Page 5 of Into the Grasslands

“I hope you enjoy your time withyourAlpha before he can no longer feed you, secure the pack’s borders, and grows too weak to hold his title, these lands, and your people safely.”

One of the six started to cry and stood as if she might leave until Aiden barked out a command at her. “Sit down!”

“I have a pup to think of,” she argued back in a quiet voice as she sat. I felt for her. She had come willingly to this charade though. Her bed had been made with that choice too. A couple generations removed was all it took for the women of the pack to forget what happened to an Alpha’s harem when he was ousted from a pack for weakening their ranks. They were cast out, left to drift as lone wolves until they were taken, claimed against their will, or simply used up by rogues.

“Get her out of here!” Aiden demanded of Avery while he glared at me as though I was the one in the wrong. The bastard was really going to do it.

“What in the hell happened to the Aiden I used to know? Where did that man go? All I see is a selfish boy before me now, who is power hungry and allowing his greed to supersede the importance of what he must do for his pack.” I spun on my heel and walked toward the doors, but before Avery could put a hand on me to guide us out of the throne room, I turned back one last time. “You have just doomedyourpack.”

“It is your pack too and you’ll never allow that to happen.”

I shook my head as I glanced around the room and made eye contact with everyone who stood there before I spoke. “With this rejection, I am being forced into exile on Mirage Island. That makes me part of their pack now. I no longer belong to this pack, nor do I belong to you. I hope your decision sits well with you, and your pack, as everything falls apart. You damned our union, the Sky Gods, and your own pack. And for what?”

I never did get an answer to that question because Avery pulled me free from the room before Aiden could explode in a vicious temper tantrum. I heard things being thrown and overturned in there, and while a small part of me worried for the safety of the females who were present, the other part knew that it was no longer my problem to be concerned for them.

They all should have known the consequences of what they were doing before they agreed to it. As power hungry as Aiden seemed to have grown in my absence, I knew one thing for sure, he would never force any of them to be with him. That was a decision they made on their own and they were left to live with the consequences of his actions

Chapter 3

Deceiver

AIDEN

The throne roomclosed in on me and stole the very air from my lungs. I stood there and stared angrily at the door that shut behind my brother and my childhood friend.

Nika.

I hadn’t seen her in nearly three years, since she left for school. After her parents passed away, there was no need for her to come back to the pack. I closed my eyes and imprinted that initial image in my memories. Her long, brown hair flowed down her back in a waterfall of loose curls. Her warm, honey eyes appeared almost golden in the lighting of the throne room. Her body made my own hum with excitement that I had never felt before as she confirmed what my father had long thought would come to pass. Nika was meant to be my mate. She was my mate.

When my father passed the Alpha crown to me, so to speak, it was because he knew Nika would come home to the pack soon to take her place by my side as my Luna. She was supposed to have another year of college, since she had only been gone for three. I was supposed to have another year to explore others and live a little. What good was being Alpha if you never got to enjoy life?

“Be good to her, Aiden.”My father used to say to me whenever Nika was around, or someone brought her up.

“Be ready for her, Aiden.”He told me before he left on this last trip. My father’s Beta, Raiden, had been paired with the daughter of an Alpha from another pack. Trinity. Nika’s mom was a beautiful wolf and rivaled my mother in poise and grace. The fact that Trinity descended from a strong Alpha line was why father always thought their daughter would one day be my Luna. If not mine, then definitely someone else’s because Nika took after her mother in every way except that she was also a fierce warrior, thanks to her father’s stalwart training.

My father had not been wrong. Nika was my mate. He hadn’t warned me that she would be coming back from university early. “Did she even graduate?” I asked out loud.

“With honors.” One of the men still in the room answered.

“How do you know that?”

“It was in the update your father sent two weeks ago. He asked that you attend Nika’s mini graduation, since she no longer had family to do so.”

My head snapped around. “I never received any such message.” How in the hell had my pack mates received a message from my father that was meant for me, yet I didn’t get it at all? Something didn’t add up. A sick feeling unsettled my stomach as I thought about the fact that no one had been there for Nika to celebrate with her.

Then it finally sunk in that she had the mate dream. That meant she had gone through her final transition alone instead of being celebrated with the pack. Had she come home to do so, she still would have found out about my harem and there was no way she would have agreed with me keeping them while she went back to school. I hadn’t even prepared or contacted her about the plans to be here for her final transition though. It was a rite of passage for all female shifters, and she missed out on it. As her Alpha, it was my job to insist that she be with the packduring that important milestone and I hadn’t even remembered she existed until she showed up in the throne room.

“Aiden?” Kyla called out from behind me. She had been my first volunteer as a harem member. In fact, she was the female who put the idea in my head that a harem would be just the thing to revolutionize the pack, since my father left it to me before I found my mate. At first, I had balked at the idea, having heard too many stories about what it was like in generations past when females were forced to partake, and males fought for rights to the mates who were dishonoring them by being with another male.

The way Kyla put it, if I had volunteers, it was the female’s choice to be with me. Years ago, when harems had been used, it was to keep alphas from going crazy after their mate died, or in the case that they didn’t have a mate. It worked for many to keep the power base leveled out for low-to-mid-level packs, but with advancing technology and the ability to travel between packs to search out mates, the hardship didn’t really exist any longer.

That didn’t mean the thought of having a harem of women at my beck and call until my mate came back to the pack didn’t appeal to me. The one thing I never thought through was the problems it might cause formymate later on. She might have had a point about the respect thing. I could imagine Kyla, and maybe a couple other females, giving my Luna a hard time for usurping their place by my side. I glanced around with wary eyes at the people who still stood around the throne room.

How the hell had I not received a message from my father when the rest of my council had been sent the same one?

“Aiden!” Kyla’s tone demanded that I give her my undivided attention. I spun and growled at her. She might be my highest ranked harem girl, but that didn’t mean she got to tell me what to do in my own fucking throne room. In my own home. In my fucking pack.

“You were all asked if this was what you wanted,” I growled as I took in each female who sat near the Alpha and Luna’s thrones that had been placed in the room four generations ago.

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