Damnation: Reckless Desires (Blue Moon Saloon Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

crashing down.
    “You’re right,” his grandfather said. “Our clan and the wolf pack are both small. An alliance might be just what we need.”
    Imagine his surprise when his grandfather had announced his decision with the whole council of elders looking on. “I have spoken with the wolf pack, and they agree. The older Macks daughter—”
    That was Jessica, and his soul had been singing inside, knowing what he would hear next.
    “Shall be betrothed to one of our own clan. Voss blood, mixing with new blood.”
    Voss. That was him. His bear tapped a happy dance. He and Jess had done it! They’d overcome the odds. Managed to get permission from two stubborn, old-fashioned shifter clans. They had a future together!
    “They shall join in three years…” his grandfather had gone on.
    The wait didn’t thrill him, but he could live with it. It did make sense for him to get a handle on the family lumber business first. That way, he could support Soren when it was his time to take over the clan. Soren could manage overall clan business while Simon ran the mill. That had been laid out since they were kids, and that was fine with him. As long as he could keep seeing Jessica, the wait didn’t matter.
    “…when our two clans shall come together and celebrate the mating of Jessica Macks and Soren Voss.”
    Simon’s soaring emotions had crash-landed right there. “Wait, what was that?”
    He blurted that out in front of everyone, even though the younger generation wasn’t supposed to utter a word at council meetings.
    “What was that?” Soren had barked, too, and even though
he
was allowed to speak as heir apparent, their grandfather still glared.
    “The eldest Macks girl mated to the eldest Voss,” the old man growled. “Soren.”
    And just like that, Simon’s whole world caved in.
    It didn’t matter how much he begged or pleaded or raged. Didn’t matter that an alliance was his idea. Didn’t matter what he wanted.
    “It has been decided,” his grandfather had said, and that was that.
    “Did anyone ask her?” he yelled, then went slack-jawed at his grandfather’s shrug.
    “We asked her father.”
    Christ. Apparently, wolves were as medieval as bears when it came to marrying off their young. What a fool he’d been to think it would be any other way.
    “Did anyone bother telling her?”
    Blank looks said nobody had, and he’d been too much of a coward to do it himself.
    Soren had sworn up and down that he wouldn’t go through with it. Confided to Simon that he already had a mate of his own. A woman he’d known since he was a kid and courted ever since. It was only a question of time before he asked the elders for permission to take her as his bride.
    “We’ll figure something out. We will,” Soren swore.
    Wishful thinking, and both of them knew it. Soren had no chance in hell of ever getting permission to take his destined mate — a human, no less.
    “And that will be that,” their grandfather, the clan leader, had announced.
    Simon had just about melted into the floor. There was no way out. He’d have to live his whole life with his true love mated to another. To his own brother!
    They’d both found their own solutions, he and Soren. Soren bottled up, tight as a bear in winter, and barely uttered a word after that. Threw himself at clan duty with a vengeance, except when the irresistible pull of his mate had him steal away to spend time with her.
    And Simon… What the hell could he do? If Jessica loved him the way he loved her, she’d die before she mated with his brother. That, or she’d run, and the wolves would hunt her down and drag her back. Her own pack, or worse, one of those marauding packs of wolves bent on preserving the racial purity of shifters. The kind who exercised their own brand of vigilante justice by burning alive anyone found to have crossed species lines.
    No. For her own sake, he had to keep Jess within the protection of both their clans. She’d be safe as long as she