Alpha's Sun

Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Titus

I park my motorcycle at the Rio Grande gorge bridge and walk down to check out the scene at the end of the bridge.

And it is a scene. There are vendors assembled on the side, some with tables set up, some operating out of buses or the backs of pickup trucks. There are pinon nuts for sale. Local honey. Jewelry. The vendors are a mix of Native Americans and hippies.

A bridge stretches across the Rio Grande gorge, a nauseating six hundred or more feet above the giant canyon. I hear a tour guide telling someone it’s one of the highest bridges in the country. I recognize it from Easy Rider and one of the Terminator movies—favorites of mine.

I scent the air, catching the smell of coffee, ice cream, sweat. The sun beats harder in the high altitude and my leather riding jacket suddenly feels too hot.

I peel it off and toss it over the seat of the bike. I don’t know why, but I have a good feeling about this rest area. Like I’m going to get the information I need from one of these humans milling about here. There’s a positive energy crackling in the air.

Someone knows something. I’m here for a reason; I can feel it.

My alpha sent me to follow up on some intel we received about another Data X lab out in the high mesa of New Mexico. I scouted around Sandia National Labs, because we thought it might be there, but I caught no scent of shifters. I checked out Roswell, because of the alien lore, but struck out there, too. There may be aliens, but I didn’t smell any shifters.

I only know one wolf in New Mexico and he’s a loner. No pack, totally off the grid. So off the grid, he doesn’t have a phone—landline or cell. It’s been years since I’ve seen him. Hell, I don’t even know if he’s still around, but I figure if any of the weird s**t that went down with the Data-X guys—any government testing on shifters or disappearances happened in his state, he’d know.

So I’ve come up to the one place I know he always goes in summer—the Taos and Red River area for fishing.

“Titus? Oh my goddess!” A female voice stops me in my tracks and my entire body reacts like a flash flood of lust dumping into my veins.

Fuck.

Not her.

I’m so not up for this right now.

I rotate slowly, and even though I’m prepared to see the brightness that is Sunny Hines, her beauty knocks my knees out from under me.

I flex my jaw, forcing myself to breathe.

“Sunny.” It comes out like a growl. Like an admonishment, which I guess it is.

This woman is f*****g trouble with a capital f**k.

A free-loving hippie who blew through my life two years ago like a f*****g hurricane. Definitely left damage in her wake. And I hadn’t even realized I had anything on the line with her.

She’s dressed in a tank top that shows off her slender, muscular arms and her long blonde hair is woven in a braid that hangs across one delicate shoulder. She hurls herself at me.

You wouldn’t think a woman so tiny could make such an impact, but I have to brace to catch her full weight, and there’s no choice but to pick her up off her feet with a bear hug. Her arms wind around my neck in a stranglehold.

“Sweet goddess above. I knew I’d see you again! It’s so great. Such a surprise.” She barely breathes between sentences. “How are things? Have you been to Tucson to see the kids?”

I try to extricate myself from the hug, mainly because the feel of those soft, bra-less breasts rubbing over my chest is too much. Especially when combined with her unique scent. I don’t know what it is—probably some frankincense or patchouli s**t, but on her, it doesn’t smell bad. On her, it comes off as feminine power mingled with mysticism.

It smells like danger.

My wolf doesn’t think so. My wolf thinks she smells like hedonistic pleasure.

And he’s totally down with that.

But I’m not.

Fuck, no. This female—this human female—is the last person I need to get involved with. If I think I made a mistake with my first mate, I know without question this one is a hundred times worse.

At least Barbara stuck around a few years to see Titus Junior grow into a little boy. But maybe that’s not fair. From what I can tell, Sunny was a great single parent for Foxfire, my son’s mate.

But she’s ditzy as hell. Like whacko airy-fairy.

I clear my throat trying to step back, but she follows into my personal space. Damn her. “Uh, yeah. I saw the kids a few weeks ago. All good.”

“Any talk of grandchildren?” The hope in her face is so blinding I want to look away. People shouldn’t show their emotions so clearly. It’s unnerving. Does something squirmy to my gut.

“No,” I say too gruffly. “At least not that I heard. But I don’t go pushing that kind of thing.” I glower at her like it’s entirely inappropriate for a woman in her fifties—a woman who looks too f*****g glorious to be in her fifties—to want grandchildren.

Her expression dims slightly and she pulls back.

I’m instantly sorry for being such a d**k. My wolf stirs, restlessly, like he needs me to fix it. ASAP. Before I know what I’m doing, I reach out to touch her arm.

I f*****g stroke her arm—like I have any right to touch her that way. To caress her sun-kissed soft skin. “I’m sure they’ll come eventually. The kids are still young.”

Some kind of pain flits across her face, something I can’t decipher, but she nods and turns the smile back up. “Well, what are you doing here, Titus? Clearly you didn’t come to see me.”

The idea that I would come to see her is ludicrous, and she must know it because a blush creeps up her neck. It may be adorable to see a woman our age blush, but again—the woman’s got to stop showing every single emotion. It’s f*****g dangerous to show so much vulnerability. Especially a woman like her, living alone in that goddamn Airstream. Any guy could take advantage of her. Mow her down.

And that thought leaves my skin prickly with anger.

“I’m on official pack—I mean club business.” I’m not sure if Sunny fully understands what we are. She lives in a different dimension. To her, everyone has a spirit animal, which she can see with her inner eye. So she sees mine as a wolf. She saw her daughter’s as a fox, so she named her Foxfire. But does she really get that we’re shifters? That part is unclear.

If she were a different kind of human, telling her probably would’ve been necessary. But she sort of accepts it all like it’s nothing. I don’t think she’s actually seen a shifter in their true animal form. Tank swore to his alpha she hadn’t, anyway. I don’t believe she knows it is a real thing, not a spirit animal.

She came to my son’s pack run, the one where I lit up the sky with fireworks to welcome her daughter to the pack, but since she’s not a member, I took her on a ride on my motorcycle when the time came for everyone to shift and run.

She stares at me now, open-faced, expecting more.

“It’s private business,” I add. I’m sure as hell not going to discuss serious pack s**t with her.

“Oh. Well great. Do you have a place to stay?”

I look around for her Airstream, but I don’t see it. I do see her painted VW bus parked at the edge of the gorge. Daisy, I think she calls it. Insert eye roll. How in the hell did I miss it before? I worked on that thing for a full week, not wanting her risking a breakdown driving around in the ancient pile of screws and bolts.

I don’t have a plan for where to sleep yet, but fate knows I’d never fit in the Airstream, if that’s where she still sleeps. Not that I plan to get anywhere near her and a bed again, anyway. “I’ll figure something out,” I say.

Her smile takes another dive.

My wolf f*****g hates it.

“Yeah, sure. Great. Well, if you want to grab a beer or something while you’re—”

“I don’t think so,” I cut her off. I need to get away from this female before she snares me in her feminine web again. I still remember how gutted I felt when she left last time. “But thanks.”

“Sunny!” A good-looking but clearly weak and inferior human male calls out from a table nearby. “You teaching rooftop yoga tonight?”

Oh, no he didn’t.

I seriously think the asshole is challenging me. He may not even understand his own behavior—humans are idiots about pack order dynamics even though they engage in them every day—but I guaran-f*****g-tee he saw me talking to Sunny and his nature prompted him to insert himself.

Asshole.

Sunny turns her bright face in his direction. “You know it! Are you coming?”

“Of course. I’m looking forward to opening my hips with you under the sunset.”

Sunny snorts, which only partially mollifies my wolf. Really I’d like to go over there and punch the guy right in his gut. Teach him to f*****g sniff around my territory.

Whoa.

Pull back, Titus.

This woman is definitely not my territory. I haven’t marked her, nor do I plan to. The last time I mated a female it ended badly. Lost me my position in the pack and ruined my kid’s life.

But I’m incapable of walking away and letting this guy open his f*****g hips with Sunny tonight.

“What’s rooftop yoga?” I snarl.

Amusement flickers over Sunny’s face. “I teach sunset yoga on the roof of one of the cantinas on the plaza. Why? You going to come?” She folds her arms across her chest with a teasing challenge in her gaze.

And my wolf never backs down from a challenge.

Never, ever.

I splutter as I try to answer. “Yeah.” The syllable wobbles across my lips. “What time?”

“Seven o’clock.” Her eyes still dance with amusement. “You probably don’t have any clothes you can stretch in, though.”

Is she giving me an out?

I glance over at f**k-face. “I’ll figure something out.”

“Well, great.” There’s false cheerfulness in her voice now, and I don’t particularly like it. Does she not want me there? Does she actually want to have a yoga date with f**k-face? She takes a couple steps back from me. “I’ll see you there, then.”

“Wait—where exactly?”

“On the rooftop patio above La Cantina. Follow the crowd with yoga mats—you can’t miss it.”

Yoga mats… f**k.

As if she reads my mind, she says, “I’ll bring a mat for you.” She tosses a wink before she saunters away, the swish of her hips imprinting on my brain like a hypnotic cue for lust.

Oh hell. What did I just do?

I’m out here on pack business, and I’m letting myself get distracted by a female. There’s a pattern here that’s uncanny. Females are trouble for me. I was kicked out of my pack over a woman. Tank and I wandered around like beggars until Emmett Green took me into his pack in Wolf Ridge, Arizona, north of Phoenix. And now after five minutes with a pretty human, I’m ready to ignore my orders for the most out of character activity on the planet—rooftop yoga.

I must be out of my f*****g mind.