Mated To The Alpha: A Standalone Wolf Shifter Romance

by JM Klaire

  Emma told him that she learned the reason why her mother had left the pack, to protect her cub, and Henry said he wasn't at all surprised, now that he knew the full story.

  "Protective of others, above herself. That does sound just like your mother. And of you, my child."

  Emma smiled at him, glad that she could fill in some empty pieces for her father, who she knew always loved her mother very much. And still did.

  "So, Emma," her dad nudged her with an elbow in her side as they caught up. "I bring you here a troubled young lady, and I come back to find you the forever mate of an Alpha wolf, a shifter yourself and a hero to boot."

  "Dad, stop. I'm not a hero. I just did what I could, that's all."

  "Whatever you say, my wolf child. Do you love your wolf form? Your mother did. She was a beautiful wolf, and you look just like her."

  "I do. Thank you. For bringing me here, I mean. This is where I belong, and I never would have even known of its existence if you hadn't brought me home."

  "Home, huh?"

  "Yeah."

  "I see you and Elam are living in our old cabin. Mine and Reine's old cabin."

  "Yeah. I like knowing that I am living where she lived. Where you two were happy."

  "We were that- happy, I mean. I'm glad you are happy there, too. And Kate? Is she as happy as she looks?"

  "Yes. She loves it here, too. She loves Galen. She loves being Alpha's mate of her own territory. And she loves that she is carrying Galen's cub."

  "And you? Do you like being with cub? I must admit you glow with it, just like Reine did."

  "I do like it. I'm glad I get to go through it with Kate, too."

  "Your mom knew you were a girl, from the very beginning. Do you know what you're having?"

  "I do. Actually I know what Kate is having, too. She doesn't want to know. They want to be surprised, so you can't say anything- but Kate and I both are having boys."

  "Ah, two boys, from brothers with shape shifter blood. This ought to be interesting, huh?"

  "I have a feeling, Dad, that interesting isn't even going to begin to cover it."

  Thank you for reading my very first full-length shifter romance!

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  Ready for another?

  Fate’s dark design brings them together ... in a mating neither is ready for.

  Five years after witnessing her father's death, Keelyn has become what she never wanted to be: a were-hunter. Surprisingly good at the career she'd had thrust upon her that fateful day, she heads to the yearly gathering to pay her farm's rent with money earned from hunting werewolf hearts and pelts.

  Bane and his wolf pack are also headed to the yearly gathering when Bane, the pack's Alpha, finally scents the female his wolf says is to be their forever mate. There's only one problem- she also scents of death and wet wolf hide.

  When Bane follows Keelyn into the woods, neither are prepared for the truths, or the passion, they're each about to face.

  Can they survive the revelations that lie ahead? Or has fate doomed them to an impossible love?

  Claimed By The Alpha is the first book in the Alpha Hunted series, but it can be read as a standalone. Turn the page for a sample chapter.

  Claimed By The Alpha

  Chapter 1

  Keelyn slowed her breathing automatically. Years of training kicked in as she eyed the large buck off in the distance, the tip of her arrow a blur in front of her as she sighted in on tonight's dinner.

  She could feel her father, Anson, off to her right side and a foot or so behind her, his quiet voice becoming silent the second he noticed her spy the large deer and raise her bow in one fluid, almost unconscious movement.

  They'd had two goals when they set off on today's hunt- a buck and a werewolf.

  The buck would provide fresh venison for the table tonight, and also make quite a bit of dried, smoked meat for her father to take with him on his journey to the castle, plus still leave plenty to feed Keelyn, her mother, and her little sisters for a few days before Keelyn would need to hunt again, in her father's absence.

  The werewolf's body, which they had yet to get, was to provide the last bit of money the family still needed to pay the farm's yearly rent at the gathering next month. If they didn't come across a werewolf today, her father still had plenty of time to kill one more on the way to the castle, since his journey by foot would take him a couple of weeks.

  His yearly route took him straight through werewolf country, so the buck was actually the more important of the two kills they were hoping to make today.

  Keelyn eyed the buck and held her breath, getting her timing just right before sliding her fingers from the bow's string and launching the sharpened, homemade arrow for a quick, humane kill.

  The arrow hit home, flying fast and sure. If she had used a bullet, she knew in her bones that the buck would have dropped where it stood, but they couldn't afford either a gun or the metal they would need to make their own bullets, so the pair carried bows they had forged from the forest instead.

  The buck took off, traveling a few hundred panicked feet before dropping to the forest floor.

  As they quickly headed toward the fallen meat to make sure the kill was complete, and that the animal suffered as little as possible, her father's words continued on as if he hadn't been interrupted in his speech a few seconds before.

  Keelyn listened to the same speech he gave her every year, right before gathering time, and she mentally said most of it right along with him from memory as he spoke.

  "Take care of your mother and sisters, Keelyn. I know she doesn't like to admit it, but we are getting older every year. She needs you to stay close and help her until I get back. No wandering in the woods all day unless you're hunting food for the family.

  It will take me a good month or so to get to the castle and back. I won't linger. I will pay my respects and our yearly rent to the King and get back here as quickly as possible. It's getting late, and dark, so I'll probably have to pick up the last bit of coin we still need on the way to the castle next week. Nighttime is great for hunting were-kind, but we'll just take this deer home instead of carrying on. I'm sure one more werewolf should be easy enough to come by on the trail. I'm not worried about that.

  One of these years I will take you with me to the castle, so you can take over that duty once I get too old."

  Her father had been saying that for years as well, but he always left her here when he went to pay the rent. She guessed that staying with her mother was more important than learning how to take over the yearly trek, since she was only fifteen.

  Her mother was getting older, that was true. Hell, both of her parents were firmly in their sixties, but in Keelyn's eyes, her mother was perfectly capable of running the farm with the help of her little sisters for a month.

  She didn't argue the point though, as she knew her father would just say that if she had been born sooner, and was therefore older, or better yet, had been born a boy, not only would she be able to go, but that many, many things around the farm would have turned out quite differently. She didn't want to resurrect that whole story on top of the yearly pre-leaving speech.

  Yes, she knew that her parents had given up on having children long before Keelyn finally came along, out of the blue. Her sister, Bella, also a girl much to her parent's dismay, waited two years after Keelyn's birth to join the family, with her youngest sister Ivy following just a year after Bella.

  Yes, she realized that having half a dozen boys instead of three girls would have made the couple's life a lot easier over the years, but she couldn't help that, now could she?

  Being the oldest, she'd done her best to help out as any boy-child would, learning to hunt and fish as well as garden, sew and cook, but she knew her dad had always hoped to have a son or six to follow in his footsteps as a were-hunter and to take on the yearly pilgrimage to the castle.

  Keel
yn could hunt as well, if not better, than any local boy she'd ever gone up against, but she wasn't sure she wanted her occupation to be that of a were-hunter like her father, and his father, and his father before that. Female were-hunters were unheard of, and besides, she was leaning toward becoming some kind of a doctor, specializing in babies and pregnancies. That was also unheard of, for a woman to be a doctor, but that didn't seem to bother her nearly as much as the thought of becoming the only known female were-hunter did.

  She had yet to actually come across a werewolf, which seemed to annoy her father greatly. He just knew that once she took one down, she'd be as addicted to the were-hunt as he was, but every time he'd taken her on a hunt they'd come up empty handed.

  "Were-hunting gets in your blood, Keelyn." He'd said many times over the years. "It becomes who you are. The money is pretty good, but it's the high, the pure joy of taking out one of those foul creatures that sticks with you. If I'd had a whole mess of boys, we'd be swimming in coin. But with it just being me hunting them, and with you being a girl and still just a bit young to go off were-hunting on your own for months at a time, well, at least it still pays our yearly rent."

  Her mind was running all of his well-known speeches together in her head as they closed in on the downed deer.

  The shot had been true, no need to put the buck out of his misery as he was already dead.

  They took a moment to quietly thank the buck for giving its life so that her whole family could eat for days, and also use the hide for clothing and such, and settled in to prepare the deer for easier carrying back home.

  Keelyn was clearing her mind for the task at hand when something made every hair she had stand on end. She knew to listen to her instincts, and paused in her efforts long enough to take a hard look at the wooded forest surrounding them. Something had set off her internal alarms, and she wasn't about to get lost in the routine of preparing the animal until she knew what had caused her discomfort.

  Her eyes darted quickly, from shadow to tree, letting her instincts aim her gaze. She heard her own sudden intake of breath and felt her entire body freeze as she spotted it. Her brain took an extra second to catch up, to process what her eyes were seeing.

  It was almost invisible in the shadows of the forest. The leaves swayed softly overhead, making light and dark dance against tree trunks, splattering the pine needle-covered forest floor with splotches of darkness that helped to hide things that stood this eerily still in the darkening woods.

  It was the shine of the eyes that gave it away.

  Keelyn eyed the animal as her brain tried to take in enough details to decide if it was a normal wolf or a were, although why she bothered, she didn't know. The method of dealing with either was the same.

  She sorted her thoughts in an instant, self-protection kicking in. She knew field dressing a deer was supposed to be quick work as the scent of blood from a fresh kill could draw anything from a bear to a bobcat, or their were-versions, in like a magnet to investigate the scent.

  Everything seemed to run in slow motion as she took the animal in. She knew somehow that only a heartbeat or two had passed, but she'd had time to notice that this wolf was larger than any normal wolf she'd ever seen.

  True, any wolves she had seen were from a distance, hugging the tree line, looking like a close cousin to a domestic dog or coyote, but not this creature. This wolf was huge.

  She was drawn in by the creature's eyes. There was intelligence there, a calculated wariness, which made her hackles rise even higher. It helped confirm for her that this was no normal wolf.

  Just as she was about to stand up, to raise her bow and load an arrow, the wolf suddenly confused her. It blinked and nodded its head, almost in acknowledgement that this was her kill, and it seemed to start to back away.

  The odd feeling of knowing the wolf's intent hit her brain in the exact instant that her father stood up from the buck's carcass, like she'd been about to, his bow already drawn and aimed.

  He muttered the words, "And there's our last bit of rent money now," as he released his pull on the bow's string, sending his arrow flying toward the werewolf.

  The wolf raised its head, seeming to brace itself with a grimace, and the arrow skimmed along from snout to ear, cutting a slice out of the wolf's face but doing no further damage.

  The wolf stood its ground for an instant, seeming to Keelyn to say "Really, that's the thanks I get for bowing out?" before slowly turning and walking away.

  Why her dad fired at the wolf's head as it was facing them dead on, she had no idea. True, this was the first werewolf she had seen in person, and her father had not only seen but killed many others, but even she knew that a kill shot was aimed at an animal's tender bits, not its hard, protective skull. Their homemade, sharpened arrows were capable of great damage, but not generally skull piercing damage.

  She'd heard rumors of her father shooting an arrow into one unlucky wolf's eye before, piercing its brain. Maybe he thought he could repeat that feat now, to impress her?

  "Oh no, you evil beast. You aren't getting away from us that easily." Her father aimed the words at the wolf's slowly retreating tail.

  "Keelyn, here's your shot at your first wolf. Take point, I'll cover your back."

  Keelyn was torn. She always assumed that when she was confronted with her first wolf she'd take it down as emotionlessly as she'd shoot a deer, or a rabbit. But the wolf's seeming acknowledgement of her kill went against everything she'd ever heard about wolves.

  She had no issues killing for meat, or even for rent since everything she'd ever seen or heard about wolves in general were how evil, barbaric and destructive they were. But in this wolf, despite her hackles rising in awareness, she had seen no indication of ruthless evil. She'd seen the respected acknowledgement of one intelligent hunter to another.

  Her father had already taken off in chase though, despite his telling her to take point, so she followed in his footsteps as he ran after the wolf.

  Damn, he was quick for being the old man he kept claiming to be.

  Keelyn picked up her pace, trotting after him as he chased the wolf through the trees.

  She saw her dad take another shot, this one piercing the wolf's hindquarters. He reloaded immediately and aimed again, shooting the wolf through the shoulder this time.

  Keelyn knew that you had to shoot a werewolf through its heart to kill it. That was one of the reasons werewolves were so valuable. The killing of a werewolf was so dangerous that few people ever killed a single one, let alone made a living from it.

  With this third wounding, the wolf seemed to decide that it was done retreating. As her dad loaded another arrow and took a deep breath, taking more care in his aim this time, the wolf suddenly swiveled, facing her father instead of continuing to run away. With a sudden, speed-blurred, running jump, the wolf launched itself at her father. Its strong paws hit him squarely mid-chest, knocking him to the forest floor and sending his bow flying.

  The wolf bent its head with a fearsome, low, rumbling growl, and took a bite out of the left side of her father's throat, ripping skin and muscle.

  Her father's initial scream of pain and terror quickly died off, as he soon no longer had a throat to scream with.

  She stared at her father's bloody body in shock as the wolf then turned to face her. Its eyes no longer held intelligent respect, but instead glowed with an animal blood lust. It may have initially been willing to walk away, but being attacked and shot at must have pissed it off.

  The tang of blood from her father's body filled her nostrils, and she saw the wolf drink in the scent as well. The iron-rich smell reminded her that her father lay dead at this wolf's paws, but the wolf seemed to revel in it. The scent seemed to feed its blood lust, driving all intelligence from the wolf's eyes and filling it with the need to kill again.

  The wolf bared its teeth, growling as it took a few steps toward her, its intent clear. It was her turn to die. In that heartbeat of staring her own death in the face, her b
rain fed her the oddly calm thought this is why my father hunted them. I won't be taken in again by their intelligent eyes. I will remember this day, and I will make him proud of me as a were-hunter, from this moment on.

  She fought down a suddenly rising bubble of rage at this beast killing her father, and managed to squash the fear, pain and sudden need for revenge deep down inside her somewhere so that she could function long enough to take this wolves' life in exchange for her father's.

  It was the sudden silence of the forest that finally got Keelyn's attention, flipping her from shock and grief-filled observation, to action instead.

  Her dad's screams had stopped, obviously, but that just seemed to leave a void in the noises of the forest. Not a single bird or tree frog stirred. Only the werewolf's threatening growl reached her ears as she raised her bow, aiming it for where she knew the wolf's heart would be, just as it pounced at her.

  Her aim was true, unlike her father's.

  Her arrow pierced the wolf's fur, driving through its chest wall, sliding smoothly between its ribs as the beast's paws hit her chest and shoulders, driving her to the forest floor just like it had taken down her father.

  Only this time, instead of ripping out her throat, the beast made a growly, gurgling noise above her as its heart was torn apart. Falling on her only drove the arrow in deeper. The wolf twitched, a warm, bloody, dead weight above her, pinning her to the ground as its life drained from its body, like her father's had moments before.

  She shut her eyes and screamed.

  She screamed again and again, filling the forest with the sound of her panic finally taking hold of her young body.

  She struggled to get out from under the heavy weight, suddenly finding that the wolf's body got lighter, slick skin against her pushing hands instead of matted, bloody fur. She rolled out from underneath it and stood beside its body in a low crouch, ready to fight for her life if need required it.