Page 1 of Bootleg Love

1

SIMONE

BABYLON, ALABAMA. 1923.

“Ican do this.” I let loose a breath to try to ease the tension lining my body. It does nothing so I take another. “I can do this.”

But still it feels like I can’t breathe.

The sweltering night closes in, thick with the sickly-sweet stench of magnolias and swampwater. I pace the confines of my stifling chambers draped in the pack's ancestral mating gown, an itchy confection of crushed velvet and moth-eaten lace.

My skin prickles, aware of the imminent blood moon straining against the horizon and the ravenous eyes of the pack awaiting my claiming. Pawing at my constricting bodice, I gasp for breath, memories swirling like muddy swamp water through my mind.

Mama's anguished cries, begging the pack to accept her strange, violet-eyed pup. The sting of pebbles hurled by jeering playmates. Whispers drifting behind shuttered windows of cursed blood and bad omens.

A perpetual outsider, until tonight.

Chanting swells beyond the cracked pane, ancient words imbued with power and threat.

They're coming.

Panic flutters against my ribs like a caged bird.

A gnarled fist pounds at the door before it bursts open, revealing the wizened face of Elder Bannon, eyes obscured behind his ceremonial hood. "It's time, girl. Everyone's waiting."

I lift my chin and step across the threshold into the soupy night.

There is no choice.

It’s simply my time.

Fairy lights flicker through the trees, illuminating a twisting path to the glade and the stone altar at its heart. My bare feet find the trail, soft loam giving way to jagged rock that bites my flesh. Pain is an old friend.

“We’re here,” the Elder growls at me, shoving me forward.

The ceremonial grounds are where my mother and my mother’s mother were claimed, like so many before them. As the hungry pack circles the primeval altar, their naked forms undulate under the blood moon's enthralling glow, casting sinister shadows across the ancient stone. The visceral chorus of yips and growls rises to a feverish crescendo, entwining with the seductive rhythm of the ceremonial drums.

Strong hands, adorned with onyx claws and silver signet rings, lift my trembling body onto the obsidian slab, still warm from the day's unforgiving sun. Jessup, my fated mate, looms over me, his chiseled visage obscured by a hood. His smile is a slash of alabaster in the darkness, canines glinting with primordial hunger.

"Mine." The word escapes his lips in a rumbling growl, heavy with dark promise.

With a fluid movement, he casts back his cowl, revealing eyes of molten amber, two predatory orbs searing into my very soul. His skin is a canvas of arcane sigils and twisting runes, painted in the ashes of gods long forgotten. Musky scent mingling with the heady perfume of incense and night-blooming jasmine.

The drums surge to a frantic tempo, whipping the pack into a lustful frenzy as they bay their encouragement. I surrender myself to the maelstrom of sensation, to the ecstasy of the claiming.

It is finally my time.

Jessup pulls me to my knees before the ancient altar, its surface gleaming darkly in the firelight. With shaking hands, I unlace my gown, baring myself to the night and the bestial gaze of the pack. The ritual words rasp in my ears, ancient, guttural, laced with forbidden power.

“Now it is time to join the mates!” the Elder announces as Jessup steps up to my side.

He draws the ceremonial blade across my palm, splitting skin and fate. My blood smokes as it hits the altar, sizzling like damnation. The chanting rises to screams. He seizes my hair, forcing his mouth to mine in a savage kiss that floods me with coppery heat.

Power, dark and ecstatic, rips through my body.

But something is wrong.

Very wrong.

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