1

Finding my mate was supposed to be the best day of my life. Not the worst.

Everyone told me I should be lucky to have someone as beautiful as the blond-haired, blue-eyed, golden-skinned alpha, Shane Dacre, as my mate.

How can anyone feel lucky with a mate who only laughed when they were walking away from you?

For a year I took it.

I swallowed it all down: all the pain from his secret cruelties, all the disgust in his eyes when he looked at me, all the fury at my standing in the way of his true happiness.

I ate it until nothing tasted the same. Until even my food tasted bitter.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if the old alpha, Shane’s father Iain, wasn’t pushing so hard for an heir.

The most stable packs had an alpha who prepared for the next generation, his father loved to remind Shane at every opportunity with a pointed look aimed my way.

But the heir had to come from his mate’s body. Mine.

And so, he came to my bed, still smelling of her. The long blonde-haired, golden-eyed, and equally beautiful Bree.

With my eyes squeezed shut, and my face turned away from him, we would mate in silence to the sharp squeaking of the bedsprings.

The sound shamed me.

And once it was done. Once he was done, he would slip away again. To shower. To return to the one he wanted. To her.

But there was never a child.

It went on and on until the whispers grew so loud and the pity so overwhelming that I would do everything I could to avoid anyone and everyone. My mission in life became to find the perfect hiding place in the extensive Dacre pack forest.

Perfect Shane could do no wrong. It must be plain, brown-haired, Aerin Boone with too many freckles. It must be Aerin who doesn’t deserve a mate as perfect and golden as Shane Dacre who was the problem for the lack of an heir.

And then I was out running one day, losing myself in the pure joy of it. As a wolf, I found happiness I could never feel in my human skin. As a wolf, I could pretend to be just a wolf and not a human girl with human pain.

But then I caught his scent. No, I could smell them.

Everything warned me to stay away, to return to the house, to turn back.

I didn’t listen.

They were in the stream; Bree and Shane.

And they were naked. He was holding her, and as she stared up into the blue sky, he thrust into her. At his every grunt, I flinched. At her every moan, I felt a stabbing in my heart.

I’ve never known pain as sharp. It felt like inside I was dying.

Then he was growling, and she was clinging to his shoulders as she gasped out her release.

I couldn’t help but notice the way her nails dug into his biceps, and when I lifted my wolf's eyes back up to his face, I found him staring at me.

Being with her wasn’t a chore. Wasn’t some duty his father pressed on him.

I’d always known it, of course, but to see it, to see how much pleasure she gave him, and he gave her, was something else.

And that wasn’t all I saw. There was a bite on her neck.

He’d bitten her even though he already had a mate.

Me.

My pain poured out of me, ran over the grass and the water until Bree must have felt it because she was lifting her head from where she’d rested it on Shane’s shoulder. Before she could, Shane slid his hand around her nape, halting her. Never taking his eyes from mine, he bent his head and kissed her.

So, I ran and I haven’t stopped running since then.

“Hey, you all right?”

The male voice, coming from much closer to me than should be possible with my shifter nose and ears, has me scrubbing at my wet face with my coat sleeve before I turn away from the window.

His blue eyes are kind, and I wonder, not for the first time, why all the bus drivers I’ve met so far have been so nice to me.

Maybe it’s my age, since at twenty-two, more often than not, I’ve been the youngest person on the bus. “I’m fine, thank you. Are we here?”

Considering I’ve had my face glued to the window for hours, I should know. If I’d been paying attention to the world around me instead of reliving my memories, I would know.

He raises his eyebrow but doesn’t comment on what has to be a pretty stupid question. “If Winter Lake is where you needed to be; yeah, we’re here.” He nods at the window.

I turn to take in the town just outside.

It’s pretty in an old-fashioned way, with pastel-painted shop fronts and what looks like mom-and-pop stores.

No, not pretty, beautiful. A haven.

From where I’m sitting, I can make out a grocery store, post office, bank, hair salon, and a diner.

It looked like the perfect place to disappear when I saw a picture of the town on a postcard in a bus station gift shop. The sort of place no one would ever come looking for me.

Perfect, in other words.

“What’s the population again?” I ask, unable to stop staring.

“Something like two thousand. But it’s a nice town. Friendly.”

That’s nothing. Coming from Minnesota, it’s a drop in the ocean.

Sure, at first, I’ll stick out a little since I’m new, but who would think to look for me in a place with a population of two thousand people?

“I like it,” I declare.

His bark of laughter has me turning to find him grinning down at me.

“Not many young people do. You’ll find it’s the older folk who come here. To retire mostly.” And with that, the man in a bus driver's uniform strides down to the front of the bus.

Once I’ve gathered my only piece of luggage—a medium size gray duffel bag, I toss my long dark braid over my shoulder and follow.

“Because there are no jobs?” I’m thinking now I should’ve thought this through a little more thoroughly since I’m going to need to find a job at some point.

After I ran away from Bree and Shane, I stopped at the house long enough to change, grab his wallet from the dresser, his keys, and then I headed for his car.

Not the flashy red sports car he was fond of reminding me had more purpose than I did, but the silver BMW I knew he wouldn’t miss as quickly as his pride and joy.

As soon as I got into the city, I parked his car near the train station and went straight to the bank to withdraw as much money as I could.

Luckily, Shane’s dad had us legally registered as husband and wife even though we didn’t have a formal ceremony in a church. So, once I showed the bank teller my ID with my married name, they didn’t stop me from my request of two thousand dollars, the most I could withdraw in one day.

I hit up Target and filled a shopping cart with food, clothes, and the gray duffel. After, I got a cab to the bus station where I bought six tickets heading in six different directions from the front desk.

I hung about, waiting until the guy who worked there was busy serving another customer before I quickly bought another ticket at the self-service machine, which was the bus I got on.

Although it seems a touch excessive, I knew I had to do everything I could to get away because no alpha ever lets his mate walk away. Because even though Shane didn’t want me, there was no way he would ever let me go, especially with his father pushing him so hard to get me pregnant.

He might not want me, but he needed me.

I’d been running for five days when I started to get sick.

And that was when I knew.

I was pregnant.

“There are some jobs. Not many, but some.” The bus driver opens the doors and as I stare out, suddenly I don’t want to step out.

I’ve been running, always moving, always in motion for nearly three weeks now. Long enough for my sickness to subside, long enough for me to get used to cheap motels rooms and disgusting bathrooms that were never completely clean.

Who am I kidding, I’m nowhere near used to it. Not even close, which is why I’m here in Winter Lake. A brief stop. My break from nasty motel rooms.

It’s hitting me now that this will be it for a while.

This town is so out of the way, there’s only one bus that passes through it every week. Just one. So, once I step off this bus, I won’t be leaving it for another whole week. It was the biggest appeal of Winter Lake; other than the pretty pastel shop fronts and the quiet serenity I could practically feel through the postcard.

“You change your mind?”

“No.” I sling my bag over my shoulder and force myself to take the first steps off the bus. “Just wondering about—”

“Five minutes.”

Halfway down the steps, I stop and turn back, my brow wrinkled in confusion. “What?”

“I’ve got five minutes before I have to leave so I can be in the next town in time. That’s how long you’ve got to figure out if you want to stay or jump back on the bus.”

God, am I that easy to read?

“Uh, sure. Whatever,” I mutter, but don’t tell him to go.

Five minutes sounds just long enough for me to figure out if this town is going to be it, or if my search for a resting place will continue.

After one last glance behind me, I leave the bus driver idling in his seat and head down the street toward the diner, since other than a truck in the gas station, there doesn’t appear to be anyone around.

I plan to stick my head in the diner because that’ll be where most of the inhabitants of this picturesque town will be at midday. And if I get any warning signs, it’s literally a minute to get back to the bus and tell the driver I’ve changed my mind.

I make it halfway down the street before I jerk to a stop.

At first, I don’t believe my nose. Frowning, my eyes sweep the streets because I’m distinctly picking up something I shouldn’t be smelling.

Not in a town this small. And not in my perfect hiding place. Shifter.

What the fuck is a shifter pack doing here?Slowly, I turn in a circle and my eyes connect with the guy filling up a battered truck at the gas station. Or at least, that was what it looked like he’d been doing before he scented me, just as I scented him.

Without taking his eyes off of me, he shoves the gas pump back in its slot and straightens from his lean against the truck.

When he takes a step away from the truck he’s filling, I get my first unobstructed view of his body.

He’s big. At least six feet, which puts him about the same height, if not build, as Shane. This shifter is more heavily muscled than Shane is—not that anyone could describe Shane as lean.

My mate has the sort of muscles most women sigh over, something I know all too well because before I knew what my life would be like in the Dacre pack, I sighed just as loudly as they did.

I feel panic surging at the sight of this shifter’s heavy muscles and the narrow-eyed steel-gray stare, which tells me he can only be one thing.

Alpha.

My duffel slides off my shoulder and hits the ground with a thud. I barely notice.

This brawny, shaved haired, alpha takes another step forward, and I back up. Fast.

“Hey, there’s no need to—”

I don’t stick around to hear what he has to say, or what lies he intends to use to trap me here. Maybe if I was an ordinary shifter, then I wouldn’t be breaking out in a cold sweat at the thought of him getting his hands on me.

But I’m special. Different. It’s the reason I stayed clear—well clear of any place I knew there were any shifters.

Since we shifters are a violent bunch, there are less packs around than there used to be. Some have been so aggressive, they’ve imploded and they exist only in shifter memory now, packs like the Raleighs, who even my father used to say he’d hesitate to take one on.

The reason I have so much value is because I can stop a pack from imploding the way the Raleighs did. It’s the reason why shifter history is full of stories about omegas being stolen from their homes and never seen again.

When I was younger, I think I was thirteen, I had enough of feeling like I didn’t belong, so I ran away from home. My father found me right away. On the long walk home, he told me story after story about attempts to breed more omegas because what I am is so rare.

All that night I thought about what that would be like, to be stolen away to another pack and forced to bear child after child with an alpha who was only interested in producing another omega.

I never tried to run away again.

When my father would hold meetings with other alphas, I saw the greedy way they studied me when he wasn’t looking. It wasn’t hard to guess what my fate would be if my father wasn’t so feared.

Coming from a well-known pack, I know most, if not all, the shifter packs in the states. Or at least I thought I did. This just goes to show how wrong I was.

So, although Shane treated me like I was worthless, I was only worthless to him. There was a reason his father pushed him to get me pregnant when we discovered we were fated mates.

It was the reason which meant that no matter how Shane felt about Bree, once his father learned who or rather what I was, there was no way he would agree to a mating between Shane and Bree.

Shane could’ve fought his father on it. But the price of Bree would mean handing back his new position as alpha, a position that would revert to the old alpha, his father, who was still young enough to seize control of the pack.

I spin around… and glimpse someone else heading toward me from across the road. Someone who halts as soon as my eyes lock on him.

This other brown-haired shifter in a white tee and blue jeans is less tall, less muscled, and overall, less threatening. The beta, most likely. But that doesn’t mean I want him anywhere near me.

His brown eyes are deep with concern, though I don’t understand why until I realize I’ve backed out into the road, and barrelling toward me is a semi-truck going too fast to stop.

Oh God, my baby.

Like one of those too-stupid-to-live characters in a horror movie confronted with the big bad, I freeze instead of running. Sheer terror floods my body that I can’t think of anything other than curving an arm protectively around my belly, feeling like my feet are glued to the ground.

After all my running, all the things I’ve done to stay hidden and not make any mistakes, mine and my baby’s life is going to end in a town with a population of two thousand under the wheels of a semi.

I worked so hard. It’s just not fair.

Before I know what’s happened, a solid weight sends me hurtling out of the way. I hear tires squealing, and the gust of wind that tells me how close the semi came to flattening me, and then my body hits the ground. Hard.

I land awkwardly, and my impact is immediately followed by a series of sharp and overly loud cracks. And then the pain hits, telling me I broke a bone in my right leg. Probably several bones, both big and small.

I’m gasping as searing agony blows through me, then my vision goes blurry, like that moment just before you drift off to sleep. As if you’re not really awake, but you know you’re not sleeping either.

For a single second, I feel the weight of a stare on my face. I get the sense someone is leaning over me, maybe even saying something.

As time goes by, my vision doesn’t get any clearer—if anything, it gets worse.

Then I blink, and the sharp agony radiating outward from my leg grows until I’d do anything, give anything to escape it. I blink again, feeling a tear slide down the side of my face to be buried in my long, dark hair.

The next time I open my eyes, it’s to blackness. Or maybe I don’t open my eyes at all because in this dark place there’s no light or sound or pain.

There’s nothing.