Rescued & Ravished: An Alpha's Conquest (A Paranormal Ménage Romance) Read online

  ***

  Harper had left the trail to follow the sound of running water. She’d needed to refill her canteen and she’d wanted to see the stream, so she simply stepped off the track. It was a mistake.

  She’d found a lovely narrow waterway, a mountain rill that ran over mossy slabs of rocks in little waterfalls, but it hadn’t been worth it. She couldn’t find the trail again.

  This was dangerous, and she knew it. Hikers needed trails.

  But it couldn’t be far. She hadn’t walked more than ten minutes to find the water. If she just circled around, she was sure to find the track.

  Right?

  ***

  Jason was Alpha, but his cabin wasn’t fancier than anyone else’s. It was simple and rectangular, made of stacked, hand-hewn timber logs. A couple of crows were sunning themselves on the cold-rolled steel roof.

  Despite the pleasant weather, it looked like there was a woodstove fire going inside. That made sense because Jason’s mate’s ancient mother, Hazel, lived with them there. She complained of the cold into July. Chance had no idea how old she actually was. Cubs joked she was older than the hills.

  “Mornin’, Chance. How’re you feeling?”

  “Hey! Mornin’ yourself, Ivy. I’m alright... definitely going to be in Season tomorrow, though. You?”

  “Mm-hmm, me too.” Ivy was the clan’s healer. She wore a satchel, hung crosswise across her chest, which was full of natural treatments for any ailment imaginable. She was a little young for her role—only twenty-eight—but last winter their proper healer, Yerba, had died in an avalanche further up the slopes and her apprentice Ivy had had to step up. “Are you expecting anything important from this meeting today?”

  “Nah, I’m not. There’s nothing special about this year, Ivy. It’s gonna be the same as always.” They were climbing the slight hill up to Jason’s porch stairs. His were in better condition than Chance’s. “Unless you know something I don’t?”

  “No,” she said, smiling. “I’m sure you’re right. Might be in a few months I’ll find myself delivering a litter or two, though. Then we’ll have some excitement.”

  “Maybe so, girl.” Not one of his, he hoped. He didn’t want cubs off any of these women, lovely though they might be. Holding open the cabin door for her, he said, “After you.”

  “Thanks, Chance.” She smelled like wild onion as she brushed past him, intentionally, he knew. She would have rubbed the scent all over herself to keep the men at this meeting from putting their hands on her on account of the Season. He stepped in after her.

  The interior of the cabin smelled like dried wild vegetables, wood ash, and must. They wouldn’t be able to properly air it out from the winter until midsummer when Hazel could tolerate the open windows.

  Seated around the main room’s table were Jason, his mate Gorse, Gorse’s mother Hazel, as well as the other elders Galangal and Stonecrop, and Chance’s closest friend, Hudson Farris. He was a transplant from the States who’d wandered his way up the Rockies into Canada almost ten years ago. He and Chance had been thick as thieves ever since, despite some marked differences in personality.

  “Chance, Ivy,” Jason said from his high-backed, hand-carved seat at the table’s head. The chair was old enough that its wood was worn down to a natural gloss. The acting Alpha always used it at clan meetings. “Sit. Looks like we’ll have fine weather for the Season this year, eh?”

  “Very fine,” Ivy agreed. “There’s rock jasmine sprouting everywhere behind my cabin.”

  “How lovely,” Gorse said, lifting a kettle off the woodstove. “Do either of you want tea? I picked and soaked it myself. It’s yellow birch.”

  “Yes, please,” Ivy said, but Chance begged off. Gorse always made her birch tea with leaves—not just softened twigs—and that made it too astringent for his taste.

  “Now that we’re all here, I’d like to ask the table if they have any concerns about, or have noticed anything different about, this year’s Season,” Jason said, threading his big, thick-knuckled fingers together. He was a true bear of a man, broad and bearded with animal-brown eyes. “Anything?”

  No one spoke. They had this meeting every year, and not once had there ever been anything worrying to discuss. Sometimes there were minor things, true—someone newly come of age who was acting skittish, someone ill who was concerned about their ability to fulfill their instincts—but never anything major.

  Chance caught Hudson’s eye. Another couple of minutes, they knew, and Jason would declare the meeting over and let them all go off to enjoy the Season in their own ways. He and Gorse, like most mated pairs, would stay inside their cabin, while younger, unattached people would go wild in the woods. The elders tended to take it easy, watching the proceedings with a jaundiced eye as they sat on this or that porch together and drank wild coffee.

  “There is something,” Hazel said abruptly. Everyone looked at her. “I’ve been having a dream.”

  “A dream?” Galangal asked, in his gruff, thin voice. “What dream?”

  “I’ve dreamed about a young woman,” Hazel said with certainty. “The clan will be gaining a new daughter this Season.”

  “Oh. Someone will be having a daughter, Mother?” asked Gorse. “Is that what you mean?”

  “No. I mean a young woman will be arriving here. Soon.”

  The other two elders nodded, convinced. But Hudson flashed Chance a skeptical look.

  “Maybe so,” said Jason, diplomatically. “We’ll soon know.”

  “Hazel has never dreamed false,” Galangal insisted. “I say we prepare for this stranger girl. She’s coming if Hazel saw her.”

  The elders did sometimes see things before they happened, but Chance had to admit that he found this particular prediction a little far-fetched. Usually they foresaw the weather, or the gender of a baby, or somebody breaking a foot, simple things like that.

  Although, hadn’t he dreamed about a woman, himself? They said Hazel had seen Hudson in a dream before he came to them, so maybe she could see someone else before they arrived, too.

  “Respect your elders, Alpha,” Galangal chided abrasively. “Listen to Hazel. She has the sight.”

  “I do respect my elders, and I am listening,” Jason answered coolly, with a slight rumble in his chest. “Don’t suggest otherwise. We’ll prepare for this girl Hazel’s seen. Chance, you know that old shed, in back of Gentian’s house? Replace the lock, and clear out anything that could be used as a weapon. Shovels and hoes and that sort of thing. Just in case this new girl proves quarrelsome.

  “Ivy, tell Gentian to make up the spare room in the cabin, just in case she proves sweet. Hudson, find Dove and run the range with her, see if you can find this girl out there. Is all that planning to your liking, Galangal?”

  “Yes,” the old man said, satisfied. Then he added, more diffidently, “Alpha.”

  “Quarrelsome first,” Hazel murmured, warming her hands over her mug of birch tea. “Sweet later.”

  “Is there anything else? A fear? A worry?” Jason asked. No one said anything. “Alright. Then this Season’s meeting is over. Let’s all get to our business.”

  There was a scraping of chairs as everyone but Gorse and Hazel stood.

  “Chance, hold back a minute,” Jason said, his hand suddenly on Chance’s shoulder. “Walk with me.”

  Chapter Three

  It was autumn. The range’s deciduous trees were flaming out in hot colors, while the changeless pines stayed green. She was in a cabin that smelled like cold wood and stove ash, in a bed made up with a quilt and cotton covers. There was a man on top of her, a handsome man, with gold-bright eyes, blonde, thick stubble, and a granite-hard, muscular body shaded in short hair. He was inside her and, instinctively, she knew that was where he belonged.

  Another cabin. Another season: winter. It smelled different here, like kindling and copper distilling and bow grease. She was in another bed, with another man, a tanned man with dark
hair and brass-gold eyes, whose body was strong, hairy, and cut like steel. He tasted saltier and wilder, and he was deeper inside her, too.

  Summer. A meadow. Both men at once, touching her, kissing her, nipping her shoulders—

  Harper sat up with a start, sweating and panting. She’d been dreaming.

  It was morning, it was spring, and she was still lost.

  ***

  Jason walked Chance toward Gentian’s cabin to clear out the shed. The morning had only gotten prettier and warmer. The spruce and pines around them were echoing with birdsong.

  “Chance, I’m getting older,” Jason said, straightforward. “You know that.”

  “Not by much,” Chance countered bracingly.

  “Yes, I am. I’ll be sixty-three soon.” Jason paused to pick a few early huckleberries. “It’s about time the clan had a new Alpha.”

  “Is it?” Chance asked, uneasily. It was true that the wild, powerful young bull in him longed to demonstrate its strength—that it longed to dominate a rival. But his human side was well aware of who that rival was.

  “There are only two men here strong enough to fight for Alpha,” Jason said, popping the tart berries into his mouth. “You know who they are. Hudson is your friend, but he’s the only other young man with the raw power and presence of mind to lead us.”

  “I know.” Chance couldn’t say it without a sigh.

  “If you both survive the fight, you can still be friends. Men have done it before. But if one of you kills the other. I just want you to understand, Chance. The clan needs an Alpha, and it can’t be me. Not for much longer. Whatever you two end up having to do to each other, know that you did it for the clan.”

  “I do understand. I’m not as young as you think, Jason.” Chance was thirty-one this year, more than old enough to accept adult, animal realities. “But I wish things could be different.”

  “I know. I know it’s a hard way to go. But it could be worse, Chance. I fought my own brother to be Alpha, and even though he lived, he left us.” The old pain of it was plain on Jason’s face. “At least you’re not blood with Hudson.”

  “Might as well be,” Chance said, grimly. “Honestly, I might as well be.”

  “We have to live as what we are,” Jason said lowly, gripping Chance’s shoulder. “Bears. Animals. We need an Alpha, Chance, and I hope you can be that Alpha. I’ll admit I’m biased, boy. You’re my favorite. Ever since you lost your pa as a cub, I…” he trailed off.

  Chance smiled. “I know. You’ve been good to me, Jason. You and Gorse.”

  Jason’s hold on his shoulder tightened. “Just don’t let him kill you. These combats get savage. Live. Live, and be Alpha. That’s what I want. That’s all I want.”

  ***

  “Smell anything? See anything?”

  “Nah. You?”

  “Nah, me either.” Dove popped her hip and put a hand on it. She was blonde and brassy and young, and range-running with Hudson Farris entertained her. “You think we will see anything? Anywhere?”

  “Are you asking me if this girl that Hazel saw exists?” Hudson asked, crossing his arms. They had paused on an old, mossy rockfall, one that was blooming with stonecrop in the spring sun.

  “Cutting through the BS as usual, Hud?” She smiled. “Yeah, that’s what I’m asking.”

  He shrugged. “Between you and me, I doubt it. But it doesn’t do any good to disrespect Hazel by saying so. Got it?”

  Dove played with her hair, squinting out over the down-sloping forest. “Got it. But maybe we could forget this goose chase and go look for some berries.”

  “No.”

  “Alright, fine. We’ll keep range-running.”

  “Yes, we will.” He peered out over the woods. “We’ll cut around back toward the notch. See what we see.”

  “Nothing,” Dove said cheerily. “We’re gonna see nothing.”

  “Probably. But develop some politesse and hush up about it.”

  “Huh?”

  “Shut up about it, kid. That’s what I meant.”

  “You’re real charming, Hud, you know that?”

  “I know it.”

  “But cute.”

  “That’s the Season in you talking,” he said with real seriousness. “Be careful. It’s not time to couple up yet. We’ve still got a job to do.”

  She rolled her eyes,and then, right then and there, she skinchanged.

  One moment she was a svelte, robust-looking girl, and the next she was a big, muscular grizzly sow, ambling powerfully down the mountainside. The sun glittered over her coarse, light-brown coat.

  Hudson changed, too, into an immense, dark-furred male grizzly, big and strong enough to fight an elk, and they both headed downhill.

  ***

  Harper struggled through fool’s huckleberry and fir saplings, making her way uphill. If she could just get to an overlook, she could figure out where she was in relation to Mystic Pass.

  Maybe.

  She hadn’t seen anyone for days, now. In fact, the only company she’d had since this morning had been a couple of yellow-pine chipmunks chattering near her tent. It was disturbing, the nobody-ness—she wanted to be alone, but not isolated. If she’d stayed on the trail, she would have seen other backpackers, maybe some horse tours. She would have seen someone.

  She didn’t kid herself. This was rapidly becoming a survival situation. She should never have left the trail.

  If wishes were horses, beggars would—

  Abruptly, she tripped and went down hard on the slope.

  “Damn!” she muttered, struggling up with a dirty, throbbing knee. Some pipits in a spruce overhead chittered like they were laughing. “Yeah, yeah. Thank you for your sympathy, you little shits.”

  She had to get to a vista. She had to.

  It didn’t help that the sky was greying up. Rain was the last thing she needed.

  ***

  “Hudson!”

  “I hear it too. Hush, girl!” Human on a dime, he gripped Dove’s arm to keep her quiet.

  “It sounds like somebody’s coming up the slope.” Dove’s brown-and-gold eyes were very large in her face. “Is somebody coming?”

  “Hush, I said!” But Hudson could already tell that somebody was coming, no doubt about it.

  “Is it that girl? It has to be that girl. Hazel was right,” Dove said. “The elders are never wrong, are they, Hud? We shouldn’t have doubted them. We—”

  “We don’t know who it is,” he cut in. “Follow me and we’ll find out. Quietly!”

  With all the skill of natural-born hunters, they slunk silently through the woods. Downhill, downhill, and downhill until they were only meters from the loud, obvious sounds of someone’s passage through the brush.

  “It is someone,” hissed Dove.

  “Quiet!” Hudson mouthed. He crept even closer to the sounds, Dove trailing him uncertainly.

  “It is a girl,” she breathed, once they’d come up behind a screen of bearberry. “It is.”

  It was. They could both see her pink, nylon-shell rain jacket, as well as her bright green backpacker’s pack and her light-blonde hair. She looked flushed and tired.

  “We should welcome her,” Dove whispered. “Let’s tell her there’s a clan near here, and she can rest, and it’s safe, and—”

  “No. Smell her, Dove! Smell her carefully.” His expression was grim. “She’s human.”

  “No!” Dove gasped. “A human? Here?”

  Hudson knew she had to be. She smelled like sports deodorant and polyester and grapefruit shampoo. No bear ever smelled like that. “She is.”

  Dove sniffed the air, her eyes dilating. “You’re right. Oh Hud, what do we do?”

  “We run her off,” he said, his eyes hard.

  “But… she looks lost.”

  She did. But the clan came first. “I’ll herd her back toward the valley. There’s a survival shed down there, with a radio. I stopped there when
I was coming up, years ago.”

  “It’s… it’s a big valley, though… and sheds are tiny, and—”

  “I know, Dove, but she can’t come up. A human can’t be allowed to find us.”

  Dove bit her lip.

  “Stay back. I’ll handle her. I’ve got experience with these people.” He put a steadying hand on her shoulder. “Watch me.”

  ***

  Harper was hot and exhausted. She was almost looking forward to being soaked by the rain, even though she knew that getting cold and wet out here was dangerous. But hell, she was already soaked with sweat, wasn’t she?

  She paused, closing her eyes and leaning on a pine. The forest smelled resiny and humid. There was a distant rumble of thunder.

  And then a closer rumble. Something else.

  Something else.

  She opened her eyes.

  Her heart seized up in her chest. Her skin went hot with fresh, thick sweat.

  Not three meters away there was an adult male grizzly bear staring at her.

  Where had he come from? She hadn’t heard anything, there’d been so sign. She knew this was grizzly country, she knew that, but she hadn’t even heard a twig break or a squirrel chatter.

  He was pushing through the undergrowth, coming towards her. He was enormous, the biggest she’d ever seen, five feet six, five feet seven at the shoulder, easily. Huge paws, hump-shouldered, thick-furred, blazing eyes.

  Her instinct was to run, plain and simple. It was to turn tail and book it down the mountainside, and then to race all the way back to Calgary, or, if that wasn’t going to work (and it wasn’t), then her instinct was to climb a tree. But grizzlies could run at 35 miles per hour, and they could climb trees, too.

  It was such a huge animal, and it was so obvious that its target was her: it was coming straight for her, staring, growling. The cold, aggressive glint in its eyes made sour ice of her stomach. She could see its big claws pressing into the dirt and smell its earthy, furry scent. It was going to hurt her, wasn’t it?