He subjected me to cruel bullying, and now, against all rules, I bear his secret baby girl. With his unexpected return to our small town, my pack compels me to negotiate with him. An outcast accustomed to insults, I'm bound by orders and haunted by memories of rejection and torment that I can't escape. My pack requires his protection-he's the alpha of the black ops, after all. Despite the need to prioritize my pack over personal feelings, I find myself unable to do so. The shame I should feel for the way he still affects me clashes with the duty I must fulfill. His mansion, a place I should avoid, only intensifies my desire for the father of my child. Denial, they say, becomes a new prison. I am confined by the scars of his cold words and the healing touch of his raw cruelty. Do I wish for him to cease using me for his gains, or do I secretly long for the alpha to expose my vulnerabilities? In the Silver Wolves Black Ops, there are three unyielding rules: find a mate, protect her at any cost, and create offspring. Uncompromising and undistracted, they persevere even when begged to relent.
Chapter 1 1
Chapter 1 - Georgia
I knocked on the door
uneasily.
"Enter," the commanding
voice behind the door said. I took a deep breath and turned the knob.
"You wanted to see me, Uncle Callum?" I asked.
Uncle Callum was a big man. Even
sitting behind his desk, he seemed to take up half the room. His muscles
rippled beneath his shirt, and every step he took screamed "power." His
brown hair was graying, and his face
was wrinkled, but his dark eyes were as
sharp and intelligent as ever. He
regarded me with a cool indifference
that I pretended didn't make my hair
stand on end. Something about the situation spelled "danger," but I wasn't sure why.
"How are you doing, Georgia?"
he asked. It was perfunctory. I knew
he didn't really care.
"I'm fine," I said. "And
yourself?"
"Not good." He stood up and stalked over to the window, looking
out at the town square below, where
people ambled about, enjoying the warmth of early summer. But his next words drew my attention back to him. "I've gotten word that there's a group of ferals nearby.
A large one."
My stomach clenched. Ferals were dangerous shifters who were wild and erratic, unable to even shift back
into human forms. They were usually loners and easy to take out. But when a
pack got together, they were
dangerous and would destroy everything that got in their way, including an entire village.
But confusion pierced through the cloud of horror even as I
absorbed the information he had just given me.
"That's terrible," I
said slowly. "But...I'm sorry...why are you telling me this? I'm not exactly..." I trailed off. But I
didn't
need to finish the sentence. Uncle Callum already knew what I'd been about to
say.
"No," he said. "You're not important. You're about as low in the hierarchy as
you can get, save maybe your child." He sniffed
derisively. "Normally, I wouldn't tell you anything. I'd tell your father out of courtesy and
loyalty to blood, but that's it."
I shifted uncomfortably, looking down at the wooden floorboards.
He was only telling the truth, but the blunt nature of his statements still
stung, and the jab at Elle made me bristle.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. But I swallowed the temptation
to snap back at him, knowing it would only get
me in trouble, and I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of
knowing he had gotten to me. Besides, there were more important things to deal
with at the moment. I looked back up at him.
"Then why are you
telling me?" I asked.
He came up to me, towering a good foot over my head. "There's
a small pack that moved into the
mansion by the lake, up in the hills. Do you know the place?"
I nodded. I'd gone
swimming there before and had always
admired the grand house standing above the lake, with a path from the back leading down the slope to the water's
edge. I still had no idea where this
was going, though. "I think I heard
something about a pack moving in. What about them?"
"Their alpha introduced
himself when they moved to the area," he said. "I was able to size him up: young, strong, dangerous-looking, and he seemed the type of man
who could keep his wits about him. He said they didn't want to cause trouble or
friction and would keep out of our way."
"So?"
"So that is no longer an
option," Uncle Callum said. "If we're to kill the ferals before they get to us,
we're going to need their help."
"I still don't
underst-"
"Are you really this
dense?" he snapped. I flinched backward. "You
know who the alpha is, don't you?"
I shook my head.
"His name is Jameson Redding."
I recoiled without meaning to, taking a step
away from my uncle. An image flashed before me: a handsome man, tall and
muscular, with sandy hair and
piercing green eyes. We were sitting
in a clearing in the woods, one
streaked with moonlight. He was
grinning as he leaned toward me, our lips moving closer as he wrapped a strong arm about me.
I shook my head, trying
to clear the memory, but it did
nothing to stop my pounding heart or
the thought of his touch. Finally, I
managed to ask, "Jameson Redding? He's here?"
If Uncle Callum had any idea what had just passed through my head, he
gave no indication. He stepped away and strolled back to his desk.
"I'm surprised you didn't
know." He paused. "No, I'm not
surprised. It's no wonder your
parents kept it from you. They probably didn't want you getting hysterical or trying
to see him. Normally I would agree, but times have changed."
"You're not telling me you want me to go talk to him?" I asked.
A knot formed in my stomach and
tightened.
"That's exactly what I'm saying," he said. "You know the man. I'm sure he'll be more
amicable to helping us if someone he knows is negotiating rather than a complete stranger or myself."
Jameson and I had grown
up together in a different pack that
was maybe a hundred miles away. Well, I say "together," but I had never really fit in. My
family was even more of an outcast there than we were here. And Jameson had
held that knowledge over my head for nearly my
entire childhood. He and his friends had
tormented me for years. That was, until we were about seventeen.
I opened my mouth, about
to ask Uncle Callum exactly how much of our history he knew, then closed it. If he didn't know who Jameson really was to me, that
was probably for the best.
"I don't want to talk to him," I said. "We didn't
part on the best of terms. I'm actually surprised
my parents thought it was a good idea
for me to talk to him. They hate Jameson."
"They made that very
clear," he said. "But given
your...intimate history with him, I thought you might have a better chance of convincing him than
anyone else in the pack."
So he did know the whole
story. I shouldn't have been surprised. We had to explain why we left our last
pack in such a hurry and came here.
My parents hadn't wanted anyone
there to find out about the pregnancy,
let alone Jameson himself.
"He bullied me for
years. We don't get along, and when we finally did become..." I coughed, not
wanting to think about that night. "Well,
that didn't work out, either. There's
no guarantee that he'll talk to me." In fact, based on our last conversation nearly ten years ago, I didn't think he
would want to see me. Or if he did, it was only to use me, like he had last
time. "Truthfully, I'd rather never see him again."
Uncle Callum glared at
me. "I wasn't asking for your opinion," he said. "You're acting under the assumption that I'm giving you a choice." His voice was a low growl, and I knew I was in trouble. Still, I
raised my head and looked him in the
eye.
"I don't think this is a
good idea," I said.
"I don't care what you think," he said. "You're already an outcast in the pack. Don't make it worse for yourself or your
family by being this stubborn. You're not in a position to bargain."
I wanted to argue. I wanted to say no. I wanted to laugh
in his face and storm out.
But he was the alpha, and I was an outcast in the pack. There was really only one thing
I could say.
"Okay."
As I stepped out of his
office, still shaking violently from
what Uncle Callum had told me, I turned left to take the long route home,
hoping the summer air would clear my head. But it didn't. All it did was leave me thinking about the things Jameson
had done when we were kids.