Loyal to His Mate (Shadow World Shifters Book 1) Read online

  Loyal to His Mate

  Shadow World Shifters

  Haley Weir

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Also by Haley Weir

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Peyton

  The graduation ceremony was entirely underwhelming, but I guess that’s what you got when you lived in such a small town as Rye in East Sussex. When I told people that I lived just two hours outside of London, most of them immediately assumed that I was a city girl, and that Rye was some hip blend of city architecture and sprawling mist-ridden hills. They were wrong on both counts.

  Rye was a small, countryside town that felt like it had fallen back in time about a hundred years. There was nothing to do here except skip stones on the lake if you were a kid and hang out at the local pub if you were an adult. Fortunately the legal drinking age was eighteen, so I opted for the pub now. Not that I was a fixture at the bar, just that sometimes I needed a place to sit and think and have a cold drink while I mulled over how much I wished my mother was still around. My father was great, and we got along fabulously. But it still wasn’t the same as having a mom. I know my dad tried, and I was completely content with it just being the two of us in our small little house. But it was times like these, after just having graduated high school and getting ready to head off to university, that I wished mom was here to see me.

  I picked up my cap and gown and tossed it over my shoulder to carry on the walk home. Dad had to leave the ceremony early, right after I had walked across the stage. He said it was something to do with “business” but since he only worked at the market, I didn’t see what could possibly be that urgent. If didn’t matter though, because we were planning to spend the rest of the evening together in celebration.

  I walked up to the front door of our house and wrapped my fingers around the handle, ready to turn the cool, metal knob and let myself in. But I stopped and hesitated when I heard voices coming from inside. There should have only been one voice there that I heard. No one ever came to visit us, mostly because neither of us had very many friends, but also because people thought that this cool, old building was haunted. I was getting ready to go inside anyway and see who was talking with my father, but something about the other man’s voice made me freeze in place.

  “I told you, Ryland,” the gruff voice said as he addressed my father. “This isn’t a game. The time to act is now. If you don’t do something soon, you’ll quicky find that there is someone else who will do it for you.”

  It wasn’t the words that the man said which caused me to grab the handle and pull the door open with so much force that it nearly hit the wall. It was the tone of his voice. That sounded like a threat, and here in our quiet hometown, there were no threats. Granted, there were the occasional strange incidents, but not threats.

  As soon as I set foot inside my house, the stranger turned abruptly to look at me. He didn’t look as scary as he had sounded like from outside. Still, he wasn’t a friend—that much I could tell.

  “Peyton,” my father said when he saw me come in.

  He looked both worried and angry, but not at me.

  “Hi dad,” I said as I stared down the other guy and tipped my head in his direction. “Who is this?”

  “Just an old friend,” my dad said.

  He was a bad liar.

  “He was just leaving.”

  My father headed straight to the door and took the handle from me as he held it and motioned for the other man to leave.

  “Thanks again for stopping by,” he said with a forced, polite smile.

  The other guy looked confused. He looked at me with a stare that made me feel a little bit like I might be his next meal. It was unnerving to say the least. Then he looked at my dad and huffed as he walked to the door.

  “Remember what I told you, Ryland,” he said as he glared at my father before stepping out of the house.

  “Okay,” I said as soon as my father had closed the door. “That was definitely not an old friend. Spill it; who was that guy?”

  “No one of any importance,” he said as he shook his head and walked toward me with open arms. “I’m sorry that I had to leave the ceremony early, but I have a great idea to make it up to you.”

  He smiled. My father’s smile was always a contagious one—even if he was just trying to change the subject.

  “There’s a new performance at the theatre and I want to take you tomorrow night in celebration of your graduation. What do you say?”

  “Sounds fun,” I answered. “I love live theatre.”

  “Perfect,” he beamed with satisfaction. “You’re eighteen now and you’re off to university soon. I want to spend as much time with you as I possibly can.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. “But what about work? I don’t want you getting in trouble with any of your customers again.”

  I could tell by my father’s look of confusion at my remark, that the man who was just here wasn’t a customer. I was bound and determined to narrow down who the guy was and what he wanted with my father.

  “Work can wait for a night. It’s not as if there’s going to be a giant rush on the market in one night.”

  “You never know,” I teased. “What if everyone in town runs out of potatoes at once, on the same night that everyone is planning to make potato soup?”

  My dad laughed and rustled my long, dark hair until it got knotted around his knuckles.

  “You know, someday you’re going to steal a heart with this beautiful hair and those big, brown eyes of yours,” he smiled. There was a sadness behind his smile that I hadn’t noticed before and I wondered if he saw pieces of my mother in me that caused him anguish.

  “Nah,” I said in an attempt to lighten the mood. “If I’ve made it more than eighteen years without a guy, I’m pretty sure I don’t need one.”

  He frowned.

  “I want you to find someone that will make you happy, and that will protect you and keep you safe.”

  “Why would I need anyone for that?” I asked with a smile. “I’ve got you.”

  There was that smile again—the one that rested on his face like a placeholder so that a more somber look didn’t take over.

  “It’s been a long day and I’m pretty tired,” I said. “I’m going to head up to bed.”

  My father gave me a kiss on the cheek and told me goodnight as I climbed the narrow staircase to my bedroom. I got distracted by thoughts of university, and thoughts of a fun night in town tomorrow with my dad. Thoughts about the stranger in our house earlier dissipated as I laid my head down onto my pillow.

  Besides, who in the world would want to threaten my dad? He was a decent guy that everyone in our small town seemed to look up to. He was a humble business owner, and a good father. There were no enemies that he had ever had in his life as far as I was aware of. I was sure that I had overthought the whole thing, and that it was probably just some neighbor having a bad day, or an old acquaintance who had come by to pay a visit and was upset to hear of my mother’s passing so many years before.

/>   There were a number of things that could explain what I had walked into earlier, and the least likely of them would be that someone was threatening my dad. I had all but eased my mind about it, until I fell asleep and had a strange dream.

  In my dream, it was as if I was reliving this evening. I was walking into the house, and there stood my dad and the other man again. It felt so real, almost as if I was doing it all over again. But this time, something was different about the man—and about my father. The man turned to look at me when I walked in, just as he had earlier, but this time his teeth were so elongated that they seemed to stretch right out of his jaw as if his mouth was too small to hold them inside.

  I ran toward my father in fear, grabbing onto the front of his shirt with my fists, and looked up at him for some sort of reassurance. But instead of the calm and steady caramel-colored eyes that I was so used to seeing every day of my life, he stared at me through glowing yellow pupils.

  Chapter Two

  Jasper

  East Sussex was nothing like I had expected it to be. I had imagined it to be more beautiful and serene, and less—well, dingy. When our pack left London, under our alpha’s orders to expand our territory and take over some of the packs in the surrounding towns, I had hoped that meant a bit of adventure and excitement. I was getting restless in London as we waited for the time to be called to act. Being the alpha’s second in command wasn’t nearly as thrilling a position as I had thought it would be. But the upcoming events definitely would be. With the shadow worlders vying for dominion over humanity, it was just a matter of time before battle erupted. That’s why we were here—to overthrow the alpha in all of the small towns of East Sussex and take over control of their packs.

  “Whose idea was it to start in Rye?” our alpha said as he stormed back into the room.

  “Yours,” I reminded him.

  Being politically correct was not one of my strong suits.

  “You said it would be easy to sack, remember?” I added with a smirk. I got away with quite a bit of mouthing off, and I was pretty sure that was due to having a reputation for being ruthless.

  “Well, it was a shite idea,” he growled.

  “What happened, Addicus?” I asked him. “Did things not go as smoothly as you had hoped?”

  “That depends on how you define smooth. If the refusal of the alpha here to concede, and the interruption by his irritating daughter bursting into the house, qualify as smooth, then yes—it went smashingly.”

  The sarcasm in Atticus’ voice did not go unnoticed. He got more sarcastic the more agitated he became. It was one of the ways that I could always tell just how far I could push it with him.

  I had no great love for Addicus. I only had a love for freedom and being loyal to him and to my pack gave me the position of power to garner that freedom. I was the most powerful pack member that we had in London, aside from Addicus. That made me valuable.

  “The alpha here is weak, Jasper,” he said as he poured us both a short glass of bourbon and sat down to tell me what had happened.

  It would be my job later to relay the information to the rest of the pack, and I always tried to do the truth some justice at least.

  “Ryland is a fool,” he continued. “And soon, he will be a dead fool.”

  “Is it really necessary to kill him?” I asked. “I mean, if he’s weak, why can’t we just remove him as alpha? He would have to either pledge loyalty to our pack or be outcast.”

  “No,” Addicus said firmly as he slammed his glass down on the table. “There can be no insurgency. Keeping the alphas after we have taken over their packs is sure to incite future uprisings and rebellions from those that would still be loyal to them. I gave him the chance to join us willingly and he refused. Keeping him alive is no longer an option.”

  I nodded. My head in agreement. Whatever we needed to do in order to create a pack big enough to stand a chance against the shadow world, was worth it. Sacrifices would need to be made. Lives would be taken. And orders needed to be followed. This was the cost of war, and war is what it would be when the shadow beings decided to attack.

  “He’ll be easy to remove from power,” Addicus continued. “He lives alone, aside from his daughter, who looks to be about your age. He has no mate.”

  “What happened to her?” I asked out of pure curiosity.

  “Rumor has it that she was killed by a human hunter a long time ago.”

  “I didn’t even think there were any human hunters left,” I said surprised.

  “Guess there was at least one.”

  “And the daughter?”

  Addicus laughed and lifted his glass to his lips again. “She looks as easy enough to kill as she would be to bed. Nice on the eyes, but definitely not a formidable opponent.”

  He looked over at me with a taunting grin.

  “Maybe you could take her for yourself, once we have sacked the town and taken the pack. She’s very pretty.”

  I raised a brow at him, feeling offended at once.

  “Do you honestly think that a pretty face would do it for me?” I asked. “You know me better than that. I’m not going to be tied down by some female.”

  “That’s what they all say until,” Addicus said as he rolled his eyes.

  It didn’t matter what he thought. He was my alpha, and that was all. I neither loved nor loathed him; I simply remained allegiant to him.

  “I’m going to go inform the rest of the pack,” I said as I started to walk out of the room.

  We had been staying in an abandoned warehouse that used to belong to one of the town’s oldest welders, and I was ready to get the job done and get out of here and on to the next place.

  “After you do that,” he called. “Find a place to put him.”

  “Put who?”

  “Ryland. We’ll need a place to put him for a few days before he’s executed.”

  “Why wouldn’t we just kill him and be done with it?” I asked, wanting to pick up the pace with things. Waiting on the shadow beings to suddenly appear and knock us on our tails, wasn’t something that I was wanting to happen.

  “Because first I need to get some information out of him,” Addicus answered.

  “What kind of information?”

  “Details about this town and his pack, the kind of things that only an alpha would know of his pack members. I’ll need to know as much about them as possible in order to spare as many as I can.”

  “What do you mean spare them?” I asked. “I thought the only one getting executed was the alpha. Aren’t the pack members joining us?”

  “Yes, as long as they don’t resist. The ones that resist will need to be put down. That’s why I need the information on them all, so that I can try to sway as many as possible to our cause.”

  It was ruthless, but he was right. We were on the brink of a war and there wasn’t time to grow feelings, or a conscious for that matter.

  “Alright,” I said. “I’ll find a place.”

  Addicus nodded in satisfaction, and I left to go carry out my tasks. Second in command was a very overrated position to be in.

  The town was quiet at night, aside from the small crowd gathered at the local pub, and the line outside the theatre hall which was boasting a new show opening tonight. There were so many nooks and crannies here, and several buildings that weren’t even in use anymore. It would be easy to find a place that would be suitable for keeping the alpha of Rye in for a day or two. I didn’t need to agree with the mission to still be totally on-board with it. All I needed to do was compartmentalize what I needed to get done—a skill that I was expert at doing. At least, I had been up until this point.

  I didn’t even really see her standing there until it was too late for me to look away. There was something about her that instantly caught my eye in the crowd and as soon as I saw her—I knew.

  This woman had to be mine.

  The feeling was usurping. I couldn’t explain it nor control it. All of a sudden, all I could see and think
about was this beautiful girl standing in line outside the theatre. Never in my life had I been so caught off guard and disarmed by anyone or anything. Never had I been so immediately drawn to another person. But as I tried to get my eyes to move off of her, I noticed who she was with.

  You have got to be kidding me.

  This girl was the daughter of the alpha of Rye. She was the daughter to the very same shifter that we had come here to overthrow, and now—to kill.

  I needed to stay focused and follow through with my assigned task, which was to scope out a place to assassinate Ryland. But instead, I followed her. I followed this woman who made me forget how to breathe, as she walked into the theatre. I even bought a ticket to see the show. I sat in the back of the theatre and watched as she softly tossed her hair over her shoulder, and as she leaned over to her father to whisper something in his ear that made them both laugh softly. I didn’t pay any attention to the performance at all. I just stared at the back of her for the hours that the show went on.

  When the show was over, I followed her at a distance, sticking to the shadows as I watched her walk home with her father. Even when they got inside their house, I still couldn’t bring myself to leave. I didn’t know what was wrong with me that I was acting so foolishly, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. I climbed up the tree that rested against her bedroom window and sat there on a wide branch. The curtains were drawn so I couldn’t see anything inside, but with my enhanced shifter senses, I could hear her breathing while she slept, and that was enough to keep me there all night. Instead of doing what I had been sent out to do, I was sitting outside her window listening to her breathe until the morning light threatened to break above the trees.