When guards alert Ethan, the alpha of Pine Ridge Pack, that a female from Hemlock Lake Pack has come looking for help and is claiming to be the sister of one of their pack members, he worries about the state of relations between the packs—something a tenuous treaty barely keeps peaceful. Upon meeting with Kate, he learns of her harrowing time with the lake pack, during which she was treated as a servant and locked in a cell at night. She tells of how just before making her escape, she became aware of the lake pack alpha’s plans for her, and he knows he can’t send her back to that fate.
Ethan and Kate devise a plan to buy her freedom, and after an exchange of money, the lake pack agrees to forget she exists.
Reunited with her brother, Kate finds what she’s been looking for as she becomes a member of the ridge pack. While she tries to get her life back on track, she fights an attraction to Ethan, and before long, things turn physical between them. Knowing that the alpha’s bed—one that sees many a pack female—isn’t the place to find the kind of life she wants for herself, she pushes him away.
Soon after, Kate finds herself in heat and discovers she’s bonded to the pack’s alpha. Ethan comes to her aid as she suffers in stubborn defiance of her new biology. He takes care of her, planning to discuss what their future holds once her head is clear in a few days.
Can Kate get over her feelings of inadequacy about being mate-bonded to the alpha? Will she be able to accept him when she discovers what happened to his first mate?
Tropes: surprise! now you go into heat, she pushed him away…now they’re mates, he already has a mate, finding a purpose, take a bite or die, he has a roster of females and she wants no part of that, fated mates, new pack member x alpha
Available: Kindle – Kindle Unlimited – Paperback
Content Warnings
Consent/Coercion Issues: Alphas can compel the actions of pack members. The alpha of the lake pack is unscrupulous and uses the ability however he wants. Ethan, the ridge pack alpha and MMC, only uses the power when necessary—in times when not using it will result in someone getting hurt. He swears to Kate, the FMC, that he never uses it in a sexual context. When the FMC’s ex makes it known that Kate witnessed his Change, the lake pack alpha forces her to take a werewolf’s bite or die. Another partygoer touches himself while watching Kate, despite it being obviously uncomfortable for her. Kate goes into heat, a time in which her arousal is unbearably high. The only thing that soothes it is the act of being bred. Were she not in heat, she might not seek out sex. Kate becomes aware that the alpha of the lake pack had planned for her to be his mistress, regardless of her feelings on the matter.
Violence and Murder: After a wolf kills another wolf, Kate finds her ex covered in blood and viscera. This book contains descriptions of someone transforming from a human into a werewolf and back again. Kate seduces a guard to get him into her cell so she can murder him by stabbing him in the neck and escape. A werewolf nearly attacks her before it is attacked by another wolf.
Death: Kate believes her brother died five years ago. She comes to discover a werewolf had bitten him, and he disappeared to live with the pack that found him and gave him aid. Early in the book, an elder of the ridge pack is honored after his passing.
Imprisonment: Kate is confined to a cell during her time with the lake pack and is only allowed out during the day to work. When she escapes to the ridge pack, she is kept in a cell while naked until they can sort out what happened and whether they’d have wolves from the other pack trying to take her back. Kate and Ethan come up with a plan to buy her freedom from the lake pack.
Drug and Alcohol Consumption: After losing her brother, Kate uses a lot of drugs and alcohol over a five-year period. At the party in the beginning, Kate and her boyfriend drink beer and take molly. There is beer available at the social time for the ridge pack, but they have a three-beer limit each night.
Reckless Behavior: During the years in which she believed her brother to be dead, Kate used drugs and alcohol, and random sex to cope. At the beginning, she and her then-boyfriend do not wear helmets while riding a motorcycle to the party.
Difficult Parental Relationships: When he was bitten by a werewolf, Mike walked away from his human life because for most of it his parents were overly critical of his life choices. That attention shifted to Kate after he disappeared. She resents her parents not only for waiting weeks to tell her that her brother had disappeared, but for giving up the search so easily. At the beginning of the story, she is mostly estranged from them, having walked away after they tried to force her back to college when she failed out due to the grief of losing her brother.
Explicit Sex
Shonna Preston 