Christmas With the Alphas: A Claimed Novella Read online

  “It is too late for that now.”

  Mila frowned. “It’s never too late to celebrate Christmas.”

  “Christmas is tomorrow and we have not prepared any gifts.”

  Her brows rose. She’d had no idea that Caim even knew what Christmas was.

  Mila hadn’t celebrated Christmas since she was a child which was one of the reasons it had been so easy for her to overlook the holiday in the past few years. The other reason was that specific dates were rarely acknowledged among the pack and it was easy to lose track of time. This year, Mila had missed Dawn’s birthday by two days. The kid was totally oblivious, but Mila was still beating herself up about it to this day.

  “You’ve celebrated Christmas before?” she asked, cuddling closer to him.

  “With my mother, when I was a pup.”

  Caim’s biological mother had died when he was very young, so she knew he must have been referring to his father’s second mate, Sarah. She had raised him as her own and the few times Caim spoke of her, it had always been fondly.

  “Did you enjoy Christmas?” she asked.

  “No,” was his firm reply. His eyes grew distant as he thought back. “My father would often be gone for a week getting gifts. While he was away, my mother would spend days cleaning and decorating the den. Lotus and I would always be stuck looking after the pups. It was an absurd amount of hassle for a single day of gift giving.”

  Mila reached down to pull one of the furs over their laps. “Christmas isn’t just about getting presents, you know. It’s about spending time with your family.”

  “I spend every day with Dawn,” he said.

  She placed her hand back on this thigh, this time giving it a squeeze. “You don’t spend very much time with me anymore.”

  “You are always with Asch.”

  “That never seemed to bother you before. We used to all spend time together, just the three of us. Remember?”

  Caim looked away. He paused, and then said, “It comforts me to know that if anything happens to me, Asch will be there to protect and provide for you and Dawn.”

  Mila’s brow furrowed at the non sequitur. Caim continued talking, though she still couldn’t figure out what his point was.

  “I also like the added security of having a second alpha. When I was a pup, my father’s brothers lived in our pack. There was always someone to watch out for us, someone to hunt, and someone to delegate. After they left the pack, things were much harder on my father. Much more of his time went to defending his territory and he had less time to be with my mother and his pups.”

  Mila placed a hand on his shoulder. “You know I love hearing about your former pack and your childhood, but why are you telling me this?”

  He turned to look at her and there was a vulnerability in his eyes that Mila found unsettling.

  “While I appreciate the benefits of having a second alpha, I often wish that I did not have to share you. That you belonged only to me.”

  Mila felt her eyes prickle with tears at the admission. She did her best not to blink.

  “You never wanted a mate. If it weren’t for Asch, I wouldn’t even be here,” she tried to reason. “We wouldn’t have Dawn…”

  She could tell by his deep frown that her logical approach wasn’t getting her anywhere. Determined to comfort him, she decided to change tactics.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” she asked in a hushed voice.

  He looked intrigued. “Yes.”

  “You have to promise not to tell Asch, or anyone else.”

  Now, he looked annoyed. “Tell me.”

  Mila leaned in to whisper, “Sometimes, I wish that you were my only mate, too.”

  She didn’t tell him that she’d only thought that when Asch got on her nerves, or that she had once said just the opposite to Asch when Caim had pissed her off. A little twist of the truth wouldn’t hurt anything.

  Caim was still for a moment, his expression inscrutable. Then, he hooked a finger under her chin to pull her in for a kiss.

  Warmth blossomed in her chest as his firm lips worked hers with consummate skill. In the past, Caim had treated kissing like a bothersome pit stop on the road to mating. Now that the eagerness of youth had faded, he took his time and relished in the act.

  After a few moments of kissing, she began to grow impatient. She could feel herself becoming slick with arousal and knew that she could just be setting herself up for frustration. Caim wasn’t the same zealous alpha she had mated years ago. He had patience and restraint. Unless she could be extremely convincing, their interlude would be over before it began.

  Her hand, which had been innocuously rubbing his thigh, moved to gasp his stiffened cock. Caim grunted in surprise, and she sensed he was about to pull away from her. She moved forward, deepening their kiss as her hand began to stroke his cock. His grunt turned into a purr as he began kissing her with more enthusiasm.

  The victory filled her with excitement and she quickly moved to straddle him. Caim’s hands, which had moved to her hips, held her in place.

  “Stop,” he murmured.

  It might have been a lot more convincing if he hadn’t said it in between kisses.

  “Why?”

  “You know why.”

  She broke away to glance over in Dawn’s direction. The little girl was still sound asleep. She turned back to her mate.

  “We can be quiet.”

  Caim shook his head and his gaze flickered down to her belly.

  Mila resisted the urge to roll her eyes, knowing it wouldn’t win her any points right now.

  “You see how big I am?” she asked. “On the million to one chance that having sex causes me to go into labor, you’d be doing me a favor.”

  Caim didn’t agree or disagree, so she took it upon herself to make the next move. Grabbing the hem of her shirt, she lifted it up and over her head, revealing a pair of large, full breasts. Caim’s eyes lit up as she cupped one in each hand.

  “Want to touch? You’ll have to be careful. They’re very sensitive.”

  She didn’t need to ask twice. He pushed her hands out of the way, replacing them with his own. For a few seconds, he simply held them, as if testing their weight. Then, he began gently stroking the curves and caressing her nipples.

  “You are making milk again,” he informed her. “I have been able to smell it for weeks.”

  Caim was too absorbed with her breasts to notice her cringe. She really hoped he wasn’t going to start drinking her milk again. She was already going to have her work cut out for her with feeding two pups.

  But as time passed with Caim only caressing her breasts, she would have gladly let him do whatever he wanted, so long as he would just put something inside of her. She had gone from wet to drenched, for aching to outright throbbing. She needed him.

  She pressed a hand to his chest. Her voice raspy, she said, “Lay back.”

  To her relief, Caim listened.

  Drawing the furs up around herself, she moved to straddle him. Caim appeared conflicted at he watched her push aside the flimsy buckskin to reveal his swollen erection. She held his gaze as she pushed herself up onto her knees and then slowly began to lower herself onto him.

  It had been months since he had been inside of her and she had forgotten what a tight fit he was. Caim must have too, because his neck arched back, his mouth opening in silent exaltation.

  When he was fully inside of her, they both groaned. It felt so good to be filled that she had the silly thought that she could climax just from sitting there. Caim, however, had no such delusions. With one hand on her hips, he helped her to move back and forth in a sensual rocking motion. With his other hand, he deftly stoked and teased her clit.

  She fought against her climax for as long as she could, but with Caim’s relentless touch, it quickly overwhelmed her. She gripped his wrist with both hands, clutching him with all her might as pleasure rippled over her in increasingly intense waves.

  Unable to resist her inner walls contract
ing around him, Caim quickly joined her in climax. He let out an almost pained sound as his entire body tightened with his release. For a moment, he seemed to be locked in place, but then, all at once his muscles relaxed and a long, contented sigh escaped his chest.

  They stayed like that for an indeterminate amount of time. Mila sat on top of him, while Caim languidly traced the contours of her body. As his finger ran down her swollen belly, he said something that made Mila’s throat catch.

  “Sometimes I imagine they are my pups.”

  She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry. I know you wanted a boy.”

  Unexpectedly, his face contorted into a scowl. “That sort of thing no longer matters to me.”

  “But you always get so upset when Asch brags about the pups being boys.”

  He nodded towards Dawn. “I do not want her to overhear such things and feel that she is in any way inferior to a male pup.”

  Now, she officially felt horrible. “I… I can’t believe I never thought about that.”

  His hand flattened on her stomach. “Are they kicking today?”

  She knew that he was trying to distract her, and she was grateful.

  “They’ve been still for the past few hours. It’s weird. Maybe they’ll be born soon.”

  That seemed to displease him. “They better wait until tomorrow.”

  Securing his hands at her waist, Caim rolled over and settled her in the crook of his arms. He pulled a fur up to cover them.

  “Rest now.”

  Mila smiled, and for the first time in a while, she fell into a perfectly serene sleep.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mila woke up before Caim, though that wasn’t unusual. With her bladder squished beneath the twins, she averaged three hours of uninterrupted sleep per day. In those moments, more than ever, she missed indoor plumbing.

  Determined not to experience a repeat of her first night in the small den, she turned to nudge Caim. Thankfully, she didn’t have to try hard to get him to wake. He was up within seconds and didn’t ask for an explanation as he grabbed a fur to drape over himself.

  Mila was shoving her feet inside her boots when she felt a strange discomfort in her lower abdomen. It was a dull, tugging sensation that she was certain she recognized. The pain passed as quickly as it had come and she debated telling Caim about it, as it could just be a false alarm.

  Before she could make up her mind, Caim seized her attention.

  “Dawn is not here.”

  Her head snapped over to where her daughter had been sleeping, only to find that Caim was right. The fur she’d been sleeping in was bare. A rock dropped in Mila’s stomach.

  “Maybe she just got up to go pee,” she suggested hopefully.

  Caim bent to sniff the fur. “She has been gone for at least a half-hour.”

  Her heart began to thud inside of her chest. “We have to go find her.”

  Mila finished dressing in record time and followed Caim out of the den. Despite how worried she was, there was just no getting around the fact that she had to pee. She hastily relieved herself behind the nearest bush while Caim shifted.

  As soon as she climbed onto her mate’s back, he darted off into the woods, hot on the trail of tiny paw prints in the snow.

  ***

  As they trekked farther into the mountains, Mila’s only consolation was that they didn’t see any other prints besides their daughter’s. Still, Caim was clearly as distressed as Mila, which was why she didn’t bother him with the minor fact that she was having contractions.

  They had been running for exactly thirty-six minutes and she only knew that because she was counting the minutes between each increasingly sharp pain. The contractions were coming closer and closer together at an alarming rate and soon she was gritting her teeth to keep from crying out.

  Mila tried to reason that it would be hours before the babies would be there. After all, she had been in labor with Dawn for over half a day. But it just didn’t feel like the same, agonizingly slow pace as before.

  They had begun scaling the mountainside when Caim began to pick up speed. His sudden acceleration came in tandem with her hardest contraction yet, justifying her sharp exhalation and tight grip on the back of his neck.

  A strong wind swept down the mountainside, stinging her cheeks. The trees thinned, but only to give way to jagged stone outcroppings. Mila was thankful that it had been too cold for any of the snow to melt, otherwise the rocks would have been covered in an invisible layer of ice. She staved off images of her little girl falling down the mountainside as Caim continued to surge forward.

  Mila had lost track of time when they finally heard Dawn barking. The ground plateaued and they found their daughter in a wide clearing, frantically yapping up at a small tree. A quick glance up at the tree revealed a terrified-looking squirrel, clinging for dear life on a naked branch.

  Dawn began hopping up and down with excitement at their arrival. Her joy was met with a stern growl from her father. The little wolf pup whined, then whimpered, but Caim didn’t back down. In the end, Dawn bowed her head in a submissive pose.

  Caim stopped to let Mila off. Rather than run up to her daughter, she made for the nearest tree and leaned against it as another contraction threatened to bring her to her knees.

  Still oblivious to her distress, Caim shifted and stalked over to Dawn, picking her up by the scruff of the neck.

  “What have I told you about leaving the den on your own?”

  As she usually did when she was in trouble, Dawn remained in her wolf form and did her best to look pitiful. As he usually did when he was supposed to be disciplining Dawn, Caim gave in to her woeful puppy dog eyes.

  Sighing, he said, “We will discuss this later. We should go back to the den now.”

  “Um, I don’t know if that’s really an option at the moment,” said Mila.

  On cue, her water broke.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  His mate had clearly lost her mind. There was no other logical excuse for what she was doing. Still, Caim decided to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m sitting down,” she said, as she lowered herself onto the fur she had laid out.

  Dawn immediately rushed to her side. His mate’s condition had the pup confused and frightened, and she immediately sought to comfort the pup. She put an arm around Dawn’s neck and kissed the top of her head.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart.”

  This was most certainly not ‘okay’. She was sitting on the ground, lying to their daughter, and she had definitely lost her mind.

  “Get up,” Caim ordered. “We are going back to the den. I’ll get Fern.”

  She opened her mouth to respond, but her words were cut short by a hissing moan as another pain hit her. Caim watched, feeling the blood drain from his face as she clutched at her swollen belly.

  “I really don’t think we’ll make it that far,” she said, still wincing in pain. “These pups want out.”

  Bile rose in Caim’s throat. “You can’t have them here.”

  His mate looked exasperated. “They aren’t exactly going to wait, Caim. Please, just sit down and help me.”

  Caim stared at her for a long moment, as if he could somehow delay the inevitable. Deep down, he knew that his mate was right. If the pups were coming, there was nothing either of them could do except let them come.

  Finally, he asked, “What can I do?”

  It must have been the right question, because relief was evident on her face. “For now, hold me.”

  Caim got behind her and forced his large body not to tremble. He wrapped his arms around her waist and put his legs on either side of her.

  The next pain hit her just as he settled down. She gripped his hands and squeezed them with more strength than he knew she had. By the time the pain had passed, Caim found that a thin sheen of sweat had broken out across his forehead.

  “How much longer will it be?” he asked her.

  He was met
with a long groan. “Can you please shut up?”

  Caim sat with his mate as her body was wracked with pain after pain. Sometimes, he honored her request for silence. Other times, she wanted him to talk to her—reassure her that everything would bee all right. Each time, he told her it would be, but worried that he may be lying to her.

  As he sat with her, Caim wished that he could take her pain into his own body. He wished that she didn’t have to feel any pain at all, that childbirth as a whole could be easy and uncomplicated. He wished that he could do something for her besides just wishing for pointless things.

  Although it felt like an eternity, the first pup arrived in under an hour. It was purple and seemed somehow misshapen. Caim could not recall Dawn being so unpleasant-looking and concluded that the pup must have gotten it from his father. He cut the cord and wrapped the pup in the pelt from his back before passing him off to his mother.

  While he didn’t care for the pup, Caim found that he couldn’t take his eyes off it. By the time its brother was born, it seemed to have taken on a more natural hue, though its head still had a strange shape.

  The second pup was easier for her and Caim was relieved when it was finally over. While Mila nursed, he disposed of the afterbirth—an experience Asch would owe him dearly for.

  He arrived back in the clearing to find that the first pup had become rather handsome and the other was well on its way.

  “I can’t believe they’re actually boys,” Mila said as he crouched down beside her. “I was hoping Dawn would have a little sister.”

  Beside her, Dawn let out a soft whine. Caim reached over to pat his daughter on the head.

  “I will give you a sister next year,” Caim assured her.

  His pup barked excitedly, while Mila let out a loud snort.

  “Not the best time to mention getting me pregnant again,” she grumbled.

  Caim sat back down, holding her for a few more minutes as she continued to nurse. He would have been content to stay there for a while longer, perhaps even build a fire for them, but thick flurries of snow began to fall from the sky.