Read Online Reluctant Alpha by Kathi S. Barton - Free Book Online Page A

GET FOR THEMSELVES HAD THEY HAD A JOB. MS. BENNETT IS WELL KNOWN IN THE UNITED STATES FOR HER WORK IN CERAMICS. SHE WILL BE RELEASED FROM THE HOSPITAL AS EARLY AS DAY AFTER TOMORROW. MS. BENNETT COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT.”
    “ Quite a change of venue, don’t you think? First you have a poor, tragic family attacked, then its ‘she’s famous, but not worth bothering for a comment.’ I don’t buy it. She shouldn’t have been that hard to get a comment from. She was in the hospital for Cripe’s sake.” Aaron put the papers on the desk and leaned back in the chair again.
    “ Yeah, I can see some bureaucrat being pissed off about having their tourist town advertising that they have a pack of wild animals running around eating the money makers. A few jobs were probably lost over that first article.” He took another pull on his cigar. “I don’t think it was a pack of wild dogs any more than I suspect you do. I also think maybe I know the tracker.” He looked over at Aaron.
    “ You think it was Bailey. Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. If you’re thinking it was Bailey, and then you’re also right that it was probably werewolves, she’d be pulled in to kill them as well. But to attack like that, is that normal, even for rouges? I mean, the first article says it was early morning when they were attacked, on a tourist route.”
    Bradley sat up and moved to the vase. “Ms. Bennett was in town the other day. A couple of my wolves…she put them in their place. She’s an alpha female. Something isn’t right about that; she’d be a rarity without a mate already. I think she was targeted and turned by another alpha male.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
     
    “ Fuck! So this alpha male attacks her family, kills them, takes her into this cave, and changes her because…why? I mean, she’s beautiful, and obviously talented, but why her?” Bradley knew what he was asking. Why turn a human tourist into a wolf to be an alpha without claiming her?
    “ The pups from the other day said she was a virgin. And if that’s so then he changed her without claiming her. That’s also rare and stupid. He wouldn’t know if she was his mate without tasting her. And without her being his true mate, there’d be no offspring. Without offspring, there’d be no heir.” Bradley had been thinking about the reasons she had been so terrified when she realized she had been with wolves. This newspaper article cleared that up, but opened the door to many other questions as well.
    “ You can smell when someone is a virgin? Shit, that would be handy, I suppose. So…you and Lynne, that’s why there were never any children while you were together. She wasn’t your true mate? Okay, but tasting. I didn’t know you drank from your partners. I thought you just went at it like bunnies and mated with the one you liked best.” Cocky bastard, Bradley thought. He knew Aaron knew better than that.
    “ Yeah, it is handy knowing when a female is a virgin. A virgin is to be treasured, treated with respect. Taking a female’s virginity is something we take time with. Not like you vamps who plunder and pillage at first scent, you jackass. And tasting as in tasting her skin; a kiss or even a lick along a vein will do. The taste to us would be like the scent you get that attracts you to your mate. We do bite, though, and taste the blood. It will strengthen the bond between mates and open telepathic pathways between us sometimes. But to turn a human, especially a female human, into one of our kind…” He thought about the pain she would have had to endure. The bites had to be near fatal, brutal in the worst sort of way. The teeth of the biting wolf had to stay in the wound, usually in the soft tissue, for several minutes to ensure that their saliva and enzymes got into the blood stream. That was how the change occurred. In turning a female into an alpha, there had to be a multitude of bites and not all from the same male. The more alpha males that bit her,