Her Alpha Read online

  Her Alpha

  Fiona Davenport

  Copyright © 2020 by Fiona Davenport

  Cover designed by Elle Christensen

  Edited by Editing4Indies

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Her Alpha

  1. Larissa

  2. Kace

  3. Larissa

  4. Larissa

  5. Kace

  6. Larissa

  7. Kace

  8. Kace

  9. Larissa

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Her Alpha

  When Larissa Nash went looking for her best friend, she never expected to find her in a town full of shifters. She didn’t even know they existed until Kace Lowell clued her in on the secret by shifting into his wolf.

  Mating a human was complicated for the alpha of the pack, but Kace was more than ready to take on anyone who dared to challenge Larissa’s place in his life.

  1

  Larissa

  “Did you find her yet?” one of my best friends asked as I pounded on the door in front of me.

  “I’m at the house where her phone’s location shows she’s at.” I switched my cell phone to the other ear and looked over my shoulder. “There’s a big truck in the driveway, so hopefully she’s here, and someone answers the door soon. I’ll call you back when I know what the heck is going on with her and the sexy sheriff.”

  “Don’t disappear on me, too,” Calliope warned before hanging up. If I hadn’t been worried sick about Allegra, our other best friend, I probably would’ve laughed because of how ridiculous the idea was. I highly doubted I’d find a guy who’d make me forget to check in with my friends like Allegra did, the day after she stumbled upon her hot cop at the scene of an accident. None of our trio had gotten into the dating scene in high school, so it would be super weird if two of us threw ourselves into the deep end at the same time.

  Scared that Allegra had ended up in water too deep for her to handle, I slammed my fist against the door again. I almost took a step back when a deep male voice roared, “I’m coming!” But I held myself in place, refusing to back down when Allegra might be in trouble. Steeling my spine, I lifted my hand to knock again, but held it in the air when the door was flung open by a muscular guy with dark hair and green eyes. “Who are you, and what the hell do you want?”

  Refusing to be intimidated by him, I crossed my arms over my chest and stared him down. I wanted to see my best friend with my own eyes to make sure she was okay, and I wasn’t going to leave until it happened. “Where is Allegra? She missed both of her classes today, and I haven’t heard from her since last night. I don’t care that you’re the sheriff around here. If you’ve hurt her in any way, I’m going to make you pay.”

  The big lug’s lips curved up in a smirk at my threat, and I clenched my fists at my sides. But then a familiar voice called, “I’m okay!”

  My gaze darted over his shoulder, and I spotted Larissa at the top of the stairs. She was practically swimming in the sweats she was wearing, but she made it look good. The surge of relief racing through my system was so strong, my knees trembled a little as I stepped around around her guy to get closer to my best friend.

  She rushed down the stairs and said, “I’m so sorry I disappeared all day. I don’t even know where I left my phone.”

  “It’s in my office.” Allegra’s sheriff moved to stand next to her, wrapping his arm around her back and pulling her close. “I noticed your battery was low after you fell asleep last night. Since we have the same model, I plugged it in to recharge in case you needed it later.”

  As thoughtful as it was that he’d thought to take care of Allegra’s phone for her, I wasn’t ready to cut him any slack yet. “If you were trying to be helpful, you should’ve set an alarm so she wouldn’t have skipped the entire day and worried her friends.” Shifting my focus to my best friend, I added, “It was a good thing your location is shared with me on our phones, or else I wouldn’t have had any idea how to find you.”

  “I didn’t mean to scare you.” She gestured toward the guy at her side with an awkward wave and explained, “I just lost track of time.”

  “Yeah, I can tell,” I snorted, pointing at her bed head. “But you’re going to need to figure out how to juggle having a guy and going to school, or else your grades will plummet and then your mom will be all up in your business even more than usual.”

  “You know getting a degree has never been important to me. I enrolled in college more because of you and Calliope than anything else,” she reminded me.

  “Yeah, but you can’t just drop out before the end of the semester.” Her point was fair, but I wasn’t going to back down just because she’d never been interested in getting a degree. I needed some answers before I’d accept that she’d change her whole life for a guy she met last night. I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for her to give me something that would help me understand what the heck was going through her head.

  “There are only three weeks to go, so of course I’m not going to drop out,” she assured me with a smile.

  “The campus is only a ten-minute drive, and my job is flexible. I’ll make sure she doesn’t miss any more classes.”

  The sheriff’s announcement shocked the heck out of me. “Hold up! Are you trying to say Allegra is moving in with you? After only one night?”

  “Good question.” She tilted her head back to stare up at him. “Are you?”

  He nodded. “Absolutely.”

  She beamed a smile at him before looking back at me, her brown eyes full of happiness. “Yup, that’s what we’re saying.”

  “I don’t even know what to say to all of this.” My brain felt as though it was about to explode. I shook my head and pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger.

  Allegra’s grin widened. “Is it really that much of a shock? You know that all I’ve ever wanted is a family of my own. I finally found a guy I could picture myself growing old with, so why should I go slow?”

  Her guy stunned me by offering, “I’ll be more than happy to give you as many babies as you want.”

  “You’re already talking about babies?” I sputtered. “Do I need to remind you again that you only met this guy last night? You haven’t even had time to introduce him to your best friends.”

  “I can fix that with half of my best friend duo right now.” She patted his chest. “This is Zeke. I get that it’s super crazy, but I’m already falling in love with him.” Then she pointed at me. “Zeke, this is Larissa, one of my best friends in the whole wide world.”

  “Nice to meet you.” Zeke jerked his chin in my direction. “Allegra has told me a lot about you.”

  All I’d gotten from her about him on the phone last night was what he did for a living. “I wish I could say the same. If my mind is blown by all of this, I can just imagine how your parents are going to react.”

  Her eyes went wide at the reminder of how badly they would take the news of her having a boyfriend. “I think I’ll wait until Christmas break to tell them about Zeke, and then I’ll have a whole month to decide if I want to take any classes next semester.”

  Allegra was kidding herself if she thought the holiday was going to help her family accept Zeke more easily. I snorted, “Good luck with her mom.”

  A wide grin split Zeke’s face as he looked over my shoulder. “Good luck with my alpha.”

  His alpha? What the heck did he mean b
y that?

  “Huh?” My brow wrinkled in confusion, but I didn’t get the chance to ask what Zeke was talking about before strong arms grabbed me from behind. I was tossed over a broad shoulder, and some random guy carried me away while I pounded on his back with my fists. Allegra just whispered, “Oh, boy.”

  Being kidnapped while my best friend did nothing to help me was beyond wrong. Especially when she was the reason I was there in the first place. If love at first sight made her look at everything with rose-colored glasses, I wanted nothing to do with it.

  2

  Kace

  Tossing my human mate—who didn’t know shifters existed—over my shoulder and carrying her away might not have been my smartest decision ever, but I didn’t regret it. Not when she was exactly where I wanted her to be—under my roof where nobody else could see her. The mystery of my wolf’s reaction to Allegra’s scent had been solved the moment I stepped out of my house and the sweet aroma with a hint of chocolate hit my nostrils. When my wolf had caught the faint trace of it on Zeke’s mate earlier, he’d wanted to hunt the source down.

  I’d had to force him to stay inside my human skin when I’d left without the information I needed. Nothing but a mating would’ve made me walk out before I got the answers I wanted. Zeke and Allegra were in the early stages of theirs, and privacy was a necessity. The last thing I wanted was for my beta to challenge me because the mating urge whipped him into a jealous rage. Now that I had found the woman who was born to be mine, I wished I had those lost hours back. She, on the other hand, did not seem to be thrilled with me as I set her on her feet after slamming my door shut and flipping the lock.

  Her blond hair was disheveled, with one long lock curled around a plump breast. Twin spots of color filled her cheeks, standing out against her fair skin. If she had the power to kill me with the glare from her pretty blue eyes, I would’ve died on the spot. She was a fierce little thing, and both sides of my being heartily approved. Being mated to the alpha was a challenge for shifter females and even more so for a human. Her intensity would serve her well as she took her rightful place at my side. But first, I had to convince her that was where she belonged...before my wolf broke free and clamped his teeth into her shoulder when she didn’t even know what the hell was going on.

  Holding my hands up, palms toward my gorgeous mate, I murmured, “Relax. You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “Relax?” she yelled, her eyes narrowing as she pointed her index finger at me. “I don’t know you.” Her middle finger joined the first. “You just carried me out of my best friend’s boyfriend’s house while I was kicking and screaming for you to put me down.” Her ring finger got in on the action before she waved her hand in a small circle. “You brought me to another house, locked the door before putting me down, and you’re standing in front of it to block my exit.” Her hand dropped, and she pressed her fists to her hips. “Don’t you dare tell me to relax after doing your best to scare the crap out of me.”

  Knowing she was afraid of me was like an arrow to my heart. I wasn’t about to let her escape until I had the chance to explain who she was to me, but I could at least give her access to the door since I was fast enough to catch her if she somehow got past me. Taking a few steps to the left, I apologized, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Her gaze slid to the door before returning to my face. “You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, right? How else did you expect me to react to the stunt you pulled? You can’t just go around kidnapping people and then act all surprised when they’re afraid.”

  “It worked for Zeke,” I grumbled, wondering how my beta had gotten Allegra to accept him so damn quickly.

  “I’m still unclear on exactly what happened between my best friend and Zeke last night, but I’m pretty sure you can’t compare him rescuing her from a car accident to you carting me off in the middle of a conversation you weren’t even a part of.” The cutest little wrinkle formed in the middle of her forehead, and I wanted to brush my lips across it. “He was acting like a hero, but what you did was more along the lines of a villain.”

  My wolf almost went berserk at the possibility of my mate preferring Zeke over me. I held still, forcing my beast to remain within my skin until she was ready to meet him. Once he was no longer ready to tear across the street to rip Zeke’s throat out, and I had him back under control, I prowled closer to my mate. My lips curved up in a satisfied smirk when she held her ground, refusing to back down from me. There was only the slightest whiff of fear in her delicious scent. No matter how scared my mate thought she should be, she felt the pull between us the same as me, and it was stronger than her uneasiness with the situation. “You can kid yourself all you want, but Zeke would’ve done the same damn thing with Allegra if he’d had to.”

  “I find that difficult to believe,” she scoffed with a frown. “He’s the freaking sheriff. It’s not like he’s going to run around kidnapping women when his job is all about upholding the law.”

  I shrugged my shoulders, and my smile widened. “So what if he’s the sheriff? I’m the mayor of Timber Ridge, and that didn’t stop me from taking you out of his house.”

  Her blue eyes widened as her gaze swept down my tall body to take in the flannel shirt and faded jeans I’d put on after my run earlier. “You’re the mayor? You’ve got to be kidding me. Is this why I never heard much about Timber Ridge even though I moved to Stewart three months ago?” She paced back and forth in front of me, waving her hands in the air. “With you at the helm of this town, there are probably all sorts of illegal things going on that you need to keep quiet.”

  I barely held back the chuckle that rumbled up my chest at her rant. Pressing my lips together, I shook my head. “Nope, there’s no illegal shit going on in Timber Ridge that we need to hide.”

  We didn’t need to add crime to our collection of secrets. The fact that we were a town full of people who could shift into animals was more than enough to keep on the down low from the human world.

  “Oh, really?” She quirked a brow at me and tilted her head to the side. “What do you call kidnapping me then?”

  “I wouldn’t call it a kidnapping, that’s for damn sure.” I grinned when she parted those plump lips of hers to argue, hurrying to add, “And based on the lack of reactions from the sheriff and your best friend when they saw me carry you away, they didn’t think so either.”

  “Thanks for reminding me”—she marched past me—“that I have a bone to pick with Allegra. Just because she’s all loved up doesn’t mean she should let some strange guy haul me away like a sack of potatoes.”

  When her hand wrapped around the knob, I came up behind her and crowded her against the door. “There’s a flaw in your logic.”

  Her lungs expanded, her back brushing against my chest. She held perfectly still as she asked, “How so?”

  “I’m not just some strange guy.” I wound a stray lock of her hair around my finger and let it drop down her back. My wolf wanted to mark her bare neck, and my canines pressed against my gums as I rasped, “Your best friend already trusts Zeke, and he knows you’re safe with me because I’m his alpha.”

  “Alpha?” she echoed, twisting her head to meet my eyes. “Do you guys have a whole different vocabulary or something? Zeke wished me luck with his alpha, but I didn’t know what he meant.”

  I knew a few shifters besides my beta who’d mated humans, and I’d heard stories about how they’d broken the news to them. Learning from their experiences, I figured it was best to spit it out sooner rather than later. Otherwise, I was running the risk of her discovering my secret when I shifted in front of her without any warning, which was the worst-case scenario when it came to her accepting who and what I was. With no better choice, I said, “It’s fair to say shifters have our own language since we need words for things that don’t exist in the human world.”

  Her eyes widened, and the wrinkle popped up on her forehead again. “What in the ever-loving heck do you mea
n?”

  “The residents of Timber Ridge aren’t fully human,” I confessed, my muscles tensing as I waited for her reaction. “We’re able to shift into animal form.”

  3

  Larissa

  I blinked up at him before turning to face the door and letting my forehead drop against the hard surface. For a little bit there, I’d thought maybe Allegra had stumbled across an awesome town full of hot guys, and I was looking forward to visiting her on the regular. And that was after being kidnapped, which just went to show how good-looking these guys were.

  Zeke was attractive enough to make any woman look twice, but the guy who’d dared to snatch me out of his house was the one who called to me. He was a good nine to ten inches taller than me and had muscles on top of his muscles. His light brown hair was long enough for me to run my fingers through it, and his eyes were a rich chocolate brown. It really was too bad he was the one who caught my attention since he was completely out of touch with reality. And lucky me...I was trapped inside his house with him. “Why me?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but the guy who thought he was part animal decided to answer anyway. “Because you’re my fated mate.”

  “You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.” Squeezing my eyes shut, I lifted my head and banged it against the door again.

  Gently gripping my shoulder, he turned me to face him. Then he cupped the back of my head so his hand was protecting me from the door. “Stop, you’re going to hurt yourself.”