Prologue
Everyone in here smelled like a damn shifter.
Kian McHurne had come to the Alpine Inn bar specifically to get away from everyone in the Clan, to drink himself into oblivion and nurse his wounds in private…and look here. One shot of cheap whiskey in, and the shifters from the mainland were flooding into this tiny hotel bar in Cooper Landing, Alaska.
Like he didn’t know why they were here.
The bartender, a grizzled old man who didn’t say any more words than forced to, jerked his chin at the growing group filling up the tables of the small bar. “What do you think? Destination wedding?”
Kian huffed a pissed-off sound and gestured for another shot. Much worse. This lot was here for much more terrible reasons than some wedding. They were here to back up the Clan’s new King. Or old King. Hell, he was still confused on what had happened to Biergon. He had a new human side now. And speak of the damn devil himself, Foster/Biergon the Dead appeared through the window. As Kian’s eyes landed on the females beside Foster, he froze.
Oh shit.
Eryn was here.
He frowned at her. Right? That was Eryn, wasn’t it?
The braids of her dark hair were fresh on one side, and the other side of her hair had been curled into long waves. He’d never seen her with her hair down. She wore makeup. Her blue eyes had been all done up with dark, shimmery eye makeup, making the blue look like new-fallen snow on a cold morning. Her lips were painted pink. He’d never noticed how full they were, because when they’d been mated she’d always kept them in a thin line. She wore a skintight tunic with leggings and heeled boots, and her arm was linked in Anya’s as she approached the bar. Her smile lit up the entire parking lot, and a hollowness filled him.
He ripped his gaze away and tried to figure out why the pain inside of his chest existed. He’d always been healthy as a horse.
The bartender set another shot in front of him. Kian threw some cash onto the counter and downed the shot, and in a few smooth strides exited out the back door next to where he’d been seated.
Being Turned into a bear shifter had given him some mighty deep instincts, and one of those was to always be near an escape route when he was in town. Not for his safety, but for the safety of the general public.
He stood behind the building as the exit door swung closed behind him, eyes closed as snowflakes melted on his too-hot cheeks. He exhaled a slow, frozen, steadying breath.
She wasn’t his anymore.
He’d unpaired them, and it didn’t matter what reasons he’d had.
She was free.
Of course she was happy now. Things were changing in the New Clan, and she was safe. That’s why he’d done what he’d done—so she could be safe.
Her showing up here dressed to the nines, smiling like that…it was fate telling him he’d done right by her.
Too bad doing right by her was going to be the death of him.
Chapter One
“I say we kill them all!” Tonga roared, to the cheering of the Clan.
The whole Clan was cheering except for Kian, who sat off to the side, twirling the point of his long knife blade into the woodgrain of the table he sat at.
“Those bitches did this,” Tonga snarled, his long hair twitching against his cheek. His lightened eyes were full of rage.
Bitches. Kian frowned and cocked his head, glaring at Tonga. We should fight him, his bear suggested. Tempting.
“Yeah!” Raul yelled from the back of the new meeting hall. This place didn’t even have walls yet. “If it weren’t for those females, Biergon would’ve never had the power to come back. I saw them fighting for him. They betrayed our traditions. They betrayed us all!”
Mmmm, Kian didn’t like the turn in conversation. He leaned forward, laid the blade on the table, and focused his attention on the Old Clan meeting. Oh, Biergon might be King now, but only of a few. Most of the Clan had cut out and had begun building a new territory, but the rage had not wavered.
“It’s Jaydah who is to blame,” someone yelled from the other side of the room. “She was always too wild! She was born to cause chaos in our Clan.”
“You mean born with a voice?” Kian asked.
Silence descended over everyone. One of the council members, Jonah, asked from the front of the room, “What do you mean?”
Kian didn’t fucking know. He hadn’t even meant to say anything. “Nothing,” he said in a monotone voice.
“No, now we would like to know, Kian!” Tonga yelled. “Kian who was Jaydah’s guard the day she escaped. Kian who allowed Jaydah to be released. Kian who was caught fucking his mate in the woods instead of stopping the females from attacking us!”
“Attacking you,” Kian snarled, standing and locking his arms on the table. “I seem to remember you attacking Biergon after you’d told him he could leave peacefully. So what is it, Tonga? Are you angrier that you lost to Biergon the Dead? Or that you lost to a group of females?”
Tonga roared and charged forward. “I’ll fucking kill every one of them, your whore of a mate inclu—” Thunk.
A look of shock flittered across Tonga’s face, and he looked down at the knife that was lodged deeply into his shoulder.
What. The. Hell? Kian hadn’t even known he’d thrown the damn blade.
His animal’s voice scratched out of his throat as he told Tonga, “I missed your heart on purpose. You’ll live, and for the remainder of your life, you’ll keep your threats away from Eryn.”
“Traitor,” Truck rumbled, jamming a finger at him through the crowd. “He’s a female sympathizer.”
“A what?” Kian asked.
“You are forgetting tradition!” someone yelled.
“And what is tradition? I don’t remember reading ‘kill the females’ in any of our old texts!” His voice boomed through the clearing. “In fact, I don’t remember treating females like shit being anywhere in our traditions. That tradition was born when Doren was King, and that was less than a hundred years ago!”
“You are betraying your Clan,” Jonah yelled.
Tonga pulled the knife from his shoulder and chucked it at Kian, who was ready. He caught the handle easily and wiped Tonga’s blood off onto his jeans, then looked directly at Jonah. “What Clan? Biergon is King.”
And then Kian strode out of the meeting hall knowing exactly what was going to happen next.
This was going to hurt.
Chapter Two
Ponytail.
No.
Eryn turned her face to the side in the mirror and narrowed her eyes at the claiming scar there, then released her ponytail from the hair band that gathered her braids and curls at the nape of her neck. Her tresses fell forward and hid the scar.
The hollow feeling disappeared, and she prayed to look in the mirror someday and not see her shame.
He’d unpaired them.
Kian had really unpaired them.
He’d sworn an oath to never do that to her, but he’d changed his mind.
“Ready?” Jaydah asked.
Her queen was leaning against the front wall of the females’ cabin, relaxed as if she’d been there awhile. “How long have you been there?” Eryn asked.