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CHAPTER1
MISCHA
Tangled Vines Vineyard
Otter Cove, Alaska
“You are mine, and there is nothing that will save you from your fate,” he growled, fisting the woman’s blonde locks—the color of ripened wheat—and tilting her head back so he could plunder her mouth.
Her strong will might be a match for his own, but Mischa knew he would prevail. He would bring her to heel, despite the way her sapphire eyes sparkled with the fire of anger and rebellion. He could scent her growing arousal, which inflamed his own. She would submit to him and take her place at his side as the mistress of the Tangled Vines Pack. She would bear him many sons and daughters and delight in their mating.
As his tongue tangled with hers, his hand came up to cup her naked breast, rolling the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. She moaned and sank back into his body. When he moved his hand from her nipple down her body to cover her mons, she struggled against his hold.
“Piatsuk, give in to me. You will not regret it. Our story will be told around the bonfires of our people for all eternity.” He rubbed his rampant hardness against her backside, slipping it between her legs where her wet folds welcomed him.
She jerked her head back, cracking his nose, before stomping on his foot, calling forth her she-wolf, and bounding away from him.
He woke with a start. “Damn it!” he swore. For the past two weeks, each night he was taunted by the blonde-haired beauty. Each time he thought she would succumb to his will, and each time she eluded his grasp. She was becoming something of an obsession. And he had to rid himself of the idea that she would be his mate and mistress to his pack. He was pledged to another, and she looked nothing like the sultry beauty that haunted his dreams.
Her dangerous curves, blonde hair, and dark eyes called to him as no other woman ever had. Mischa was fascinated by her and experienced a feral need to possess her and make her his own. The only problem was he had no idea who she was or where she might be found.
And he was slated to marry another—a tall blonde who looked as though she’d be more at home on the fashion runways of Milan than here in Alaska, but that wasn’t her choice. He had brokered a deal with Giuliano that would allow him to not only use the Sicilian gangster’s network to distribute their featured ice wine, Frost, but would also keep his bloodline pure.
In return, Mischa had agreed to pay an outrageous bride price and allow his first-born son to one day travel to Sicily and take his place as both alpha to the Bacchus Dire Wolf Pack and to lead the family business. Mischa meant to see his son had a strong moral core and would help him to divest the pack of its mafia ties.
Mischa had found it interesting that Giuliano had been set on his oldest daughter becoming mistress to the Tangled Vines pack, considering it wasn’t necessarily the most advantageous match she could make. There was a second, younger daughter who was probably better suited to a vineyard owner across an ocean, but the old man wouldn’t entertain any consideration of her for a bride.
Standing amidst the vines usually gave Mikhail Palmer a profound sense of contentment, but today wasn’t a normal day. True, the air was crisp and cold, but it would be months before the harvest began. Reaching down, he rubbed a shiny, smooth leaf between his fingers.
Calling forth his great wolf in an arctic swirl of ice, thunder, lightning, and shards of blue and green, Mischa took off, galloping down the row between the vines towards the trail that led down to the sea. It was far too cold for a swim, even for one with the thick coat of the Alaskan dire wolf. Larger, stronger and faster than their more diluted counterparts, the dire wolf-shifters had outlived their pureblooded relatives by more than ten thousand years.
Mischa bounded down the side of the cliff, challenging himself not to use the well-worn, well-established path and leaped from rock to rock, gathering speed as he made his way down to the beach. He ran with every bit of strength and speed he could, paying little attention to the terrain beneath his feet.
Hitting the sand at the bottom of the precipice, he stumbled, lost his footing and somersaulted once before he bounded up and galloped down the beach. He played with the waves as they rushed onto the sand and got hit by a rogue wave, shaking himself vigorously before rolling in the sand, jumping up, and shaking himself again.
He ran to the end of the private beach and then headed back up the headland and toward the vines. He galloped over the lands his people had called home for millennia. They said the dire wolves came before any of the indigenous people who also dwelled here. He ran with abandon, finding both power and freedom when he ran as his more primitive self. There was a oneness with this ancient land when he ran on four legs and embraced his other half.
“Alpha?” questioned Valentin, his vineyard manager as well as his cousin and beta to the Tangled Vines Dire Wolf Pack, as he handed him a pair of jeans, a heavy handknit sweater, boots, and a knitted skullcap.
Mischa shifted and smiled, taking the proffered items and getting dressed. “Is everything ready for tonight?”
“Yes, the warehouse is prepped and ready. The fisherman reported a good haul, so we should have a bumper crop of sablefish.”
“Good; we have customers in Japan waiting.”
Valentin nodded. “The boys will have the fish prepared and ready to be flown out before dawn. Then they’ll take what we don’t ship out and start making the fertilizer for the vineyard.”
The sablefish caught illegally from the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska had become a lucrative, if illegal, business for Mischa and his pack. In addition to the illegal seafood he shipped to Japan, he was also the master vintner for his vineyard, Tangled Vines, and for their exclusive and rare ice wine, Frost. Between the two crops—sablefish and grapes—and the aftermarket for rich fish fertilizer, his dire wolf pack had risen to become one of the wealthiest in the world.
Therein lay the problem. There weren’t that many dire wolf packs left. Each year their numbers dwindled. But looking out over the vast acres of rolling hills filled with vines, he smiled.
“The vines are doing really well, and we should have an abundant harvest this fall.”
“You’re not worried about the sheriff here in Otter Cove?”
“No. I don’t doubt he suspects we’re doing something illegal, but I think Zak Grayson’s got bigger fish to fry, as he’s thrown in with the Mystic River bunch chasing boogeymen.”
“I don’t know that the Shadow League are the boogeymen we’ve been led to believe they are. I think the Ruling Council is corrupt as hell, and the League is how they keep people in line. But as long as they leave us alone, I will do the same for them. I also think Grayson is pragmatic. He knows the crack down on the fisheries is hurting a lot of families, and he turns a blind eye where he can. It’s not like we’re gangsters or anything.”
