Alpha Prime: Shiftily Ever After
Copyright 2016 by Georgette St. Clair
This book is intended for readers 18 and older only, due to adult content. It is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this book are products of the imagination of the author. No shifters were harmed during the creation of this book.
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Chapter One
“Dakota, stop. This is a bad idea. This ranks up there with Custer’s Last Stand. Are you listening to me?” Tina grabbed at Dakota’s arm, but Dakota kept marching down the hallway of the pack headquarters towards her father’s office. She was going to give her father a piece of her mind, Alpha or no.
Dakota ignored her best friend as she pulled on her arm. She screeched to a halt in front of the hand-carved mahogany door that led to her father’s office. There was a big, solid gold plaque with the words “Brandon Sheffield” stamped on it in ornate lettering. Her father, one of the most successful builders and developers in California, was all about displays of wealth and power.
“Dakota, just think this through! Wait until tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to calm down!” Tina pleaded.
“Nope,” Dakota said stubbornly. “I need to do it right now, while I’m still furious. Otherwise I might chicken out.”
“Hey, I know! Let’s go to Howlers and you can drown your sorrows in cosmopolitans,” Tina suggested. “Mmm, tasty cosmopolitans.”
“Not now, thanks. I’m on a mission. I will make him listen to me if it’s the last thing I do,” Dakota said, and stormed into her father’s office.
“But that’s the problem. It just might be!” Tina hung back in the hallway.
“A she-wolf’s gotta do what a she-wolf’s gotta do.”
“I wonder where I can find another Alpha Femme to hang out with. Since there’s going to be a vacancy real soon,” Dakota heard Tina say as she shut the door.
“I heard that!” Dakota yelled through the door.
“I know!” Tina yelled back. Of course she knew that Dakota had heard her. All descendants of the Alpha Prime had senses that were enhanced, even over those of other shifters – including hearing.
Dakota shook her head. She couldn’t let her friend dissuade her. Sure, Tina was right and she was crazy; when had that ever stopped her?
Her father was sitting behind his enormous desk at the far end of his office. The office was bigger than most apartments, with a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes and statuettes and antique globes. Oil paintings of the pack ancestors were on display in giant gilt frames. They all seemed to be glaring at her, as were her father’s Omega Percy and several other pack members who were on hand in case he needed anything.
As she approached the desk, they discreetly melted away, moving swiftly past her towards the back of the room and pretending to be very preoccupied with straightening up some of the ancient books.
She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone, her hand shaking. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the picture on the screen.
Her fiancé, Roy, was sprawled out on his bed naked. As always, he looked magnificent. He was asleep, and there were four scratches down his chest. Unfortunately, Dakota wasn’t the one who had taken the picture.
She had no idea who’d sent it to her; it had come from an anonymous number. It didn’t even matter; the fact was, Roy had cheated on her, and she wasn’t marrying him.
Her father looked up and scowled at her, thick brows drawing together.
“I don’t know why you’re interrupting my work. My decision still stands,” he informed her as she walked up to him. She’d told him about the picture that afternoon as soon as it had come in – and he’d informed her that it didn’t change a thing.
“Oh yeah? Well get a load of this.”
She leaned across the desk and shoved her cell phone in front of her father’s face, pointing the screen towards him so he could see the picture on it. He gave the picture one horrified glance before rearing back with a snarl of anger.
She knew she was treading on dangerous ground right now. If any other member of the pack had acted like this, they’d have ended up flat on their back on the floor, bleeding and begging for their life.
“Why did you show me that picture?” her father growled furiously. “I am never going to be able to unsee that.”
“Welcome to the club,” Dakota said. “And that’s my naked cheating fiancé that I can’t unsee.”
She could feel the anger building in her father. As Alpha Prime, he was capable of broadcasting his emotions so that others picked up on them. He was also capable of keeping them to himself; the fact that he was letting his anger ripple through the air was a deliberate choice.
She knew her father really wanted the marriage. Supposedly it was because Roy’s father was a strong Alpha – not a Prime, but still one of the more successful leaders in the area, with a pack of seventy-five, second only to the size of her father’s pack of a hundred and twenty. Therefore, according to her father, Roy would always be able to protect and provide for her.
The truth was, her father wanted to form an alliance with their pack because it would cement his status as the most powerful Alpha Prime in all their region – and to hell with his daughter’s happiness.
She could see her father’s face flushing with anger, but he kept his tone steady. “Could have been taken before you two were engaged.”
“No, it couldn’t have, because you can see that scar on his chest from his fight with Beck.” She winced at the memory. Beck was an Alpha from Southern California. She’d never even met him, but he had challenged Roy for her hand after Roy had announced their engagement.
Everyone wanted to be married to the Alpha Prime’s daughter because of the prestige and the possibility that one of her male cubs would also be a Prime. The fact that she was an Alpha Femme, capable of healing and sending out calming energy, added to her value. Like she was a prize cow, she thought resentfully.
Pack tradition had required that she attend the death match, and she remembered Beck sinking his teeth into Roy’s chest – right before Roy pulled away and killed his rival. The only thing that left a scar on a wolf shifter was the bite of another shifter.
Her father met her gaze with a steady, ice-cold glare, his blue eyes glittering. She felt the waves of power intensify, and fought the overwhelming urge to submit, to hang her head and whimper her surrender. Her head hurt, but she didn’t flinch or blink. Instead she visualized the power rolling over her and washing away, and after a minute her father leaned back in his chair with a growl of anger and dropped his gaze.
She stifled the urge to smile in victory. Her powers were growing stronger; a year ago her father would have been able to make her double over with the force of his will.
Well, now she had a reason to fight back. She had gone along with this farce long enough. She’d l
et her father push her into dating Roy, and then he’d announced their engagement without even consulting her.
She’d never loved Roy in the first place, although she’d found him physically attractive. No surprise there. He was as handsome as a Greek god. Roy had turned on the charm and courted her enthusiastically, and for a brief while she’d managed to convince herself that she had some feelings for him.
The charm had worn off fast, though. Roy had started to act bored and distant as soon as the engagement was announced. She’d tried to bring it up with her father, and he’d brushed her off every time. For the last month, she’d been agonizing about what to do. Breaking off an engagement to the son of an Alpha was no simple matter.
But this? Him screwing another woman a month before their wedding? It was the last straw.
Her father finally broke the silence. “Well, you two aren’t married yet, so technically it isn’t cheating.”
“What?” she exploded. “You can’t be— Are you actually—” She was so angry she could barely form words.
“There’s nothing in our agreement that says he can’t be with other women before the wedding. Or after, for that matter. This is a mating of convenience, after all. As long as he’s discreet, you don’t really have anything to complain about.”
She felt a wave of fury flood her body, and instead of trying to hold it in, she let it roll outwards. The air practically crackled with fury. An Alpha Femme could only broadcast her feelings to someone who was close to her, like a family member or a mate. It was enormously disrespectful of her to let her Alpha Prime feel her anger, her disapproval…and she couldn’t have cared less.
“I’m not marrying him, ever, and you can’t make me!” she yelled. God, she hated how talking to her father made her sound like a tantruming toddler. She knew how ridiculous she sounded, and it made her even madder. “You like him so much, you marry him!”
Her father shot to his feet, and despite herself she let out a gasp and took a step back. Her father was six and a half feet tall – a huge, towering presence. Dakota wasn’t exactly petite herself – she’d inherited her mother’s curvy physique. But her father was like a tank who could grow fur and sprout fangs.
“Nobody speaks to the Alpha like that. It’s only because you’re my daughter that I don’t strike you dead or cast you out from this pack.” His voice shook with fury, and now he was so angry that he wasn’t bothering to direct his emotions just at her; he let them blast across the room. She heard whimpers of pain and dismay from the other pack members, all the way across the room. Fur sprang from her father’s face, and she heard the bones under his skin cracking as he struggled to retain human form. His ears sharpened to points with tufts of fur on them, and his fangs curved out from his gums as his jaw lengthened.
Percy, his Omega, hurried forward, ready to absorb the dark energy pouring from his Alpha Prime. He stood there, eyes closed, face paling with the effort of calming her father. Her father was close to losing control. If Percy failed, her father would not only shift, but he might attack in a wild rage, hurting everybody close to him before he could stop himself. The great power of the Alpha Prime also came with some downsides. There were tales of Alpha Primes who’d lost control of their animals and killed their entire families before they could stop themselves. Those Alphas were hunted down by their own packs and killed with silver bullets – the only thing that could stop them.
Dakota realized she was holding her breath, and she let it out slowly, not moving a muscle. After a long, long moment, her father’s fur sank back under his skin and his fangs retracted. Percy was as white as a sheet and covered in sweat, and he sank to his knees, trembling.
Brandon fixed his daughter with an ice-cold glare. “You will go to your quarters, and you will stay there until your wedding,” he gritted out. “Which is moved up to next week. No visitors. And I don’t want to hear another word out of your mouth – and you’d better keep your feelings to yourself too.” He gestured violently at his Beta, who rushed over so fast that Dakota heard the whoosh of air in his wake. “Drew, escort her out of here.”
As she turned to go, her father reached across the desk and grabbed her cell phone, crushed it into pieces in his fist, and dropped the pieces on the desk.
Head held high, she blinked back tears that she refused to shed. She walked out of the room with Drew right behind her. In silence, she let him escort her down the hall, through the enormous great room, and upstairs to the wing of the house where her quarters were located.
Chapter Two
They stopped at the door that led to her suite of rooms, and she stomped through the doorway and turned to glare at Drew.
“You can’t come in. No boys allowed,” she said coldly.
He stopped by the doorway. “I’ll be standing right here, so don’t try anything,” he blustered.
She raked him with a look of contempt. “Bite me.”
At that, he looked worried. “Er…you mean like…claim you? Your father would tear my head off.” Drew’s smarts were in direct inverse proportion to his strength – and he was very strong.
Dakota snorted in contempt and slammed the door in his face.
Her suite was made up of half a dozen rooms, and her bedroom was at the end of a long hallway. As she passed the laundry room, she heard Vinessa and Tiffani, two female pack members, speaking in low voices.
“Hey, did you finish ironing the lazy cow’s dainty underthings?” Vinessa asked scornfully. “Since she can’t be bothered to lift a finger for herself.”
“Right? Her Royal Hiney wouldn’t want to break a nail or something,” Tiffani griped. “And did you see what she was wearing today? Her skirt has ruffles. On those hips. Does she shop at the Short and Fat outlet?”
Both women broke into giggles.
Dakota paused, taking a deep breath to calm herself and wishing, not for the first time, that she didn’t have such freakishly good hearing.
And she bristled at the unfairness of what the women were saying. Her father insisted that everyone in their pack serve her hand and foot. She would love to do her own laundry and clean her room and cook for herself, but if she tried, the pack members practically fell over themselves to stop her. Then they complained behind her back about what a spoiled brat she was – like she had a choice in the matter.
She stalked down the hall, past the laundry room, and Vinessa and Tiffani saw her and hurried out.
“Oh, Dakota! I didn’t see you!” Tiffani said with a big, bright smile. “You look so great today. Love your skirt.”
Usually she just let things like that go, but today she was in no mood. “Thanks,” she snapped. “I bought it at the Short and Fat outlet.”
Tiffani’s face went pale. “You’re not going to tell your father what I said, are you?”
Dakota ignored her and stomped into her room and slammed the door behind her.
She heard Vinessa mutter “bitch” under her breath. Then she heard them hurry down the hall and shut the door, and she was alone.
Her room was the ultimate gilded cage. Most of the furniture had been picked out by her father, although he’d let her keep a few old pieces that her late mother had bought for her. The furniture that her father had selected was in an elaborately carved baroque style, gilded and overstuffed and more suitable for seventeenth-century French royalty than for a twenty-first century woman. The massive vanity with the bowed legs and the inlaid mother of pearl, the ivory silk bedding, the velvet curtains…a pack member came in every day and spent hours dusting every gleaming inch of it.
However, she hadn’t felt comfortable complaining when he’d moved it all into her room on her sixteenth birthday. How ungrateful would it have been to say that her furniture was too fancy?
She scowled at herself in the enormous floor-length mirror. Round face, curly brown hair that frizzed in the summer heat. Nothing special about her looks. Nothing special about her, except that she was an Alpha Prime’s daughter, which meant that she was a commo
dity to be bartered off to the highest bidder.
She glanced at the oil painting of her late mother, who’d died in a car accident when Dakota was fifteen. Dakota looked just liked her, and when she felt low, she usually reminded herself that her mother had been the most magical, wonderful, gorgeous creature in the world, and that must mean that she was pretty too – no matter what people whispered when they thought she couldn’t hear.
Today, nothing could make her feel pretty or magical. She felt dull and hopeless. And trapped.
She paced the floor of her bedroom, wondering what to do. No phone, guard at the door, marriage from hell right around the corner…
She would not marry Roy, no matter what. It just wasn’t happening.
But if she didn’t, her father would kick her out of their pack. And it would be impossible for her to find another pack that would take her in anywhere on the West Coast – all the other pack members were afraid of her father, for good reason. He’d fought in several dozen death challenges over the years, and he’d never lost. He was sixty now, but age had not weakened him.
If she didn’t have a pack to protect her, she wouldn’t be able to work anywhere, or rent a home. Humans were aware of shifters, and they maintained an uneasy truce, but they didn’t hire shifters or rent apartments to them. Shifters built their own towns and lived in areas far removed from humans. There had been an out-and-out war in California between shifters and the humans who’d tried to take their territory about fifty years ago, and humans still bore a grudge.
So she’d basically be living in a tent in the woods and hunting her food. Also, she didn’t know how to pitch a tent and she wasn’t a very good hunter and she really preferred pasta to raw rabbit.
Also, she didn’t own a tent.
And now that she thought of it, where could she pitch a tent even if she had one? Not on human lands, or she’d risk ending up the victim of an “accidental” hunting incident. Not on shifter lands, because if she didn’t belong to a pack, she couldn’t stay on their property.
Shiftily Ever After: A BBW Paranormal Romance (Alpha Prime) Page 1
