Page 3 of Claimed by the Pack

2

Ridge

The spell was broken by the sound of Cheyenne's friend Marta's voice.

“Here you go,” she said, “One Cosmopolitan. Hi Ridge.”

Cheyenne introduced her friends to me the first night we met. They seemed like nice enough girls but I preferred having her to myself. Growing up mostly in the woods, as a wolf, I didn't have a lot of experience being around groups of women.

They tend to whisper and giggle too much for my taste. I was a very direct guy and all that whispering and giggling kind of annoyed me. I felt like if you had something to say, you should just say it. If it were simply up to me, and I thought it wouldn't freak her out, I would tell Cheyenne how I felt and then I'd take her to the woods, and change her. I could feel her vibes. I knew she was having feelings for me, but in typical human fashion, she was fighting them.

“Hello Marta,” I said, politely, while hoping she'd go away. “So nice to see you again.”

“You too,” she said. She whispered something into Cheyenne's ear and they both giggled. Then Cheyenne said,

“Go on. I'm okay.” To me she said, “So are you here with your friend Chase again tonight?” I'd introduced Chase to Cheyenne the first night I met her. Something about the vibe between them made me change my mind about having him around when I talked to her though. Their vibe wasn't nowhere near as strong as mine and hers...but, it was there and I didn't like it. I respected my alphas and their ability to share Chelsea, but I didn't like to share, and when I got Cheyenne to believe she was my mate, I wasn't about to share her with anyone.

“Yes,” I said. “He's on the prowl out there somewhere.”

Poor Chase didn't have much luck with women. He was a good-looking guy, I guess, but he had no idea how to talk to a woman. I was just winging it myself most of the time, but it seemed to work for me a lot more often than it did him.

Cheyenne's eyes scanned the crowd on the dance floor and I felt a tickle of jealousy, thinking she was looking for him. The sudden loud burst of laughter from a table behind us prompted her to smile herself and say, “Hopefully he's careful. It sounds like the hyenas are out in full force.”

I laughed too.

I loved that she had a sense of humor. I loved that she was just so real, and I told her so.

“You're not just another pretty face. You have wit as well.”

I watched the color rise in her cheeks. “Sure, whatever you say,” she said, picking up her drink and hiding her face behind it for several seconds. I watched her eyes scan my face. It was like she was always trying to figure out what I was thinking...or why I was with her. I couldn't figure out how she didn't know how incredibly beautiful, and sexy she was. When she was mine, I would spend the rest of our lives proving it to her.

“So there's a question I've been wanting to ask you, Cheyenne. Why don't you have a boyfriend? You're much too wonderful to be alone.”

Another blush and then a slight roll of her eyes like she thought I was simply using my lines on her. “I haven't had the best of luck with relationships,” she said, leaving it at that.

“Hmm, sounds like you've been looking for long-term in temporary people. Some men have no idea how lucky they are to have a beautiful, sexy, funny, smart woman, until it's too late.”

Her blush grew darker and she said, “You don't have to say things like that. I'm happy to just sit and talk to you, about real things.”

I raised an eyebrow and said, “All I ever talk about are real things. You, Cheyenne, are the realest thing I see in this club and I meant every word I just said.”

She was fidgeting with a straw with both of her hands and not looking at me when she said, “You could have any woman you want in this club...any woman on the island. You can't expect me to believe that you look around this room and see all these gorgeous women and truly believe that I'm the most beautiful.”

I reached over and put my fingers underneath her chin and tipped her face up so she would be forced to look at me.

“I do expect you to believe it, Cheyenne, because it's true. Take a walk with me, Cheyenne, in the moonlight. Let's get out of this stuffy place and get some fresh air.”

Her eyes widened and I saw her scan the room for her friends. This was the part about that old fashioned way, that annoyed me. I was too impatient to wait until she began to believe I genuinely had feelings for her, and she ran it by her friends and her family. I wanted her...right now. “Um...I'm not sure that's such a good idea.”

I covered her hand with mine, stopping the fidgeting, and looked into her eyes and said, “Cheyenne, you don't think I'm going to hurt you, do you? I would never hurt a woman, especially not you. You would be safer with me than anywhere in the world, I guarantee you that. Did I tell you that I work for The Pack?”

The Pack was the name of our security company, and it was quickly gaining a sterling reputation on the island. We didn't have police of our own. They had to come over from Bali or Komodo and sometimes that took too long. The citizens had begun to turn to us for many of their safety needs. The alphas, Courtney's mates, had begun installing security cameras in some of the darker places in town where crime had increased in recent years and so far in the short time we'd been there, our pack had been responsible for the apprehension of over a dozen criminals who had been terrorizing the locals for a long time before we even got there.

I could tell by the look on Cheyenne's face that she knew exactly who The Pack was.

“Your company does a lot of business with the company I work for,” she said. “My boss used to have a company come over from Bali to install the security systems on the new properties he built, but he's been using your company almost exclusively for months now.”

“Awesome,” I told her with a wink. “So see, there's a connection between us that should make you feel more comfortable with me.”

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