Chapter 3
Shea
Shea had two dreams that night, one of horror where she watched her father murder the Luna over and over again, and then as dawn was almost near, her dreaming changed.
She was in heat and was being chased in her dreams, fear and excitement coursing through her.
Shea woke up, for the second time, out of a deep sleep, but this time her heart was racing and her body shuddering from an intense orgasm.
She took huge gulps of air into her lungs, sweat coating her body, the pillow, and the sheets underneath her.
A cold breeze came through her open window.
February in the mountains was still cold, but everything was beginning to thaw for spring and warm up.
But February was also when adult female shifters would go into heat, and if not fated mated or mated, could be rutted by any eligible male she took to her liking.
For Shea, the choice of an eligible male would be slim to none.
As a child, she never really fit in; her head was in the clouds, and she loved nature and plants.
She always felt more comfortable with them than she did the people around her and was always out helping her mother with gathering the plants and herbs needed to help tend to those who preferred an alternative to regular medicine provided by the doctor, who tended to the different clans living in different areas on the mountain.
If the doctor was not around, people would come to her mother to help them out with their ailments.
The males here had no interest in her that she knew of, except for needing her help with an ailment.
Her gaze turned to the sun slowly rising over the tiny hill and forest she called home.
She jumped up and took a shower, rinsing the slick wetness that was between her legs, using a special soap she had created to mask her arousal from anyone that could possibly be close by, as she lived far on the outskirts away from all of the Moonshadow Lycan clan.
The rest of the clans on the mountain had their own mating and heating cycles.
It was rare but still possible for them to mate outside their clans; nevertheless, not many had been interested or able to do so.
She donned another cotton nighty, and on bare feet, padded to her small kitchen, where she put water from the spring into her kettle and settled it on her stove to boil. She opened her cupboard and searched for the tea she needed to drink to calm her nerves.
Shea thought about her first dream as she waited for the kettle to whistle.
It started out as usual with her screaming and begging her father to let go of the Alpha King’s wife.
His eyes had turned a feral yellow, his face contorted with jealousy, confusion, and anger.
Her father was a scientist and was experimenting on improving the life expectancy of weakened Lycan babies, who were born with defects just like him.
Her father had been born with one leg shorter and weaker than the other, which, when he shifted, made it difficult for him to run with the men of the clan on their nightly outings.
As a man, he would wear shoes created to compensate for the size difference.
He was not allowed to be one of the Lycan warriors who protected the king, queen, and their son.
He felt shame all his life because of it, but he also had a love for science, and that was what he studied instead.
Both her mother and father attended the same school together and then married, coming back to the mountains to live and raise her.
After her mother passed away, her father withdrew more into himself and threw himself into his experiments.
One day, he came out of his study, claiming he was working on a project that would help all the Lycan clans.
She became scared when he told her he would first experiment on himself, giving himself a bigger dosage than what he would be giving a newborn child.
Her father would not listen to reason and, behind closed doors, began to experiment despite her begging him not to.
Shea remembered the day when she was out collecting herbs to help fight a bad cough from their garden when she suddenly felt a presence behind her and turned to see a wolf with dark brown eyes and an almost dark black coat watching her intently.
He was still smaller than the Lycan warriors, and as he slowly walked toward her, she realized it was her father in his wolf form, whole, his leg not shorter than his other one. He was not hopping about as he used to.
She shouted in excitement, scaring the birds from the trees.
“Father, you did it! OMG, look at you. You look so magnificent.” She bent down and wrapped her arms around her father’s neck, happiness overshadowing everything to see him this way, and she could feel a lick to her face and then the sound of a huff to release him.
The joy she felt for his accomplishments lasted only a week, and then her father, who was once an amiable man, began to become short-tempered with her, his temper peaking at the littlest of details, and then it would change to his fixation on things.
He felt people were watching and laughing at him.
Every day was something new. He suddenly became obsessed with his appearance, the way the house looked, and how she looked going out.
She became seriously alarmed when there were animal kills on or around their property.
She tried talking to him, and he wouldn’t listen.
Then the day came when she had to do something she never thought she would have to do: lock her father up and keep him bound inside the house.
While she kept him locked up, she tried to look for anything she could find to help him and reverse what was happening.
Shea was scared that she was about to lose another parent, but then a miracle happened, and her father began to act like his old self, and she thought that he’d finally stopped using the serum and released him from his prison, despite the warning bells going off in her head.
Tears and guilt ate at her because her foreboding came to a head when the king’s wife came to visit unannounced one day to collect some herbs she needed for the king’s ailments with his joints.
Her father was in his study working on more of his experiments, but just as Queen Olaria, King Ramsey’s mate, was leaving, her father came out of his study.
He moved fast, grabbing Olaria and pulling her tight against him.
His canine teeth had dropped, and that’s when Shea knew real fear; his eyes were yellow and crazed. The serum had triggered the fated mate response in her father, and he now thought the queen was his predestined mate, but it was the drug at work in his system.
She’d later discovered that her father had given himself another injection even though it had been working.
She read through his notes and listened to his recordings of his findings to see what went wrong, and on the last taping, he admitted to beginning to need it like a fix; the drug had become an addiction to him that he couldn’t stop.
Both Olaria and Shea had fought to get him to release her, but her father was too strong and fast. He took off with her into the forest. She ran screaming for help, and the village people and the king ran to track down her father.
They all gathered at the edge of one of the cliffs, where her dad had Queen Olaria pressed tight against him, his teeth close to her neck, his eyes insane as they jerked from one person to the next that was trying to reason with him.
The king lunged, and in that moment, her father tore Olaria’s throat apart.
She screamed from the amount of blood and couldn’t stop.
Shea’s father had turned toward her at the sound, his eyes going normal for a second with confusion and then dawning fear and horror as he took in what he’d done.
He mouthed "sorry" before he threw himself over the edge with the queen.
And just like that, she not only lost both parents but also the community that used to welcome her.
She knew that she should not be using this drug.
The King and Roland had searched for and destroyed his experiments, but she discovered a small vial of the stuff in a hidden compartment in her father’s desk.
Just a little of the stuff had helped her during her first heat cycle, ending it before it had even started.
And now she’d been able to get four tiny vials for her friends and herself to take today.
She wiped her tears and then finished her tea and got dressed; it was time to start her day with picking, drying, and crushing up the herbs she would need just in case someone in the village had an ailment or cold while the doctor was away.
She was out in the garden working when everything around her went quiet, and like a deer caught by a predator, she froze. Her heart racing, she turned to see Roland standing a couple of feet away, watching her. The man who continued to chase her in her dreams and in her thoughts.
They stood like that, eyeing each other in the stillness, and Shea had to curb her instinct not to run because even if she was not in full heat yet, running would just make him chase her, and then there would be a lot of questions later on.
She tilted her chin stubbornly, determined not to be the one to break the silence between them, and caught the quick, amused quirk of his lips before he moved and was now in front of her.