Alpha Betrayed: A Dark Shifter Romance

FordContent (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

I've wanted my vengeance on this woman, craved her pain and suffering for so long, it's still hard to wrap my head around the fact that Princess Juliet Lilliana Zion has spent the last two years a prisoner.

Apparently, she's been living in a hell very much like my own.

Glancing down at the program in my hand in the dimly lit audience space in the old barn, I take in the sharp angles of her cheekbones and giant, haunted eyes. She's emaciated and frail-looking, with her once thick and glossy blond hair dyed a flat, ugly brown, but that's Juliet, no doubt about it.

Juliet, the girl I was told ordered my sale to the Blood Pit syndicate.

Juliet who doomed me to fighting for my life every Saturday and days filled with blinding pain as the syndicate doctors pumped me full of drugs to make me heal faster. Juliet, who I've dreamed of tracking down, capturing, and torturing for so f*****g long, the thought of hurting her still sends a bright, sweet taste rushing over my tongue.

But obviously my stepfather lied to me.

Juliet didn't want me out of the picture so she could rule the Zion pack without my supporters plotting to oust her. Juliet wasn't lounging in the lap of luxury in her oceanside mansion or skiing at the pack's mountain resort while I suffered and bled. She's been here in Gorey's sick, twisted circus, being hunted by men twice her size and ripped to shreds every Friday night.

The images on the second page of her "listing" are so disturbing, I can't look at them for more than a second. Images of her spread eagle on the ground, her small breasts bared to the camera and her viscera spilling out of her bloodied belly are meant to show how sturdy she is, according to the captions, but I know why the circus really included the shots.

It's murder porn. Half the men in here are salivating over that bloody shit, hiding boners beneath their light summer jackets, imagining all the horrible things they'll be able to do to Juliet if they place the winning bid.

Even if she had done what Hammer said she did, even if she'd banished me, I wouldn't wish this on her, or anyone. This is the stuff of nightmares, the darkest, most sinister, most depraved shadow side of humanity.

I just hope I have enough money to take her with me, if not, we might have to get a little more...creative.

I slip my hand into the pocket of my leather jacket, taking comfort from the solid weight of the gun there. I'm sure most of the people here are packing, but even after two years without a chance to practice, I'm still a rock-solid shot. I stopped at a firing range in Washington state a few days ago to practice and hit the bull's eye almost every time.

I'll be able to take out the men running the auction without a problem-old Gorey, and a handful of thugs-and hopefully get Juliet out before the rest of the audience realizes what's happening.

Or you'll place the winning bid and walk out the door, nice and peaceful. Not everything has to end in a fight.

It's cute that my inner voice still has moments of optimism, but I'm not buying it. Not everything ends in a fight, no, but most things do, especially when you're a lone shifter without a pack and have half a dozen assassins on your trail.

I took out the skinny guy with the moustache in Oregon, but the others are still out there, determined to take me in and claim the bounty.

Unsurprisingly, the moment Hammer heard that I'd escaped the syndicate, he put a price on my head. Hired killers tracked me all the way up the west coast of the United States, but I haven't seen any of them since I crossed the Canadian border.

I doubt anyone was expecting me to go looking for Juliet. They likely assume I'm in Seattle, laying low while I plot a takeover of our pack's summer home on Anderson Island.

Hopefully, I've thrown them off my trail long enough for me and Juliet to get three thousand miles across country to the only possible refuge for people like us.

And hopefully they'll agree to take you in, even though she can't shift and you're hella old for an undergrad. If not, you might as well keep driving right into the sea.

There it is. There's the voice of doom I've come to know so well since my world came crashing down two years ago. But I don't mind it. At least the voice of doom tells the truth. I'm most likely f****d. And so is Juliet.

This rescue mission, even if successful, is probably just the calm before the final shitstorm, the one that will wash us both away forever.

But doomed or not, I'm not the kind to back down from a fight, or to leave an innocent member of my pack to suffer, even if she is the bratty little stepsister who road my last nerve as a kid. And I need her for my plan to work. A unified front is the fastest route to victory and vengeance. Together, we can make Zion a merciful pack again, the way it was before Hammer burned his heart up in the fires of his own ambition.

Yeah, I have plans-big plans. Juliet clearly doesn't deserve the fate I had planned for her, but her father isn't so innocent. Thoughts of stripping him of his power and position, making him kneel at my feet, begging for his life, before I sentence him to death, feed my soul. They are my bread and water, my reason for being, the warm coal I clutch to my chest when everything else in the world has gone cold.

I will have my revenge and it starts now, by freeing the daughter Hammer threw away.

"Welcome, friends," Gorey Pulitzer croons into the microphone. He leans on the podium set up on the left side of the stage, his sunken eyes shadowed in the single spotlight beaming from the hayloft behind us. He's stooped and brittle-looking in his baggy black suit, but his voice is still the powerful velvet serenade of a showman. "I'm so thrilled to have you here with us tonight for our first annual Gorey circus sale and celebration. My team is setting up a tent by the train as we speak. After the auction, I hope you'll join us there for drinks, dancing, and entertainment. My vampires will be feeding free of charge and the fairy dancers will do just about anything for a nibble of cake. Even sit on Timothy's lap, isn't that right, Timothy?"

"Guilty as charged." An obese man in a black-and-red checkered flannel lifts an arm from the front row of metal folding chairs. "And I got the Twinkies in my pocket to prove it."

The crowd chuckles and I pull the hood of my sweatshirt forward, the better to hide the disgust I'm sure is showing on my face.

"Indeed, indeed," Gorey continues, wheezing along with the crowd for a beat before motioning to the curtains behind him. "And with such fun to look forward to, why delay another moment? We'll start with a delightful offering, Magenta the Mer-woman." The curtains part and a woman with bright pink hair and a drugged expression is rolled in, her lower body submerged in a small water tank. The vessel is plastic and cloudy with age, but her long, green tail is visible through the yellowed material. "Over the years, several of you have asked me if it's possible to bed a mermaid, and I assure you it is." More chuckles, uglier ones this time, fill the barn, and Gorey winks. "But I'm not going to tell you where to start looking, not when finding the juicy spot is so much fun." I almost gag aloud. This poor woman.

I wish I could buy her and set her free, that I could liberate every being under Gorey's control, but I don't have that kind of cash. I have eleven thousand dollars after emptying my account in Leavenworth, and I already spent two thousand of it on a motorcycle for the cross-country drive. For now, I have to focus on Juliet. She's the one who can help me gain the power to take on people like Gorey and the Blood Pit syndicate.

As the bidding starts, I glance down at the brochure, but I don't see the words or images anymore. I see the faces of all the men I've killed in the ring to save my own skin. Hammer did that to me. He made me a murderer and one day soon he'll have to face the consequences of turning a man into a monster.

The mermaid goes for a paltry five thousand dollars and a waifish fairy with fine lines on her face is paraded on, her wings clipped and bound with chains.

Gorey assures the crowd she'll appear younger if she's fed regularly, but that his clients prefer fairies on the thinner side. Then he adds, "Some even like a crone in the bedroom, and as an older gentleman myself, who am I to judge this aging beauty? Still so much fun to be had over fifty, my friends. Or over five hundred in her case!"

My lip curls and a snort escapes my lips. I can't help it. The nod toward age-inclusivity in a setting like this one is obscene. Grotesque, just like everything else about Gorey's operation.

He might even be worse than the syndicate. There, it's just violence, pure and simple. Here, it's violence mixed with head games and storylines that awaken the most repulsive fantasies ever to dance through the minds of men.

The fairy goes for seven thousand-to Timothy, the flannel-wearing creep-and it's time for Juliet. I force myself to relax in my chair, resisting the urge to jog my knee or crush the brochure in my fists.

I have to play it cool and swoop in at the last minute with the winning bid.

In the past two years, I've become a master at controlling my bodily responses and conserving my energy for the moments when I really need it, but still...

When she's dragged out onto the stage by a leash wrapped around her wrists, barefoot and vulnerable in a blue-flowered sundress too short and thin for the cool summer night, it takes all my self-control not to lean forward and glare at the stage. I want to rip the smug-looking fucker holding her leash into pieces and toss them to the dogs tied up outside.

She looks so broken, thin and shaking with weakness, but on second glance I notice a defiance in her eyes I've never seen before. The Juliet I knew was a spoiled rich girl, accustomed to getting everything she wanted, including designer clothes, ski vacations, and a slick little sports car when she decided to go to Pepperdine for college. She was pampered and entitled, the kind of kid who would tear up and run to daddy to bitch about being excluded from a game instead of holding her ground and demanding to be included. This Juliet burns with the same fire that roars inside of me.

This Juliet wants revenge as much as I do. Maybe even more.

Watching her lift her chin and shoot daggers at the men daring to bid on her as a "breeder" for their shifter puppy mills gives me more hope than I've had in a long time. Maybe we'll be able to pull this off, after all. One fire is dangerous, but with two...we might be able to burn down the world.

The bidding reaches six thousand, then seven. It stalls at seven thousand five hundred for a few beats, but just as I'm about to come in with my bid, a man behind me booms, "Eight."

Fighting a curse, I glance slowly over my shoulder to see a tanned older man in a cowboy hat wearing a shoulder holster over his denim shirt. He's big, powerful looking, and sitting with a group of other armed men gathered close around him. If it comes to fighting these guys for Juliet, things will get ugly.

I turn back around, willing someone else to bid before I come in at nine, my absolute max and every dollar left in my bag. We'll have to steal food and gasoline to get across country, but we'll manage.

We just have to get out of this f*****g barn in one piece.

"Eight thousand five hundred?" Gorey wheedles. "Do I hear eight thousand five hundred for this lovely, breedable, young girl? She's only twenty-three, with at least a decade of easy fertility ahead of her. And you've seen the pictures. She's stronger than she looks and should come through multiple births just fine."

"Eight thousand five hundred," one of the men who bid on Juliet earlier says, lifting his hand in the second row.

"Nine," comes the cowboy behind me, making my stomach bottom out.

Well, f**k. That settles it then.

The optimistic inner voice was wrong yet again. This won't be ending without a fight, and Juliet and I will be lucky to get out of here alive.

It's my last thought before I stand and sprint for the stage, pulling my gun from my pocket as I go.