Taken by the Pack: Wolf Shifter Menage (The Wolfpack Trilogy Book 2) Page 10

  “Who did all this carving?” she said.

  “Hardy,” Packer said.

  Hardy, Tucker and Logan were all out on the porch smoking pipes. They’d agreed to allow Packer to show her around, as she seemed to have the closest bond with him. She could tell that they were all hoping she’d form relationships with them too, but they seemed to understand that it would take time. She’d have to handle them gently, making sure none of them got jealous if she spent too much time with one of the others.

  “He’s very talented.”

  Packer nodded. “People think of us as beasts,” he said. “They’d be surprised at how we actually live. Hardy in particular is very sensitive. He’s a shifter, but he’s no animal. If we lived in a city in the south, he’d probably be an artist or something.”

  “And what would you be?” she said.

  Packer smiled. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve never really had to think about it.”

  “I know you like books,” she said.

  “That’s true,” Packer said, “but I also like killing wolves.”

  Packer showed her the main living area. There was a handmade dining table with sturdy pine chairs, a seating area where they relaxed with a large fireplace, and an open kitchen with its own massive open hearth for cooking deer and other game. A hall led to the bedrooms. There were four bedrooms in a row along a walkway that opened out to the deck. Packer didn’t show her inside all of the bedrooms, just his own. Aisha thought that was a little suggestive of him. He seemed shy when he opened the door. She liked his room. There was a large bed against one wall covered in hides that looked soft and inviting. On the floor was a deerskin rug. There was a wooden table with a chair, and on the table was a small stack of old books. There was a wardrobe against the other wall.

  “So this is where the magic happens,” Aisha said, and as soon as she said it she blushed.

  Packer cleared his throat.

  “Bad joke,” Aisha said.

  “We’ve also set up a room for you,” Packer said.

  Aisha was touched. It was almost like the life she’d always wanted. She’d always wanted to be part of a family—she’d wanted to live in a house full of people who loved each other and have her own room. This wasn’t quite the way she’d imagined it but it came close.

  “I’ve got a room?” she said.

  “Follow me,” Packer said.

  He led her back down the walkway toward the living area. From the seating area there was a ladder that she hadn’t noticed earlier. He climbed it and she went up after him. When they got to the top, Aisha’s jaw dropped. It was the most beautiful space she’d ever seen in her life. The ladder came up onto a large, airy open loft that looked back down onto the living area. There were large windows on the front that overlooked the clearing, the stream, the forest, and above the trees down over the valley. It was amazing.

  “This is so beautiful,” she said.

  Packer smiled. In one corner there was a huge pile of soft hides and woven blankets that would make the most cozy, comfortable bed Aisha could imagine.

  “When did you prepare all this?” Aisha said.

  “As soon as I got back from my journey.”

  “You knew back then that you were going to bring me here?” she said, touched at how thoughtful he’d been.

  “I hoped,” he said. “The truth is, all four of us have prayed our entire lives for a handmaiden. We thought there were none left. When I got back, my brothers could already sense your presence. When I told them I’d met you on my journey, they agreed that I should be the one who brought you back here.

  “How did you know I’d come?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You hoped?”

  Packer nodded. “You have no idea,” he said.

  *

  Chapter 25

  AISHA’S FIRST MEAL AT HER new home was surprisingly civilized. Hardy and Tucker put a small deer on a spit and roasted it over an open flame. They also had wild mushrooms that they cooked in a skillet and berries for dessert.

  Aisha went up to her room to prepare before the meal. There was a large cast iron trough in one corner of the room, and Packer brought up hot water to fill it.

  “I have a bathtub?” she said.

  Packer smiled at her. “We really hope you’ll be comfortable with us,” he said.

  Aisha luxuriated in the bath, and when she got out, she found that the brothers had also filled a closet with fresh, clean clothes for her. She put on a fur-lined dress, and she felt like a princess in it. She wondered where they’d gotten the clothes. She found it difficult to imagine they’d made them all for her during the past few days.

  When she climbed down the ladder, the four brothers were already sitting at the table waiting for her.

  They stood up as she approached. Aisha felt shy as she walked toward them. They’d reserved the seat at the head of the table for her, and as she approached they all stared at her, transfixed, their yellow eyes burning with a passion that Aisha found difficult to bear.

  Tucker stepped out and pulled Aisha’s chair from the table for her.

  “Thank you, Tucker,” she said.

  She sat down, and the four brothers only took their seats after she was comfortable.

  “That dress,” Hardy said. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “You have,” Logan said. “It was your mother’s.”

  Aisha looked down at it. It was rich, warm white wool with a white fur trim. She’d never worn anything so exquisite in her entire life.

  “You look very beautiful in it,” Hardy said.

  The other three murmured in agreement.

  “Thank you,” Aisha said. “Thank you all for everything.”

  “It’s our pleasure,” Logan said.

  “I’ve never had a home like this,” she said.

  “Well, neither have we,” Logan said.

  “It wasn’t a home till you got here,” Tucker said.

  Aisha looked out across the table. She didn’t know where the day had gone, but it was already dusk outside. Candlelight lit up the table, giving everything the most romantic sparkle. The table was exquisitely set.

  “It’s the first time I’ve had a home too,” she said, tears of happiness falling down her cheeks.

  *

  Chapter 26

  THE NEXT MORNING WHEN AISHA woke up she felt so happy that she wanted to sing. It was dawn, and the first light of the sun was spilling into the valley from the horizon. She stood at the window of her room and looked out over it all. How had she ended up somewhere so beautiful, so peaceful? Was it really real?

  She went down the stairs and thought she could smell coffee. There was a kettle hanging from an iron post over the fire, and she grabbed it with a glove and poured some of the coffee into a cup. When she tasted it, she knew that it wasn’t quite coffee. It was some other root or nut that had been ground down, but it had a similarly pleasing taste.

  The house was silent. She wondered where the brothers were. She wrapped herself up in a thick fur blanket and went out onto the porch and sipped the drink. When she heard a rustling in the trees, she looked up to see Logan walking toward her in his wolf form. Aisha was amazed that she could recognize him, but she could.

  And then, right before her eyes, he shifted into a human. It was a remarkable thing to watch. He was in mid-stride, and within the space of a couple of steps he’d risen up. His fur changed to skin, and his wolf’s snout transformed into the hard, angular, handsome features she knew as Logan.

  And he was completely stark naked!

  Aisha looked at him and blushed, but she didn’t look away. She figured she was allowed to look. She was a shifter female, and she was up here in the wilderness with the last four males in the entire valley. She would drink it all in.

  His body was strong and hardy. He seemed built as much from wood and leather as from skin and bone. His chest and arms were muscular, his ass was firm and puckered, his legs were thick and strong, and his cock h
ung long and loose from a tuft of pubic hair like a delicious decoration.

  “Aisha,” he said. “Good morning.”

  He strode toward her and climbed the steps up onto the porch. Aisha was amazed. He was so unselfconscious, almost like he didn’t even notice he was naked. She presumed it was very normal and natural for the brothers to walk around naked. Any time they shifted, they’d be naked, and they shifted regularly.

  “I poured some coffee,” Aisha said.

  “Oh, you found that. It’s probably not what you’re used to,” Logan said.

  “I like it.”

  “We gather the nuts from the forest here and roast them ourselves. It’s the closest thing we can get to real coffee, and we avoid going into the town when we don’t have to. We like to be self-sufficient.”

  “I don’t blame you,” Aisha said.

  She was trying to hold a straight conversation with him, but the fact that he was naked was very distracting.

  “Would you like a cup?” she said.

  “I’ll get it,” Logan said. He went inside and poured himself a cup. When he returned, he’d wrapped a deer pelt around his waist. Aisha wasn’t sure if she was glad or disappointed.

  “Where are the others?” Aisha said.

  “They’re hunting,” Logan said. “We’ve vowed to protect the village from wolves. We do it even though the villagers aren’t much better than the wolves.”

  “Packer told me about that,” Aisha said. “He said you do it because this valley used to be for shifters alone.”

  “That was many years ago,” Logan said. “There was a time when the entire valley was the territory of the shifter pack and the wolves wouldn’t have dared to enter it. Now, the wolves are running rampant over this entire region. They’re killing off all the food. There are too many of them. They are even attacking humans when they can. They see humans as intruders in their territory. Can you believe that?”

  “It’s strange,” Aisha agreed. “I’m used to thinking of humans as the top predator of them all.”

  “So were the wolves,” Logan said, “at least until recently. Now, the wolves see any humans north of Fairbanks as intruders and try to kill them.”

  “I don’t know why you help the humans when they’re so cruel to you, to us,” Aisha said. It was the first time she’d referred to herself among the shifters. She was already beginning to feel more a part of them than the people down in the village who’d treated her so barbarously.

  “Sometimes I don’t either,” Logan said. “All I can say is that despite everything the humans have done to us in the past—and they’ve done terrible things, like almost wiping us out—I can still say there are some very good ones. I think that as a whole, they’re worth helping just because of the good ones.”

  Aisha smiled. “Ma Hetty is a shifter too, and she lives with them.”

  “Yes. She’s come to the same conclusion we have. There’s enough good in the humans to warrant our help. She just went farther, living among them and giving up her ability to mate.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “It’s always been an option open to the handmaidens. If they decide they don’t want to take mates, they can become a seer. Seers are very important in our culture too. They guide our packs, tell us what’s wise and what’s foolish, what’s right and what’s wrong.”

  “I found it very useful when I spoke to her,” Aisha said.

  “You met with Ma Hetty?”

  “Yes, my friends at the inn brought me to her.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Nothing that I understood at the time,” Aisha said. “But now I’m beginning to understand more of it.”

  Logan nodded. "I find there is a lot of wisdom in everything she tells me. Sometimes I don’t appreciate it at the time, but sooner or later I realize how wise she has been.”

  “Why aren’t you out hunting with the others?” Aisha said.

  “I came back to check on you.”

  *

  Chapter 27

  THERE WAS SOMETHING ABOUT BEING alone with Logan that made Aisha uneasy. She was scared of making the other brothers jealous, especially Packer. She felt that since he’d been the one to find her first, he had the most claim over her. Flirting with Logan, who was naked but for the skimpy deer hide wrapped around his muscular waist, felt disloyal.

  “Do your brothers know you’re here?” she said.

  “Of course. We communicate constantly. We’re in each other’s heads, more or less.”

  “And they didn’t mind you coming back to see me by yourself?” Aisha said.

  “We decided together that I should be the one to come back. Just like we decided that Packer should be the one to bring you up here.”

  “How do you decide such things?”

  “We just know what’s the right thing,” Logan said.

  Aisha nodded. She’d read a lot about the mating rituals of animals. It had always fascinated her, and training as a vet, it had been part of the textbooks she’d studied. She knew that wolves fought over the right to mate, and that they could even kill each other over it. She didn’t want to see herself coming between the brothers.

  “Will me being here change things for you and your brothers?” she said.

  “Of course,” Logan said, laughing. “It will change everything.”

  “What I mean,” Aisha said, awkwardly, “is will it lead to fighting? If I formed a bond with one of you, would the others get jealous?”

  “We try not to get jealous of each other,” Logan said. “We’ve spent our whole lives protecting each other. Any one of us would die to save the others. We’re all we’ve ever had.”

  “You try, but jealousy between brothers is always a danger, isn’t it? Especially now that I’m here, and I’m the only female.”

  Logan looked at her and smiled. “To answer you honestly, yes. It will be incredibly difficult for us. It will be a completely new challenge. Until now, we’ve shared everything. What one brother has helps all the others. But if you were to form a handmaidens bond with one of us, yes, it would be incredibly difficult on the other three. Can you imagine having to live your entire life without ever finding a mate?”

  Aisha thought about it. “I would hate it,” she said.

  “We know that pain,” Logan said. “We’d even accepted it to a degree. Now that you’re here, it’s given each of us hope. We haven’t spoken of it, but we don’t need to. We can feel each other’s thoughts. Each one of us is ardently hoping to bond with you.”

  Aisha nodded sadly. “I hope I’m not the cause of too much pain,” she said quietly.

  Logan was watching her.

  “Maybe it would have been better for the four of you if I’d never arrived at all,” she said.

  He thought about that. When he spoke, there was so much wisdom and truth in his words that it almost moved her to tears.

  “Perhaps that’s true,” he said. “Perhaps we would have been better off living out our lives alone up here. We’d built up good relations with the town. Now they probably want to kill us for stealing you. We’d never had any reason to be jealous of each other. Now we have you. But sometimes, life is more complicated than we wish, Aisha. And shouldn’t it be our wish to live as full a life as possible, even if it’s difficult? Shouldn’t it be our wish to be tested to the full extent of our strength, rather than live lives of safety and peace and never know our own limits?”

  “Maybe,” Aisha said.

  “When we hunt,” Logan continued, “we’re not like other predators. Other hunters watch their prey for hours, they look for signs of weakness, they look for the oldest and youngest members of the herd, those that will be the easiest to kill. And only when they’re sure they’ve found the easiest prey do they strike. We don’t do that. We go for the alpha. We hunt to kill the strongest of our enemies. If we kill the strongest, the rest fall back. We’re not interested in killing their weak, their old and young and sick. We’re interested in killing on
ly their strongest warriors, their pack leaders, their alphas.”

  “I guess in the long run, it’s more effective to kill the alpha.”

  “It is,” Logan said, “but that’s not the only reason we do it. We don’t just want to weaken our enemies. In fact, we pray every full moon for their strength. We want them to be as strong as possible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because only then can we know that we’re true hunters. There’s no glory in killing something weaker than you. It is only by standing up to your equal that you truly prove your strength and your courage. We hunt the strongest wolves because we long to be the strongest, deadliest predators in this forest. We hunt their alphas so that we can truly be alive. Without strong adversaries, we are nothing.”

  “And you see me as an adversary?” Aisha said.

  Logan smiled at her. His smile was intoxicatingly attractive. “Not at all. But we wish to be truly alive. The goal of the shifter is never to prolong his life, but to make sure he gets the maximum from it. To truly live to the limits of his ability. And there is no way any of us could ever have truly lived a full life without a female. Even to court a female like you and lose is more honorable than to never have a chance to mate.”

  “Where I come from,” Aisha said, “we say that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved.”

  Logan smiled again, that smile that was like a drug. “I like that,” he said. “That’s exactly what I meant. Even if you were to form no handmaiden’s bond. Even if you never mated with any of us, we’d still be happier for having had the opportunity to pursue you,” Logan said. “The only thing worse than never having a mate, is never even having the opportunity to pursue a mate.”

  “So you’re going to pursue me?” she said.

  “Oh, Aisha. We’re going to pursue you like the wolf pursues the deer. Everything we do from now on will be in pursuit of you. Even if we don’t admit it. Even if it doesn’t look like it. It’s our nature. We won’t be able to think of anything but you. That’s who we are. We’re males, we’re all alphas, at least in our own minds. Every one of us wants to mate with you.”