Page 1 of The Silent Mate

1

ARIA

When my mother died two months ago, a piece of my father died too. That’s the sad thing about mates. One can’t live without the other. Not really. Not meaningfully.

If my mother was still alive, maybe Dad would’ve been strong enough to fight. Instead, he bent the knee and offered his loyalty–and our entire pack’s loyalty–to a monster. To the infamously cruel alpha of theIntonat NoctePack.

The negotiations took place two nights ago, shortly after theIntonat NoctePack stormed our territory under the cover of darkness. My small, peacekeeping pack never stood a chance, and Dad surrendered to save our friends and family.

It made me sick.

I glared up at the sprawling mansion and wrinkled my nose. It looked more like a castle than a home.Goddess,why the hell did this bastard feel the need to conquer anyone when he owned something like this?

“Aria,” Dad warned, his voice a low, hoarse grumble. “Don’t look so disgusted.”

I hadn’t realized I’d stopped walking in the middle of the cobblestone drive to gawk at theIntonat Noctecompound. It was unlike anything I’d seen before.

Born into theAurorasPack, I was accustomed to life without extravagance. We were a small pack of thirty-two members. My mother homeschooled me throughout my youth, and my father taught me to shift and fight. I was training to become a nurse under our pack’s old doctor. A simple existence, yes, but I had everything I needed.

Now, twenty years later, one greedy, power-hungry alpha had ruined it all.

“Sorry,” I muttered, averting my eyes before anyone could witness my revulsion. “I just don’t understand why I had to come.”

The rest of our pack—ouroldpack—had been allowed to stay at home. Our new Alpha, Alpha Roman, didn’t seem to care where we lived, so long as we paid homage to him with quarterly taxes and answered his summons when needed.

Dad shot me a weary look. Dark circles sagged beneath his blue eyes, duller than I’d seen them since Mom’s death. He looked like he’d aged a lifetime in the span of two days.

“I told you. When Alpha Roman heard I had a daughter, he wanted to meet you,” he explained for the third time that morning, rubbing at his patchy beard.

He was hiding something. He’d never been a very good liar, and I’d learned to read the signs when I was a girl.

He could barely hold my gaze, fidgeting like a nervous boy rather than a fifty year old alpha-male. Tension lined his shoulders, and I could sense the anxiety rolling off of him in waves through the bond between alpha and subject—father and daughter. Something wasverywrong.

My chest tightened, further restricting the air that I struggled to pull into my lungs. I didn’t push him any further as we walked toward the front door and knocked to announce our arrival.

Of course, theIntonat NoctePack already knew we were there. They’d likely been tracking our movements throughout our entire journey to the center of their territory. Although we hadn’t seen anyone, manorwolf, since we arrived, I felt their eyes following us.

Heavy footsteps sounded behind the iron arch door, and I subtly stepped behind my father’s shoulders. Once, his broad frame might’ve been able to completely obscure me from view. Now, his posture exposed his growing frailty.

The door opened with a creak, and I peeked around Dad’s shoulder to find a huge warrior staring down at us. He had short blonde hair, buzzed to the scalp, and a slightly crooked jaw.

The man’s eyes, dark as a midnight sky, flickered between me and my father, seemingly unimpressed. “You’re Mason Knox?”

My fingers curled into fists at my sides.Alpha Mason Knox,I wanted to correct him, but my father wasn’t an alpha anymore. He’d relinquished that title the moment he bowed his head to another.

Dad nodded. “And this is my daughter, Aria.”

The brute in the doorway appraised me, his eyes lingering for a moment longer than necessary, before stepping aside. “Come in. Alpha Roman is expecting you.”

I felt his lecherous gaze trail after me as we entered the pack house, barely concealing a shudder. The interior of the mansion was as foreboding as the exterior. With gray walls and dark decorations, I felt like I’d stepped back in time.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. As I’d learned in myHistory of the North American Packsclasses, theIntonat NoctePack was one of the four founding packs in the northern continent. Theirhistory spanned centuries, extending back to the first werewolf settlers that reached the Canadian shores from Scandinavia.

“Through here,” the man barked, leading us deeper into the castle.

With wide eyes, I took in every little detail. Massive, six-foot-tall portraits of old alphas and lunas glared blankly ahead, and I swore their eyes moved as I hurried behind my father. Wearing a pair of jeans and a pretty white blouse, I felt horribly out of place amongst the architecture and decorations.

As the warrior led us through the halls, the knots in my gut tightened. Something sparked to life in my blood, an instinctual urge to travel further into the compound. Unlike anything I’d ever felt before…

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