Prologue
32 years ago
*Narrator*
The Alpha of the Elverton pack scowls annoyed down at his latest bastard, blotchy and naked, held aloft by a midwife, as though she is offering him a treasure discovered in the ruins of an ancient city or the tomb of an emperor. He wonders if he should bring this one home and present it to his wife, tell her to suckle it at her sad teat, and announce to the world she had given birth to it.
Why the devil did he seem incapable of getting his Luna knocked up when he has such success at it elsewhere, with every woman he f***s regularly except for her ? Perhaps if he were more enthusiastic when it came to the taking of her it would work. But she is a plain, docile thing, the daughter of a beta his father had forced him to marry when he was nineteen. Naught about her makes a man’s c**k stand at attention, although he does manage to plot her once in a while. Yet still, after a decade, not once has his seed taken root.
He should probably rid himself of her. A trip down the stairs, a fall from a rowboat in deep waters, a tumble from her horse. He could make an accident happen. He had before with a brother who should have inherited the title ahead of him.
A shooting accident when they had been out hunting grouse. No one was surprised. The heir apparent had never been comfortable around weapons or truly mastered the use of firearms. ‘He tripped, his finger on the trigger’ Elverton had told everyone. ‘The gun discharged quite by accident’. No one doubted his word, no one suspected it had been his finger on the trigger that was responsible for his brother’s demise, not when he blubbered and produced tears. He became the victim, the one everyone comforted, because he would have to live with the horror that he had witnessed due to his brother’s clumsiness. Fools all of them.
Now he slides his gaze from the bawling baby to the woman in the bed recovering from her ordeal, watching him, waiting for his decision. If he was to arrange to pass this by-blow off as his legitimate heir, he would have to dispatch her to a watery grave at the bottom of the river in order to ensure her silence. He was not one to take risks of discovery when misdeeds were done. While at present with her bedraggled hair, sweaty and her skin clammy she wasn’t much to gaze upon, when she was at her best, she was the most beautiful, exciting woman he had ever plowed. She also possessed a luscious mouth that knew its way well around a man’s c**k. He grew hard just thinking of placing his once
again between her luscious lips.
“Swaddle it”. He ordered the midwife.
“Can I not keep this one ?” His favorite mistress asked.
He glanced around at the lavish furnishings he provided for her in the fine town house he leased. “Not unless you want to keep it and yourself on the streets. Bastards are tiresome, a burden I do not tolerate”.
“But you will ensure he is well cared for and loved, will you not ?” She asked him hopefully.
No good would come of changing his plans, but where was the harm in a small lie that would keep her enthusiastically welcoming him between her thighs ? He gave her a much practiced reassuring smile. “For you, I will do almost anything”.
Perhaps he would even replace his wife with her when the time came, if it came, if his Luna did not bear fruit soon.
Taking the boy from the midwife, he headed from the room. Because he paid for his bastards to be ‘put away’ … killed in baby-farming circles he preferred to spread them out, never using the same farmer more than a couple of times.
He had recently obtained a new name, a woman he had not visited before. He would gladly hand over the required fee to Mae Tempest to ensure he was never again inconvenienced by this brat.
