Coveted

BORN OF MYTHS AND LEGENDS, GUARDIAN
WOLVES PROTECT THE WORLD AGAINST EVIL. AFTER CENTURIES WITHOUT THEIR DESTINED
MATES, THEIR RACE IS NEARLY EXTINCT.

SOMEONE IS DETERMINED TO PREVENT
THEIR RETURN AND HARNESS ALL THEIR POWER FOR THEMSELVES.

Pack alpha Aiden vows to do whatever
necessary to protect his people. When he discovers a plot to harvest blood from
his wolves to create the ultimate drug, he’s determined to stop them at any
cost. And quickly finds himself taken captive. After months in prison, Aiden
barely manages to hang onto his sanity. The last thing he expects is a shapely
little human to come to his rescue and bring out all his protective instincts.

Shayla is being stalked because of
her abilities as a seeker. When offered a job in Scotland, she leaps at the
chance to escape. With danger pursuing her at every turn, she must decide if
she could give up her magic in order to live a safe, ordinary life. Never in
her wildest fantasies did she expect to find a feral-looking man imprisoned in a
thousand-year-old dungeon…or be so wildly attracted to him. She didn’t need
more trouble, but when fate presents the means to help him escape, she doesn’t
hesitate. 

Now they are both being hunted, and
Aiden is determined to do everything in his power to protect Shayla
…
and seduce her into becoming his
mate. As the danger intensifies, Aiden  begins to suspect that Shayla might be
the key to saving not only his people but also the future of his race…if he
could keep her alive long enough.

This is a work of fiction. Names, character,
places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead,
business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
used or reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form
in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the
case of brief quotations for articles or reviews. Please do not participate in
or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials.

Copyright © 2014
S
tacey
B
rutger

Cover
artist: Amanda Kelsey of Razzle Dazzle Design (
www.razzdazzdesign.com
)

Editor: Faith Freewoman  (
www.demonfordetails.com
)

All rights reserved.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For those who’d helped me along the way…Melissa Limoges, Angela Rafuse,
& Jessie Teicher…Thank You!

And a special thanks to my amazing editor, Faith, whose hard work has made
this book stronger.

I bow to your skill at finding the story buried beneath all the words and
making it shine.

To my husband and his unending support…thank you for believing in me. Know
that you hold my heart.

Thank you to all my fans and readers.

I couldn’t have written this book without you.

 Chapter One

D
eath saturated the air,
oozing up from the hard-packed dirt floor of the prison. Aiden prowled the
confines of his cell, intimately familiar with every stone after weeks spent
locked in the underground fortress.

He closed his eyes
and ran a hand down the front of his threadbare shirt, ignoring the betraying
tremble of his fingers, ignoring, too, the stiff crust of blood and assortment
of stains.

The clothing reminded
him he was human.

The moment he forgot,
allowed his beast to roam free, he was a dead man.

Claustrophobia methodically
ate away at his last shaky hold on sanity. And it only grew worse at night. The
walls closed in on him. The air thickened until breathing became impossible.

If he squeezed his
eyes shut hard enough, he could almost pretend he was free and home in his own
castle. But even half-starved and feverish, his mind would not be fooled. At
least his keen sense of smell had faded, burned away by the rancid stench of
rot and decay that infested the walls from the previous occupants.

He opened his eyes,
and a heavy dose of grim humor took hold, kept him from going bat-shit crazy.

The five-foot-eight
cell was surprisingly accommodating for an eight-hundred-year-old dungeon.

Running water?

Check. Plenty of
water trickled down the mossy stone walls…if you didn’t mind the extra protein
of slime in your diet.

Entertainment?

Well, entertainment
of a sort, anyway. Spiders and other insects feasted on every available inch of
his flesh. He hardly felt them anymore. And let’s not forget the talkative
fellow one cell over. The whittled-down corpse lay crumpled against the far
wall where he’d perished, his body disturbingly juicy even after months of
rotting one slow inch at a time. Manacles dangled overhead, the man only
escaping after death.

A foot or more of stagnant
water pooled in the other cell, the floor having long since been washed out by
rainfall. Despite the placid surface, a putrid stench of death rose from the
watery pit. Half of the poor man’s body had disappeared into the sinkhole, the
water insidiously claiming the man’s decomposing corpse as if it got a taste
for flesh and wanted more.

Another chain,
anchored lower on the wall, snaked below the surface. The placement guaranteed
the prisoners were forced to struggle to keep their heads above water until
they eventually weakened and succumbed to a watery death.

Which would’ve been
his own fate if not for his lineage. His captors had reserved the fortified
cell especially for him. They couldn’t risk killing him too soon, not until
they got what they wanted.

Then there was the
food.

At first they’d
brought him raw meat, most of it days old if the sour smell was any indication.
Aiden ate it anyway, determined to remain strong. Only when he’d nearly escaped
did they leave him to fend for himself.

The underground
dungeon harbored an unlimited supply of rats, a type of room service, he
supposed, since the food came to him. Although even that was getting scarce.
The rodents didn’t venture near anymore, not with the full moon drawing close,
and his wolf pressing so insistently beneath the surface. The predator in him
kept them at bay.

Exercise?

Only if you consider
the way they worked him over during the frequent torture sessions. They’d escalated
to nightly visits…anything to force him to change into his wolf so they could
extract his blood.

And they were close
to succeeding.

The change was becoming
harder to fight.

Much to his shame, he
was weakening.

It was his wolf, his
beast’s thirst for vengeance, that Aiden feared would ultimately break him.

In the last few days,
he’d become more beast than man. The wolf had worn away his resistance,
shredding the  little bit of humanity he’d managed to scrape together. Soon
he’d be left with nothing. When that happened, he wouldn’t be able to contain
him
much longer.

Aiden clenched and
unclenched his fists as he paced, the scabs on his knuckles—that should’ve
healed in minutes—cracked and dripped blood.

One thought kept him
sane.

They’d slip up soon
enough.

Make a mistake.

They had to.

Then he’d give free
rein to his wolf and pick them out of his teeth afterwards.

The full moon would
rise in a few days. Few wolves could resist her seductive call. Those who were
denied her regenerative rays became raging beasts after a few cycles. He knew
in his bones that he wouldn’t be able to hold off the change a second time.
Even now his beast slashed under his skin, tearing into his flesh in
retaliation for daring to imprison him.

He needed to shift,
and soon, or he’d be in danger of going into flux. Locking out his wolf for
extended periods of time would either stifle or kill his beast outright. Aiden
wouldn’t survive being trapped in his human form for an eternity, half of his
soul damaged beyond repair.

But if he shifted, he
was dead. They would put him down like some rabid animal, drain every last drop
of blood they could squeeze from his veins, and bottle it.

An ounce sold for
thousands of dollars.

The hottest new drug
on the market.

Since blood
deteriorated so quickly, they required more wolves to maintain the supply.

He was an alpha, a
purebred born and raised, not some bitten mutt. That made his blood more
potent. They’d discovered that while he was unconscious. They offered him food
and water, better accommodations, if he would voluntarily give his blood. Aiden
refused. It was the only reason they didn’t kill him outright, but their
patience was growing thin.

They wanted his
blood, and they were becoming more determined to take it from him one way or
another.

One dose gave the purchaser
a surge of adrenaline. People could do impossible things, heal from life-threatening
injuries. Diseases went into remission. It wasn’t a complete cure. They needed
continual doses. But after the first miracle, people didn’t care where it came
from or that a little too much would kill them.

Or worse.

Transformed them into
something no longer human.

Those genetically
predisposed, those that carried the werewolf gene, would turn into the very
creatures they’d hunted if they consumed too much blood.

A lone wolf on its
first change would rampage, its human side overtaken by a wolf more savage than
those in the wild, and massacre anything in its way. A news report he’d spotted
shortly before he was captured proved this point. A wolf had ripped through an
apartment building, killing dozens before morphing back into his human from.

The police had taken
one look at him, naked and covered in blood, ranting about monsters, and raised
their weapons.

The first shot hadn’t
even given the guy pause, only a hail of bullets succeeded in bringing him down.

The rest of his teams
had been on assignment, tracking the record number of missing people from the
surrounding area. People whom Aiden suspected were wolves. With no one else
available, he’d gone himself to investigate. It was their first clue in months,
his chance to search for the source of the drug.

That was when he met
Nora, the lone survivor.

Nora had been on the
drug, he’d smelled the blood on her. When she said she knew where he could get
some, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to hunt down the culprits and eliminate
the problem once and for all.

Too bad he hadn’t
trusted his instincts.

She hadn’t lied. She
knew where the drug had come from.

His
veins.

And she was desperate
for more. 

She’d set up her
boyfriend by giving him an overdose while he slept, possibly hoping to lure out
more of his kind. Aiden should’ve been more careful. He took one look at her
pretty face and underestimated her addiction and her knowledge of wolves. When Aiden
had lunged, ready to force the truth from her broken body if necessary, she’d
tossed a handful of powder at him.

Wolfsbane.

He’d tried not to
inhale, but the damage was done. The instant the powder came into contact with
his skin he was flat on his ass, only dimly aware of his surroundings.

Warmth burned under
his skin to know that he’d fallen for her lies like some feeble human.

That carelessness had
landed him in this hell.

He missed the feel of
the sun and moon on his skin, the fresh breeze instead of the stink of this
sewer. The passage of days could be measured only by the pull of the moon. Even
now, his skin prickled, and his wolf stretched under his skin, testing the
boundaries.

The moon was rising.

Night was ready to
fall.

And they always came
after sunset.

Aiden stopped in
front of the wall, flicked out his claws, and pressed the sharp edge against
stone, slashing a single mark next to the long line of others.

Nearly two months.

Thunder boomed in the
distance, loud enough that a fine sift of sand rained down. The sound sent his
stomach rumbling pitifully. He scratched his chin through the thick beard, while
his wolf scenting the air for prey. Thunder meant a torrent of water would
sweep through the underground, carrying rats in the floodwaters.

And if he was lucky,
something he could use as a weapon. Everything he’d gathered so far had been
useless. Every makeshift weapon he’d constructed had failed, the wood too
rotten to be of use, and anything heavier never made it far enough to reach him.
 

He’d relentlessly battered
his fists against the stones for the first few days of his stay, but the foot-thick
slabs of rock had refused to relent. He ended up beating himself into a bloody
mess. He would’ve continued his destructive ways but for one thing. The more
blood he lost, the weaker his control over his wolf, ultimately leaving him
more vulnerable to his captors.

He refused to give
them any opening. So, instead, he slowly scraped the mortar from between the
stones until the skin around his nails bled.

At the current rate,
he’d be free in six months.

If he lived that
long.

Any hope of sleep
vanished with the storm, but it also meant his nightly torture session would be
cut short.

Couldn’t have him
drowning and waste his blood.

Bunched muscles
relaxed infinitesimally.

He’d survive another
day.

He glared at the
bars. He’d have to give the assholes credit. They’d planned everything down to
the smallest detail. The metal bars were coated in silver. Each time he yanked
on them, his flesh sizzled and the smell of charred meat filled the small space.
The blasted door didn’t even budge.

Each exposure to the
silver weakened him, until he was as ineffectual as a human back when the prison
had been first constructed.

He could take the
torture.

It wasn’t the first
time.

Boredom or his wolf
would kill him first.

A howl worked up his
throat, and he gave in to the urge and released all his pent-up rage.