Shared Mate (Alphas of Ireland #3)

Prologue

Seven years ago…

Isle of Skye

Tamsin Drake

The morning started with a light sheen of mist.

It always did out here, the sea breathing fog over the hills like a dragon guarding its hoard of golden treasure. The heather was wet under my boots and the wind smelled of salt and peat smoke. When I stepped out of our shelter, the cold kissed my cheeks hard enough to make my eyes water.

Camp was tucked into a shallow dip above a rocky inlet, hidden from the open coastline by a crooked line of birch and gorse. We’d chosen it because you couldn’t see the sea unless you knew where to look, and because the cliffs behind us rose like the spine of a sleeping giant.

For our people, it was safe, at least safer than most places anyway.

The shifters called it Haven sometimes. We humans just called it Skye. A patch of stubborn green that the Collapse hadn’t swallowed whole, where wolves and humans shared fires and watch rotations and dried fish racks without looking at each other like mortal enemies.

Here, the wolves didn’t go feral.

Here, no one went missing in the night.

I tugged my braid over my shoulder and started toward the firepit, the soles of my boots soft on the damp ground. Someone had already stoked the coals. Orange light winked between stones, and the kettle hanging over sent steam up into the air like a rising cloud.

My mother was humming.

She always hummed when she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t excited about something.

Her hands were busy with the oatcakes, flipping them on a flat stone, her fingers quick and sure.

Her dark hair had come loose from its tie and the wind kept stealing strands and slapping them against her mouth.

“Happy birthday,” she said without looking up, but I could hear the smile in her voice. “Fifteen now, huh? You’re practically ancient.”

“I’m practically dead,” I muttered, stepping close enough to steal one of the warm cakes.

She slapped my wrist with the flats of her fingers, laughing. “Wait, or you’re going to burn your tongue. If you do, don’t come crying to me.”

My father sat on a log near the edge of the firelight, sharpening a tool with slow, careful strokes with his pocketknife. When I looked closer, I saw that it was a bone hook for pulling nets.

He glanced up at me and his eyes softened. “Fifteen,” he echoed, like the number meant something big. “Your gran would’ve—”

He didn’t finish.

We all had people we didn’t finish sentences about.

A shadow shifted behind him, tall and broad-shouldered, moving like he belonged everywhere at once. Griff dropped into a seat by the fire, and I glanced up at him.

He was smiling, which was always a warning.

His hair was tied back with a leather cord, the wind catching loose strands and turning them into a mess around his ears. He wore a patched coat that had once been military. The scars on his knuckles looked older than I was.

“Birthday girl,” he said, voice warm as the fire. “You ready?”

“For what?” I asked automatically, because with Griff, the answer was never nothing.

He tipped his chin toward the others gathering in the morning light.

They came in twos and threes from the shelters and from the perimeter, drawn in by the smell of breakfast and the excuse of celebration.

Aunt Moira with her hands stained green from herb poultices.

Wee Finn, who wasn’t wee anymore, carrying a coil of rope like it was his own personal treasure.

Eira, one of the wolves, shifting from her four-legged form into human with that smooth ripple that still made my stomach tighten even though I’d grown up with it.

Someone passed her a set of clothes and she pulled them overhead, covering herself.

My mother wiped her hands on her skirt and finally turned to face me properly. “Come here,” she said, and the way she said it made my skin prickle.

I moved to the center of the circle they were making, the fire at my back. Heat licked up my spine. The air felt charged, like the moment before lightning struck and set the forest aflame.

“Stop looking like you’re about to bolt,” Griff murmured under his breath as he stepped in close behind me, his presence solid and familiar. “It’s just your birthday, Tam.”

“You’re the one who said, ‘you ready’ like I’m about to be stabbed,” I shot back, turning to face him.

He chuckled. “If anyone stabs you, it’s gonna be me. And only if you deserve it.”

“Comforting.”

“That’s my job,” he said easily, but his gaze flicked beyond me, scanning the tree line reflexively before it settled back on me.

My father stood and set the hook aside. He reached behind the log and pulled out something wrapped in an old tartan. The vintage cloth had faded to the color of a stormy sky.

My mother stepped forward and placed her palms on my shoulders. “We wanted to give you something special this year,” she said softly.

My father’s mouth twitched. “You’ve been eyeing my belt knives for two years,” he said.

“I have not,” I lied.

He raised a brow.

I shut my mouth and grinned, because he was one hundred percent right.

He offered the bundle to me, and for a heartbeat my hands didn’t want to move. Superstition. Fear. The part of me that knew gifts always came with strings attached even when people pretended that they didn’t.

Then Griff nudged my elbow. “Take it, Tam.”

So I did.

The cloth was soft and worn, smelling faintly of smoke and rosemary. My fingers fumbled with the rope knotted around it, suddenly clumsy under everyone’s watchful eyes. I heard my mother make a little pleased hum, like she could already taste the moment I realized what it was.

The cloth fell away.

Steel winked in the firelight.

It was a blade.

It wasn’t big, like some heroic sword out of a story.

It was practical, balanced, the blade leaf-shaped and slightly curved, made for cutting and skinning and the quick, clean work of survival.

The handle was dark wood wrapped in a dark brown braided leather, fitted to a grip that felt like it had been measured against my palm while I slept.

I ran my thumb along the spine, careful not to touch the edge, and swallowed hard.

“This—” My voice broke. I cleared my throat and tried again. “This is mine?”

My father nodded. His eyes were too bright, and it made my heart tighten behind my ribs. “Griff and I made it,” he grinned. “Scrap steel from an old boat. Took us a month to get the balance right.”

Griff lifted one shoulder like it was nothing, but he looked awfully pleased with himself. “Your dad’s better at the fine work. I just hit things until they do what I want.”

“You did the sheath too,” my mother corrected, and her mouth curved with pride. She stepped in and held up a strip of leather. “And this.”

She handed me a beautifully stitched sheath with a loop that would sit snug against my thigh. The leather was stamped with a simple mark on it, a small crescent, like a sliver of moon.

“The old symbol,” Aunt Moira murmured quietly from the edge of the circle. “For safe hunting.”

I breathed out slowly, the knife warm in my hands from the fire and from the weight of everyone’s attention. It felt… right. Like it had been waiting for me for all my life.

“Go on, Tam,” Griff said, leaning in a little. His voice dropped, softer. “Try it.”

I slid the blade into the sheath. The fit was perfect, that satisfying whisper as steel met leather. I pulled it free again, watched the edge catch the light of the fire, then tucked it back home.

A tremor ran through me, part excitement, part anticipation. Growing up, I’d learned how to track rabbits in the bracken, learned the patience of snares and the silence of stalking. I knew that this knife would be the next step in learning how to take care of myself.

“I love it,” I said, and meant it so hard it hurt.

My mother kissed my forehead. My father cleared his throat like he was swallowing his own emotion. Someone clapped me on the shoulder. Someone else shoved a warm mug into my hands. It was tea, black and strong.

For a few minutes, we were just a family.

Griff started telling a story about the first time I’d tried to fish and fallen into the inlet fully clothed, and everyone laughed, even me. Finn mimicked my flailing arms and nearly tripped over a log himself, and my mother’s laugh rang out clear as wedding bells.

I remember thinking, stupidly, at that moment, that maybe this could last. That maybe Skye really was a pocket the world couldn’t ever reach.

I’d been wrong.

A terrified shout cut through the wind.

The laughter died like someone had snuffed out the fire.

A figure burst through the trees, stumbling into the clearing with sand clinging to his boots and panic carved into his face. It was one of our lookouts, Rowan, wide-eyed, and his chest was heaving so hard he could barely speak.

“Ships,” he gasped. “Off the shore—down by the south inlet. British ships. Guns. An army—”

He swallowed, staring at us like he was begging someone to tell him he was wrong.

“—and they’re coming here.”

For half a heartbeat, no one moved. The fire still crackled. The kettle still hissed.

My father was already moving.

“Get in your positions,” he barked, voice steady with the kind of calm that only comes from having survived too much. He snatched the bone hook off the log and looked to Griff. “Get the west ridge. If they’re landing just south of us, we won’t have long to prepare.”

Griff’s grin was gone. He was suddenly all purpose.

“On it,” he replied, and then his gaze snapped to me. “Tam.”

“I’m coming,” I blurted, because the knife at my thigh felt like permission and because my legs had started to shake and the only way to stop them was to move.

“No.” Griff grabbed my shoulder hard enough to hurt. “You’re not going.”

“I’m not a child—”

“You are fifteen,” he cut in, voice practically lethal.

My mother caught my face between her palms, forcing my eyes to hers. Her thumbs swept quickly beneath my cheekbones as if she could wipe my fear away with nothing more than her fingers.