by Viola Rivard
Shan
Destined for the Alpha, Book 2
Viola Rivard
Copyright © 2018 by Viola Rivard
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Epilogue
Destined, Book III
Prologue
Autumn, 1992
“You loved him more than me.”
She said it nonchalantly, as though it were part of some conversation they’d been having, one that wasn’t in her head. Though they were the first words she’d said to him all day, Shan knew precisely what she was referring to. He considered ignoring the comment, but he was afraid that if he didn’t say something, she’d fold back inside of herself, back to whatever void she’d been in since her mate’s death.
“That’s not true,” he said, lifting the bandage on her wound. It hadn’t been a bad wound, just a clip on her thigh from a stray bullet. He’d seen her endure far worse, like the time she’d gotten a stag’s antler’s stuck between her ribs. Under his father’s care, the wound had taken only a few nights to heal, turning pink, and then becoming nothing more than a slight depression on her chest.
This wound, this small, glancing wound, was refusing to heal. It had grown red, and then a sickly yellow that was quickly spreading across her thigh. As he had every night, he cleaned it as best he could and replaced the bandages. If it hurt, his mother gave no indication.
She sniffed. “If you’re going to tell me the sky is green, best be sure I can’t tilt my head back.”
Usually, he loathed it when she accused him of lying, but tonight he was just glad to hear her voice.
“Of course you loved him more,” she said, her eyes not quite focusing on him. “He never spoke a harsh word to you. He took your side in everything. You were his life.”
Hearing her refer to his father in the past tense was almost more than he could bear. In the days since he’d buried him, no one had spoken of Hannes. Gareth had been too devastated from the loss of his own parents and Kalla was far too young to understand any of what had happened.
“And you,” he whispered. “He loved you, too.”
As if he hadn’t spoke, she went on, “He was too old when you were born. No one should live as long as he did. He was big and strong for so long, he forgot how merciless this world can be.” She shook her head sadly. “I fought so hard for you, Shan. When you were small, I tried so hard to make him understand.”
“Understand what?”
“He thought childhood was a garden and it was our duty to nurture you. To pour water and sunshine on you and uproot any weeds that threatened to challenge you.”
Shan sighed and grabbed her hand. “My childhood has not been a garden. You’re rambling. Come back to camp and I’ll get you some food.”
She turned her hand so that it was gripping his. “You thought I was a bad mother. Don’t deny it. I was unkind to you. I never indulged your art. I favored your wolf. But I had to do something. If I’d been soft, you would have never known pain until now.”
Shan stood, fighting back the bile that rose in his throat. He tried pulling her up with him, but although he’d been carrying her for days, she now felt too heavy for him to budge.
“Come and eat.”
“You do not feed the dead.”
“You’re not dead!” he snapped. “You’re breathing. Your heart is beating. Get up and eat something, now.”
She looked up at him, her eyes finally focusing on his, and gave him a wan smile.
“And here I believed you would be the one man who would never try to control me.”
Shan kept his face hard, refusing to let her see how much her words stung.
“Starving yourself isn’t going to bring him back.”
His mother leaned back against the tree, closing her eyes and clicking her tongue.
Shan had taken on so much responsibility since his father’s death. He felt as though he’d grown ten years in four days, yet the familiar sound of his mother’s patronizing clicks made him feel small and foolish.
“Poor boy. One day you will have a mate, and then you will understand. I died the moment your father did. You just haven’t buried me yet.”
Chapter 1
Pale and enervated as she lay on the bed, Harper looked more like a doll than a living, breathing being. It made the sight of her being stitched up seem all the more surreal to Shan. He wished she would complain, moan, or even twitch as the needle wove in and out of her flesh. He wanted any sign of life, other than the sound of her erratic heartbeat.
A full day had come and gone since he'd found her by the river, bloodied and in the arms of another male—her brother. He'd been angry then, and he hadn't stopped being angry since.
Shan was angry at the wolf who had mauled her. He still wanted him dead and had only spared him to avoid inadvertently killing Caim, who may have come to his defense. At the time, Shan's mind had made several quick calculations. Once he'd found out that Caim was her brother, he had known that he couldn't kill him. It had little to do with Harper's pleas. His mind had already worked ahead of the situation, determining that if he did kill her brother it would be nearly impossible to get Harper to accept him as her mate.
Shan was angry at her for leaving. First, she had insulted him, implying that the life he had to offer her was somehow inferior to whatever bullshit she was doing back in the human world. Like he was some sort of fucking primitive, asking her to come live in his hovel and be his bedwarmer. Then, she'd disrespected him. She'd called him an asshole, yelled it loud enough for anyone to hear, and then stuck her middle finger up at him and stormed off. He'd wanted to stalk after her, but knew that in his mood, he would not be kind or gentle with her, and in her mood, she would only fan the flames of his rage.
In spite of that, Shan was still angry with himself for letting her leave. There had been a point, perhaps ten minutes after she'd left, that he'd calmed himself and had been able to think more clearly about the things that she'd said. She wanted to be his mate, she wanted to stay with him, and she had given him everything he needed to convince her to do so. All she needed was for him to do what he'd set out to do from the start—prove to her that a life with him would be better than a life without. She needed for him to be patient and allow her to get to know him and his world.
The problem was, he was so attracted to her, so drawn to her in a way that was beyond his understanding, that he just couldn't help himself. He needed her to accept his bond, needed his mark on her, and needed his pup growing inside of her, and he didn't want to wait for any of it.
Shan ran a hand down her smooth, unblemished arm. Her skin was cool to the touch. When he reached her hand, he laced his fingers between hers and squeezed. She squeezed back, though with considerably less force. He looked at her face in time to see her eyelids flutter open.
Her lips were dry, cracked, and only a shade darker than her pallid complexion. When they parted, it was only to take in a breath.
“There's water beside you,” Ginger said.
The young female kept her eyes on he
r stitching as she spoke. She had already sewn up the worst of Harper's wounds and was now finishing up her work on the more minor cuts. The scarring would be extensive and there was the possibility of permanent nerve damage.
Twice now, under his watch, she'd been scarred. The first time, he'd been able to dismiss his fault. It had only been after the attack that he'd decided to court her and she'd become his direct responsibility to care for. This time, he'd not only been courting her, but he was also the reason she'd run off on her own. He'd let her go. He had told her to go and get herself killed. In that moment, he'd been every bit as juvenile as her, and he'd now have a constant reminder of his irresponsibility.
Never again.
Shan held the cup to her lips. Harper accepted the water. As she drank, she watched Ginger stitch her from the corners of her eyes. She emptied the cup.
“Are we in The Steppes?” she asked, her voice a hoarse whisper.
Shan ran his fingers through her bangs. “This is Tower Hill. It's my southernmost province.”
“You have provinces? Fancy.”
He was relieved to be talking to her again. After their discussion by the river, he hadn't been able to keep her awake. He'd carried her for several miles in his human form, both so that he could properly monitor her condition, and because he didn't trust his wolf to have his priorities straight.
As he predicted, once he finally shifted, his wolf had begun backtracking at once, intent on finding the wolf who'd injured Harper and tearing him apart. Shan had expended a great deal of mental energy impressing upon the wolf how important it was that they get Harper to a healer.
Some of what Shan had learned must have passed to the wolf. The wolf seldom held many thoughts in his head. As a matter of course, he would have an impulse and then act on it, or decide against it. His decisions were rarely colored by feelings, except for a handful of baser emotions that tended to fizzle out as quickly as they surged up.
During the entire trip to Tower Hill, his wolf's mind had been nearly unrecognizable and barely coherent. It had been a crowded mess of images and emotions that Shan could hardly make sense of. Most of the images had to do with Harper, or at least, what Shan assumed was Harper. In the wolf's mind, he now envisioned her in wolf form, slightly smaller than himself, with a blue-black pelt. He imagined himself mounting her and mating with her, and the accompanying emotions were more intense than anything Shan could remember feeling in his own mind.
In sharp contrast to the feelings of ecstasy and reverence that he felt towards Harper, there was deep acrimony. It was directed not only at the wolf who had hurt her, but also at Shan, whom the wolf felt was to blame for not keeping her safe. The wolf didn't care that she had insulted him, disrespected him, or lied to him. All that mattered was that she was protected, and in that, Shan had failed, utterly.
He was wearing clothes, his pelt folded and placed on a chair on the other side of the room. Shifting back into his human form had been difficult. Shan sensed that the wolf had only ceded because he needed him to communicate with the shifters of Tower Hill and ensure that Harper got the medical attention that she needed. Once she'd been settled into bed, his skin had immediately tried rebinding to his flesh, heedless of the fact that they were inside of a cavern that was too small to accommodate his wolf form.
In spite of what he'd told Harper, Shan still didn't know whether he was his wolf, or if his wolf was a separate entity. His parents had been of two minds on the issue. His mother had believed her wolf to be the manifestation of her true nature, while his father had been firm in his stance that the wolf was a higher being inhabiting his body. He tended towards his mother's interpretation, but in this case, that would mean that at his core, he loathed himself.
“I don't remember coming here,” Harper said, her blue eyes flitting around the room.
“You were asleep,” he told her.
Passed out, feverish, and unresponsive.
To Ginger, he said, “When you're finished, bring her something to eat.”
Ginger had already tied off and clipped the last of the stitches, and was wrapping Harper's arm in treated gauze. Shan was glad to see the wounds disappear beneath the filmy fabric.
“Not hungry,” Harper said, her eyes drifting shut again. “I just want to sleep. I'll take some of that tea, though, if you have it.”
It took him a second to realize she was talking about the tea he'd given her to help her sleep peacefully. He hadn't known then that the dreams she'd been trying to block out were of her wolf. The possibility had seemed so remote as to barely cross his mind. He had toyed with the idea, but it had seemed more fantasy than possibility. What were the odds that when he'd finally given up hope for a mate of his own kind, the first female he decided to court would end up being like him?
“Bring her something to sleep, as well,” Shan instructed.
Later, there would be time to coax her wolf out. Tonight, she needed proper rest in order to recover.
As soon as Ginger departed, Harper cracked her eyes open and frowned.
“Is she really my healer? She looks like she's ten.”
“Twelve, actually,” he said. “And you were seen by a proper healer earlier. Ginger was sent in to do your stitching. She's something of a savant.”
With what looked like great effort, Harper turned her head to look at her arm. It was wrapped from her shoulder, down to the joints of her wrist. She wiggled her slender fingers, and then winced.
“I guess so. I barely felt her stitching. Just promise that if I get real bad, you'll take me to a human doctor.”
“You're going to be fine.”
She closed her eyes, her body sagging with her exhalation. “It doesn't feel like anything is going to be fine ever again.”
Shan wasn't about to ask her what she meant by that, nor was he willing to make assumptions. They couldn't afford another fight, not now.
He stood and said something to the effect that he would return later. He grabbed his pelt on the way out, not waiting for a response.
He had folded the pelt in such a way that his hands held only the outer fur. Had the skin-lined underside made contact with his flesh, he knew it would be trying to latch itself to him. His wolf didn't want to leave his mate, not even for a moment. Shan, however, was in dire need of some distance between the two of them.
The Tower Hill den was old, belonging to what had formerly been known as the Nipawset pack. A century ago, the native pack had been almost entirely wiped out by warfare with a new, insurgent pack from the east. The fight had been not for land, but for the alpha's daughter. Their bloodline largely undiluted by humans, they'd still been capable of producing offspring.
Such conflicts had been common at the turn of the former century, when infertility had begun ravaging their kind. Had the alpha of Nipawset been able to mate his daughter off to a male with a similarly pure bloodline, their daughters may have gone on to produce offspring as well. Instead, a young, upstart alpha had overthrown the Nipawset alpha and claimed the young female for himself, passing on his mother's human genes to their pups. It was just a small example of what was happening on a global scale, and another phase in the prolonged downfall of their kind.
He ran his hand along the flat walls of the hallway, his fingertips catching on the tribal engravings. He passed several rooms, all of them furnished, but presently empty. The alpha of the den, Tag, had ordered the upper layer to be cleared out upon Shan's arrival, perhaps to give him privacy, or perhaps because he'd been concerned for the safety of his pack mates. Shan had not been in the best mood when he'd arrived.
The air grew cooler as he descended the carved stairway and entered the lower quarters. The scent of cooked pheasant reminded him that he hadn't eaten in over a day, and hunger clawed at his stomach. He followed the sound of whispered voices until he arrived at a common area. Ginger was inside, bent over a cook pot, her sister crouched beside her.
He listened to them gossip for a moment, feeling a strange sense that he
was intruding, in spite of the fact that he was the topic of their conversation. Ginger was trying to convince her more skeptical twin that he and Harper were going to be mates. As Shan listened to them, it occurred to him that his core pack would also be rife with speculation about his relationship with Harper, and he wondered what he would tell them.
“She will be my mate,” Shan said, startling the girls as he stepped into the room. “So take good care of her.”
Blushing, Ginger sputtered several apologies and reassurances. As she scuttled from the room, Shan addressed her sister, asking her to bring him ink and paper.
Once he was alone, he settled down in the fur-lined chair nearest to the fire. For a few minutes, he refused to think about anything. He let his mind go blank. Anytime a thought threatened to disturb his peace, he dismissed it before it could take root.
The tumultuous emotions of the past few days fell away as he centered himself. Only once his mind was still and his body was perfectly at ease was he able to objectively consider what he'd learned about Harper.
She was like him.
It made sense, now.
It had baffled him, how attracted he'd been to her, right from the start. Yes, she was beautiful and intelligent, but she was also more immature than the types of females he was typically drawn to. She also hadn't come seeking a mate, and under normal circumstances, he would have respected that.
But nothing about his attraction to her had been normal. Within three nights, he'd shrugged off all his reservations about taking a mate and had decided to court her. In spite of his conviction that he should take things slowly with her, they'd slept together the very next night. From the moment he'd first been inside of her, he'd known that he wouldn't settle for any other female. From then on, he'd stopped imagining a future that didn't have her in it.