Choices: Alpha City, Book 3

I
would like
to acknowledge my mom, who passed away a few years ago; she told me to follow my dreams and never allow anyone to tell me I couldn’t achieve them.

Thanks to the love of my life, John, for making me a place to write and even taking up the slack when I was typing away in my own world. You helped to make my dream come true. It may be a small table in the corner, but it’s my corner of make believe, where dreams do come true.

Thanks to my beautiful kids, who keep me grounded and drive me crazy at the same time. I love you all.

Thanks to Janka Dustan who agreed to be my PA and tells me now what to do and when to do it. We have been figuring it out and having a great time at it. Thanks Janka.

Thanks to my Beta Readers: Janka Dustan, Bobbi Kinion, Mary Durham, and Pamela Altman Talley.

A SPECIAL THANKS to the REBELS. You know who you are.  

It’s a long road but it’s worth it!  We did it!!!!!! And now we are making it a reality.

P
lease be
kind and leave a review on the site you purchased the book from.

A
s the Alpha
of his Jaguar clan, Judd Walsh is supposed to be open minded and objective in all decisions. However, he draws the line when it comes to vampires. A vampire stole the life of someone important to him, and he would rather be protecting anyone else. Until a pretty vampire sparks his jaguar like no one else ever has.

Maggie Lamont came to Alpha City to join in the fight to protect her people and others like them. As a healer, her blood can bring shifters and other magical beings back from the brink of death. Her life unexpectedly takes a left turn when she saves the life of a pack princess, and she comes face to face with Judd Walsh. 

Once lit, the fires of the mating call can’t be extinguished, and these two reluctant souls are caught between a rock and a hard place. Neither desires a mating, but neither can walk away. Faced with the continuing battle for all their lives against the dangerous Claudia Blackwood, the choices they make today, will certainly affect all of their tomorrows.

J
udd Walsh knew
he was going to be in so much trouble as he took the shortcut back to his house. Everyone in the pride used this trail if they wanted to bypass the big house, where most of the guards lived. That was all he needed, for one of the guards to catch him after hours and report him to his dad. It would spread like wildfire among the pride that the Beta’s son was caught violating curfew. It was getting darker as he speed-walked through the woods. He heard a branch snap, and something told him to stop. There were always animals running around these trails, but for some reason this felt different. He paused to check the area—this time it felt wrong.

He had traveled these woods a hundred times, and never once had the trees looked this creepy. The branches appeared twisted, almost as if they were reaching out for him.

At first he thought it was his dad, waiting for him, but nobody came out. Judd stood still, observing the area the way he’d been taught. Straining his senses, he focused on what was behind the bushes and trees. He was ten years old and had only shifted a few times, but right now his beast was close to the surface.

When he didn’t see anything, Judd continued walking. He looked down at his watch and saw that it was already past the time his mom had told him to be home. He figured by now she was already hunting for him. He was going to get in so much trouble.

Judd’s jaguar suddenly jumped inside of him, making him stop and search the area again. That’s when he noticed the figure, leaning against a tree. The man’s pale blue eyes watched his every move. Judd stood completely still as fear crept up his spine. This man was a stranger on pride land, and that wasn’t good. Not moving an inch, Judd watched as the man smiled. At first Judd smiled back, thinking the man was friendly—until his fangs dropped down.

Every instinct told him to run, even as the stranger seemed to drift closer. Judd knew what this man was: a vampire. His dad had told his friends in gory detail all about the night people. The ones who sucked the blood from their victims, bleeding them dry while they were still alive.

Judd felt hypnotized in front of the man, even as his beast urged him to run away. Staring into his eyes, Judd was completely at the vampire’s mercy. He was trapped, and his mom and dad didn’t even know where he was.
What should I do?
He’d never felt this scared before.

“Hello, little one. You’re out late.” Judd could only listen as the vampire towered over him. “You’ll be a nice addition to my collection.”

Judd wanted to yell, but his voice had left him; only a whimper escaped his mouth. The vampire’s nostrils flared as he picked him up, pulling him toward those sharp fangs.

“I wonder if you taste as good as you smell?” Judd closed his eyes, knowing he’d be dead soon. His dad’s comment rang like a bell in his head: ‘Once you’re bitten, you become one of the dead.’ Roaming the night, the dead searched out humans to feed on. Tonight, this vampire had found his next meal.

Judd opened his eyes as his mom’s scent drifted up his nose. “Mom,” he whispered as her body flew out of the woods, hitting the vampire in the back and slamming them all to the ground.

Judd’s body rolled against the trees. “Run, Judd!” his mom demanded. Judd got up and was running toward his house when he heard his mom’s scream. He turned around as the vampire grabbed hold of her, pinning her to the ground and biting into her neck. Her face was turned to the side in pain as she screamed again, “RUN!”

“MOM!” Jerking awake, Judd looked around the dark room. He was dreaming again. The scent of shame lingered in the air as he breathed in deeply. The nightmares had been getting worse. Ever since he met Maggie Lamont, he’d been having the same ones every night. Maggie was a vampire, and his mate. Whoever said that the fates were right every time when they paired you off with your perfect partner was completely crazy. His mate was a damn vampire; the same type of creature that had taken what he held most precious away from him. All his life he’d hated vampires—except Maggie.

Judd was the Alpha of the Walsh jaguar pride, a member of the Alpha Council that ran Alpha City, and even he couldn’t hide from Maggie. At every turn, he had denied Maggie and their mating. He tried to keep away from her, but his thoughts always returned to the brown-haired woman and her piercing green eyes. Everything about her drew him in, but the memory of his mother’s death would forever haunt him. He would always live with the fact that he had left her there to die. His mother had sacrificed her life for his. How could he be mated with someone whose very existence he had hated for most of his life?

His pride would never know what a wonderful woman his mother was. His father grieved so much for her over the years that he finally died in his sleep. Going through the journals he left behind, Judd read how much his father loved his mate. Even now, the thought of having a mate of his own was unthinkable. Death was a part of life, but it still hurt his soul every time he thought about having a mate and then having them die at such a young age, just like his mother.

That was his biggest fear; and now that Maggie had come into his life, he felt their relationship would be doomed. Vampires were frequent targets of hunters. At first when he looked at her, he could feel a smile crossing his lips, and then his mother’s memory would come back to him. He couldn’t disrespect her by being mates with a vampire. He just couldn’t.

Shaking his head, he pushed the drenched sheet off of him and got up. He knew that Maggie wasn’t like the vampire—Locke—who’d killed his mother, but how could he change his whole way of thinking? Before Maggie showed up, he would’ve gladly killed them all. He’d thought that none of them deserved the right to live, but now he was faced with one of the kindest women he’d ever met…and she was a vampire.

He had a lot to do today. He had to stop thinking about her so much; it was distracting him. He couldn’t even concentrate. If they didn’t figure out how to deal with Claudia and Jamal, then none of this would even matter. The woman had tried to kill Zoey, and then they’d killed Thorn.

It was almost impossible to not let his mind drift back to the day he met Maggie for the first time. There was so much tension and chaos going on that day in Alpha City he didn’t know if he was coming or going. Zoey Malone was Ryder Malone’s little sister and the mate of Kayden Lynn, another Alpha and Judd’s best friend. Zoey had it in her head that Kayden was going to mate with Rose, a new member of his pride. Angry and distraught, Zoey had run off into the woods and was attacked.

That was the first time they experienced Claudia Blackwood’s power. Claudia was a powerful witch, and not a good one. She wanted to eliminate all of the Alphas in order to take over and get into Valceria, the home of the Elves. She’d concocted a spell that allowed her to pop into their territory for a brief time, allowing the witch to sneak up on Zoey as she ran through the woods and stab her over and over.

Zoey almost died that night, but Maggie showed up and saved the day. Maggie is a Healer and used her blood to heal Zoey. Unfortunately, Judd and the other Alphas didn’t have a clue that she was really trying to help Zoey. This was also the first time they found out that Maggie was a vampire.

It was also the first time they found out that Claudia had released a dragon from the depths of Hell to help her. Jamal, King of the dragon’s was sent to Hell by the first members of the Order. How the woman had pulled it off was still a mystery.

The Order was meeting today in the mines to see what progress had been made. Even though they’d accomplished a lot in a short amount of time, they still needed a plan for defeating the witch, Claudia Blackwood, and the dragon Jamal. It was almost impossible to believe that a dragon could exist in today’s times. This creature was more than just a shifter like him; this was a fire-breathing dragon. Judd’s father had told him and his friends stories during their training of how dragons had once existed on earth. The destruction they created, even to their own kind.

Jamal, the King of the dragons was evil and killing him would prove difficult. Especially since he was working with an evil witch who was becoming more powerful every day. All Jamal wanted to do was to destroy the earth and its beauty. He would rather live in ash.

The only thing going for them right now was the fact that Jamal couldn’t reach his full power until he got his hands on all the pieces of the Stone. Judd was a member of the Order and had a piece of the Stone himself. At first, before Bast explained to them what the Stone was, he thought it was actually a rock of some kind.

It wasn’t.

The Stone was composed of several special gifts given to the members of the Order, a group of special shifters and other paranormals who were brought together to rid the earth of Jamal and his people. Jamal had killed his father Riffa, who believed in only flying at night and letting the humans live in peace. Unfortunately, Jamal didn’t like hiding who he was, and so the Order was formed; with one elf, one bear, one wolf, one panther, one tiger, one jaguar, one dragon, and two witches. They were each given a special gift that was passed down from generation to generation, or which would appear to that member once the Order was reconvened.

No one, including Bast, the king of the Elves, knew what would happen if Claudia got all the pieces. What would it do? What power would it give her?

Judd touched the medallion that hung around his neck. He actually held a piece of the Stone. He still didn’t know much about the Stone or what made it so special once the pieces came together. It was made of silver, but he couldn’t deny the power it held. When he touched it, he could feel something powerful lurking inside of it. He could feel the energy seeping out as he held it firmly in his hand, almost like an electrical current.

Yet he had no idea what to do with it. It didn’t do him much good without any kind of instructions; it was just a piece of jewelry. The damn thing never showed him how it could help them defeat Jamal and Claudia. There were so many unanswered questions, and that’s what had them all at such a disadvantage. How that damn dragon had escaped from Hell was still a mystery, and that was only one of the many problems they needed to figure out. Sending this dragon back to Hell was going to be a huge challenge, if they could even accomplish it at all. Nobody knew that shifters existed, so the fear of others like Jamal bringing unwanted attention to Alpha City plagued Judd and his friends day and night. Judd would rather they found a way to kill him; that way he could never come back and inflict his misery on future generations.

Claudia Blackwood and her coven were the ones who were to blame for unleashing this dragon on Earth. Using some heavy-duty black magic, they had released Jamal from his prison in Hell. Unbeknownst to them, Claudia had had a lot of time to prepare; her plan had already been successful in taking one of them out.

Thorn Russell, the Beta for Kayden Lynn’s pride, had been killed by Jamal on the last full moon. They were trying to make it to the safe house when they received a call that Carina had sneaked out of the mines and ran back to the house to get her doll. Carina Bailey was the youngest member of the Order and the newest member of Kayden’s pride. She was also a powerful Witch and Seer. He felt sorry for Carina because she was still a little girl, a child who had been given too much responsibility. When the call went out for all the members of the Order to leave for the mines, Carina had left her doll at home.

When Thorn realized she was missing, he shifted and tracked her back to the cabin. She was running outside, holding her doll, when Jamal swooped down from the sky and tried to grab her with his huge claws. Thorn got to her first and pushed her out of the way, but sadly Jamal’s claws grabbed hold of Thorn. The dragon carried him into the night sky, then ripped his body in two. Jamal laughed as he threw the Beta’s body to the ground to land in front of his Alpha, Kayden. Before anyone could get any shots off with their guns, the dragon had already taken to the sky and fled.

The pain Kayden felt was evident. Carina had watched it all happen and hadn’t spoken much since. Thorn knew how important Carina was to the Order, and had sacrificed his life to make sure that Jamal didn’t get her. Thorn’s funeral was in a couple of days. They’d scheduled it so the Alpha City community could pay their respects and so his twin brother would have time to arrive; he was in the military and on active duty.

Getting out of bed, Judd went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. He stared at himself in the mirror, thinking about Maggie again. His body heated up every time he thought about her. Turning the shower to cold water, Judd stepped inside, trying to wash away his feelings of regret. He wished they’d never met.