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All I could do as we drove away from the cottage that I had worked so hard to acquire, that I had spent years making into a home, was look back and watch it fade into the distance. It was dark, and I was only able to get a few precious seconds before my home was gone.

I wanted to rage. If my hands were free, I thought I might try to strangle Samson, Alpha bullshit be damned. He might be able to break me like a twig, but at the moment, I didn't give a damn. In one fell swoop, he had taken nearly everything from me, except for the little boy sleeping in the back seat.

The grief of losing it all threatened to choke me, but knowing I still had Kit and was still in a position to keep him safe was enough for the moment. It had to be.

"Don't do anything stupid," Samson warned, almost as if he could read my mind as we finally left the town limits and drove out into the darkness. The streetlamps faded out of the car as we sped along the narrow highway. There was only a sliver of the moon in the sky, but we both knew that we'd have no problem seeing as we drove back to his home.

My home, too, if I didn't manage to escape.

The idea of going back to Crystal Creek, right in the epicenter of so many shifter packs, made me feel sick. I'd wanted more than anything to raise Kit away from pack toxicity and politics, and I'd achieved that for seven wonderful years. Now Samson had found us, and it was time to face the reality of it all—my little Kit was the son of an Alpha, and that Alpha had come to take what he believed was his.

My witch magic churned inside me like a hurricane, so intense that I rubbed my chest to try to alleviate the feeling. I reached for it tentatively, but no matter how powerfully it reacted to me, there was something in the way of me truly reaching it like I could any other day.

From the moment I'd laid eyes on Samson again, it was like the utter shock of seeing him had knocked something off balance inside of me. My best weapon against the Alpha was gone, at least for the time being, and it made me feel like the same sad, weak Kiera who had run away from Samson before.

Yet...she was still inside me. My life in Crystal Creek was impossible to forget, the trauma of it having shaped so much of who I had managed to become.

My childhood had been average enough, but as I grew into a teenager, none of my shifting capabilities manifested, and my peers took notice. My parents' constant disappointment in me made things even harder, as they never missed an opportunity to point out my shortcomings to me. But what made it worse was the way my packmates responded. I'd always been an outsider among them, an awkward girl who didn't belong anywhere.

I had thought I had been content, even happy with that reality. But as the years passed, the heaviness of the constant isolation began to sink in, and with it, the misery.

I thought things would change once I came of age, once my first heat finally took hold.

I was wrong.

Samson had only been Alpha for a few months by the time it came around, and even on a good day, I tried to avoid him like the plague. Like his father before him, Samson ruled the Saltfang pack with cold efficiency. He was ruthless, devoid of any emotion, and the exact type of Alpha that I hated to be around. He wasn’t outwardly cruel to me, but all of his displeasure came through in the way he would look at me as if I was worth less than the dirt on his shoes.

That had all changed, at least temporarily, when my first heat came. I was twenty at the time, and my parents were out of town, so it was just me in the house, which was a blessing. The pain was almost blinding, but the loneliness made it even worse. I needed an Alpha, as if my life depended on it, but no Alpha would stoop so low as to be with me. I didn't want any of them, anyway. I'd rather be in pain than have an Alpha with me during my heat because of pity alone.

I was at the peak of my heart cycle when I heard a knock at my door. I'd missed work at the pack-owned grocery store for four days straight, too embarrassed to call in because of my heat, and apparently, my absence had finally been noticed.

I expected my manager, or another coworker, but never in a million years did I expect to pull open my front door and see Samson Jones on the other side.

I remembered the shock I felt, and the frustration that my heat had distracted me too much to sense Samson before I opened the door. He stood there for a few seconds, and for a brief moment, I was struck by the way his eyes trailed over me from head to toe. Then his expression was like steel, and the moment passed. I remember him saying that he needed to speak to me about my absence and that I was in danger of being fired, but he didn't leave, and we both knew it was a lie.

The next thing I knew, I'd let him in, and we were kissing. The way his hands felt as they dug into my hips, his fingers pushing up under my shirt and touching my skin...

Samson had been my first, and he'd been surprisingly kind and gentle with me. Gone was the pushy, cold Alpha I knew, replaced by someone who seemed to generally care about me and wanted to make sure I found as much pleasure as possible.

He'd made sure I was comfortable, he'd helped me prepare for him, and as we lay together after he knotted me, he held me so closely, so tightly, that I had felt safe in the circle of his arms.

Then everything went wrong.

My heat ended abruptly, and the next morning, he was back to being his normal, cold, cruel self. The memory of how he had taken me aside the morning after my heat ended, the way he had looked me in the eyes and told me he wanted nothing to do with me, that it was a mistake, was as sharp now as it was the day it happened.

Samson had told me in no uncertain terms that he would never take an Omega like me as his mate, and I wasn't the one he had any plans to have his pups with. It didn't matter if I had been; if we had had a passionate night together, I had been nothing but a fling, a dirty secret. I had been lucky enough that he'd taken care of me in my time of need, and it was stupid of me to expect more.

I'd retreated into myself, heartbroken and humiliated. I stopped going to work, stopped answering the few calls I'd get, and tried my best to accept my life of loneliness. I had been a fool to think an Alpha like Samson might have cared for me.

It hurt more than anything ever had before, but at least I knew I'd survive.

I was never given a chance to find how everything might have played out, because a few weeks later, I was slapped in the face with a staggering realization—my period was two weeks late. I'd been too depressed to really care, but now...

My body was a mess, and the idea of a pregnancy scared the hell out of me. The idea of me being a mother seemed impossible, even more so when I imagined who the father was.

But it didn't matter who the father was.

All I could think about was my own parents and how they had raised me with cold distance, like they couldn't stand being near me. I'd gotten the impression they'd never wanted kids, and I was more of an inconvenient accident than anything else. When I thought about my own baby, I knew I wanted so much more.

More than distant parents, and definitely more than an asshole Alpha for a father. Alphas like Samson viewed mates and children as property and exerted absolute control over them. Thinking of the sweet baby I had been carrying controlled like that, and by a father who saw him as a way to increase his own power? It was horrifying, and the idea that it would happen to my baby was unbearable.

It had to be enough to spur me into action.

I knew I needed to leave the Saltfang territory, and needed to do it right away. There had been a nearby human city, Portland, and if I were careful, I’d be able to find a job and a place to stay. If I were lucky, maybe I could even find someone willing to help me and my unborn child. It wouldn't be easy to leave my entire world behind me and start a life on my own, but the thought of staying where I was only brought up a bone-deep sense of panic and fear.

I had made a promise to myself, after Samson rejected me, to leave town and make a better life for myself, for both of us. I'd spent years working to achieve that, and in the process, I had done my best to bury all the anger and hurt that Samson had left me with. It hadn't always worked, but it had been enough.

But now that was over. The threat was real and right next to me. I could try to resist Samson's advances and protect my child as much as I could, but I knew what he was capable of. As far as Samson was concerned, the fact that I carried his child made me his, and by extension, my child would belong to him, too. He'd probably use his power to take control over the child as a means of exerting control over me as well.

Damn him. As the miles passed, it became harder and harder to hold in my tears. The unfairness of it all was so heavy it was blinding. I'd had it all, the freedom that I'd worked my ass off for, and Samson was able to take it away in an instant.

I hated Alphas, every single one of them...the one in the car with me, worst of all.

When I looked at Samson's face again, I realized that he was occasionally looking at me out of the corner of his eye. There was a scowl on his handsome face, and he didn't even have the good grace to pretend he wasn't staring at me like I was some kind of specimen under a microscope.

We didn't stop, Samson happily piling miles upon miles between us and my home, and the tension inside of me coiled tighter and tighter with each one. He didn't try to make conversation with me, or even ask if I needed to stop as the first hour rolled into the second, and then the third. I was starving, and I needed to pee something fierce, but Samson unsurprisingly only cared for his own needs. Now that he had me in his clutches, he didn't bother to speak to me at all.

Well, tough shit. If he's going to trap me here, handcuffed to my own damn car, then we're going to talk.

"So....care to explain why you came all this way to kidnap me like some low-life criminal?"

Samson sneered, shaking his head like he couldn't believe how idiotic I was being, which, of course, only made my temper burn brighter. "Don't be a child. I am bringing you back home where you belong, where your family and pack is."

I scoffed. "I haven't had a pack in a long time.”

Samson frowned. "I thought after the initial shock that you'd be happy. Isn't that what you begged me for all those years ago? To make you mine?"

The heat in my body spiked even higher, my skin practically burning from his proximity. "I was young and stupid."

"Can't argue there. It was stupid to disappear with my son. Beyond stupid. Do you know how long I looked for you, Kiera?"

"You...what?"

"After I found out you'd left, I tried to find you." His knuckles were white where his fingers dug into the steering wheel, his jaw ticking from the force of his teeth clenching. "You hid well. And I shouldn't have let you run. You should have been with me, you and the pup."

"He doesn't even know you. You just uprooted our entire lives on a whim."

"I'll admit that I may have made mistakes, but you ran, Kiera. I might not have taken you as my mate after one single night, but the pregnancy would have changed things."

An old sadness was creeping up my throat. "I didn't want to be just some Omega that you kept as a side piece because I had your son. And I sure as hell didn't want my son being used as part of your Alpha pack political bullshit."

Samson laughed cruelly, "I'm the Alpha, Kiera, and I will use my son however I see fit."

My response came like the crack of a whip, "Like hell you will."

The scent of his rage spiked the air, a hint of ozone in it. "You don't get to speak to me like that. Not if you don't want me to punish you right here, right now."

The memory of that night seven years ago flickered through my head like a ghost, a ghost that was as horrifying as it was arousing. He could hurt me in all the ways he wanted. My body craved him still, and I hated it.

"Punish me however you like, Samson, I don't care."

He inhaled deeply, and almost as if he could tell all the ways he was affecting me, some of his rage bled away into something more...intimate. The corner of his mouth pulled up, just slightly. "If I remember correctly, you like taking orders."

I quickly looked into the back seat, where Kit was still sleeping, before responding. "We both know that, however, I acted duringthe heat doesn't count—"

"But it does."

I huffed, fighting against the instinct that urged me to just agree with him, that insisted on his dominance over me.

I could tell my hesitation, however small, pleased him, because his lips quirked into a real smirk. "You still have some fight left in you, Kiera. That's good." His tone turned low. "I love it when my prey fights back."

I glared at him. "You're going to find that this prey will be much more trouble than you bargained for."

"You know what? I like the sound of that. You're already taking your first punishment so well, anyway."

I froze. "The kidnapping?"

He chuckled, and this time, he really was amused. "No, little Omega. That's just part of it. You committed the crime of running away from your pack and taking my heir with you. To make sure it never happens again, I'm bringing you back to Saltfang, where you will marry me and serve me like the good Omega I know you can be."

I balked. "W-What? I'm not going to marry you, Samson! You can't force me to!"

"Actually, I can," he corrected, "The Alpha can claim his right to marry whomever he chooses. And you know why that is, don't you, Kiera?"

I had to bite back a sob, my body too hot, too overwhelmed by his presence. I could smell him all around me in the little car, feel his body heat, his dominance, the hint of arousal when he talked about the night of my heat.

"Because an Alpha has the power to claim a mate. Any Omega he chooses, no matter who they are. If he decides he wants them, he takes them. And you are no different, little Omega." He leaned in closer, his voice dropping down until it was little more than a deep rumble. "You are my mate now, and you always will be."