Wicked lessons from the Alpha

Prologue

From the Journal of the Alpha of Silverpine

On the morning of February 2, 1872, I, Hunter Zachary Pinewood, the seventh Alpha of the Silverpine pack, died.

Not that my death was apparent to anyone other than myself.

I continued to breathe. I still walked about. On occasion, I spoke. I seldom smiled. I never laughed.

Because on that morning, that dreadful morning, my heart and soul were ripped from me when my darling mate and precious daughter succumbed to typhus within hours of each other... and with their passing, I died.

But in time I was reborn into someone my mother or pack barely recognized.

All my life I had sought to do the right and proper thing. I did not frequent gaming hells. I did not imbibe until I became a stumbling drunk. I found my mate and fell in love at nineteen, married at twenty-one. I did the honorable thing: I did not bed my mate until I wed her. On our wedding night she was not the only virgin between our sheets.

I was above reproach. I had done all that I could to be a good and honorable man, to be the best Alpha for my pack, the best mate and the best father.

I was brought up to believe that we were rewarded by the Goddess according to our behavior. Yet the Fates had conspired to punish me, to take away that which I treasured above all else, and I could find no cause for their unkind regard.

And so I said to hell with it all. I would sow the wild oats I had not in my youth. I would gamble, I would drink, I would know many women.

Yet I knew, with my blackened heart, that never again that no one would ever stir me back to giving a damn about anything beyond pleasure.