Page 1 of Savagely Mated (Shared Mates #1)

D arcy

“She’s mine.”

“No. She’s mine.”

“You’re both wrong. She’s mine.”

I wish I was wearing more than my school pajamas. Even at twenty years old, these things are juvenile. They’re really not the attire to be facing three very large, very frightening men who are looking at me with competitive, possessive lust in their handsome gazes.

I’m used to getting in trouble, but not like this.

Each and every one of them is a musclebound fighter.

Each one of them is capable of great violence and even greater cruelty.

That’s all I really know. Other than that, they’re strangers to me.

Three very attractive strangers who I individually managed to start some shit with and who now want me for…

well. There’s no delicate way to put this.

Mating.

They’re more like animals than men, and that’s saying a lot, because I’m more beast than most.

I shouldn’t be in their presence, let alone in their captivity. But I wouldn’t run away even if I could.

Because I’m feeling the same thing they are.

Imagine the most intense desire in the world. Then imagine it multiplied by three. Imagine knowing you love someone more than yourself, but they’re a complete stranger. Then imagine that happening all at once again, and again, and again, one after another, all in a row.

I’ve been in trouble my whole life. Right now, I’m in more trouble than I could ever have imagined being in.

“We’re going to have to share her,” the dark, smoldering one with the piercing blue eyes says.

“I don’t share,” the stunning blond responds. This man should be on the cover of a magazine. He should be on the cover of all the magazines.

What the hell am I doing? I try to fight my way through the fog of lust to make some sense of things.

“There’s no choice. For any of us.” The oldest one speaks.

He’s in his forties, with dark reddish hair, glittering green eyes, and the most intensely vicious paternal energy I’ve ever encountered.

You can talk about dominant men. You can talk about alpha men.

But this guy makes every other commanding male I’ve ever encountered seem like a… well, a sub.

I can usually trust in my ability to rebel, but right now, I’m regretting every choice that led me to this place of no sexual return.

I could have made better decisions. I could have stayed safe and sound in a literal fortress designed to keep me safe. But no, I had to sneak out one more time. Had to break the rules…

Yesterday, or maybe the day before…

The royal city of Eclipse sprawls out beneath the hallowed walls of the King’s Guard Academy.

The city is bright, incandescent with brilliant yellows, purples, and greens.

I can’t hear it from here, but I can imagine the sound of it.

There’s traffic and life, people shouting, screaming, cursing, laughing.

Eclipse is even busier at night than it is during the day. I’m not allowed there at any time.

I’m supposed to stay here behind thick walls of old stone construction where those loyal to the king train to guard his highness. This is where I belong, they tell me.

I crouch at the highest point of the academy, teeth bared to the wind, ears pinned back against my head as I breathe in the night just as it turns the corner to day.

There is nothing more invigorating than the night and the full moon.

Energy flows from it to me. I half-close my eyes and let myself bathe in it.

Sometimes I feel alone, but not here, not when I am like this.

A wolf is not capable of feeling loneliness in the same way a person is.

A person, finding themselves separated from society, struggles to stay sane.

A wolf finds out who they truly are and becomes it unapologetically.

“Darcy!”

My name is shouted by an annoyed woman, standing down below on the level where the ladder to the rooftop sits. She’s the matron, and she has some limited authority over me when I take the human form that makes me smaller, weaker, and infinitely less interesting than this one.

“Darcy, come down from there this instant!”

Matron’s strident tone irritates me. Makes me want to leap from the very top of this rampart, but I know I’ll be hurt if I do, and wild as I am, I have been trained. My wildness has been blunted.

My fur abandons me first. I feel the cold of the air that was enjoyably bracing now beginning to chill me to my bones. I shiver as I become human again. Small, naked, curvy, short.

I climb down the ladder to the matron, who throws a blanket over me rather than wrapping it around me. Little gestures show her disdain, and there are so many opportunities for little gestures in a day.

“Put something on!” she harries me as I push the blanket off my head, scowling as if she is deeply offended by my nudity.

“You’ve got some nerve breaking curfew to come stand up here,” she says. “You knew the guard would report you. Why can you not follow the rules? You’ve lived with them a lot longer than most! And you know it’s uncouth to display that animal.”

She talks like my wolf isn’t me. It’s because she’s just human.

She doesn’t understand what it’s like to be wild on the inside, and sometimes on the outside too.

My behavior is an annoyance to her. My existence is an inconvenience.

She’d much rather be tucked up in her little apartment watching her stories on the television and sending dirty messages to the archery instructor. Everybody knows she likes his shaft .

I came to the academy when I was three years old.

The youngest students they have taken nowadays are sixteen.

But I’m rare. I’m a female wolf shifter.

They don’t make many of them. Most wolf shifters are men.

Something to do with the Y chromosome and the missing leg not repressing a certain wildness.

For a female to be a wolf shifter, she’s got to have the gene on both chromosomes.

Usually, that leads to a creature that is more wolf than person.

Not really a shifter so much as a werewolf.

The fact that I can take a human form makes me important.

Not important in the way that people treat me very well.

But important in the way that I should never go anywhere or do anything. That kind of important.

There are two places a female shifter is allowed to be, according to official academy guidelines.

One is inside the academy; the other is inside the royal palace, where the wolf king takes them into his harem.

I don’t want to be taken into a harem, and so far nobody has been stupid enough to try to put me in one, but every day that passes, and I get closer to graduation, I know there’s a time limit to how long I can be here.

Not because they’ll kick me out, but because my sanity is starting to wane.

Shifters belong to the king. Male shifters are trained here, as are loyal human males.

I’m the only female, because females are supposed to be sent to the palace.

I don’t know who made the decision to keep me from the royal household when I was very young, but I think it was the right call.

I can barely follow the rules of this place.

I can’t imagine what it must be like in the palace.

I’ve been told over the years that it’s a place with endless protocols, and you have to do exactly what you’re told all the time.

The academy is theoretically like that, but the rules are looser. Well, sometimes.

“Do I need to remind you of the very simple rules?” Matron scolds me as if I am ten years old.

I don’t say anything as I follow her down the stairs and into the interior of the academy.

This place is beautiful. It was actually the old king’s palace at one time, but several kings back they built a new one and left this to the guard.

It is old, and it has always been inhabited by shifters.

You can feel that when you walk through the halls, or sit in the rooms. There’s a kind of hominess that makes me feel as though I belong here—and yet there’s a part of me that needs to roam, break rules, and push past the boundaries of the narrow expectations that have been imposed on me.

“Nobody takes their wolf form inside the academy…” She leaves the sentence dangling for me to finish.

“Unless authorized,” I sigh.

“Yes. That’s a simple enough rule, isn’t it? You don’t have full control of yours as yet, and doing it outside of the academy will inevitably lead to what?”

“Disaster,” I groan dutifully.

“You can report to detention this evening at seven p.m.,” she says.

The joke is on her. I was already reporting to detention at seven.

Three different instructors sentenced me to it yesterday.

I don’t bother to tell her that, of course.

Instead, I try to look chastened, like I know I could do better.

I’m lucky that I have the kind of face that screams innocence: round shape, low cheekbones, big brown eyes.

When I smile, I lose some of my sweetness.

My canines are kind of elongated. People who don’t know better think I am a vampire.

Sometimes I let them think that, even though it is stupid because vampires aren’t real.

“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

She checks her watch. “It’s almost time for the rising bell. You may as well get ready for class.”

I don’t get ready for class. I go back to the little single room that’s been assigned to me in the attic. The male dorms are below. They’re split into shifter and non-shifter. I’m kept clear of most of the shifter boys. I don’t know what they’re afraid of, but I know I’m managed within these walls.

I belong here, and yet I don’t.

That’s why sneaking out of the academy is my one joy.