Read Bound to the Alpha: Part One for Free Online

to avoid running into him. She craned her neck up to give him a questioning look.
     
    He said, “Keep your voice down. This is not neutral territory.”
     
    Cain resumed walking and Sarah placed a hand on his arm, trying to keep up. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she asked, “Is that why you haven’t been talking to me?”
     
    “No,” he replied bluntly. She thought there might be a hint of humor in his tone, though it may have just been wishful thinking.
     
    “So whose territory is this?” she asked, hoping to change the subject to something that didn’t embarrass her.
     
    “I told you earlier, bears.”
     
    “ Werebears?”
     
    Cain chuckle d. “If you meet one, be sure not to call him that, unless you want to get eaten.”
     
    Her brow furrowed. “Well , what do they like to be called?”
     
    “Bears.”
     
    “Doesn’t that get confusing?”
     
    Cain shook his head. “ Only to humans.”
     
    Sarah couldn’t argue with that, because it didn’t make much sense to her. She was relieved that t hey were talking again. Anything to keep her mind off of the cold and her aching body.
     
    “What happens if we run into a bear?”
     
    Cain rubbed his jaw. “I suppos e we will have to beg for mercy.”
     
    She gave him a skeptical look. “Seriously?”
     
    He laughed. “Of course not. I would never cower before a bear.” He gave her a sideways glance. “If we encounter a bear, we will fight to the death.”
     
    Her anxiety rose for a split second, until she noticed the mirth dancing in his golden eyes. She snorted, giving him a hard nudge on the arm.
     
    “You can fight to the death all you want, hot shot. If I see a bear, I’m running.”
     
    Cain stopped again, his face impassive. Sarah blinked up at him. She pulled her hand back and gave him an apologetic look.
     
    “Sorry, I shouldn’t have pushed you.”
     
    Ignoring her, Cain shrugged the duffle bag off his shoulder and thrust it into her arms. “Do not drop this,” he ordered.
     
    She watched in confusion as he began pulling his shirt off. “What are you—”
     
    Somewhere in the distance—but not nearly distant enough—Sarah heard an unmistakable roar.
     
    Bears .
     
    ~*~
     
    Cain darted through the forest, bounding over large rocks and narrowly dodging trees. The human’s hands clung tightly to his back, her nails biting into his flesh. The pain was irrelevant to him. All that mattered was that she held on.
     
    From the start, he had known that the human would be a burde n. He had anticipated it would be her body that drove him to distraction, and he had been right on that count. Even while walking and conversing with her, his mind was strategizing, not on how they were going to safely navigate through the mountains, but on how he was going to work around her nonsensical objections to coupling with him.
     
    He could hear the bears. There were at least two, still far back, but gaining ground. It was their territory, which put him at a disadvantage. Man and wolf warred within him, rationality struggling against instinct. He knew that the bears were unlikely to attack if they caught up. They would chase him to the boundaries of their territory—farther than Cain was keen on running—but they would not risk injury or death when he posed no direct threat to their main cave. The smart thing to do would be to pace himself, let them catch up and hang back until the morning, when he would reach neutral ground.
     
    Instinct had him surging forward at full speed. He could smell her fear, and it was difficult to control his reaction to it. After two days of lying beside the human, his scent was beginning to rub off on her. As far as his wolf was concerned, she was his and he needed to protect her.
     
    The trees thinned and then gave way to a snow-frozen field. Cain flew across it, coming to a brief stop when he reached the other side. He looked back in time to see two bears breaking the treeline. When they caught sight of