Wild (Savage Alpha Shifters 1)

“Why don’t we find a pack that isn’t corrupt? What about other packs, Uncle?”

“There are no others for us.”

As I grew, I felt like it was a lie. I felt like it had to be.

If our pack was bad, why didn’t we seek out another? I craved companionship, wolves to run with that were my size. Boys to play with and talk to when I was in my man form. Uncle didn’t like talking unless he drank the whisky and then his words were always confusing.

I don’t know what age I began shifting but I know he used my wolf senses and my size to his advantage both when I was a small wolf and when I was a large one. I remember rules about when we could and could not show our nature and the grass we had to eat to hide our smell, and I fucking hated that grass. Then things changed and we were wolves more often than we were people and we continued to eat the stupid grass.

I remember being much smaller than him and then being much larger a few seasons later. I remember him being a man of few words except when he needed something done or when he’d have one of his dark times and then he would talk words that made no sense until my ears grew tired of hearing him. He hated my questions. He only liked me to do what he told me to do. He liked to remind me that he saved my life, that without him I’d have been killed like my father.

I’m still spilling into my Ivy and she’s crying into my shoulder as her body trembles with her pleasure. I groan mine into her soft hair. She goes limp on me as my knot releases and my pants are soaked with my essence.

“I can’t have any more sex right now, Ty. Please, please no more.” Her face is buried in my neck.

“Okay, sweet Ivy,” I whisper into her hair. I kiss her purple wrist and feel terrible. I’ve hurt her wrist, made her cry, taken her more times than she wanted. I won’t feel bad for stopping her from leaving me.

Doesn’t she understand that I do this because I have no choice? She’s not angry at me. She seems sad and that’s confusing. Some of the women I tried from the bar got angry when they knew I was finished, when their attempts to get me to take more from them failed. Ivy doesn’t get angry at me. She gets sad. And it hurts my chest and my stomach and now I want to go hunting and rip things apart, make them bleed. I’m angry. It makes my innards feel foul.

She’s gotten a little angry a few times, but her face isn’t ugly when she’s angry. In fact, when she gets angry, it makes me want to take her to the ground and mount her as much as I want to do it when she’s smiling or laughing.

I carry her toward the bed so I can lay her down, but then my left foot slides and my body goes airborne. All I can think of as I land hard on my back is of keeping her from being hurt, so I manage to hold her high up enough that she feels no impact. I hear her gasp as my body protests at the pain.

She’s on me. I’m on the floor.

“Are you okay?”

She’s moving off me and I’m wincing in pain. This was like the soap incident in the bathroom, but worse. I fell and I nearly allowed her to get hurt.

“Are you okay?” she asks again.

“Yeah,” I grunt and sit up and stretch my back.

“Oh, Ty.” She giggles. “You slipped on a banana peel.”

She lifts it from the floor and then she laughs. “I’m sorry for laughing, but it’s a classic slapstick comedy we’ve got going on here.” She’s laughing so hard, she’s rocking to and fro.

I’m still holding my back, feeling a little disappointed that she laughs.

She suddenly sobers and swallows. “You protected me as you fell.”

I did. I always will. “I’ll always protect you.”

She leans over and no longer laughing, she puts her hand to my face. Her eyes fill with moisture. “You’re so fucking sweet.” She has a big smile on her face.

“But you still want to leave me. Wolves mate for life, Ivy. And I’ve mated you to me.”

Her face loses its joy and looks haunted as she stares at me for a long moment. Finally, I see a swallow work down her throat.

“But I’m not a wolf,” she says, and then she blinks rapidly, shaking off her emotions. “And I only just met you. I can’t know something like that instantly, especially when meeting them in the woods and they’re naked and breaking my car and then they steal me away to their remote cabin and refuse to let me go.”