Free Taken By The Alpha (Timber Valley Pack) by Georgette St. Clair

Patrick had used brutality and humiliation in an attempt to mold Roman into what he’d considered the perfect Alpha.
    Two of Roman’s brothers and one of his sisters hadn’t survived their upbringing. Only Roman had made it through – and the older he got, the more savage Patrick’s punishments had been. Roman’s mother had been too terrified of her husband to intervene.
    Roman didn’t begrudge the beatings, the impossible challenges, the constant pain, hunger and fear that had marked his childhood.  He planned to use those methods himself, as soon as he started having Alpha sons.
    What infuriated him was the public humiliation. Even when he succeeded in the tasks his father set for him, his father insulted him, held him up in front of the pack and called him a girl, kicked him hard enough to break bones and dared him to utter a single whimper, spit on his face…
    The intercom system on his desk chirped. Somewhere on the compound, his lovely, near-perfect bride was trying to get in touch with him.
    Roman leaned down and spit on his father’s head.  “I’ll be seeing you,” he growled, and turned and left the room.
    His lovely Janet wanted him. Killing her husband and marrying her had been an enormous achievement for him, the next step in his ambitious plans. He’d had his eye on the Mordhaus pack lands for a long time. He wanted their lumber business, their construction business, he wanted everything they had – including the beautiful, elegant, Janet, who gave him that entrance to the high society world that he’d always craved.
    She looked perfect on his arm, was as dedicated as he was to bettering her position in the world, and was nearly perfect in every way. She only had one tiny flaw. No matter; he’d found the solution to that problem too.
    In the meantime – she probably wanted to talk to him about the charity ball they’d be hosting. They’d managed to get three members of the Council of Elders to attend. He’d be keeping careful track of who chose not to attend. He always remembered his allies, but it was his enemies that he kept in a special mental memory vault, that he opened every night and re-visited and help up for examination.
    * * *
    It was 3 a.m., and someone was outside her window, getting closer.  Katrina lay perfectly still in bed. She’d always been a light sleeper, and especially so tonight, with so many problems running through her mind.
    She heard a rattling, and then bars opened from the outside and then the window slid open.  Then a bag was tossed through, landing on the floor with a thud.
    She tensed – bomb? Thrown in by Lula? After a few seconds, when nothing exploded, she sat up in bed and walked lightly over to see what mysterious gift she’d just received.
     
     
    She smelled noscentium. Noscentium was an herb which disguised individual smells and masked an individual’s identity, but it came with its own distinctive aroma. Somebody didn’t want her to know who they were.
    The bag had been drenched in Noscentium – and contained a spray bottle of Noscentium as well. There was a tranq gun, and a cell phone – a cheap disposable one. 
    Someone was trying to help her escape.
    She doubted that any of the Killingworth pack would risk this kind of move.  Her money was on Teresa.  She probably hoped that helping Katrina escape would win her favor. It could also be any of the other pack members who’d come over.
    She picked up the tranq gun, which was specially designed to hold four darts. She bent over and sniffed at them.  She was a little concerned about using a tranq gun when she hadn’t personally loaded the dart’s syringes, or at least gotten the syringes from a source that she knew and trusted.
    Dear lord, did she smell cyanide in them? Well, that made it useless. Irritated, she set the gun down.
    She did not actually want to kill anyone. She could suck it up for a month if she had to; everything would be resolved one way or another then.
    She’d just