The Alpha's Warlock (Mismatched Mates #1)

by Eliot Grayson

A pair of glowing golden eyes looked back at me, set in the face of a wolf with his (probably his, but I sure as hell wasn't going to try to inspect) teeth bared.

The wolf came right up to me with a nonchalant saunter that was more than a little insulting. To be fair, if I'd been a giant predator with four-inch razor-sharp retractable claws, I probably wouldn't have been too terrified of the twink in skinny jeans lying in the mud like a lump, either.

My heart sank. Ian Armitage. My dead ex-lover Jared’s best friend and cousin, the pack leader's second in command, and one of the most feared werewolves in northern California. And he hated me. The curse might still try to kill me, but now it would probably have to get in line.

“All right, Nate,” he said, sitting down and resting his chin in one propped hand. “How about you focus less on pissing Ian off and more on telling me what the fuck is actually going on here.” “But he's so easy to piss off.”

“That's helpful,” Matthew said dryly. “Really. Good to see your magical expertise is so detailed.” “Bite me,” I muttered, and then quickly added, “Figuratively! Figuratively, Matthew.” He laughed a little, but he sobered at once. “Let's skip the biting for now and get to the part where you were in the middle of being bonded and ended up crawling through my territory at dawn.”

And that was when it twigged. There weren't all that many alphas available. They had more magic, more strength, more everything; whatever it was that made werewolves what they were, alphas had it dialed up to eleven. They were popular, and not just because (so I'd heard, anyway) they had giant dicks to go with the rest of the perks.

“Where are we going?” It came out shaky as hell. “I have my own place. I don't usually stay at the pack house.” Ian shrugged, jostling me. “Matt calls it my fortress of solitude.” “Yeah, because Superman's exactly what I think of when I think of you.” I gave that a moment's actual thought. “On the other hand, you have more muscles than brains and constantly fuck things up, so maybe it's not the worst comparison.”

I rolled over in bed and blinked. The shack of solitude was quiet, with that echoing stillness that comes with the absence of other people. I reached out a tiny bit with my magical senses, careful not to overdo it, and couldn't feel him in the house or the immediate vicinity. I stretched a little more, following the filament of energy that now connected us. It took a minute to interpret what I was feeling, but then the information began to flow into me, forming concrete impressions. He was alive, and he was somewhere within a few miles of me, and he was in a bad mood. Well, what the fuck else was new.

The pantry yielded a box of Pop-Tarts. I didn't bother looking for an expiration date. Those things had a half-life like frosted-cherry plutonium.

The one thing I was categorically not going to do was sit there, uncaffeinated and unprotected and with my thumbs up my ass, waiting for Team Furry and Clueless to figure out what to do next, when any second now another pack could turn up and kill us all.

Was it better to be useful, and therefore used, or useless and left to die? That was an interesting, if fucking grim, philosophical question, and one I wished had less practical and more theoretical application in my disaster area of a life.

“Ian?” I still had my hands in his hair. I forced myself to relax my grip before I gave him a bald spot, and I let my hands fall to the bed. “You okay?” When he lifted his head, his eyes glowed like stars, yellow shining through the pale blue. “Fine.” It was a little muffled; his fangs were out. Fuck, glad that waited until he was done sucking me off. “Do you need —” “What I need is to fuck you,” he ground out, hoarse and low. “I need to knot you.”

Honestly, he was still a jerk. But now he was my jerk, and he'd just swallowed my come, and when I took a second to think about it...he didn't sound pissed. He sounded hurt.

Pain wasn't my kink, and if he'd dug them in I'd have screamed and kicked and probably taken him apart with magic. But his restraint, the careful way he was making sure not to hurt me even while he was too overwhelmed with his own desire to control his shift? That was apparently my kink.

Fuck me, but it was so good. “Yeah it is, and I will, just fucking get the lube already,” Ian said against my neck, lips dragging over my pulse and then latching on. Aaaand I'd said that out loud.

me. I landed on my back and the breath whooshed out of me. When my vision cleared, he was kneeling between my legs with his fists braced on either side of me, claws tucked into his palms. “You're bleeding, you have blood on your hands —” “Don't care,” he grunted. “Long as it isn't yours.”

Honestly, if that lightning had hit either of them, it wouldn't have done jack shit; it would've been about half the shock of sticking a fork in an outlet, a big nothing-burger to an alpha werewolf. But it really did make me look like a younger, more moisturized Emperor Palpatine, and I kind of loved it.

“Please stay out of trouble,” Matthew said. He sounded a lot less optimistic, not that I could blame him, given my track record — not to mention Ian's. “Groceries, laptop, low body count,” I promised him. He smiled weakly in return, all that my feeble attempt at humor deserved, and I pushed off the table and went to follow Ian to the car.

Did I want to follow scary Tweedledum and scarier Tweedledee to wherever they wanted to take us? No. Did I want to stand here in the woods without a working phone or a plan? Also no. Did I think they could beat us in a fight? Definitely yes, but I knew better than to say that out loud in front of Ian. We probably didn’t have much choice, and the choices we did have all sucked.

“Trying to off my father’s more of a feature than a bug,” I said to Charlie. “We’ll come with you. But keep your swords and fangs where we can see them.”

me. I’d be capable of that kind of magic, I knew it — if I’d ever had anyone to teach me. Which made me sound like that bitch of an aunt from Pride and Prejudice, with her I’d have been a proficient if I’d ever learned bullshit, but I kind of got where she was coming from. How were you supposed to reach your potential if you didn’t even know what steps to take to get there?

Why would Matthew think the Kimball territory would be a good place to look for us, if he was so sure Sam Kimball wasn’t involved in my kidnapping? But it wouldn’t help to say that out loud. I moved to walk right beside Ian, hoping to show support, and also maybe be in range to stop him from committing suicide-by-Dor if he wolfed out again. He ignored me.

I was sitting down, though, not strung up, so that was something. Always look on the bright side of life, right? Monty Python. I could focus on Monty Python.

the day Ian was grateful to my father for anything would be the day he redecorated the shack of solitude with Swedish modern furniture and bought a set of matching tasseled throw pillows.

Maybe I only had one reliable mode of attack, and maybe it was unimpressive, but when all you had was blue finger lightning, every problem looked like Darth Vader. That probably wasn’t the worst comparison.

“Watch it,” Ian said, without heat. I tipped my head back a little to glance up at him. He was really going to let Charlie whale on his brother like that? He looked like he was right on the ragged edge, and I couldn’t blame him: taken down by a whole pack of wolves, beaten, gouged, bitten, strung up in chains and muzzled, and then death-cursed in a magical duel, not to mention being used as a conduit for a lightning storm. Yeah, he’d earned the right to be a little tired. “Don’t break his neck before I get the chance to beat the shit out of him.” Yeah, fair enough.

“Why would you stay and help us defend our territory?” he asked, with understandable wariness. Well, at least whatever was scrambling his brain had left him with a few neurons to rub together. “What do you want?” “You’re welcome, by the way,” Charlie drawled. “And I don’t want anything, except a return to equilibrium in the neighborhood. Oh, and Sam Kimball’s head on some kind of spike, or possibly mounted on a plaque. I used to do some taxidermy in my younger —”

Something shiny appeared in front of my face, and I blinked it into focus. A water bottle, one of those super-eco-friendly self-purifying costs-more-than-my-rent deals. The Fleetwood Brougham of water bottles.

He waved a hand, and then went back to polishing his giant gleaming sword, the motion hypnotic. And a little sexy. But mostly scary. I swallowed hard. I already had enough weird kinks. No adding to them, not allowed.

“I’ll stay out of trouble,” I said hoarsely. “Promise.” Ian’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You never give in that easily.” “Well, first time for everything.” I turned away before he could read my expression, which was probably somewhere between misery and longing. I was like a bad supernatural country song, all wanting to be loved and sad that my werewolf ran away. Or something.

It wasn’t the world’s most efficient shower, and when the water started to run cold, Ian still hadn’t washed himself. “Get out and get in bed,” he murmured into my ear. “I’ll get cleaned up on my own.” If alpha mating instincts meant they washed you in all the hot water and then uncomplainingly took cold showers on their own, I couldn’t believe everyone didn’t want one.

I woke as Ian tried to sneak out of bed. And that was not happening. He was warm. I was sleepy. No way. I rolled over, doing my best impression of a needy, grabby octopus. Would it be easier to keep him in bed if I had eight limbs and those cool little suction things? Probably, but I managed anyway, wrapping my hands around one big bicep and flinging a leg over his.

“Hey,” Ian interrupted me, reaching up to stroke the side of my face. With the hand that hadn’t been in me, thankfully. Werewolves’ senses of hygiene could be really hit or miss.

Ian tensed. “You can’t actually hear me through the mate bond, right?” I rolled my eyes. “Yes, of course. That’s why I’m asking you. Jesus, Ian.” “Okay, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m actually glad you’re being sarcastic again,” he said after a pause. I turned my head and propped my chin on his chest, ignoring him when he winced and squirmed a little. Yes, I had a pointy chin. No, I did not care.

At least, frustration was what I meant to send. But when I opened myself up, everything else I was feeling went pouring through without my volition: my soul-deep need to belong somewhere, my terror that if I didn’t make myself useful I’d be cast aside, my nearly frantic desire to be more than what I’d been, to be as competent and able as Dor. Ian staggered back a step, eyes wide. “That’s what’s going on inside your head?” He sounded shell-shocked, sort of like I felt. “That’s — completely — that fucking sucks.”

Seriously? Ian was worried about me preferring Luke to him? I did remember him, as Ian’s sullen, hulking, grouchy shadow on those occasions when Ian went out drinking or otherwise looking for trouble. For real, he even looked sullen, hulking, and grouchy next to Ian. Great. “I’ll try to restrain myself,” I said, with all the enthusiasm of a man about to get a root canal. “I’m sure we’ll have so much fun grunting at each other like cavemen.”