The Brutal Alpha's Mate

Prologue

Elijah Baumann

The Crimson Shadow pack had a problem and right now I was staring at it straight in its face.

The man grimaced and for the briefest of moments, his eyes flashed bright red.

This was the third attempt to break into the pack’s territory in a week and this particular vampire had come the closest to actually being successful.

Honestly, it was becoming something of a nuisance.

His upper lip rolled slightly, his nose crinkling along with it.

A harsh scarlet glow burned around the edges of his irises, the veins surrounding his eyes darkening as his teeth lengthened to sharpened points capable of piercing through human flesh.

This was a newly born vampire; all the signs were there, including the desperate lack of control when it came to hiding his true nature.

They were the only ones with the audacity to challenge someone like me. Overconfident pricks that deserved nothing more than a thick stake right through their still-beating hearts.

I swung my arm around and caught him in the side of the temple hard enough to make him growl anew. My ring cut his cheek, but it healed right before my eyes in no more than a fraction of a second. Annoying little perk, really. I’d just have to hit him harder.

“Why are you here?” I roared. The vampire should have shuddered in fear, but he did something far more stupid. He challenged me instead.

“I don’t have to tell you anything,” he snarled. His lips rolled again and he hissed. I didn’t hold myself back.

I punched him again, the crunching sound loud enough to make even Theo grimace beside me. The vampire hardly even flinched. God damn supernatural healing. Sometimes it was so incredibly inconvenient and this one seemed even more resistant to pain than usual.

What was he on? Was it some new drug? Ecstasy? Meth? Something else? What the fuck was going on here?

There was an oddly deranged gleam to his gaze, something more than just the fact that he was a newly sired vamp. It was sharper. His pupils were dilated, his eyes bouncing back and forth so rapidly that a normal person wouldn’t even have picked up on it. Something was off. I could feel it.

Tomorrow, my alpha Amir was supposed to meet with the leaders of the Malkovian clan to sign a peace treaty, which was all pomp and circumstance.

This guy had probably been sent to throw a monkey wrench into all of that.

Maybe it was another jealous clan wanting to move in on our territory. I didn’t know.

Whatever it was, it was my job to handle it.

Slowly, I took a step back, taking stock of the situation before I decided on a course of action. I was nothing more than a soldier within the Crimson Shadow pack, but I hadn’t gained the respect of my men by making reckless decisions in the past.

I looked at the well-groomed Venetian-style gardens all around me.

It was well into the night, but the moon was bright, illuminating the flowers below in an ethereal glow.

The rest of the grounds were silent, but that didn’t stop my hackles from rising all the same.

This didn’t make any sense. Why would any of the nearby vampire clans send several lone men into our compound knowing that they’d be easily overpowered and killed as a result? What could their reasoning possibly be?

This one hadn’t exactly been quiet in his approach. He’d triggered pretty much every motion capture camera and had seemingly set a direct course for a run-in with me and my men.

Something was going on and this newbie vamp was only a piece of it.

“I’m not afraid of you,” the vamp goaded, but I didn’t respond.

Instead, I studied him more closely. My existence in the pack was well known.

I was unbeaten in a fight, so much so that people were intimidated by nothing more than my simple presence when we were together in a room.

It had worked well for Amir in the past, especially when he wanted to procure a deal that wasn’t necessarily fair for the potential recipient, which he took advantage of. Again. And again…

I was the one who did the dirty work for him. I always did.

The vamp struggled in his bonds, but he wouldn’t be able to break them.

The ropes I’d used were too strong, threaded with blackthorn to keep him weak.

He rocked back and forth, trying to tip the heavy stone bench Theo and I had secured him to.

He was strong enough to move it just a little bit, probably a perk of the extreme strength of a newly sired vampire.

He continued to goad me, but I no longer took heed of him.

There was something more to his presence than what appeared to meet the eye. I could feel it in my gut.

He was dressed in all black, which was usually a token of the Lasombre clan, but it could also be just a cover to use in the shadows of the night.

He had the look of a vampire that might have been compelled, which might explain the insanity I could see within his eyes.

He didn’t carry himself in the haughty way a vamp from the Malkovian clan would, plus they’d been allies with the Crimson Shadow pack for centuries.

Maybe he was a member of the Asamire clan, but that would mean he wasn’t a very good assassin if he’d gotten caught this easily.

It was possible he could be Venuti, but they’d gone quiet ever since their run-in with the Council last year in New Orleans.

“Whom do you serve?” I snarled. His maniacal laughter followed, slowly rising in pitch until it burrowed into my eardrums and made every single hair on my arms stand on end. His pupils dilated even further, the red of his irises only a thin border now encompassing pitch black spheres.

A woman screamed in the distance.

Impossibly, his laughing surged to a deafening decibel as his psychotic derangement took over completely.

“You’re too late,” he sneered gleefully.

On instinct, I surged forward and gripped his skull.

With a hard wrench, I tore his head from his shoulders and tossed it aside, ending him so quickly he hadn’t even gotten the chance to panic that his life was over.

The rotten scent of vampire blood pierced my nostrils and I scowled with disgust.

The woman screamed a second time, and I burst forward.

The sound had come from the northern reaches of my alpha’s compound, where his daughter’s quarters were located.

Knowing speed was of the essence, I shifted into my wolf form and sprinted across the gardens.

I rounded the corner and leapt up onto the second-floor balcony to catch sight of nearly a dozen vampires crawling up onto the third.

I grasped one by the ankle and jerked him down hard, throwing him to the ground below.

He landed on his back with a grunt and was just about to leap at me when Theo made a grab for him and dislocated his angry head from his shoulders with a ruthlessness that had more than earned the position of my second in command.

I howled and the vampires looked back at me with surprise, almost as if I’d caught them off guard. They hadn’t expected to be discovered at all.

The other vampires had been a diversion. They’d sent loners in enough times to lull me into a false sense of security when their real goal had been something else entirely.

They wanted Ashleigh. They wanted to kidnap the alpha’s daughter.

I wasn’t going to let them.

Behind me, my soldiers answered with excited yips as they jumped up onto the balcony along with me.

“Get out!” Ashleigh screeched and I pushed onward.

My men would follow me. They had walked through fire for me, and this time would be no different.

My claws dug in between the mortar of the rock, pulling me up onto her terrace with frightening speed.

Once I reached the top, I shifted back into my human form.

A blond-haired vampire was climbing through her window, not caring that he was slicing himself open on the broken glass in the process.

I rushed toward him and reached for him, grabbing the hair at the back of his scalp in my fist so hard that it stopped him dead in his tracks.

I reached down to my belt and un-holstered a thick wooden stake, quickly spearing him straight through the heart with the violent force I was known for.

His body twitched for several seconds in my arms before I threw him aside. I didn’t bother pulling the stake back out.

Ashleigh screamed bloody murder and I looked back to see her fighting off a vampire that had made it all the way inside.

Her small size put her at a distinct disadvantage to his much larger one, no matter how hard she fought.

His hand closed around the back of her neck, whipping her around so that her back was pressed against him.

With his other hand, he boldly pressed a silver blade firmly against her throat.

She stilled, trembling in both fury and abject fear.

She was completely naked, water still dripping down her damp glistening skin.

She must have just gotten out of the shower.

There was a towel on the floor. Her chest rose and fell, her nipples tightening in the chilliness of the night air, and I watched a single bead of water roll down between her swollen breasts, down the flat expanse of her lean stomach and the toned surface of her right thigh.

Her wet hair framed her face, more water dripping from the soaked ends.

Several strands were plastered to her left cheek and her throat, dark mahogany that was almost black against the paleness of her skin.

A breeze whipped through the room from behind me, catching me by surprise.

I wasn’t prepared for what came with it.

Her scent was something like a gift from heaven. Men had described the sensation to me in the past, but a gift like this was too incredible to be put into words. I knew the signs, what it was supposed to be like, but this was something I had never really understood until this singular moment.

When I felt the call of my mate.