Desired by the Alpha (Wolf Destiny Book 1) Read Free Page A

a solid house. Could last for decades more without too much upkeep.  
    “Why would you want to go back?” her mother had asked her. “What are your plans?”
    The only thing Olivia really wanted to do was fling herself into her mother’s arms and cry. All she had ever wanted was to be a dancer. It had never even occurred to her that her dream might not work out the way she planned. There was no backup plan.  
    And now she had no idea what to do next.  
    “I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out,” Olivia told her, trying to sound upbeat and positive.  
    A clean slate was supposed to be a good thing, right? There was room for endless possibilities. But right now, it seemed like there was a big, scary, gaping void in front of her, full of fear instead of promise.  
    About to shrug her coat off, Olivia got up and went back to the front door instead. There was an endless amount of time to sit around and figure out what to do with the rest of her life.  
    But she hadn’t gone out to the woods in ten years, not even when she visited her parents after moving to New York to continue dancing. She didn’t do anything more than gaze at them from the window of her old bedroom before she went to sleep.  
    Facing the woods now, her spirit reawakened for the first time in a very long while.  
    More people knew about werewolves now, at least more than would admit it when she was a teenager. Going alone wasn’t without risks, of course, but the sun hadn’t set yet. And she was used to going it alone.  
    When her boyfriend had dumped her, she was completely blindsided. She had been so in love with him, it never even crossed her mind that he might not have felt the same way.  
    Ron was always telling her he loved her. Why would someone say it if they didn’t mean it?  
    The two of them had been together almost from the moment she had joined Ballet Manhattan and met him. Her life became complete, a whirlwind of dancing, sex and fun.
    Sure, they weren’t married, but after four years together their lives were so entwined they might as well have been.  
    Until her fall. Suddenly Ron became distant when they were together, which was far less often than normal.
    She didn’t want to admit it, but the change in him had come as soon as she stopped dancing and started eating like a normal person. Or rather, a normal person that had been starving herself for a long time and had a lot of years to catch up on.
    She discovered Ron had been cheating on her with another dancer, and then she found out it was her understudy. He didn’t even have the decency to face her and tell her it was over. Olivia came home one evening after a difficult physiotherapy session to find the few things that he kept in her apartment were gone. A brief, cowardly note was waiting for her on the kitchen table.  

    I’ve met someone else.

    All the other words he had scratched out hurriedly on the torn scrap of paper disappeared after she got to those ones. They weren’t even true, Ron had known the other woman longer, but they were burned into her memory nonetheless and all the hurt and anger she felt became contained in them. They haunted her.  
    The day he left his terrible note, he hadn’t taken Olivia to physio like he usually did. She didn’t think much of it when he said he had to work. Ron had gone on the company tour without her, leaving her behind to cope with her injury without his help, and it had been a great boost to his career.  
    While she had been struggling to learn how to walk again, he had gone to her apartment, using the key she gave him to get in, and left her a note. A note. Four years spent together and not even a face-to-face goodbye. It made her burn with anger even now.
    They hadn’t seen each other since. It had taken more willpower than Olivia thought she had to keep from contacting him. Some nights were so hard she would ask a friend to come over and take her phone away so she wouldn’t cave in and text him.