Divided Loyalties-epub Read Free Page A

morning.” The man paused, frowned, and then said, “My name is Hayden. The male with me is Tanner, my brother.”
    Then he walked outside, leaving her alone.
    She sagged into herself and wrapped her arms around her middle.
    You know how to find trouble, don’t you?
     
    ****
     
    Hayden stepped outside and looked up at the dark sky. His mate was afraid of the dark. Not just afraid, terrified, as though something very bad had happened to her when the lights went out. He knew that because he’d seen that type of fear before, once with Addyson, the Pack Scribe, who’d spent about one hundred years as the Onyx’s captive before she arrived in Ashwood Falls.
    He also seen it in his mother the day his father died.
    Shaking out of his thoughts before he was sucked into the past without the ability to come back from it, he went to search for Tanner.
    He found his brother a few feet away, staring at the wreck of homes and other buildings. “This looks worse than MoonRiver did.”
    Hayden nodded. They didn’t call MoonRiver their den anymore. Their den was now Ashwood Falls. MoonRiver had died with its Alpha. When their mother, Luna, took on the Alpha powers, she changed everything, even the location of the den.
    “That’s because Travis burned eighty percent of the den down.”
    Tanner nodded. “To keep the mutant virus from spreading.”
    Travis Hunter was the former Alpha of Hunter Ridge—the same den they stood in now—and now mated to Shayna, the adopted sister of Blaine, the Ashwood’s leopard Alpha. The couple made quite a pair. No one had thought that a wolf and a tiger could ever be mates, but Shay and Travis were a bonded pair and so in love it made Hayden’s teeth hurt to be around them.
    “Can you clean up most of the clutter? I mean put it in one pile or something.” Hayden hated messes and disorganization. If he had to be here for God knew how long, he wanted it halfway organized. If that was at all possible.
    Tanner laughed. “I’ll do it in the morning when the light is better. Your OCD is worse than Mom’s.”
    Hayden growled, but he felt his lips rise in a grin. “Go rest. I’ll take the first watch.”
    Tanner slapped him on the shoulder as he moved toward the house Hayden had placed Christa in. He had to fight the urge to not growl at his brother for being so close to Christa.
    Yeah, Hayden was in trouble. Christa was his. He’d known the moment he saw her at Shield. His wolf paced and nudged him to claim her, hard. And he’d have her as soon as this screwed-up shit with Shield was straightened out.
    First, he’d have to gain her trust and make her see the truth.
     
     

 

Chapter Three
     
     
    Ana must have been staring at the family photo for hours. At least that’s what it seemed like, even though she’d arrived at Blaine and his mates’ home fifteen minutes ago.
    The Alpha family home.
    The one she should have grown up in, but didn’t, thanks to Felix Darwin, the bastard Alpha of the rogue Onyx Pack and the same male trying to destroy so many shifter communities and innocent lives. The one she believed was her father until a few weeks ago. That was when she had left the only life she’d known for a new one within a new Pack where her real family lived.
    The family in the photo was hers, at least should have been hers. Longing filled her, making her chest ache and her eyes burn. The three males, Keegan, Blaine, and Alec, circled a dark-haired female. Keegan, her biological father, stood at the female’s back, hands resting on her shoulders.
    The female was her mother. Cate. Ana’s nose tingled and vision blurred. Taking a deep breath, she blinked the tears away. She would not cry, damn it.
    Ana wasn’t as sad as she was angry. She’d missed out on so much of life because Felix stole her away her parents and her brothers. Now she had thirty-eight years to catch up on.
    She reached out and brushed a finger over Cate’s smiling face. The only difference in their looks was Cate