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Beta’s Destiny
Rocky Mountain Shifters: Book Two
A Paranormal Romance
By Jasmine Wylder
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Bonus Content (Limited Time Only)
Paranormal Romance Collection
Shifter Romance: Sheltered by the Alpha Bear
About Jasmine Wylder
Chapter One
Sage
It was weird being back on his old pack’s turf. Sage Blaine, Beta of the Boulder pack down in Colorado, had come to Wyoming as a favor. His brother, now Alpha of their old Tahoe pack had said it was an emergency. That he needed Sage’s help.
Samuel Blaine, the oldest of the four Blaine children, sat across from Sage and ran his hand through his long dirty blonde hair. It hung to his shoulders now and Sage noted how much older his brother looked. Being an Alpha had changed the surly, anti-social older brother Sage had known all those years ago into this cautious, quiet-speaking leader sitting a few feet from him.
Sitting back in the old Pack lodge he’d mostly grown up in was a strange experience. Samuel had redecorated and remodeled, so none of it really looked the same. More modern. More spacious. More cared for. But the vistas out of the large bay windows were the same ones he looked out as a young boy, wishing more than anything he could escape pack lands with his brothers and sister.
The Northeastern Wyoming landscape was rugged and rocky, full of pines and mountains—the same landscape he used to hide in with Sienna when their stepfather was drinking and in a rage. He wished he’d been there to watch his older brother rip his wolf’s throat out.
Samuel’s voice brought Sage back to the present. He shook his head a bit to clear the memories and focus on the now. It was how he’d survived those early years away from his family. Focus on the task ahead of him and take care of it. Step by step.
“How’s Sienna?” Samuel asked of Sage’s twin sister, younger by nearly two minutes. She was also now mated and married to the Boulder Pack’s Alpha, Brody McAllister. The very same half-feral Alpha that Sage served as Beta.
“Great, considering the morning sickness and the fact that she can’t decide if she wants to cry or murder us all in our sleep from moment to moment.” Sage was learning hormones were terrifying things and made his normally cool-headed sister borderline insane.
“Hard to imagine herself mated and an Alpha female,” Samuel mused to himself. Most likely, he remembered the battered, abused 17-year-old girl who’d fled from the Tahoe pack after one too many run-ins with the pack’s then-Alpha—their stepfather. A monster named Richard who Samuel had eventually challenged and killed to take the reins as Alpha.
By that point, Sienna was long gone and perfectly happy being a lone wolf. Sage had left, too, with his best friend Jai when nobody went after Sienna. Jai had an old friend from his days in juvie who was a powerful Alpha shifter who’d gathered a couple people in Northern Colorado. This old friend turned out to be Brody McAllister. The rest had been history.
Speaking of history, back on Tahoe lands was about the last place Sage ever planned to be. This was ancient history.
“You’ve got some sort of trouble you need help with you, don’t you?”
Sage cut straight to the point. He could feel the agitation roiling off his brother across from him. Instead of denying it or taking offense to Sage’s brusque manner, Samuel nodded.
“Former pack member with a serious gambling problem went off the grid a few months back, leaving his daughter here.”
Sage groaned.
“I don’t do well with kids, Samuel,” he said. “I’m barely coming to terms with the fact that I’m going to be an uncle to some overzealous pup.”
Samuel shook his head, stopping him.
“She’s in graduate school,” he said. “Turns 25 next month. This isn’t your typical babysitting job.”
This had Sage’s attention. He motioned for his brother to go on.
“Dad’s name is Hank Wilkins,” Samuel said. The name rang a bell, somewhere far off in Sage’s early memories of the adults who used to pal around with their stepfather. He couldn’t place a face, but the name was familiar enough. “But this story isn’t about Hank. It’s about Emery Wilkins, a girl with a faith so strong and so blind in her father that’s she’d point the finger at one of Nevada’s worst syndicate bosses and get him locked up to spare her father.”
“Shifter?” Sage asked.
Samuel shook his head. Human, then.
“Eddie Cardoza,” he continued. “Runs most of Nevada and creeps into Colorado and Wyoming from time to time on the reservation casinos. Bad news all around. Hank got tangled up with him as a bookie, we think, and took off with a huge amount of money.”
“Sounds like a charming guy,” Sage said. He’d never heard of Eddie Cardoza, but the type of characters that the casinos attracted were never the highest caliber.
“Hank was on the run and the state of Nevada offered Emery a deal if she’d cooperate and hand over phone records, cash receipts, and computer passwords. Hank would serve a couple months somewhere local, far away from Eddie’s goons, while Cardoza himself went away for up to 10 years.”
Sage took a deep breath.
“She took it, didn’t she?”
Samuel nodded.
Stupid move, Sage thought. The girl should have kept her nose out of that entire business and let her father handle his own business like a grown man.
“What do you need from me?”
Samuel dug his cellphone out of his pocket and set it on the low table between them. Sage could tell his brother was stalling.
“I need you to hide her for a while,” he said. “Hide her in your pack for a while so that I can find a more permanent solution for her.”
Damn. There it was.
“I have a pretty anti-social Alpha who doesn’t trust outsiders,” Sage began. “He also has a pregnant mate. I don’t know that I could convince Brody to do this even if I agreed to do it.”
Samuel scrubbed a hand down his face and closed his eyes.
“Please,” he said simply. It jarred Sage a little to hear the note of desperation in his stoic brother’s voice. “She’s a special girl and I’m genuinely afraid for her with all of this. She’s smart and on a good path in life and if it weren’t for Hank, she’d be beyond all of this in some big city saving the world.”
Sage
didn’t like it at all, but part of him was sensitive to bad situations caused by shitty parents. He and Sienna had barely survived with their skin intact.
“What’s your permanent solution look like?”
Sage would need a bigger picture if he was ever going to get Brody on board.
“I have some contacts in Quebec and one in Vancouver,” Samuel said. “They’re really strong packs and I think if I have enough time, I could convince them to take her in and help her get on her feet somewhere new, where she could blend in. New name. New identity.”
“But those things take time, right?” Sage knew the answer to the question.
“It’s a business transaction in cases like these,” Samuel nodded. “I need to know if they’re even a good fit for Emery in the long run and what kind of deal they’d want.”
Sage rolled his neck and sighed. This wasn’t going to be an easy sell at all. Brody was damn-near paranoid and aggressive and even if he could get him to agree, what’s to say he wouldn’t run the girl off with his terrible personality and constant growling and brooding.
Sage had a flash of brilliance. Brody wasn’t the one he needed to convince.
***
“Cardoza, huh?” Sienna asked through the phone. Sage could practically hear the wheels in his twin’s head turning. “Have you met her yet?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I wanted to know what you guys thought first.”
“Liar,” Sienna interrupted. “You wanted me to agree because you knew Brody never would.”
There was no point in lying to her.
“True.”
In the background, he heard Brody’s gruff voice. His supernatural hearing must have kicked in.
“You can’t be serious, Sienna,” he was saying.
“Hush,” Sienna said, cutting off her mate and returning to the conversation with her brother. “Do you trust Samuel’s judgement in this one, Sage?”
“I do,” he replied. It was true. Their brother hadn’t asked them for anything over the years. For him to reach out like this meant he’d reached the end of his options and was truly looking for a way to help the girl.
Sienna was arguing with Brody again and Sage could only catch snippets of it before a door slammed with a bang somewhere in the room with Sienna. She gave a soft laugh.
“What’d you do to the Alpha?” Sage asked slowly.
“Sent him to his room for a while,” his sister replied casually. “He needs to cool off and let me think for a second. The second we found out we were pregnant he’s been up my ass like a boil. A girl need’s a little breathing room when she’s trying to think.”
Only Sienna would ever get away with treating Brody McAllister like that. He chuckled.
“Sage, I trust you more than anyone else, except for maybe my mate,” Sienna finally said. “I think if you meet her and it’s something you want to take on, I support you 100 percent. Just know that if you do this, Brody’s going to pout for a couple days and will probably make you take total responsibility for her health and safety.”
Sage was worried about that. Being the pack’s Beta was an all-consuming kind of a role and adding a babysitting charge to the mix could spell disaster. Sage was good at what he did for one reason—singleness of mind and purpose. What kind of distractions would something like this cause?
“I’ll go meet her and let you know what I decide,” he said finally. “Try to be nice to Brody in the meantime. Something tells me I’m going to need him a good mood.”
The devious chuckle on the other end of the phone made Sage frown.
“No worries, big brother,” she said. “I know how to make sure my man is in a very good mood.”
Sage groaned.
“Gross,” he said as he ended the call.
Sage returned to the lodge’s large community room and told Samuel to bring the girl in. Sage would agree to meet her and make his decision from there. It took 30 minutes for Samuel’s sentries, guards who kept the pack lands safe and did any heavy lifting the Alpha or Beta might order, to find Emery Wilkins.
“Bring her here,” Samuel said into his phone before tossing it on the sofa next to him. He let out a long sigh. “She was out in town at a hostel when Ricky found her. I’m not convinced she planned on coming back.”
Interesting. She didn’t necessarily want to come with him to Colorado. The predatory wolf in Sage surged forward, wanting to see this little rabbit who wanted to escape so badly.
Twenty minutes later, Samuel’s two sentries walked through the front door followed by a bedraggled, angry girl who looked like she had murder on her mind.
“This is her?” Sage asked Samuel.
“Her has a name,” she said as she dropped her duffel bag to the floor and walked to the lodge’s small, open kitchen and grabbed a water from the stainless-steel refrigerator. “I’m Emery.”
He bit back a laugh of surprise at her surliness. Damn, but she was angry.
“Emery Wilkins, this is my younger brother, Sage,” Samuel said as he stepped forward, putting himself between Emery and Sage. Sage’s wolf jumped at the motion, not liking it at all. What the hell? “Sage is the Beta of the Boulder Pack and is here to help you if you agree.”
“I don’t.”
Samuel’s words were hardly out of his mouth before Emery cut him off. Instead of getting angry, however, the Tahoe Alpha merely rolled his eyes.
“Settle down, Emery,” he said. His words were kind enough, but the slight wave of Alpha dominance Samuel sent out had her lowering her eyes and letting out a breath without probably meaning to. Alpha dominance was like that—able to bend another wolf to their will if they pushed hard enough. Even dominant wolves had to bow to an Alpha if he was strong enough.
Samuel was strong, but getting Sage to act against his will would have been a lot more of a fight. In most circumstances, though, Sage didn’t resist. Especially in an Alpha’s home.
“Come sit down and talk with us for a minute,” Samuel said, motioning to the sofa. Emery trudged slowly over and kept her eyes in front of her as she passed the men. Sage could feel the anger coming off her—she hadn’t appreciated the dominance one bit. He bit back a smile and made note of that particular bit of useful information.
When they were all seated, Samuel explained his stance to Emery and why he was insistent that she leave as soon as possible.
“I can’t,” she said when he was finished. “Dad’s getting out in a couple months. I need to be here for him.”
Samuel just shook his head.
“You’re in danger, Emery,” Samuel said slowly. “Cardoza’s men are going to find you if you stay here. They’ll hurt you. Worse. You need to disappear for a little bit so that we can concentrate on protecting your dad when he gets out.”
Sage watched the woman from across the low table between them. She was tall with long, strong legs she was showing off by wearing a soft, flowy sundress and strappy leather sandals. Her hair was a deep, rich shade of dark brown and shone in the sun coming in from the window behind her. Trying not to be too obvious with what he was doing, Sage scrutinized her a little more.
If he was being perfectly honest with himself, he’d admit that she was fucking gorgeous. Her eyes were a bright blue and the small smattering of faint freckles across the bridge of her nose and dotting her cheeks might possibly just be his undoing sometime in the future. Sage shifted his focus to the window behind her to catch his thoughts, which had begun to tailspin.
“…Sage?”
Shit. Samuel was asking him something.
His older brother frowned slightly but repeated the question.
“I said, Emery is always free to return if she likes,” he said. “We’re simply asking her to give us a little time to settle things with the Cardozas in the meantime.”
Sage nodded.
“Of course.”
He didn’t miss the amused glint in his brother’s eye as he turned to get Emery’s answer.
She was playing with the ends
of her long hair between her fingers, twirling it over and over as she thought. Her eyes darted to the door and back to Sage while she deliberated. Something was off about her—Sage picked up on it immediately.
She had plans of her own.
“Fine,” she said, letting out a breath. “But only temporarily. I need to go back to my room and take a quick shower, obviously. And grab my text books. I’ll be back in 20 minutes.”
Liar. He could sense it off her right away, from the too-quick acquiescence to the constant flexing of her right hand. She was lying and nobody else in the room had picked up on it.
Sage watched her walk out the front door and shot his brother a crooked smile. She wanted to play him for a fool?
Fine. He could play, too.
Chapter Two
Emery
No real offense intended to her Alpha, but the man was out of his mind if he thought Emery was going to agree to leaving with a complete stranger. So, sure, she could play along and pretend to be the obedient little wolf she always was.
She wasn’t sure she’d fully convinced the stranger, but so be it. She’d be long gone before either of them realized where she was. She had a couple friends in her graduate program she could stay with for a few weeks until she sorted it out and wait for her dad’s release.
Her room was in one of the communal houses on the pack’s property. Mated couples got their own houses, but the unmated males stayed in two of the larger houses on the property and the unmated females stayed in another.
She shared the house with four other shifter females who ranged in age from 19 to 28, and none of them paid her any attention over the three and a half years she’d lived there. Emery hadn’t exactly tried to make friends, either. Between trying to stay afloat in her studies and keeping tabs on her father, she hadn’t had time for any real female bonding. Luckily, as she pushed her way inside the front door, she saw she was alone.
Perfect.
On the second floor, she grabbed a change of clothes and tossed it on the bed. Moving quickly, she threw her textbooks and a few personal items she’d missed into the large duffel bag she had carried earlier. She’d spent a night in a hostel in Jackson Hole after meeting with her father’s public defender. That’s where Ricky had found her earlier today, forcing her to come back to talk to the Alpha immediately.
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