role in all of this. Everything about him seemed warm and caring once she punched through the awkward outer layer. He spoke plainly and directly, valued the feelings of those around him, and seemed to be held in high regard by the town folk whom they’d spoken with .

Then there was the wolf thing. It was a thing from bad horror movies and silly teen dramas. Easy to accept between the pages of a paranormal romance novel, but something that actually existed in real life. Hell, Akala had even written a few werewolf stories of her own back when that had been a popular thing. She’d researched the various myths and legends surrounding their existence, and she’d never once imagined them to be anything as normal as Nashoba. All of the werewolf characters Akala had written were brooding and sullen men who took what they wanted and didn’t do things like antiquing or star gazing. They fought and bled for their tribe.

“Like Nashoba just fought and bled for me,” she said aloud.

Akala picked up a pillow, held it to her face, and screamed her frustration out into it. Dropping the pillow back to the bed, she looked at her packed bag and then to the door of her room. She had no way of getting back to the airport except through Nashoba, and he hadn’t come up here to tear her throat out or anything, so she could at least go down and talk to him to find out the real story, couldn’t see?

Akala opened the door and crept down the stairs. She didn’t know why she was sneaking, but it hadn’t done anything anyway. There, at the bottom of the stairs, was Nashoba sitting on a chair positioned so that she wouldn’t be able to leave without walking right into him. He must have kept some spare clothes at the B&B or in his truck, because he was blessedly fully clothed again.

He stood as soon as he noticed her turn the corner. “Akala, please let me explain.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what you can say that will make up for what happened just now.” Akala held her ground on the stairs, not wanting to go any further lest she have to use physical force to get  past Nashoba. “I mean, fuck. You turned into a damn wolf, Nashoba!”

“
It’s not what you think!” He seemed to catch his frustration and forced himself to calm down. “Well, I mean, it probably is exactly what you think, but—”

“
How about you two don’t have this conversation with poor Akala trapped on the landing,” said Haley, appearing at Nashoba’s side. “No one is going to come to any sort of harm, or start any kind of fight, so what do you say we all move over to the breakfast table? I’ve just put a pot of tea on to steep and there’s cakes and cookies for anyone who wants one.”

“
I don’t think food is the answer right now,” growled Nashoba.

One scathing look from Haley put him in his place and he raised his hands in mock surrender while backing away towards the kitchen.

Akala followed hesitantly, wanting to believe that she could trust these two people, but reminding herself that she’d met them after answering a marriage ad on the internet. It wasn’t like she’d even been contacted through a proper dating site, but rather through Craigslist; the same site where people sold off old couches and broken down cars.

“
So you’re a werewolf,” Akala said after she’d sat and accepted a cup of tea.

“
I am,” answered Nashoba with calm seriousness.

“
And you?” asked Akala, her eyes shifting to where Haley sat anxiously nibbling on the end of a cookie.

The girl simply nodded and placed her cookie back on her plate. She’d managed to knock more crumbs on herself and the table than she got into her mouth, and she picked at these to avoid meeting Akala’s accusing glare.

“Justin, who I understand is Haley’s brother, said something about a tribe. What’s that all about?”

“
He is my brother,” said Haley, “but he’s not entirely right in the head. He was a good kid once, if you can believe it, but lately there’s been a shift in his personality. I don’t know what happened, but he’s gotten mean and dangerous. I told him I didn’t want to see him around here anymore, and I really didn’t think he’d bother you. I swear I didn’t know he was hanging out around the B&B.”

“
We are all of the Choctaw tribe,” explained Nashoba. “Were-kind are more common than you might realize, although we are spread throughout the country and we tend to keep mostly to ourselves. Few of our kin choose to live in large cities, and others prefer the privacy of remote wilderness camps where they can live more openly. We chose a semi-public life because we are equally in touch with our human sides and don’t want to lose the generations of socialization our ancestors gave us when they settled here.”

“
And you’re the Choctaw leader?”

Nashoba nodded solemnly. “Although my blood line is not pure Choctaw, I have lived within the tribe my entire life, and have only recently come into my position as alpha. As such, it has fallen to me to ensure that our people are cared for and kept safe.”

“And that’s why you’re seeking a… what did Justin say? A mate?”

“
That word means something other to our kind.” Nashoba’s voice was soft and full of patience. “While you may hear it as something crude and sexual, for us it’s more of a life partner. When wolves mate, we do so for life. It’s the pairing of two souls in an eternal bond of love that we believe goes beyond death. Something that the common definition of marriage doesn’t even do.”

“
You lied to me,” said Akala. “You brought me down here on false pretenses and failed to tell me about your ability to change into a wolf whenever you wanted to. I mean, don’t you need a full moon for that?”

“
We have far more control over it than that,” answered Haley. “The moon has its effects on us, certainly, but we can choose to shift to either form almost any time we choose.”

“
Put yourself in our position, Akala. How do you think people would react if we posted things like
Wanted: Werewolf Bride
on the internet? Would you have ever responded to me if there had been a single small disclaimer on the bottom that explained what I really was?”

Akala pursed her lips and begrudgingly shook her head. “No, I would have emailed it to my friends to show them what a crazy thing I’d found.”

“That’s exactly why we needed to keep this from you until we knew we could trust you. There’s no way of being able to prove that I would have told you when the time was right, but you have to believe that.”

“
So you thought the time was right for us to fuck a few times before I learned your big secret?” Akala spat.

She looked at Haley and felt suddenly ashamed of her angry words. Still, she felt betrayed on a deep level after giving herself up to Nashoba in a way she’d never intended.

“We’re not bad people.” Haley’s voice was small and squeaky; nothing like the boisterous woman who’d first welcomed Akala into her B&B. I wish there was some way we could show you that we have nothing but the best intentions here.”

A war raged in Akala’s mind. One the one hand, she wanted to yell and scream over how they’d misled her and abused her trust, but on the other was this heartbroken and ashamed young woman who clearly felt she’d let down someone who’d been placed in her care. Even Nashoba looked as chastised as a puppy having been whacked with a rolled up newspaper.

In the end, Akala chose kindness and reached out to lay her hand over Haley’s, squeezing it reassuringly. “I know you’re good people. You have to understand how this is for me too. As of a few hours ago, I had no idea that werewolves even existed, and now I’m sitting at a table talking to two of them after watching one transform and fight another that seemed intent on dragging me off to his cave to rape me.”

“
Den,” said Nashoba. “It’s a den, not a cave.”

“
Oh, well that makes it better then.”

Haley choked out a sob and wiped tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I don’t know what’s wrong with Justin. I don’t know why he’s acting like this. He’s not a bad wolf, I swear he isn’t.”

Akala didn’t know what to say. She’d forgotten that the two were related, but that didn’t change the fact that Justin had had more than a little bit of crazy in his eyes when he’d come after her. That look had only meant one thing to Akala, and she never wanted to find out what was waiting for her down that path.

“
If you still want to leave, I’ll drive you straight to the airport right now,” offered Nashoba. “This wasn’t what you agreed to when you said you’d come down to meet you, and it grieves me that you’ve fallen into the middle of our tribal problems.”

“
What about my safety?” asked Akala, trying to remain sensitive of the fact that it was Haley’s blood relation she was worried about.

“
I’ll stay with you at all times,” said Nashoba. “There will be no pressure to pick up where we left off, but if you’ll allow it, I’d like to show you the real Choctaw nation. What you’ve seen this far is only the side of ourselves we present to those who don’t know of our true form. If you stay, I’ll show you everything.”

“
No more secrets?” asked Akala.

“
No more secrets,” said Nashoba. He exchanged a quick glance with Haley, and there was something else deep in those eyes that had been left unspoken. “Although, you must permit me to explain things to you in my way and in due time. I’ll do my best, but there are things you need to know before you hear the full story.”

“
I suppose I can live with that.”

Haley smiled through the tears that still trickled down her face, and she jumped out of her chair to hug Akala. “Oh, I’m so happy to hear it. I feel absolutely horrible about what’s happened today, you have no idea.”

Akala hugged her back and couldn’t help but smile as well. She caught Nashoba’s gaze, and saw the faintest upturn of his lips that indicated he was pleased with how things had turned out. She didn’t know if she’d come to regret her decision, but she had faith that Nashoba was true in his intention to keep her safe, and she wasn’t ready to leave here just yet. She wasn’t ready to walk away from him just yet.

C
HAPTER EIGHT

Nashoba suggested they begin immediately. They helped Haley clean up the damage to the living room as best they could, and then left her bustling about the kitchen. Akala thought she might have been more comfortable if Haley had come with them, but as they once again drove down country roads in silence, she was glad to have a moment alone with Nashoba.

“
Was this all a plan to get my clothes off?” she asked, not taking her eyes off the pastureland rolling by out the window.

“
Not at all,” he replied. “Everything I’ve told you about me is true, except for that one obvious omission. I had no expectations of being as attracted to you as I am, and I didn’t think we’d wind up… together in that way so quickly. It was a pleasant surprise.”

“
I hadn’t expected it either.” Akala turned her head to look at him, and he glanced over at her with that half smile of his before returning his attention to the road. “I haven’t been with anyone in a few years.”

“
Nor have I,” he admitted. “Not since I was a fair bit younger.”

“
How old are you?” she asked, surprised it hadn’t come up yet.

“
Thirty-six. Most of the last ten years of my life have been spent learning the ways of leadership in our tribe. Elder Mekimé had been grooming me to take over for him long before I realized what was happening, and I’ve always been too serious for most of the women of my tribe to take much interest in me.”

“
Is that why you’ve had to look outside the tribe for, um…” the word stuck in her mouth, but she forced herself to use it, “for a mate?”

“
That’s a complicated question.” He let out a long slow breath and seemed to take a long time thinking about what he would say. “I want to explain everything to you, I do, but now is not the right time. Can you accept that you’ll learn the truth of it soon enough?”

“
I suppose I can do that.” Akala drummed her fingers on the door frame where she rested her arm half out the window. “If I were to become your mate, or whatever, is it a problem that I’m not a werewolf? I mean, assuming you want us to have kids or something; wouldn’t we both need to be werewolves for them to be werewolves too? If you’re the leader of your tribe, I can’t see you wanting to have regular human kids to take up your legacy.”

“
The were-gene is dominant, so our kids would get it from me no matter what. And as for succession of leadership, the alpha progression doesn’t quite work like that.”

He turned off onto a side road that was considerably rougher than the one they’d been driving on, and Akala had to hold on to the window frame to keep from being bounced around too roughly. They had gone from the middle of nowhere to the back end of nowhere in the blink of an eye, and there were few signs that this road was used by anyone other than the few who knew of its existence.

“You mean they have to challenge for the position,” said Akala, drawing on what she remembered of her research. “Does that mean you had to challenge your mentor to become alpha of the Choctaw?”

Nashoba nodded. “In my case, it was a ceremonial challenge more than anything else. I am well respected in the tribe, and there were none who rose to challenge me for the role. Had there been another, I would have faced a real battle.”

“You seemed to be pretty comfortable fighting Justin back at the B&B.”

“
Fighting is what male wolves do for fun,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I’ve been wrestling with pack mates since I was old enough to stumble around on four legs. The fights are a lot more serious these days, but it’s in my blood. When I’m in wolf form, my senses and mental processes shift as well. Everything is more clearly honed, my focus absolute.”

“
It sounds incredible,” said Akala, a touch of envy creeping into her voice.

“
It’s impossible to describe in words. I wish you could experience it for yourself.”

Akala was surprised when Nashoba turned the truck yet again, this time into a clump of bushes that seemed impenetrable. Only after the vehicle pushed through them and emerged onto yet another rough looking road did Akala realize what lengths these people had to go to in order to keep themselves hidden away from society.

“What would happen if people found out about you and your tribe?” she asked.

“
It has happened to other tribes before, and it’s never a pleasant thing. People fear what they don’t understand, and our kind have been hunted and killed for as long as we’ve existed alongside humans. We have many legends surrounding our creation and the reason we exist, but the truth of it is that no one really knows where we came from or why we have to remain hidden. If we’d made ourselves more visible a long time ago, who knows what might have happened? It may have taken years for us to be seen as equals, but I like to think we’d have gotten there eventually. Instead, we have to hide ourselves away like trespassers on our own land.”

“
That sounds awful.”

Akala wanted to reach out to touch Nashoba, to cuddle up against him and make him feel as though she accepted him for who he was, but it was all so raw and new to her that she held herself back from him. She could offer words, but that was all. It had yet to be seen whether or not she’d ever trust him enough to be physically close to him again.

“We survive and find ways to make it work for us.” He smiled more broadly than Akala had yet seen him do. “Haley is a wonderful example of that. You see how she is with people. If it wasn’t for her family ties to this place, I think she’d have gone off long ago.”

“
Haley is quite special,” Akala agreed. “I’m happy to have met her.”

Nashoba navigated the narrow track with a familiarity that spoke of frequent visits to this place, and they were soon parked at the edge of a small village that consisted mainly of simple log cabins and one longhouse style building in the center of the forest clearing. Smoke drifted lazily from the cabins and a few fire pits around the village, and people came and went like they would in any other town. A few vehicles sat parked in the shade of some trees, but the road ended where they’d parked, and they got out of the truck to enter on foot.

People stopped to watch them as they passed by, their looks making it clear that Akala was an unknown presence in their community.

“
They can smell that you’re not wolf like us,” explained Nashoba. “It wouldn’t be safe for you to be here alone, but they accept you because you’re with me.”

“
Is it dangerous for me to be here?”

“
It would be if you came alone and uninvited. While some of us choose to venture out into the world, this is a place of refuge for our kind. Haley and I must constantly keep our behavior and speech in check when we’re in town or dealing with non-shifters, but here we can speak about anything and shift at will.”

As if cued  to illustrate his point, three naked young boys sprinted out from between two cabins and ran across the path, shifting into wolf cubs and tussling with each other before scampering off into the woods to continue their play.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to seeing that,” said Akala, shaking her head as though she thought it was all a dream that would fade at any second. “Am I the first human you’ve ever brought here?”

Nashoba chuckled softly. “No, not by far. There are many who’ve known about our kind throughout the ages, and in recent years that circle has expanded considerably. There are those who trade with us or have come as mates to one of our kind. There are other women here who’ve married into the tribe.”

“Oh.” Akala thought about her future in a place like this. Would she take care of her young shifter children and dutifully cook dinner for Nashoba if she went through with the marriage he was looking for? She couldn’t stomach the idea of giving up her writing career to become someone else’s wife.

“
We should meet the elders,” said Nashoba, guiding her to the longhouse in the middle of the village.

The long wooden building was smoky and dark after the bright afternoon sun, and it took Akala’s eyes a while to adjust to the smoky interior. Here and there she saw men and women resting or working on small tasks like stitching a blanket or preparing herbs for drying. On the far end of the building was a low fire with tendrils of sage-scented  smoke that drifted up towards ventilation holes in the the roof. Around this fire sat three old men and one old woman.

“Elders of the Choctaw tribe, I present to you Akala Templeton,” said Nashoba. He motioned for her to step forward. “I formally request that she be welcomed in this place, and offered sanctuary and protection as befits a guest on our land.”

“
We welcome this woman as a guest on our lands,” said and elder with a shock of long black hair with a thick white stripe running through it. “Let it be known that she is under our protection.”

Akala didn’t know how to respond, so she performed and awkward half-bowand mumbled her thanks.

“I see a bright spirit in this one,” said the old woman. “Although she muddies herself with self-doubt, this woman would make an excellent mate for you, Nashoba.”

“
I have seen that same bright spirit you speak of, Elder Cressima.” Nashoba half turned and smiled apologetically at Akala. “Although we are not quite at the stage of considering whether to formalize our union or not.”

“
Why not?” asked Cressima. “You are healthy, she is healthy. She is well of the age to bear pups. Why delay?”

“
As I’ve mentioned,” explained Nashoba, “that is not how things are done when one looks outside the pack for a mate. Customs differ in human society. The courtship rituals last considerably longer.”

“
So much easier to just have a little fight and then claim your prize,” muttered one of the male elders. He grinned at Cressima. “Isn’t that right, my love?”

“
As if you had any choice in the matter,” she snapped back with a wicked grin. “I told Brownclaw I’d tear his throat out while he slept if he didn’t let you win the duel for me.”

“
Must we hear this story again?” grumbled one of the other elders.

“
Perhaps we should ask our guest if she has any questions about our society,” said Elder Cressima.

“
I, um,” Akala felt uncomfortable with all eyes on her. She could tell that others watched from the shadows, and although she had a million questions about the tribe and their ways, she couldn’t seem to formulate a single one of them. “This is all a little overwhelming for me. I had no idea your kind existed until just this morning, and now I’m being welcomed into your society and I don’t really know what to say or do.”

Akala’s cheeks and forehead flushed with heat and she felt embarrassed at running her tongue with gibberish. The air was so thick and cloying with smoke and cooking smells that she felt about to pass out at any second.

“Perhaps you should show her the gardens,” suggested Elder Cressima, “before she faints and falls into the fire.”

Nashoba’s strong arm was around Akala’s shoulders then, and she felt herself being guided out into the sunlight again. She blinked at the blinding light and felt her disorientation intensify slightly before falling away.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“
No, it is I who should apologize. Perhaps this is all a little too much for you. Would you like to go back to the B&B now?”

“
Yes, I think that would be best. I just need to gather my thoughts a little.”

Akala’s mind churned through everything she’d learned in the last few hours, and she couldn’t shake the overwhelming feeling of being dragged into something so much bigger than she’d expected. Although she’d never really given much thought to the actual marriage part of the Craigslist ad, she most definitely hadn’t expected to be marrying into the leadership of a tribe of werewolves. No matter how much she liked Haley, or how strong her romantic feelings for Nashoba were, she just couldn’t see herself taking the next step of becoming his mate. Better to break it off now than to get any deeper and give Nashoba hope that she might actually marry him.

“I think I have to leave,” she said softly when Nashoba pulled into the B&B and shut off the truck’s engine.

“
Are you sure that’s what’s best? I won’t stand in your way if that’s your final decision.”

Akala had her hand on the door handle but hesitated in opening it. “It’s not that I want to leave you just yet, but that I need some space to think this all through.”

“I can take you to the airport tonight. If you get home and change your mind about me and about this place, all you have to do is ask and I’ll fly you back down here.”

With nothing more to say, Akala opened the truck door and went into the B&B to pack her bags.