Their Alpha Bitch

Their Alpha Bitch

     Growing up amidst one of the largest, most powerful wolf shifter packs in North America had prepared Kenna for almost anything...but not for the untimely deaths of her aunt and uncle, alphas of the Dumont pack. Hurrying home from Seattle to find her adoptive aunt on her deathbed was hard enough...but hearing her final request was worse.

They expected her to do
what?
Aunt Maggie hadn't really just made her promise to take her three hulking, gorgeous sons as mates...had she? Oh, no way could they expect that. She wasn't a
were
...her mates would outlive her by a couple hundred years! And there was no way in hell Kenna could handle three hot men...especially men that size!

Not even in her wildest fantasies...

Their Alpha Bitch

Fran Lee

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Their Alpha Bitch

Copyright © 2014 Fran Lee

Electronic book publication September 2014

Editor: F. Romney

Cover design: Oliver Hill

With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the copyright owner.

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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental.

Dedication

To my dear friends, Laurann Dohner, Jaid Black, Katalina Leon, Amber Skyze, Syneca Featherstone, Regina Carlysle, and Anny Cook...you've lifted me up when times were bad...and you've come to my rescue time and again. God bless each and every one of you.

And special thanks to Rebecca Hill, who pounded into this old head that saying something thirty-five times does not make it better.

Prologue

“I got here as quickly as I could, Aunt Maggie…” Kenna dumped her handbag and gloves onto the chair beside the bed, and reached for the woman’s pale, cold hands. “I dropped everything and left the moment Gant called.” She stared into the older woman’s fathomless dark eyes, and fought back tears.

How can this be happening?
She can’t be dying. I won’t let her die!

At a hundred-forty-something, Magdalena Dumont had looked no older than 40, with her dark hair and sparkling smile. But that smile was absent now, her cheeks were sunken and grey and the glittering liveliness in her eyes had faded.

Impossible!

“You’re going to be fine…you still have so many years left…”

Her words died in her throat as the woman slowly shook her head and whispered, “There is no life without Peter, child. He is waiting for me.” Her eyes dropped shut for a long moment, then opened again to pin Kenna’s. “I only waited until you came.” Her tongue touched dry lips and she struggled for breath. “I know this is a great deal to ask…but I must have your promise, child.” Another rattling intake of air.

“Don’t try to talk…you'll tire yourself…” Kenna clutched the thin hand between hers and sank to her knees beside the bed, her tears wetting her cold cheeks.

“I should have discussed this with you long ago…but…” she coughed softly, and Kenna’s throat tightened. “But now that I have lost Peter, there is not enough time left to make plans for the future…” The frail voice caught, and she fought for breath to finish. “Forgive me, child…but it is far past time to ask you this…”

Kenna felt the woman’s thin fingers close tightly around hers, and she swallowed the hard lump that rose in the back of her throat. “Anything, Aunt Maggie…I’ll do whatever you ask. I owe you so very much…” Numb fear and pain would have made her promise anything at that moment, without thinking through such an open-ended promise.

Before realizing what Magdalena
Dumont might ask of her…

She had to lean down to catch the final weak whispers, and then the hand in hers went limp, and Kenna felt as if all the air in the darkened room had been sucked out. She felt as if she were going to faint dead away.

Lifting her eyes to the intense faces of the three big men who surrounded the bed, she felt the world slipping away into darkness…

Chapter One

The swirling lethargy cleared slowly. Kenna blinked at the vaulted log ceiling in confusion, wondering why she was lying on the carpet. Foggy thoughts drifted through her mind.

Something I
just promised to do…

The woman who had raised her after her parents’ deaths…
had just died
.

Aunt Maggie…

She sat up with a cry of anguish, clawing her way past the big body that was bent over her where she lay¸ fighting off the strong hands that were easing her to an upright position. Arms around her waist held her back from the bed as she tried desperately to touch the slowly disintegrating body as if that would keep it from disappearing into nothingness, its vital spirit gone.

“She‘s really gone…” her voice choked on the words.

Oh, God! What have I just agreed to?

“You know that she couldn’t have lived more than a few days after Dad’s death. She wouldn’t want you to grieve.” Gant’s deep voice was muffled by the pale blonde hair at her temple as his warm breath brushed her skin.

Another body pressed close against her side, and arms slipped gently around her ribs. “She only held on until you arrived. She refused to go before she spoke with you.” Dune’s gruff voice came from behind her shoulder. Warm breath tickled the back of her neck.

Despite the comforting feel of being held close, Kenna shoved at their hands until they released her, and allowed her to move away from them. She turned away from the rumpled bed and the empty little pile of night clothes that was all that remained of the woman that had raised her.

Life was so fleeting…
but not for shifters
. Uncle Pete and Aunt Maggie should have had another century or more to live and love.

But how could these two loving people have been swept from her life so early? Their lives should have continued far beyond this…far beyond the normal life spans of humans. Only a finite number of things could end a wolf’s life. And Uncle Pete and Aunt Maggie had bound their lives together. One could not go on without the other.

Her swimming eyes lifted to Gant’s solemn face. “How did this happen? What…who…
killed
…Uncle Pete?” Because she damn well knew that a werewolf in his prime didn’t just up and die of natural causes.

Gant’s huge fists clenched and slowly opened. “Vincent Draga challenged him again for pack supremacy. When he couldn’t win by strength, he chose to use poison. He dipped his claws into wolf's bane. Dad would have recovered from anything Vincent could have thrown at him, except that.”

“And so Vincent is the new pack alpha?” Her heart caught painfully, thinking about the large, vicious male that had coveted leadership of the Dumont pack for so many years. The bastard had made her skin crawl, the way he always looked at her. He had tried many times to challenge, but had never succeeded.
Until now.

Mace’s voice was deep and rough as he answered her question from where he stood, taut and feral-looking as he leaned against the wall beside the heavy drapes. “The fucking coward ran. We would have torn the bastard to pieces…”

She blinked at the three tall, intimidating men, her mind swimming as she assimilated exactly why her presence had been required tonight. The very air swirled with hot pheromone magik as her head grew light and dizzy. Aunt Maggie’s impassioned request, whispered on her death bed, was like a death knell to her independence and her freedom. And despite her ingenuous promise to agree to her dying aunt’s wishes, she was having serious second thoughts…

* * * * *

Kenna DeWolf had known for many years that Magdalena and Peter Dumont were not her true aunt and uncle, but she’d always referred to them as such. They had been very close to her parents, and when Kenna had been orphaned by that horrible fire, the Dumonts had taken her in and raised her as one of their own. She’d been a member of their extended “family” for over twenty years. She had grown up protected and sheltered by them, and they were the only family she’d ever known.

Until three years ago.

She’d left their home for the first time three years back, after one of the hot-blooded men in the close-knit community around the Dumont compound had made it very clear that he intended to take their relationship beyond where she was willing to take it. Kenna hadn’t wanted to allow herself to be “claimed” by Aaron Kennard and his brothers. The bastard had chosen to try to carry her off while Gant, Mace, and Dune were in Manitoba on business. Uncle Pete had discovered their plan and had sent them off with a double barrel of buckshot. Even though it wouldn't have killed them, it would have hurt like the devil.

She’d high-tailed it out of the relative safety of her protected life and had fled to Seattle, where she’d found a decent job and had managed to get by on her own. She’d maintained contact with the Dumonts, though. Cards on birthdays and holidays. Phone calls every Sunday night.

As she thought back to her childhood among the Dumont pack, a wave of hollow pain washed over her. Her totally idyllic, pampered existence now rose up to nip at her anguished thoughts.

She had lived the life of a protected human child amidst one of the biggest, most feared packs of wolf shifters in North America.

Things that other children thought of as myths and fairy tales were a reality for me.

Shortly after Kenna had come to live with them, Aunt Maggie had taken the child aside and had explained gently that the Dumonts and their extended family were “special” folk…that they had special “magikal” powers that allowed them to live far longer, and even to change their shapes. Of course, that oversimplified explanation was the easiest way to tell the child why she had seen Mace shift into his wolf form during a play fight when they all thought Kenna was fast asleep in her bed.

The child had mentioned her funny “dream” to Magdalena at breakfast the following morning, and the wary looks that went round the table had made it impossible to ignore the situation. So four-year-old Kenna had learned that mythical creatures like werewolves did, indeed, exist. But there were strict rules to follow while living with the Dumonts…and one of them was that she must not keep asking her adoptive cousins to “turn into big dogs” just to entertain her.

Growing up in the midst of a large pack of hot-headed, hot-blooded shifters had also meant that the child needed to understand that it was not a good idea to become too familiar with the other young men that lived within the Dumont compound, and close by.

Kenna had learned that the hard way when one of her “second cousins” had attempted to “claim” her at a family picnic, and Dune, Mace and Gant had been hard-pressed to
talk
the eager young shifter out of forcing his suit on the little female who had just turned fourteen and was too damn curious about kissing and petting. The excited young wolf had insisted on carrying her away to the barn for a quick coupling that her protective cousins had barely prevented.

That had certainly been enlightening.

And scary as hell when Mace and the youth had shifted and circled one another, snarling and biting until Gant had stopped them with a huge hand on each lifted ruff, dragging the two apart before anyone got seriously hurt. That was when Kenna had seen how massive, delicious, and buff her
were
protectors were. Mace was buck naked when he shifted back to his human form, and as hard as a fence post. Gant had tossed him a horse blanket when he’d noticed where Kenna’s pie-plate eyes had locked, muttering something about her being “too damn young for this shit”

Living in a mountain compound over two hundred miles from the closest city had made formal education rather tricky. To facilitate the modern curriculum that Kenna would require, Uncle Pete had installed a satellite dish and Aunt Maggie had utilized the Internet to home-school the child. Needless to say, such isolation from the outside world had put Kenna in a bit of an emotional bind when she’d first left the compound, but she’d managed to pick up enough general knowledge of city life and how “normal” folks lived to be able to scrape by.