by Alisa Woods
“The bounty hunters said so. After I beat the shit out of them.”
She frowned. “These bounty hunters pointed you here?”
“They called you out by name, Hecca.” Why was she dancing around this?
Her frown deepened, and she drummed her dagger-like nails on her desk. Then a phone appeared in her hand from somewhere in the folds of her purple dress. She spoke into it. “I need you in here.” A pause. “I don’t care. Drop it. I need you now.”
Jak was half-certain she was going to have him thrown out, and he wasn’t sure what his play was going to be then, but after a strained moment of silence, Circe floated into the room.
Now that they were standing together, Jak could see the sisterly resemblance: same dark eyes and hair, same carved cheeks of ivory. Circe’s red hair streak echoed Hecca’s purple one, and she favored the same tight-fitting suits. But Circe’s eyes were once again roaming Jak’s body, whereas Hecca’s had nothing but contempt for him.
“Please tell me,” Hecca said to her sister in a voice filled with danger, “that you haven’t been tramping around in my playground again, Circe.”
Circe curled a lip at her sister. Apparently there wasn’t much sisterly love among witches. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Jak decided he needed to lean in to this conversation. “Well, someone sent bounty hunters after Arianna… and given that the hunters say it was Hecca, I’m thinking someone in this office is operating in your name.”
Circe’s eyebrows lifted, and she seemed genuinely non-plussed. “Sister,” she said to Hecca, “you may disagree with my preferences in many things, but surely you know I’m not idiot enough to do magic—or kidnappings—in your name.”
Hecca looked grumpy but not the fire-spitting anger she had a moment ago. “No, that doesn’t seem reasonable. Even for you. And even if you did, I doubt you would be caught by the likes of a beta wolf.”
Circe tipped her head in acknowledgment.
“Wait a minute,” Jak said, his frustration growing. “Are you actually saying none of you were involved in this? Is that really your story here?”
Hecca sauntered forward, and her sister watched on with amusement. “Little wolf, you should take care to come here making accusations when you have no proof.”
“I guess I can haul in the bounty hunters.” If they haven’t already fled town. Jak winced at his misjudgment there: he should have brought the hunters back to the pack. But he was so bent on working a deal with the witches, he couldn’t see past that.
Hecca arched an eyebrow. “Even if they squealed my name, that means nothing to me, wolf. I don’t know who was after your mate, but it wasn’t anyone in this office.”
“She’s not my mate. I’m just the guard.”
Hecca’s eyes narrowed. “And yet you’re on quite the quest here, storming in and making demands. Bargaining…” She looked Jak up and down and began to circle him, taking him in from all angles. Hecca threw a pointed look to Circe, who nodded. Jak didn’t like this silent witch conversation. At all.
“Tell me, little wolf, what did you expect to gain, coming here?”
Jak gritted his teeth. His leverage was gone. He had no idea who was actually after Arianna… or possibly even himself. And now he was deep inside a coven that he had just, apparently, falsely accused of capital crimes.
“I just wanted to keep a wolf-witch war from breaking out unnecessarily,” he said, backpedaling.
Circe floated across the room, the wisps of her red dress flitting around her legs as she moved. “He said he had personal business, Hecca dear.”
“Yes, I can sense that,” Hecca replied, still looking him over. “Your aura is giving you away, little wolf. You have very personal business here… about a woman who is not your mate… ahhh, yes. Now it’s clear.”
Jak didn’t like the look of recognition on Hecca’s face at all.
But she just twiddled her fingers again. “This is your domain, Circe,” she said, turning her back on him and heading for the door. “Kill the beta or… whatever. Just clean up after yourself and keep us out of a pack war, yes?”
Jak’s mouth dropped open as she whisked through the door and closed it behind her, leaving Jak alone with Circe.
“So, little beta. You want a female who doesn’t belong to you,” Circe said with a smile that made Jak’s stomach clench tight. “And you’re willing to walk into a witch’s coven to protect her. Or is there more to it than that?”
Jak shut his mouth and swallowed. This had spiraled quickly out of control. What was he thinking, coming here without his pack? They didn’t even know where he was: as far as they were concerned, he was still staking out the bounty hunters, who had probably fled the state. Which left him with precisely zero bargaining power. And a sinking probability of getting out of the building alive. Which, strangely enough, also left him with nothing left to lose.
Jak stood straighter and withstood Circe’s roaming gaze. “I have a need for a certain dark art. I can pay you well, if you have the ability to do the magic I need.”
“The ability…” Circe’s dark eyes flashed. “I have bent the knees of witches more powerful than you’ve dreamed of in your small, wolfy dreams, beta. You have no idea what I’m capable of.”
“Then you should have no problem breaking an unbreakable magic bond.” He folded his arms and dared her with his eyes.
They narrowed at him. “The mating bond. The female is mated already, and you desire her.”
There was far more to it, but… “Yes.”
Circe’s pointed look softened into boredom. “So simply kill her mate. That’s what you wolves like to do anyway, isn’t it? Brawl and thrash around with your claws and teeth, all animal-like.” Her lips were twitching into a barely repressed smile.
Jak had a strong feeling she had a taste for wolves and would very much enjoy his animal nature. That must be why he was still standing, still alive, and dealing with Circe, not Hecca, whose revulsion for wolves was much more typical of witches. But sex was a dangerous bargaining chip with a witch—one that before this very instant he wouldn’t have even thought possible—but it was also one that would likely land him as her permanent, and eventually deceased, love slave.
“Can you break the bond or not?” he asked, as if he might march out if the answer was no. He could only hope that option was still on the table.
She smirked and stepped closer, enveloping him in her spiced clove and sage scent. “What you seek can be done, little wolf. The question is: what would you be willing to give for it?”
“I can pay you handsomely.” Jak had more than enough cash tucked away. He never spent anything anyway, and Gage had brought him in early on the bonus pool for the projects he had worked. Over four years, that added up.
She edged even closer. “Maybe I’m not interested in money.”
Jak leaned back, regaining space. “Maybe money’s all I’m interested in offering.”
She moved in again, and he would have backed up, but he was already up against the door.
She smiled. “You might enjoy it more than you think, little wolf.”
“I’m certain you would find I’m not a little wolf.”
Circe bit her lip. And there was definitely a scent of arousal under the sage. He wasn’t sure if this was smart—in fact, he was certain it wasn’t—but he didn’t have many options at the moment.
He leaned forward, meeting her halfway, close enough that his whispered words would brush her skin. “I would definitely take my pleasure from you—repeatedly, little witch—but you can be sure that the females in my bed will always get their pleasure first. And often.”
She breathed a low sigh. “So you would bargain with me, wolf?”
He leaned back. “I would… except that spending time in your bed seems like a good way to lose all my blood.”
She pouted. “Why would I drain someone who kept me so completely satisfied?”
His wolf snarled, and even Jak could see that wasn�
��t exactly a denial. “You’re forgetting one important thing, witch.”
She was back to looking amused. “And what’s that?”
“I happen to be in love with another man’s mate. I’m willing to make a one time payment to break that unbreakable bond. But that’s it. And payment comes after the spell has worked.”
She tipped her nose up to look down at him. “The spell will work. You might not like the result, however.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
“What makes a mated female’s heart so powerful in magic?” she asked rhetorically, amusement returning.
“I have a feeling you’re going to enlighten me.” Jak knew mated females were highly sought after for the properties of their blood, and he figured the heart was especially drenched in it… but he hadn’t really thought about why. Delving into what ghastly things witches did with wolf internal organs wasn’t something he spent a lot of time ruminating upon.
Circe licked her lips, still eyeing him. “A mated female has twice the magic of an unmated female, or a male in either case. That’s because she has two forms of magic in her blood, intertwined—her own magic and the male’s magic. The second one is what binds her to him. It’s a living force inside her. The stronger the male, especially an alpha, the stronger the magic and the greater the bond. The reason you cannot mate with this female you desire isn’t because the bond holds her to him—”
“It’s because my magic in her blood will kill her,” he cut her off impatiently. “Yes, I know this. I’m not a complete idiot, in spite of the evidence of me standing here right now.”
She smirked and ran an appreciate gaze over him again. “No, you’re not stupid, little wolf. Foolhardy and brave in your love, perhaps, but I can see you are not dim.”
“Gee, thanks.” He glowered at her. “Now, how does this spell work?”
“Inside your beloved female’s blood, there are essentially two wolves: hers and her mate’s. To extract one while leaving the other is a delicate thing. A dark art, not unlike slicing out half of her soul while leaving the other half behind.”
Jak felt his own blood drain from his face. “Will it hurt her?”
Circe’s eyebrows arched up. “I imagine so. Although the pain is the least of your problems, little wolf.”
“Just… tell me.” He was growing tired of this witch’s games.
She scowled at him, but there wasn’t much heat to it. “In order to entice the wolf that lives in her blood, we will need somewhere else for it to go—another host, you might say. If you have an unmated female available, transferring the bond from one to the other would be relatively straightforward. Not least because the essence of the male is drawn to the female.”
Jak’s heart rate picked up. He could see where this was going. “There is no other female available.”
Circe nodded once, solemnly. “Then it will have to be a male. And the transfer will not be so simple.”
Jak’s face twisted up, disgust clawing at his throat. “You mean you have to transfer her mate’s essence into a male’s blood. But… what happens then? One male cannot be bound to another, not with a mating bond at least.”
She lifted one eyebrow. “What do you think will happen when the essences of two males are trapped in the same blood, little wolf?”
“They will fight.”
“To the death.” Circe sniffed and held her head high. “It’s not my fault that your species is so ridiculously violent.”
Jak felt suddenly light-headed. “They would fight to the death,” he repeated, the words bouncing around inside his head. With the witch’s spell, he could draw Mace’s essence out of Arianna, but only by bringing it inside his own body… where the war between their wolves would happen at the DNA level. And Jak would be the one dying because of it, slowly and painfully.
He could set Arianna free, but only by dying in her place.
Jak blinked and dragged his gaze up to meet Circe’s steady one. “Is there no other way?”
“I’m afraid not, little wolf.” Her voice was soft, and not entirely unkind, but her sympathy rang hollow in his ears. “Perhaps now you can understand why I would want my payment in advance.” She pursed her lips into a tight line.
Jak didn’t have to worry about the witch draining his blood after a night of wolf-on-witch sexual depravity… because the spell he was bartering for would kill him anyway.
He swallowed. “I’ll have to get back to you on this.”
Then he turned and stumbled out the door. As he fled the coven, he had just one thought: he had promised to free Arianna, and he was going to keep that promise. But if a wolf had to die to make it happen, it wasn’t going to be Jak…
It was going to be Mace.
He would have to do this the old-fashioned way: by killing Arianna’s mate.
Jak has a plan to free Arianna without the witch's help... but the best laid plans of wolves and men rarely turn out as they hope.
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Dark Alpha (Vol 1-6)
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Dark Alpha Release Schedule - 2015
1 - Torment (1.19)
2 - Pleasure (2.2)
3 - Untitled (2.16)
4 - Untitled (3.2)
5 - Untitled (3.16)
6 - Untitled (3.30)
Box Set (Dark Alpha 1-6) - releases 3.30
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Alisa Woods lives in the Midwest with her husband and family, but her heart will always belong to the beaches and mountains where she grew up. She writes sexy paranormal romances about alpha men and the women who love them. She enjoys exploring the struggles we all have, where we resist—and succumb to—our most tempting vices as well as our greatest desires. She firmly believes that love triumphs over all.
DARK ALPHA is Alisa's second New Adult Paranormal Romance serial. Find all of Alisa's books here.
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Table of Contents
Pleasure (Dark Alpha 2) Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Get The Next Episode of Dark Alpha
About Alisa Woods
