Page 3 of The Alpha's Arranged Bride

“You have the kind of face that broadcasts your every emotion. I know better than to try to ask you to change. I’m not here to make you unhappy or stifle you. I’m honestly just trying to do right by you as I promised I would.” He should likely have led with that. She might have seen him as trying to gentle her, not break her.

“I see that,” she muttered darkly with heavy sarcasm.

Agnar let her have her peace, returning to staring out the window. Soon, they’d drop off the rental, reclaim their truck, and be back home where he could breathe again.

Possibly. He had a feeling he’d be getting into a few fights of his own over what might be said by those who didn’t approve of his new peace and took it out on his new mate before the night was over.

Chapter 2

Prairie Rose

Despite the auspicious warning during the drive before they reached Sedona and exchanged the rental SUV for a truck so lifted, modified, and heavy that it looked like something out of apocalyptic movie, nothing could have prepared her for the shocking land and people she now belonged to.

They’d driven for what felt like forever, leaving the main road and heading down dirt paths. She wished they’d made the journey in the daylight so she could see more than just flashes of the red cliffs and towering striated buttes. She’d barely been able to sight any vegetation as it flashed by in the headlights. The promised token images of massive cactuses or sandy hills hadn’t been a reality for her yet.

The desert never opened up or made way for civilization. There was no modern oasis. Just a chain link fence with rolls of barbed wire on top that turned into a stone wall on the back with high lookout towers. It reminded her, shockingly, of a prison.

She was wedged into the backseat beside Ireland, who was slight of build but still huge, and Bathos, who was not slight of anything. It was a struggle not to put her elbows into either of them and wedge them over so she had room to breathe. She’d thought the desert was supposed to be a hot, scorched place, but the cool air that rushed through the Gideon’s driver side window when he rolled it down to greet the man guarding the gate was cool.

They were waved through the gate, the whine of the electronics on the fencing slamming shut behind them, locking them in.

“People think we live in a cult,” Ireland scoffed. “With the Earthships and the compound with all our apartments, I’m sure it must look that way. The whole area’s a hotspot for tourists now. They come out this way sometimes, thinking it’s a good place to host some kind of music festival or get away from society. Others must think it’s a prison and they stay clear. Either way, the fence keeps them out and we’ll shoot down any drones we might see. There have been a few.”

She didn’t ask if that was legal. If they’d survived out here without humans interfering for so long, it must be because the local police were either taken care of, or because they just couldn’t care less about a few odd acres of private land with some high fencing in the middle of nowhere. It had probably been searched once or twice and likely everyone was satisfied it wasn’t any sort of drug operation or that people were being locked up there to be trafficked or something else sinister and illegal.

Ireland answered that unspoken question. “We’re technically registered as some sort of religious institution, and no one gives any trouble. It allows great tax benefits as well.”

“Don’t people come wanting to join, though? The fanatical ones?”

“Not very many can even find us out here, and those who might give it a try are soon enough chased off. They get nervous when we don’t open the gates, and in the dead of night they hear wolves calling in the unprotected wilds of the desert. Of course, nothing happens to them. We see to that because we don’t want to fight with humans.”

“We had enough trouble with our own kind.” Bathos offered.

That still disturbed her far more than she wanted to admit. She’d known only peace for so long in her own pack, but she knew it wasn’t always so.

Gideon drove the truck straight into the heart of the enclosure. She was able to see through the windshield if she looked straight on, a long white structure that curved around in an L shape. It had a flat roof and looked to be made of some kind of concrete. A bunker? Barracks? Maybe that was the apartment block they’d just mentioned.

She hadn’t even climbed out of the truck yet and the whole area had a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ vibe about it that brought to mind experiments, aliens, and wild festivals.

All four doors of the truck opened like the men planned a synchronized exit. She was left suddenly alone in the back on the bench.

She shivered even though she wasn’t cold. She’d worn her best wool sweater, thinking she could shuck it along the way and a pair of leggings under her vintage dress. As she climbed out of the truck, she was glad for it. She’d always heard the desert was cold at night, but she was struck by the crispness of the air. Still, she was used to winter in Wyoming. They’d done their mating ceremony outside, in the middle of a blizzard.

Her wolf howled with danger and thrashed uncomfortably within her as she took in the elongated buildings in the distance and the flat, squat building with all the doors and small square windows near where they’d stopped. It looked like a seedy motel.

“Come,” Agnar commanded briskly. “We walk to our ceremonial site.”

He wasn’t a man to wait around and take her hand. He didn’t ask her if she needed anything or care that her equilibrium was way the hell off. To him, she’d given her word, he’d prepared her accordingly with harsh words along the way, and that was all that was needed.

She left her bag sitting out in the back of the truck and hurried to keep up with the men who stalked ahead, hulking black shadows in the night. As they got further past the buildings, there seemed to be a garden and several greenhouses. That made her heart quicken with joy. There was nothing she loved more than gardening. Vegetables, flowers, and herbs, she loved all of it in equal measure. She took little joy in cooking, was hopeless at flower arrangements, and was less than useless when it came to practicing medicine, but from planting to harvest she excelled.

Prairie Rose was taken aback at the way the chain link fence continued on, those rolls of gleaming, razor sharp barbed wire glistening sinisterly in the moonlight. Was the whole of their land fenced? Likely only their living areas, food, water, and ceremonial places would be fenced to keep them safe from intruders of all sorts and attackers alike.

She’d worn sturdy hiking boots under her dress, well broken-in during Wyoming spring, summer, and autumn months. She couldn’t see the red of the earth beneath her feet, but it had a strange smell. The whole of the air did. It was earthy in a way the forest wasn’t. She missed the sharp pine scent or the bright hay and wildflower aroma of home. But the stars here… they burned with a bright magnificence, so clear that they rivalled even the northern sky where she’d grown from a child into a woman. She turned her face up to the nearly full moon. Another pang of homesickness shot through her. They’d be having the full moon celebration soon. Half of her wanted to be there, celebrating the way she knew how, a way that seemed familiar and was safe. She wanted to be among the faces of the people she knew and loved, not here in a land of strangers. But the other half of her, that half that always craved adventure, wanted to see the world more than anything.

Of course, she never had. She’d never done anything crazy except lie to her parents and the rest of her family over ten years ago for Sagen, a wolf from a pack not so far from theirs. He’d mated another in the end, but she’d never asked him for anything, and he’d promised her nothing in return. She wasn’t heartbroken.

She had nothing to do but think as she walked. Not one of the four men turned around to make sure she was still there or ask her if she was alright. These weren’t sensitive, kind people. It probably never occurred to them to check on her.

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