Page 5 of Alpha Rising (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

Sam took another sip of his drink, and Angel spoke up saying, “Most shifters get hit by the urge to find a mate, but alphas get hit particularly hard. It’s evolutionary. Nature tells them that the survival of the species—the survival of theirpack—depends on them. An alpha making his mating gambit can get seriously protective.”

“A gambit?” I asked.

“Do you know what a gambit is?” Toby asked.

“Doesn’t it have something to do with chess?”

“It’s a strategic move,” Sam said. “You sacrifice yourself in order to gain an advantage. It is a great advantage to an alpha to take a mate. It secures the pack, but to commit to someone like that first requires a sacrifice of control.Self-control. Reese’s animal side would take up much more space in his mind.”

“And body,” Angel added.

“But what does that have to do with what happened this morning?” I clenched my hands around my glass.

The three of them just stared at me patiently while my wheels slowly turned.

“Oh.” Reese’s mating gambit had something to do with me. He saw me as a potential mate?

“Oh, exactly,” Sam said. “When Uncle Joe knocked into you, it triggered Reese’s protective instincts—if not his territorial impulses, which are arguably worse.”

“But I’ve only been at the resort for seven weeks. You don’t marry someone you’ve known seven weeks. He doesn’t even know me. Not really.” I swallowed hard, remembering that Reese didn’t even know my real name.

“First,” Sam said patiently, “No one’s talking about marriage. Though becoming a mated pair can be an even greater commitment than that. Second, Reese probably got the first inkling of the mating instinct as soon as you stepped off the bus. Did you know he made a shift within minutes after that? And that was after he laid down a strict no-shifting ban.”

I had a sudden flicker of memory. My first afternoon at the lodge, seeing Reese emerge from the woods…his clothes rumpled and his hair a tousled mess... “But—”

“Third,” Toby said. “Reese knows you care about the business, which—by extension—means the family. You busted your butt to make sure we didn’t have to sell the resort after our first disastrous month. Showing concern for the best interests of an alpha shifter’s family would make a big impact on the alpha.”

“I did that because that was my job.”

“Was that all it was?” Sam asked knowingly. “What about researching that bit of patch Reese found? Was that part of your job?”

No. I’d done that for Reese. I’d done that because I knew how important it was for him to find the person responsible for his father's death.

“What research?” Angel asked, tucking his shoulder-length hair behind one ear.

Neither Sam nor I responded to that question. Sam was too busy watching my face, and I was too busy processing all they were telling me. “Reese wants me to be his mate?”

“No,” Angel said, laughing.

“What?” I’d been imagining what life would be like as a mountain lion’s mate, and his response jerked me out of my head. “I thought you just said—”

“Wesaidthat Reese has the natural urge to take a mate, and more specifically to take you as his mate. We didn’t say hewantedto do it.”

“Oh.” Well, that made sense. We’d been circling each other since the very beginning. More than once he’d insinuated that I was a royal pain in the ass.

So maybe his avoidance of me was for the best.

I really wished that truth didn’t hurt so badly.

“It’s not your fault you’re making him miserable,” Toby said. “It’s just that we’ve never seen a good example of a successful mating.”

“Your mother?” I’d never felt comfortable asking Reese about her obvious absence when he was already hurting so much from the loss of their father.

“For some reason,” Angel said, “Dad wasn’t honest with her about who or what he was. How he kept it a secret from her for as long as he did is anyone’s guess. She found out by accident when Reese’s very first shift happened right in front of her.”

Sam put his forearms to his knees and laced his hands together, leaning forward. “We don’t shift until we’re nearly out of puberty. There’s no pre-warning that it’s going to happen, and our father hadn’t properly prepared Reese for it. Maybe he thought us having a human mother meant it wouldn’t happen for any of us, but shifter genes are dominant.”

“Scared the shit out of our mother when it happened,” Angel added. “It was Reese’s seventeenth birthday.”

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