Filed to story: Mated to the Alpha and His Beta Novel Free >>???
First, I clicked on DarkLuna’s screen name, hoping I’d be able to find a way to connect with her.
The link took to me to another site, and what I saw there had me gasping aloud, Mason–
Asher pushed his half-eaten platter of wings to the side. He shook his head.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Mason. I guess if you need an answer right this minute, it’ll have to be ‘no.”
I shook my head. I wasn’t surprised by what he said, but I was glad he wasn’t raging at me about it.
“I get it. All of this is heavy stuff. You need time to think about it. Hell, I wouldn’t want you to agree right away. If you decide to join us, I want you to be a hundred percent certain that it’s the right choice for you.”
He cut his gaze from me and rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. Finally, he turned back to me. His gaze flared briefly with a hint of his wolf.
“You know s hit’s going to go down,” he said.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“If the Treaty’s been broken, that means another war, F uck, another Great War.”
“Probably,” I agreed. “Yes.”
There was so much more for me to tell him, too. The existence of hybrids. What the Council was doing with them, and my father’s role in all of that. The fact that Lanie was a hybrid. And her daughter. At least some of that would help explain why Malachi had been around in the first place.
I kept my mouth shut, though.
There was so much we didn’t know, and I didn’t want to open that can of worms with him until I had more answers. Until he’d sworn his loyalty. Until I was sure I could trust him, Asher let his head fall back with a groan. “If all of this had just been over a woman, we could’ve just brawled it out and gotten over it.”
“I know.”
He eyed me. “That baby is your brother’s, isn’t it? She looked a helluva lot like you.”
“Yes. Lanie was mated to Xander and Zane before she came to Stillwood.” I waited for the next set of questions.
“My sister told me some f ucked-up story that Katie had lost her memory and that’s why she came here.” Asher sat up straight.
“And you never wondered about all of that?”
“What do you mean?” Of course, I knew the whole story, but I was pretty sure Lanie had told Quinn only an abbreviated version of it.
“She shows up pregnant and alone, can’t remember anything” He used air quotes. “Gets you to f her, ends up getting you to go to Constantine lands…
fall for starting to have feelings for each other.”
it.
Asher quirked an eyebrow at me. “You sure about that, bro?”
“What are you getting at?” I caught myself pushing some Alpha energy toward him, and I could tell he felt “Everything cool, bro?” Zane thought to me.
I appreciated that my Beta had my back, but I didn’t need him in my head right now. I put up my shields again, I focused on Asher.
“I’m just saying.” Asher’s tone was sly. “It kind of seems like she reeled you in with the whole damsel in distress routine, got you h ooked on her, got you wanting to be a father to a pup that wasn’t even yours, and she just happened to be mated to your brother? And now all of you are in some kind of tangled up quartet, sharing powers and a Beta? I’m just saying,” he repeated, “it seems a little f ucking contrived.”
“Or,” I replied as evenly as I could, “you’re jealous that Lanie didn’t have feelings for you.”
Asher shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “There are plenty of women. I don’t need to fight you Especially not one who’s already mated to someone else don’t need sl oppy seconds.”
for one.
I was over the table with my fists in the front of his shirt before he could blink…and Asher didn’t even do that. His grin was wide and full of dark humor. He’d been taunting me on purpose.
I released my grip and sat back with a frown. “You’re an as shole.”
“Maybe I get to be, just a little. Don’t you think?” He c ocked his head at me.
Grudgingly, I nodded.
His mouth twisted. “Look, man. I appreciate that you came here alone without your two goons. And I’m glad you were able to tell me the truth about getting a different Beta. I’m glad you confided in me as much as you could about all that other s hit, too. But I don’t think we are friends anymore. Not sure we ever will be again. If you thought by coming here that we’d be all cool like nothing ever went down, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
I shook my head. “No. I didn’t think that. But thanks for meeting me. I hope…sh it, man. I get it if you don’t want to hang out. But I hope we aren’t enemies.”
Asher gave me a single, slow nod. “Yeah. Me too. I guess we’ll have to wait and see Lanie–
The site I linked to from the comment on DarkLuna’s post was all about the Great Wars. The history of vampires, witches, and wolves There was even an entire section on human history and how their world and ours intersected. I skimmed over the entries, which were almost like a diary. It looked like DarkLuna had been researching for a while and posting entries as she discovered information.
In addition to the posts on history, she’d written essays on her theories about why her powers were so much stronger than expected. I read eagerly, hoping she’d have some big reveal about discovering that she had a vampire grandfather, the way I had, but I reached the end of the posts still disappointed. Also, heartbroken.
Her entire life had been torn apart by her jealous Alpha. She didn’t state it directly but hinted at him turning abusive. Refusing to have pups with her. Taking a mistress.
If DarkLuna had ever figured out that she was a hybrid, she didn’t share it in this online journal.
The last entry was dated from a few years ago, and I wondered what had happened to her. Did she just get tired of posting? Or had something kept her from it? Most of the entries were locked from comments, but the last one was open, There were the typical number of s u pid comments, and I read them but tried to ignore what they said Finally, there it was. A
comment from SeekTheTruth.
“Lots of history here, friend. Did you look into your own and figure out the truth?”
The date of that last comment was the date of the last entry.
Had SeekTheTruth scared DarkLuna off the dark web?
A flare of Mason’s Alpha energy distracted me for a second. I tuned into him. He was shielding, so I connected with my other two mates.
“Zane checked on him. We’re ready if he needs us. What are you doing in there? Ma said we needed to leave you alone,”
Xander thought.
“Til be out soon.”
I hated not being fully honest with my mate, but until I had some answers, I didn’t want to share anything.
I shut down the link and got back to the computer.
It seemed pretty clear to me that DarkLuna was a hybrid, and that Seek The Truth knew about hybrids and was p possibly one, too. No fresh search turned up anything from or about DarkLuna, though. She could have changed her usernarne or just stopped posting Or, something bad could have happened to her.
My next quick check was for any information I could find about a Luna in the Midwest being exiled.
Or worse. ..killed.
My fingers shook as I clicked another link, expecting to be taken to a site with a horrible news story, but Instead I found myself on a page filled with smiley faces, rainbows, and balloons “What the f uck?”
“Baby? You okay?” Xander thought to me at once.
S hit, I’d been sending my shock. I really, really needed to learn how to control that.
“All good, love. I need a little more time with this project, okay?”
I imagined his face as I sensed his grumbling answer, and my heart twisted as I thought of poor DarkLuna’s experiences, I really wanted to find out if she was okay. Everything about this site should’ve felt happy, but it felt ominous.
I looked all over it, but there weren’t any words. Only floating balloons that bobbed up and down. The rainbows sparkled occasionally. The smilies sometimes winked. Whoever had designed this site was a big fan of vintage websites. I was surprised the cursor didn’t trail butterflies with the motion, and there wasn’t any electronic music playing in a loop.
Carefully, I dragged the cursor across the screen, watching to see if it became a clickable link. Finally, one of the balloons turned out to be clickable. I had to laugh, even though I was getting pretty frustrated. and running out of time.
“Why all the jumping through hoops?” I murmured to myself. “It’s the dark web, it’s not like thin a public forum or something.”
Still, I guess the existence of hybrids was controversial enough that whoever was posting int about it wanted searchers to really work hard to find it. My frustration wasn’t going to make me qui on the balloon and waited a few seconds while the screen went dark.
It stayed dark.
I frowned and navigated back to the cheery landing page. Dragged my cursor around. That balloon was the only clickable link.
So, I clicked it again.
That same dark page filled my screen. This time, though, I forced myself to have more patience. I waited for it to fully load. As I was dragging my cursor around it, seeing if there were any hidden links, a small chat box popped up in the center of the screen.
Five words, white on black.
Do You Seek The Truth?
Lanie–
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?