Wicked: A Savage Alpha Shifters Romance, page 1
Wicked
A savage alpha
shifters romance
Book 3
BY DD PRINCE
©COPYRIGHT 2023 – DD Prince – HTTP://DDPRINCE.COM
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Cover design: Haelah Rice Covers.
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Dedication:
For My Mister, who will most likely never read this book, but it’s my twenty-fifth book and you should know that pieces of you and our love are in every single hero and story I write.
Peas and carrots, Hubbalicious.
Author’s Note
This is book three of my Savage Alpha Shifters series. While each story is about a different couple, they’re intended to be read in order. Book one is called Wild. Book two is called Twisted.
Please note: This is a steamy paranormal romance series with lots of carnal behavior and over-the-top wolf shifter heroes who claim, bite, and knot their fated mates.
This isn’t categorized under dark romance but does have some darker elements.
This story contains mature language and open-door love scenes. My wolf shifters are also alpha, primal, and when it comes to their fated mates… sometimes quite feral.
My website, http://ddprince.com, has more information about elements found in my books.
Riley Savage thought his fated mate was lost in the river almost seven years ago. But when it’s revealed that not only is she alive, but also she’s a witch who’s been hiding from him, fury doesn’t begin to describe how Riley feels. He’s determined to get answers and hits nothing but dead ends. And then she shows up.
Despite how angry he is, the desire to claim, bite, and knot her is stronger.
Come back to Arcana Falls and the Savage Alpha Shifters, wolf shifters who identify their fated mate and chase, claim, bite, knot, and purr for them. These stories are best experienced in order, starting with Wild.
“Regardless of trying to work against it, fate will always work harder than you. Fate has aces up its sleeve that you have no hope of comprehending.” – Lyrica Young
1
Erica Young
The door to my hippie bus flies open with enough force to make everything inside rattle, not the least of which is me.
Everything in me has been coiled tight since I parked. Heck, since I decided to drive here. And now the moment I’ve been both dreaming of and dreading for seven years happens, and seeing him? I’m rattled to the core.
The look on his unbelievably handsome face? The furious, accusing eyes touching me? Together they make pain radiate through every single shaking cell in my body.
Barely leashed fury crackles as his eyes give me a once over from head to toe. Urges war within me. Run toward him? Hide?
I can’t run to him. Absolutely not.
This is going to be agony. More anguish. Part of the price; it’s time to pay. Though really, it feels like I’ve already been paying for nearly seven years. My entire body is a heartbeat, thumping, aching to touch – no, aching to fuse with him.
The cozy interior of this van suddenly feels even smaller. He can only stand in here because the overhead bunk is popped up and he takes up a lot of space with his height, his muscle. His presence. His fury.
He’s pulling the door shut, towering over me as I sit on the bench seat that takes up the majority of the back of the van. I clench the patchwork quilt that covers it. Coincidentally, I’m gripping the piece of fabric from the shirt he wore the last time I saw him.
He doesn’t know how important this quilt is to me. How important he is to me. How my sisters found that shirt dangling from a tree branch days after it all went wrong and brought it to me. I slept with it for months until I put it in this quilt and have slept with it nearly every night since. He doesn’t know I’ve kept him close to me in the only ways I could for the past seven years, despite the fact that my mistakes cost us both so much.
He’s even more handsome than I remember. And I never forgot just how easy Riley Savage is on the eyes. But the handsomeness I saw back then looks hard now. And it’s down to me that there’s no light in his green eyes at this moment.
The set of his more-than stubbled squared jaw is hard. He hasn’t shaved in at least a week, maybe two. His dark hair is a mess, long enough there’s a curl to it. It looks like he’s been raking his fingers through it in frustration. And I can feel the rage shuddering inside him, as if rattling his rib cage, ready to burst out.
He's even more muscled, even more deliciously built. He’s got a few sexy crinkles around his eyes. Has he laughed much? Or have I given him those faint crow’s feet due to stress? It was a given he’d mourn the perceived loss of me, but has he held others, gotten pleasure from others? Sought comfort? Because I haven’t. I wouldn’t. I have so many questions and no right to ask any of them.
There’s something strange in my chest, something elusive. It feels like I can almost reach out and touch the soul of him with mine, but his is caged by an invisible wall. A wall I built. My aches and fears shift into need. Stark need. Vivid desire. The need to feel him. The desire to be touched by him. The pulsing ache not only in my heart and my soul, but also in that forbidden place I’ve been saving for him. To show him how much I love him, to have him understand that I never meant for any of this to happen.
I wish I could touch him. I’ll never forget the way it felt when we had that first kiss. The last one, too.
I don’t even get to make a move toward him. It’s like he senses the intent before I’ve done more than flex a muscle in my foot and his hand flies up to halt me.
“Do not take one step toward me, witch,” he shouts, his voice coming out guttural, filled with emotion so raw, so visceral, it can only be described as loathingly. The way he says witch is as if it’s the gravest insult he can hurl at me.
Danica told me when he smelled me in the Drowsy Hollow covenstead, there was significant fall-out. And I knew it was coming, knew last Fall when I dug deeper than ever to help Holden and Isabella with their problem that this could come at any moment. I knew I had no control over when it would happen. I gave it to fate. And now I guess fate is showing me that I reap what I sow. I fucked up so epically.
I’ve had a couple important occasions requiring me to step into the area and have been careful with masking my scent as well as traveling with a hat and glasses, I’d managed to avoid him up until then and still don’t know how he caught my scent. But I guess it had to happen.
Is it better that he’s had time to digest things rather than catching him off-guard? I don’t know, won’t ever get to know. This is how it is. And the day the coven helped with Amelia and Mason’s problem; I knew my time had run out. Tyson Savage wanted to drag me here to answer for my crimes. His mate Ivy talked him out of it, believing me when I swore I was heading this way.
And now… here I am.
Of course I knew things would be amped today. Vivi saw that things were crazed, knew major events were underway with the first two couples as well as that a third couple was about to come together. But she wasn’t sure if it’d be me and Riley. Suspected there would be a change in mating order and that if that happened, it could throw things off kilter.
I knew, we all knew, that I couldn’t leave this any longer. A foreboding bell tolled inside me letting me know it was time.
I needed to face this. Begin the mission of fixing things. I’ve always known it’d be difficult. I knew it would hurt. As the days have gone by I’ve become more and more sure I’ll lose something I never got to have.
But I doubt anything could have prepared me for the loathing that’s coming at me from the man I love. The man I’ve wanted to connect with, with an unrelenting ache since just days after I turned eighteen. The loathing isn’t just coming from my remorse. His loathing is weaving its way through me, showing me that we truly do have a connection with depth to it that I don’t yet comprehend. I don’t understand this bond we would’ve shared, but it hurts to know I’ve destroyed what could’ve been. I had to wait until my coven knew it was time. They told me it’d be about seven years. And we’re less than two weeks away from that seven-year mark.
I’ve wanted him for ten years but have been punished for nearly seven. Because of my crime of using witchcraft to make him mine. The way I went about it, too. The kick in the gut being he would’ve been mine had I waited on fate. It’s felt like one long punishment so far, feeling how I feel and knowing that he’s likely been mourning me all this time.
But maybe now is when the real punishment begins. Seeing the results of my fuck-up. Feeling the consequences.
I don’t even know where to begin with him.
They told me that when this time came, I would come here and tell him the truth. That using magic would be forbidden while I’m in the village of Arcana Falls. I have to wait until he makes his decision before I attempt magic.
So, here I am. I’ll do my best to make peace with the man I love, the man who I’ve known for seven years would think of me as his greatest enemy when he found out the truth.
He continues glaring at me as I do my best to not wither into a heap of emotion. My body trembles and I know my eyes must be oozing with my feelings.
His fists clench and unclench. When he growls low, with warning, like I’ve done something, like he’s reading my thoughts, his eyes coast over my body again as my underwear become saturated. It’s as if that growl called it forth. And this throws me for a loop, and I press my knees together.
Riley’s nostrils flare and suddenly, he lunges, caging me on the bench seat. It’s not big enough for this, but that means nothing, because I’m on my back and he’s on me, my wrists painfully pinned over my head.
Another rumbling growl rolls up from deep within him, this one angrier. His eyes flame with fury. His exceptionally strong sense of smell coupled with this reaction shows me he knows what’s just happened in my underwear.
His chest heaves up and down as his eyes bore into mine. His jaw muscles clench and unclench before he buries his nose in my throat. I melt as he inhales me deeply. I’m about to burst into flames of desire as his scent fills my senses. He pulls back and his eyes move up to the roof. He’s looking at the pop-top bed up there.
Our eyes meet again and his glow a luminescent green for an instant.
“I can explain,” I whisper, wanting to drink that scent, fill myself with it. “I still come off looking like the bad guy, but…”
His head jerks slightly, like I’ve shocked him, knocked him out of a trance, something.
“I do have an explanation,” I continue. “I didn’t mean it, Riley. I screwed up, it all went wrong, and then it was too late and-”
He knifes off me, making the camper van shake with the action. One of my glass jars of herbs smashes to the floor and books from my little shelf fall as well. If it weren’t for the fact my bed is popped up, he’d have hit his head on the roof.
He roars, “Are you out of your fuckin’ mind?”
I cower at the rage coming at me.
He continues shouting at me and three more jars smash to the floor. “Nothing you could say… fuckin’ nothing!” He grinds his teeth and then shakes his head before he drops his voice an octave. “Go back wherever you came from, Rikki.”
I flinch at the name; the nickname Dad gave me. Rikki-button, cute as a button. It’s the name I told him was mine that day, the name I haven’t let anyone use since.
Because of how right it sounded on his lips back then. Because of how wrong it was to do what I did. Because what I did meant I ceased to be Rikki. I became someone else after I had to face the music of my actions. I knew I’d never hear my dad say it again and suspected I’d never hear Riley, either.
“I’m here to explain, Riley. I-”
“I don’t fuckin’ care!” he roars.
“But…”
“Do you think there’s anything you could say to me to make up for what you did to me? Anything? You know what you did. What it’d do to me. Right?”
I swallow.
“Right?” he bellows his question.
I nod. “I do know what I did.” My voice trembles. “And no. Nothing’s going to make up for it. Nothing.”
“So you knew. You knew what it’d do.” Somehow, the hatred intensifies.
“No.”
“You didn’t know?”
“Not exactly. I found out after.”
“And you didn’t put me out of my misery?”
“I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed to.”
“Fuck your excuses and fuck you.”
“Please let me explain.”
“Why? It’s not gonna change what it did to me, how it changed me, what it took from me. From my pack. Go, witch. Let me finally have some…” his voice goes gruff, “some fuckin’ peace.”
Ouch. Ouch times a thousand.
I choke on a sob.
“Don’t you dare,” he snarls, pointing at me accusingly.
He doesn’t want my tears. He’s right, I don’t deserve to have an emotional meltdown right now.
I try to hold my shit together. “I’m not leaving until I expl–”
“What, confess? So I can absolve you of your sins?” His eyes travel over me with disgust in them. “I don’t think so.”
The look on his face makes my chest feel like it’s caving in.
“Go,” he says coldly. “Crawl back under your rock, witch.”
“I’ll wait until you’re ready to talk,” I whisper.
“Go!” he roars.
I tremble, arms cradling myself.
“Then I’ll fuckin’ go,” he states icily, then he leaves, slamming the door behind him.
All this time and now he’s just… gone.
I don’t deserve to meltdown and let it all out, but I can’t help it.
I somehow manage to crawl up into the bunk. And as soon as I fall face-first into the pillows, I fall to pieces. It pours out. All of it. Finally. Flooding rivers of pain. Crying so long and so hard it’s as if seven years of grief tsunamically surges straight out of my soul.
And while it happens, something digs in deep, weaves its way in, settling within my chest. Something strange and new. And I’m pretty sure it’s got something to do with him and the bond we could have developed if I hadn’t fucked up.
2
Riley Savage
My wolf form runs faster than my human form, so to get the fuck away from the sensations chasing me, sensations from her, fur bursts from my skin the minute the night air hits and I’m on all fours.
I’m gone. Gone, but being chased by pain coming at me through that new, odd place in my chest that hurts so much it’s got me in some sort of chokehold that means I can barely breathe with it.
I vaguely sense my pack brothers nearby, along with knowledge that something has tweaked somebody on the council. But I can’t linger on that or any other thought whatsoever because my paws are pounding the ground and I’m running, full speed toward the forest to get away from what she’s feeling. Because I can’t process any of it. I don’t have the capacity.
But her emotions chase me all night long, clawing for me, nipping at my ankles, trying to pull me to the ground and drag me back to her.
No. Not happening.
Instead, I rip shit up.
3
Erica
Ten Years Ago
The mystery surrounding my Great Aunt Lyrica drove me half- crazy through my teens. But when I found out the truth, it fit like a glove. Whenever someone questions my magic, I tell them I’ve been told my entire life my gift is spell-writing. The truth is, the day I found out I’m a spell-writer, it felt like my life finally began. I finally knew who I was. Why I was the way I was. The truth about my family, about my gifts, was unveiled for me on my eighteenth birthday, when it was finally my turn to take the trip - the infamous, secretive Young sister eighteenth birthday trip to Drowsy Hollow, the town where we were born.
I woke up fraught with worry, certain I messed everything up by being stubborn and digging my heels in.
I hadn’t even packed. Danica and Jessica packed a week early. But me? Nope. I told them all last week not to bother with presents or a cake because I wasn’t taking part in any of it.
You could say I’d carried some bitterness since Danica’s eighteenth birthday thirteen months before and had been kind of hard to get along with ever since.
This trip was something I’d been anticipating since shortly after my oldest sister Vivica turned eighteen. With each sister turning that age, my curiosity grew while my patience waned. Because going on that trip changed whoever went.
