Red River (Pack 2)

Prologue

“You’re only twenty-three. Give it time.”

Wesley Stone reached for the volume dial on the cracked dashboard and turned it to the right. Maybe if he could make the music loud enough, it’d drown out the voice in his head.

“You’re only twenty-three. Give it time.”

Time for what? There weren’t any other Alpha wolves in the Purple Sky pack, so everyone knew Wesley would eventually be leading them. What exactly were they waiting for?

“You’re only twenty-three. Give it time.”

Unfortunately, the sound in his head was louder than any rock song. He turned the knob again. He could concede that twenty-three was young to be a pack Alpha, but it wasn’t too young. And his uncle Paul was already sixty, well past the age when Alphas normally handed over the reins. It was time for him to transition leadership to Wesley.

“You’re only twenty-three. Give it time.”

He raised the volume and wished, not for the first time, that his old Civic had a better sound system. Wesley had spent three hours a day in that car during the four years he had driven back and forth to the nearest college. Getting a degree had been his uncle’s idea. He had said it would give Wesley extra credibility, but very few people in their small pack went to college, so they weren’t impressed with Wesley’s hard work and newfound knowledge about environmental engineering.

“You’re only twenty-three. Give it time.”

Memories piled up of those long days: waking up early, driving away from his pack and the woods into a concrete jungle, attending classes in huge buildings, holing up by himself in the musty library, and then driving home and falling into bed exhausted, only to do it all again the next day. And for what? If anything, the time away had put even more distance between him and the shifters he should be leading.

“You’re only twenty-three. Give it time.”

Once Wesley was truly their Alpha, they were certain to see his strength, his devotion, his skill in leading them, and they’d know the mark on his skin didn’t matter. Maybe then the pack would respect him.

“You’re only twenty-three. Give it time.”

Of course, for Wesley to be Alpha, his uncle would first have to step down. At six feet, one inch in height with a muscular one hundred eighty-five pound frame, Wesley had the advantage of size and youth over his uncle. If the man kept clinging to the position, Wesley could challenge him for it and he was bound to win. But at what cost?

His uncle, though not as strong as he had been during his youth, was a good Alpha and he had always treated Wesley well. His mother would be horrified if he went against her beloved brother, and the pack was already wary of Wesley, so taking the position by force wasn’t likely to endear him to them. Winning in a challenge against his uncle might earn him the position of Alpha, but he’d lose the respect of everyone who mattered, himself included. He had no options, no solutions. He was stuck waiting.

“You’re only twenty-three. Give it time.”

The radio knob he had turned yet again, snapped off in his hand.

“Dammit!” Wesley yelled in the empty car.

The music was already on full blast so he couldn’t hear himself, but his throat felt the strain. For that matter, so did the rest of him. His heart raced, his lungs worked overtime, and his muscles stretched so tightly they could have snapped at any moment. He needed a way to release the tension and frustration, and when he glanced out the windshield at the streets he had been blindly driving past in his effort to put space between himself and the maddening conversation he’d had with his uncle, he found the perfect solution: a human bar.

Most shifters had fated mates, but Alpha wolves needed to focus on their pack, not a mate, so instead of settling down with one wolf, they gave their energy to their pack and sated their bodies with shifters who weren’t yet mated. Wesley had a mirror so he knew he was attractive and there had been no shortage of admiring glances and come-ons from the humans at his school, but he hadn’t been receptive to their advances because he dedicated all his remaining free time and energy into socializing with his pack. Unfortunately, the shifters who should have been falling all over themselves to get attention from an Alpha gave him a wide berth because of the scar he’d carried since birth. As he jerked the wheel and skidded into the parking lot, the last thing Wesley wanted was to focus on wolves who held him at arm’s length.

The scar, though large—the oddly textured skin bisected his stomach from just under his bellybutton to the top of his groin—didn’t keep him from shifting quicker than others, running faster, or being stronger. When he’d scuffled with other wolves as a youth, he had always come out on top, demonstrating his strength and proving that his skin anomaly should be irrelevant. But shifters were animals as well as people, and animals perceived an abnormality as a weakness, so to them, the scar mattered.