Total pages in book: 154
Estimated words: 148955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 745(@200wpm)___ 596(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148955 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 745(@200wpm)___ 596(@250wpm)___ 497(@300wpm)
I smell arousal on her as she looks at me. Another girl steps up and smiles. Leona. She wasn’t in the receiving line, but she was at the clinic the day Ivy was bitten by the snake.
I nod at Leona and then my eyes meet Sherry’s. I look through her, showing her that I’m not interested.
Another woman, similarly aged, and dressed demurely and giving off a shy aura catches up to them. Audrey King. Half-shifter.
Ivy kisses me and tells me to go have some ‘alpha talk’ as she trots with her drink along behind those girls.
I want to warn her about Sherry’s. I don’t get the chance. Riley is coming toward me.
“Bailey,” I call out.
Bailey spins around and comes back.
“One sec, Riley; I don’t like that,” I tell him.
“Sherry is an unmated alpha female,” Riley tells me, clearly seeing what I saw. “She knows you’re mated. She won’t likely be dumb enough to make a play. If she does, we’ll deal with her. Don’t worry. Look. Aunt Cat’s heading in that direction to warn her. She just likes what she sees when she sees you. Don’t stress about it.”
“Alpha females,” I repeat.
“Most of our females are beta or omega by nature. There are a few alpha females,” Bailey says.
And I think I’ve smelled this one before. I think I might even have encountered her scent as wolf. In my years living only as a wolf, I encountered other wolves, mostly ordinary, non-shifting, who all ran at the sight of me, but once, I caught the scent of a female shifter. I didn’t let her get close. I’m pretty sure it was this woman.
“Take care of Ivy around her,” I order. “I don’t like the feeling in my gut right now.”
She slices her hand up in the air and stops at her right brow, nods at me and then catches up with Ivy, Audrey, Leona, and Sherry.
“Drink?” Riley asks and leads me toward the bar.
I don’t typically drink alcohol. I hated the way it smelled on my uncle. I hated, even more, the way it made him behave.
“I’ll have a beer.” I don’t mind beer too much.
Riley grabs a mug and opens the tap on a barrel that’s on its side, pouring me some.
“More about Mason Quinn, Riley. What the fuck was that?”
“I know it tweaked you, but Mase is solid, man. He’s rock-solid in his loyalty. He got back Monday morning, right after you two went home from the clinic. He was disappointed he didn’t get a chance to meet you. But then, man, he said he didn’t feel right. And he went around in circles all day around the village. He shifted and went in more circles.”
“Who’s his mate?”
“He doesn’t have one. He said he caught a scent of the woman who might be his mate and couldn’t find her to make sure. He knew a trail led to your place and wouldn’t take it.”
“He doesn’t think my Ivy is his.”
Riley winces.
Does he?
I feel my blood heat up, my fists clench. What the fuck?
I repeat myself.
“He doesn’t think she’s his, Riley.”
“Not exactly, he says. He’s confused, though. He’s having trouble figuring it out. I told him, there’s nothing confusing about it. When he smells her, he’ll know it. He knows she’s not his or he would’ve followed that trail straight to Ivy.”
He’s right. He will know it. I had not a doubt. No confusion that Ivy was the woman for me.
I see my woman dancing in a group with Bailey, Sherry, Audrey, Leona, and three other women the range in age from Ivy’s to likely the age of my mother. They all look to be having fun.
My woman moves gracefully, her hair moving, her hips swaying, as she drinks from a clear bottle containing a red liquid.
She catches my eyes and smiles at me, then one of the women, Carrie Blackwood, Bailey’s mother, touches her arm and speaks to her while they continue to all move together to the music.
I like watching my woman dance.
She’s gorgeous. She’s graceful. She’s having fun and looking at me like she loves me.
Does she realize she looks at me that way? She’s done it a lot today. The past few days, really. I catch her watching me. When I’m chopping wood, cutting grass. I’ve seen her watching me when I wake up and get the impression she’s been doing it a while. It feels good to open my eyes to her gazing at me with love written all over her face, her hair all messy, and my fluids leaking from her sore cunt.
I love her more than any man has loved any woman; I’m sure of this.
I won’t let anyone take her from me.
Another song starts and Ivy looks excited as she begins dancing with more confidence, with more of a sway to her hips, with a look on her face like no one is here, just her and the song that she sings the words to.