The Alpha's Selkie Mate

Chapter 7

“Get up.” Like a sledgehammer straight to the temple, the words rang through Walker’s fuzzy, hung-over-as-all-hell head. Or maybe it was a gong. A big-ass, loud-ass gong. That vibrated like an earthquake.

In the depths of hell.

And f**k if Kiran wasn’t about to be ignored either, nudging him in the ribs with the steel toe of his boots. The bastard. Walker would have told him as much too if he’d been able to make the sounds.

Salt and sand were the second things he noticed when some of the fog on his mind lifted. They coated his teeth and the roof of his mouth, gritty against his tongue when he tried to dislodge them and failed.

That, and he was so damned cold. Between the damned-near-frostbite and the sand, his skin hurt. Just from existing.

It hadn’t been a dream then.

Kiran started speaking again, “Seriously—”

Groaning gently and batting away another vicious attempt at his ribs, Walker took quick stock of himself. Body parts? Check. Feeling where it should be? Mostly. Check. If he could get past the headache eating away at the space behind his eyes, the cold, and the sand, everything felt fine...better than fine, actually.

If Kiran hadn’t been huffing about something above him, he might have been tempted to lie there until the hang-over passed. Or, better yet, force his ‘friend’ to go and scavenge a gallon of water and whatever leftovers he could find in the pack house.

But most of that required moving. And talking.

Neither of which Walker was keen on at the moment.

The morning sun wasn’t exactly warm, as it stroked over his skin. It was tempered by the stiff ocean breeze. And boy did he feel the breeze.

‘Cause he was buck ass naked and relaxed in a way that he hadn’t felt in over a year, maybe even longer, if he was honest with himself. Spread eagle on the sand without a care in the world. Sort of. It was a bone-deep slackening of his entire body that only came after a good run. Or a good lay.

And last night…

Well, good didn’t quite cut it.

He still had no idea where that female had come from – he hadn’t even learned her name, damn him. If his mother had been alive, she’d have clipped him ‘round the ear for his poor manners. But what could he do? She’d just been there.

Enticing. Lovely.

Like she’d come from the ether.

Walker hadn’t even wanted to be there in the first place. How was he supposed to enjoy himself when the accounts were still waiting for him back in the office? He’d known he wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about them long enough to enjoy himself.

Besides, did he really deserve to?

But Willow had talked him into it, as she often did. ‘All work and no play makes for a cranky alpha,’ apparently. There was probably some wisdom in that, though he hated to admit it. But then she hadn’t even been there when he had finally shown up. It was only Kiran, expectation, and the drink that had kept him there until he’d noticed her.

The mysterious female, dancing like no one was watching.

Or like everyone was.

At first, he’d only been interested in why a stranger was on their land. A rare occurrence in and of itself. Even more when he considered how suspicious his people naturally were - it had been three generations since they’d taken anyone new into the pack. But they hadn’t seemed to mind her, this otherworldly creature. And then, after she’d neatly handled Jackson and his roaming hands, they hadn’t wanted to cross her. Not on a full moon.

Full moons were for celebrations.

Of course, he’d noticed that she had a killer body and an ass that would—

But it had been when she’d looked at him, eyes seemingly almost wholly black, curious, and yet taunting, that he’d felt the quickening of desire in the pit of his stomach. From just a look, too. Like he was some whelp that hadn’t learned to jack himself off yet.

He hadn’t wanted anyone since Alice. Sweet, smart, human Alice. Who had deserved much better than a piece of s**t like him. Did deserve better.

Walker hoped that she was doing better; out there, taking the medical world by storm.

As usual, whenever he thought of her, an ache started behind his sternum. All the relaxation he’d earned the night before began to leech out of him.

Walker huffed as something heavy and coarse landed in his lap, covering up his rapidly softening morning wood.

“f**k,” he said, cracking open one eye. “Good morning to you too.”

Kiran snorted softly through his nose, nonplussed at Walker’s nakedness. It was fine, he was used to it.

Slowly, Walker attempted to sit up. Goddess, his head did not like that. He felt like someone had hung him out to dry. Everywhere, and he meant everywhere, was covered in sand.

He didn’t know if his balls would ever recover from their intense…exfoliation.

When was the last time he drank that much? Too f*****g long if his piss-poor tolerance was any sign. Probably not since his early days at college, when he’d been pathetically desperate to fit in.

Back then, he’d been out to prove himself to just about everyone.

As if he still wasn’t, he silently chastised himself.

He scrubbed the fresh t-shirt Kiran had dropped on him against his face. The amount of sand that sloughed off of him was kind of impressive. And a little disgusting.

It just made him think of the female again.

He just couldn’t help it. All it had taken was one look at her, watching her raise her brow at him in a challenge, and he’d wanted to pin her to a tree and pound into her yielding, feminine flesh until neither of them could stand.

It’d been so f*****g long since he’d felt like that. He was honestly kind of surprised; he’d been sure that his s*x drive had shriveled up along with his heart. Come to think of it, had he ever felt like that – so strongly?

He shook his head.

What was he thinking? Of course, he had felt desire. If he were able to think of Alice without his chest aching, he’d remember that. Remember the good times they’d shared… before everything had gone to s**t.

Kiran’s grim face swam into view as he crouched beside Walker.

Immediately, he knew something was wrong. “What’s happened?”

Fuck. Couldn’t he have one night to—

“John Bellwether is dead.”

Double f**k. The relentless throb behind his eyes was drowned out in a wave of static that matched the restless beat of the waves. His mind swam, miring in the guilt that immediately welled within him.

“What?”

“His widow contacted us this morning—” Us? t should have been him. He should have been at his office, doing the accounting. Doing something. Being there for his people. “She found his body at the edge of the forest, a couple of hundred feet from their homestead. He’d been missing since Tuesday.”

Four days. He’d been missing for four days.

And no one knew.

More to the point, Walker hadn’t known. Hadn’t done anything to find him and bring him home to his family.

Kiran stood and offered Walker his forearm. The one wrapped in black ink tattoos that crawled up to his shoulder. Gripping it, Walker let Kiran pull him to his feet.

“You went out there?”

Kiran nodded solemnly, turning to stare out at the distance past Walker’s shoulder. Just an endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean. His jaw was hard, tight. Whatever he’d found, it couldn’t be good.

Giving his friend a minute to gather himself, Walker pulled on his jeans. They were still damp with seawater and, of course, coated in blasted sand. He found his flannel shirt further down the beach, towards where they’d come from the bonfire last night…

His wife-beater was a lost cause. The waves must’ve taken it.

Just like it, the female who’d so readily shared her body with him last night was nowhere to be seen. Wherever she’d gone, she’d left long before he’d been rudely woken. There were no footprints in the sand but Kiran and his.

No sign of where she might have gone.

Or where’d she’d even come from in the first place.

At some point during the night though, she'd taken the time to pull him out of the surf. He couldn’t remember ever passing out that hard, even after the most mind-blowing s*x of his life. And yet he had. If she hadn't dragged his ass up the beach, he would probably have drowned in the early morning’s high tide.

How had she been strong enough to do that? He knew that he was lean for an alpha, weighing in at just over 200 lbs., but still...

Maybe it had been one of his own, trying to save his alpha from the embarrassment of drowning in such an undignified way.

That would make more sense.

If it wasn’t the fact that Kiran had seen her too, Walker might have thought he’d imagined her. After all, she’d had that odd ethereal quality about her. So pale that it was a wonder his fingers hadn’t passed through her.

“You know why she didn’t say anything about him going missing?” A dead body was never a good thing, his father would’ve scolded him. Doubly so for a new alpha flying by the seat of their pants.

Poor f*****g Bellwether.

Running his hands through his hair, Walker promised to do right by him from here on out. It wasn’t like he’d done enough before, was it?

Kiran shrugged. “She said it was not unusual for him to disappear for a day or two at a time.” Folding his arms over his chest, he quietly added. “He always let her know about it beforehand so she can take care of the farm.”

It was a good thing Jackson wasn’t here; he’d have a fit hearing that. A female, running a farm? In the twenty-first century. Scandalous. The sad reality was, that it wasn’t only Jackson that would be put off by the idea.

“Let me guess: this time, he didn’t.”

“He did not.”

Walker scrubbed his hand over his face. Covering it with more f*****g sand. “Shit.”

"I had Alexi help me take the body over to the morgue," Kiran continued with a barely noticeable sigh. "Lilah's looking at him now."

Kiran's eyes glazed over as he looked out towards the Pacific again. It was rare to see the male so unsettled; he was centuries old. He had seen a lot more than the average shifter would in a lifetime. Walker's gut sunk through the floor.

"What else?"

"His body," Kiran said, eyes narrowing at the horizon. "I have never seen anyone cut up like that. Whatever it was that got him...it was not a good or clean death."

Bellwether had suffered.

The poor bastard.

But that wasn't to say that he wasn't killed by a particularly large bear. The farmer wasn't so strong a wolf that he'd be able to take on a cranky grizzly by himself.

But Kiran knew what a bear attack looked like. Living where they did, everyone knew what a bear attack looked like. It didn’t happen often, but a few of their numbers had been lost to the local wildlife.

Generally, bears went for the head.

Cut up like that though…

It didn't make sense.

"Is there enough of him to put him to rest at least?" He might only have been a farmer, but every one of the pack deserved a pyre and a funeral under the moon. They would give him back to the goddess.

Do right by him in death, Walker told himself. Maybe it was more of a vow. To the spirit of Bellwether, which he hoped was by the Goddess’ side. And to himself. As a pisspoor excuse for an alpha.

The look on Kiran’s face was the last thing he wanted to see.