Terr4tory

By Susan A Bliler

Willa Hutchinson is in trouble. With her Alpha now dead, the lead falls to her. Problem is, she’s an unmated female in charge of a pack of young shifters. Suitors and challengers are coming from miles around to attempt to claim her territory, her pack, and her! Willing to fight to the death to defend her pack, she knows the odds of survival are slim. She needs a plan, she needs help, she needs a hero.

Barron Kane is a man on a mission. Should be easy enough. Repay his debt to his brother by heading to Minnesota and helping out an old friend. How hard could it be? Problem is, the old friend is anything but old and once Barron commits himself to playing the role of Willa’s mate and protecting her and her pack, it’s impossible to convince his wolf it was all a ruse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan A Bliler
• Release date: Apr 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310409035

Susan A Bliler

My pack territory is in Central Montana, between Stone Crow estates and the North Fortress. Born and raised in an untamed location that bridges the gap between rolling prairies and majestic mountain peaks, I am born to a family that also bridges the gap between cultures. My father’s people boast a fiercely proud Scottish ancestry while my mother’s tribes descend from two savagely beautiful and unique nations that inspire my Skin Walkers series. I'm a huge fan of MMA, boxing, hockey, 30 Seconds to Mars, Linkin Park, DMX, the Killers, and 21 Pilots (“sometimes quiet is violent”). I also love to read because it encourages me to write. (I hate it when authors add that they love coffee and chocolate. Really? Who doesn't love coffee and chocolate?) Anyway, I love beer...kidding. I don't love beer but we are engaged in a very serious relationship. (Mom, please don't call me when you read this.) Check me out at www.susanbliler.com Please leave feedback. Believe it or not I actually read your opinions/suggestions and try to adapt my work accordingly. A’hau.

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TERR4TORY

By

Susan A. Bliler

Copyright © 2014 by Susan A. Bliler

Smashword Edition

www.susanbliler.com

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Cover fonts, spine, and back cover done by:

Cindy Hubbard

Images courtesy of Shutterstock

Editing done by:

Leiah Cooper with

So I Read This Book Today…

http://soireadthisbooktoday.com/

As always thanks to my Beta, Cindy.

I couldn’t do this without you.

Thanks for believing in me when no one else did.

;o) ting

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Susan A. Bliler.

DEDICATION

For Michael Lee Lott

I remember one gloriously warm summer morning. All the other kids were sleeping in, but you and I were awake helping Ma clean. The house smelled of Pine-Sol and the warm summer breeze billowed the white and yellow curtains in the kitchen window. As a reward, Ma gave you a few stamps and you took me to T.C.’s to buy a soda. We walked the few blocks through the ‘jects and I remember being proud that I got to go to the store with my oldest brother. We each got a soda and you bought one for mom too, then you spent the last of your money to buy me some candy. I knew the other kids would be jealous, but I also learned that hard work was rewarded. I loved that day. I love you, brother. I hope life is treating you well, and just wanted you to know that I’m missing you with my heart and remembering you in my prayers.

Prologue

Willa Hutchinson stood stock still. The small dark room was crowded, and the acrid scent of impending death stung at her nostrils. Her Alpha was dying.

Garner had taken them all in, protecting them to the last, keeping their rag-tag group of misfit wolves together. She knew it couldn’t last. Garner was old when he’d found them, and now his body was simply giving up.

Becca, Sarya, and Keryn all cried. Their heads bowed as they waited for Garner to pass. Jase and Arden, the youngest of the pack males were too fresh to claim the helm, which left her or Cortez. Four years older than Cortez, she was the obvious choice with one exception. She was female. If any of the males claimed the position of Alpha, she’d have to fight to take it from them. She wouldn’t. She didn’t need the stress, and neither did the small pack.

But Garner waited with baited breath. He’d offered up the position, threw out the challenge, and everyone had bowed their head and stepped back. Everyone except her and Cortez.

Aside from Garner, she was the eldest in the pack at twenty-six. More of a matronly figure than anything, the others followed her lead but only because they were too young, too lazy, or too selfish to want to do anything else.

Lifting steely green eyes, Willa leveled her gaze on Garner and waited. She was nervous as hell, but she’d never let the emotion show. It was a habit she’d picked up her first years with the pack. Where the rest wore their emotions on their sleeves, Willa kept hers well guarded.

Cortez fidgeted, and Willa sucked in a breath. Here it was. He’d either step forward and accept the pack, or step back, relinquishing leadership to her. She prayed for the former. With him in a relationship with Keryn, they would become an Alpha pair, leaving Willa in her matronly role among the pack.

The next few moments seemed to drag on. Eyes still locked with Garner, she could see her own hopes and fears reflected in his eyes. They both knew she was born to lead, but to do so now, like this, would be hell. She’d either be challenged and have to battle to keep her seat, or she’d have to claim a mate, and only the strongest would do. Suitors would come. This meant, she’d have no say in who would claim her. Alpha males would battle for the right to mate with her, to lead the pack, and she’d have to accept whoever won. Unless she could defeat them in battle—an outcome which she doubted.

When Cortez took that deciding step back, she felt her heart plummet. She had no choice but to claim the title of Alpha to protect the pack. Any outsider would disband them, just to prove he could. She knew that word of Garner’s death would travel. When it did, the first natural question would be, ‘who is the new Alpha?’ Challengers would come. She wasn’t battle born and that fact would inevitably make her a target.

Alphas came into power in one of two ways. Many Alpha positions were passed down within Packs, with the outgoing Alpha handing over power peacefully. If Garner and the pack accepted her as the new Alpha, the transition would go smoothly—at least until challenges began. Battle born Alphas were something completely different than bred Alphas.

Of the two ways to become leader, battle born were most feared because the position wasn’t handed down. It was earned. They fought to earn their position in the pack, taking over weaker Alphas through battle and death.

In Willa’s case, if she were to take lead, it’d have to be gifted to her by the out-going Alpha and approval of the pack.

Sarya and Becca cried harder. Keryn looked equally fearful and happy. She should look happy. Cortez was free from challenge, which meant the untried young wolf would live. Willa swallowed hard, lifted her chin a fraction and stepped forward. Even as approval shone in Garner’s eyes it warred with dismay. They both knew she, and likely the whole pack, were doomed.

Garner’s chapped lips parted and he whispered an almost inaudible, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?

Willa snorted and smiled. She knew the Bible verse. Isaiah, chapter six. Here am I. She lowered her chin, narrowed her eyes on Garner in her best Alpha-female sneer, and repeated. Here am I. Send me.

The decision made, the others shuffled from the room, soft crying the only sound. Willa made to follow, only to have Garner hold up a hand. He let his eyes settle closed as he spoke. All is not lost yet. I have a plan.

A plan? Hope flitted through her. What plan?

Evander Kane, Garner smiled weakly.

Evander? She knew him only from the time he’d been traveling through and stayed a few days to visit with Garner. Old friends, the two spent a week making repairs to the farm that the other wolves were too young or too inexperienced to help with. She’d thought him handsome, but hadn’t felt a spark. Regardless, he was a good man, and if Garner could somehow talk the wolf into fighting for her, she’d be eternally grateful. Hell, she’d even be willing to overlook the fact that she had no sexual interest in the Alpha. It’d be worth it. He’d be worth it.

***

One week later, Willa Hutchinson and her Minnesota pack stood on the sunny hillside overlooking their farm as they laid their Alpha to rest. Garner had gone peacefully in his sleep, and Willa envied him his long mostly peaceful reign as Alpha. Hers promised to be decidedly more violent.

To Garner’s disappointment Evander Kane hadn’t come, and the frail Alpha could no longer hold off his death. Left as an unmated female Alpha claiming a territory she hadn’t earned in blood, Willa knew that challengers would be quick in coming.

Vibrant green eyes touched on the bowed heads of her pack mates as they stood and watched Garner’s casket as it was lowered into the ground. He’d wanted a human burial, and she’d made it happen. How could she not? He’d taken them all in and had accepted them as family. What’s more, he’d been a good Alpha. So many now, were abusive opportunistic tyrants. Not Garner. He’d been a kindly father figure to them all. Fair, but firm when needed. He’d taught them well.

The wind picked up and whipped hip-length, white/blonde hair back from Willa’s face. The morning had been bright and warm with the lick of the sun favoring the farm, but as Garner’s casket was lowered, ominous clouds rolled in as if laying the scene for her future. There’d be no sun, no light. Shit was about to get real, and Willa needed to get real tough, real fast. A shiver swept through her and she scanned the horizon, half expecting to see wolves baying in the distance. The threat of takeover was real, and her pack all knew it. To their credit they didn’t run. No, they were family. They’d stand behind her and that was the hardest part. The rational voice inside her told her to disband the pack, to send them into the wind and pray they could make it alone. The matronly side of her, the Alphina side, refused to be forced into submission. Her pack was young. Six boys and six girls, with only Keryn and Cortez out of their teens.

Cortez was the eldest at 22, but he was far from a man. Even as a shifter, he still hadn’t formed the aggressiveness needed to protect himself, let alone protect Keryn. The two had always been interested in each other, but had only just recently begun courting. Just a year younger than Cortez, Keryn set the pace, and Willa knew they hadn’t gone any further then necking in the woods and holding hands.

All of Willa’s girls were untried. At 19, Becca was viable, but too silly and youthful to be any sort of a mate at this point. The pack prankster, she got her kicks out of harassing the others and making jokes. Sarya was nothing like the older two girls. Only 17, she needed guidance and a matronly figure and she took to constantly watching Willa and mimicking her lead. Both Keryn and Becca had grown their hair long to their waists like Willa, but Saray found her spark of independence there. Currently, her shoulder length hair was dyed a vibrant red. Funny, Willa found that it suited her.

Arden and Jase were the two youngest males and the two youngest of the pack. A fact that grated on Arden. Constantly trying to out-do the other males, he was the serious one of the pack. Too serious for his sixteen years. Willa wondered if it had something to do with the fact that he was darker than the rest. Caramel skin with a fuzzy almost fro, Arden was determined to be Alpha one day. Willa could see it in his drive. Always going out of his way to help out, and the first to volunteer for duties, he was her most dependable pack member.

Too young to do much other than beam his great smile and be cute as hell, Jase didn’t do much aside from follow Arden around like a lost little puppy. At only eight, it was understandable. He needed a male figure to look up to and Garner was gone. Keryn’s actual blood brother, Jase shared her same glowing blonde hair and bright blue eyes. Cortez too looked similar to Keryn and Jase, which was weird. Still, they were a good pack and Willa loved each of them for their own uniqueness. Too young and naïve to make it out on their own, Willa vowed to keep them, protect them as long as she was able.

Chapter 1

WILLA! Cortez bellowed as he barreled into the house, sneakered feet sliding on the worn linoleum of the kitchen floor.

Turning from the boiled eggs