The Alpha's Selkie Mate

Chapter 8

Walker would never admit to how the change in Kiran’s face made him feel; it was like watching a black cloud descend on an already gray day.

“Tell me there’s enough of him to lay to rest, Kiran,” Walker demanded, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt. Tell me. How would he face Leandra with the reassurance that the pack – that he, as alpha – would do right by her and her late mate if he didn’t have that?

As though he knew what Walker was thinking, Kiran forced his face to go blank. “All we can do is wait for Lilah to finish the autopsy.”

That was not what he wanted to hear.

The dull throbbing in Walker’s head had sharpened, radiating out and into his temples until it felt like someone was trying to cleave him through with an ice pick. f**k, but he needed a glass of water.

And a hole to crawl into and pretend that the world had stopped turning.

But there was never any rest for the wicked, was there?

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Nothing about this, about anything, was how it should be.

Last night had been a night for celebrations and revelry. The rarity of no food rations, meat and wine aplenty. Not only was it the summer solstice, but a full moon besides. The long, black nights were returning with the Goddess’ blessing and the wolves inside them rejoiced. It should have been a time for joy.

Not death.

The Goddess knew his people deserved some joy. The last year had been hard on all of them.

“Fine. How is Leandra?”

What a stupid question that was. How would any newly widowed she-wolf be? Her world had just come crashing down around her.

Something pale and blue caught his attention, fluttering in the corner of his eyes.

Kiran followed him up the beach. “She is devastated, as you can imagine.” See? Stupid question. “The little ones still don’t know.”

Poor Leandra. Six small cubs and no father for them. Not one of them was old enough to have gone through their first shift.

“This is a nightmare.”

Kiran hummed in agreement, a rumble in the back of his throat. “This won’t be good for the pack.”

He spoke quietly, as though he were worried someone might overhear. That almost made Walker laugh out loud. All someone had to do to see how bad things were was look around them.

Besides, any shifter within a dozen meters would have heard Kiran’s words as clear as day anyway. But, on the other hand, they would have heard someone coming before they ever got that close.

It was only the two of them.

“The pack—"

“You think I don’t know that?” Walker’s eyes fluttered shut for a pained beat. He could already imagine the fallout. “He won’t even be laid to rest before everyone and his great uncle starts petitioning for that land.”

With John dead, the farm was just another carcass for them all to fight over; his people were going to turn vulture. After all, who cared about the grieving widow when there was a shiny, new toy for them all to squabble over?

He took a deep breath to try and steady himself.

Walker wasn’t being fair. Not to the majority of his people, who just wanted to not have to struggle for every scrap of food they got.

But still, there would also be vultures. The cruel few, at least. And his cousin would be at the forefront, as he always was.

It would be a bloodbath if Walker let them have too much of the reins – they’d walk all over him until their will won out. Hell, they chop that farm up into little bite-sized bits if they had to.

If not, he’d have a fight on his hands.

Without Walker’s father at the helm, they were all liable to slip back into the old ways. He had to find some way to make sure that didn’t happen.

But he knew if he pulled too tight and threw his fragile authority around, then he risked a mutiny, regardless of their laws and rules. Everyone had a right to petition for that land with Bellwether’s eldest son not yet of age. And they all would.

Kiran was just as heartless as the rest when he said, "All's not lost. This gives you something to bargain with. They will all want to gain your favor." Buy their loyalty, he meant. "It's an opportunity to strengthen your position."

"On the backs of the poor and the needy," Walker shot back, the words leaving a bad taste in his mouth. But maybe it didn't have to be that way – what good was his position as alpha if he couldn’t make things better? "If Leandra was skilled enough to keep it running when John was away, then she might be able to keep it now."

Kiran gave him a flat look.

Walker understood his misgivings. The Bellwether’s lived on the largest individual parcel of Pack land. It was a damned miracle that Bellwether could even run it on his own, with just his family for help.

Not to mention the rumors about the land. They’d kept everyone off it for generations before John had bought it. The land was bad, people whispered. It was too close to the eastern forest. Rotten. Dangerous. Nothing living could be coaxed from its black, packed soil.

No one had believed John when he said he’d be just fine, paying for the land with barter his paternal family had been collecting since their great-grandfather’s generation.

And John had been proven right.

Year after year, his harvests kept coming. Even when the crops from the other farms wilted and withered, Bellwether kept the pack mostly fed with healthy, robust produce. By all accounts, it was a miracle, granted to them by the grace of the goddess and on the back of an honest male.

A pity the same couldn’t be said for his family.

Walker could still clearly remember, in technicolor clarity, the night that John Bellwether had come to his office and gotten on his knees as he begged Walker to give his family more rations.

His clothes had hung from his frame, just as his skin was pulled taut over the skeletal arch of his cheekbones. The shadows underneath had haunted Walker’s dreams for days after.

And then there was hunger in his eyes, the kind that gnaws at an empty belly. Desperate and dark.

Walker, who’d only been alpha for a few weeks at the time, had given them the rations without question. Vowing that no one would starve under his rule. It had been a naïve move on his part, and when he couldn’t make that rash decision work in the books, he’d cut his own rations to make it happen.

It had been six months since then, three since Walker had been able to count his ribs.

But he’d never stopped to ask why the male with the healthiest farm in the pack was starving.

Now it was all but gone and he’d never know the answer.

Ripped away in the blink of an eye.

How far they'd come from living like wild animals and nature was still just as cruel a mistress.

Would anyone be able to farm that land now? So many questions and so few answers. Like why had the male left his mate alone so often, his pups too? What had he been up to?

Walker chewed on his worry.

“You cannot be serious – have Leandra take over the farm? With that many children under her feet?” Kiran ran a hand through his hair. “It would be better for her and her pups to move into the packhouse. She’ll have other she-wolves to help her. You will be able to keep them fed and clothed and safe.”

With a small room to call their own, better suited to one wolf than seven. The pups would climb the walls.

Walker scrubbed his hand over his face again, not caring that the sand scraped at his skin. “You might be right,” he sighed, though it pained him to admit it.

“Jackson will want it.”

It took everything Walker was not to groan or even growl at the mention of his cousin’s name.

Jackson. f*****g Jackson. The male that was everything an alpha should be. Build like a brick shithouse. Charming, fast, and tough as steel nails. She-wolves wanted him in their bed, even without the title, and males wanted to be him.

Plus, Jackson had never abandoned them. As he so delighted in reminding Walker.

“Jackson has more than enough to get on with. He doesn’t need another slice of land.”

Walker dropped to his haunches, picking up the cotton summer dress that had caught his eyes before. Pale blue against pale sand.

It was the dress the female had been wearing the night before. The one that had barely contained her smooth muscles and luscious curves. All that pale skin. He had to be misremembering but he swore that it had almost glowed in the moonlight.

Beautiful.

There was no use dwelling on a fling like that. She was gone and he was still stuck here, playing a role that he was never meant for.

It was still damp. Another reminder that none of this was a dream.

Or a nightmare.

No matter how much he turned it over in his mind, the dress was pack made. The embroidery – delicate daisies and crawling vines – was impeccable. He wouldn't be surprised if it was Anita's work. A luxury item amongst their type perhaps, a little frivolous for the more traditional, but it would have bartered well.

How had an outsider gotten her hands on it? Or, more specifically, how had it gotten on her body?

Maybe someone knew her and had given it to her. That didn’t seem likely, he hadn’t noticed anyone speaking to her other than Jackson. And he definitely would have noticed. Tearing his eyes away from her had been impossible once she’d noticed her.

He recalled how the fabric had barely contained her sleekly muscled thighs, the way her breasts and hips had pushed the cotton to its sweat-soaked limits.

The memory lasted only as long as it took Kiran to say, "More land means more power. He'll challenge you if you let him."

Walker tried not to laugh at that – he knew it wouldn't be a pleasant sound. "He's a d**k but he's not about to go against our laws. The pack doesn't run that way anymore."

Not since Walker's father had taken over anyway. Just like him, Jackson had grown up with their current rules; any change would come as a slip, not an avalanche.

So why did he sound so unsure?

"Only a fool feels that secure in their position."

Secure was the last thing Walker felt. He hadn't felt anything like it since he'd been forced to come back to pick up the pieces of his broken father. To give the mother and brothers he’d left behind back to the Goddess without a proper goodbye.

"It's been less than a year since the compound was attacked; he's not about to risk what little security we have."

"How's to say he won't use it against you?"

"Kiran..." Walker warned him softly, more exasperation than a true threat. Talking about this didn’t deal with the main issue: what had killed John Bellwether and how they were going to deal with his body.

"We both know what you need to do--"

"Out of the question."

"Taking a Luna--"

"'Would unite the people and give them hope again,'" Walker repeated rote, mimicking Kiran's tone. "You aren't telling me anything I don't already know."

Wiping off his hands, Walker stood to his full height once more. It put him eye to eye with his advisor.

"But you still won't do it." Walker swore there was a little disgust in Kiran’s look.

"No. Not yet, at least. Maybe when things settle..."

"If we keep going like this, things will never settle," Kiran blew out a quick breath through his nose. "You're stalling. What are you waiting for? You could have had any female last night and you chose the outsider; you have to know how that looks to the females."

"I know."

"Whether you meant it or not, you slighted them."

If a female was so easily slighted, then she wasn't fit to be his Luna. The pack needed someone steadfast and compassionate, strong and giving. Someone who could lead them when he couldn't. They had to compliment his flaws and add to the pack.

Someone like his mother.

He didn’t know if any of them fit that bill.

But Kiran was right; he was stalling. He'd barely been alpha for six months, adding in a Luna...would complicate things. He hadn't even felt secure enough in his position that he felt he could ask his people to take their blood oath.

It didn’t escape his notice that no one had offered either.

It was never meant to be him. They all knew it.

He hadn't taken any females to bed since coming back, partly because he didn't want to lead anyone on. Would they think that they would be Luna if he did? He couldn't risk anyone getting ideas.

And he didn't want a female only to want him because he was the alpha.

His father...

His father hadn't taken a Luna until he'd found his fated mate, Walker's mother. That had already been almost a decade into his reign. Walker didn’t expect to have the same, he knew every female in the pack, and seeing what losing his mother had done to his father, he didn’t much want it either.

A mate was a liability he couldn’t afford.

"Enough of this," he said. He didn't want to think about his parents. "I need to speak to Leandra."

"Your mother didn't raise you to run from your problems."

She hadn’t raised him for the responsibility of being alpha either, but here they all were. Trapped in the same leaky boat together.

His voice turned hard. "I'll meet you over there."

"As you wish."

Walker ignored the dismissive sneer in Kiran’s tone as he waited for him to leave. When the other shirt was out of sight, he had to fight the urge to scream into the void.

It was never meant to be like this.

As he walked towards the forest, his foot caught in the dress.

He had no idea what compelled him, but he picked it up and brought it to his nose. He pulled in a lungful of air.

Nothing.

He let it drop back to the sand at his feet.

And with that last disappointment, he shifted into his wolf form and loped towards Bellwether Farm.