Chapter One
“Please, Alpha! Don’t do this!”
Garrick Kincaid sneered at the cowering female at his feet. She’d thrown herself to the ground and begun sobbing as soon as his Enforcers had escorted her and her husband out of their home. Raising his eyes from the disturbing sight, Rick looked to his second-in-command.
Bennett shook his head. “House is clear. Mrs. King refused to pack a bag when asked, and her husband said…” Bennett cleared his throat, pointedly not looking at the disheveled man standing a few feet away. “He said he didn’t know where anything of importance was kept.”
There was a low rumble among Rick’s Enforcers and betas, and Mr. King’s cheeks turned a deep red, his eyes staying glued to the grass in front of his feet. Expensive-looking black slacks and a white dress shirt looked wrinkled and hung off King’s gangly body. Rick eyed him, and his sneer cranked up a notch, his fangs dropping slightly, when the man made no move to help his wife up from the ground.
Everything about the day was grating on Rick’s nerves. Some days, he hated being the alpha.
Clearing the distaste from his face as best he could, Rick nodded to Bennett, wanting to get on with the banishment.
Bennett cleared his throat and removed the formal edict from the inside pocket of his black leather jacket. He unfolded the pages and began to read dispassionately. “Mr. and Mrs. Calvin and Mildred King, by order of the pack alpha, Garrick Kincaid, you are hereby banished from pack land. You are prohibited from returning to pack land without prior approval from the alpha. You are prohibited from contacting Kincaid Pack members without prior approval from the alpha. You will not—”
“Alpha! Please don’t banish us! We didn’t do anything!”
“‘Didn’t do anything?’” Rick’s voice was so low he was surprised the earth beneath his feet didn’t shake. A growl built in his throat, and he moved so he stood over Mrs. King. Bennett moved behind her husband, gave a rough kick to the back of his knees, and shoved him to the ground so he was next to his wife. Both stank of fear and couldn’t look Rick in the eyes. “You stole from the pack.”
“N-no, w-we were—” Calvin King spoke for the first time, his voice barely a whisper and immediately drying up when Rick released a snarl.
“It is by my mercy that you are only being banished! Do. Not. Test me!” Rick roared, his fangs dropping down and his claws extending. No one took advantage of his pack. He had worked himself to the bone to bring the pack back from the brink of financial and social ruin. When he’d found them, they’d been a ragtag group of wolves living in close proximity to one another. They had been so vulnerable that Rick and his small group of friends could have come in and killed them all without breaking a sweat.
For some reason, he’d decided to save them instead.
Most days, he didn’t completely regret that decision.
Today wasn’t one of those days. Though, to be fair, the Kings hadn’t been part of the pack when Rick took over nearly eight years ago. They, like many others, had moved to the area in recent years and formally requested to join. A couple dozen wolves had grown to nearly three hundred assorted shifters, witches, seers, and humans.
Rick was going to need to be more careful in the future about who he admitted into the pack. He groaned silently at the reminder of all the paperwork waiting for him back at the manor. He knew for a fact there were at least a half dozen applications for admittance in that pile.
Bennett refolded the papers and dropped them onto the ground in front of the couple. “You and your wife used her position on the pack’s finance council to embezzle money. For this, you are banished,” Bennett finished succinctly.
Rick gestured to the couple, and two of his Enforcers stepped forward. Vanessa—tiny but fierce as hell—held the branding iron with the large B. It was imbued with magic to prevent shifters’ abilities from healing the wound. Marcus—over six and a half feet tall and the definition of stoic—carried the butane torch. When Rick’s father was alpha of the pack Rick had grown up in, he’d watched his father’s men cut the hands off wolves when they were banished. He’d opted for the less extreme, modernized version.
A couple of his betas moved to hold the Kings down as Marcus lit the torch and heated the brand. Calvin sobbed and begged for mercy, but his wife had a strange look on her face. Rick watched as her eyes darted around the empty yard, not settling on anything.
Just before Vanessa laid the brand on the back of her husband’s right hand, Mrs. King yelled out, “Wait!”
Normally, they would have simply ignored her since everyone begged for branding to stop. Not that he had to perform the banishing ritual that often.
No, everyone froze because Rick raised his hand just as she called out.
“Wait, wait, wait. Alpha, allow us to make reparations.” Her voice was surprisingly calm, considering how distraught she’d acted when she’d first exited her home.
“Your home and land will be taken and sold by the pack as reparations,” Bennett informed her. “You have nothing else of value to offer.”
“Our daughter. She is young and beautiful and would make you a wonderful mate, Alpha.”
Only because he was watching, Rick noticed the surprised look Calvin threw his wife before looking down once more. Eyes narrowing, Rick approached the couple again. He crouched before Mrs. King so they were nearly eye to eye. “You would sell me your child so that you might… what? Stay in your lavish home? Remain members of the Kincaid Pack?”
She bowed her head, playing at being submissive, but Rick could smell the hatred and anger rolling off her. “We understand that may be too much to ask.”
Grunting, he stood again and stared down at her. “You wish to be able to leave of your own volition, not marked as banished.”
It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway.
Rick took a step back and subtly surveyed the yard, searching for whatever it was Mrs. King had been trying not to look at when she’d been panicking. Since Bennett had reported no one else was in the house, he had a nasty suspicion brewing in his gut.
While he looked, he continued to keep her talking. “How old is your daughter?”
Sounding smug—and obviously thinking he was seriously considering her offer—she answered, “She’s eighteen and completely untouched, Alpha.”
Just as his eyes fell on a long, narrow dilapidated shed at the very back edge of the property, Rick’s ears picked up an odd rhythm coming from Calvin King’s chest. It had started when his wife declared their daughter’s age.
Rick met Bennett’s eyes. His second was frowning fiercely. “Sir, there isn’t another person in that house. We would have scented them.”
Rick didn’t answer out loud. He moved his eyes to the shed, then met Bennett’s again and raised his brows the tiniest bit. He turned back to Mildred King and saw she was still looking at the ground.
Bennett silently gestured for Vanessa to accompany him. She rolled her eyes but followed, twirling the still red-hot branding iron between her fingers. Rick resisted the urge he suddenly had to rub at the headache forming behind his temples. This simple banishment was about to become complicated as fuck, he just knew it.