Page 1 of Crimson Heart

1

“You can’t be serious!”

In disbelief, Charlotte stared at her parents, James and Maggie Beaumont. They were in her parents’ room in a luxury hotel in San Bernardino. They’d arrived the previous day to visit a werewolf pack at the edge of the San Bernardino National Forest. She’d been under the assumption that this visit was meant to get to know the pack better and evaluate if the Werewolf Alliance should make them an ally. Her father, an elder in the Werewolf Alliance, often made such trips, and she’d agreed to accompany him and her mother, thinking he intended to groom her to rise in the ranks of the Werewolf Alliance and take on a more active leadership role. After all, her brother Jude was doing just that: leading a pack that was once on the wrong path.

“I thought you knew what this visit was about,” her father said.

Charlotte shook her head, then looked at her mother for support. “Mom, you can’t let him do that!”

“I’m sorry, darling,” her mother replied, her voice gentle yet unwavering. “You always knew that this would be your destiny.”

“My destiny? To mate with a man who gives me the creeps?”

“Don’t exaggerate,” her father interrupted. “Steve Leon is a perfectly fine young man. And as the alpha’s son, mating with him will give you a high status in the pack. Any woman in your situation would jump at this opportunity!”

“Then let them!” she shot back. “I’m not interested.”

“It’s not up to you. You’ve turned down other matches before. Frankly, I’ve had enough of your fickleness. It’s time you had a firm hand to guide you.”

“A firm hand?” She pointed toward the window in the direction of the Leon pack’s estate. “A firm hand that will beat me daily? Is that what you had in mind, Dad?”

“Just because you don’t know him yet, doesn’t mean he’ll beat you. You’re just making wild accusations. Your mother and I have raised you better than that.”

Yes, they’d raised her. Not to cower but to stand up for herself. And what they hadn’t taught her, she’d learned from her two older brothers, Jude and Austin. She trusted in this knowledge now.

Steve Leon’s handshake alone had sent an uneasy feeling through her body and made the hairs on the back of her neck rise in alert. She couldn’t put her finger on it—it was a gut feeling—but she knew that the man the Werewolf Alliance had chosen as her mate was bad to the core. The way he’d looked at her as if inspecting a piece of meat had only cemented her assessment of him. Clearly, her parents hadn’t picked up on the vibes he gave off—or they didn’t want to see it, because the pack that they wanted to bring under the Alliance’s umbrella would give them access to important resources and more manpower.

“Dad, please, listen to me,” she said with a calmness she didn’t feel. Maybe he would relent if she employed a gentler tone, a beseeching one that she’d used when she was younger. “Do you really want your only daughter to live so far away from you? Mated to a man you know nothing about? If I needed your help, you’d be too far away to help me.”

“I know what you’re doing,” he said in the same stern voice as before. “You’re not a teenager anymore. In fact, at twenty-nine, you should have already given us a litter of pups, but no, you wanted to hold out for the right man.”

The last words were spoken as if he’d put them in quotation marks.

“But—”

“I’m afraid, Charlotte,” he cut her off, “there’s no right man for you, because whenever someone comes close to meeting all your conditions, you move the goal post farther out. As if you didn’t want to get mated at all.”

He wasn’t too far off with his assumption. “I want to get mated, but out of love, not duty.”

“That’s not in the cards. As an elder, I would be a horrible example if my only daughter refused to mate with a man the Alliance chose for her.”

“Oh, so it’s all about your status?” She scoffed. “But Jude was allowed to mate for love! Nobody pressured him!”

Her father’s face turned beet-red. “Jude acted against all the rules. I haven’t forgiven him for that yet.”

“Yet neither you nor the Alliance forced him to perform a blood ritual to reverse his mating to Danielle.”

“You know exactly why we couldn’t demand that. When it turned out that Danielle was indeed the alpha’s daughter, albeit illegitimate, our hands were tied.”

“So you figured since you couldn’t impose your will on Jude, you’re gonna do it with me. Thanks, Dad, that’s mighty grand of you!”

He grabbed her by the upper arm, his claws digging into her flesh, but she barely felt it. The adrenaline in her body pushed away any feeling of pain. Besides, as a werewolf, she had a high tolerance for physical pain. When it came to emotional pain, however, she was just as vulnerable as a human female.

“Don’t you take that tone with me, young lady! Because the more you protest, the more I recognize the need to hand you over to a man who’ll keep you in line.”

She lifted her chin in defiance, pinning him with a glare. “Does that include regular beatings?”

“Charlotte,” her mother interrupted. “Your father only means well.”