Page 12 of Kidnapped By the Alpha

“All I want is the opportunity to serve you and do my duty to the pack,” I said quietly, bowing my head in submission. “Would you please take me outside and show me your home?”

He huffed in annoyance, but I had been right. “I have fifteen minutes before I need to leave,” he said. “I’ll show you around the camp, but that is all. If you try to escape, I will kill you without a second thought. Is that understood?” His dark eyes were stormy, and I believed he meant what he said.

“Yes,” I answered.

He nodded and opened the door with a mocking wave of his arm to allow me to pass through. I walked outside and blinked in the sunlight. Before my eyes could adjust fully, he was out the door, ordering me to follow him.

“My cabin is here, on the end of the row.” He indicated the building we had just departed from and continued walking along the front side of the row. “The cabins on this side are for my officers and warriors.”

“Yours is smaller than these other ones,” I noted.

“I wanted privacy,” Jasper replied. “It only made sense for me to take the smallest cabin for myself. We don’t have enough buildings for everyone, so most of the pack has to share.”

I hadn’t considered that the Dark Moon Pack was low on space, but it made sense. From what I had gathered, they had been taking in as many wolves as they could to add to theirnumbers. It was bound to get a little cramped on their pack lands.

What really surprised me, though, was that Jasper hadn’t taken one of the larger dwellings. As the alpha, it would have been his right to do so, regardless of whether he had been sharing it or not. To take the smaller dwelling meant that he must—at least in part—care about the comfort and safety of his pack.

We walked down the rest of the row without speaking and turned toward the back of the houses. I saw that the tables in the middle of the cabins were nearly empty. The young men had finished their breakfast and left their dishes scattered on the tabletops. A handful of women were moving between the tables, placing the dishes into buckets and carrying them to a large basin near the fire.

“Are they a part of the pack?” I asked Jasper.

Most of the women appeared to be advanced in age, but there were also a few children of both sexes. All of them were dirty and unkempt, unlike the men I had seen when I had woken up from my kidnapping. I was surprised at the stark difference between their appearances.

“Yes,” he replied, almost reluctantly. I couldn’t fully read the meaning behind his tone, but it seemed as though he wished they weren’t. I looked at him questioningly, hoping he would expand upon his answer. He sighed and obliged my curiosity.

“The women owe me their fealty, but they don’t hold much of a role in the pack,” he explained. “Mostly, they do the cooking, cleaning, and general caretaking.”

“And the children?” I pressed.

“They’re children,” he said simply.

“But where did they come from? Whose children are they?”

“Runaways and orphans, mostly,” Jasper said with a shrug. “The pack will take in any child under the age of fifteen who needs a home.”

The shock must have registered on my face because Jasper turned away from me.

“Come on,” he said. “Time to go back.”

He began to walk back toward our cabin, and I followed behind him while considering what I had learned. I had thought I was mated to a man with no heart, but maybe I had been wrong about that. He was still evil and incorrect in many of his beliefs and actions, but he obviously had a soft spot for these children.

In spite of Jasper’s willingness to give them a home, all of the children seemed to be struggling with their lives here. Their clothes were ill-fitting, and many lacked shoes, but I was glad to see that they appeared to be well-fed.

Neither the children nor the old women held any kind of power and would be useless in helping me escape my fate. But if I had to make a home here, then I would make it my mission to care for the pack’s lowest members.

Back at the cabin, Jasper opened the door, and I went inside. He hesitated before shutting the door, appearing to be contemplating something.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he responded before shutting the door behind him.

I heard his footsteps as he walked away, but it wasn’t until he had been gone for a few minutes that I realized something. Jasper hadn’t put the padlock on the door.

The only question was whether it was because he trusted me, or because he wanted to test me.

Chapter 7 - Jasper

The morning hadn’t started as I’d expected, and I was anxious to get my head back into the game and focus on the task at hand: finding the werewolf pack that resided in Pinedale and making a plan to infiltrate them.

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