Page 2 of Collared Mate

That’s the label on the tin. It’s a little different if you know the guy personally. He is a natural alpha. And he is rich, though I think he’d rather keep the rich and ditch the alpha. It’s a ‘greatness thrust upon him’ situation. Rick never had any choice but to be special, and it’s crushing him.

The Swales are a very special family. They have a lot of money, of course, but their wealth is not what truly designates them as significant. What makes Rick and his sister Fiona truly notable is the fact that they are descended from the very first shifter to be recognized in North America.

Of course, there were legends of men becoming beasts before the Swales sailed their ships from whatever damp part of the British Isles they came from. They are not truly the first of anything. But they are the first of the lineage of what some call the New American Shifter, and before that, their bloodlines are said to be traceable beyond William the Conqueror.

All of this to say these are people who have been told they are special and perfect and above reproach from the moment they were born. They also have the resources to continue that illusion.

These thoughts have made the little glimmer of recognition I felt when that female leaped from the bushes burst into full knowledge.

That was Fiona Swale. The younger sister of Rick. The only female in his lineage. She’s young, twenty-one, already a widow, and has borne no pups.

And that brings us to the dark side of the otherwise impeccable Swale legacy. Tragedy stalks the family like a close friend. Both Rick and Fiona’s parents died while they were still relatively young. His father was the more recent to pass, and the loss of that truly embodied alpha energy is still being felt. Going back generations, there have been accidents, illnesses, and more than one assassination. As charming as they are, misfortune follows their every step.

That makes Fiona’s appearance in the depths of the forest park even harder to understand. She should be hosting a gala, appearing on a reality television show, growing a social media following, starting a perfume line. She should be doing absolutely anything besides running about in her wolf form on a moonlit night in a park where frankly, far too many people have guns for this sort of thing to be considered even remotely safe.

Zack and I are still looking in the direction she went. The impulse to give chase is intense. I had to physically restrain myself from going full shift immediately when she scooted by. A female, wild, public, and, if I am not very much mistaken, on the verge of heat, is not easy bait to leave at the best of times, and now the need to hunt her down is rising in me. I’m not going to leave her scent until I have her in my arms. I already know that. This night can only end one way.

“Should we chase her down? Teach her a lesson?” Zack looks at me, eyes wide. I can see his pulse pounding as he fights to remain in control. He’s doing well. It’s a credit to him.

“You have a mate about one week away from whelping,” I remind him. “You don’t need to be teaching any females any lessons.”

“Well, whoever mated that one clearly didn’t do a good enough job of it,” he points out. He’s not wrong.

“Could be a trap,” I point out. “She smells like she needs to be put in pup. Someone could have sent her out with the notion to draw males in. Leave her alone. I will deal with her.”

Zack’s expression shifts into a knowing smirk. “Sure you will, boss,” he says.

“Alright, go on home to your mate,” I say, dismissing him. I have new business to attend to, and an uncomfortable feeling that whatever I just saw is much more than the thoughtless rebellion of a naughty, spoiled shifter who needs a spanking.

The city has been getting wilder of late. It’s always been a place where strays congregate. Every city brings together people looking for a place to become. But there’s been trouble in the provinces, a lot of pack dissolutions, and a lot of alpha killings. It’s all to do with the Swale instability. We may not know what’s going on behind those closed doors, but ever since the elder Swale, Ethan, died, the city and its shifters have been slowly sliding into absolute chaos.

The prevailing theory is that he was killed, and given Ethan Swale was part of a legacy of men and women who get killed, it seems like a safe bet. The question is who did it.

Taking out the alpha always seems like a good solution to a problem until a pretender is left with a power vacuum they can’t fill.

Zack leaves, and I wait. Following the female’s scent will be difficult without taking my shifter form, but I can track her a little. Her paws left indentations in the ground here and there, though even those are being fast covered up by the leaves that are falling according to the desires of the fall breezes that are picking up now.

For half an hour, I slowly but surely keep on her metaphorical tail. We move through the park in a winding fashion, going deeper into the bush and then coming out closer to the city where cars honk and fumes threaten to overwhelm. I start to think I am going in circles, that I lost her scent a while ago, that the indentations aren’t hers at all…

And then I smell blood.

I follow faster now. Something terrible has happened. I hope she has not been hurt.

Fiona is not a complete stranger to me. In another lifetime, I tutored her older brother. We were friends of a kind, Rick and I. As friendly as it is possible to be with a Swale anyway. He always had a part of him locked up and away, a darkness and a sadness and a separation. But he was also a teenager and so was I, and sometimes we’d set shit on fire and laugh.

Of course, Fiona was around then too. She’s younger than him by a few years, and had a habit of showing up when nobody expected it. You’d think you were alone, having a private conversation, then glance up the stairs and see her sitting there, her dark hair falling over her face as she listened in.

I don’t think she ever heard anything worth hearing, but boy, did she love knowing everything she could. That curiosity saved my life once, and goddamn if anything has happened to her…

There’s more movement in the undergrowth.

To my immense relief, I see her moving by. Slower, this time. Her ears are pricked, her tail is low, she’s keeping herself close to the ground. Hiding, perhaps. The scent of blood is more intense now, but I can tell it is not hers. It is caked around her muzzle, streaked across her flanks, and her paws are soaked in it. She is paying no attention to me; she is far too busy executing whatever plan exists inside the wilderness of her mind.

Dammit. I just know that tomorrow, the humans are going to find some kind of terrible crime scene, declare that there is a wolf loose in the park, and it’s going to be open season on shifters. We have to be more careful than this.

“She’s fucking killed someone,” Zack says.

I damn near come out of my skin as his voice appears somewhere near my elbow. “Where the hell did you come from?”