Chapter 1 Foreword

• Foreword
• Raven had always heard that male wolves were monogamous beings. Once they fell in love with a mate they were faithful to him for the rest of their lives. Especially if they found their mate. They are beasts after all.
• So she knew well that being with someone who jumped from mate to mate was not the person who really loved her. But she had a goal.
• But
• It was raining. It was raining hard and her body was freezing. Her skin burned from the freshly made wounds and burns that lashed her skin. Still she couldn't cry. She had done so much in the last few hours that there were no tears left inside her eyes. Her throat was such a mess that she could barely make a sound.
• And now she was alone, in the middle of that dark alley where she had been left. She barely had the strength to return to her wolf form and get out of there by herself. There was no one who could help her, and if he did, she would be afraid that he would do something to her again. And she could not escape. Her bruised thighs full of foreign fluids and bruises prevented her from doing so.
• Still her chest was pounding and pounding. She hated that person. The one who had first threatened her with her biggest secret and then betrayed her in the vilest way. The one who had not allowed her to be close to the one who had been the object of her feelings. The one who had broken all her plans.
• But if he thought that things would stay like that he was very wrong because she did not plan to die there. Because omega wolves could let themselves be bent by a male wolf, but that didn't mean she would allow her life to end there.
• That was the last time Raven allowed herself to feel, before killing the emotions inside her. Forgetting both that wolf that destroyed her, and the one that first made her chest throb, and let her know that it was find your mate and hadn't stopped it from happening to her.
• Only to return, years later, much stronger and not as a simple weak wolf. But as the second in command of the government, the one who was behind the tycoon of the country.
• Now she was... The shadow of the alpha.
• ***
• Years before
• Lawson was sitting unhappily on the chair without caring much about the subject his younger brother was talking about, a wolf who changed girlfriends like underwear, someone who did not really lived up to his race. That story of a wolf faithful to his mate and monogamous did not apply to him in any sense. Maybe that's why the girlfriends he used to call them only lasted a few months, the ones that lasted the longest.
• He had just heard that his current girlfriend would be arriving shortly and that was Wow. Kenny never brought women to the house, that would be a first. That had to be a significant change, right? Had he really found his destined mate? That was most likely. Maybe he'd give up the crazy sex life he had and put down roots. Although he wasn't the best person to say that. He had no partner and no interest in finding one.
• Although he had to admit that Kenny didn't bring his mates into the house for one simple reason.
• Lawson was a much more attractive wolf than his younger brother in every way. Nothing could be done, his father had very good wolf genetics and those qualities had been passed down to him. He was tall, taller than average at least for his area, his body was sinewy with a rapid tendency to muscle development, his skin lightly tanned from long outings in the sun though the coloring never lasted long, which contrasted with his blond hair that grew too fast for his liking. She often had to wear it tied at the nape of her neck in a small ponytail and a few strands behind her ears. She had no complaints about her face either, with an angular jawline, lips neither thick nor thin, and thick eyelashes lining her pairs of blue orbs. It could be said that he had no criticisms for his appearance.
• Kenny, on the other hand, looked much more like his mother and few could say he was her brother. He had inherited the she-wolf’s light brown hair, as well as her height. From his father he had only inherited his blue eyes, but nothing else. He used to spend a lot of time exercising and complaining about the work he went through to build muscle. Even this one had had the facility to develop his pheromones, so attracting females was much easier for him and they were enraptured by his scent.
• Which was not the case with him. Lawson had always been considered a wolf with dense pheromones that even if he attracted females with his physique, they were afraid of him in the end because of how strong and dominant his scent was, just like his father. Something Lawson didn't mind. When he really wanted to have a she-wolf to mate with or a mate to have a puppy with, he would look for her and he was sure she would appear.
• Just like his mother, who had fallen into his father's life by chance.
• He was doing very well just for the moment. She”wolves tended to be very demanding when they were in their early twenties and he had no patience to put up with their squealing. If he wanted sex he would meet at one of the bars in the small town and the one who first approached him would take her to a room and over a drink to suppress his pheromones he could forget about the rest. Life without commitments was easier. Something he didn't often do, just to avoid trouble.
• His mother, at his side scolded him until he adopted a better posture when the doorbell rang and Kenny ran out like an arrow. Apparently the new wolfie liked him or he wouldn't have reacted so easily that way. He had never seen him so excited before. That got his attention. He wondered who the lucky girl had been that had caught his brother's interest so well.
• And he understood shortly thereafter when the newcomer entered the room with a faint, shy smile. And Lawson could admit for the first time that he had just seen the most beautiful she-wolf in the world. Or rather, the best smelling she-wolf on the face of the earth. No, no, no, no, that couldn't be. It had been his imagination. She”wolves smelled rich, nothing else, though she had a scent that made him shiver and heat run through him in a strange way, as if something was calling him to her.
• Fated mate? Mate?
• The words leapt into his mind, but he bit his lip to keep from saying them. He was just imagining it. That was mere puppy tales, even if his parents had always talked about it when he was very young.
• He couldn't help but run up and down it and was tempted to lick his fangs that he hadn't realized had grown considerably inside his mouth poking his lower lip. Cute was always nice to admire. And she was cute, at least to his brown eyes. She was petite, the kind of she-wolf you could easily hug and squeeze between the strong male arms, her waist narrow and hips pleasingly wide, her skin fair and almost flawless. Her hair danced behind her back, extremely dark and straight, beautiful and shiny and soft to the touch. Her delicate face with beautiful pink lips, aquiline nose, high cheekbones and perfect eyebrows.
• He shook his head to get the idea out of his head and diffuse the haze. She was his brother's girlfriend for god's sake.
• That reasoning made him lose interest instantly. If she was dumb enough to fall for her brother's nets that meant she was an easy wolf. She didn't mean it in a bad way, but, her brother's love life was well known. So if she was willing to be one more number on his endless list, then that was her problem. If she looked at it that way she wasn't as pretty as he had seen her.
• Quickly, the glow with which she had glimpsed him faded, and Lawson went about his business vaguely listening to his brother recount how they had met and how much he appreciated her. Half of it sounded like lies. Who didn't know him. Still he had to admit he looked at her out of the corner of his eye from time to time and damn. She smelled so good. No one had noticed. His scent was mild though less than a normal she-wolf would smell. Still she knew if she kept inhaling it she would become aroused.
• His mother would tap his side to stop being so rude and he would just push her away again. He had a lot on his mind right now and they all involved this new girl. What was the point of interacting with a she-wolf if all he would know her for was...weeks, too long. He gave her a month's leeway, sure that after that his younger brother would quit and find himself another girlfriend. And he would never smell her again.
• “And what do you like?" his mother always very polite. Politeness that neither of her two sons had inherited. She often said that their father had given birth to them. A wolf who had been of few words.
• “I like to read and draw-her voice was quiet, soft and delicate, as was the way she moved her lips. Lawson was debating what to entertain himself with until he heard something that interested him and made him raise his head” I also spend a lot of time on video games. My dad fights me, but he eventually lets me because I get good grades.
• He smiled again, highlighting two rows of polished white teeth. Although his smile was fake. Or so Lawson could tell out of the corner of his eye. He was a very perceptive wolf so he often saw beyond the noses of others.
• “Son, where did you get this treasure," his mother said with a huge smile, "Young wolves nowadays are only thinking about finding a strong wolf to guarantee their offspring, not about wanting to study and become independent.
• “Yes, where did you get it?" for the first time Lawson was interested in one of his brother's companions.
• Every minute he looked at her, in the way she was behaving he detected that there was something unusual. Maybe she wasn't so normal as to be just another number on his brother's list. And god, her smell, it was getting more and more addictive. It was driving him crazy even though he maintained a calm demeanor.
• “Mom, bro, you're embarrassing me," Kenny guffawed with fake shyness and kissed his girlfriend's cheek, "It's a secret, and it's all mine.
• Well, it was his until Lawson monopolized the young woman one day when she was waiting for him in the living room and they couldn't get through to him, taking her to his room and showing her the video game collection as an excuse to keep her close. Lawson figured the reason for his tardiness given that it wasn't the first time he had done that and felt him arrive with the scent of another she-wolf on him very late at night, and from the looks of it she maybe because she didn't seem too concerned as she didn't show any resistance. Rather, the few previous visits he had made to the house had found her looking at him in a way that any wolf would say she was flirting with him.
• But she was his brother's girlfriend.
• And before Lawson knew it, it became routine. Every time she went to visit him or her brother would bring her over to his house to spend the afternoon as a family supposedly, she would somehow end up playing Lawson video games while Kenny talked on his cell phone for a long time.
• Lawson made sure to have a new game every time and they spent long hours together. The two of them even had more chemistry than the couple themselves and on more than one occasion Lawson had to claim that he had no feelings for her. Rather. It was as if those feelings were natural and the attraction to her was instituted. Each time he became more and more convinced that she was his mate, his partner, the mate that had been groomed for him, even if her scent was not strong enough to make him come into heat. But enough to make him hard and have to leave her by the TV set and him running to the bathroom having to relieve himself with only his hand worse with the image of her in his mind.
• Best of all, they were quite compatible both in tastes and in spending long days together because, rarely did he find someone who could have the same stamina for video game marathons and tolerate his vocabulary when he lost.
• “You seem more his girlfriend than mine, do you like my brother?" and Kenny complained to Raven every time they went down to dinner, annoyed.
• She didn't answer him or reproach him for not paying attention to her when he was on his cell phone, and he ended up demanding a kiss or maybe something else. Although Lawson could never say if they had ever had sex because she never really smelled his scent coming from her.
• In short their relationship was strange and for some reason he prayed it would end because it was the first time he was interested in one of his brother's girlfriends leaving him and being with him. Because unlike this one, he did know that he would not be unfaithful to her.