Once an alpha hidden wol.., p.1
Once an Alpha (Hidden Wolves), page 1
Once an Alpha
A Hidden Wolves Novella
Kaje Harper
Can I be both Alpha and the man Rob needs me to be?
I spent nineteen years rebuilding the pack I took from our abusive Alpha, with my bondmate Melody as my wife, and my best friend Rob at my side as Second. Then I lost Melody and the child we hoped to have, and my world crashed down on me. I holed up, grieving and fighting conflicting impulses, until my Third, Sherman, got tired of my apathy and Challenged me for pack Alpha.
I could’ve taken Sherman down, no sweat. Rob could’ve wiped the dirt with him. What held us back was the memory of one night when we were both seventeen, and three decades of not giving in to impossible dreams. If we were free, away from the violent homophobia of the packs, maybe we could finally be more than Alpha and Second. So I suppressed my Alpha instincts and walked away. Rob, as always, came with me.
Now we’re in my truck, heading west into the mountains. Just David and Rob, two men trying to figure out what we can be to each other. Until we stop in a small town for a meal, and someone who smells like a wolf steals my truck. Trouble’s afoot, the local lone wolves need help, and I’m discovering that once an Alpha, always an Alpha. But if we get entangled with a new pack, does that mean any relationship Rob and I might’ve found has to be lost again to werewolf laws?
Set in 2010, a year before Unacceptable Risk in the bad old days of the packs, this is a Hidden Wolves universe standalone 44,000 word novella with new characters.
Content warnings for grief, past pregnancy loss, past abuse, past captivity, and violence.
Contains the added bonus 5K short story Toby, Doyle, and the Cats.
Copyright 2024 by Kaje Harper
Editing by Debbie McGowan
Proofreading by Ashley Van Buren
Cover art by Jo Clement
Formatting by Beaten Track Publishing – beatentrackpublishing.com
License Notes
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission of the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted is a model.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No AI / No bots: No generative AI was used in the creation of any part of this book. We do not consent to any Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, large language model, machine learning, chatbot, or other automated analysis, generative process, or replication program to reproduce, mimic, remix, summarize, or otherwise replicate any part of this creative work, via any means: print, graphic, sculpture, multimedia, audio, or other medium. We support the right of humans to control their artistic works.
Contents
Note to Readers
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
Toby, Doyle, and the Cats
About the Author
Other Books by Kaje Harper
Note to Readers
This story is set in the world of the Hidden Wolves, where all werewolves are male, and although they live and work among humans in cities, towns, and suburbs, the human world has no idea werewolves exist. The only exceptions are the human wives bonded to their mates and packs, married to their men, occasionally bearing them precious children, and keeping the pack secrets for everyone’s safety.
That secrecy is ruthlessly enforced in a closed, authoritarian, and hidebound society. The Alphas rule their packs, some benevolently, some less so. The winds of change are coming, but for now, as this story opens, even beloved human wives have little authority. The only limits on an Alpha’s power are what his Second and Third can threaten him with, and anything considered a risk to the pack is a death-penalty offense. Including being gay.
This tale takes place in early September 2010, a year before Unacceptable Risk— book 1 of Hidden Wolves— and many miles away…
Chapter 1
“How much longer are you planning to drive?” Rob slouched deeper into the passenger seat of my pickup.
“Till I’m ready to stop.” I didn’t look at him.
“Just asking, ’cause it’s been twenty-five hours, and I don’t want to die shoved up the ass of an eighteen-wheeler because you’re too stubborn to take a break.”
“I won’t hit a goddamned semi.” I eased off the gas a fraction to give the guy ahead of me more space. The beat of anger and frustration in my head wouldn’t settle. No! Go back. Turn around now! Driving forward as fast as the road would let me was the only thing keeping me from listening to that voice.
“How about a meal, then?”
“We stopped at a drive-through already. And we peed and got snacks just a while back.”
“If you count nine hours as ‘just.’”
“Nine…?” I checked the dashboard clock. Sure enough, time had gone by. When I sniffed the interior air, the smell of the wrappers in the trash had faded to a hint of pickle juice, salt-and-vinegar, and congealed fat. My wolf stirred, and for the first time, a push of hunger replaced the need to turn, to go back, to go home.
It’s not home anymore.
I almost apologized to Rob for those hours, but I hadn’t asked him to come with me. It was his own fault he wasn’t back with the rest of the pack. No doubt they were having a party, a congrats-on-becoming-Alpha shindig for Sherman. Might even have roasted a pig, like we did last Christmas. Rob could’ve stuck around and enjoyed that instead of making a martyr of himself, tagging along with me.
Rob’s stomach took that moment to complain, loudly, about how little he’d shoved into it recently.
“You sound like you swallowed a bear,” I told him.
“I wish. Could eat a bear about now.” He winced as his gut rumbled another long, gassy salvo, but straightened his shoulders and kept staring out the windshield, not pushing me harder.
I didn’t have to be that much of an asshole. “I guess we could eat something.” The highway sign ahead said, “Food, lodging, next exit,” although the business names on the sign weren’t any of the familiar chains of rural America. Still, “food” wasn’t exactly ambiguous. I hit my blinker and moved into the exit lane.
Waiting for the next visible-from-the-highway McDonald’s would’ve been a smarter move. The exit took us away from the main road on a curving two-lane blacktop between dense stands of trees. It was pretty country, if you liked unpopulated and rugged, which I did. But each new mile took me on more of a detour from my drive across the country. Not that I had anywhere special I was going— I was running from something, not to something— but the highway was straight and simple. This winding road wasn’t.
When our course reversed again, I grumbled, “You think there’s actually a town back here, or they just let tourists wander till they die and then eat them?”
Rob chuckled. “I reckon they’d have to be pretty bold to eat us.”
I glanced at the man who’d been my Second for the last twenty years. He looked ordinary, a long, lean cowboy in worn jeans and battered boots, his dirty-blond hair needing a trim, his narrow face alight with amusement, but this was the man who’d helped me whip a warped and traumatized pack into shape. I’d seen him face down a much bigger wolf on sheer willpower. Hell, I’d seen him physically beat a man fifty pounds heavier into crying uncle and bowing his head in surrender. Rob had barely been breathing hard.
“You’re right. Unless we keel over because there’s no damned food and that sign was a lie—” I cut off my rant as we rounded another bend and a small roadside diner came into view. A scatter of houses and storefronts beyond suggested this might be the actual town. Didn’t matter as long as the diner was open. We wouldn’t be sticking around long.
I pulled into the lot and parked near the entrance. There were a couple of other battered pickups beside us, much like mine. When I turned off my truck and opened the door, a scent of gasoline from the nearest truck blended with a far pleasanter mix of pine trees and damp earth, French fries and baked bread.
Rob’s stomach growled again and he grinned at me. “I smell fried food. Can’t be all bad. Come on, Alpha, let’s see if some carbs can put you in a better mood.”
“David,” I snarled. “Not Alpha.” Never Alpha again. I’d made my peace with that, even if my wolf hadn’t.
Rob sobered, dropping his gaze. “Sorry. David.”
My name sounded odd in his voice. I didn’t think he’d called me that in twenty years. Not since he was the first to step forward, put his hands between mine, and swear to me as his Alpha. We’d been young together once, Robin and Davey, but there was an entire ocean of water under that bridge.
I turned toward the diner, and he fell into place at my side.
Overhead fixtures, underpowered and fly-speckled, dimly lit the interior. Neglect, or to keep the patrons from seeing their food? I almost turned bac k, but the aromas I detected were wholesome— meat on a grill, rich and succulent, not burned.
“I could murder whatever burger that cook’s frying,” Rob murmured.
“Agreed.”
A sign said, “Seat yourselves,” so we moved between the empty tables to one in a corner, giving us walls at our backs. A booth in the rear was occupied, presumably by the owners of the two trucks, but we couldn’t see more than the tops of their heads over the high seat backs.
We waited in a fatigued silence for a few minutes before a middle-aged woman came to take our orders. Both of us ignored the menu and went for three burgers each with all the fixings and fries. She eyed Rob up and down before writing his, since he didn’t look like the kind of guy to put away that much food, but headed back to give the cook our tickets without commenting.
“I was born in a place like this,” Rob said, glancing around. “Little Podunk town where everyone knew everyone. Back before Mom finally agreed to marry Dad and we ended up in your neck of the woods.”
“Did you miss it?” We’d been a suburban pack, buying anonymity by living around lots of humans who ignored their neighbors, going out to the pack’s backcountry retreat to really run.
“I didn’t have good friends back there. Second night with your pack, I met you.” Rob’s gaze found mine. Something passed between us, older than recent decades as packmates, more than memories, a link I could remember jolting me to the core, the first time eight-year-old me accidentally knocked over the new kid in the pack.
“Yeah, you did.” I aimed for lightness. “I knocked you on your ass, if I remember right.”
“Yep, flattened me right off my feet. Never recovered from it, either.” Rob’s steady tone dared me to make something of that, but I wasn’t ready, not yet. Maybe not ever.
“Where’s the food? It’s not like they’re slammed for customers.” I glanced over my shoulder. In that booth at the rear, I caught movement as if someone had ducked out of sight. Didn’t matter. We wouldn’t be staying.
“Give the damned cow time to stop mooing.” Rob leaned back in his chair and stretched out his legs. I’d have said it was an accident his shin rubbed against mine, except he had a werewolf’s body awareness. That was no accident.
I didn’t nudge him back. Didn’t move my leg away either.
“So, I’m curious,” Rob drawled. “When we hit the Pacific Ocean, you gonna stop or drive right on into the water.”
“Fuck you,” I muttered.
“Wouldn’t say no.” His voice barely reached my ears, small-town-America cautious.
I pretended not to hear. “I thought we’d stop in the mountains, maybe. At least for a while. Find a place to run and just hang out. No responsibilities. No pressure.”
“We’re in the mountains now,” he pointed out.
“Barely.” My wolf’s demand to turn back and reclaim what was ours had blunted with fatigue and distance, but the urge was still there.
The server came up to the table with a laden tray. “Here y’are, three burgers apiece with the works, all the fixin’s.” She unloaded plates in front of us. The aromas of grilled beef and bacon, fries and ketchup, rose like the scent of heaven.
Manners be damned. I grabbed the first burger and shoved half of it into my mouth.
“You enjoy, now.” The woman picked up the tray and headed toward the back.
Two burgers in, I slowed down enough to say, “How much do you think this place pays the cook, and can we outbid them?”
Rob chuckled. “You gonna stick them in the back of the truck and haul them along to wherever we wash up?”
“No. Guess not.” I chewed a mouthful of fries. No ketchup. They were too perfect to need it. “Pity, though.”
I was finishing the last dill pickle spear on my plates when my wolf alerted with a growl. “My truck!” I bolted upright and ran to the front of the diner as the familiar engine noise rose and receded. Leaping out the door, I was just in time to see my pickup vanish around a bend in the road. I whirled to Rob, half a step behind me. “Someone stole my fucking truck!”
My wolf wanted to shift and run after them, hunt them down, and punish the thief. Lethally. My human brain knew that even in fur, I couldn’t keep up with a four-hundred-horsepower engine.
“You two gonna pay for your meal?” the server asked from behind us. “Or do I gotta call the sheriff?”
I whirled around. “Of course we’ll pay, but we need the sheriff anyhow. Some bastard just took my truck right out of your parking lot.”
She pointed to a battered sign. “Not responsible for damage or losses.”
“I didn’t mean you’re responsible.” I nodded to Rob. “Call nine-one-one.”
“Sure.” He was dialing before I realized I could’ve done it myself. Keeping the Alpha’s phone free for pack emergencies wasn’t a thing anymore. I wondered how many reflexes I’d have to relearn.
Rob reported an auto theft to the dispatcher, who told us the sheriff would be along soonish. I’d have pushed for a clearer time frame, but Rob thanked her and hung up. “Quit your huffing,” he told me. “Yelling at her wouldn’t bring him out sooner.”
The woman said, “I’m heading back inside. You holler if you need anything. Don’t forget to come on in and pay after. Or you could pay me now.”
That made as much sense as anything. I peeled some bills out of my wallet and passed them to her, including a big tip. She eyed the amount. “We serve breakfast, if you end up stuck here. Open at six-thirty. Endless coffee. Come on by anytime.”
Once the front door had closed behind her, I said, “I’m going to try to get a scent. Keep an eye out.”
We headed over to where I’d parked, looking around as someone whose truck was suddenly gone might. I knelt to tie my sneaker and bent low behind the screen of Rob’s legs to sniff the ground where the driver’s door would’ve opened. Without my wolf nose, my senses felt dull and fuzzy, but I got a whiff of sweat and a hint of wolf, something vaguely familiar way in the back of my mind. “Well, fuck.”
“What?” Rob held down a hand to me.
I didn’t need the boost, but I took it for the momentary comfort of his fingers in mine. If that made me weak, well, I didn’t have to be the perfect Alpha anymore. “Wolf,” I murmured once I was upright. “Familiar, too. Someone I once knew.”
Rob blinked and said in the same low tones, “Takes a ballsy wolf to steal an Alpha’s truck.”
“Or a desperate one, I suppose. Plus, whoever it was, my memory’s long buried. He must’ve left the pack years before I became Alpha.”
“They’d know just from watching you walk.” Rob elbowed me. “Or strut.”
“I don’t fucking strut.”
“Of course not, Alpha.”
I stepped on his foot and he laughed. Then we both sobered and moved apart as a sheriff’s brown cruiser pulled off the road and into the lot. The car stopped ten feet away and a tall, muscular man unfolded himself from the driver’s seat, jamming a hat on his balding head. He walked over, eyeing me up and down. He was probably used to being the biggest guy around, but I had an inch or two on him. “What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?”
My grumpy ass wanted to lead with some kind of snark about his town greeting visitors by stealing from them, but one thing I’d learned in my fifty-three years was not to make trouble when I didn’t have to, especially with the law. “I want to report a stolen vehicle.”
“I’m Sheriff Frazer. Who might you gentlemen be?”
We introduced ourselves and I handed over my license while describing the truck. The sheriff scanned my details and photo with a sharp glance and a raised eyebrow, then took a long look at me. That was probably over the conflict between my date of birth and the fact that werewolf blood and frequent shifting kept me looking in my late thirties. Another couple of years and I’d need to revise my documents to take a decade or two off, as most werewolves did before we hit sixty. And that would be a challenge, away from the resources of the packs… Irrelevant now. Focus. I tried to look calm and unthreatening under the sheriff’s intent stare.
After a moment, he passed the license back without comment, fetched a tablet from his cruiser, and we went through the whole fill-in-the-forms business. I was embarrassed to find I didn’t recall my license plate, but Rob did. Damned overachiever.
