Every Dawn Forever
Read Every Dawn Forever Online
Authors: R. E. Butler
Every Dawn Forever
(Hyena Heat Two)
By R. E. Butler
Copyright 2013 R.E. Butler
Every Dawn Forever
(Hyena Heat Two)
By R. E. Butler
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Cover by Ramona Lockwood
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those over the age of 18 only.
* * * * *
I would like to extend sincere thanks to Alexis Arendt at Word Vagabond for editing this story.
Thank you
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A special thanks to my beta Jackie G., for her tireless devotion to my worlds and her unending support, to Jacq H., for being the best cheerleader around, and to Alex G., for running my Facebook page. To my husband for his support and to my Aunt B. L., who has been there for me forever...thanks.
Table of Contents
Coming Soon…Every Sunset Forever (Hyena Heat Book Three)
Sydney Nichols washed the dinner dishes as quietly and quickly as she could. The less attention she drew to herself, the better. Byron, her mate, was in the next room. No,
mate
wasn’t really the right word for him. He wasn’t her truemate, the one male that had been made for her. She had been given to him against her will, powerless to refuse or change her circumstances. As far as she was concerned, Byron was her mate in title only, and in no way was he the mate of her heart. That knowledge, that little secret that she kept locked up tightly in her mind, was the only thing that kept her sane when things got really bad. When his fists flew at her blindingly fast and his hateful words filled the air like buzzing insects, she could hold onto the truth: he was not really her mate.
She could picture him in her mind without even seeing him, and knew exactly what he was doing at that moment. He was stretched out on the beat-up leather recliner, which had been repaired with duct tape so often that it was more silver than brown, his dirty work boots on the footrest, one hand wrapped around a beer. The television blared through the thin walls of the single-wide trailer where she lived. She had never called it her home, because home was supposed to be a place where you were loved and kept safe. No, the walls that surrounded her were more like prison bars, and Byron was her jailer.
She settled the last dish in the drainer, released the plug to let the water drain out, and pulled the rubber gloves off her hands. Picking up a threadbare dishtowel, she looked out the small window over the sink and dried the dishes.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been happy. It certainly had been a long time ago. She had grown up in a single-parent home with her mother, in the busy city of Baltimore. Sydney was the product of a one-night-stand with a werewolf whose name she was never told. Sydney wasn’t even sure that her mom knew the male’s name. Her mother had a reputation for being the pack slut. Her earliest memories of her were the tight, revealing clothing that she wore whenever she went out. Sydney spent a lot of time alone as a child. Her mother’s parents had moved out of the country to retire and never had any contact with them, and the mothers of the other pack children never wanted Sydney to play with their kids, because they were worried about her mother trying to have sex with their mates.
She’d still managed to find a few friends in school who were human. The female wolves from her pack assumed she would take after her mother and become a whore too, and wanted nothing to do with her. The males also made that assumption, but unlike the females, they were hoping it was true. But Sydney wasn’t her mom, and had no intention of becoming like her.
Her eighteenth birthday had not come fast enough in her mind. That hot July day had been one full of celebration with her friends. In a few weeks, she would be moving out of her mother’s home and sharing an apartment with two friends, then starting community college in September. She felt like her whole life was spread out in front of her, and she had an opportunity to start fresh and become anyone that she wanted to be.
That night she came home after a dinner out, to change into more comfortable clothes before going to a drive-in. While she was changing she heard the doorbell ring, and assumed that her friends had come back to pick her up. When she came into the kitchen, it wasn’t her friends she found waiting for her, but a man that she had never met before. Her mother introduced him as Harris Monroe, alpha of a wolf pack that lived in the mountains in Virginia. Sydney noticed that her mother held a suitcase in one hand, and her stomach twisted in knots.
“Mom?” she asked.
Her mother smiled at her, but it wasn’t a sweet, loving smile. It was cold and distant. “Alpha Monroe is taking you back with him to his pack. He will assign you a mate and you will be a good wife and mother to your cubs.”
Sydney went pale. “What? What are you talking about? I’m going to start college in September. I don’t want to leave.”
“It’s already done.” Her mom set the suitcase down next to Sydney. “As your mother, according to pack law, it is my right to choose a suitable mate for you.”
Hot tears welled up in Sydney’s eyes. “Why are you doing this to me? I’ll leave, I promise I won’t come back, just don’t send me away to be mated. Please, Mom, please!”
The male that her mother had been dating for the last month came into the kitchen and settled his arm over her mother’s shoulder. His mouth curled up into a nasty smile, which he directed towards Sydney. “Your momma don’t want you around anymore, little bitch. She’s ready to have her life back now that you’re going to be mated off.”
A firm, calloused hand clamped down on Sydney’s arm and she was jerked abruptly towards the visitor. “Get your bag and follow me immediately.”
He released her arm and gave her a stern look. “No!” Sydney shouted. “Mom! Please!”
Alpha Monroe slapped her across the face so hard that she saw spots and blood filled her mouth. She whimpered as her teeth cut into her cheek, pressing her hand gently to the inflamed area. “Now,” Alpha Monroe growled.
She’d known that her mother hadn’t really enjoyed being a mom. She’d known that she thought of her as an inconvenience and not a cherished child. But she never imagined her mother would betray her. Fear knotted in her stomach as she picked up her suitcase and followed Monroe outside. An older-model black van was idling in the gravel driveway, with a man behind the wheel. Monroe went to the back and opened the door.
He pointed to the floor behind the third row and said, “The floor is for cargo.”
When she didn’t understand what he meant, he grabbed her by her long blonde ponytail and yanked her towards the van. Her legs crashed onto the floor of the van and her suitcase slid under the seat. With practiced ease, he slipped a dog collar that was chained to the inside of the van around her neck.
Gripping her chin firmly in his hand, he stared into her eyes and she only saw menace and anger. “If you make a sound, I will gag you. Are we clear?”
She opened her mouth to respond, thought better of it, and nodded.
“The bitch can learn,” he mused, releasing her chin. He slammed the back door shut and she could hear his footsteps as he moved around the van before opening the passenger door and getting in.
“You really going to give her to Byron?” the man in the front seat asked as the van backed out of the driveway.
“My grandson needs a mate, and he’s bored with the females in the pack.”
The man chuckled. “After living with Byron, she’ll probably think this shithole is paradise.”
How right the man, who Sydney came to know as Monroe’s beta, Gregory, would turn out to be. She’d been taken from the van straight to a clearing on the pack’s property, where the entire pack stood. Monroe told the pack that she and Byron were now mates, and the pack had cheered. There was no real mating ceremony, no vows exchanged, just a statement. As coldly delivered as a deli order. Sydney remembered looking around at the pack in bewilderment. The males were enthusiastic, but the females all looked at her with pity. Later, she would find out that they felt sorry for her because Byron didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘tender’. The night of their mating he brutalized her virgin body, slaking his need with her in the roughest and vilest of ways. Her cries of pain only seemed to spur him on.
She soon came to find out that Byron had a hair trigger and a violent temper. Once, when she’d only been with him for a few weeks, she hadn’t been able to get the laundry done before he got home from work. After throwing her against the wall in anger, he stripped her, took all her clothes and tossed them onto the grill, lighting them on fire. He said she needed to learn her place in the house, and that she had to earn her clothing by being obedient. Years later, he got a DUI and came home spoiling for a fight. After beating her so badly that she couldn’t see out of one eye for almost a week, he decided that, to save up the money needed to pay off the ticket, he would cut the amount of food she was allowed to eat. He put a padlock on the refrigerator, and only left out a small quantity of food for her during the day. Sometimes he forgot altogether. She still had to make his dinner, but he decided what she was allowed to eat. She’d been so hungry. A part of her had always hoped that he’d grow bored with her, the way that he supposedly had with the other females in the pack, but after six years, nothing had changed about her situation.