~ NEW ~ EXCERPT BELOW ~
To save the woman Rayne loves and the pack they formed, he challenged her and took her position as alpha. Can their mate bond survive such a betrayal?
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She was not alone.
Alpha. Mate. Enemy. Two of the three words she would never have applied to the man she loved. The man who betrayed her. The wolf who kept her hostage. The individual she’d turned her whole life into a crusade to support. Rayne would never let her go.
Ever.
Once more her wolf snapped and snarled, but all that escaped Luciana was a long sigh. The Americans were a passionate people, but they tempered their passions with cold pragmatism and the oddest sense of morality. Loving and loathing someone or something in the same breath was not a new sensation for her.
Just one she would never have applied to the mate she and her wolf had adored without measure.
The wind raced passed her, tangling her hair and pulling it across her eyes. Shaking her head, she glanced at the phone in her palm. Her thumb hovered over the call button and she still couldn’t bring herself to press it.
“Luciana Esposito Barrows,” he vocalized her full name. Salvatore hadn’t used her full name since they were children. “I repudiate you. Seven Hills is closed to you and yours. Never darken our land, never call to us for help, never invoke us to your need. You wished to be alone, so shall you have it. We do not know you.”
Pain sliced through her. An unexpected agony as it cleaved her heart.
“She is yours,” he told his mate, the bitch Enforcer, Margo. “The Enforcers may do as they will, I withdraw my protection and free you from the promise you made.”
Skating her thumb away from the call button, she elected instead to shut the phone’s screen off with a squeeze to the button on the side. Seven Hills repudiated her, but only after she had repudiated them first. It had taken her months to accept her brother’s censure. Months to understand Salvatore had no other choice, but to let her go.
She couldn’t call him. She could never call him for help. All they had built, all that occurred—the town, the pack, even her mate—had been her choice. Unshed tears burned behind her eyes and her throat went scratchy. Still, she would not let them loose. Pride straightened her shoulders and stiffened her spine.
A hushed whisper of sound, and a crunch of grass or maybe it was the slide of foliage against leather, but she sensed the presence of other before she scented it. Twisting, she glanced behind to find a woman with a lean, athletic form and shrouded in her own power approaching. Shrouded because it was so contained, yet beneath the cool façade crackled an alpha in her own right.
Long dark hair flowed as she moved, the wind tugging at it as it had Luciana’s. She strode with purpose, and strength seemed to resonate with every step. The woman also had a familiar look to her—only where Luciana had seen similar features before had been on a far more delicate, and seemingly fragile frame. Chrystal was no longer Three Rivers, the wolf having chosen to follow her mate to his pack even as she broke from Luciana’s.
“Dallas Dalton,” she said by way of greeting. “Or has the Dalton changed now that you have mated Julian?” The Chief Enforcer had no surname that Luciana was aware of, nor had she asked him on the three occasions she’d met with him. The wolf was as prickly as her brother Salvatore on a bad day.
“Doesn’t matter. Dalton is fine.” The woman prowled with a kind of deadly grace. It would be a mistake to think of her as anything, but dangerous whether she was with her mate or alone. She’d let Luciana hear her coming, and Luciana recognized the choice. Distraction left her vulnerable.
A mistake she wouldn’t make again.
Alpha. Mate. Enemy. Two of the three words she would never have applied to the man she loved. The man who betrayed her. The wolf who kept her hostage. The individual she’d turned her whole life into a crusade to support. Rayne would never let her go.
Ever.
Once more her wolf snapped and snarled, but all that escaped Luciana was a long sigh. The Americans were a passionate people, but they tempered their passions with cold pragmatism and the oddest sense of morality. Loving and loathing someone or something in the same breath was not a new sensation for her.
Just one she would never have applied to the mate she and her wolf had adored without measure.
The wind raced passed her, tangling her hair and pulling it across her eyes. Shaking her head, she glanced at the phone in her palm. Her thumb hovered over the call button and she still couldn’t bring herself to press it.
“Luciana Esposito Barrows,” he vocalized her full name. Salvatore hadn’t used her full name since they were children. “I repudiate you. Seven Hills is closed to you and yours. Never darken our land, never call to us for help, never invoke us to your need. You wished to be alone, so shall you have it. We do not know you.”
Pain sliced through her. An unexpected agony as it cleaved her heart.
“She is yours,” he told his mate, the bitch Enforcer, Margo. “The Enforcers may do as they will, I withdraw my protection and free you from the promise you made.”
Skating her thumb away from the call button, she elected instead to shut the phone’s screen off with a squeeze to the button on the side. Seven Hills repudiated her, but only after she had repudiated them first. It had taken her months to accept her brother’s censure. Months to understand Salvatore had no other choice, but to let her go.
She couldn’t call him. She could never call him for help. All they had built, all that occurred—the town, the pack, even her mate—had been her choice. Unshed tears burned behind her eyes and her throat went scratchy. Still, she would not let them loose. Pride straightened her shoulders and stiffened her spine.
A hushed whisper of sound, and a crunch of grass or maybe it was the slide of foliage against leather, but she sensed the presence of other before she scented it. Twisting, she glanced behind to find a woman with a lean, athletic form and shrouded in her own power approaching. Shrouded because it was so contained, yet beneath the cool façade crackled an alpha in her own right.
Long dark hair flowed as she moved, the wind tugging at it as it had Luciana’s. She strode with purpose, and strength seemed to resonate with every step. The woman also had a familiar look to her—only where Luciana had seen similar features before had been on a far more delicate, and seemingly fragile frame. Chrystal was no longer Three Rivers, the wolf having chosen to follow her mate to his pack even as she broke from Luciana’s.
“Dallas Dalton,” she said by way of greeting. “Or has the Dalton changed now that you have mated Julian?” The Chief Enforcer had no surname that Luciana was aware of, nor had she asked him on the three occasions she’d met with him. The wolf was as prickly as her brother Salvatore on a bad day.
“Doesn’t matter. Dalton is fine.” The woman prowled with a kind of deadly grace. It would be a mistake to think of her as anything, but dangerous whether she was with her mate or alone. She’d let Luciana hear her coming, and Luciana recognized the choice. Distraction left her vulnerable.
A mistake she wouldn’t make again.