Page 9 of The Alpha's Arranged Mate

“Members of our pack?” she asked, her curiosity aroused. “Were they all at the celebration?”

Reeve hesitated. “I guess—not really? The company is my pack, but the staff on the yacht are my personal staff.”

She’d frowned, but before she could ask any follow-up questions they were being helped aboard the yacht by a couple of smiling wolves in bright white clothing that seemed unnaturally clean. Seeming to sense her discomfort with the staff (were they or were they not part of her pack, she wanted to know?) Reeve dismissed the wolves, speaking in a strange, halting tongue that she’d never heard before.

“They’re from Earth, obviously,” Reeve explained once they’d left. “It’s okay, I’ll teach you enough English to get by.”

“They’re wolves,” she said slowly. “Wolves who don’t even speak our tongue?”

“Why would they?” Reeve blinked at her, seeming genuinely nonplussed by the question. Lyrie took a deep breath, wondering whether an argument about the cultural significance of language was really the right hill to die on right now. “C’mon. I’ll show you to your room.”

She followed uneasily, stumbling occasionally at the swaying of the ship’s floor. It was like being a child again, learning to balance on two legs for the first time, and she gritted her teeth against the overwhelming desire to shift. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been in her two-legged body for this long, but the narrow hallways of the yacht clearly wouldn’t accommodate her form. The cruelty of it took her breath away. Did Reeve really force the staff on this ship to imprison themselves in their two-legged bodies in order to work for him? It was unthinkable. Surely there had to be an area somewhere in the ship where they could frolic and play as they were supposed to. It was certainly large enough.

The room was pleasant enough. More cushions and bedding than she considered at all necessary, and she didn’t much care for all the decorations on the wall, but it was a relief to see that her small collection of possessions had already been delivered—including the familiar sight of her sword in its scabbard.

“Do you think you’ll be comfortable here?” Reeve asked. She turned to meet his eyes, suppressing the habitual shiver of unease that ran through her at the resemblance to Darion. “Is there anything else you need?”

“Certainly not bedding,” she remarked drily, nodding to the bed. “Though I’m grateful that I’ll be warm. Are ships always this strangely cold?”

“Oh, the thermostat’s right here,” Reeve said, tapping at a dark square on the wall that she’d assumed was decorative. To her surprise, the square lit up with a series of unfamiliar letters and shapes that Reeve tapped at with the same easy confidence with which she handled a sword. “The up arrow will make it warmer, the down arrow will make it cooler.”

“Make what cooler?”

“The air in here.” He turned, a look of dawning realization on his face. “Oh, wow, this is your first encounter with climate control, huh? That’s exciting.”

“Climate control,” she repeated slowly, not liking the way the words felt. “You’re telling me this square controls the weather?”

“Something like that.” She didn’t like the way he was grinning at her. Did he expect her to be excited about something so foolish? Did he expect her to be grateful for the plush little prison cell he’d prepared for her? The low fury that had been burning in her belly all day suddenly became too much to bear, and with an abruptness that shamed her a little, she let the magic rip through her. Her great paws thudded into the plush carpet, and she felt a burst of smug satisfaction as her tail knocked an ornament flying from the side table. Not sparing a glance for Reeve, she leapt nimbly up onto the bed. Absurdly oversized as it was for her human shape, she was pleased to note that her wolf form fitted nicely.

Reeve hovered in the doorway. For a moment, she studied him through half-closed eyes, curious as to whether he’d accept the implicit challenge and join her in this form—if he remembered how, that was. He didn’t seem like a man who spent too much time in his wild form. He glanced around him, as if sizing up the area, and for a moment she was sure he was going to shift. Good, she thought grimly. She’d always struggled to express herself well in words, without the telepathic brush of minds that wolves were capable of only in their four-legged forms. Perhaps this way they could actually have a real conversation. But instead, he’d murmured something about needing to get some work done, and then he was gone. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the needling sense of disappointment that seemed to belong more to her wolf than to her.

And so the days continued. Lyrie had expected Reeve to be more of a presence, if she was honest, but he seemed to want to leave her to her own devices, which suited her just fine. She made her own exploration of the yacht, growing more and more uncomfortable with the indulgent excess of it all. Especially ridiculous was the inclusion of a swimming pool on the yacht’s upper deck. At first she’d assumed that it was a method of storing water, though it seemed rather inconveniently located. But the strange, chemical smell of the water made her recoil from its surface, and when she asked Reeve about it later, he explained that it was for swimming. Swimming! Not even bathing!

The kitchen was galling, too. Why, there was enough food in storage to nourish a pack ten times the size of the staff. As for the staff… she found their presence profoundly unsettling. Being unable to communicate was a problem, and even their body language was confusing. There was a strong sense of deference from them all, and when they spoke to her in their strange language their tones were always warm and friendly. Had Reeve instructed them to speak to her like a child? She withdrew in confusion from their advances, and it wasn’t long before they began to steer clear of her.

Her frustration grew day by day. She’d hoped that she’d be able to spend this time getting assimilated into Reeve’s pack, finding a role for herself as his new partner. She had well-honed leadership skills, after all, and a valuable alternative perspective, something he seemed willing enough to take into account. But when he invited her into his office to introduce her to his pack’s most trusted senior advisors, she was baffled to be confronted not with a small council of wolves, but with yet another of the flat screens he was so obsessed with. He tapped a few buttons and she recoiled in shock when the screen gave way to a grid of cubes, each of which held a different smiling face.

“What is this?” she demanded of Reeve, leaning closer to scrutinize the image. “Where are your advisors?”

A chorus of disembodied voices responded, and she retreated in horrified confusion to the chair he’d offered her and watched as he spoke directly to the screen like some kind of madman. These were his advisors, she realized slowly. They were scattered around this strange world, using some kind of bizarre magic to project their voices and images to this little room… and Reeve, in turn, was projecting his own. And not just his. He gestured to her, tilting the hated device towards her, and with a start she saw her own frightened face represented in one of the squares in the grid. She watched herself struggle to hide her discomfort and her fear, reached up to push her hair out of her face, suddenly self-conscious about how young she must look to them. All of Reeve’s advisors were considerably older than he was, and Reeve himself was a few decades her senior. She usually relied on her physical presence to compensate for the impression of her useful features—her powerful stance, her perfect posture, even the sword at her hip. None of that was any use here. Nor could she even communicate with these advisors. A couple of them spoke some halting words to her that she understood—words of greeting and welcome, bizarrely accented and poorly pronounced—and she realized from Reeve’s sidelong glance that he must have taught his advisors these phrases especially for her. Was that supposed to make her feel good, that her ancestral language was a quirky little novelty for the wolves on the screen? They ought to have been speaking it from birth, instead of the grating human-derived language they slipped into as soon as they’d done their duty.

Reeve did his best to translate for her, but by the end of the meeting she’d lost all hope of having any meaningful impact on the pack any time soon. A great deal of the conversation had been completely missed, and even the parts that Reeve did translate were borderline incomprehensible in parts. He admitted that it had been a struggle to convey many of the concepts, especially those that had to do with what he called ‘abstract finance’.

“What’s abstract about it?” she demanded, aware that she was lashing out at him because of frustration with herself but unable to help it. “Currency is a measure of value, that’s all. A coin represents a certain quantity of a supply or a service.”

“Sure, that’s the basics, but it gets a lot more…” Reeve shut his eyes, rubbing his forehead. “Sorry, Lyrie. I want you to understand, I really do, but I have a lot of calls to make today, and it’ll take a long time to get you up to speed on—”

“Fine,” she snapped, rising to her feet. “Keep your secrets. I’m only supposed to be your soulmate, that’s all.”

She heard him call her name as she stormed out of his office, but she couldn’t bring herself to look back. Her face and body were both burning with the shame of having lost her temper like a child, with the powerlessness she’d felt in that incomprehensible meeting, with the sure and certain knowledge that she’d never understand that world for as long as she lived. How could she become a true partner to Reeve when she didn’t even understand how he was making contact with his advisors, let alone what they were discussing? She burned to think of the way she’d ridiculed Reeve and his wolves for not understanding the old ways. Well, now she was the one who didn’t understand. And she’d never felt so helpless in all her life.

She burst out into the morning sunlight on the yacht’s largest deck, where she’d taken to sunning herself in her wolf shape. Her paws thudded down hard on the deck, but lying down was the furthest thing from her mind right now. She paced in circles, unable to silence the low growl in her throat, feeling more alone and more furious than she ever had before. She couldn’t stay on this yacht for another second. Reeve had told her she was free to visit the mainland whenever she liked, that the staff had been told to escort her over in the tender if she asked, but the prospect of interacting with those wolves was absolutely unthinkable.

And so, knowing it was reckless but utterly unable to bring herself to care, Lyrie turned and studied the railing at the edge of the deck. Then, with a running start, she hurled herself over it and into the arms of the fresh sea breeze beyond.

She hit the water with a resounding splash, the worst of the impact cushioned by her thick fur—which became immediately and unforgivably waterlogged. Her head broke the surface and she blinked the salt water from her eyes, seeing the island of Kurivon ahead of her in the distance. When had been the last time she’d swum in this body, she wondered? There had been occasional lazy days by the lakeshore in the warmer days of summer, back home on Halforst, but even then she’d been more inclined to splash in the shallows than to swim. Still, her body knew what to do, her powerful hind legs kicking and her forepaws paddling to keep her head above the waves. She made it across the expanse of ocean about as fast as the little boat had, and as she padded out of the water and onto the sand, she was panting with a mixture of exertion and triumph.

Now what, she wondered? After a hearty shake that spattered the beach around her with droplets, she looked up at the path that led from the docks straight up to Kurivon’s central settlement. Perhaps she could check on how construction was proceeding? Go and visit with Syrra at the old library? She hesitated on the beach, torn between wanting to make herself useful and not wanting to interact with another living soul. They’d be sure to ask her how it was all going, what it was like to live with Reeve, whether the two of them were getting on well… and what was she supposed to tell them? That she felt like some horrible combination of a pet and a hostage, imprisoned on some luxury vessel she didn’t understand or appreciate?

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