In a primal world that favors the strong and punishes the weak, Aria knew that her family's pack would not survive long when her father's health began to fail. Her fears come to life when the Intonat Nocte Pack attacks, demanding that they surrender...
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| ARIA |
When my mother died of a heart attack two months ago, a piece of my father died, too.
That's the sad thing about mates. One can't live without the other. Not really. Not meaningfully.
If my mother was still alive, maybe Dad would've been strong enough to fight. Instead, he bent the knee and offered his loyalty– and our entire pack's loyalty– to a monster. To the infamously cruel Alpha of the Intonat Nocte Pack.
The negotiations took place two nights ago, shortly after the Intonat Nocte Pack stormed our territory under the cover of darkness. My small, peacekeeping pack never stood a chance, and Dad surrendered to save our friends and family.
It made me sick.
I glared up at the sprawling mansion, more like a freakin' gothic revival castle, before me and wrinkled my nose. Goddess, why the hell did this bastard feel the need to conquer anyone when he owned something like this?!
"Aria," Dad warned, his voice a low, hoarse grumble. "Don't look so disgusted."
I hadn't realized I'd stopped walking in the middle of the cobblestone driveway to gawk at the massive Intonat Nocte compound. It was unlike anything I'd seen before.
Growing up in the Auroras Pack, I was accustomed to a life without extravagance. We were a small pack of thirty-two members. My mother homeschooled me throughout my youth, and my father taught me to shift and fight. I was training to become a nurse under our pack's old doctor. It was a simple existence, but I had everything I needed.
Now, twenty years later, one greedy, power-hungry Alpha had ruined it all.
"Sorry," I muttered, immediately averting my eyes before anyone could witness my revulsion. "I just don't understand why I had to come."
The rest of our pack, our old pack, had been allowed to stay at home. Our new Alpha, Alpha Roman, didn't seem to care where we lived, so long as we paid homage to him with quarterly taxes and answered his summons when needed.
Dad shot me a weary look. Dark circles sagged beneath his blue eyes, duller than I'd seen them since Mom's death. He looked like he'd aged a lifetime in the span of two days.
"I told you. When Alpha Roman heard I had a daughter, he wanted to meet you," he explained for the third time that morning, rubbing at his patchy beard.
He was hiding something. He'd never been a very good liar, and I'd learned to read the signs when I was a girl.
He could barely hold my gaze, fidgeting like a nervous boy rather than a fifty year old alpha. Tension lined his shoulders, and I could sense the anxiety rolling off of him in waves through the bond between alpha and subject– father and daughter. Something was very wrong.
