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Alpha´s Desire
A Paranormal Romance
By Jasmine Wylder
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Bonus Content
Bonus Book 1: Chosen by the Vampire King
Bonus Book 2: Her two Dragon Princes
About Jasmine Wylder
Chapter One
Sienna Blaine watched the massive poker player sitting across from her with a practiced nervous expression on her face. He was a bear shifter, her inner wolf could smell it on him, and was so drunk that he hadn’t realized he was sharing the tournament Finals table with another shifter. She was sure he’d have been more careful with his mutterings and under-the-breath talking he was doing with his cohort in the audience if he knew she was a few feet from him. Supernatural hearing and all that.
The bear, she was almost certain his name was Adrick or Baldric or something like that, was cheating—relying on those same highly tuned supernatural abilities to win his way through the eliminations rounds. Sienna had moved through the rounds as well, unnoticed by him and his compatriots as they whispered information to the shifter about the other players’ cards, tells, and the shady dealers they had in their pocket. With a $150,000 prize up for grabs, the bears were taking no chances. They were also getting sloppier as the rounds progressed, letting their guards down a little bit more.
This was tedious work that bored Sienna to tears and, really, was an insult to her tracker abilities. But it paid the bills—very well. The Windsor Luxury Hotel Group had made Sienna’s last 18 months lucrative and gave her the ability to quit her late-night bartending gig at the dive in her neighborhood. If spying on preternaturals cheating at poker got her away from the ass-squeezing perverts that frequented the holes in the wall she’d worked at, she’d put on her best fake smile and play the part of the air headed bimbo with a lucky streak as generous as her cleavage. And she’d been sure to put that on full display tonight, too.
Cedric (she was 75 percent sure that was his name) took in a deep breath and from the third row in the audience behind their raised table on the stage, she heard a very distinct Eastern European accent whispering to him a few levels below the average human’s hearing ability.
“Two kings to green. Ace high to blue. Guard says Blondie has two pair. Jacks.”
The last sentence was almost difficult for Sienna to hear above the crowd’s reaction to Park, the player the bears were calling “Blue” thanks to his blue Dodgers baseball cap, who had just raised the bet. Her mind racing, Sienna was trying to figure out which guard behind her was cluing the cheaters into her cards. Trying to look casual, she stretched and twisted in her chair just enough to catch a glimpse of the three security guards in suits that oversaw the finals table. Her money was on the one with the sunglasses. His heart rate was accelerated and he swayed from side to side, unable to stand still. Idiot. The people who hired her weren’t going to take too kindly to this being an inside job.
Sienna studied Cedric while he considered how to play his turn. Shifters came in all shapes and sizes but, often, an individual fit a mold for their particular species and Cedric certainly fit the bear profile. His frame was a few bricks short of a small house and his shoulders were broad and bulky beneath his suit jacket. It was clearly an expensive suit (bears loved to flaunt their status and tended to tread the line between stylish and gaudy precariously) but he took it too far with his gold aviators that matched his ridiculous gold-capped front teeth.
Sienna stifled a groan. Cedric’s gaze suddenly shifted to her and her wolf growled from within, not liking the bear’s attention at all. Sienna and her wolf lived peacefully together and the two trusted each other. They rarely disagreed and Sienna knew her wolf was a great judge of character.
Sienna forced a flirty smile and looked down at her cards, praying to the gods that she looked demure and shy and whatever the hell else turned bears on. She wouldn’t know-she didn’t date shifters. Ever.
Cedric raised his hands over his head and let out a growl as he stretched, moments before folding his hand. Obviously, his cards had been weaker and he needed to withdraw from this hand, lest he lose all his chips when Roberto, the Brazilian hipster sitting next to her in a bright green Brazilian flag shirt, called for an all-in, which he was probably going to do during this hand. It was how the guy operated and Sienna could tell from his shallow breathing and from the scent of his increased perspiration (eww!) that he was close to raising the stakes. He, obviously, was the one with the best hand. With his two kings against her two jacks, Sienna wasn’t going to beat this guy and on a normal night, she’d fold her hand now, too, knowing what she knew. But she was on the clock and getting her chips wiped out right now was a good thing. She could bow out of the tournament and get in touch with her contact before the night got too late.
Sure enough, Roberto called the hand, winning a big chunk of Park’s money and all of Sienna’s. Well, it was the casino’s money, but it still stung Sienna, just on principle. She had a bit of a competitive streak. Cedric shot her a condescending smirk and topped it with a smarmy wink. Sienna shuddered and looked away, lest her dominant wolf blow her cover as a submissive airhead.
Half an hour later, after being processed out of the tournament by staff and handing over her credentials, Sienna punched in a text message to the head of the Windsor security team, telling him she’d make her way to his office within the hour. She wanted to make sure none of Cedric’s bear buddies were tailing her after the weird looks he was giving her just before her elimination.
Stopping in the bathroom, Sienna wasted no time in removing her costume. The itchy blonde wig came first and she almost sighed aloud in relief when her own chestnut locks fell free from the pins and bun it’d been subdued in. The thick-framed, cat-eyed glasses were next. They were purely for show (all shifters had phenomenal vision) and played into the sexy librarian look Sienna was going for. Finally, she leaned over the sink and used the warm water and a makeup removing towelette from her messenger bag to remove the buckets of foundation, contouring and highlighting powder, and fake lashes from her face.
She was a fan of makeup like the next girl, but when she did jobs like this, she layered on the war paint until she reached level Kardashian. It was a lot of effort and far out of her comfort zone, but it did its job in making her look incredibly different from the fresh-face
d look she usually favored. Beside her, Sienna’s phone buzzed and she frowned as she recognized her twin brother Sage’s number. It was the third time he’d called her in the last 24 hours and more likely than not, he wanted to talk about their family. Her best guess was that their oldest brother Samuel wanted Sienna to return home to their old pack.
There was no chance in hell that was happening, and Sienna silently promised her twin, the only family member she bothered to stay in touch with, that she’d call him back tomorrow. Or the next day. Soon.
Just as she was rearranging her items back into her bag, the bathroom door burst open and a looming blonde man who looked like he could have wandered off the set of a Viking documentary with his long ponytail and braided beard walked in. He was flanked by two goons in dark suits and ear pieces.
Sienna blinked in surprise at the intrusion.
“Well, hello, Fallon,” Sienna frowned at the huge mountain lion shifter. “I said I’d be over to your office in a minute. What’s the rush?”
A small smile quirked on the man’s otherwise serious face.
“I have patience issues and if those assholes are cheating again, I want their balls on a platter sooner rather than later,” he said. “What’ve you got for me?”
Sienna looked around the bathroom and raised an eyebrow, hoping Fallon got the hint that she found having a serious work conversation in the women’s restroom was a little undignified.
The head of security wasn’t moved, raising his own eyebrow and insisting she download all her information now.
Taking a deep breath and remembering the handsome paycheck waiting for her, Sienna began to talk.
Chapter Two
Brody pulled a large hand through his dark hair and let out a long sigh. They’d lost the young woman’s scent. Again.
“Shit,” his Beta, Sage, spat. He’d obviously lost the trail, as well. “This isn’t good, Brody.”
Brody didn’t need to answer. As the Alpha of the Boulder pack, keeping his wolves safe was his top priority. The fact that Liesel had managed to disappear without a trace last week while out with her friends had his wolf pacing inside him, clawing to break free and find the female in case she was in trouble.
The women had come to this bar and met up with a group of friends—shifters of all species. Her friends had told Brody that Liesel had been drinking and dancing most of the night, nothing out of the ordinary. When the bouncers had called last call, however, they couldn’t find Liesel anywhere. For six days now, Brody and Sage had followed every clue they could strangle out of other club goers and it’d all led to nothing. While his sentinels, the enforcers of his pack, scoured a 25-mile perimeter for signs of Liesel, he and his Beta interviewed anyone they could find to talk. And it’d all been a dead end.
Dane, one Brody’s sentinels and a self-proclaimed IT junkie, was upstairs with the club owner reviewing new footage they’d been able to download from the security cameras. Minutes later, as Brody and Sage were getting ready to leave, Brody’s cell chirped in his jacket pocket. A text from Dane telling him to get back to the pack’s lodge in a hurry.
Moments later, they were on the highway heading past the Boulder city limits to their pack’s land. It was a huge sprawl of lush green forests with a very imposing, very electric perimeter fence that discouraged any interlopers—human or shifter. It’s just how Brody liked it. He and his wolf were hypervigilant and a bit overprotective. But if it kept his pack safe, Brody could care less what other people called him.
On the Boulder pack land was a main lodge where Brody lived and scattered throughout were smaller lodges equipped with every modern convenience a person could want. The Boulder pack was relatively small, just eight males, three females, and one mated pair so far, but eventually their numbers would grow. Wolf shifters needed mates to stay grounded and centered as they aged. Wolves were tactile creatures and lived in packs for a reason. Because his pack was relatively new, Brody understood that soon enough his wolves would look beyond the casual hookups they were known for and start looking to settle down once they encountered their mates.
But Brody? Not him. Mating wasn’t in the cards for him. He was too guarded. Too untrusting. He loved sex as much as the next guy—probably more, actually, and kept plenty of willing females’ numbers in his phone. But his bed mates understood long before the clothes came off that he wanted nothing more than mutual pleasure from them. And he was known for giving as good as he got, a fact that made he and his wolf more than a little smug.
Bounding up the stairs into the main lodge, he met Dane at the giant marble kitchen island where he was posted with his laptop, waiting on them.
“What’d you find?” Brody posed the question before he sat on a stool next to the massive blonde wolf shifter.
“Grainy video,” Dane said as he clicked through tabs on his screen. “But I think we caught images of her dancing with a shifter.”
Sure enough, as Brody squinted at the dark photo, he could make out Liesel’s tall figure and pale blonde hair and behind her, as she danced, moved a massive man with dark brown curls hanging in his face. Dane played the video and Brody watched as Liesel danced, mostly unaware of the man dancing behind her, until he moved his giant hands up and down her arms. Brody didn’t miss the look of confusion on Liesel’s face—she didn’t know the man, that much was obvious. She settled in soon enough, though, and got back to dancing.
“Almost an hour of this,” Dane said finally. “Eventually they head to a corner of the bar that’s just out of sight and we never see Liesel on camera again.”
Brody’s chest was heavy with concern, but at least it was something. Somewhere to start. He took two screenshots of the video and sent them to a friend of his on the local sheriff’s department for a little help.
Two hours later, after a tense meal that the mated female Georgia had made for them all, Brody got the call he’d been hoping for.
It was Chet, the deputy.
“Bears,” Chet said with a growl. He was a wolf shifter from the nearby Canyon pack. Chet’s Alpha, Grayson, and Brody had a solid alliance and generally, the packs looked out for each other as much as they could.
Brody bit out a curse and slammed a fist on the table.
When he hung up the phone, Brody told the assembled sentinels what Chet knew. A bear den had moved through Northern Colorado recently and stopped in Boulder, Colorado Springs, and parts of Denver before heading west. They all knew what that meant.
“Las Vegas,” Sage said. Brody nodded.
If Las Vegas was known as Sin City for the human population, shifters had made the town Debauchery Town for themselves. Any sort of trouble could be found, and often was, for the right price. If the bears had gotten their hands on Liesel and any other number of females and kidnapped them, chances were they were headed to Las Vegas to find buyers.
The rage seethed up Brody’s spine at the thought of Liesel and the other females Chet had mentioned missing in danger. It was a wolf’s nature to protect and he’d let Liesel down.
“We headed to Vegas?” Jai, one of the pack’s sentinels, asked.
Brody hated Vegas. Nothing good had ever happened in Vegas as far as he knew.
“It appears that way,” he said in growl. “It’s going to be like looking for a damn needle in a stack of needles, though.”
The others nodded in agreement.
“We could call my sister,” Sage said quietly and all eyes shot toward him.
“What sister?” Jai asked with a sly grin, despite the circumstances. Sage had mentioned a twin sister before, but he never talked much about her or the rest of his family back in Wyoming.
“My twin sister Sienna can find anything,” he said, and Brody didn’t miss the note of pride in his voice. “I’ll call her and we can head out and see her tonight.”
“What pack is she with?” Jai pressed, a glint in his eye.
Sage swallowed hard and narrowed his eyes a fraction before answering.
“None.”<
br />
The air dropped a few degrees. Lone wolves were rare and they were usually outcasts. Brody never trusted lone wolves. He moved to speak, but Sage held up his hand and cut him off.
“Look, I know you, Brody. And I respect your thing against lone wolves, but that’s not Sienna,” he said. “We had a rough time of it in Wyoming. Sienna had it worse than I did and you remember what kind of shape I was in when you found me. She’s got trust issues now and she’s finally found a little peace in being anonymous in Las Vegas.”
All ears perked up now. This was news to the pack. Brody knew about the sister, but he hadn’t known she was living as a lone wolf. He exhaled slowly.
“I’m not asking her to join the pack,” Sage said. “I’m just saying that if you want to find out whether a new bear den has arrived in Vegas, if you want to know if there’s some shady shit going down out there, then you might want to talk to her. She gets paid to know these things for the more powerful shifters out there. It’s what she does.”
Brody’s mind was at war with itself. Under no circumstances would he normally allow his pack to have anything to do with a rogue shifter. But these weren’t normal circumstances—one of his own was missing and in danger and chances were, this Sienna character might be able to find some information for him.
Would he be putting his pack in danger in some way if he let this outsider in on their troubles? The thought niggled at him. He’d be damned if an outsider caused trouble. He’d rip their throat out before he let that happen.
“Fine,” he said at last. “But if I feel like we’re being played, I won’t treat her different from any other threat, Sage. I don’t care if she’s your sister.”
Sage nodded.
“It’s not like that, Brody,” he added. “You’ll see. Sienna is something special.”
Brody couldn’t help the snort that followed. Loners? Special? That’d be the day.
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