Tarian Alpha (New Tarian Pride Book 1) Read online

  TARIAN ALPHA

  (NEW TARIAN PRIDE, BOOK 1)

  By T. S. JOYCE

  Tarian Alpha

  Copyright © 2019 by T. S. Joyce

  Copyright © 2019, T. S. Joyce

  First electronic publication: February 2019

  T. S. Joyce

  www.tsjoyce.com

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Cover Image: Wander Aguiar

  Editor: Corinne DeMaagd

  Cover Model: Josh Mario

  Name Suggestions: Bonnie Burnhart, Cassie Zimmer, Becky Perry, Victoria McDonald, Carrie Centers, Meghan Holden, Melanie Smokenator Williams, and Karen Crossland. Thank y’all!!

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Up Next in this Series

  New Release Newsletter Sign-Up

  Want More of these Characters?

  More Series by T. S. Joyce

  For More from this Author

  About this Author

  Chapter One

  Ronin Alder couldn’t stop staring at the creature his best friend had turned into.

  Grim was dominant, good at fighting, and being groomed to take over the Tarian Pride someday, but this…this…monster didn’t belong inside of Ronin’s friend.

  The lion pacing the incineration room had a pitch-black mane and bore the red angry scars of the fight. His eyes were gold instead of green, and when the lion saw Ronin looking through the small window, he roared and charged. There was no recognition in the animal’s face as he slammed into the metal door over and over. Ronin knew that if there was no barrier between them, the lion would kill him.

  The council called him the Reaper.

  Ronin had watched his best friend die in a dominance fight with Justin Moore. He’d died. Everyone had seen it. The entire Pride had watched him bleed out, and none of the council would let Ronin or Grim’s grandmother, Rose, try to save him. All Ronin had been able to do was watch Grim’s final breaths and drag Rose against him so she could fall apart.

  The sound of breaking bones echoed through the incineration room. Two days ago, Grim’s body had been put in here and covered with a sheet to burn. But then the council had found him Changed into this—the Reaper.

  A groan of agony sounded. “Ronin,” Grim rasped out. He had to be delirious with pain. He’d been Changing every few minutes for days. “Ronin, please.”

  “Please what?” Ronin asked.

  “Kill me.”

  Ronin turned suddenly and slammed his back against the door, then slid down to the floor and buried his face in his hands. Sixteen years old, and he knew what he had to do. He owed it to Grim to save him from this hell.

  “Who will I have if you leave?” Ronin asked thickly.

  “Rose.” Grim almost choked on the word. The Reaper was growling again already. “Take care of my grandma.”

  “But…” Ronin swallowed hard and tried to imagine his life without Grim. He didn’t have parents. He didn’t make friends, didn’t attach to people. He’d known Grim was his to protect from the time he was a cub. How many nights had he spent with Rose and Grim, his make-shift family, and now he would be called upon to murder half of it? He would just as soon cut out his own heart.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “Ronin,” Grim snarled out in a voice he didn’t even recognize. “Please.”

  A tear slid down Ronin’s cheek as he pulled the long blade from the sheath at his belt. When he Changed back to his human form, Ronin would have to make it quick. Blade to the neck. He would hold him close so Grim would know he wasn’t alone at the end. Not like in that killing field where this creature was born.

  The door behind him rattled with the force of the Reaper slamming against it.

  “I know what you’re planning,” Leon said as he stepped from the shadows down the hall.

  Ronin startled hard, nicking his thumb on the blade where he’d been checking the sharpness. He hadn’t realized anyone was here.

  “The council has plans for him,” Leon said above the roaring that rattled the walls.

  “You always had plans for him, and look what happened. Look what you did.”

  “It’s a miracle,” Leon said, his eyes in the deep shadows cast by the single hanging lightbulb in the short, narrow hallway that separated them. The harsh lighting made him look like a corpse. Leon approached slowly as he spoke. “The Tarian Pride has been getting too soft lately. There are too many submissives. We need to cull some, and the people here are forgetting how important the culls are. They keep us strong. We needed a sign, a weapon, and…the Reaper landed in our laps.”

  “Fuck you, Leon. He’s only eighteen. He’s a kid, and you ruined his entire life by forcing that monster out of him. One lion inside of him wasn’t enough? You think it’s some sort of blessing that he has two? I wish it was you lying in that field bleeding out. Someday it will be, and I’ll be holding the knife in your gut. I swear it.”

  The roaring of the Reaper was deafening as Leon approached him. From the other side of the hallway, two more council members stalked toward Ronin.

  Ronin huffed a laugh and stood. Weak, weak, weak. The council had this stupid notion that only dominants were important, but look at these three dominants. Three mature males on one sixteen-year-old kid. He gripped the handle of the knife and glared at the council members with all the hatred that had consumed him since the Reaper had been born. They didn’t understand that their “weapon” couldn’t be tamed or controlled. The animal roaring to be released was a murder machine, plain and simple. It had killed the good parts of his friend. The Reaper had killed Grim. The council, with their need for war had killed Grim.

  So fuck it.

  Realization filled Leon’s glowing gold eyes in the second Ronin reached for the door handle to release the Reaper. It was the first time Ronin had ever seen fear there.

  Ronin offered the three lion shifters sprinting toward him an empty smile. “It’s the council that needs to be culled.”

  And then he yanked open the door.

  “Ronin!”

  With a gasp, Ronin shot up in bed.

  Kannon was standing in the doorway, eyes wide and gold. It was just Kannon here, not the council. The council was long dead. It had been just a dream. A nightmare. Ronin was here in the big house in Tarian Pride Territory again after all these years. That’s why the damn dream had returned.
That’s why the memories were haunting him again.

  “What’s happened?” he snarled.

  Kannon ran his hand though his black hair and swallowed hard. “Rose is gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Yeah, she’s not in her house.”

  Ronin forced his muscles to relax. God, he was drenched in sweat. “Well, she’s a grown woman, Kannon. She’s entitled to spend her nights wherever she wants.”

  “Understood, but…”

  “But what?” Ronin snapped.

  Kannon swallowed hard. “It looks like there was a struggle. We found blood. It smells like it belongs to Rose. Do you want me to call the Reaper?”

  She’d been taken, and he knew exactly who took her. Fury seared through Ronin’s words as he murmured, “No. I’ll handle it.”

  Chapter Two

  Today was the worst day of Emerald Lawson’s life.

  It should’ve been the happiest. Engaged. Paired up. On the eve of the day most girls have dreamed of since childhood.

  In the back seat of the SUV, she stared at the woods blurring by to avoid looking at the stranger who would walk her down the aisle.

  Derek was her age, and he was Tarian through and through. She didn’t mean that in a good way. She hated the Tarian Pride. Her parents had run years ago, and Emerald had been lucky enough to be raised rogue. Just her, Mom, and Dad.

  Mom had passed away a few years back, and the Tarian Pride council had been killed off in a stupid war they’d started. The Pride split, New Tarian and Old Tarian. It was the Old Tarian half that had come sniffing around last year. Bullying her and Dad. Scaring them. She’d moved cities twice in one year, and Derek and the others had still found her both times.

  Why did they care?

  Bloodlines.

  Fuckin’ bloodlines. Her lineage traced back to one of the founding families of the Tarian Pride and in a time of rebuilding, that apparently counted for a whole lot.

  “Everything looks good. Your handwriting is shit, though. I can barely read your signature on the contract,” Derek murmured amid the sound of paper rustling.

  It had ripped her soul out to sign it. She wasn’t sorry that she’d scribbled. If he looked close enough, it said fuck you in the middle of all of her signatures.

  She hated, hated, hated the Tarian Pride.

  And now she would be Queen.

  How had she found herself here, speeding toward her internal death? She glanced forward, checked the speed. Going sixty-five miles an hour up winding, mountain roads. Sixty-five miles an hour toward the end of the happy part of her life.

  For the dozenth time, Annamora glanced at her in the rearview. There was always worry sitting in the too-bright gold hue of her lion shifter eyes. “It’ll be okay.”

  “Annamora,” Derek snarled, “Cassius doesn’t pay you to have an opinion.”

  “He doesn’t pay me at all,” Annamora whispered.

  Oh, no.

  Derek lurched forward and grabbed Annamora’s throat so fast, he blurred. “The fuck did you say to me?”

  The SUV swerved, and Annamora hit the brakes hard, choking loudly.

  “Let her go!” Emerald yelled as the rig rocked to a stop on the shoulder.

  Derek ignored her and yanked Annamora back against the seat. He hissed into her ear, “You fuckin’ slut. You remember your place, you submissive piece of shit. Or do you need me to remind you?”

  Why couldn’t she move? Why couldn’t Emerald hit him? Her fists were clenched but stayed helpless on the tops of her thighs. Heat boiled through her, but she couldn’t even lift her gaze from the floorboard.

  All the memories of her time with the Tarian Pride as a cub flooded back. Submissive piece of shit.

  Annamora and Emerald were the same. They had no value to the dominant-heavy Old Tarian Pride. No value but their lineage.

  Submissives were worthless.

  She wanted to hit him. Annamora was gasping for air as Derek murmured vile insults into her ear. For what? For telling Emerald everything would be okay? For offering her comfort? Hit him.

  But as always around dominants, her inner lioness crouched, got smaller and more terrified until Emerald couldn’t feel the big cat inside of her at all.

  Worthless.

  She hadn’t felt this low in years.

  Hit him!

  Her nails dug into her palms, but still, she couldn’t throw the punch. Emerald slammed her head back, trying to shake her mind loose from the control this undeserving dominant had over her animal. Shitty Tarian males. They were all like Derek. When she was a cub, all the males were one big blur except for Dad. Dad and a boy. A boy she’d watched as a little girl. Blond hair, blue eyes that turned to a striking green-gold when his lion got riled up. He was dominant, but showed kindness. And that kindness had gotten him killed. Ronin. Emerald tried to hide in the good memory of the boy who had stopped another kid from hurting her on the playground. Nice cub. Orphan. Hard life, but he’d still been nice when he was alive. People could be nice.

  Remember…people can be nice. Don’t let them break you. Don’t let them make you bitter. Don’t let them make you forget that people can be good.

  When Derek slammed Annamora’s head against the headrest, Emerald jumped, jolted from the memory. Tears of anger streamed down Emerald’s cheeks as she sat frozen.

  Derek sat back next to her and began going through the contract again, as if he hadn’t just hurt a woman.

  She wanted to puke. The worst part? Annamora wasn’t even crying, didn’t even rub her neck, didn’t show pain. Emerald witnessed the exact moment Annamora shut down. In the rearview mirror, Emerald could see the fear fade from her eyes, and then Annamora’s expression went blank. Her breathing steadied out. She didn’t show any emotion at all. She just put the SUV back into gear and began driving again.

  That’s what Tarian dominants did to submissive females. They broke them.

  Annamora was Emerald’s future.

  But what choice did she have other than to sign her life away and marry Cassius, the new Alpha of the Old Tarian Pride?

  He had taken her father.

  Emerald recognized the road when Annamora edged the SUV around the curve of a cliff. It tugged at some long-buried memory of this place. She hadn’t been back to Telluride, Colorado since Mom and Dad had run away with her in the night. She’d only been fourteen years old. Fifteen years, and she’d tried to think about this place as little as possible. And now here she was again, about to tether herself to these mountains for always.

  On either side of the two-lane road, massive mountains jutted up toward the sky, covered in snow and pine trees. A green sign on the side of the road read Telluride city limit, ELEV 8750 FT. She was going to have to get used to the dryer climate and thinner air. It was the end of January and freezing outside. A thin layer of ice covered the road as Annamora drove them straight through the quaint town. Population 2,300 or so from the Wikipedia page she’d looked up about it as she waited for Derek and Annamora to collect her and the one sad suitcase from in front of the house she’d rented in Sterling, Colorado for the last year.

  She didn’t even want to think about the life she’d left behind. It would only make this harder.

  She checked the cell phone that had been sitting facedown next to her. Her dad’s smiling face lit up the lock screen, her reminder not to jump out of this damn car and make a run for it. If she paired up with Cassius tomorrow, the Old Tarian Pride would set him free. It was in the contract. If she didn’t, they would kill him. Simple as that. And they wouldn’t lose a single ounce of sleep because that was what the Tarian Pride did. They killed and bullied and took. No wonder all the other shifter Crews hated them. It was a Pride full of monsters that had bred monsters who bred monsters for generations until evil was ingrained in their DNA.

  “Control your emotions, or I’ll have to put you in your place, Queen,” Derek said in a soft, low, dangerous voice.

  She hadn’t realized she was growling. She swal
lowed the sound down and turned the phone off so the picture of her smiling dad wouldn’t see her expose her neck and lower her gaze for a man like Derek.

  And there was Annamora’s dead eyes in the rearview mirror, checking on her again. Annamora didn’t know it, but she was probably Emerald’s best friend in the world right now.

  They drifted straight through town and another twenty minutes into the mountains, right along the edge of the Rio Grand National Forest. 1.8 million acres of wilderness and the perfect place for a Pride of monstrous lions to get away with murder. Which they probably had infinite times.

  Everything would be fine. Dad wouldn’t be one of their numbers. She’d signed the contract and so had Cassius.

  It wasn’t fair. Stop! She couldn’t think like that. She couldn’t get angry. She’d already torn her rental house to shreds in her fury when she’d found out they’d taken him. She’d dealt with the anger. Mostly. Now she just needed to make sure he was released safely. Tarians were no shifters to mess around with. Everyone knew they didn’t bluff.

  These mountains were stunning—this place would be soooo beautiful if she hadn’t attached it to every bad memory from her childhood.

  Except for her parents. And Ronin, the nice boy.

  There were still nice people.

  Annamora parked the SUV in a white gravel parking lot with woods surrounding it. On the other side was a bridge, not one of those sturdy ones, but a hanging bridge. Well, this part she didn’t remember.

  “What happened to the Tarian Pride Territory?” she asked Annamora as they all got out.

  Annamora blinked slowly and looked at her with a vacant expression. There were red marks on her neck in the shape of Derek’s fingers. “You want help with your suitcase?” Annamora asked.

  Emerald swallowed hard and shook her head. “I can get it.”

  “Let’s go,” Derek barked out. “Cassius will be eager to meet you.” He strode toward the bridge, contract flapping in the frigid breeze in his hand.

  She wished she could burn the damned thing, and the man holding it while she was at it.