Page 7 of The Alpha's Forced Bride

Let it be me, I thought. Let me be the next name to be called. I just want to have somebody in my life. I just want to be happy.

Desire seemed to sting me right in a place that I didn't want to think about right now. But it was definitely a place I wanted to think about with a mate. I just wasn't sure what was going to happen. Did anyone notice me? Did anyone see what the ritual was doing? Why wasn't Regina talking anymore? What was she doing?

The wind blew, suddenly whipping around us like a fierce hurricane. We were consumed by nature, and in its consumption of us, we were at the very precipice of something new. Regina raised her arms in the air and shouted three words, “Kiara and Harvey!”

The wind quit its incessant circular motion immediately and flew toward me like a specter, like something that was about to haunt me.

That was when I saw him. He had dirty blond hair, a thick barreled chest with pronounced pecks, and olive skin that reminded me of sandy dunes. His sturdy torso made his core look impenetrable, and he was also tall—so much taller than me that I had to tilt my head back to look up at him, to look up at his glistening honey-walnut eyes and square jaw. He wore a pair of ruddy blue jeans and a tattered plaid shirt that was unbuttoned. Despite the detail of his appearance, I could tell that he was translucent because I could see Regina and my father's shocked faces staring at me right through this ghostly vision.

Was it a projection? Was this person supposed to be my mate? I reached out for him, feeling a sense of familiarity, arousal, and fear coursing through me. Once again, I felt the adrenaline flowing through my body; again, the incessant beat drummed and the thrumming returned between my thighs. Right then, the honey of his eyes turned to black, and he looked directly at me.

That was the sign of a demon. Panic took over as I recoiled and stumbled back, and then fell. My bottom hurt from where I hit the ground. I grabbed the grass around me, trying to scramble back even more, but his eyes appeared to follow me. It seemed like this ghost was ready to attach himself to me and follow me right to my grave.

Or maybe he would drive me there. Was this guy really supposed to be my mate?

A large fist came through the vision and broke it apart. The smoke swirled around the fist, making it look like a cloud of incense disappearing into the night.

Then, I saw my father standing above me with his arm outstretched. “You okay down there, sport?”

I reached for his hand instinctively and let him pull me up from the ground. I was shaking. I was shuddering. I was doing a lot of things. I was so disoriented that I couldn’t get my limbs to function properly. It felt like I had been running for miles and miles without my wolf legs, using my weaker human legs instead, and I was exhausted from the sensation of it. Regina ran up to us and grabbed my shoulders; she shook me and forced me to look at her before raising a cup to my lips.

I hoped it was water. Yes, it was water. Everything around me was clear as day, and yet it was night, well past midnight at this point. I wasn't sure how long I had been hypnotized or how long I had been staring at my alleged mate.

My ghostly, demonic-eyed mate.

Dad was fuming right beside me. He looked at Blake. “You can't be serious. She can't be mated to something like that.”

Something like that. He meant my mate, the man with the black eyes. I agreed with him.

Although I felt an attraction, I also felt a feeling of repulsion. It was wrong, perhaps even shameful. Blake and Troy approached us wearing equally serious expressions. They stood there for a moment, looking at each other as if they were speaking silently—as if they had their own little language between them.

Blake turned to my father. “What's done is done. The ritual just didn't work.” Troy nodded in agreement.

I stood there, feeling stunned all over again. Yet, my legs were working this time. My feet were moving me forward as Regina guided me by the hand back into the mansion, back to the large kitchen with a cushioned chair near a window overlooking the garden. The same garden that held the ritual that had mated me to a demon wolf.

Did the ritual truly not work, or had Blake not wanted it to work?

Chapter 3 - Harvey

Clancy and I were just trying to get our damn ducks in a row. The thing about trying to do this while being a wolf was that the ducks ran away whenever they got lined up. That was how it felt going through all the papers that Clancy had collected on the black market earlier this evening—like birds scattering away from a curious beast.

The time was just approaching midnight, and everything felt like it was eluding me. Trying to find a non-possessed wolf woman who was unattached and in the area seemed a lot more complicated than just stating it out loud as a wish. I didn't have any magical powers to make her appear in front of me. I wasn’t like my best friend.

So, I wasn't sure what else I could do. At least there was a list that ended at the bottom of the page. Since it wasn’t long, it wouldn’t take too much time to go through the names. Clancy had collected enough information about each woman so I could peruse the files like an analog dating profile.

Clancy sighed while hunching extra hard over my desk. “Please tell me we're not going to do this all night. We could do other things, you know.”

I stared at him over the top of a folder. “You don't have to stay here, you know.”

Maybe I sounded bitter, maybe I sounded ungrateful, but I just figured that my friend would want to sit and help me figure out how to save our pack. Instead, he seemed like he wanted to run off somewhere. In fact, he looked like his mind was wandering.

They had a strange sheen to them that told me he was stuck inside his own head, stuck inside with his demon, arguing about one thing or another. Maybe they were arguing about the power that they shared, the power of the demon that imbued him with the strength that he gave to our pack. Our healer. Our makeshift witch.

Clancy ultimately shook his head. “No, I'm with you until the end, and if the end means that the morning comes, then that's just the way it is.”

He added a little smirk to the end of his sentence, and then he went back to looking down at the files in front of him, shuffling through the disorganized mess. How was one supposed to organize something like this? It was strange and entertaining how Clancy’s demon could make him super straightforward or completely bewildered at the same time. But I assumed that was just the nature of being possessed, because that was just the way things were at this point.

A couple of photographs fell out of the files that Clancy was searching through. One of them caught my attention, drawing me from the chair near the fireplace toward the desk.

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