The Cowboy Who Strolled Into Town (82 page)

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Destined by two Alphas

(Alpha Shifter Romance)

By Riley Moreno

Chapter 1

                 The mountains rose like jagged red teeth biting into the clearest blue sky that Jana had ever seen. She looked around, her diamond blue eyes as wide as they would go as she soaked in the immense New Mexico landscape. It made her feel small. It made her feel lost in the raw, desolate landscape that so similarly mirrored her own emotions.

              She trundled on, fighting against gravity and her own body’s exhaustion as she struggled up the side of the shallow cliff. Reaching the plateau, Jana collapsed in breathless heap, panting in the warm, breezeless air. She shifted against the sparsely grassed mesa until she was leaning back on her elbows, staring up at the sky that just seemed to swallow up the entire landscape.

              For the first time since it happened, she allowed herself to grieve. First one tear, and then a steady stream, made tracks down her pale, dust stained cheeks. The painful memories from the night before rose like ghosts in her mind, and she was too tired to battle them back again. They swept over her.

              Jana had smelled the smoke from the fire first. It was more intense than normal, filling the air, choking her lungs, and she had woken up coughing in the thick night air. And then there had been the screams, the angry shouts and terrifying howls that still sent a rash of chills sweeping up her arms at the remembered sound. It had been so close, just outside the trailer she had shared with her father, Colt Dubois. The Alpha of the Mesa Verde pack.

              They had been on their way home from a trip to the nearest city, a four day journey, for supplies. The same trip they made several times a year, but this time had been different. Terribly different.

              Jana had known for years that her father’s beta, Dalton Lefevre, had been increasingly unstable. Letting his jealously and paranoia get the best of him. Not to mention that she had overheard him more than once saying that he deserved to be Alpha, not her father. That Dalton would do better by the pack. And the problem was that there were some who where listening to him. Mostly the dregs of the pack, or those that held a grudge against her father. She knew he was about to dismiss Dalton, demoting him to scavenger rank, but her father never got the chance.

              The howls had become wilder, and filled with fear and panic thick in her blood she had fled the trailer and landed in pure chaos. A crowd of rowdy men stood in a circle, their blood thirsty expressions made more menacing by the flickering red firelight and starless night. She hurried forward, but stopped with a pained gasp as someone roughly grabbed her by the shoulders, holding her back.

              “I don’t think so, princess.”

              She snarled up at Gray, one of Dalton’s lackeys, as he used the nickname that she hated. Jana had struggled against him, but froze suddenly as her blue eyed gaze fell on what was happening inside the circle of yells and cruel jeers. Two wolves circled each other. They were larger and more heavily muscled than normal wolves, and one was solid black with bright blue eyes so much like her own, her father. The other was mangier with a shaggy, dull brown coat and amber eye that seemed to glow with red in the light of the fire. Dalton

              They continued their deadly dance, the brown wolf snapping at the black’s legs, the bigger, darker furred wolf feinting, patience and experience heavy in its gaze. It was obvious he was trying not to seriously injure the other wolf, just slow him down, attacking only when he needed to.

              “What the hell is going on, Gray?” Jana growled up at the man still holding onto her shoulders. He just grinned down at her, his yellowed teeth sharp and jagged in the dim, flickering light.

              “What was always gonna happen, little princess. Your big bad dad is finally going to get what’s been coming to him all these years.” There was a grim glee in his words that had her searching out the rest of those standing in the circle. They were all cheering on Dalton, yelling in fury when he missed his attack and pure enjoyment when the brown wolf’s teeth sank into the back of the black. Her father. 

              She should have seen it before. All of the men that had volunteered for the convoy were Dalton’s. His thugs. Men he had won over with lies and fear mongering. He had turned the pack against her father!

              She watched, breathless, as the brown began to run at the other wolf in an odd way, pressing him ever backwards, the circle bowing out to make room. As they cleared, she noticed something strange about the ground that had just been added to the growing arena, and she gasped as Dalton rushed her father again, pushing him ever backward.

              “Father! Watch out, behind you!”

              She had barely gotten the words out before a sweaty hand landed over her mouth, muffling the rest of her warning. She struggled against Gray, watching in terror as her father continued, her shout going unheard, lost in the savage noise filling the hot, dark night.

              Another step back, another, and her father stumbled, falling into the shallow pit that Jana had just seen, had tried to warn him of. Taking advantage of the black wolf’s loss of focus as he tried to regain his balance and that’s when he struck, using the slightly higher ground to his advantage.

              Dalton leapt, his brown fur like rust in the firelight as he landed on her father’s back, his teeth latching onto his neck and with powerful jaws crushed down with an audible snap.

              She fought in a frenzy now, unaware of the claw marks rising bloody on her arms as she finally escaped her temporary captor.

              “No! How could you!”

              Her voice echoed out into the night and time seemed to slow as she watched it happen, unable to take her eyes away.  Jana watched as her father’s body fell, limp and lifeless and a terrible scream bubbled up from the depths of her stomach, across her chest, ripping straight from her heart until it crashed out of her throat on a howl of rage and pain.

              Several of the onlookers paused in their rejoicing to glance at her. The Alpha’s princess. The looks in their eyes sent chills rippling down her spine. There was more than malice sitting there in the dark, there was intent. Suddenly, Gray was behind her again, reaching for her, but she was too fast. He may have had strength on his side, but Jana was smaller, and much more agile.

              She ducked out of his grasp with ease, tearing out into the dark New Mexico desert with only one thought running through her frantic mind. To survive. She reached the outer ridge, panting heavily from exertion and fear and terrible, terrible grief when a noise reached her. A voice. His voice.

              “I’ll find you, my princess. Jana!” Dalton’s voice echoed in the darkness, “I know you can hear me! I can still smell you. You will be mine! You were always meant to be mine, just like I was always meant to be Alpha!”

              There was a chorus of gleeful howls and yips accompanying his decree and she turned, fleeing into the night, away from Dalton and his gang of wolves that had betrayed her father, the pack, and everything they believed.

              She had run all night, not letting herself stop, not letting herself think, or grieve, or even try to understand. She kept moving, putting one foot in front of the other until she had reached the mesa. Jana knew she couldn’t go back to the pack. Dalton had undoubtedly reached them first, told them whatever lie he had concocted, but she also knew it wouldn’t be enough for them, for the rest of the pack.

              But if he mated with her, the daughter of the old Alpha, then the rest of the pack would follow him without question. But she would never let that happen. She would rather die first!

              Jana was heading back to the small town where they purchased their supplies, and then she could catch a ride away from there. Away from her friends, her only family. Tears crashed over her cheeks now in massive waves and sobs racked her small frame. Tears for everything that she had lost, everything that had been stolen from her in a single night.

              She stood, the sun beating down on her, her body protesting every movement as she continued. The city was just a two days walk, she could make it there. Her other side, her wolf side, gave her added strength, extra resistance against dehydration and exhaustion but she knew she would have to eat soon to keep up her demanding pace. And she had to. Jana knew if she slowed down, Dalton would catch her. He probably already had search parties out hunting her down and she had stopped trying to hide her tracks hours ago.

              Shielding her eyes against the glare of the midday sun, she searched the empty landscape once, and then again. Her diamond eyes lighting on a small patch of trees jutting wildly into the blue sky. There! That would be her best chance of catching a quick meal, maybe her only until she reached Sun Hill.

              She shed her clothes, wrapping them into a small pack at her feet. A short minute later, and there was a wolf, smaller than the others had been but still larger than a normal wolf, with dark auburn fur and shining, blue eyes loping across the New Mexico desert.

Chapter 2

              The wolf crouched patiently in the meager shadow supplied by the crooked trees that arched toward the burning sun on the side of the sheer cliff. She had waited for almost two hours already, but knew if she didn’t find something soon she would have to move on. Patience, a trait learned by her father.

              Pain cut through her at the thought, but she shook it off, focusing on the hunt once more. There! In the deepest shadows, she saw it. The slightest of movements noticed only because of the lack of the breeze.  The dark furred wolf crouched even lower, trying to be as still as possible as the stop and go motions continued to move closer. But then they stopped altogether.

              She stalked forward, intent on the kill, on her next meal. Fury and pain and the edge of desperation fueled her forward in one giant leap that had her landing directly on top of the small mouse. Normally, she would have let it go, something so small, but she needed every ounce of energy the tiny animal would give her.

              It wiggled out from under her paw, shooting around a giant, gnarled root, and she followed. One jump, and then another, and she would have it. She prepared to jump again, her eyes only on the prey, and propelled herself forward. She landed with a crunch amongst the trees and fallen, leafless branches, and then, suddenly, she was moving. The ground shifted, rustling unnaturally, and her heart raced, all thoughts of the tiny mouse gone as the large net closed around her, hauling the wolf almost ten feet into the air.

              A trap! Of all the places for her to fall into one, this seemed the most unlikely. On the side of this abandoned cliff, in the least populated area of New Mexico. Only her kind lived out here, surviving off the land and occasional supply runs. And then she remembered the story, like a dream the memory rose of sitting around the camp fire with her father and the other cubs as he talked. Her father had a gift. When he spoke, he could make people see what he was saying, believe in what he was saying. It was why he was such a good pack leader.
Had been,
the wolf reminded herself painfully. 

              But the story he had told that night was well known by her people, especially in this area. It told of two young wolves, barely grown, that had turned against their pack, slaughtering many before fleeing into the mountains of New Mexico, just waiting for wary cubs to wander so they could catch them. Some people called them ‘the Ghosts’ claiming that they had seen them before, just for a moment, and then they had disappeared.

              Others said that they only appeared under a full moon, or only when the fogs rolled across the land. When Jana had asked her father afterward, terrified that the
Ghosts of the mountain
would come after her, he had just chuckled, holding her close as he had drawn her up to sit on his knee.

              “Jana, you must learn to tell the difference between the story, and the truth.”

              “So, it’s just a story? It’s not real?”

              He had shaken his head. “Now, I’m not saying that. Normally, when enough people say the same thing, there is some kernel of truth in there, but it’s figuring out what that kernel is that will make you a good pack leader one day.”

              She just stopped herself from shaking her head. It was one of the things that would have shocked the pack if they had heard. There had never been a female Alpha before for the Mesa Verde pack, and Jana didn’t think they would ever accept one. But her father believed, and trained her in all the ways to be a great leader, just like him.

              “But, papa, does that mean that there really are two killer wolves out there in the mountains?” She had looked out, her childlike blue eyes taking in the massive, dark shapes silhouetted in the landscape surrounding them.

              “Perhaps, Jana, perhaps. But for all the tales and all the stories have you ever heard of them actually catching or killing anyone else?”

              She thought about it for a moment, “Well, no. I guess not.”