Bleary, Scarlet wiped the sleep from her eyes and stumbled into the main area of the suite. She chose to ignore the massive array of guards positioned throughout the room. She also decided to pretend none of them heard her during the previous night with Keller and Madden.

Keep dreaming, sweet.

She mentally harrumphed at Keller. Damn man needed to leave her to her delusions.

So, telling you they were all jealous they weren’t the ones buried in your delicious cunt would be a bad thing? She could “hear” the smile in Madden’s voice.

This time, she growled.

The jerks laughed.

Double jerks.

Scarlet shuffled toward the center of the room, knowing without a doubt that her sisters would come hunting her. At least she could order room service before they sniffed her out like bloodhounds.

It took mere moments to secure food, a lot of food, and she snuggled into a comfy chair to wait.

Thankfully, breakfast arrived before Gabby and Whitney. Marginally before, but she still had five minutes with a cup of coffee.

Gabby’s yell reached her first, loud, but muffled. The elevator doors were still closed. Great. “You open these doors, or I’ll bite you! I may not have furball teeth, but I can still break skin!”

Damn, the woman had a set of lungs on her.

Scarlet glanced around the space and found a familiar guard. “Can you tell them to let my sisters in? They’re not going to kill me. At least, not without a lot of effort, and you can save me before things get bloody.”

The wolf grinned and left the room, presumably to do as she asked. When the yells got louder, she realized he’d followed through. Well, that was pretty cool. She got to tell people what to do, and they listened.

She wondered if that’d work on Keller and Madden.

Not on your life. Keller’s mental voice held a growl.

Only if I get a blow job first. Ah, Madden, her practical man.

Stomps from the entryway grew louder, and her sisters burst into the room.

“Coffee?” Yeah, Gabby wasn’t a morning person without coffee.

“Breakfast.” Whitney shared her love of nummies.

“Ooh, Danishes.” Gabs eyed the apple-filled treats.

“And chocolate muffins. I love you.” Yeah, that was Whitney. She was a sucker for chocolate.

Gabby’s eyes drifted closed the moment her lips touched the mug. Scarlet smiled, sad this would be ending. No more morning munchies and getting together for no reason other than the fact that they were sisters. They probably wouldn’t live fifteen minutes from each other, like they were used to, when all was said and done.

Not for forever, sweet. We’ll figure things out. Keller’s voice held a hint of the sadness that inched into her heart.

I’m fine. She wasn’t, but she could pretend.

The Captain of the guard came into the room, giving her a jerky nod, and then he froze, hand going to his arm.

She furrowed her brow. “Captain?” Scarlet really needed to learn the man’s real name. She refused to wander around calling the wolf by his title for all eternity.

You will.

Scarlet mentally snorted. Not.

Brushing her mate’s grumbles aside, she returned her focus to the statue-like guard. “You okay?” The man’s eyes were glowing bright, edging closer and closer to pure yellow. “Captain?”

Real worry assaulted her, but then her mates entered, half-clothed, and rushed toward the Captain. A few low words were exchanged, and Keller and Madden lead him away. Every few steps, the agitated wolf looked back, seeming to strain against her mate’s hold.

Returning her attention to her sisters, she noticed Gabby’s focus was on the wolf while she rubbed her left bicep. “Gabs?”

“Huh, what?” Gabby shook her head. “Sorry, did you say something?”

She eyed her sister, wishing the three of them shared the same type of connection she had with her mates. “No. So, either of you find Misters Wonderful?”

Gabby looked toward the doorway where Scarlet’s mates and the Captain had disappeared, then back at Scarlet. “No. But it’s only Saturday morning. We’ve got a few more days, right?”

“Uh huh.” She didn’t believe those words for a second. “Right.”

“Whatever.” Her sister pegged her with a strawberry. “So, I figured you did the mating thing last night, I can grab a pair today, and we’ll sort out Whitney. Get this shit wrapped in time for our flight on Sunday.”

Whitney tossed a grape at Gabby. “Crass much?” She popped a piece of fruit into her mouth. “So, how’s mating?”

Scarlet thought about it for a minute, replayed their night of lovemaking, kissing and caressing and coming… “Squishy.”

A sense of male satisfaction crept into her mind, and her clit twitched. Yeah, she could deal with squishy for a long, long, lemme-come-some-more time.

Keep reading for an excerpt from book 2 in the Alpha Marked series, Gabriella…

Talk about an awesome souvenir. The organizer for the annual werewolf Gathering had purchased the best pens ever. Gabriella found them sitting in a pile on the registration desk, and she’d snared one before the morning’s round of speed sniffing began.

Click.

Clickity click.

It had the perfect balance for her to spin it around her fingers.

Flip. Flip. Click. Click.

There was a brief pause and then she reversed the pen’s path.

Clickity click. Flip. Click.

Okay, officially? She was engaging in various Tests of Proximity, not speed sniffing. Her sister Scarlet had called it werewolf speed dating.

So now she had to sit at a table opposite two chairs while Alpha Pairs made their way around the room. Then they’d sit, sniff, and go.

See? It boiled down to werewolf speed dating.

Well, they weren’t only sniffing. There was this whole Mark thing going on, too.

Gabby sighed, hand automatically going to her left bicep. Stupid Mark. She’d been born with the thing. In a swirling triangular shape, the Mark was slightly darker than her overall hue and rose from her skin as if it were a scar. Present since birth, it signified her eventual mating to two—count ’em two—werewolves.

Which left her lounging around enduring the Test of Proximity with pair after pair while the one wolf who’d caught her eye lurked outside the ballroom. A glance toward the doors revealed that the man still skulked, moving like the predatory animal that prowled just beneath his skin.

Too bad she couldn’t mate a single wolf. Nope, individual wolves, those that weren’t Alphas and part of an Alpha Pair, mated other wolves and never humans. Only pairs ended up with a human Marked as their mate.

Except…except her Mark had reacted to the Captain’s presence. It’d heated and throbbed and screamed at her to rush into the wolf’s arms. Supposedly that only happened when a Marked was around the ones meant for her.

Funny how the guy she reacted to wasn’t part of a pair. He seemed dominant enough. But he was the Captain of her newly mated sister’s guards, which meant he was definitively not paired up and ruling a Pack.

Geez, her sister now had guards. Gah. Scarlet had not only mated the previous night—their first night at the Gathering—but she’d snared the North American Ruling Alphas: Keller Aaron and Madden Harris. Which left Scarlet out of the morning’s activities and Gabriella all alone.

Lucky (maybe) bitch.

Low chimes filled the air and then the shift of bodies relocating replaced the gentle sounds. Oh, look, time for the Alpha Pairs to move on to the next “lucky” (she almost snorted) lady.

Gabby sighed as she saw her next two potential mates approach.

They weren’t bad looking, like, at all. It seemed shifters didn’t come in ugly. Nope, they were all tall, muscular and gorgeous. While she, Gabriella Wickham, was short, plump and rather ordinary. Good thing a big part of mating was based on her Mark’s reaction and not the men’s attraction to her.

She sighed and was thankful her sisters couldn’t read her thoughts. They’d spent her entire life bitching at her about her Debbie Downer attitude when it came to men. They kept trying to convince her that men could love her just the way she was, big butt and all.

The two newcomers slid into the seats across from her, all predatory smiles and leers. God, were wolves this hard up that they were looking at her with sex on the brain?

Whatevs.

Pasting on a purely fake smile, she held out her hand. “Hi, I’m Gabriella Wickham. My friends call me Gabby.”

Knowing what was coming, she kept her expression frozen in place. The first guy didn’t even bother to introduce himself. Nope, he gently gripped her hand and brought it to his lips. Actually, his nose. The first time it’d happened she’d nearly swooned at the seductive gesture. She’d thought the wolf was going to brush a kiss across her knuckles like some gallant man of old. As if. The guys were really taking a good whiff to see if she belonged to them.

He turned her hand over and slid his nose along her inner-wrist, sending chilly air rushing over her skin. The seductive light in his eyes instantly dimmed.

Yeah, she could have told him she didn’t belong to them. The Mark on her bicep wasn’t doing jack shit. No pulse-y ache, no heat, no throbbing of her pussy that said “Ooh, take me now!” None of it.