Page 5 of Possessive Alpha

I have my back to him as he lowers his mouth to my ear. “When my mate takes one look at me and runs, I assume she might need time to work something out. Maybe even that a big alpha intimidates her.”

It’s not his size that intimidates me. It’s the thought of having to choose between my mate and my sister.

Mia, Lucia, and Wayne, currently hanging out on the porch, eye me curiously. I don’t think they can hear, Ty is speaking that quietly.

“You don’t scare me.” I twist my wrist, a sign for him to let me go.

He releases me immediately, and I take another step toward the porch, but Ty hasn’t finished with me yet.

This time, he speaks loud enough for everyone to hear.

“I’ve given you time to get used to the idea of you and me, but I’ve had enough of waiting. If you won’t come to me, I’ll go to you.” His voice is deep, thick with a promise I couldn’t miss even if I wanted to. “You’re mine, Martha, and I mean to claim you.”

I jog up the porch stairs and into the house, head down, hoping my sister is nowhere close by to have overheard Ty’s dangerous words.

Words that threaten to rip us apart.

CHAPTER 3

“Regan and I have been thinking about what this pack might need.” Jackson begins the pack meeting sitting in his armchair in the den. He has Regan perched on the edge, with his arm wrapped around her waist.

The den is a space I love to hang out in the most. Cozy, warm, and flooded with natural light most days from the four oversized windows. Pack meetings don’t happen often here, less frequently than we had them in my old, more traditional pack.

Here, it’s informal. Everyone spreads across the couches, sipping tea and hot chocolate from mugs, and they rarely last longer than fifteen minutes. Mostly, it’s a check-in. Jackson and Regan give us a quick rundown of any upcoming big changes. If there was any trouble recently, how they dealt with it so it won’t happen again.

I like the meetings, mostly because I like Jackson and Regan.

Both are relaxed and comfortable in each other’s presence, and they’re good at making us the same way.

When Jackson draws Regan closer to him, my heart pangs at how nice it would be to cuddle up with someone like that.

My eyes, the traitorous things they are, find Ty standing feet away. To no surprise ever, he’s leaning against the nearest wall to me, arms folded, forest-green orbs fixed on me.

I look away, pretending I’m absorbed in listening to Jackson.

And I pretend even harder when footsteps move closer and halt directly behind me. With Clara sharing the two-seater love seat, he couldn’t squeeze on even if he wanted to.

I make a mental note to hug Clara for thinking to pick this seat for us.

Jackson’s gaze briefly settles over my right shoulder, and I wait to see if he’ll say anything about the alpha I swear is breathing down my neck. After a beat, his gaze moves on, sweeping over the fifteen or so assembled members of the pack.

Not everyone is here.

There are about twenty of us now, though the number grows and shrinks often. Some faces are becoming more familiar than others, and those are the ones who I know have decided to stay.

Mia, Lucia, Travis, and Wayne have been here even longer than I have. Riley, at fifteen, has been here the longest and is the youngest among us. Regan likes to call him her resident cookie taster, and Regan told me she’d initially believed he was a wild wolf when she first met him.

There are others, though it’s not as easy to focus on them when I’m painfully aware that Ty is standing somewhere behind me.

Those are the ones who feel like packmates, who I greet at mealtimes, and who I play with when we go on pack runs. I never thought I’d ever meet people who would feel like family after Clara and I lost ours, yet, impossibly, I have.

“The house is large enough for everyone to have their own bedroom, but Regan thought some of you might occasionally want somewhere quieter to relax. Or even to stay. Her old alpha, Dayne, built a cabin for his mate. I like the idea of building some here.”

Before Jackson has finished speaking, a handful of people are already nodding.

We’re all strays here, and I can’t have been the only one to have struggled at first to deal with having so many around. Maybe some are still struggling and would like to stay because going from being alone and relying on yourself to living in a big house with dozens of people is too much.

“Regan and I have been talking about the best place to build one or even two-room cabins. Since we won’t be the ones living in them, we wanted to get your thoughts,” Jackson continues.

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