Chapter 1

Tate

“Woo wee! Bring that sweet beta booty over here, baby!” A loud, raspy, obviously drunk alpha howled across the sidewalk to an innocent-looking omega in tight faded blue jeans with a tucked in red flannel.

His voice was swayed by the sweet taste of whiskey or rum, actually probably cheap beer by the look of him, as he licked his lips from the back of the line.

I sighed at his obnoxious tactics. Not that you can’t find a mate with similar behavior, but we try to keep a low profile here at The Love Knot, and shouting things like “beta” across the street, when we’re in a town filled with humans, isn’t the best way to go about it.

“Yo, dog!” I growled in his direction, snapping my fingers to get his attention. “Keep it down until you’re inside!”

I could see he wanted to talk back, show off in front of the two plain-looking betas standing with him. They must have been members of his weak pack, on their nightly prowl for ass. But the poor guy was at least six inches taller than me, and when I let my fangs extend and flashed them at him with a grin that let him know who was the fucking boss, he backed down.

I’d been working as a bouncer at the club for a few years. It was always packed and never boring. The place functioned as a spot for shifters to meet, find mates, or just let their heats run wild without consequence.

It attracted the packless – orphans, exiles, survivors of pack battles who’d been on the losing side. Or alphas like me, who’d never found a mate or had a chance to start their own pack.

My father died when I was young. He’d been killed by another Alpha from down South. That’s what my mother told me. She died when I was fourteen, killed by a pack of hunters when she was letting her wolf run free up on the edge of the nature preserve.

They weren’t supposed to be there. The area was off-limits to hunters, but the place is difficult to get to and the game wardens rarely bother. I told her not to go, but she’d said she really needed the run and went anyway.

“I’ll be back before you know it, sweetie,” she’d told me. Those were the last words I ever heard from her.

I left school and started working. First for a mechanic, doing oil changes and brake jobs. I picked up snow removal work in the winter – Northern Maine gets lots of the stuff. But the life was hard.

I kept my pheromone blockers on at all times. The last thing I needed was an omega getting his eye on me and looking to me for support. There was no way I was ready to start a pack. Hell, I could barely take care of myself.

I was always big, and by the time I was sixteen I was almost six feet tall and looked like I’d been in the gym for years. And like all big guys know, little guys love picking fights with you. I won most of the time, unless they came at me with a big group, but it hardened me, and when I saw an ad in the paper for a bouncer position at a club, I jumped on the opportunity.

It paid well. Not enough to buy a new car or put a down payment on a house, but I didn’t want that anyway. I never left my parents’ house. It was paid off, and if I could come up with the property taxes every year, I was in the clear.

My dad bought it as a fixer upper. It was an old homestead at the base of the White Mountains, with farmland and an old barn. It had more room than we’d ever need. Hell, four families could live there with no issues whatsoever, but Pops never got around to fixing it up – he never had the time.

I planned to one day. I swore to myself that once I had the money, I’d fix it up like dad had wanted, start my own pack and protect them, watch over them like no one had been able to do for me.

Four guys spill out of the club behind me – two alphas, each grinning like skulls with their arms wrapped around an omega.

“You’ve got me salivating, little fella,” one of them whispered to his omega as he passed. “I’m gonna tear that ass up. You won’t be able to walk in the morning.”

The omega grinned like a devil, loving every word. I got the impression that he didn’t get hit on that much and was thrilled to have scored such a prime stud. “How do you want me, big boy?”

“How do you think?” The alpha grinned, flashing his fangs and planting a kiss on the omega’s forehead. “Doggy style.”

I rolled my eyes as the four guys sauntered off across the wet street and disappeared into the shadows across the road.

It can be bittersweet working here, to be honest – seeing so many couples linking up for the night, or for life, while I head home alone at the end of my shift. But the club life just wasn’t for me. What were the chances I’d find my fated mate on the dance floor – his breath filled with the smell of cheap beer?

No. If I was going to find lifelong happiness, it wouldn’t be in The Love Knot.

Chapter 2

Kyle

“Another night alone?” I heard my mother, Helena, say from my doorway, unable to hide that tone from her voice. What she was really saying was, “Aren’t you going to get out there and find a mate already?”

“What can I say?” I replied, my voice a miserable whimper as I lay on my bed flipping through the endless channels of garbage reality TV, which had become my nightly ritual. “Do you see any hunky alphas knocking on the door, ready to sweep me into their arms and put a baby in me?”

My mom grimaced and waved her hand like she was swatting at a bug. To say my mom was a prude would be the world’s greatest understatement. I wasn’t even sure how I ended up alive. Immaculate conception was one option. At least that would explain the suffering of my life.

“Do you have to be so crass?” She sighed, picking up one of my t-shirts from the floor and tossing it in the hamper. “What about that club downtown?”

“The Love Knot?” I asked, shocked that she’d even think of such a suggestion. The Love Knot was the only club in town where you could be out of the closet as a shifter, but it didn’t have the greatest reputation for love – at least not the kind my mom was hoping I’d find. “You really think that’s a place to send your son?”

My mom twisted her lips in thought and leaned against the doorjamb. Life has been hard since my dad was killed three years ago. She’d never spoken to me of the details surrounding his death, and would tear up every time he came up in conversation, so I never pressed her.

“I don’t know, honey,” my mom replied. “I just want you to be happy. Are you happy sitting up here alone every night? You know I love having you in the house, but I want you to have your own life. You need to find yourself an alpha.”

“I know, I know,” I said, swinging my feet off my bed and turning to her. “And no, I’m not happy up here alone, but I’m just – I don’t know. The Love Knot makes me nervous.”

“What’s the worst thing that could happen, sweetie?” She asked. “You go, you don’t meet anyone, and you come home.”

She’s probably right, I thought, grumbling as I got to my feet. I can always just come back home if I don’t like the scene.

“All right, ma,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. “I’ll check it out. But only because you’re forcing me to go.”

My mom gasped and swatted me gently on the shoulder. “I would never make my son do anything he didn’t want to do. I just want you to be happy.”

“All right, all right,” I said, sifting through my closet for something decent to wear. “Don’t get all sappy on me here or I won’t be in the mood to go out.”

“Okay!” My mom laughed, backing out of my room. “Have fun, sweetie! I’ll probably be asleep when you get home, but I want to hear all about it in the morning!”

“I’ll make sure to include all the juicy details—” I started to joke, but my mom plugged her ears and ran for the hills.

“La la la la, I’m not listening!” She called as she vanished down the hall toward her bedroom.

I grinned to myself and thumbed through my sad wardrobe. It was really pathetic how few nice clothes I had. But when you work at a doggy daycare, nice clothes are the last thing you want to wear to work.

After what really wasn’t a hard decision, I settled on a brown and maroon flannel button-up I’d bought two years ago with my birthday money. I barely ever wore the thing, so it was still in pretty good condition. I slid out of my slobbery t-shirt and into the flannel, grabbed my keys from the kitchen counter and headed out the door.

My old red sedan was sitting in the driveway, right where I’d left it, and after giving it some gas and trying it a few times, it finally sputtered to life. Pulling out of the driveway, I headed toward downtown.

This is weird, I remember thinking as I pulled out of our quiet neighborhood and onto the main road heading to town. The doggy daycare was in the opposite direction, so unless my mom needed me to run some errands for her, I’d rarely taken this road.

After a few minutes, the club came into view and as I saw the line waiting outside, I felt my heart rate skyrocket. There were no obvious parking spots, and I almost turned back, but when I thought about my lonely bedroom, the same room I’d grown up in, and the endless channels of sad reality TV, I gritted my teeth, turned down a side street and found a spot.

“Okay, you can do this,” I told myself, picturing a beautiful alpha in the club with his eyes on me. I wasn’t looking for a one-night stand. Hell, I hadn’t even had my first heat yet, so I doubted anyone would be fired up enough by me to put the moves on me.

But even still, dreams of romance were swirling through my mind as I got out of my car and locked the door behind me.

Maybe my mom was right. Maybe inside the seedy Love Knot, there was a dreamy guy with big muscles and a kind heart, ready to take me into his pack and make me a father.

Or maybe I’d be headed home for another night alone.

But as I saw a group of guys heading down the alley toward me, their bodies silhouettes against a bare orange bulb, I realized I’d probably made the wrong decision.

Chapter 3

Tate

“Listen, you gonna let us in here, or what?” It was the obnoxious alpha again from the end of the line. His crew and he were only another ten or twenty minutes from being let in, but he didn’t like having to wait, and like most impatient pricks, he’d decided to take it out on me.

What most of these jerkoffs didn’t realize was that I had no power over the speed of the line. People left the club when they wanted to, and if we were at capacity, and no one was leaving, there was nothing I could do. Code is code, and the last thing I was going to do was risk my job and the safety of everyone inside by letting people in over capacity, just because they whined while waiting on the sidewalk.

“You can wait your turn like everyone else, boss,” I growled, rubbing my hands together to combat the cold. Autumn in Northern Maine is no joke, but it’s nothing like what it’ll be like when winter comes.

“This job make you feel like a big shot?” The Alpha asked, raising his voice and stepping out of line. “Don’t get enough love from your pack so you gotta come here to be the big boss?”

“Get back in line,” I tell him, not even bothering to look at him. “Unless you want to go home right now.”

“What did you say?” He snapped, taking a step toward me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two betas he was with step out of line to back him up.

“I said the guy who barks the loudest always has the weakest bite,” I told him, finally turning to face him. He was right next to me and even though I stood a good half a foot above him, he didn’t seem afraid.

Alphas love asserting their dominance over other alphas, which can lead to some tense situations in the club, but I can tell this is a guy who only acts tough when his pack is there to back him up. Not having a pack of my own, I never had anyone to rely on.

“Yo, Tate!” I heard a voice call as the door to the club opened. Without taking my eyes off the alpha in front of me, I called back to Bryce, my buddy who tended bar on the weekends.

“What’s up, Bryce?”

“We’re out of whiskey, and I can’t find Martin. Can you run out back real quick and grab a case?”

“Sure, Bryce,” I said slowly. “Just let me handle this real quick.”

“We got a problem?” He asked, his voice lowering slightly.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” I replied, saying it more to the alpha dick in front of me than to Bryce.

“Okay,” Bryce said after a brief pause. “Let me know if you need me.”

And with that, he went back inside. I heard the door slam shut behind me.

“Now,” I said slowly. “Why don’t you tell me what your name is?”

“The fuck you wanna know my name, bouncer?!” The alpha spat at me. I could see he was fired up tonight, filled with lust and looking for a tight hole to bury his sorrows in. And here I was, getting in his way. Or at least, that’s how he saw it.

“I like knowing the names of all the guys whose asses I kick,” I told him. It was true. I had a mental list of all the dickheads I’d chucked out of the club, off the sidewalk or booted into the street after they opened their mouths one too many times. And I knew, if things kept heading the way they were headed, this guy would join them.

When I first started here, my wolf would stir at the first sign of trouble, and I had to really fight not to shift into the beast and tear their throats out. But this guy was so obviously trying to be tough that my wolf slept quietly within me.

He took another step forward, puffing his chest out like a blowfish, but when I didn’t even flinch, I saw the look in his eyes change.

Pussy, I thought, doing my best not to chuckle as I stared him down. He wasn’t going to do anything, and now, we both knew it. All I had to do was wait for him to save face on his exit.

“Lucas, come on,” one of his betas said softly from behind him. I guess he thought I couldn’t hear him, because showing up your alpha in front of another alpha is a big no-no. “Let’s just go to Tony’s and grab a slice.”

“You know what, guys,” Lucas said, putting all the bass in his voice that he could manage. “This place isn’t worth our time, and I’m not about to get into a fight with a pathetic bouncer. Let’s get out of here.”

I nodded and smirked as he turned around and stepped off the sidewalk and into the road. His other two betas followed dutifully behind as they slipped into the side alley where people would sometimes find parking spaces. As I turned back to the line, a huge crowd of guys spilled out of the club.

From the looks of them, they were all having a great time and were heading home for an even better one. Funny, if those idiots had stuck around another few minutes they would have been heading inside.

“All right,” I said to the rest of the guys waiting in line. “I gotta run out back real quick. I catch any of you inside when I get back, you won’t ever be coming back here. Understand?”

As I walked off and turned down the alley, my mind drifted to a fantasy of mine I liked to return to when the nights would get to me. One day I’d have my own pack – a beautiful omega who was faithful and true to me, and we’d have our home on the outskirts of town. We’d be self-sufficient, farming and hunting, living together in harmony and I wouldn’t have to deal with the insanity of The Love Knot anymore.

But it was just a pipe dream, and I when I heard a scream from the alley, I remembered just what my life was now.

I growled and felt my wolf roar within me as I rounded the corner and saw Lucas and his two betas with their hands on some poor omega who was doing his best to fight them off.

A scent filled my nostrils and hit me like a fucking freight train right to the chest.

What the fuck is that!? Is it that omega?

I’d never smelled someone so delicious. My mouth salivated instantly and when I saw those bastards with their hands on him, my wolf threatened to take over.

“Hey,” I shout, kicking off the pavement and racing toward them. “Get your hands off him, you son of a bitch!”

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