by Rose, Aubrey
THE SCARRED PRINCE
The Wolf’s Pet Book One
by Aubrey Rose
Every alpha has scars. That’s how they get to be the alpha.
The Scarred Prince is only a rumor. A whisper. A shadow. Nobody believes that he really exists, or that he does the things that they say he does: keeping females as slaves and mutilating members of his own pack. He’s just a a character in a story to frighten young cubs before bedtime.
Until now.
Kinaya has spent the last eighteen years living in her twin brother’s shadow. Blaise is always the favorite: stronger, faster, more handsome. The fighter. Everyone says he’ll make a good alpha once his father steps down.
But on the night of their birthday feast, a mysterious warrior arrives, a messenger from a rival pack. He’s stronger and bigger than any wolf Kinaya has ever seen. His message: Surrender, or war.
While her brother prepares for battle, Kinaya slips away to see the captive warrior. As she struggles with her strange attraction to him, she realizes that the only sure way to bring peace to the rival packs will come at a cost - and she is the one who will have to pay the price. But can she marry a brutal conqueror, even to save her pack?
From NYTimes and USA Today Bestselling author Aubrey Rose comes a new shifter book that's as wild and hot as anything. This werewolf shifter BBW romance novella is 27,000 words long, has some naughty language, and a lot of naughty sex. Be warned!
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Follow me on Twitter: @TheAubreyRose
Copyright 2015 by Aubrey Rose
First Kindle Edition: February 2015
ISBN: TBD
Book 1
His teeth clamped down on my shoulder and I cried out as ecstasy flooded my body. He was on top of me, pinning me against the forest floor in the darkness of night. I couldn’t tell if he was in wolf form or human form until I felt his hand come around, gripping my neck tightly.
His breath was hot against my neck. Craning my head, I tried to turn and look back. I couldn’t see his face. Everything was dark around us and I couldn’t tell where we were. This was a place I’d been before, I thought, but it was not our pack’s territory.
He growled, and a low thrill rolled through my body. His strong chest pressed against mine, his fingers tightening their grip. I could barely breathe. My heart was pounding, and yet I yearned for him. This dark man. This shadow in the forest. I needed him, needed him more than I needed air to breathe.
His arm pulled me up from the forest floor, and I could tell then that I was naked, the chilly wind perking my nipples. His hand moved down from my neck, cupping my breasts. He pinched one nipple, twisting it hard, and I wrenched my body from side to side. I wanted to shift, to change into wolf form and fight back, but I knew somehow that I couldn’t. I had to stay like this, had to stay with him.
I had to stay here in the darkness.
He rolled into me, and I could feel it with my whole body. I felt full, right, and all of the pressure inside of me exploded outward, shivering my nerves again and again. As the orgasm shuddered through me, I tried once more to look back at his face, to see who he was.
I caught a flash of dark hair, a glint of skin, and then—
—nothing.
Chapter One
“Are you excited for today, Kinaya?”
“Yes, Dee.” I tore my thoughts away from the dream I’d had the night before and focused on the decorations in front of me.
I wasn’t excited, but I didn’t want to let Dee down. I loved Granny Dee. Technically, she was my great-granny Dee, but everyone in the pack called her Granny.
She was the first one who had switched to calling me by my true name, Kinaya. And I called her Dee. She alone treated me as an equal. And she alone was an adult I truly looked up to.
“You’re lying,” she said. She must have heard it in my voice, or in my scent. She wasn’t even looking at me. Her back was turned as she hung the holly from the longhouse roof. The decorations were almost done for the feast. Ribbons of red felt and branches of holly festooned the rafters. Candles hung in delicate glass globes overhead. And the wooden floor had been painted gold. Gold to celebrate the new alpha’s coming of age.
Gold for Blaise.
“Excuse me?” I said, twisting a felt ribbon around the banister.
“You’re lying,” she repeated. “You’re not excited at all.”
Dee got down from the ladder. Her steps were as lithe as any of the other females in our pack, despite her age. Her long white hair flowed down past her shoulders, and when she shook her head it flowed like clouds over the treetops. Even with the chill from outside, her movements were lively as any cub.
I sighed. I should have been excited. It was the day before my birthday. Before our birthday. I hated sharing anything with him, but this day most of all.
“I hate it,” I said.
“Hate what? Blaise?”
“Not him,” I said, my chest clenching hard at the sound of my twin’s name. “I hate sharing all this with him. Especially tomorrow.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“You know why,” I said. My hands twisted the ribbon into a knot. I pulled it tight.
“The new alpha.”
“It’s all about him. That’s all anybody has been talking about. It’s my birthday, too.” I sounded petulant, childish. I hated sounding like a child. But how could I tell her what I really wanted?
I smelled someone coming to the longhouse. I squinted my eyes and tried to focus on the scent. I was getting better at identifying people by their scent, but I still wasn’t as good as I wanted to be. Dee could tell anybody in the pack from a half mile away. I wanted to be like her. Who was it? It wasn’t Blaise; I knew his scent as well as I knew my own. Was it Francis? Or Ash? Or—
Will poked his head in through the doorway and my shoulders slumped.
“Oh, it’s you,” I said.
“Hey, Kinaya!” He smiled at me, his nervousness rising from his skin like morning dew evaporating off of the grass. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t place him by scent. He was a nervous wreck. His white-blond hair flopped over his eyes, and he pushed it back with one hand.
“Hey,” I said.
“Oh, hi, Granny Dee.”
“Hello, William.” Dee walked away from us to string holly down at the other end of the longhouse. I could tell she was leaving us alone to talk, but I didn’t want to talk with any boys. And definitely not Will.
“Are you excited about tomorrow?” Will asked. His pale cheeks were flushed pink.
“Yep,” I said, my sarcasm tinting my words. “So excited.”
“I heard that they’re making a cream cake for after the roast,” Will said.
“That’s Blaise’s favorite dessert.”
“Oh, is it? Um, I like it a lot, too. Don’t you like cream cake?”
“It’s fine.”
“What’s your favorite dessert, then?” Will asked. He leaned on the banister and knocked over a display of pine cones and holly. The pine cones scattered across the floor.
“Oh, crap! I’m sorry,” Will said, scrambling to pick up the fallen decorations.
“It’s okay,” I said. I picked up the holly bunch and set it back up onto the banister with a blank expression set on my face. “It’s not like I spent all day putting this together.”
“Sorry,” Will said again, blushing fiercely. “I wanted to ask you if, well, if you wanted to dance tomorrow night?”
“Like, during the feast?”
He nodded.
“Sure,” I said, shrugging. “I mean, I’m supposed to dance with everyone. It’s a birthday feas
t, right?”
“Right,” he said, smiling broadly. “Right. I can’t wait. It’s going to be great!”
I couldn’t meet his eyes as he smiled at me. He obviously felt something I didn’t feel. I turned back to the ribbon.
“Okay, so I have to finish these decorations,” I said, waving the end of the ribbon in the air. “Is there something you wanted, or…?”
“No. I mean, I’m sorry to bother you.” Will stepped backward and knocked into the holly decoration again. He caught it before it fell and righted the pine cone up on the banister. “I’ll just… I’ll see you tomorrow. For that dance, right?”
“Right,” I said, turning away and rolling my eyes. His scent faded from the doorway.
“You don’t like that boy?” Dee said, coming back to my side.
I shrugged.
“Why not, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Dee, come on. I thought only my parents were allowed to push me about finding a mate.”
“It seems like you aren’t a fan of any of the boys in the pack. Not only William.”
“They’re all boys. They talk about stupid things all day and spend their time wrestling in the leaves. It’s dumb.”
“That’s fine,” Dee said, smiling.
“What’s fine?”
“You’ll just have to wait for them to grow up and become men. You’re more mature than you think, Kinaya.”
I blushed and turned my head down.
“And tomorrow will be a big day for you.”
“For Blaise, you mean.”
“For you too.”
“He’s the one who’s becoming the alpha. You tell the legend about the two jewels, but he’s the real jewel. He’s the one who gets to lead the pack. It’s always the men who have the power. It’s so stupid!”
“It’s the men who have the titles,” Dee corrected me. “Don’t think that they have the power.”
I sighed.
“Kinaya, you’re just as important to this pack as your brother. Maybe more.”
“It doesn’t seem like it,” I muttered. I took down a pinecone and rearranged it for the tenth time.
“I understand why you’re not excited about it,” Dee said. “But it is his birthright.”
“He’s just another immature boy,” I said. “How am I supposed to be part of a pack where he’s the alpha? He still forgets to brush his teeth at night!”
Dee laughed.
“You of all people should know that the alpha of a pack doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“Yeah, well, Blaise should be just fine, then,” I grumbled.
“Oh, Kinaya,” she sighed. She put a hand on my shoulder. It was warm, and I was grateful to her for caring. But I really wasn’t grateful for the constant needling questions about finding a mate.
If I thought anybody would leave me alone about it, it would be Dee. But she was always there when a boy was bugging me, trying to suss out if he would be the right one for me. I’d gotten to the point of thinking that there wasn’t a right one. At least, not in our pack.
“And once he’s the alpha, he can find his own mate. They can start a family. Then Mom and Dad can get off my case about finding someone to date.”
“You’ll find someone,” Dee said, patting my back. “Soon, I’m sure.”
I looked at Dee out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t sure if I should admit anything more to her, but she always had a way of sniffing out the truth, even before I told it.
“I don’t want just any guy,” I said. “In my dreams, the one I’m with…”
“Yes?” Dee asked, cocking her head.
I would never tell anybody else about my dreams. They’re just dreams, right? But Dee thought that there was something more to dreams than most people thought. I closed my eyes and saw the shadowy figure from my imagination.
“He’s more… mature,” I said, trying to come up with a word to describe him. “Darker. I guess. I don’t know.”
“Darker?” Dee frowned slightly. I could sense that she was uncertain. That wasn’t something that I normally sensed from Dee. I pushed ahead, curious.
“You told me once that you knew when two shifters would become mates,” I said. “In our pack, whenever two people get together, you’ve always called it beforehand. It’s like you know.”
“Yes,” Dee said, looking away and adjusting the felt ribbon on the banister. She never boasted about her heightened senses.
“Well?”
“Well?”
“What about me?” I asked, a note of desperation coming out of my voice.
“I’m not sure, Kinaya.”
“You’re not sure, or you won’t tell me?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Look, I can handle it,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. “Even if he’s a jerk now, or pimply, or whatever. I can handle knowing. But if I should be looking for someone…”
“Kinaya, I don’t know,” Dee said. Her voice was low, and I smelled something coming from her, an emotion that I wasn’t used to sensing from the one person who always seemed to know the future.
She seemed… scared.
“Dee?”
Her head snapped back toward the decorations, and the scent of fear was gone. Everything was gone. She had pulled back inside of herself completely, suppressing her shifter side. She adjusted the pinecones. Her fingers trembled. When she saw me looking at her hands, she clasped them together.
“I’m going back to the house to tell them the longhouse is ready for tomorrow,” she said. She paused, her white eyebrows creasing together as she looked at me. She reached out and caressed my cheek. The old skin of her fingers felt like the thin silk of my celebration dress. “Kinaya?”
“Yes, Dee?”
“Don’t go looking for darkness. It will find you soon enough.”
Chapter Two
It was dark when I left the longhouse and made my way back through the trails. The pack’s cabins were scattered through the property in the forest, but I passed by the main meeting area.
A campfire was roaring in the center of the clearing. Through the trees, I could see the sparks of embers floating up toward the fir branches. They flickered and died out in the stream of smoke above the fire, like fireflies that only lived for a few seconds.
I jumped back in fright as a noise came from right next to me. Immediately, I placed the scent. Little Ana. She must have come from downwind.
“Kinaya!” she cried. She flung herself forward and hugged me around the waist.
“Hey, Ana!” I hugged her back. She was little, five years old, and she loved to follow me around like a duckling follows its mom. Her big brother, Erroll, was one of the most popular guys in the pack. And, of course, that meant that he was one of the most immature. He and Blaise were always trying to outdo each other with their stupid stunts, like climbing trees way too high or swimming across the whole lake. Now, I saw that he was standing, gesturing wildly with his arms.
“What’s your brother doing?”
“Telling scary stories. You should come! Blaise is next.”
Blaise? Seriously? I couldn’t escape my twin brother anywhere. But Ana was already tugging my arm. I reluctantly let her pull me toward the campfire. Blaise was already standing up.
“This is a story about a pack of young cubs who were out camping in the forest,” he said. The fire twinkled in his eyes. Ana pulled me over to the log and we both sat down. Blaise winked at me when he saw me. I rolled my eyes. Scary stories? Sure, whatever.
“After they went to bed, and their fire died down, they huddled together in the darkness in their sleeping bags. ‘What was that?’ one of them asked. ‘What was what?’ ‘That noise. Did you hear that noise?’”
Blaise paused and looked around. In the middle of the group, the fire crackled. It was mostly young cubs with a few of the older boys sitting next to Blaise on the log, and they were all leaning in, listening to every word.
“Nobody believed the cub, bu
t he knew he had heard something. So he went looking around the clearing where they had camped, a clearing just like this one. He didn’t hear anything, but then he smelled it.”
“Smelled what?” one of the younger cubs chirped.
“The smell… of death,” Blaise whispered. Next to me on the log, Ana shivered. I pulled her close.
“He knew that something was coming. Something bad. Something dangerous. He went back to the camp, but again, nobody would believe him. They didn’t smell the scent. They told him to go back to sleep. They told him that he was imagining things.”
Blaise peered around the campfire, making eye contact with the younger cubs to see if they were buying into the scary story. Watching, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the way Blaise told his tale. He had a knack for getting everyone’s attention and keeping it. Now, he breathed in deeply, as though smelling the scent of death. I noticed quite a few of the little cubs mimicked him.
“He whined and whimpered, but nobody would listen to him. THEN!”
Blaise threw another log into the fire, and it leapt up, the flames licking upward in the darkness. Despite myself, I looked around the clearing to make sure nothing was there. Ana squeezed my hand and I squeezed it back, pretending like I wasn’t scared at all. The warmth of the campfire kept the chill of the air away, but I shivered nevertheless.
“What happened, Blaise?”
“Yeah, what happened?”
“Then,” Blaise continued, “the campfire roared up, even though there was nothing there but embers before. All of the cubs clung to each other as a howling wind blew above them in the trees.”
Above us, the wind whistled. It wasn’t quite a howling wind, but it was enough to make the cubs scared. Ana whimpered and I hugged her close.
“And then the first cub saw him.”
“Saw who?”
“Who?”
“Tell us!”
Blaise paused for dramatic effect, his hands wide.
“The Scarred Prince.”
One of the cubs yipped in fear, and the others shushed him.
“He was as tall as the tallest fir tree in the forest. His breath was as hot as the fires of Hell. And he wore only a strip of loincloth. The rest of his body was naked, and you could see the scars on his body. Lines and lines, crisscrossing like tree branches all over his chest and back.”