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I was fourteen the first time it happened. I had enough control to say no but that didn’t stop the males who found me in the woods. After forcing me to shift back to human form, they kept me captive the rest of the night, then left me for dead. It didn’t matter that I was the alpha’s daughter. Even my own father blew it off. Told me to find someone I wanted to be with when the time came each year. As if it was my fault.
Okay, there wasn’t enough nice things in the world to truly forgive my father. When he passed, it was going to take effort on my part to pretend to mourn his loss.
Pushing the memories aside, I downed the rest of the potion. Thank the gods for Jasmine. I’d tried everything to prevent going into heat after that night, but nothing I’d come up with on my own worked.
Instead, if I felt even the slightest sign of it coming on, I fled. There were times I’d spend days out in the woods, miles from civilization just in case. Unfortunately, going into heat was random and nobody knew how to predict it. I wasn’t about to take chances.
When I turned eighteen, my dad said I couldn’t keep taking off. It was making him look bad. I think what he was really after was to make sure my scent would find my mate if he was in our pack. So, I had to adapt. Which meant finding a random male to shack up with as soon as I felt the signs. At least then I had some choice. Sometimes it worked out okay, other times I ended up in bad situations. It was one of the reasons there were so few single female wolves in this town. Waiting for your mate wasn’t an option for most of us. It was safer to find someone good enough to settle down with.
I wasn’t willing to settle for some random male. Especially after everything that happened with Owen. I thought that maybe I could do it and I tried. But being with him was like killing a part of myself and I just couldn’t do it. This was better. No worry about it happening when I couldn’t get away. No having to find a male to fuck just because my body desired it.
There were days I could feel my wolf stir, desperate to run and break free of the human form I’d imprisoned her in. But it didn’t matter how much I enjoyed being a wolf, it wasn’t worth the risk.
A crashing sound made me jump, and I set down the empty bottle. My heart raced as I threw open my door to find Jasmine staring wide-eyed from her door across the hall.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Downstairs. You think it was Mary?” she asked.
I grabbed the baseball bat I kept next to my door and padded on bare feet toward the stairs. My weapon of choice wasn’t going to do much against a full shifted wolf, but it made me feel better.
“Mary, that you?” I called.
A thump. “Mother fucker,” a male voice cursed.
“Definitely not Mary,” Jasmine hissed.
I choked up on the bat, prepared to swing. “Lights on in three, two…”
Jasmine flipped the light switch, and I leaped from the stairwell into the bar, bat back, ready to swing.
My shoulders slumped, and I lowered the weapon. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Is that any way to greet your alpha?” my dad asked.
I clenched my jaw and bit back the nastier things I wanted to say. “This is my bar. You signed it over to me.”
“That it is, but I’m still your father,” he said. “And you’re not married.”
“So?” I thought he’d given up on this years ago.
His eyes lowered, then he looked back up. “You’re not wearing any pants.”
“So observant,” I said. “I just woke up.”
“It’s noon,” he said. “You’re too soft.”
“I’m not really your concern,” I said.
“But you are,” he said. “I don’t like it, either, but what you do reflects on me. And people talk, Morgan. They talk about you too much. It’s not good for me.”
“They need hobbies if they’re wasting their breath on me,” I said.
“True, but I can’t control them.” He took a step closer and leaned down to pick up the baseball bat.
I tensed, using all of my strength to hold my ground. He’d never hit me. He’d turned a blind eye while members of the pack did all sorts of unspeakable things to me, but he’d never physically hurt me. Insults, emotional abuse, sure. Sitting back and letting others get away with anything they wanted, absolutely. But I had never trusted him. Never felt safe. Was today the day he crossed that new line?
It wouldn’t be the first time someone who was deemed undesirable was found dead in the river. I’d wondered if it would come to this but part of me never thought he’d take out the only part he had left of my mother.
