Page 28 of Forced By the Alpha

Devon yanked his shirt off over his head and started to clean her up, wiping off the mess he’d made all over her. “If we don’t clean this soon, it won’t be the noise in the garden that gives us away.”

Watching him like that, shirtless and caring, was starting another knot of heat at the base of her spine. She cleared her throat and looked up at the sunlight dappling the canopy above her. Had she really just done that? Outside? With the White Winter alpha? Every part of it made her head spin.

But there wasn’t a hint of regret inside of her. Her desire for Devon, the physical part of it, was as natural as breathing. Uncomplicated. Inescapable. It was everything else about them that resembled a tangled web.

He tucked his shirt into his pocket and pulled her back in. She lingered there longer than she should have, listening to his heartbeat beneath her cheek. It didn’t sound like a tainted, warped thing. It was steady, still quick with passion, and beating for her alone. If she could see it, peer into his chest, and study it there, would she spot a core of darkness? Or was it a single thread of black, veining through it, something she could excise with a snip?

She looped her arm through his, taking the long way back through the garden to the house. They passed the turtle, still on his rock, and she nudged Devon.

“Still happy,” she said.

“All his success was handed to him,” he replied. Then, to the turtle, “Shame on you.”

“You’re ridiculous.” Impulsively, she asked what had been circling in her mind since their last conversation about the territories. “What is the next step? For the White Winters, I mean.”

She expected his face to shutter as it always had before. This time, he frowned, but his eyes didn’t darken in the way she’d grown used to. He was thoughtful, and it was a moment before he responded.

“The pack requires regular shows of strength. We’ve made progress, but that’s the way it is for now, and if I don’t perform well, Emma will be at my throat. A raid, a hunt, something like that. I need to push the territory boundary a little farther.”

“Devon,” Beth protested, squeezing his arm.

“It’s not what I want, but your plan will take time. We need to make contact with the Rosewoods and get a message to their alpha for a meeting. In the meantime, if I let the pack get unruly and, let’s face it, bloodthirsty, they’ll be less receptive to negotiation as a means to acquiring this land. They might take matters into their own hands.”

Beth shivered. It wasn’t hard to imagine the White Winter pack doing exactly that. Hurting for sport. Running rampant through a town just to watch the people suffer.

That reminded her of something.

“Why do you let Caleb carry on a relationship with a human? I’ve heard him talk about a woman named Amy in town, and it’s pretty obvious that Emma wants her dead. Aren’t you worried things will get messy, given the nature of the two of them?”

He swallowed guiltily. “I hadn’t really thought about it, to be honest with you. I was kind of glad that he was backing off of Em. For a while, I was worried it was going to get messy between the two of them and Jonah.”

“I don’t know what Jonah sees in her. He’s too sweet for that.” She knew, of course, what Jonah saw in Emma—she was gorgeous.

They left the shade of the garden and the illusion of peace with it. With the White Winter house looming over her like a constant reminder, there was no way for Beth to pretend that Devon was not her captor. She pulled her arm free and wrapped it around herself instead. He shoved his hands in his pockets.

“She wasn’t always this bad, you know. Everyone here is more than their reputation, more than their worst days. I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but people are driven to do desperate, awful things.”

Beth looked past him, over his shoulder. It was easier to keep her anger hot when she wasn’t looking into his eyes.

“Desperate people don’t always do awful things. And look at this place,” she said, waving her hand to the palatial house beside them, “maybe they were outcasts once, struggling to find their place. They’re not anymore. There’s no excuse.”

“Sometimes, you spend so long in that dark place, doing whatever you have to, that you don’t know how to find your way out again.”

His voice was pained, frustrated. He was pulling away from her, like always when she pushed too much on this topic.

She didn’t want to let it go this time.

“Then we drag them back kicking and screaming if we have to.”

“All that work for this band of killers?” He cocked an eyebrow at her and started up the stairs to the house, leaving her trailing behind.

“If you don’t ever believe they can be more,” she continued, catching up to him and grabbing his arm, “then they won’t be.”

He towered over her, two steps above. “And if they don’t believe it themselves? If they don’t even want it?”

She had thought of it. Despite what Devon thought, she wasn’t so naive as to think everyone was redeemable. Emma, probably, would never be able to overcome her nature. She seemed determined to be cruel in every possible way. But Jonah? Caleb? There were sparks in them.

“We just have to show them. We have to lead them.” She watched her words land on him like he was shouldering a burden. Not for the first, she wondered why he had ever wanted to be alpha.

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