The
Alpha's Secret Family
A Howls Romance
By Jessie Lane
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Release Date: March 28, 2017
Dia has just
moved to a new city to run her own hair salon. She doesn’t have time for the
hot guy who won’t stop asking her out, yet she can’t seem to stop thinking
about him.
Stone Blaylock
is the Battletown Packs’ Alpha and his mate has just moved into town. Problem
is, she’s human. Therefore, he has to win her over the old fashioned, human
way—by dating her.
Things are
looking up for Stone when he gets his mate to fall in love with and mate
him.
However, there’s
someone out there who doesn’t like that the Alpha’s new mate is human. When
their plan to kill her backfires and Dia survives, but she doesn’t remember
anything, including Stone, or the circumstances that left her alone, hurt, and
pregnant.
Excerpt 1
As Dia sat at her table looking at the
laminated dinner menu, her mind swirled with doubts and worries. So much so,
that she wasn’t reading the menu at all, just lost in her thoughts. All of that
changed when the chair across from her scraped across the floor as it was
dragged backward and someone sat down.
Suddenly, every nerve ending and instinct in
Dia’s body flared to life. Although she hadn’t looked up yet, she somehow knew
two things. One, it was a man. The spicy scent of him wafted across the table
and filled her senses until her head spun. And two, for some odd reason, her
entire being knew that her life was about to change forever.
How weird was that?
Not only weird, but scary. Dia’s life had
already changed so much in the last few days with her move to town and taking
over the business. There was no way she was ready for it to change any more.
She tried to ignore the unknown man, hoping
he might go away if she paid him no attention. Just minutes later, though, she
found out that wasn’t going to work, as he leaned forward and braced his arms
on the table.
“You going to ignore me all night, princess?”
The unknown man’s voice was so deliciously
deep that it tingled certain parts of her body. She loved a deep bass like
that. His voice wasn’t what made her head snap up, though. No, it was her
irritation.
“I’m not a fucking princess,” she snapped
back.
She hated when people made assumptions about
her just because of the way she looked. Just because she liked to have her
make-up and hair done at all times didn’t mean that she was a high-maintenance
woman. Dia could swing a hammer just as good as any guy in here, and if the
stranger didn’t watch it, she would swing that hammer at his head.
It didn’t take much to set off Dia’s fiery
temper.
Of course, the urge to hit him abruptly died
away when she got her first good look at the man she had studiously tried to
avoid only seconds before. The word beautiful didn’t seem to do the man
justice. No, he was absolutely and utterly beard-bodacious beautiful.
He had dark, shaggy hair she immediately
wanted to run her fingers through, and gorgeous steel-grey eyes. His facial
features were strong, like his jaw, and undoubtedly handsome. Rugged was how
one might describe them. Not Dia, though. No, the word predatory was the word
that came to mind as she looked at his intent eyes and the smirk on his lips.
The man was staring at her like he was a starving wolf and she was the plump,
little lamb he had set his sights on.
Would it be terribly wrong if she gave in to
temptation and asked him to eat her? Because looking at the stranger made her
hotter than any other man had before. He was just that damn devastating. The
realization made Dia feel confused because she had never had this sort of reaction
to a man before.
The stranger’s smirk spread into a huge grin
as he watched her after she snapped the heated words at him.
She waited for his rebuttal; some
condescension that she hadn’t needed to be so snippety. Instead, he leaned
forward and whispered, “All right, sweetheart, I get it; you’re not a princess.
I just couldn’t help myself because, here you sit, in this little restaurant,
surrounded by farmers and working men, prettier than anything I’ve ever seen in
my whole life. You haven’t noticed that every single man’s eyes are glued to
you, and you haven’t seen their pitiful attempts to get your attention. So, I
had to come over here and make sure you had no choice but to notice me.”
“Why is that?” she asked him curiously.
“Because you’re mine.”
Excerpt 2
“And what if I told you I was something
straight out of a fairy tale, would you believe me?”
Thinking he was teasing, Dia teased back, “Is
this where you tell me you really are Prince Charming?”
When Stone didn’t laugh at her joke, Dia took
notice of the tension in the air around them and stiffened herself.
“Or, are you the frog under those clothes?”
He grabbed her tightly, almost as if he was
afraid she would ask him to let her go. “I’m not Prince Charming, sweetheart.”
“Then what are you talking about?” Dia asked
him, confused.
“I’m the big bad wolf, Dia.”
She started to laugh, thinking he was joking
again, but his serious face stopped her.
Quickly getting confused and frustrated with
his mood swings, she snapped, “Fine, if you’re such a big bad wolf, then how
about you prove it to me, then? Do something … wolfy.”
One of his eyebrows cocked up. “Wolfy?”
Dia nodded, determined to straighten out this
confusing mess. She had no idea what the hell Stone was trying to get at here,
but she wasn’t one for bullshit. It was best just to cut right through the
crap.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she
reiterated her command, “Wolfy, mister.”
Shrugging his shoulders, Stone started to
move, but not in any way she had expected him to. No, the crazy man started
stripping his clothes off.
“What the hell are you doing, Stone?” Dia
glanced around, worried someone might see him getting naked.
With a laugh in his voice, Stone answered her
as he pushed his boots off his feet, “I’m getting wolfy, woman. Give me a
minute, would ya?”
Tired of the man acting like a total lunatic,
Dia put a hand over her eyes to block the sight of him and shouted, “You will
put your clothes back on right this minute, Stone Blaylock, or I will never
speak to you again!”
Stone didn’t answer her with words … There
were grunts. Then a long groan. Followed by … a growl?
Past the point of confusion, and a whole lot
worried, Dia peeked between two of her fingers to where Stone should have been
standing. But he wasn’t there. That was when Dia removed her hand altogether
and looked to find a massive wolf in his place.
Dia’s fear and adrenaline kicked in right
away. She had good reason to be scared, too. The damn wolf was almost twice the
size of any wolf she had seen at a zoo, and licking his chops like she was
dinner.
Excerpt 3
“Wait!” Dia shouted, scared at not knowing
what was going on. “Before you go, please tell me what happened!”
Dr. Bennett looked back down at Dia with a
stoic expression. “Miss Connor, you were involved in an accident. There was a
gas explosion, and you just barely missed the worst part of it. You are lucky
to have survived the blast.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Dia could see
the nurse injecting something into her IV line.
Totally dumbfounded at what she had just been
told, she squinted at the bright light around her while asking the doctor, “How
long have I been here?”
Dr. Bennett bent back over so she could block
the light from her eyes again, “You’ve been in a medically-induced coma for two
months, Miss Connor. Now I know you must have lots of questions for me, but I
need you to lie back and try to get some more rest, okay? I’ll be back to check
on you in a couple of hours.”
She watched as Dr. Bennett walked away then
stood just outside of the room’s doorway, writing on what was presumably Dia’s
chart. The nurse walked out with her and stopped right next to her, quietly
bringing the door to a close. Thing was, she didn’t close it all the way. There
was a small crack, and as fogginess started to impair her thoughts, she could
still hear the nurse talking to the doctor.
“It’s so tragic what happened to her and her
family. And it looks like she doesn’t remember a thing. When are you going to
tell her that her parents were killed in the explosion?”
Dia’s heart clenched so hard in her chest
that, for a moment, she wondered if she was having a heart attack. Even though
she couldn’t place a face to the thought of having a mother and father, it
still broke her heart to know that they were now gone. Dia might never remember
them again.
Her heart monitor went crazy as her chest
started to tighten even more, and the nurse rushed back in to check on Dia.
“Miss Connor, are you okay?”
Tears ran silently down her face as she
watched the nurse check the machines that had her heart monitor and blood
pressure on it. The nurse turned back to her and said, “You’re safe here, Miss
Connor. I need you to try to calm down. It’s not good for the baby for you to
be this upset.”
The edges of her vision became black, and the
haziness she had felt earlier was now stronger than ever. Dia’s heart was still
pounding away in her chest, but it wasn’t enough to keep her awake. Nor was the
shock from the nurse’s words.
In all honesty, through the frantic thoughts
racing through her mind, Dia realized she was probably more lightheaded because
she was about to pass out than from the meds they had given her. All because of
one little word.
Baby.
And as the black in her vision spread, her
chest gasping for air, Dia had one last thought before she passed out. What
baby?
Jessie Lane is a
best-selling author of Paranormal and Contemporary Romance, as well as, Upper
YA Paranormal Romance/Fantasy.
She lives in
Kentucky with her two little Rock Chicks in-the-making and her over protective
alpha husband that she’s pretty sure is a latent grizzly bear shifter. She has
a passionate love for reading and writing naughty romance, cliff hanging
suspense, and out-of-this-world characters that demand your attention, or
threaten to slap you around until you do pay attention to them.
She’s also a
proud member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA).
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