Chapter 1
The invaders tore through the border defenders like one of those posters that cheerleaders hold up for the football team to run through before the game. In seconds, over fifty bloodthirsty wolves had ripped the throats of ten Pack members and left them bleeding into the pine straw that lined the forest near the edge of the lake. The Alpha looked at what was coming and knew it was hopeless. "Get back to the Pack House, defend it to the last man!"
Wolves started running for the large house in the middle dozens of smaller homes and cabins. Women and children ran or were carried into the basement, where the safe room was. In her home, the Luna was pulling on a sling, them wrapping her baby girl in blankets before setting her in it. Everything could burn, she would die tonight, but their daughter had to survive to carry on her line.
"Luna!" Cheryl was still in the building, she was a nanny trainee just turned eighteen who had been cleaning up the kitchen when the alarm came.
"Cheryl, what are you doing? Get to the safe room."
"It's too late, Luna." Through the windows of the Alpha's House, wolves were pouring out of the woods a half mile away at a full sprint. They would have to beat them to the Pack House, and there wasn't enough time to reach safety any more.
"Follow me." The Luna raced down to the basement, Cheryl on her heels. Moving aside a bookcase on hinges, she opened a door that led to a tunnel. "This leads to the garbage cans at the back of the property. Take her and run, run east until you reach the Oxbow Lake Pack. Let them know what happened to us."
Cheryl looked up as the Luna took the sling off and put it around her neck. "What about you?"
She set her jaw. "I'm not going down without a fight. Go." She practically shoved Cheryl into the tube, then closed the door and slid the bookcase back. Racing upstairs, she grabbed a shotgun from the cabinet just before the door was busted open. She cursed her pregnancy, only two months after she had delivered their first daughter, because she couldn't shift.
The short-barreled pump shotgun belched fire once, twice, three times before it fell to the floor. While she had been blasting at the five wolves in the front, one had run in from the kitchen behind her and knocked her to the ground. The black wolf's jaws clamped down on her right elbow, and loud crunches accompanied her screams as she tumbled forward. Wolves surged through the undefended door, one grabbing her left forearm and pulling while others attacked her legs. The wolves kept her on her stomach, unable to fight their combined weight.
"Hold her," the command came from outside, and a man came through the door. He was huge, his head almost touching the doorframe, his shoulders having to turn sideways to enter. He stepped over the dead wolves on the porch and looked down with disdain at the woman on the ground. She looked at him, fury showing on her face. "Your mate is dead," the man said as she finally gave up her struggle, her broken limbs bleeding onto the glossy wooden floor. "Your Betas, your warriors as well. Your safe house is surrounded, it's defenders lay dead or dying on the grass outside it."
"You won't get away with this, Todd." She spit at his feet, the b****y mix not quite making it there.
"I warned your father what would happen if he turned down my proposal, and he should have known better. You refused me, but your daughter will not be able to. Where is she?"
"f**k you."
He just laughed. "A couple years ago, that was the plan. Find her." The men not holding her shifted and started to go through every room in the house. Their ears and noses would defeat any hiding place, he knew that. Todd casually walked over and sat down, unconcerned with his nudity as he looked at the bloodied young woman he had once courted.
His men that had gone to search the house came back, shaking their heads. "The kid isn't here, Alpha."
Todd just nodded. "The bloodline rights are to be mine, Luna. Turn over your daughter now and I'll spare the ones in the safe room."
"Never. My family line is not going to mix with your craziness."
"Fine." He looked at the wolves holding her in place. "Break her arms and legs and leave her here, then burn the house. The rest of you, with me. The truck should be here in a few minutes."
"MAY LUNA CURSE YOU AND YOUR LINE TO ETERNAL HELL," the woman screamed as her femurs were broken, leaving her helpless on the floor. "You'll never have her."
"She will be mine." Todd turned and walked out, as a man ran in with a can of gasoline from the garage. He started shaking it around the room, soaking the furniture and drapes. When it was empty, he tossed it aside and took the matches from the top of the fireplace. "You never should have rejected him," the man said.
"You never should follow an Alpha like that," she replied. The match was struck and tossed, the gasoline flashing to flames immediately. Before he was out of sight, the room was engulfed in flames. It took a minute for her screams to be overcome by the roaring fire.
The men were gathered around the entrance to the safe room, a reinforced-concrete room in the basement of the Pack House. "Beta, how long to take it down?"
All the men bowed their heads as Alpha Todd came to the front. "The door can't withstand the blowtorch, boss. I'll get through this in an hour." Men were already hauling equipment down from the trucks that had just arrived out front.
The big man walked to the door and banged on it three times with his large fist. "This is Alpha Todd Blackstone. Your Alphas are dead, your mates as well. Open the door in the next two minutes, and you will live as Omegas in my Pack, but you will live. Your young will grow and find their mates, maybe you will find love again. No one can know what the future holds except ME. And I promise you that if this door is not opened in time, we will come in and take what we want and leave your dead bodies in there for the rest of time."
