Prologue
“You will choose a mate by the next full moon or I will do it for you.” Magnis Quinn gave his daughter a hard look.
Lily lifted her chin and glared at her father. “Don’t make me do this, father. Please. I don’t feel drawn to either one of them; how can you demand I take someone I feel little for as my mate? How can you demand I spend my entire life in a loveless, passionless bond?” She knew he’d not faced that himself. He and her mother were true mates who’d loved each other fiercely, and her father still felt her loss five years after she’d been killed by a human who’d thought she was a regular wolf.
“That is irrelevant, Lily. As daughter to the Alpha, you have a duty to your pack, one you will honor. Make peace with that and make your choice. They’re good men. They’re dominant, strong, and loyal. Either one would make a good mate for you. As my only child, you are heir to the pack, unless I’m challenged for Alpha by one of the younger males and lose. You have no other option but to choose one of them and start a family. You have one week.” He gave her a dark look and walked out of the house to tend to pack business.
Lily watched her father leave. She knew he would be gone until the wee hours of the morning. There were several wolf shifter packs in the area around Slatefall, Montana, and sometimes tensions rose between them, leading the Alphas to come together to smooth things over. Earlier in the evening there was a fight between a member of her pack and a neighboring pack, and her father was off to make sure there were no lasting resentments, especially since the other wolf got the worst of the fight.
“Like hell am I going to spend the rest of my life unhappy.” In that moment a plan formed in her mind. If he wouldn’t listen to reason, then the only real choice she had was to leave. She quickly packed as much clothing as she could shove into two bags, grabbed the photo of her mother she kept next to her bed, slung the messenger bag that had her wallet, car keys, and various odds and ends in it over her shoulder, and slipped out of the house. The sooner she left, the better. She would have to get a fake ID, but that wouldn’t be too hard. There were lone shifters who could give you a completely new identity if you had the money to pay for it. Thanks to her mother having the foresight to make sure she had a life insurance policy, with a high payout, listing Lily as the beneficiary, she had the money for it.
Lily took one last look at the house she’d grown up in before she squared her shoulders, slid into her car, and drove off into the night. She didn’t have a destination in mind. She would decide later; for now she just needed to put as much distance between her and Slatefall as she could before her absence was discovered.
