Taking the Beta Male

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~~ All characters in this book are over 18. ~~

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It's time to get out while you still can. Theadvice, given to her weeks ago, echoed through her head.

Laura Hudson's hands shook as she packed her duffel bag. In the room she shared with the current alpha, no one would bother her. But alphas change. They get old. They pass on their authority to the next generation.

And sometimes the change of leadership is involuntary, Laura.

Graham's words haunted her as she jammed a bundle of t-shirts into the bag and zipped it shut. Even he, she thought, had been unprepared for this challenge. He had led the Lupe Mountain pack for over twenty years, something which was almost unheard of in the violent world of wolf-shifters.

But Tate had been different. An outsider like Laura who Graham had accepted into the pack, he wasn't content to wait for the alpha to hand over power in his own time. Almost from the moment he had joined them, he had been pushing the limits, like an angry dog on a short leash. Unlike Graham's dangerously democratic notions of cooperation and building consensus, Tate threatened and bullied. And he was not above trying to take by force what was not his by right.

It had all come to a head earlier that morning. Several of the older females, driven to furious outrage by Tate's behavior towards their daughters, had come to Graham for judgment. Graham, after hearing their complaints, had given Tate an ultimatum: change his ways or risk banishment. But rather than accept his terms, Tate had challenged the alpha to single combat for leadership of the pack.

They were down there now, in the clearing, where leadership of the pack had been decided for generations. Surrounded by the other shifters, they would fight to the death, switching from wolf to man and back again as the fortunes of the battle ebbed and flowed. One would die and be left for carrion. One would live and be alpha.

But no matter who won, Laura was leaving. Graham had warned her, weeks ago, that this day was coming.

"I've been unlucky in my children, sweetheart," he had said, that night in bed. His dark eyes were haunted. He ran a tired hand across his short-cropped beard, now speckled with gray. "Three girls who all married outside the pack, and no sons. And none of my grandsons are close to being old enough to lead. Alex is the oldest and he's only seventeen. He wouldn't last a week. Hell, I was close to forty before old Rolf let me take over. And this younger generation..." He sighed in frustration. "They act like it's all some sort of damn game.

"Win or lose, you're going to have to leave. Even if I kill Tate, another one is going to rise up to take his place. Sooner or later I'll be dragged down. There's too many of the youngsters who think like he does. That just because we can change our forms we're superior to humans. And that being alpha is all power and no responsibility.

"If you had family here..."

"But I don't," she said, her voice harsh.

He chuckled softly. "Ah, Laura. You should have been born a man. I could leave this bunch to you and die happy." His hand brushed her cheek. "No, you don't have family here. If you did, they could protect you. But you don't. If I lose, Tate is going to see you as a symbol. He can't let you stay here. He'll either kill you, to show the others what happens to my allies, or he'll do something even worse."

Laura shuddered. Even on short acquaintance, she had a good idea what 'even worse' would be where Tate was concerned.

She nodded to herself, a quick, fierce gesture. She hadn't had much when Graham took her in, and she was ready to leave in a matter of minutes. One duffel, packed. One purse, with money, credit cards, phone, keys, and miscellaneous. One laptop, safely stowed in its case. Her art supplies were already packed in the trunk of her car. She snapped a silver hair ring, a long-ago gift from her grandmother, around the trailing fall of her tawny blond hair and left her lover's bedroom forever.

*****

The common area was quiet, with only a few people hanging around. Most had gone to watch the battle.

Her chin raised high, she slung her bag across her shoulders, her long legs carrying her across the room swiftly. Her boots beat a rapid tattoo on the hardwood floor as she headed for the door.

Into the car and down the mountain. Thank god Graham let me work. I have money enough to last until I find a new pack. I-

"Yo, bitch."

She skidded to a stop. Tate's hulking form filled the doorway. Naked from the waist up, his torso was spattered with blood.

Laura closed her eyes against a sudden wave of grief. A man she had admired was dead. When she showed up on his doorstep, almost mad with terror, he had taken her in. He had been a father-figure, a mentor, and then, for nearly three years, a lover. And now he was gone.

"Tate," she said, her voice carefully respectful.

"I'm the alpha now," he said. His voice was gloating. "Ripped the old man's belly wide open, then tore his throat out. He didn't last two minutes.

"You're mine."

She raised her chin, though her heart hammered in fear. "My oath was given to Graham, not the Lupe Mountain pack. I am released from it on his death. You have no authority over me. I'm leaving."

"No authority?" He grinned, stepping into the room. Two of his cronies followed him. "What authority do I need, bitch? I'm the strongest. I take what I want. That is the way of the wolf." He sniffed the air, and his grin transformed into a feral snarl, his teeth showing long and white.

"Boys, I think this bitch is in heat. Why don't you help her take off her clothes? I'm in the mood to celebrate."

Before Laura could do more than open her mouth in protest, Channing and Blaze had taken her by the arms and forced her over a pool table. She jerked back and forth helplessly, but could not break their grip.

"No!" she shouted. She tried to catch Blaze's eye, but he flushed and looked away guiltily. "You know this is wrong!" she screamed to the room. "Someone help me!"

"Wrong?" Tate laughed. "The strong make the rules, little bitch. Haven't you figured that out yet?" Violent hands pulled down her jeans and panties, a seam parting with a scream of ripping cloth. The rest of her clothes were torn away as well, even her boots, leaving her naked and helpless. "Smell that, boys? She wants it." She heard a pair of thuds as Tate's shoes hit the floor. "After I'm done I might let you both try her out. It wasn't fair for old Graham to keep this sweet piece of ass for himself. If he had been willing to share, I might have let him live. Too bad."

Laura wept in terror and humiliation as she felt Tate's erect cock against the skin of her rear. Her face was crushed against the worn felt of the table, her eye staring at a discarded pool cue. In only moments he would rape her, asserting his dominance, and there was nothing she could do to prevent it.

Wait.

"There's a better way than that, Tate," she said, letting her voice grow slow and seductive. She wiggled her rear invitingly. "I can do a lot more for you if you tell these nice boys to let me go."

"Ha! What did I tell you!" Tate's voice was triumphant. "They all want it! No matter what they say, they all want a real man. Go on boys, let her go. Let's see what tricks old Graham taught little Laura here."

This one.

As soon as the hands released her, Laura struck, faster than a snake. Her hand darted out for the pool cue, spinning in a tight circle to smash the hard maple shaft across Tate's leering face. He staggered backward with an enraged bellow, his cheekbone shattered.

Then she shifte and leaped for Tate's throat, howling out her fury and rage, seeking to end the life of the man who had killed her lover.

She almost succeeded.

Her first vaulting leap was fouled by Channing, who grappled with her, knocking her off-balance. He slowed her just enough that she missed ripping away Tate's windpipe by bare inches. As it was, her teeth closed on thin air, spattering his face and neck with her spittle, but her momentum knocked him to the ground, even as it carried her past him.

Quick. I have to be quick. She whirled in place, her claws scrabbling for a purchase, seeking to wound, to kill, to destroy.

~Too late, bitch.~

A monstrous wolf, its black fur covered in scars, rose before her. Its teeth parted in a feral grin. ~Stupid whore,~ his mind-voice sounded in her inner ears. ~Did you really think you could kill me?~ He cast a quick glance over her shoulder. Without looking, she could hear the thudding footsteps of Blaze and Channing drawing near.

Idiot, she thought despairingly. You should have run for the door.

Then the pain began. It didn't stop for a long, long time.

*****

"Hold him, for God's sake," the foreman snarled as his ranch-hands fought with the restive young colt.

Calvin Smith smiled, standing well away from the snorting, bucking horse. If someone was going to cut my balls off, I might be a little upset, too. Though I hope this fellow doesn't know what we have planned. Otherwise this is going to be a hell of a lot harder than it looks.

He sighed as the horse flung up its head, pulling the lead rope out of the hands of a nervous young woman. Partially freed, he turned a rolling eye on the other ranch-hand, backing him against the side of the loose stall where he was penned. A hoof the size of a softball slammed against the wooden partition, making dust sift down from the rafters overhead.

Lou Jackson, the foreman, raised his voice in an exasperated shout, but Calvin set his hand on his arm, cutting him off. "Come on out, guys," he said, his voice calm, but pitched to carry. "You're not doing any good in there."

With grateful glances behind them, the two hurried out of the stall. Calvin closed the gate behind them, then leaned on the top slat, his entire body in a posture of non-threatening relaxation. The horse, a bay colt approaching eighteen months, eyed him suspiciously, its ears flat and wary.

"God, you're a beauty, aren't you?" he said quietly, his voice low and calm. "Poor guy. You don't know why you're penned up in there. Bet you'd like to be outside where you can run, wouldn't you? Run until you leave all the rest of the horses behind, eating your dust. Then you could find a nice tall tree, and take a nap under its shady branches, eat some sweet green grass, and then run back home to the stable."

Still talking, he opened the gate. The colt snorted, but didn't make a move. "Shhh," he said, reaching out to stroke the arched neck. His other hand came out of his pocket, holding a sugar cube on an outstretched palm. With an eager whicker, Incubus reached down, lipping up the treat.

He didn't feel the prick of the needle until it was too late. With a look of almost comic dismay in his round eyes, he backed away, but the anesthetic was already taking hold. Seconds later, his legs began to wobble, and he collapsed to his knees, then his side.

"Thank goodness," Calvin said, putting the syringe safely aside on a convenient bale of hay. "Let's get to work."

*****

"Good God, Lou. Why'd you wait so long to geld that monster?"

The old foreman grunted and pushed up the brim of his stetson. "Don't blame me. The boss man up to the big house was waiting to see how his older brother would do at stud." He jerked his chin at the building where the owner of the ranch and his family lived, a few hundred yards away from the bunkhouse where Lou and Calvin were enjoying a well-earned cup of coffee. He tipped back his chair and put his feet up on a scuffed, ancient coffee table, its finish worn away by generations of bootheels. "When Demon turned out to be worth jack-shit as a stud, Turner decided that Incubus should be cut. Not my idea, and I argued against it. Eighteen months is awful old to be gelding a colt, and Incubus was out of a different sire than Demon. It could have been he'd work out and get some of Turner's money back, rather than spending the rest of his life as a saddle-horse.

"Thanks for doing the job though, son. That could have turned nasty. You sure have a way with animals. How come you never went for foreman at your father's place? You could have been running the place by now, instead of that pain-in-the-ass Denton."

Calvin smiled. Anyone who didn't know better would think that Lou Jackson and Denton Ward were lifelong enemies, rather than friends since childhood. "I'm just lazy, I guess. I got my fill of getting up at the crack of dawn when I was a teenager. Seemed to me it was smarter to get myself a fancy college degree and sleep until six in the morning." He paused. "Six-thirty, some days."

"Right," Lou agreed. "Because being a large-animal veterinarian in the Big Horn Mountains is such an easy job."

"Easier than ranching. Anyway, Dad and Craig do a better job on our family's land than I ever would. They're welcome to it." He shuddered theatrically. "My older brother actually thinks shearing sheep is fun."

"Sheep." Lou made it sound like a curse word. "Stupidest damn animals alive."

"Smarter than chickens, at least."

"True. There ain't nothing dumber than chickens."

Calvin drained his metal mug and set it down on the table. "Thanks for the coffee, Lou. But I have to get back to the clinic." He shrugged into his leather jacket and opened the door to the bunkhouse, emerging into the bright Wyoming sunshine. Just before he could get into his truck, he was halted by Lou's low voice.

"Cal, wait."

"Yeah?" He turned, leaning against the side of the battered old Ford, its bed filled with veterinary supplies, packed neatly into labeled cases.

"Have you had any reports of wolf attacks around lately? Going after livestock?"

He shook his head. "Not recently, why?"

The gray-haired man shook his head, but his seamed, weather-beaten face was strangely worried. "We had a couple calves come early last week. We put them in a pen with their mothers, out of the weather. You know the drill."

Calvin nodded. It was standard procedure to avoid the death of a premature calf. A week or two in a heated outbuilding would give them time to eat and grow. And they would also avoid the eyes of predators, who invariably went after the young, sick, or helpless.

"Well, José went out on Thursday morning to check on them and found them dead. Wolf attack, and half-eaten, and their mothers run off or dead, too. But here's the thing. The door on the stall was latched shut when he got there.

"Now, I know a wolf is smart enough to take advantage of a stall door that's swinging open. But there ain't no wolf on earth that can latch a door shut behind him when he leaves!"

Calvin blinked. "Then José was wrong, Lou. I'm sure he feels bad about losing the calves. Maybe it was just the wind."

"Maybe," the older man said, but he sounded unconvinced. "Anyway, keep your eyes open, would you? I don't like killing things, but if we got a pack of rogue wolves around here, we'll have to put them down."

*****

The weather was wonderful, and Calvin rolled down the window as the truck rumbled along the gravel track, headed for the main highway south back to Larkspur. Spring came by fits and starts this high in the mountains, and even with the calendar showing mid-May, snow was not impossible. But for today at least, the sun shone high in a blue sky dotted with puffy white cumulus clouds, and the temperature hovered in the low seventies.

He sighed in contentment. Let his father and his older brother wear themselves to the bone raising sheep and cattle. As a licensed vet, he traveled all over the Big Horn range, helping those that needed it. The local ranchers gave him a good, steady business, and there was enough small animal work in Larkspur to keep him from feeling overwhelmed by horses, cattle and sheep. And he wasn't stuck in a big drafty farmhouse, five miles away from the nearest paved road. He had a small home of his own in a real town, with stoplights and grocery stores and everything. Actual civilization, not the pioneer crap his father worshiped.

He braked suddenly as a dilapidated truck roared onto the highway from a dirt road to the right. Belching blue smoke from a leaky tailpipe, it accelerated quickly, spattering the grill of his truck with gravel.

"Assholes," he muttered. He frowned up at the mountain to the west. More and more squatters had been seen up there, laying claim to land that rightly belonged to the state or the federal government. Lupe Mountain itself was part of Bighorn National Forest, and he had a suspicion that some Interior Department agents were going to find themselves busy rousting out the newcomers sometime soon.

He slowed to turn onto the main highway, and sighed in relief as the truck ahead of him pulled away. Then his eyes widened in disbelief and he braked violently. The tailgate of the truck had swung down, revealing a large man in the bed. With contemptuous ease, he booted a large, blond-furred bundle out of the back of the truck.

"Christ!" Calvin yelled, almost standing on the brakes. He jerked the wheel to one side to avoid running it over. He skidded to a stop on the shoulder and stared in mute fury as the other vehicle pulled away, its horn blaring in brazen mockery.

He put his vehicle in park and hit the hazard lights, then got out. With his engine off, it was eerily quiet, the wind sighing softly through the aspens. Slowly, then with quickening steps, he walked back along the highway, until he was staring at the limp bundle of fur.

It was a wolf. A female, her pelt was not the usual gray or brindle color, but rather a deep, tawny gold. Beaten and bloody, she lay sprawled on her side, barely breathing. Her coat was filthy and matted with dirt, vicious cuts wept blood into her fur, and her left foreleg was broken in at least two places.

"Oh, God," he murmured, falling to his knees. "You poor, poor girl. What did those animals do to you?" His hand reached out to stroke a quivering flank.

The smart thing, he knew, would be to simply move the animal off to the side of the road and let nature take its course. A second, more humane choice would be to load up a syringe with barbiturates and put the poor creature to sleep.

No. I heal animals. I don't kill them. Not if there's a choice.

He ran back to the truck and yanked down the tailgate. From a drawer in the bed of the truck he pulled out a thick blanket. Working as quickly and carefully as he could, he lifted the she-wolf onto the makeshift stretcher and put her in the truck bed. He would rather have had her in the cab with him, but he didn't want to risk what might happen if a wild animal suddenly regained consciousness in the middle of the road.

He grabbed his cell phone and called the clinic. "Lisa," he said to his nurse when she answered, "I've got an emergency here. I'm on my way back to town, but I want everything prepped and ready to go. Splint, dressings, bandages, sutures, the whole nine yards. Anesthetic for a large dog, weighing, shit, I don't know, maybe around eighty pounds.

"I'll be back there in fifteen minutes, twenty at the outside. Go."

*****

"Christ!" Lisa Reed said as he staggered into the clinic. "That's a damn wolf!"

"Tell me something I don't know," he grunted, carrying the bundle into the operating theater. He set the blanket down on the operating table, then went to the sink to wash his hands, which were still shaking in impotent anger. "She's unconscious right now, I think. Those bastards who dumped her out of the truck worked her over pretty badly. But put her under just to make sure. I don't want to have to deal with a hysterical wolf when I'm trying to set its leg."