Wolf's Choice Read online

  Wolf’s Choice

  Alpha’s Hunger

  Carina Wilder

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  30. Coming Soon….

  Also by Carina Wilder

  Introduction

  This is the third book in the Alpha’s Hunger Series. The books can be found here:

  Wolf’s Hunger

  Wolf’s Secret

  Wolf’s Choice

  Dragon’s Hunger (Coming Soon!)

  Southern Alpha is a spinoff serial about Trick, who plays a fairly important role in this book…the instalments start here:

  Southern Alpha Part 1

  Prologue

  If he’s not allowed to be with a mortal…

  then maybe you need to see to it that you never die.

  Chapter 1

  “Tell me something,” Tristan said. He was lying in bed next to me, his gorgeous features highlighted by the dim light pouring in through sheer curtains from the moon outside.

  “Mmm?” I asked sleepily as I rolled onto my side to get a proper look at him.

  As beautiful as my lover was in every light, I adored moving my eyes over his body in these moments of shadow, when the scars that criss-crossed his muscular torso seemed to disappear. At times like this, all evidence of his dark past was temporarily erased in favor of fleeting, precious moments of wholeness. Suddenly he seemed unburdened by the cruel twists of fate that had assaulted him for so long.

  He pressed his cheek down onto his bent right arm, looking into my eyes before stroking a fingertip over the diamond that ornamented my left ring finger. The sparkling gemstone signified our bond, our future, our lives together. Aside from the man reclined next to me, the engagement ring was my most treasured possession.

  “Where do you want to do it?” he asked.

  “Do it?” I laughed, my mind jolting to life with his question. “What, isn’t bed good enough for you anymore?”

  He chuckled and moved his hand to my cheek, slipping the backs of his fingers along my skin in a sensual movement that sent shivers of pleasure along every inch of flesh on my body.

  “You know perfectly well what I’m talking about, Ariana.”

  I looked at the ring for a moment, then into my lover’s eyes, reveling in the notion that I could now call him my fiancé…and that soon he’d become my husband. The thought of it all still seemed so surreal, so impossible. How had we ever managed to find our way to this point after everything we’d gone through? Obstacle after obstacle had been thrown up in front of us, the world working overtime to wrench us apart. My near-death experience at the hands of my estranged stepfather. Krane’s invasive foray into our lives. Not to mention myriad trust issues between us.

  The most destructive at all, of course, had been my discovery in Louisiana of an ancient journal, which had recounted page by page how Tristan had once been infatuated with a woman and eventually asked her to marry him. Only when I’d confronted him about the journal had he confessed that his former fiancée had also been pregnant at the time.

  Despite the fact that it had all happened two centuries ago, it had nearly shattered me to realize how close he’d come to fulfilling his dreams with another woman. As irrational as it seemed, I’d wanted to imagine that I was the only woman in his life. Knowing he’d been haunted by her memory and the events surrounding their break-up for two hundred years had all but driven a permanent wedge between us.

  Yet somehow we’d risen from the flames of that destructive force, stronger than ever before. Tristan had learned to open up to me, and I’d learned to be patient with a man who’d endured more trauma than anyone I’d ever met. He’d been beaten nearly to death for the transgression of loving Elodie Demarche, after which a wolf shifter called the Marquis had changed him, sealing his fate.

  Tristan was now a shifter himself—a man who fought constantly to control the beast who lived inside him.

  “Yes,” I replied at last, pulling my thoughts to the present. “I know what you’re talking about.” I winced for a second before forcing a smile onto my lips. I wasn’t supposed to think about her. About his past, about any of it. I’d promised Tristan that from now on, we’d focus solely on our future together. Our marriage, our plans, our lives here and now.

  “You’re wondering where I want to have the wedding ceremony,” I said, raking my fingertips gently over his neatly-trimmed beard.

  “Yes,” he replied, his exquisite lips parting ever so slightly in a tempting display.

  “Shouldn’t we wait to talk about plans?” I asked. “In case you’ve forgotten, Clarissa’s getting married in two days, and I’m one of her bridesmaids. I’m pretty sure it’s my womanly duty not to be planning my own wedding while I’m supposed to be focusing on hers.”

  “Remind me why she’s getting married on a Friday?” Tristan said. “I thought human weddings were supposed to take place on Saturdays in a nice, orderly, predictable fashion.”

  “She said something about James getting an extra-long break for their honeymoon if they take off a couple of days early,” I told him with a shrug. “But I suspect it has more to do with not wanting certain super-annoying relatives to show up.”

  “Fair enough,” said Tristan. “Now, answer my question about your desired location for our wedding, and I promise I’ll be satisfied for now. In one way, at least.”

  I fingered my engagement ring as he’d done, a now semi-permanent smile pulling my lips up still further at the corners. “I don’t really care,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me, as long as you’re my husband in the end.”

  “Oh, good,” he replied, flopping dramatically onto his back. “I’m so glad to know that the most important day of our lives is of no consequence to you.”

  Laughing, I reached for him, turned his face my way and laid a long, lingering kiss on his lips, my tongue finding its way to his just long enough to send a fierce shot of pleasure straight to my core.

  “No, no,” he moaned, pulling away, “you can’t make up for what you’ve just done to me, not even with kisses. You’ve cut me too deep. This is the end. I’ll die of misery, knowing how little I mean to you…” With that, he turned his stark blue eyes on mine, narrowing them seductively. “Unless, of course, you straddle me right now.”

  “Anything to save you from certain death, Mr. Wolfe,” I said climbing on top of him and pressing my knees into the sheets on either side of his waist. “I wouldn’t want you to die of a broken heart on my watch—but especially if I could cure it by riding your massive dick.” As always, his gorgeous length hardened instantly under me. Eager, sexy man, always ready to sheath himself inside my desperate, greedy body.

  “I feel so much better already,” he said. “You’ve brought me back from the edge.”

  “Good. But you know,” I breathed, gyrating my hips gently to roll my wetness against him, “I meant what I said. All that matters to me is that we get married. The location is the least of
my worries; the only thing I care about is making things official. But…since you asked the question…”

  “Yes?” he replied, his hands cupping my breasts gently, the pads of his thumbs stroking over my nipples with a fluttering touch that made my pussy tighten in response.

  “I think we should get married as quietly as possible, in a secluded place. I have no family, and neither do you, really.” For a second I contemplated mentioning Krane, but Tristan’s dragon shifter brother had only ever caused us pain and torment, so it hardly seemed necessary to point out that the bastard wasn’t welcome. “I mean, I could invite Clarissa, but somehow I feel like it should just be you and me in some special, secret location that nobody knows about.”

  “Agreed.”

  I stared down at him for a moment, contemplating his perfect, handsome features, and rocked my hips gently to show him just how wet I’d become. In response, he pinched my nipples between his fingers, rolling them gently while a low growl of pleasure erupted from his chest.

  “There’s one thing, though,” I said. “Something that I think might affect my decision, if you’re really willing to leave the destination up to me.”

  “Go ahead, tell me.”

  “It’s just…” I bit my lip, hesitant to continue. Tristan probably wouldn’t like my suggestion, but he had asked, so…

  “It’s okay, lover,” he said, pulling me down so he could take one nipple then the other between his lips before speaking again. “There’s nothing you can say right now that I won’t like, as long as it involves making our bond official.”

  “In that case…I think we should do it by the Magic Lake,” I blurted out, pulling up and wincing as I awaited his response. My hips had stopped moving, either on their own or from some unconscious desire to disappear before he could reprimand me for suggesting such a thing.

  “The Magic Lake. Really.” Tristan’s eyes went wide with surprise, his hands sliding down to grip my waist tight. I could feel the tension taking him over as he absorbed my words. “I can’t say I expected that.”

  “You hate the idea,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s probably terrible.”

  He shook his head. “Actually no, I don’t hate it at all. I just wasn’t prepared for it. I figured you’d never want to go back down south again. The last time we were there wasn’t exactly a happy holiday for either of us.”

  Needing to feel the reassurance of his heat under my touch, I reached for his hands and wove my fingers through his. “Yeah, a lot of bad things happened down there,” I said. “You have a lot of ugly memories, so do I for that matter. But on the other hand, that place is where you grew up. You have some good memories from your time on that property, too, you and Krane, from before…well, before everything went crazy. I thought it would be a good place to make a fresh start. I want to forget the past and move into the future, and that means starting over. Something about the Magic Lake felt…I don’t know, happy. When we were there together, I felt like you’d shed all the bad memories and held onto only the good ones. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen you looking so content, like every worry in the world had been stripped away for a few hours and replaced with something innocent and pure.”

  I couldn’t help but recall the look on Tristan’s face when he’d told me about the days he’d spent with his brother down by the water. It had been a time of bonding, of love…of danger and play, and all the things that come with a perfect childhood.

  I knew, whether he admitted it now or not, that it was his favorite place on earth.

  Tristan raked his fingers over his beard, his brow furrowing thoughtfully.

  “Fine,” he said after a few seconds. “Let’s do it.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “The Magic Lake is beautiful. It makes perfect sense for us.”

  “Oh, thank you!” I all but squealed, pressing down to kiss him.

  “There’s just one small issue,” he added.

  “What’s that?”

  “The competition for a new Alpha of New Orleans is starting. The Southern Pack is in need of a leader, which means that things could get complicated if they don’t go our way.”

  “What do you mean, our way? They’re not part of your pack, are they?”

  My heart sank a little in my chest at the thought of having to give up on our newly-hatched plan, but I reminded myself that we could get married in a bathtub in the middle of a garbage dump and I’d be just as happy. If Louisiana became an impossibility, we had so many other options that I couldn’t even begin to count them.

  “If the wrong shifter wins the competition,” Tristan said, “we won’t be welcome in New Orleans, to put it mildly.”

  “The wrong shifter? Wait—isn’t Trick competing?” I asked, recalling the powerful man I’d met when I’d gone back to Tristan’s childhood home. I’d thought of Trick almost every day since our encounter—not because he’d appealed to me in any way other than an innocent curiosity, but because he’d given me a piece of advice that I hadn’t been able to shake from my mind.

  A fortune teller in New Orleans had informed me ominously that Tristan would suffer dire consequences if he married a mortal, because the Seven—the group of powerful dragon shifters who ruled the immortal world—had cursed him many years ago.

  Trick had told me that the solution to the dilemma was to ensure that I never die—which could only mean one thing. I’d have to persuade a shifter to change me into one of their own.

  Since then, of course, I’d discovered that I no longer had to worry about threats to my lover’s life. Tristan had struck a deal with one of the Seven’s servants. He’d made them an offer, he said, that they couldn’t refuse, which had secured our future happiness. And sure enough, we hadn’t heard a word from them since.

  I’d all but forgotten the curse until this very minute, in fact…

  “Trick is competing, yes,” Tristan replied. “Which is good. But if he fails, we have a problem on our hands. The wolf shifters in that part of the country have been leaderless for some time. They will follow anyone who picks up the title. But if that someone is Trick’s opponent, things will…”

  My lover sealed his mouth shut as if he’d said too much.

  “Who’s his opponent?” I asked, my heart suddenly beating a little quicker.

  “I think you know,” Tristan said, his eyes meeting mine with an expression that made my blood run cold.

  I nodded. I knew perfectly well that he was talking about the cruel, awful creature known as the Marquis. The man who’d sunk his teeth into Tristan’s flesh so long ago and changed him into the half-wolf that he was now.

  “You think that monster could beat Trick?” I asked.

  Tristan set his jaw for a moment before replying. “Perhaps not through brute strength alone. But by other means? Yes, I do.”

  Holding back a shudder, I bit my lip.

  “I can’t imagine it,” I said. “Trick’s a giant. I literally watched him pick up an alligator and tuck it under his arm without a second thought.”

  “There’s no question that Trick is strong. But the Marquis is cunning and, more importantly, a cheat. I’m hoping the Valkyries and Trick’s other allies help to ensure that he doesn’t try anything.” He pulled my right hand to his lips and laid a lingering kiss on its back. “Let’s hope for the best. Okay, lover?”

  I nodded. I didn’t want to think about the outcome of the Trials; I’d already worried more than enough for one lifetime.

  “Now let’s get back to the wedding,” said Tristan, “and don’t forget, there’s the honeymoon to consider, too.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I replied with a faint smile, pulling my mind away once again from unpleasant thoughts. “I hadn’t even thought about the most fun part of all.”

  Tristan arched his right eyebrow mischievously. “That’s weird. I think about it all the time,” he said, reaching a hand over the lower part of his belly, slipping it down until he pressed his fingers between my legs, drawing a sharp gasp from
my chest. “I can’t wait for an excuse to fuck you for three weeks straight, Ariana.”

  I let out a laugh, moving against his touch. “Tristan, our entire lives are one giant sexual marathon.”

  “True. Well then, we’ll talk about the honeymoon some other time.”

  “Maybe you could pick the location and surprise me?” I smiled down at him, lifting myself just enough so that he could push his fingers inside me.

  “Surprise!” he said, spreading his fingers wide, sending a ripple of erotic torment through my body.

  “Come to think of it, this bed would make a very nice honeymoon destination,” I said.

  Tristan pulled his fingers away, licking them one by one before adding, “You know what? The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the Magic Lake is a good idea. It’s private, secluded, and you’re right—it has sentimental value for me. I’m actually kind of touched that you want to have the ceremony there.”

  “I do.”

  “I do,” he repeated slowly. “Save those words for the day.”

  He grabbed me and in one quick flurry of motion, threw me onto my back, his impossibly thick cock burying itself deep. I let out a howl at the shock of erotic pleasure that struck every nerve at once.

  “I will,” I moaned. “I do and I will.”

  “Cheeky,” he said, pulling out before sheathing himself deep again and leaning down to lash the tip of his tongue over my breasts. “Cheeky Mrs. Wolfe.”