Harper (Destined for the Alpha Book 1)

by Viola Rivard

  “Why did he attack you?”

  It was the first question he'd asked, and one she actually thought she could answer.

  “It was the other one, not Caim.”

  “I know,” he said, his impassivity giving way to a flash of irritation. “Your blood was all over him.”

  “Oh. Well, I think he must have seen me with Dawn—the pup. I was trying to find you. I was running. He didn't know who I was. Though, even if he had known, apparently your scent makes me a persona non grata in these parts.”

  She tried to smile at him, but he wouldn't look at her face.

  “You were trying to find me?” he asked skeptically. “Not your brother?”

  “I didn't know, Shan. I was just walking along the river and I heard something. I found the girl stuck in a tree. Part of me thought I was hallucinating and when she told me her name, I...”

  “You expect me to believe that you just happened across your brother at the same time I was preparing to execute him? Your brother whom, up until this point, you've failed to mention was a shifter and the alpha of the Lazarus pack?”

  “I...”

  This wasn't good. She knew it, she just didn't know how to fix it. How could she convince Shan of something she hardly believed herself? And while she was in the midst of what was definitely a mental breakdown?

  “He called you Snow.”

  She swallowed. “No one has called me that in a long time.”

  Shan finally looked at her, and she didn't like what she saw. All of the warmth and affection he'd been so quick to lavish her with before was now hidden behind a wall of distrust. In the back of her mind, she could hear Sarah, the mother who had raised her, reciting a line from a poem in a children's fable.

  'A liar is not believed forsooth, even when liars tell the truth.'

  She felt her panic rising again, like yet another wave crashing into her. This time, the source of her fear was more abstract and difficult to pin down. The danger had passed, but as she looked into Shan's eyes and saw only herself staring back, she wanted to start crying all over again.

  Even if he didn't believe her, if she could have any hope of salvaging their relationship—such as it was, she would have to begin with the truth.

  “My mother's name was Dawn. She was the mate of Caim's father, Cain. I don't know what happened between them. I guess their mating bond didn't take, or something. They were never very close. When my brother was young, she slept with someone else and got pregnant with me. She died not long after I was born. Cain took me in. He and his new mate raised me as their own, but when I started to... When I hit puberty, everyone decided it was best that I go live with my own kind. They were right. My life has been so much better than it could have been if I’d stayed here and taken a mate.”

  She watched his face the whole time. He'd gone back to tending to her wounded arm, not sparing her a glance as she spoke.

  “What else?”

  She frowned. “That's it. I mean, I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, but can you be a little more specific? My head's kind of fuzzy. I think I've lost a lot of blood.”

  His brow creased. “You have, but you'll live. Your father, who is he?”

  She hadn't set out to hide that detail, but rather, she'd glossed over it as it would have led to more questions that simply had no answers. While she tried gathering her thoughts for an explanation, Shan continued talking.

  “It doesn't add up. Your mother left her mate, and then returned to him with a human's child?”

  “No, it's more complicated than that. My father was Cain's half-brother, Alder. He—”

  Shan's frown deepened. “As in, the alpha of Halcyon? We're acquainted. You're too old to be his daughter.”

  “That's what I'm trying to explain. Alder was fourteen when I was born. That's why Cain raised me. My dad was a kid, himself. Look, I know this is a lot to take in and you probably think that I'm some sort of, I dunno, spy or something. But the truth is, I wasn't keeping this from you. I was keeping it from everyone, and I've been doing it for a very long time.”

  Harper waited for a reaction from him, but he gave her none. She hazarded a glance at her arm and found that it didn't look much better than it had when she'd first sat down. Blood was still seeping from the jagged wounds and Shan was working to bind them with strips of fabric.

  “Oh, that looks bad,” she said. “Am I bleeding out?”

  “No.”

  Harper wasn't convinced. “I dunno, Shan, this looks really bad. Should we maybe go and find some bandages, or something?”

  He continued speaking through gritted teeth. “We're in the middle of the forest. There are no bandages.”

  “You planned on taking on a wolf pack and killing their alpha, but you didn't think someone might need bandages?”

  He tied a piece of leather particularly tight. She whimpered, her hand shooting out to grab his shoulder.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, tying the next one more carefully. “Stay still.”

  He didn't tell her to let him go. She relaxed her grip on his shoulder, but kept her hand where it was. Her thumb brushed over the bite mark. It was still there, even though he'd shifted. He had told her that it might scar, but part of her had thought that it would vanish the next time his pelt melded to his flesh.

  “When I was little, I was sick all of the time,” she said. “Everyone thought I would die. That's why they named me Snow. Because it's impermanent. They needed the reminder that they shouldn't get attached. But I survived. Year after year. Of course, I was never as strong as them, never as fast. I couldn't shift. My whole life in the pack, my life as Snow, it was a study in inferiority. That's why I left them, to live with my own kind.”

  “They're not your kind,” Shan said. “You're not human.”

  “Yes, I am. I heal slowly, I can't see in the dark, my hearing and my sense of smell are at best, slightly above average, and let's not forget about the obvious part where I can't turn into a wolf.”

  With grim fascination, she'd been watching him bind her arm. He appeared to be finishing the grisly task, though Harper could still see a few places that looked to be leaking. A tiny part of her was screaming inside over the fact that her arm was well and surely mutilated, but she'd deal with her vanity later.

  She was surprised when he pulled her into his lap, and then startled when he bit down on his wrist. He held his wrist to her mouth as blood dripped from the puncture marks.

  Her lips parted to issue a vampire quip, but Shan covered her mouth with his wrist.

  “Drink until I tell you to stop.”

  Biting him in the throes of passion and drinking blood from an open wound were two very different things for Harper, but she listened to him. She wasn't sure how his blood could help her, but she was still light-headed and not entirely convinced that she wasn't going to die. If Shan thought it would help, she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  Drinking his blood didn't seem to have any magical effects on her. Her arm still hurt like hell and she still felt dizzy, even with her head resting against Shan's chest. She did feel warmer, but that was more likely due to him wrapping his pelt around her.

  His expression softened as he held her, and she felt the last vestiges of her panic ebb away. When he finally removed his wrist, she hoped he would kiss her, but he went back to talking instead.

  “Your nightmares. You said they started when you were thirteen?”

  Harper nearly groaned.

  She was so over being interrogated and her response was clipped. “They started after I was kidnapped and held captive for months. You really want to dredge that up tonight, too?”

  “You were abducted? By who?”

  “It doesn't matter. And my nightmares don't matter.”

  Neither statement was true, the latter, more than ever. The nightmares had had a profound effect on her life. They'd driven her to substance abuse and delinquency. Given how much she'd accomplished in spite of everything, there was no t
elling how much more she could have done had she not spent her teens and early twenties getting wasted.

  Tonight, her nightmares had almost killed her. When they weren't managed, they became so consuming that she could no longer tell the difference between dream and reality.

  Harper squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn't cry again, but she thought that might be because the blood loss had dehydrated her.

  When Shan's lips grazed her forehead, Harper felt a small sense of solace and she leaned into him fully, allowing him to hold her like a child.

  Shan's mouth moved against her skin as he spoke.

  “My mother was born to a common shifter and his human mate. She had nine brothers and sisters, all of them shifters like their father. When she reached her third year without shifting, she became a pariah.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but believe me, I haven't remained human for lack of trying. I spent the first half of my life doing everything I could to shift.”

  “Do not interrupt me,” Shan chided. “When my mother was twelve, she had her first estrus and her family assumed she was human, that somehow she'd taken after her mother. Not knowing what else to do with a human child, they passed her off to a neighboring alpha. When she began having nightmares of a wolf tearing her apart, she assumed it was her mind's way of making sense of being raped each night.”

  A chill overtook Harper. She had never told Shan what was in her nightmares. She'd never even told Ian or Jo.

  “She bore him six daughters and buried each on her first birthday, when the child failed to shift. The pack considered it a mercy, and with the life she'd lived, my mother was inclined to agree.

  “On the night she buried her sixth daughter, she laid down on her grave and went to sleep. In her nightmare, she finally stopped resisting and surrendered to the creature, letting it devour her until there was nothing left. She woke in agony and retreated to a cave, believing she was dying. When she emerged the following night, she had completed her first shift.”

  There were so many parallels between their stories, but Harper's mind still railed against it. She had spent the first half of her life trying to be something she wasn't, and when she'd finally realized that she was human, it had been a revelation. Her entire identity was woven around her humanity, and without it she didn't know who she was.

  Shan said, “I was ten when I started having the nightmares. If I hadn't had my mother to guide me, I might have blocked them out as she had, like you did. It took me a few months, but eventually, I was able to let it in and complete my first shift. It gets easier, after the first time.”

  She didn't know what to say. She wished she could un-hear everything he'd told her.

  “Shan, I can't... Even if I could shift, how could I ever go back?”

  She should have anticipated his response.

  “You're not human. You never belonged with them, just as you didn't belong with your pack.”

  “Then where did I belong? With you?”

  “Yes,” he said bluntly. “I'll help you. If I'm wrong about you, you can go. If I'm right, then you'll stay here with me, as my mate.”

  With everything that had happened, she hadn't expected him to still want her as his mate. But then, he only wanted her if she was like him. The opportunity to have a mate of his own kind was too hard to pass up.

  “So you're saying I have a choice, now?”

  Shan gave her a look that was utterly patronizing. “Not really, because I'm not wrong. You're already mine. I'm just going to prove it to you.”

  Coming Soon

  Shan - Destined for the Alpha, Book II

  Presented with the possibility of having a true mate, Shan is willing to overlook Harper's deception—mostly. He's certain that there's a wolf inside of her, but bringing it out might be the single greatest challenge he's ever faced.

  As their relationship escalates, Shan tightens his control over Harper. Between him, his wolf, and the creature threatening to consume her from within, it seems that everyone knows who she is and what she needs, except for her.

  Coming March 27th

  Signup for the Mailing List for a release day notification and read on for an excerpt from the first chapter.

  Shan

  Chapter One

  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 Harper 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 bed warmer. 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 or twenty 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 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 to take in a breath.

  “There's water beside you,” Ginger said.

  The young female kept her eyes on her 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, 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’d 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 a 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.