MATED TO A RUTHLESS ALPHA

PROLOGUE

1850 Colorado

As soon as he stripped naked, he’d be hers.

Unbraiding her hair, Bella’s blood heated with desire while she observed the dark-haired boy. He looked about eighteen, two years older than she. He yanked off one boot, then another, at the lake’s edge. It wasn’t the first time she’d watched him peel out of his clothes, but it was the first time she’d join him. If he had a taste of her, wouldn’t he crave her? Hunger to be like her? Wild and free?

She swallowed hard, longing to be Devlyn’s mate — rather than some human’s — but it would never be. Lifting her chin, she resolved to make the human hers. She untied her ankle-high boots, then slipped them off her feet.

The human boy’s pet gray wolf rested at the shoreline, his ears perked up as he watched her. But the boy didn’t see her — he was unobservant, as most humans were.

However, a boy who cared for his wolf such as he did would care for her, too, wouldn’t he? He’d studied her when she swam here before, naked, splashing lazily across the water’s surface, attempting to draw him to her. Though he’d tried to conceal himself in the woods, she’d seen him. And heard him with her sensitive hearing when he stepped on dried oak leaves and pine needles to draw closer, to see her more clearly. She’d smelled his heady man-scent on the breeze. He’d desired her then, setting her belly afire; he’d desire her now.

Tilting her nose up, she breathed in his masculinity. Masculine but not as wild as her own kind — lupus garou. A human who treated a woman with kindness, that’s what she desired.

She tugged her pale blue dress over her head, struggling to shed her clothes as quickly as she could now. Wanting to get her plan into motion, before she changed her mind, or one of the pack tried to change it for her.

Adopted by the gray pack, she wasn’t even a gray wolf. So why should it matter if she left them and chose the human boy for her own? Volan, the gray alpha pack leader, wanted her, that’s why. Her stomach clenched with the thought that the man who’d nearly raped her would have her if she couldn’t find a way out of the nightmare.

The human pulled off his breeches. A boy, still not well muscled, but well on his way. A survivor, living on his own, that’s what intrigued her so much about him. A loner — like a rogue wolf — determined to endure.

Only in her heart, she desired the gray who’d saved her life when they were younger — Devlyn. Even now she had difficulty not comparing his rangy, taller body with this boy’s. They had the same dark hair and eyes, which maybe explained why the human had attracted her. She wanted Devlyn with all her heart, but craving his attention would only result in Volan killing him. Best to leave the pack and mate with a human, cut her ties with the grays, and start her own pack.

She’d watched the human ride, run, hunt with his rifle, but she admired him most when he swam. Her gaze dropped lower to the patch of dark hair resting above his legs and...