The Alpha's Heart (Wilde Creek Two)
Read The Alpha's Heart (Wilde Creek Two) Online
Authors: R. E. Butler
The Alpha’s Heart (Wilde Creek Book Two)
By R. E. Butler
Copyright 2014 R. E. Butler
The Alpha’s Heart (Wilde Creek Book Two)
By R. E. Butler
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Cover by
Ramona Lockwood
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.
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I’d like to thank Kimberli Crook for being part of the
Shifter Babes Street Team
and for letting me use her name for one of the characters in the story. Thank you so much for being part of my world! XOXO
* * * * *
I’d like to thank
Alexis Arendt
for editing this story.
Many thanks to
Amanda Pederick
for beta-reading, line editing, and being there for me!
To Joyce B., thank you for all your help and your support.
To Aunt B. L. and my husband, B.B., I love you both.
Much love and hugs to the
Shifter Babes Street Team
for their encouragement, dedication, and support…you guys rock!
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
“Achoo!”
A little boy sneezed right in Brynn Mara’s face as she stood behind the desk at the Family Clinic of Wilde Creek. She blinked and jerked back; the mom holding the boy shifted him away by sliding him to her other hip and smiled apologetically.
“I’m sorry. If it’s any consolation, Bobby has allergies, not a cold.” Bobby’s mother Jackie said.
Brynn grabbed a few tissues from the box on her desk, wiping away the wetness from her cheeks and nose, and smiled at Jackie in understanding.
“After working here for the last three years, I’ve been sneezed on by over half the kids in town. It’s no problem, trust me.” She gave Jackie a reassuring smile and handed Bobby a sucker from the jar on the desk. He flashed her a sweet smile as he peered at the sucker.
Jackie looked grateful that Brynn hadn’t had a total conniption fit. It certainly wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to her in the doctor’s office, and she didn’t want Jackie to feel bad. After checking Bobby in, she sat down and turned her attention back to the schedule on the computer screen. She picked up the caller that she’d placed on hold when the mom and her sneezing kid had shown up.
“Thanks for holding,” Brynn said after pressing the line button. She made an appointment for the caller, and before she’d disconnected, two other lines rang. It was hectic, but she was used to it. The phones were always ringing at the clinic, and the two doctors — husband and wife team Kimberli and Frank Channing — were kept busy fielding patients from not only Wilde Creek but also the surrounding towns.
Seeing Jackie and Bobby, and the flashy diamond ring on Jackie’s finger, made Brynn suddenly aware of her current situation. Twenty-nine and painfully single. She had a job she loved, but at the end of the day she went home to her empty house. What she wanted was to start the next chapter of her life…getting married and having a family.
“Oh man,” she muttered, trying to banish the thoughts of one very sexy hunk of man from her mind.
“What?” Dr. Kimberli, affectionately known to everyone as Dr. Kimmi, asked, coming to stand behind the desk with a patient chart.
“Nothing. My brain was just wandering into unwelcome territory.”
Dr. Kimmi chuckled and tucked a lock of dark blonde hair behind her ear before reaching for a pen from the cup on the desk. “That happens to the best of us, dear. Do you have plans this weekend?”
“Not really. Mia and I usually go see a movie or grab dinner on Friday nights, but she’s going to a relative’s wedding out of town so that’s out. I think I’ll do something really exciting, like tackle my closet and put my summer clothes away and get my winter things out.”
“Ooh, exciting,” Dr. Kimmi said with a smile. Then she looked thoughtful. “Are you up for a blind date?”
Brynn blinked in surprise. She couldn’t have been more caught off-guard by the question if Kimmi had also thrown confetti and danced a jig when she asked it.
“Uh,” she started, and Kimmi put her hand up with a chuckle.
“His name is Xavier Whiting. He’s the son of some friends of ours; he just graduated from medical school and is working at Findley Hospital. He’s very cute and nice, I promise.”
Cute and nice? Sounded like the description for a pet, not a potential boyfriend. She preferred descriptions of her dates to include words like ‘sexy’ and ‘gorgeous,’ but then again she hadn’t gone out with anyone worthwhile in a long time. Sure, there had been dates, but she’d spent the years since high school nursing a bad case of unrequited love for a certain alpha werewolf. Eleven years was a long time to hold onto someone that didn’t really want to be held onto. At least not by her. Since he was a wolf and she was human, and he hated humans.
Deciding that she’d spent more than enough time comparing men to Acksel Moore, she smiled up at her boss. “I’d love to meet Xavier.”
“Great! I’ll give him your number and have him call you. I’m sure you two will hit it off.”
Brynn watched the doctor leave the reception area and smiled to herself. Going out on a date with an eligible doctor was just what she needed.
If she could just stop thinking about that charming, infuriating, gorgeous, and sexy wolf.
Damn it.
Chapter 2
Acksel knew that he was standing on the verge of changing everything as he looked out over his backyard and the wolves that were gathered there waiting for him, as alpha, to make a decision about his sister Eveny. She had fallen in love with a human named Luke Elrich and was now mated to him and carrying his child. It was pack law that humans and wolves didn’t mate; to do so meant banishment from the pack and town. But he knew that he couldn’t banish his sister, not without tearing his own heart out.
She loved that human. Had chosen a human over her family and pack. Acksel hadn’t ever made a choice from the heart the way that Eveny had, and he wasn’t really sure he had it in him to walk away from everything for love. Not that he knew anything about love and relationships. Aside from a bad case of unrequited love for a human who didn’t even know he was alive, he didn’t know a damn thing about what was driving Eveny to walk the line of giving it all up. He’d hated humans for so long, it was hard to look at the human male on his knees before him with his arm protectively around Eveny without wanting to punch his face in. But Luke had never been anything but nice to Acksel, and if anyone deserved to be happy it was Eveny. Especially after Acksel had nearly gotten her killed in an attempt to control her.
“An alpha cannot be a rod made of steel, unbending and unyielding to change. He must be willing to bend when he sees that the laws of old are choking the life from his pack,” he said, letting his voice carry over the pack. “As is my right as alpha, I declare that from this day forward, the members of the Wilde Creek pack may mate with whoever they choose, be they wolf, other supernatural creature, or human.”
Two males stood up to him, but he put them down and asserted his position as alpha. His word was law. If he wanted to throw all the old laws out the window and start fresh, then he could damn well do it.
“Our pack was built on blood,” Acksel said, “but there is room for peace here. We live among humans; we can accept them as the mates of our members. You have until the next full moon to decide if you want to remain in the pack. Those that wish to leave will be allowed to without fear of reprisal, but once the full moon has passed, the only way out of the pack is through banishment or death.”
After dismissing the pack, he invited his dad, Eveny, and Luke into his home. It had been hard for him to think of his sister as a grown woman now, mated and pregnant, but the truth was staring him in the eyes. And so was the harsh truth that he’d lost her trust and would have to work hard to gain it back.
Watching his family leave after they talked about the future, he decided the last thing he really wanted to do was be alone, but after what happened with the pack, there wasn’t anyone he could call. He’d believed that he had friends in the pack, until some of those ‘friends’ had tried to kill his sister so they could take it over. He didn’t trust his own judgment anymore. So he drove to Poke’s, the only bar in Wilde Creek. Sitting in his usual booth, he told the owner, Teddy, to leave the bottle of whiskey. He tried to drown himself in amber-tinted liquid, but it only worked to dull his senses, not erase what he’d done completely.
He’d thought that Eveny would thank him. Every September starting in their twenty-fifth year, female wolves went through a heat-cycle. Unmated females could either suffer through the week-long cycle alone or they could find a male to tend to them. If a male came inside the female during her heat-cycle, they were mated, which was the wolf equivalent of marriage. Eveny had told Acksel she didn’t want to go through her cycle with anyone, and he’d known that it was because of Luke. She’d left Wilde Creek and gone to their family cabin in the woods to ride out the cycle alone. Acksel hadn’t liked that one bit, so he’d asked his theto, Vince, to go through her cycle with her and use condoms so that they wouldn’t become mated. What he hadn’t known was that shortly after the conversation, Vince called three pack members to drive up to the cabin with him.
Although the details were sketchy, apparently Vince and his pals had planned to gang-rape Eveny when she was at her most vulnerable. It hadn’t mattered to them if she survived or not, because they knew Acksel would become unhinged knowing that something he had arranged had ended in her being hurt or killed. Then they would challenge him for the position of alpha, using his grief against him. He was sure that the plan would have worked. He wouldn’t have known what to do with the guilt. Luke had come to her rescue, standing up to the four pack members and killing Vince. If it weren’t for Luke, Acksel might have had to bury his sister instead of congratulating her on the baby.
It didn’t mean that he was particularly fond of humans, though. Except for one — a brunette goddess with the prettiest green eyes and the kindest smile. A human who had been nice to him in school when he was bullied and tormented because he was scrawny and weak. Because of the pack law against humans and wolves mating, it hadn’t mattered that he’d had a major crush on Brynn. That she’d been the star of his fantasies for more than eleven years. But he’d just changed the law, hadn’t he? He’d made it so that wolves could mate with whoever the hell they wanted to. And that meant him, too. Didn’t it?