Mated To The Alpha: A Standalone Wolf Shifter Romance, стр. 53
Ready for another?
Fate’s dark design brings them together ... in a mating neither is ready for.
Five years after witnessing her father's death, Keelyn has become what she never wanted to be: a were-hunter. Surprisingly good at the career she'd had thrust upon her that fateful day, she heads to the yearly gathering to pay her farm's rent with money earned from hunting werewolf hearts and pelts.
Bane and his wolf pack are also headed to the yearly gathering when Bane, the pack's Alpha, finally scents the female his wolf says is to be their forever mate. There's only one problem- she also scents of death and wet wolf hide.
When Bane follows Keelyn into the woods, neither are prepared for the truths, or the passion, they're each about to face.
Can they survive the revelations that lie ahead? Or has fate doomed them to an impossible love?
Claimed By The Alpha is the first book in the Alpha Hunted series, but it can be read as a standalone. Turn the page for a sample chapter.
Claimed By The Alpha Chapter 1
Keelyn slowed her breathing automatically. Years of training kicked in as she eyed the large buck off in the distance, the tip of her arrow a blur in front of her as she sighted in on tonight's dinner.
She could feel her father, Anson, off to her right side and a foot or so behind her, his quiet voice becoming silent the second he noticed her spy the large deer and raise her bow in one fluid, almost unconscious movement.
They'd had two goals when they set off on today's hunt- a buck and a werewolf.
The buck would provide fresh venison for the table tonight, and also make quite a bit of dried, smoked meat for her father to take with him on his journey to the castle, plus still leave plenty to feed Keelyn, her mother, and her little sisters for a few days before Keelyn would need to hunt again, in her father's absence.
The werewolf's body, which they had yet to get, was to provide the last bit of money the family still needed to pay the farm's yearly rent at the gathering next month. If they didn't come across a werewolf today, her father still had plenty of time to kill one more on the way to the castle, since his journey by foot would take him a couple of weeks.
His yearly route took him straight through werewolf country, so the buck was actually the more important of the two kills they were hoping to make today.
Keelyn eyed the buck and held her breath, getting her timing just right before sliding her fingers from the bow's string and launching the sharpened, homemade arrow for a quick, humane kill.
The arrow hit home, flying fast and sure. If she had used a bullet, she knew in her bones that the buck would have dropped where it stood, but they couldn't afford either a gun or the metal they would need to make their own bullets, so the pair carried bows they had forged from the forest instead.
The buck took off, traveling a few hundred panicked feet before dropping to the forest floor.
As they quickly headed toward the fallen meat to make sure the kill was complete, and that the animal suffered as little as possible, her father's words continued on as if he hadn't been interrupted in his speech a few seconds before.
Keelyn listened to the same speech he gave her every year, right before gathering time, and she mentally said most of it right along with him from memory as he spoke.
"Take care of your mother and sisters, Keelyn. I know she doesn't like to admit it, but we are getting older every year. She needs you to stay close and help her until I get back. No wandering in the woods all day unless you're hunting food for the family.
It will take me a good month or so to get to the castle and back. I won't linger. I will pay my respects and our yearly rent to the King and get back here as quickly as possible. It's getting late, and dark, so I'll probably have to pick up the last bit of coin we still need on the way to the castle next week. Nighttime is great for hunting were-kind, but we'll just take this deer home instead of carrying on. I'm sure one more werewolf should be easy enough to come by on the trail. I'm not worried about that.
One of these years I will take you with me to the castle, so you can take over that duty once I get too old."
Her father had been saying that for years as well, but he always left her here when he went to pay the rent. She guessed that staying with her mother was more important than learning how to take over the yearly trek, since she was only fifteen.
Her mother was getting older, that was true. Hell, both of her parents were firmly in their sixties, but in Keelyn's eyes, her mother was perfectly capable of running the farm with the help of her little sisters for a month.
She didn't argue the point though, as she knew her father would just say that if she had been born sooner, and was therefore older, or better yet, had been born a boy, not only would she be able to go, but that many, many things around the farm would have turned out quite differently. She didn't want to resurrect that whole story on top of the yearly pre-leaving speech.
Yes, she knew that her parents had given up on having children long before Keelyn finally came along, out of the blue. Her sister, Bella, also a girl much to her parent's dismay, waited two years after Keelyn's birth to join the family, with her youngest sister Ivy following just a year after Bella.
Yes, she realized that having half a dozen boys instead of three