Page 1 of Claimed by the Pack

1

Ridge

“Chelsea will skin you alive, Ridge.”

I rolledmy eyes at my always worried friend, Chase. We called him Chase because all he did most days was chase his own tail. Chelsea, our female alpha and the leader of our pack, took pity on him when she took him in, I think. Chase is a nice guy and if we hadn't taken him in he'd be alone on an island and in constant danger from other, established packs. Normally the male and female alphas would chase away a lone wolf, maybe even kill him. But our pack is different. It was started by Chelsea and her four mates. Yes, I said four. I know it's slightly unorthodox, but it works for us. The fact that our alphas all five spent most of their lives as strictly human is probably the most unorthodox part of it all, but like I said, it works.

The pack was formedin the deserts of Afghanistan and the five of them, along with their pup, traveled to Bali, looking for a place to start over. Along the way they've collected strays, myself being one of them.

The pack is about 20 strong now. Mostly males, pups and old women. As my name might imply, I was found wandering along a ridge on Komodo Island. My family was killed, my pack, all of them except for myself and a younger pup named Grayson who I'd been told to protect. Grayson was the son of the alpha and it was important to the pack he survive. I'm a beta, but was one of the strongest of our pack, so that's how I ended up with the assignment.

I don't necessarily blame the humans. We had a renegade omega in our pack. He was killing farm animals then humans. Before he could be dealt with, the humans came for all of us. They didn't know what we were, they just believed they were dealing with an overpopulation of wolves.

Chelseaand her mates found Grayson and me and invited us in, with open arms. Since then, we have both learned a lot about being human as well as being a wolf. Our pack lived mostly in our fur and sometimes we were hungry and cold. Since we've joined up with Chelsea's pack, our bellies have always been full, we've slept warm and dry at night and we lived more as human than wolf, which I was getting used to.

My only complaint was the lack of females in our pack. Chelsea had no objection to us finding a human mate, but she wanted us to do that the old fashioned way. I'm 23. I need a mate, and I hate to say it, but I don't see anything wrong with the way my kind has done it for God knows how long.

“I'm not going to hurt her,” I told Chase. “I'd never hurt a woman.”

“You're just going to drug her a little bit.”

“You know how much respect I have for Chelsea and her mates, but they all lived most of their lives as humans. She doesn't understand the old ways. She's coming around to a few of them...”

“But, she specifically forbade us from using the drug for mating.”

“I'm done curling up alone at night, Chase. I'll take the consequences. I'll handle it. I want this woman and she won't give me the time of day.”

“Maybe that means she's not interested.”

“She's afraid. She's had a bad go of it with men. I'll show her a whole new world.”

“And that's what concerns the pack. You show her our world and she tells everyone else and then we're exterminated the way your pack was, and mine.”

Chase was foundon the island of Bali where the pack had intended on settling. He'd come from a very small pack. Some of them died off from hunger or old age, but the majority of them had been hunted. Chase was a pup when he lost the last of his pack. He survived, barely, high up in the woods, alone.

Like me, he knew little to nothing about functioning as a human. The Pack found him and took him in.

He’s got a lot to learn, but his heart is in the right place.

Bali was where the Pack intended to settle, originally, but they found it to be too overpopulated mostly thanks to all of the tourists.

The Pack moved onto Komodo Island from Bali and finally settled on an island just north of Komodo. It's unincorporated and many people don't know about it. The population is under a thousand counting our little pack. There are plenty of places for us to run and hunt and frolic in the woods without drawing attention.

We can blend with humans easily most of the time, but keeping us in our human skin too long is like keeping us in a cage.

The locals call the island “Surga” which in Indonesia means, “Paradise,” and I would agree that it was, if not for the lack of females.

My main problem with doing things the old fashioned way as a human was that it took so much time. You couldn't just spring who and what you were on them without running for the hills, or the cops.

In my world we mated with another wolf, or we used the drug for humans. By the time they woke up, they were one of us. Sometimes it was slightly traumatic for them, but I've never seen one that didn't come around...eventually.

I wanted to do it the way my parents had done it, and their parents, and my great grandparents before them, but the youngest female wolf in our pack was Chelsea, and she was certainly taken. Then, the next youngest was in her 50's. I loved her like a mother, but definitely not a mate.

“There she is,” I told Chase.

My eyes were drawn to her whenever she was in the room. Her name is Cheyenne and she's beautiful. She's from the US, Native American, she told me, in case I couldn't guess. She has that look about her. The high cheekbones, long, shiny dark hair and big, round dark eyes. Her eyelashes are so long that at first you might think they're fake, but they're not.

My favorite thing is that her body isn’t rail thin like a lot of human girls. When I first saw her, I noticed that she had curves...so many curves, curves my palms itched to explore. I could tell the few times I talked to her that she was somewhat insecure, probably because the curvy girls in Indonesia are few and far between. Her two friends that she comes out with every week are rail thin. One of them looks Indonesian and the other is a blonde, probably also from America. They're both beautiful women...but not like my Cheyenne. She was the one I wanted.

---