Total pages in book: 202
Estimated words: 193561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 968(@200wpm)___ 774(@250wpm)___ 645(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 193561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 968(@200wpm)___ 774(@250wpm)___ 645(@300wpm)
One home has an elderly couple outside waving happily. They look so healthy and fit despite being advanced in years. They’re happy about this alpha carrying a strange woman through the village, because they believe he’s about to mate with his fated female. This is what they believe: that every alpha has a woman who was made for him, meant to be his. We don’t believe that. Father said it was a myth. A myth used by powerful alphas to steal attractive females from their families.
But I’m just plain. I’m too tall and thin. I have small breasts and narrow hips. I’m defective to men, though that doesn’t seem to stop them…
I told Wyatt once when we were younger, before Father died, that I thought the notion of fated mates was romantic. Wonderful. That I wondered if I was made for an alpha. Wondered what kind of alpha was made for me. Would he be smart? Kind? Generous?
Wyatt ridiculed me, schooled me that the measure of a man was about so much more than who he chose to fuck. He rolled his eyes at the notion of a woman being anything other than a broodmare who cooks and cleans. Then he educated me, saying that being an alpha’s daughter meant I was currency, not about to sit on a shelf until someone wanted to mate me for life. And I didn’t know how a person could be considered currency at the time, but I’ve certainly found out the meaning since then.
Wyatt feels that an alpha has the ability to mount anything and everything in sight, so why wouldn’t he take what was owed to him by his pack? It was ridiculous to think otherwise.
Father was only able to bear two children, Wyatt with his mom who died, then came me after Wyatt’s mother died, so that didn’t fit with the notion of mating for life.
Father taught Wyatt to take his due and because of what he’d been through with females, which was a long and sordid tale that changed almost every time I heard it recounted, Father’s opinion was that alphas should always take their due. Money. Power. Fealty. Women.
We move past a pretty home with a wide yard and I see a side patio where six people sit around a fire bowl grilling meat, waving at us, smiling. An older man is tying up his boat at a dock in front of another house two doors over. He gives us a thumbs up and calls out, “Congrats, Grey! Welcome to the pack, little lady!”
Next door to that there are three teenaged boys on bicycles in a driveway. They’re gesturing and elbowing one another, and I catch enough of their words to know they’re talking lewdly about the fact that Grey is about to go and mate a she-shifter.
Greyson picks up his pace with an even more determined expression on his face.
My nerves are fried; I’m on sensory overload.
A half a dozen or so homes past the teenagers, we turn right to go down another street lined with even more pretty buildings. This village has so many houses, but they’re not on top of one another like our village, where you can hear and smell absolutely everything and everyone around you.
Wyatt said this pack is at least five times the size of ours. Then again, more than half of our members have either run away or died in the past few years and our numbers are dwindling because of the lack of live births.
“We’re here,” Greyson breathes, and his eyes hit mine just briefly. They’re still like liquid silver.
His chest has been rising and falling the entire walk, not like he’s out of breath, more like he’s determined, gearing up to fight or something.
My heart skips a beat as my eyes cut away to take in the sight before me. A house. His house. In a minute, we’ll be alone together on the other side of the pretty bottle-green carved wooden door in front of us.
Wyatt initially wanted me to get into this village and scope it out for him, get them to take me in and give him the layout, where each of the extra-alpha ones live, but it felt too risky to simply show up and just pretend I was lost. He didn’t like that I defied that order at all and instructed Jimmy to lay a beating on me for it.
But it didn’t make sense to do that. Not that much of what Wyatt wants us to do does. They’d ask questions. I’m not a liar; don’t think I’d get away with trying to deceive anyone.
I fibbed when I told Jimmy that the last time one of them was in the diner, his nose twitched around me. I told him I thought it was one of the extra-alpha ones and that I was concerned he could scent me past my masking agent. I said I thought I should keep my distance.