Desired by the Alpha (Wolf Destiny Book 1) (2 page)

Forgetting to breathe, Olivia took a single step forward. And then another. Glancing around, she confirmed what she already knew. She was completely alone. And nothing bad had happened. Olivia went in deeper, but not so far that she couldn’t see out.
 

Disappointed she hadn’t come across a secret witch’s coven or something, she was about to turn back when she glimpsed a clearing just up ahead, right in the middle of a dense area of trees.
 

It didn’t look natural. Even the bushes seemed cut away into a circle. What was that about?

A twig snapped with a sharp crack. She nearly jumped a mile straight into the air.
 

She took off, running as fast as she could, not stopping until she got home. Flinging the back door open, Olivia whipped her head back, checking behind her. Nothing had followed her out.
 

Heart pounding, she raced up the stairs to her room, diving onto her bed. Already thinking about doing it again when her phone rang, startling her into jumping back up to find it. It was Tiffany.
 

“Hey,” Olivia said, trying to sound normal.
 

“What’s with you? You sound weird,” Tiffany said.

“Nothing.” Olivia took a deep, shaky breath. “What’s up?”

Tiffany started asking her about their homework, and Olivia decided right then not to tell her what she had just done. She had always trusted her best friend with all of her secrets, but not this one. Tiffany would be worried enough to tell her father, and there would be hell to pay then.
 

Besides, Olivia was thrilled to have a secret that was just her own. As soon as she had applied to Hewthorn, she decided that if she got accepted, she would go back at night.

Ever since then, Olivia had ventured just that far, going up to the roughly-circular clearing but never beyond. Each time she went inside, she was less nervous. But something told her she wouldn’t be safe if she went in too deep.
 

She couldn’t explain how, but Olivia had learned to trust her instincts young. And while they had gotten her into trouble, they had always kept her out of real danger.
 

Creeping in quietly, she shivered, more from the adrenaline racing through her veins than the cold. Olivia hadn’t expected the forest to be so was completely transformed at night. It was so beautiful she stopped to take a good look around.
 

It was like being in another world. Moonbeams reached down through the trees, shining on the patches of new snow dotting the ground everywhere.

The trees were luminous from the light reflecting off the snow, so brightly that it almost felt like it was still daylight. Even the silence was different, more alive than in the daytime.
 

Striding forward in spite of her pounding heart, Olivia didn’t stop until she was at the edge of what she called The circle. Pausing only briefly to gather her confidence, she sprang into the centre.

This was her stage. Dancing with wild abandon, Olivia performed the same piece that she used for her Hewthorn audition, the one that she used to win her place and secure her future.

Now that she didn’t have an audience, she took the piece further, making it wilder, a lot more free and abstract but still recognizable. For the first time in a long time, she was dancing just for herself, her imaginary audience loving every move.

Olivia spun around in her final pirouette, stopping at the perfect point to transition into her final great leap. She ended up on the far side of the circle, just managing to hold her final pose before sweeping her arms down to bow for the trees.
 

Swinging her arms up high before swooping her body down, Olivia froze. She wasn’t alone.
 

A pair of dark eyes stared directly into hers. For a moment it seemed as if they could see right inside of her, all the way through to her soul.
 

Olivia was rooted to the spot. It was a wolf, standing not five feet away from her. But it was something more than just a wolf.
 

Bigger, stronger, his fur was so dark it was close to black. A werewolf. All of her senses were screaming at her to run away, but she didn’t want to give him a reason to chase her.

Oh, god. Why was he staring at her? Did he want her to panic before he ate her? Because he was so close, he wouldn’t even have to make much effort to jump, knock her to the ground and tear into her body.

Was this it? Was her life actually going to be over when it hadn’t even begun yet? The wolf didn’t move, he just kept staring into her eyes.

Agonizingly slowly, she began to lower her aching arms. She didn’t want to startle him, and since he hadn’t attacked her yet, she didn’t want to give him any ideas.

Olivia still hadn’t looked away. The wolf’s gaze was mesmerizing.

Thoughts bounced around her mind as she dug through her memory. What were you supposed to do if you encountered a werewolf? She had asked Tiffany’s father that when they had found out what had happened to the foolish out-of-towners.
 

“You don’t go into the woods, and then you won’t be faced with one. They don’t come out of there, ever. Stay clear and you’ll be safe,” he had said, his voice stern.

Great. That was a real big help right now. Racking her brain, she tried to think of anything else she might have heard. Even a legend would be something.
 

But she came up empty. Didn’t anyone think it might be a good idea to study werewolves, since they lived so close by? Or at least come up with a plan for a time like this?

He didn’t take his eyes off her, but he didn’t seem to be in an attack posture of any kind. All of a sudden, the wolf turned his back on Olivia, breaking out into a run, disappearing into the darkness.

Turning her head around to make sure there were no other wolves around, Olivia turned around, walking back the way she had come from.
 

Every muscle in her body ached to run away, fast, but she didn’t want to attract attention and make herself look like even more like prey.
 

Walking as fast as she could while still trying to stay quiet, heart thumping so loudly she was afraid it could be heard, Olivia forced herself to go slowly.

When the edge the woods finally came into sight, Olivia took off like a shot. Climbing back up the tree in record time, she pulled the window shut behind her, jamming the lock into place.

Shucking her clothes, she dove into bed, still shaking with fear. It took awhile before she calmed down enough to fall asleep. Just before she drifted off, a smile crossed her face. She was safe, and now she had finally seen for herself what lived in out the woods. No risk, no reward.

Chapter 1

Unlocking the door of her childhood home, Olivia was greeted by silence. The emptiness in the house was like a haunting presence. Nothing was different from her last visit, or even since she was a child. But everything else had changed.
 

Olivia’s mother had moved in with her older sister, both widows now and happy to head down south to the warmth of Florida, even though they were only in their fifties and too young to retire.

“I can’t stay at home any longer,” Mom had told Olivia when she came to visit, the two of them sitting in her tiny, cramped living room in her Brooklyn apartment. “There’s just too many memories. It’s too lonely now. If you want the house, it’s yours. If not, I’ll put it up for sale. But either way, I’m moving in with your Aunt Audrey.”
 

“I want it,” Olivia said immediately.
 

“You should think seriously about it before you give me an answer, darling,” Mom said. “Are you sure you want to leave New York? You’d have to give up your career.”

“It’s already over,” Olivia said, more to herself than her mother.
 

“Don’t say that. You just have to take a break for awhile, but it’s too soon to give up now.”

Staring down into her cup of strong black coffee, Olivia didn’t reply. Usually she loved her mother’s optimism, but for the first time it was making her feel worse.

On the brink of Olivia’s growing success turning into international renown, everything had fallen apart.
 

She had been rehearsing for her first tour with Ballet Manhattan, having landed a prime lead role in a modern ballet that had been on fire since it debuted last year.
 

Just days before the company was scheduled to start the tour, Olivia had been dancing in the final dress rehearsal. Everything was flowing together and it all felt so right. Flying across the stage in her signature jete, she couldn’t have felt better.
 

Seconds later, she was in a crumpled heap, the tiniest error in timing causing her to crash to the ground.
 

Olivia still didn’t understand exactly how it had happened, but she couldn’t forget how it felt. Two surgeries later and nothing had changed. She was haunted by a twisting, aching pain in her leg that kept her awake at night and never let her forget what she had lost, everything broken in a single moment.
 

After weeks of physiotherapy, Olivia had been able to leave the crutches behind. For the most part, she could walk normally again. It only hurt when she danced. Her body might recover from the fall, but her career couldn’t.

Propping her suitcases by the door, she went to sit in the living room.
 

Her mother had left everything behind for her. The house was filled with the same furniture that she had grown up with, all aged wood covered with worn cloth cushions. It was a solid house. Could last for decades more without too much upkeep.
 

“Why would you want to go back?” her mother had asked her. “What are your plans?”

The only thing Olivia really wanted to do was fling herself into her mother’s arms and cry. All she had ever wanted was to be a dancer. It had never even occurred to her that her dream might not work out the way she planned. There was no backup plan.
 

And now she had no idea what to do next.
 

“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out,” Olivia told her, trying to sound upbeat and positive.
 

A clean slate was supposed to be a good thing, right? There was room for endless possibilities. But right now, it seemed like there was a big, scary, gaping void in front of her, full of fear instead of promise.
 

About to shrug her coat off, Olivia got up and went back to the front door instead. There was an endless amount of time to sit around and figure out what to do with the rest of her life.
 

But she hadn’t gone out to the woods in ten years, not even when she visited her parents after moving to New York to continue dancing. She didn’t do anything more than gaze at them from the window of her old bedroom before she went to sleep.
 

Facing the woods now, her spirit reawakened for the first time in a very long while.
 

More people knew about werewolves now, at least more than would admit it when she was a teenager. Going alone wasn’t without risks, of course, but the sun hadn’t set yet. And she was used to going it alone.
 

When her boyfriend had dumped her, she was completely blindsided. She had been so in love with him, it never even crossed her mind that he might not have felt the same way.
 

Ron was always telling her he loved her. Why would someone say it if they didn’t mean it?
 

The two of them had been together almost from the moment she had joined Ballet Manhattan and met him. Her life became complete, a whirlwind of dancing, sex and fun.

Sure, they weren’t married, but after four years together their lives were so entwined they might as well have been.
 

Until her fall. Suddenly Ron became distant when they were together, which was far less often than normal.

She didn’t want to admit it, but the change in him had come as soon as she stopped dancing and started eating like a normal person. Or rather, a normal person that had been starving herself for a long time and had a lot of years to catch up on.

She discovered Ron had been cheating on her with another dancer, and then she found out it was her understudy. He didn’t even have the decency to face her and tell her it was over. Olivia came home one evening after a difficult physiotherapy session to find the few things that he kept in her apartment were gone. A brief, cowardly note was waiting for her on the kitchen table.
 

I’ve met someone else.

All the other words he had scratched out hurriedly on the torn scrap of paper disappeared after she got to those ones. They weren’t even true, Ron had known the other woman longer, but they were burned into her memory nonetheless and all the hurt and anger she felt became contained in them. They haunted her.
 

The day he left his terrible note, he hadn’t taken Olivia to physio like he usually did. She didn’t think much of it when he said he had to work. Ron had gone on the company tour without her, leaving her behind to cope with her injury without his help, and it had been a great boost to his career.
 

While she had been struggling to learn how to walk again, he had gone to her apartment, using the key she gave him to get in, and left her a note. A note. Four years spent together and not even a face-to-face goodbye. It made her burn with anger even now.

They hadn’t seen each other since. It had taken more willpower than Olivia thought she had to keep from contacting him. Some nights were so hard she would ask a friend to come over and take her phone away so she wouldn’t cave in and text him.
 

“He’s a coward,” Paige would tell her every single time she came over for another rescue mission, so many times it got embarrassing. “He doesn’t deserve your time or your thoughts. Leave it alone.”

It was true, of course. But so, so much easier said than done.