Page 1 of The Alpha's Pregnant Mate

Chapter 1 - Rhietta

Rhietta drew a deep breath through the cloth that covered her mouth and nose, wishing the flimsy fabric could do more to stifle the stench of demon flesh. There was no getting used to that smell. She’d become desensitized to plenty of other smells over the last few days. The smell of smoke from the burning woods around them, even the stench of blood from her pack’s collection of half-healed wounds—these she could put out of her mind. But something about the stink of demon flesh was impossible to shut out. It was probably some ancestral thing, she’d realized. A reaction to the ancient enemy of wolfkind, deeper than thought, embedded in the very magic that made them what they were. A useful defense mechanism, to be put immediately on guard at the faintest indication that demons were approaching.

But what about when the demons were already here? When they’d been here for days, with no sign that their assault would be relenting any time soon? After the first few buildings had fallen and the pack had made the decision to pull back to the town’s center, they’d stopped ringing the alarm bell. With the whole pack inside, there’d been no point in sounding the alarm any longer. It was a shame that her wolf hadn’t gotten the message, Rhietta thought now. And looking around at the exhausted faces of her pack, she knew she wasn’t the only one having trouble getting any rest.

They were all slumped around the remains of a fire they’d built in the center of the cleared floor of what had once been the settlement's intended town hall. It had to be a few hours past midnight at least, though Rhietta wasn’t sure. They’d given up on keeping track of the time; all anyone really cared about was how far away dawn was, and even sunrise wouldn’t bring much hope along with it. Not now that she’d made the decision to fall back—the decision, she felt a treacherous voice whisper, to give up.

“We did the right thing, Rhi.” Her best friend’s voice broke into her reflections at the same time as she felt her squeeze her hand. Silea had always had a supernatural sense for when Rhietta needed reassurance, but something told her that even without that gift, she’d have known something was wrong. Rhietta had always worn her heart on her sleeve. Her father had warned her it wasn’t a good quality in a leader, to be so transparent about what she was feeling all the time…but her father wasn’t here now, was he? She felt tears welling up in her eyes, felt Silea squeeze her hand even tighter. “You know you made the right call, right?”

“It’s hard to feel good about just letting the demons take everything we’ve worked for,” Rhietta said softly, keeping her voice low. She knew better than to think that the rest of the pack were having any more luck getting to sleep than she was, but if anyone had somehow managed to slip into merciful unconsciousness, she wasn’t going to let her voice be the thing that dragged them back out again.

“Not everything.” Silea squeezed her hand again. “No casualties, Rhi. Everyone lived. Do you have any idea how big a deal that is?”

Rhietta nodded, trying to make herself believe what her friend was saying. There were a few injuries, of course, but the outcomes of the last few days could have been a lot worse. The pack had lost their homes, many of their belongings, and the vast majority of the settlement they’d built here over the last year…but nobody had lost their life. Nobody had lost a loved one. She knew she had to hold onto that small victory and the hope it represented, if they were going to have any hope of getting through this. Still…

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said softly, her eyes on the smoldering remains of the fire. “That was the last of the food stores.” They’d had more originally, of course. One of Rhietta’s first priorities, when the pack had first settled here, had been to make sure that the little settlement was well-equipped in the event of a lean winter. They’d stored away a few months’ worth of supplies in case of an emergency. But what hadn’t been destroyed by the wildfires that had swept through their town had quickly been spoiled and sabotaged by the opportunistic bands of demons that followed, as if drawn by the magnetic pull of disaster.

“We’re wolves,” Silea said bracingly. “We’ll hunt. We’ll fish. We’ll be nomads again for a little while. We did okay when we first got here, didn’t we?”

Rhietta cast her memory back to what felt like a lifetime ago. Could it really only have been a year since they’d made the long journey from their old home back to Kurivon? So much had changed since then…she barely felt like the same person any longer. And could she really call this the same pack? It had been a different Alpha who’d answered the call to settle this ferocious foreign island, a different Alpha who had led them here full of hope and determination to build a new future. An Alpha whose absence still burned in Rhietta’s heart every day that passed. Every wolf there had grieved when Alpha Lowell had fallen in battle a scant handful of days after they’d arrived here on Ravil Island. But Rhietta was grieving not only her Alpha but her father.

And that had only been the start of their troubles.

“Rhi?” Rhietta started a little, realizing that she’d been staring into space while her friend waited for a response. Silea smiled her lopsided smile, the slight asymmetry always more pronounced when she was tired. “I said we did it before, we can do it again. Right?

Rhietta bit her lip. It was usually the right move to agree with Silea—there was a reason her best friend was also one of her most trusted lieutenants. She was sharp as a knife and had excellent instincts. But right now, Rhietta could tell she wasn’t listening to those instincts. Right now, her best friend was just trying to make her feel better.

“Right?” Silea prompted again.

“We’ve got less than half the numbers we had back then,” Rhietta pointed out softly, nodding around the circle at the sleeping forms of their pack. Silea stiffened a little. That particular elephant in the room was one that the pack did their best not to talk about. The pack had been sixty wolves strong when they made the journey to the Kurivon Archipelago a year ago. Right now, there were twenty-five wolves in this room—two of whom hadn’t even been born when the pack first arrived. “Silea, I appreciate you’re trying to look on the bright side, but we simply aren’t in the same position we were back then.”

“And whose fault is that?” Silea muttered. Even in the low light of the fire, Rhietta could see the tightness in her friend’s jaw, the muted anger blazing in her eyes. Nobody had fought more passionately in support of her bid to take over the pack after the unexpected death of her father, and nobody had been more furious when that bid was supported by less than half of the pack.

“That doesn’t matter now,” Rhietta said, bracing herself for what she knew was going to be a difficult conversation. “Silea, you know what we have to do.”

“No,” her friend said immediately, eyes filling with horror. “Rhi, no. You don’t have to—we’d never want you to—”

“We don’t have a choice, Silea,” Rhietta said as gently as she could. It was her turn to squeeze Silea’s hand. Her friend barely seemed to notice the touch, her silver eyes flickering as her mind visibly raced. Rhietta almost laughed; it was like looking in a mirror. “I know what you’re thinking. I’ve been going over and over this in my head for three days straight, Si. If there was any other way—”

“There has to be,” Silea snapped. Her voice had been steadily growing in volume—Rhietta was aware that the bodies around them were shifting, that more and more of the pack were paying attention to this conversation. Well, that was fine by her. She kept very little from her pack—another trait that had always made her father despair. Oversharing, he called it. But in the same breath, he’d compliment her instincts for leadership, her incredible ability to build rapport and trust even with wolves she’d only just met. He’d never quite understood that what he saw as a fundamental flaw in his daughter was the very thing that underpinned the gifts he so admired in her. Her vulnerability, her willingness to share even her most embarrassing, authentic self with her followers…that was precisely why they’d chosen to follow her as Alpha, even when the stakes could not possibly have been higher.

The wolves gathered around this campfire right now had trusted her with their lives. And as that simple, overwhelming truth reasserted itself in her mind again, Rhietta felt a sudden calm wash over her. Her best friend seemed to sense it, too; she saw Silea bite her lip and lapse into a brooding silence.

Rhietta smiled, then raised her own voice, just a little. “I can hear you all pretending to be asleep.”

A few soft huffs of laughter. One by one, her wolves sat up, drawing in close around the remains of the fire. Eventually, she could see all of their faces, lined by exhaustion and worry, but still so full of trust when they looked at her that she felt the familiar warmth of tears welling up in her eyes. Nobody batted an eyelid. Anyone who was uncomfortable with seeing their Alpha cry wouldn’t have lasted long under her leadership, that was for sure.

She’d intended to wait until morning before having this conversation with the pack, wanting them to get what rest they could given the circumstances, but it was clear that sleep was out of the question for all but the youngest members—two babies, still mercifully asleep in their parents’ arms. Rhietta kept her voice soft as she spoke, summing up the situation as frankly as she could. The settlement they’d been hard at work building for almost a year was all but gone. The building they were sheltering in was all that was left—what hadn’t been claimed by the sudden rash of wildfires had since been destroyed by the opportunistic demons, unnatural aftershocks to natural disaster. And as hard as it was to face the loss of all that hard work, that didn’t change what needed to happen next.

“We have to go to the other pack for shelter,” Rhietta said. The words were easy enough to speak; it was the action they described she was still trying not to think about. The reaction from her wolves was immediate—a mixture of denial and fury, expressions identical to the one that Silea had worn. But few of them were surprised by the suggestion. The other pack hadn’t been far from their minds either, then.

Strange to think that it had been a whole year since the others had left them. Some part of her simply hadn’t acknowledged that they were gone, had filed their absence away as a troubling anomaly, as if they were just late back from a hunting trip or something. Occasionally, she’d still find herself frowning when a head count of the pack came up shorter than expected, and have to remind herself that twenty-five represented the pack’s full strength. The others—well, the others had made their choice. Rhietta still wondered whether she herself had made the right call back then. Wracked by the grief of her father’s sudden loss, still working hard to become accustomed to their strange new home…she’d hardly been in a fit state to work out the finer points of pack politics. And Laurent…even the thought of him cast a shadow across her heart. Laurent had been relentless. Merciless, clinical, cold—he’d dissected her every flaw in front of the gathered pack with a terrifying remoteness. Too young to lead, too inexperienced, too emotional—a claim that had only been supported, she remembered, by the tears that had been streaming down her cheeks. She’d never felt so ashamed of the strength of her feelings. Laurent’s formal challenge to her leadership had ranked as one of the worst days in her entire life.

But, she reminded herself as she looked around at the pack huddled around her, it had also been one of the best. Because just when she thought she was going to crumble into dust and blow away with the humiliation, her pack had spoken for her. It had been Silea who’d broken the numbing silence first, she’d never forget that, but many voices had followed hers. Voices of support, insisting that Alpha Lowell had made it clear that his daughter would be his successor in the event of his death—that Rhietta was their rightful Alpha, and they wouldn’t hear another treasonous word from Laurent.

It hadn’t done much to stem her tears, that was certain, but then they were tears of gratitude, of overwhelming joy. And through the maelstrom of emotion that had raged through her, Rhietta had done the one thing her father had always told her to do. She’d followed her instincts. And her instincts told her to keep her wolves safe. The pack was divided into two opposing sides - one that supported Rhietta’s claim, one that supported Laurent’s, and as the argument wore on between them, it became clear that neither side was going to give in. There was too much at stake here—a dangerous new environment to tame, a new home to build, a future to plan for. Rhietta knew her pack. She knew how stubborn they were, how strong. Sooner or later, the frustration of this stalemate would give way to civil war.

For a moment, she’d considered relinquishing her claim to leadership. Stepping down, handing control over to Laurent, agreeing to bow to his wisdom, his knowledge, his training, his experience. But then she saw the passion in the faces of her supporters as they argued for her. How could she let them down? How could she tell them they were wrong to support her? And what would her father have said, if he’d known that her first act as Alpha of the pack had been to disregard his wishes and hand leadership to someone else?

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