The Alpha King's Curse, Part One, page 1
The Alpha King's Curse: Part One
Bloodlines, Volume 1
L.G. Savage
Published by L.G. Savage, 2024.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
THE ALPHA KING'S CURSE: PART ONE
First edition. March 8, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 L.G. Savage.
ISBN: 979-8224470556
Written by L.G. Savage.
Also by L.G. Savage
Bloodlines
The Alpha King's Curse: Part One
The Alpha King's Curse: Part Two
The Alpha King's Fate
Standalone
The CEO's Obsession
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Also By L.G. Savage
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
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Also By L.G. Savage
About the Author
Chapter 1
“I’ll get straight to the point. I need you to have my baby.”
Jackson King watched the girl’s eyes widen as she looked from him to his Beta, Dylan.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. I thought you said you needed me to have your baby,” she chuckled.
He could sense her unease the same way he could smell her arousal. She was drenched. Even without a wolf telling her she was his, her body knew it, and he hated that. He hated that he had to fight so hard with his beast to stop it from claiming what was rightfully his. He hated the fact that he had to resort to this. She was half-human! Why would the Moon Goddess curse him like this on top of everything else?
He’d caught her scent even before he had walked into the hotel days before, and now it filled the entire suite, taunting him, reminding him how fucked up everything was.
“I did,” he answered. “I need a surrogate, and I will pay you handsomely.”
“Um... I’ve just walked into this room to clean. You don’t know me; you don't even know my name,” she said.
“Layla Carlisle.”
Layla looked down at the name tag on her uniform. She covered it briefly before she probably realised it was useless and lowered her hand. But he didn’t need her name tag to know who she was.
“Twenty-one years old. High school dropout. You live in a trailer with your father and sister.”
Layla’s eyes widened, and for a moment, he sensed her anger.
“Have you been stalking me?” she hissed.
Dylan snickered. He gave his Beta a look that shut him up before he returned his attention to the human.
“No, I haven’t been stalking you,” he said, but he could tell he had already lost the momentum. Layla's anger had grown at an alarming rate, eclipsing even the sweet scent of her arousal.
The human stood and smoothed her uniform before she lifted her head and looked him directly in the eye. His beast unfurled, his excitement rippling through him at the thought of accepting his mate’s challenge.
“I don’t know why you two need to ask a stranger to have your baby, but I don’t think I will be right for the job. I wish you all the best, though,” Layla said.
It took him a moment to realise what she meant as she walked over to her cleaning cart and started pulling it out of the room.
This was the problem with humans. Feeling the pull of their bond wouldn't have been an issue if she’d had a wolf. He would have marked her the moment he had found her, and she would have been carrying his pup already.
“Miss Carlisle, can we talk about this? You haven’t even heard what I’m willing to pay.”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to be your surrogate,” she answered firmly. “I’ll return later to clean your suite.”
When she closed the door, he heard her mutter, “It’s always the handsome ones.”
She thought he was crazy. And she was right—he lost more of his mind the longer he went without a child and the shorter his time on this earth got.
“She thinks we’re gay, Jax,” Dylan pointed out as he sat in the spot she had vacated.
“I got that,” he growled.
“I don’t think she will change her mind,” Dylan said. “I don’t understand why you can’t pick someone from the pack and be done with it.”
He would have had many children already if it had been that easy. Goddess knew how much he had tried. But Fate had messed that up for him, too, and made sure only one woman could carry his children. Only one woman could save them all—his mate.
“I told you why.”
At least as much as he could. Dylan was not only his Beta; he was also his only friend. Keeping the truth from him was essential. Keeping it from everyone was crucial. It was bad enough that they would have to accept his heir from a woman who was as useless as a human, but he could deal with that better than the panic that the truth would cause. He had no time to soothe anyone or deal with the packs that would circle his territory when they realised he was about to die.
As the Alpha King, the repercussions would be astronomical.
“I doubt any of our pack would assume they are the Queen just because they have your child. They can do a blood oath—”
“Dylan, please,” he sighed as he stood and walked towards the drinks cabinet.
It was still morning, but fuck it. He needed something to calm and stop himself from going after the human. To prevent himself from pinning her down and marking her while he buried himself deep inside her body.
He closed his eyes as he tried not to imagine what that would feel like, but it was all his wolf wanted and all he could see.
Every wolf he’d ever come across dreamed of being lucky enough to one day meet their mate, but he couldn’t understand why anyone would think this was a blessing. It was torture!
“Okay. Pick another one if that girl doesn’t want to do it.”
Cain growled in his head, ready to attack Dylan for even suggesting that, but he shoved his wolf back and focused on his drink.
And just like that, his mind returned to a place he didn’t want to be. He didn’t want to think of touching Layla or tasting her. He didn’t want to remember the scent of her arousal.
Four days since he first caught Layla’s sweet scent, he was already acting like a lunatic.
The first day felt like a gift from the Goddess. He was almost out of time, so finding his mate had given him hope. And then he had seen her. A half-blood. Half-human and cleaning up after everyone else. It felt like a punch in the nuts; he’d wanted to kill someone for this cruel joke. She was not worthy to carry his child; she was not worthy to be the one who saved them all.
But there they were.
There was no other choice.
“Jax—”
“Get more information on her. She’s human. You’ll find many weaknesses I can use,” he ordered. “She’s the one I’ve picked, so she’s the one I’ll have.”
Layla would have his child one way or another, and then he could finally have some peace.
Dylan felt the command in his words and stood up to do as he had ordered. When he sensed his Beta was far enough away from their suite, he picked up his glass and threw it against the wall, smashing it into pieces.
If he told Dylan the truth, he would tie the girl up and offer
her to him on a silver platter. But then his child would be a product of rape; that was the last thing he wanted. The child would be his legacy, the only thing left of him on this earth, and would carry his blood. He couldn’t taint the child before he had even conceived them. He was a bastard, but not that much. His child would be the best part of him.
Layla would change her mind. Humans loved money, and this one, in particular, was drowning in debt. Why hadn’t she wanted to know how much he was offering her? He could solve all her problems in a day if she took his offer. That meant Dylan had to find something else he could use.
Something she couldn’t refuse.
The growl came louder in his head as his beast showed his displeasure. But he was in charge here, not Cain. They would do things his way, and at the end of it all, Layla could go back to her life because there was no future for them, even if she wasn’t a half-blood.
‘Find her. Mark her,’ Cain growled.
‘Be patient! She hasn’t got a wolf; she doesn’t even know we exist,’ he snapped as he picked up an entire bottle of alcohol and walked towards his bedroom.
And marking her was out of the question.
He didn’t stay at the Royal Hotel often even though he owned it and it was in his territory, but he was sure Layla hadn’t been around the last time he had been there. Her scent was all over the hotel as if she had marked it. Could anyone else smell it? Did they have that sweet, intoxicating scent turning them inside out? Making them drool? Making them think of nothing else except to claim her?
One thing was certain now. If—no, when—Layla agreed to this, he would get her pregnant and then stay the hell away from her. He’d been hard for days, and her scent had made Cain unstable. He didn’t need that complication on top of everything else. Not when he had less than a year left to live.
Chapter 2
Did she have some sign on her head that said she was a pushover or desperate?
Layla pushed the cart with more force than necessary until she was far enough away from the penthouse suite and then leaned against the wall. Her knees were still shaking, and she wasn’t entirely sure if it was because of the man’s words or the man himself. It surprised her she hadn’t fallen flat on her face when she’d made her righteous exit.
The men were in the most expensive suite in the exclusive hotel; they didn’t need to ask a stranger to help them out. He might have somehow gotten a hold of some of her personal information, but everyone in Wolfdale knew about her. The kid abandoned by her mother. The kid who’d dropped out of school so she could work and take care of her little sister because their father was an alcoholic and a gambling addict.
That didn’t mean she had no dignity left. She wouldn’t give up a child! Those men thought they could throw their money around like that, and she would agree just because she wasn’t like them, and that made her blood boil.
But in her mind, she still saw the man naked and on top of her. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel it. It was a shame he was gay because she was positive he would be great in bed. Her body was still on fire, still trying to get over the shock of coming face to face with such a perfect specimen of a man.
A god.
He looked like one. Handsome didn’t even begin to describe him. Chiselled jawline, a short beard that probably cost more than her wages to maintain and silky, dark hair styled to look like he’d just rolled out of bed and didn’t give a fuck. He’d turned her knees to jelly and melted her panties in seconds without moving from his seat. Without even cracking a smile. She had never reacted so violently to anyone before.
Why was it always the handsome ones that were batshit crazy?
She pushed aside the disappointment. The cool wall slightly helped control her overheating body, but sweat still dripped down her back and cleavage. They were in the middle of a heatwave so intense even the hotel’s air conditioning system wasn’t helping. She’d been like that for a few days as if she was coming down with something for the first time in her life.
But it was the stranger with the cold ice-blue eyes that had worked her up like that.
She shouldn’t care about who he shared his bed with, but something inside her wanted to claw the other guy’s eyes out. It was so strong that she had to make a conscious effort to stop herself from returning to the room. Crazy. She was going crazy.
“I don’t pay you to have unscheduled breaks, Layla.”
Her eyes snapped open to see Andrea looking down her nose at her as usual. And it took a special kind of person to look down their nose at someone who towered over them. Andrea barely reached her chest.
“I’m sorry, Miss Roberts,” she said, lowering her head. “I’m almost finished.”
Her supervisor insisted on being called Miss Roberts since her promotion, as if that would make her more respectable. Everyone knew how she got that job.
“You’re a mess,” Andrea said, wrinkling her nose. “And you smell. Clean yourself up and do something with that hair. We have important guests here today; I don’t have time to deal with you.”
She self-consciously wiped the sweat on her forehead and patted her hair down, even though she knew it wouldn’t help. Her red, curly hair was just a giant unruly puff above her head, and her pale blue uniform had sweat stains under her armpits. Whatever sweat that wasn’t being sucked up by her hair was dripping down her face like crazy.
Another reason why that stranger had to be out of his mind to make such an offer to her while she looked like that.
Andrea turned and carried on down the hallway in her formal suit and high heels. Her manager did indeed look distracted today, so she supposed she had to be grateful for that because usually, she would have shouted at her and threatened to fire her at least a hundred times already.
With a sigh, she put Andrea and the handsome stranger out of her mind as she continued cleaning. By the time she finally left the hotel that evening, she looked even worse, but she went out through the staff entrance and straight to her little car without bumping into Andrea again. There was a shower with her name on it at home.
It took her almost half an hour to leave the nicer neighbourhoods and cross the tracks to hers. It was so cliched, but the wealthy had separated themselves from the rest of the residents. The difference was stark, but she was used to it. There was nothing shiny on her side, and all the cars were old bangers like hers. Everything needed fixing or was broken beyond repair. But she felt more at home there, even if she itched to leave the dump and discover what was beyond Wolfdale.
She parked outside their old trailer home and sighed as she walked in. The TV was blaring, and her father lay on the couch, already passed out. She didn’t have to go near him to know he had been drinking again. The day’s mail was on the counter near the door, placed there where she wouldn’t miss it, and it was unopened even though it had her father’s name on it. Bills. Overdue bills.
The stranger's offer popped back into her mind, but she pushed it away. She didn’t need to sell a piece of herself to pay the bills.
She sighed again as she picked the mail up and headed for the tiny bedroom she shared with her sister. She carefully opened the creaky door in case Britney was asleep but saw her hunched over her books instead. A small smile formed on her lips.
It was worth it. All the shit she had to do to feed her sister was worth it. Brit would forge a better life all by herself, away from this dump.
And then she would finally be free, too.
Layla felt like she’d hardly closed her eyes when her alarm went off. She always woke up early to make sure Brit didn’t forget to eat her breakfast before school. Her sister always did that, as if by skipping meals, she would lighten the load on her shoulders.
There was hardly anything in the fridge, and she probably couldn’t do a proper grocery shop for a while with the bills she had to pay. A second job would have been great, but no one was hiring. Another pitfall of living in a small town in the middle of nowhere. She had to do her best until they could leave for greener pastures.
And she couldn’t leave until Brit left for college.
With a loud yawn, she took the eggs out and set about making an omelette for Brit with a couple of slices of toast. She’d just poured herself a cup of coffee when she noticed her father through the window. In just his pyjama bottoms, his long, brunette hair was a tangled mess, and his beard was weeks old. Her father didn’t care that the neighbours always saw him like this. He was pacing and seemed to be in a heated argument on the phone. He looked tense and had a scowl as he gestured with his free hand like the person on the other side could see him. What the hell had that man done now?
