Chapter One
“Dakota, stop. This is a bad idea. This ranks up there with Custer’s Last Stand. Are you listening to me?” Tina grabbed at Dakota’s arm, but Dakota kept marching down the hallway of the pack headquarters towards her father’s office. She was going to give her father a piece of her mind, Alpha or no.
Dakota ignored her best friend as she pulled on her arm. She screeched to a halt in front of the hand-carved mahogany door that led to her father’s office. There was a big, solid gold plaque with the words “Brandon Sheffield” stamped on it in ornate lettering. Her father, one of the most successful builders and developers in California, was all about displays of wealth and power.
“Dakota, just think this through! Wait until tomorrow when you’ve had a chance to calm down!” Tina pleaded.
“Nope,” Dakota said stubbornly. “I need to do it right now, while I’m still furious. Otherwise I might chicken out.”
“Hey, I know! Let’s go to Howlers and you can drown your sorrows in cosmopolitans,” Tina suggested. “Mmm, tasty cosmopolitans.”
“Not now, thanks. I’m on a mission. I will make him listen to me if it’s the last thing I do,” Dakota said, and stormed into her father’s office.
“But that’s the problem. It just might be!” Tina hung back in the hallway.
“A she-wolf’s gotta do what a she-wolf’s gotta do.”
“I wonder where I can find another Alpha Femme to hang out with. Since there’s going to be a vacancy real soon,” Dakota heard Tina say as she shut the door.
“I heard that!” Dakota yelled through the door.
“I know!” Tina yelled back. Of course she knew that Dakota had heard her. All descendants of the Alpha Prime had senses that were enhanced, even over those of other shifters – including hearing.
Dakota shook her head. She couldn’t let her friend dissuade her. Sure, Tina was right and she was crazy; when had that ever stopped her?
Her father was sitting behind his enormous desk at the far end of his office. The office was bigger than most apartments, with a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes and statuettes and antique globes. Oil paintings of the pack ancestors were on display in giant gilt frames. They all seemed to be glaring at her, as were her father’s Omega Percy and several other pack members who were on hand in case he needed anything.
As she approached the desk, they discreetly melted away, moving swiftly past her towards the back of the room and pretending to be very preoccupied with straightening up some of the ancient books.
She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone, her hand shaking. Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the picture on the screen.
Her fiancé, Roy, was sprawled out on his bed naked. As always, he looked magnificent. He was asleep, and there were four scratches down his chest. Unfortunately, Dakota wasn’t the one who had taken the picture.
She had no idea who’d sent it to her; it had come from an anonymous number. It didn’t even matter; the fact was, Roy had cheated on her, and she wasn’t marrying him.
Her father looked up and scowled at her, thick brows drawing together.
“I don’t know why you’re interrupting my work. My decision still stands,” he informed her as she walked up to him. She’d told him about the picture that afternoon as soon as it had come in – and he’d informed her that it didn’t change a thing.
“Oh yeah? Well get a load of this.”
She leaned across the desk and shoved her cell phone in front of her father’s face, pointing the screen towards him so he could see the picture on it. He gave the picture one horrified glance before rearing back with a snarl of anger.
She knew she was treading on dangerous ground right now. If any other member of the pack had acted like this, they’d have ended up flat on their back on the floor, bleeding and begging for their life.
“Why did you show me that picture?” her father growled furiously. “I am never going to be able to unsee that.”
“Welcome to the club,” Dakota said. “And that’s my naked cheating fiancé that I can’t unsee.”
She could feel the anger building in her father. As Alpha Prime, he was capable of broadcasting his emotions so that others picked up on them. He was also capable of keeping them to himself; the fact that he was letting his anger ripple through the air was a deliberate choice.
She knew her father really wanted the marriage. Supposedly it was because Roy’s father was a strong Alpha – not a Prime, but still one of the more successful leaders in the area, with a pack of seventy-five, second only to the size of her father’s pack of a hundred and twenty. Therefore, according to her father, Roy would always be able to protect and provide for her.