Alpha of my heart a m m.., p.1
Alpha of My Heart: A M/M Mpreg Romance, page 1
Alpha of My Heart
Love by Glitter Bomb Book 23
Maggie Hemlock
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Maggie Hemlock. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.
Stock photos for the cover brought to you by 123RF.
The Love by Glitter Bomb series is a spin-off series from the Hemlock Wolf Pack Saga. All of Maggie Hemlock’s books are set in the Hemlock Mpreg Universe. Characters, places, themes, and magic cross over from book to book and series to series within the Hemlock Mpreg Universe. All of Maggie’s books take place within this universe.
Chapter One
Ramero
The sun shined down hot over the lake and the pavilion where the party would take place the next day. As I carried the nineteenth million box of supplies up the slope, I silently cursed Dayton for dragging me into this. A month ago, his true-mate’s best friend went on a vacation to Europe. Vacations should be simple, but not this one in particular. Kimber’s best friend, Wilder, went to some secret magical fox village in Europe with his true-mate and another set of true-mates that they were poly relationship with, in some way or another. If I had my fuck ducks lined up in a row, it was omega + omega and Alpha + Alpha. Well, the latter was just a rumor, as far as I knew, before they left for Europe. It’s not like I go around taking polls about who’s taking poles from whom and in where. Still, if there were any doubts before they left that they were all in one big love cluster fuck there wasn’t when news reached Canton Valley and Kimber’s ears that they had a big four-person wedding while over there.
That’s why we were setting up for a party. Kimber, Dayton’s true-mate and Wilder’s best friend, already planned a homecoming party for the quad couple but then plans changed. If they had a wedding over there, they had to have a reception over here. Kimber hadn’t said boo to me or anyone else since the news came, but Dayton bitched enough for them both.
Dayton was my best friend, a wolf shifter mated to a unicorn, and the Captain of the Guard of the Guardians of Glitter Bomb. Also, he could bitch up a storm when something pissed off his unicorn omega, Kimber. Dayton didn’t give two shits that they got married over there, or he wouldn’t have if Kimber didn’t feel so forgotten and left out. I expected Canton or the drag queens to raise hell because Bryn and Nolan did all that without them, but they took it in stride and thought the spur-of-the-moment wedding was romantic. I didn’t really care. I was friends with them and all, but I wasn’t close enough to be in the wedding party.
The only one of them that sought me out on a regular occasion was the Alpha fox shifter, Jude, and that was only because we both had fuck nuts who possessed our bodies in the past. So, I was his ‘how do I get his filth out of me?’ mentor and not much more than that.
So how the fuck did I get sucked into being a pack mule for their stateside wedding reception? One word: Evie.
Last week she and her best friend, the draconic teenager Alice, got into a big argument over some boy at school, and Evie shifted her hand and slapped the shit out of the other girl leaving big scratch marks on her cheek. I didn’t see what the big deal was. The scratches were half healed by the time Alice whipped out her phone to call her dad to pick her up minutes later. Evie was a teenage lioness, and they did that shit. My sister was a terror at that age. She was now off at Hemlock Academy with most of our friends and had her slap and scratch fests under control, but there was a time when she didn’t. Every cat shifter, big or small, goes through something similar. Lionesses are probably some of the worst for it, though. Their inner beasts know in the wild, they’d be in charge. Well, the biggest lionesses would. So, they always went about trying to prove they were the biggest. I said Alice should’ve slugged her to teach her no, she wasn’t, but no one ever really asked me.
So, when Evie wanted to come along with Philip and Canton to prepare for the wedding’s afterparty, her older brother and Dad-Mom, agreed she could only come if another lion came along to ensure she didn’t eat anyone’s face. Somehow I got the job. Out of all the lions in our pride, I was the only one not working or taking care of a kid at the time. I figured it wouldn’t be too much of a hassle to just keep an eye on Evie, but of course, just like on the grand mapping trip into the Wildlands we took the previous year, Dayton turned me into a pack mule.
“All of this because no one knows how to handle a lion cub,” my lion shook his big head inside of me. “Alice is a dragon. It’s not like Evie gouged out her eye! All these freaking not-cats are dramatic.”
“Brent knows. That’s why one of us has to be here with her. We could’ve said no.”
“No, we couldn’t,” he shot back at me. “We’re pride, and she needed a guardian. It should’ve been a fun day, but people had to go and marry in a rectangle or something and make us carry all their stuff.”
“She’s getting awful close to that lake, Ramero,” Canton pointed out as he took the box I carried. “She can swim, but she’s not supposed to be in the water today. We didn’t ask the water dragons for permission, and it’s one of their off days in this section.”
“Shit,” I said and snagged a water bottle before turning to start down the slope to the lake.
“This is good birth control for you!” Philip shouted after me, and he and Canton shared a laugh.
“If Philip wasn’t a bear, I’d eat the rabbit,” my lion chimed off in my thoughts.
As far as I was concerned, everyone could shut the hell up and do what needed to be done. Then we could go home and come back tomorrow for the party.
“What’s up, Evie?” I called out when she was within easy earshot.
“There’s a cat in the lake!” She called back. “A cat-cat. Well, probably. Maybe a shifter. I can’t smell him!”
“Hold on!” I called out as she stepped out of her pink flats. “Don’t go in the water. You’ll get boiled by a water dragon.”
“They don’t really do that,” she stood akimbo, watching my approach.
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve never heard of them actually doing that to anyone,” she rolled her eyes at me.
“Well, you might be the first. Maybe their favorite food is rolled lioness eyeballs,” I chuckled.
“See him!” She turned without retorting and pointed out over the lake.
Borrowing my lion’s vision, I shifted my eyes to his. The water looked inviting, and it was midday. It was time to nap by the watering hole. It wasn’t time to search for lost house cats and chase after a lion cub who should just lay down and sleep anyway. Except, we moved in the world of humans and not big cats at the moment.
Evie was right. There was what looked to be a house cat out in the lake. He was mostly white with some gray speckling on his ears and face from what I could see from the shore. With how much fur trailed behind him in the water, I guessed he was a long-haired cat.
“I’m goin---” Evie started toward the water but never finished her sentence. I snatched at the neck of her tank top and gave her the spot where her neck met her back, her human scruff, a good pinch as I did. That was a trick I picked up from my parents.
Evie froze and then turned and hissed at me. I shot her a look with my still-shifted eyes that said, ‘One day you might be big enough to kick my ass and get your way, but today was not that day, little lioness.’ She got the message too, because then she did what every lion cub did when they didn’t get their way. She faked danger and fear.
“Don’t!” I said too late.
She took a deep breath and let out a wail that made every head turn toward us. I was familiar with the tactic. The Old Cats knew my sister and I used it even when we were teenagers. If one of our parents had us by the scruff, we yelled our heads off for the other. Screaming about danger and mayhem and about being eaten and bitten. Most only human parents probably could’ve ignored the dramatics, but not lion shifters. Our inner beasts reacted as if the Guardians of Glitter Bomb territory was the wild and a rival lion was going to eat our cubs. Heck, my lion almost looked around for the threat she squalled about. It didn’t matter if Evie was a human teenager. Her lion was still a cub to all of us, and her inner beast knew it.
“Evie, stop it. You’re not hurt. You’re not in danger,” I said, keeping my voice level like I learned to do for my new job as security down at the Cuddle Club.
Only Evie knew that, and she was milking everyone’s reactions to get her way.
“Typical cub!” My lion rolled his eyes.
“Evie, I’m the only lion here. You’re stuck with me. Now stop squalling, and we’ll talk,” I said.
She took a deep breath and pressed her lips together. Then she took another deep breath and gave me a look that said, “We’ll see about that.’
And we did see because up in the pavilion, Philip and Canton shared a look between them that I was pretty sure was about which one of them got to come down and save me. I wasn’t even ten years older than Evie. Maybe seven if I had my math right. So, yeah, I felt a bit out of my comfort zone, but I wasn’t letting go of her. I was the bigger lion, damn it!
Philip started down the path, and I took a deep breath and spun Evie around to fully face me, still keeping ahold of her t-shirt scruff. She squalled in my face, and my ears rang.
“Stop it!” I roared this time letting out the deep throaty vocals of my lions.
“Don’t roar at me!” She squalled, crocodile tears rolling down her cheeks. “Philip! Philip!”
Philip opened his arms, and I let her go, unsure of if I actually scared her or if she just wanted her way. Heck, it was better to err on the side of caution than to traumatize her for life. We wanted her to grow up confident and ferocious. We just didn’t want her to eat faces while getting there.
“She’s fine,” Philip said, hugging her close. “She does this when she doesn’t get what she wants. She’s fifteen going on fifteen hundred, aren’t you?”
“There’s a cat out there! I don’t think he can get back on his own,” she tugged Philip down to the shore.
“Well, there is a cat out there,” Philip frowned for a second after scanning the lake. “Though from what I know about cats, they can swim, and he seems to be doing just that.”
“What if he can’t find his way back to shore? What if he’s a shifter? What if it was Brock or Kieran? Would you rescue him then? Why does everyone think non-shifters aren’t worth rescuing?” Tears fell down her cheeks.
Okay, those were real tears.
“Sweetheart, no one thinks that,” Philip squeezed her shoulders.
“They do too! This is just one example and----” she let out a sob.
“Here,” I said, stripping my shirt off over my head. “Hold this, Evie.”
“I wouldn’t go out there, Ramero,” Philip said, using his adult voice on me.
“You be my eyes. The water dragons know you. Don’t let them boil me alive while I save that damn house cat.”
“You’re just as bad as her,” Philip shook his head as I stripped off my sneakers and handed them to Evie too.
“Don’t lose my clothes and shoes,” I said, locking eyes with her, so she knew I was serious. “I’m going to save your damn stray cat. So, keep track of these.”
“I will,” Evie nodded hard and rose up on her tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek.
“Ramero, she’ll survive not having that cat out of the water,” Philip said.
“Yeah, and the bulls would’ve survived if you didn’t play rodeo too. Sometimes we do things because we can,” I said and then stopped talking because my lion pushed his way out.
My cat was a water lover, and not just in the hydrating way. We grew up with a big pool in the backyard, just like the one at Ramero’s house. He learned to swim before I did and still had more confidence than me in deeper water. My lion was the fearless part of me, and I let him take over.
We splashed hard into the water, and he swam out until he could sink under the surface. Cool water played through his fur and mane. The bastard would’ve let out a happy sigh if he could’ve. Then it was time to come back up and find that damn house cat.
A white spot in blue water was easier to locate than I thought it would be. The cat watched as we swam toward him but stayed in place until we were almost there. Then he swam like the dickens away from us. My lion kept his slow, easy pace, and the cat repeated his game of backing away. Soon everyone was watching, and I knew the cat was playing a game. Philip was right, and the cat was fine, but my lion wasn’t having it. He came out to catch the house cat, and that’s exactly what he was going to do. The drenched rat of a cat had been out here a lot longer than us. So, our endurance would outlast his.
Eventually, after ten minutes or so of playing stop and swim with us, the cat stayed still and allowed us to approach. Then his muzzle screwed up almost looking like lips, and he sprayed a warm gush of water in our face. My lion flailed his front legs whacking at the water, trying to catch the little bastard, but he swam away. Now, shit was serious.
“I’LL EAT YOU FOR THAT!” My lion roared, and the cat shot a mischievous look over his shoulder.
This was a new element of the game. Whenever we got close to him, the cat sprayed us with water. We were already wet, and my lion’s butt wiggled as he swam. Inside of him, in the inner sanctum where he usually waited to come out and play, I could only laugh my ass off even as our minds merged into one. This little thing was amusing. I was pretty damn sure it wasn’t an ordinary cat, but it was fun to play with.
My lion circled around the cat creature, who in turn swam in circles spraying warm sprouts of water at him. Then my lion’s tail twitched ever so slightly, and he pounced. We plunged into the water, taking the cat creature with us. When we emerged, its scruff was firmly but safely in our mouth. He would’ve let out a victory roar if the cat creature wouldn’t have escaped.
The cat creature tried to swim away, but it was stuck between our teeth. It swam harder and harder and eventually tugged us along with it in the water.
“LET GO OF THAT DAMN THING, RAMERO!” Philip shouted from the shore. “LET IT GO! IT’S NOT A DAMN CAT! LET IT GO!”
Only my lion was having none of that nonsense. We caught it fair and square, and now it was ours.
Chapter Two
Uri
“Uri, are you going to save that dumbass lion from Mookie?” Algae asked me, laughter still dancing in his voice from the show Mookie and the lion put on. “You think they’d know better by now. It’s not their day to be in the water. Though, they’re furbabies and not dragons. Maybe they’re that stupid.”
Algae and I sunbathed on a boulder half sticking out of the lake but hidden by the foggy magic that always kept our village a secret from those who weren’t in our wave of dragons. Some folks thought we’d be called a school of dragons but fuck that! We aren’t fish! We’re dragons.
Safe behind the fog, we lounged in just our underwear. Usually, none of us would’ve bothered with underwear, but the powers that be allowed the group of land leggers to set up for a party on a day we usually kept folks away. So, I kept my thong on, and Algae sported his yellow rubber ducky boxer briefs. His had more coverage than mine, obviously, but if folks didn’t want to see my naked ass, they should’ve stayed on their own side of the damn fog.
“Naw, he’s having fun, man. Let him get his energy out now. He can’t swim around on days the lake is open to the public. He never gets to make any new friends.”
“I don’t know how much of friends they’re making,” Algae snickered. “Seriously, he’s dragging that lion around in circles. He’s going to catch lion cooties. Can Mookie catch feline diseases?”
I ignored his last ignorant question because Mookie was having fun and I didn’t want to explain to Algae yet again that Mookie wasn’t actually a cat and the lion shifters in the city were probably at least as healthy as we were.
“Eh, he’ll let go when he gets dizzy,” I said and rested my chin on my hands, watching my little Mookie drag the giant lion around. The lion was the normal sandy brown color of his beast type, but he was huge. Lots of the big cats loved to swim, and it was usually the tigers that plunged headfirst into the water but so did some of the lions. This was the biggest of the lot, but Mookie was Mookie, and he wanted to play.
Mookie wasn’t a house cat. Hell, he wasn’t even an Earthside being. As a ‘kitten’ the trickster got swept up in an undercurrent and ended up in our lake. I found him as a kid and knew right away he wasn’t a normal kitten, but he needed help, and we became friends. Now, he was my Mookie. We didn’t find out what he was until a harpy named Zee spotted him one day and came to find out if he needed help. I was relieved that someone knew what he was and that his parents had never looked for him. Apparently, once they can walk, what the harpies call ‘tricksters’ leave their kids to do whatever they wanted. So, I saved Mookie from a life of being a solo creature.
“He’s dragging that lion over here, Uri!” Algae groaned. “Everything will smell like wet dog! I hate the smell of fur but wet fur?!”
“You do know that lions are cats, right, dude?” I asked him.
“Same thing! Furry creatures stink to the high heavens when they get wet.”
“Not Mookie,” I shook my head.
“Mookie is the exception, not the rule. Go stop him from dragging that wet cat over here!” Algae said, scrunching up his nose and shaking his head.
“Eh, leave him alone. Maybe he made a friend this time.”
