The Alpha's Selkie Mate

Chapter 2

Meriwa danced like she was a leaf caught in the tail end of a hurricane, desperately trying to cling onto her roots. To remember who she was and why she shouldn’t be here. But it was so hard. Or perhaps she was more like a wave when it curls in upon itself before crashing and turning to sea foam. Sparkling off into nothing and everything, just a mote of possibility in an endless ocean.

She was one with the world, with the heartbeat of the Earth. It could be nothing else, its draw was so strong and right. After all, how could it be wrong if it felt like this? As though she had bubbles in her veins and wings on her feet.

Spinning and dipping, her hips rotated in slow, full, and sensuous circles. Her hands were slick as they slid down her torso, over the peaks of her heaving chest to the valley of her waist and the gentle swell of the thighs. The body was foreign but it wasn’t wrong either. It felt good, she felt good.

Lost in the moment, she thought of nothing else. She could only be. With abandon, she explored her body – new but hers all the same – and pushed it to its limits. Her muscles were on fire, the smoky air thick in her lungs, but she didn’t care. She was so giddy on novelty that she felt drunk. On it, on everything. Her smile stretched her face almost to its breaking point.

I could dance forever, she thought, but there were only so many hours of freedom before the sun peeked over the distant horizon. She would do whatever it took to enjoy them, and she’d cling to it until she perished in a hollowed-out cave of ice. She would not be like her mother, she would make sure this kernel of life kept her going, kept her strong and vital for any pups she bore.

Nothing would make her leave them to fend for themselves.

She swallowed down the taste of ash and pine resin, vowing to herself that it wouldn’t be an empty promise. Callik, if the shaman approved the match, would be good to her. He had never been anything else—

A hand, large enough to engulf her elbow and soft as sandpaper against her irritated, flame-licked skin, hauled her backward into something hot and solid. A body. The air whooshed out of her chest in a rush, her ass finding itself nestled between two impossibly thick, muscular thighs. The bite of a metal zipper was frigid even through the material of her dress – a shock to her sensitive system.

But it was the rapidly swelling c**k that punched the placket of that coarse denim that coated her throat in bile.

Danger.

“I’ve never had one like you before,” came a low and even voice, sliding right into her ear like honey. It was deep enough to rumble through his chest at her back, and she could hear the fiendish smile in it.

It was enough to rub her nerves raw.

Her skin prickled, her hair standing on end.

She didn’t have to see him to know that she was in the presence of a worthy predator – he practically engulfed her and smelled of surety and thrill of the hunt. It wafted off his hot skin in plumes of acrid phermones. Bitter, it caught in her throat and made her heart race in all the wrong ways.

Was this it, the very scenario the shaman and her mother had warned her about?

No, that was ridiculous. Her pelt was hidden away from prying eyes, where no one would ever find it. Stashed in the depression between two rocks, covered with kelp and sand and dirt. Even with a shifter’s superior sense of smell, they would be hard-pressed to stumble across it.

But he touched her as though he owned her, with a familiarity he had no right to.

Thick, blunt fingers trailed up her arms, startling her from her thoughts and leaving a horrid trail of shivers in their wake.

Wrist just as thick as the rest of him, she knew it would never fit between the rocks to reach her precious pelt. Still, she could not breathe a sigh of relief.

She knew that she should leave and go back to the beach, turn back to her true form and take her chances with the sharks and orca that prowled the open waters. Clever though the predators were, they had nothing on an entitled male that threw off pure testosterone like it were perfume.

She ground her teeth.

Was she meek prey, to run off at the first sign of danger? No, she never had been. She was sleek and strong, more than a proficient hunter – no one else was better than her, female though she was. No matter that hunting was as forbidden to her as standing in this forest. Meriwa had done it anyway, any chance she got.

Could she not hunt penguins faster than Panuk or Callik put together? Was she not braver? She'd been the one to take out that bull elephant seal, once upon a time. They’d feasted on that carcass in secret for weeks and she had been proud.

Even in her human form, she had the scar on her flank to prove her worth, given to her by that bull’s nasty bite. Two puncture marks, right above her right hip.

Weakness was not in her nature, and she wasn’t about to start running away now.

“Why don’t you and I go get out of here and I’ll show you what you’re missing out on—” she heard the smile grow wider, the smell of bloodied meat on his breath, “—I’m an animal in the sack. Or on a rock. Against a tree. I’m not picky.”

Then pick someone else, she wanted to snap.

He laughed at his own ‘joke’ and reached for her again.

Not picky, but plenty prideful. She knew his type, picking the one female here that had shown no interest in him. Would never show any interest in him. He wanted to conquer her and brag about it afterward to anyone who would listen.

‘A selkie,’ he’d say, elbowing one of his friends in the side. ‘Bet you’ve never had a f*****g selkie.’

How was she? they’d ask and he’d say something vulgar about how she compared to a shifter - maybe that she was wetter or too loose for his taste - or better yet, he’d brag about reducing her to a blubbering mess of pleasure. It didn’t matter whether that was true or not. Not to males like him.

Even if she was interested in spoiling herself tonight, it wouldn’t be with him. Already she’d done enough damage. If anyone found out what she’d done, she’d be severely punished. To ruin her body for her future mate…

Baring her teeth, Meriwa grabbed the massive paw that was curling its way around her hip, moving towards her vulnerable belly and breast.

“I’m not interested,” she said in perfect, unaccented English. That was one of the few good things about the visions and memories – they gave her the gift of speaking many languages fluently. Another skill she hadn't earned rightfully.

Meriwa flung the male’s hand aside, not caring when it hit the people dancing next to them. He just needed to be off of her.

“Don’t be like that, sweetness,” he returned with a smooth chuckle, nuzzling his nose into her hair and the hollow below her ear. She bristled when she felt him suck in a deep breath – she hated that her smell might be in his lungs. “I know how to treat a female right. You’ll see.”

Like hell, she would.

Spinning on her heel, fire-spitting in her veins, she found herself faced with an expanse of chest wider than her shoulders were. The olive-green fabric was stretched tight over the defined outline of his pecs, just as it clung to every ridge of his abdomen. She was surprised to find that she had to crane her neck to look at this male – as a female selkie, she was much larger than a male of her kind.

But not this male.

He dwarfed her by half a foot in height. At least.

Never mind his shoulders, her whole width would have fit within the span of his waist. He was built like an oaken barrel. His straining t-shirt looked like rings that were barely holding the whole thing together.

“Well, well. Ain’t you even prettier from the front?” His eyes tracked down the length of her like resin seeping down a tree trunk, stopping briefly on her n*****s where they strained against her dress.

When his eyes eventually flicked up to meet hers, they glittered with sharp curiosity.

“How did a thing like you end up here, hm?”

“None of your business.”

His eyes, the grey-blue color of the southern waves during a winter storm, dilated and his grin turned wolfish. Meriwa could smell that his interest was increasing, his scent getting warmer.

Fighting him only made him want her more. Time to try something else.

She made to turn away, reiterating, “Still not interested.”

His hand snapped out, fingers digging into her bicep to keep her in place. “I enjoy a female that knows how to play hard to get.”

Grabbing his wrist, she clamped down with all of her strength. Until she could feel the faint shift of his heavy bones and muscles. His pulse beat heavy and fast against her white-knuckled fingers.

She ripped his hand off of her and it fell into the small space between them. She did not let go. They leaned towards each other, neither willing to give in, until there was only the span of a hand between their noses.

The color began to drain from his hand, and then his face.

“Don’t touch me.”

He dared to lean closer. “Aw, come on—”

“Go find someone else to be the…” she frowned, rifling through her brain for the word she wanted. It sat on the end of her tongue, wrapped up in a memory that wasn’t her own. “To be the notch in your bedpost.”

“Who said anything about a bed?” He reached out towards her face with splayed fingers. She reacted before she could think. Whipping to the side, she kicked the back of his knee with all of her might.

With a roar, he buckled and collapsed to the ground on one leg.

Wasting no time, Meriwa barrelled at his shoulder. Till he was on his back in the dirt, and she sat on top of him. Dust and dried mud swirled around them, settling on her hair and his face.

Through it, his dark eyes promised bloody murder. The disgusting desire he’d directed her way had been replaced with seething coldness, like the endless darkness of the deep-water trenches she had passed on her journey. She’d grown up on stories about the monsters that lurked in the abyss below.

Lifting her head, she noticed that the drums had stopped. All of the music had. The clearing was silent and those with shifted a little uneasily. Everything had stopped. Because they were all staring at the two of them: him in the dirt and her pressing her knee directly into his sternum, teeth bared in a warning.

“Do that again,” she said, leaning towards him and quieting her voice, “and I’ll break something you’ll miss.”

She leaned all of her body weight down into him to prove her point. Just until she heard him wheeze a little when he grunted at her.

His eyes were flinty and focused solely on her. It was a look that spoke to the depths of her, to that lizard part of her brain that only knew instinct from millennia of nothing else. Feeding, fighting, fear, and f*****g. And her instinct told her she should fear deeply what this male’s eyes promised her.

The muscle in the corner of his jaw leaped with wild abandon, just like the veins in his thick neck.

She could feel the stares of the shifters roving over her bent back, her sides. Between her shoulder blades. Like worms under her skin. But no one moved to interfere, to drag her off of him or tear her apart.

This was their land; she didn’t know what their rules were.

But she did know that it wasn’t the first fight that had broken out tonight. There had already been a heated altercation between two young males over an older, sly-mouthed female with slanting, golden eyes.

No one stepped in then, just as no one stepped in now.

But even if they didn’t seem inclined to kill her, she was a stranger. It would be foolish to push her luck by drawing this out.

The male’s nostrils flared as though he could smell her indecision, his pupils shrunken to black pinpricks. They hadn’t moved so much as an inch from her face, so determined was he to bore a hole right through her. His scent had changed too. Gone was the heat and musk, in its place the rank odor of lemon left to rot in the sun and something she couldn’t place, something unnatural.

“Are we clear?” she asked. No way was she getting off of him until he’d agreed to leave her alone.

“Fine,” he growled, the word bit off between his clenched teeth.

She stepped back just enough that she would be out of his immediate reach. The crowd moved backward with her, beginning to murmur.

The male stood with little grace, tucking his t-shirt back into place. He looked at her, lip curled in a sneer. “There’s plenty of other females just like you out there – you’re nothing special. And they don’t stink like fish rotting in a barrel.”

Rolling his shoulders with a snort, he turned and marched away. The crowd parted around him like a river around a boulder that thought itself too good for the riverbed. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, many watched him go. A few fresh-faced females chased after him, much to Meriwa’s surprise.

How anyone would find such a brute attractive was beyond her. There was more to life than being big and strong.

But that was none of her business.

Slowly but surely, the music began to bleed back in. Quiet at first, as though it were hesitant. Then louder. And louder. Till the drums beat in time with her heart, still a little fast in her chest.

Shaking herself off, she gave herself over to the tentative thrum.

It was a few minutes before anyone else dared join her.