Forbidden Alpha (The Alpha's Obsession Book 4) Read online

  Forbidden Alpha

  The Alpha’s Obsession Book Four

  Olivia T. Turner

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

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  Copyright© 2020 by Olivia T. Turner.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including emailing, photocopying, printing, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. For permission requests, email [email protected]

  Please respect the author’s hard work and purchase a copy. Thanks!

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, companies, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  www.OliviaTTurner.com

  Edited by Karen Collins Editing

  Cover Design by Olivia T. Turner

  This one is for Andrea,

  Who once jumped on stage at a Limp Bizkit concert

  And now knows every word to Elmo’s Sing-Along Concert.

  #IKnowWhatYouDidLastDecade

  Chapter One

  Brooklyn

  “I just don’t understand how you can defend him.”

  “Because he’s my husband!” my mother snaps. “And he’s your father now.”

  “Step-father,” I correct. Never in a million gazillion years would I ever consider Rhys to be my father. Ugh. I’m getting nauseous just from thinking about it.

  “You chose him, Mom,” I say as we walk to the barn. “I never got a say in the matter.”

  “You got a say,” she says with a derisive laugh. “All you did was say how shitty he was.”

  “Yeah and you should have listened because I was right,” I mumble under my breath.

  She gives me a nasty look but doesn’t say anything.

  It’s morning on Rhys’ ranch and we’re headed over to feed the goats. I hate it here. I need to get out.

  It all started when we were living back in Columbus and Dad was wiping the snow off his car. He suddenly grabbed his heart and fell. I was in the front seat playing some stupid game on my phone when I saw it. I ran out, called 911, but it was too late. He was gone by the time the ambulance arrived at the hospital.

  And that’s when my nightmare began. My mother met some random guy on a shifter dating website and less than a year later, she was dragging me and my brother to this small town in Montana to be free labor on the world’s biggest asshole’s farm.

  I’ve been here for two years now and I want out. I want to start fresh with a new home, surrounded by sane people who love me. I want to be anywhere but here.

  I hate Rhys, but I seem to be the only one who can see his true colors. My mother either defends him relentlessly or pretends she doesn’t hear the nasty things he says, and my younger brother is fully on board the Rhys train. Oliver worships him.

  I’m not sure if it’s the grief he’s suppressing from missing our dad or the fact that they’re both tiger shifters, but Rhys has my impressionable sixteen-year-old brother under his spell. And I hate him for it.

  A full-grown tiger walks by a few yards away and I glare at it. It’s Victor’s cat. I can tell by the wide-set eyes. Rhys always has all kinds of goons hanging around the ranch and they’re usually up to no good. I hate that my brother is becoming one of them. He used to be such a sweet boy but now under Rhys’ influence, he’s turning into a real piece of shit.

  The tiger lowers its head and hisses at us as he passes.

  “Kiss my ass,” I shout as I give him the finger. It just snarls and keeps walking.

  “It wouldn’t kill you to be nicer to the men around here,” my mother says with a shake of her head. “You might like some of them if you open up.”

  “I’d rather open my throat up,” I say as my stomach churns. “And these are not men. They’re boys. Mean, rude, immature boys and Oliver is turning into one of them thanks to your all-holy Rhys.”

  My mother stops and spins on her heels, looking fed up. “I know you don’t like him, but I do. We’re living here and that’s that. You and him have to find a way to get along.”

  With Rhys, that’s an impossibility. I don’t know what he really does for a living, but I don’t think it’s on the up and up. This goat farm is a front for something. Him and his crew of tiger shifters can do whatever illegal shit they want to, but I just want them to keep my family—especially Oliver—out of it.

  “Are you going to try harder?” she asks with her nostrils flaring.

  “Yes,” I lie as the familiar feeling of disgust at what my family has become settles into the pit of my stomach.

  “Thank you.”

  We continue walking to the barn and Oliver is already in there, feeding the goats. He’s a goofy looking kid with the same light blue eyes as me, but with a wild bird’s nest of hair on his head that is always sticking up in different directions. He used to always laugh when I said that his hair defied all the laws of gravity. That was back when we used to joke around.

  “Did you hear?” he says with excitement in his voice as he drops the bucket in his hand. “We’re finally going to get that bear that attacked our crew!”

  “Our crew,” I say as I cross my arms and narrow my eyes on him. “Your part of Rhys’ crew now?”

  He puffs out his scrawny chest, acting like he’s a tough guy. “Dad says I’m on my way to being a member.”

  Dad. I think I’m going to be sick.

  “I think it’s great,” Mom says as she walks over with a smile and starts rubbing his back. “I love seeing you and your step-father getting along.”

  My mother never said it, but I’m sure that’s why we’re here. It was a shock to everyone when out of the blue, Oliver phased into a tiger when he was two years old. I still remember my mother screaming her head off when she walked into her boy’s room and saw a tiger cub where she had left her son.

  None of us—including my dad—had the shifter gene, so it was a big surprise. My parents did some digging into their family tree and it turned out that my mother had a great uncle she didn’t know about who was a tiger shifter. The gene got lost in the family but somehow popped up in Oliver.

  So, I guess when she met a tiger shifter online, she immediately thought it would be the best thing for Oliver who was having a hard time without his dad. Maybe she would have been right if Rhys hadn’t turned out to be a total dick.

  “We’re going to get that grizzly bear shifter,” he says as he starts feeding the goats. “We’re going to make him pay for jumping Victor, Patrick, and Clyde.”

  “If Victor, Patrick, and Clyde got their asses kicked,” I say, “then they probably deserved it.”

  “You always think the worst of these guys,” he says as he dumps the rest of the feed and then chucks the metal bucket at the wall, scaring a goat.

  “Because they are the worst. I don’t want you turning out like them.”

  “Would you rather I turn out like you? No, thank you.”

  He storms out of the barn, bumping me with his shoulder as he goes.

  I turn to my mother with a frustrated huff of breath. “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills here. Ar
e you seriously okay with Rhys taking your sixteen-year-old boy to jump some bear shifter?”

  She sighs as she walks over and picks up the metal bucket. “Let him have his little battle. It’s bringing them closer together.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  She frowns as she gathers more feed in the bucket.

  My heart is hammering angrily as I head over to the goats. I pet one as it yells at me. These guys always calm me down. They’re always making me laugh with their funny faces and the way they bleat and scream out the funniest noises.

  I step into their pen and start cleaning it with the shovel. My favorite one, Rosey, tries to climb on my back when I’m bent over.

  “Will you get off me?” I say with a laugh as I push her off.

  This is the only place on the ranch where I enjoy being. Everywhere else feels like a prison. It feels like I don’t have a home anymore. That’s what hurts the most. It’s like my family got absorbed into a cult and I no longer recognize them. It’s like I’m surrounded by brainwashed people and I’m the only one who can see that the leader is a conman.

  Rhys walks into the barn and I get a cold shiver snaking down my spine. He’s a large imposing man with a shaved head and cruel green eyes. His shoulders are the size of boulders and he’s always swinging his big arms around like he’s constantly ready to hit something. He’s older than my mother by at least a decade or two. His skin is all hard and rough with wrinkles on the sides like a dried-up riverbed roasting in the hot sun.

  He walks right up to my mother, grabs her jaw with a rough hand, and slams his lips against hers. I turn away in disgust.

  My mother is a gorgeous woman with a nice easy smile. At least, she was like that when she was with my father who was a good man and treated her right. She’s smiling less and less these days and looking more defeated with every week that passes.

  We learned all about shifters when Oliver had phased and the most interesting part to me was the bond with the shifter’s mate. I used to dream about having an intense love like that. A bond so unbreakable and deep that you would know immediately upon seeing the other person that you were meant to be together forever.

  That’s not what Rhys and my mother have. I don’t care what she thinks, this is not that.

  He releases her and turns to me with his wicked green eyes shining. “You.”

  “I have a name.”

  “Brooklyn. I need you to help me out.”

  “Why would I ever help you out?” I squeeze the handle of the shovel and stand up straight, staring at him defiantly as he comes over.

  He hops the fence and even the goats know to get away from this man. They bolt to the other end of the pen as he walks right up to me with a sadistic grin on his face.

  “You’re going to help me because I’m giving you free room and board.”

  I swallow hard as I raise my chin, not breaking eye contact with him. He may have my family under his spell, but I’m not fooled. And I’m not intimidated.

  “I work my ass off on this farm and you don’t pay me a cent.”

  He grins as he shifts his bottom jaw from side to side, clearly amused with me. I don’t think he’s had a lot of people stand up to him in his life.

  “Fine. Then you’re going to do it because I’m ordering you to do it you little cunt.”

  I look over at my mother to see if she’s hearing this, but she’s suddenly busy and extremely focused on filling her bucket with more feed. Typical.

  I squeeze the shovel, wanting so badly to hit him across the face with it.

  He seems to read it on my face because he grins as he looks down at the shovel. “Don’t be stupid. This is important.”

  This is the first time Rhys has needed something from me and I’m definitely going to take advantage of it.

  “Leave Oliver out of whatever you’re planning with that bear shifter and I’ll do it,” I say, staring up at him with defiance.

  He slowly crosses his arms over his chest as he looks down at me with narrowed eyes. “You bargaining with me?”

  “Yes.”

  We stare at each other for a long tense moment and then he rolls his eyes. “Fine. He’ll probably just get in the way and fuck it up anyway. Come with me. Now.”

  He steps over the fence and I glance at my mother as I follow him out. She’s on her knees in the mud, opening a bag of feed and I shake my head as I wonder how she let herself get to this point.

  We head outside and I have to jog to keep up with his long quick strides.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  He grabs a paper out of his pocket and hands it to me.

  “Bowen Ranch?” I say as I read it. There’s an address too. “What’s this?”

  “That’s where you’re going,” he says. “Go there and act like you’re applying for a job.”

  “What job?”

  He stops with a frustrated huff of breath. “It doesn’t matter what job! There’s no job. I need you to look around and see how many shifters live on the ranch. What kind of animals we’re dealing with.”

  I suck in a breath when I look at the parking lot and see three new pickup trucks parked there. It’s not the trucks that are surprising, it’s the number of tigers prowling around them. There are seven or eight huge tigers, most I’ve never seen before, snarling and snapping at each other as they lurk around the trucks.

  “Who are those shifters?” I ask as a horrible feeling sinks into my gut.

  “Friends from upstate,” he says as he glances over his shoulder. “Don’t worry about them.”

  My mother and my brother are on this ranch and those vicious cats look like they’re up to no good. Of course, I’m worried about them.

  “Go to that ranch,” he says as he closes my hand over the paper. “And don’t mention anything about me or those guys. Ask for a job. Get a count on the number of grizzly bears that are there.”

  “Grizzly bears?”

  “Shifters,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “Can you tell the difference between a man and a shifter?”

  “Yeah. If the dude is enormous, he’s a shifter. Obviously.”

  He steps forward as his eyes darken. “Don’t get smart with me.”

  I lean back as he gets in my face. He’s terrifying when he’s like this.

  “Numbers, names, and general layout of the place,” he says in a fierce tone. “Now go, or I’ll feed your brother to those predators over there.”

  I gulp as I watch one enormous tiger swipe another one.

  Rhys steps back and looks me up and down, giving me cold shivers all over. “Go inside and try to make yourself look decent for once. You have ten minutes before I want that big ass off this ranch and on the road.”

  He storms off toward the trucks as I grit my teeth and crumple the paper in my fist, seething.

  “See?” my mother says as she walks out of the barn and stands beside me. “He’s not so bad.”

  I can’t even.

  I have to get out of here for good.

  Chapter Two

  Logan

  “Come on,” I grunt as I slap Zeus’ ass, making him run faster than I’ve ever seen him run before. He flies down the hill, hooves slamming into the ground as I bounce on his back, gripping the reins with one hand and holding my black cowboy hat down with the other.

  “Get ‘em,” I grit through clenched teeth as the pack of wolves flee before us. They separate like a river running around rocks as they sprint in different directions. Some disappear into the forest to the left, others run down the hill to the right.

  I keep my eyes on the huge black alpha who’s continuing down the valley. He’s faster and stronger than the others, but Zeus is one hell of a fast stallion and he gains ground on him.

  “We got ‘em now, buddy,” I say with a grin as he slopes to the left. Over that hill, there’s nowhere to go.

  Zeus pounds his hooves into the earth as we follow the wolf to the side and run over the hill. “Whoa,”
I say as I pull my stallion back, skidding to a stop.

  The huge alpha is pacing nervously in front of the cliff, which is shaped like a steep bowl all around him. The only way out is through me. And he’s not getting through me.

  I jump off the horse, remove my black cowboy hat, and pull my shirt off with one swift movement. I toss it behind me as he lowers his head and growls in warning.

  “You and your boys have to learn to stay off my ranch,” I say as I unzip my jeans and yank them off. “This is the third time this week.”

  He snarls as I remove my underwear and slap it onto Zeus’ back.

  Ever since Adrian’s bear moved out of the forest, the local wolves have been getting more aggressive. I never realized how much Adrian’s bear deterred them, although I’m not surprised. His feral bear deterred everything until Courtney walked in, stole his heart, and turned him into a teddy bear.

  The hair on the wolf’s back is standing straight up as he snarls at me. There’s panic in his eyes. He knows what’s coming. He can smell it.

  I squeeze my body and let my bear come.

  Pain sears through my veins as my body grows, cracking bones and tearing muscle. I get sucked in as my furious grizzly bear explodes out of me with a primal roar.

  The wolf starts pacing in terror as he desperately looks for a way out. There’s nowhere to go so he starts digging furiously, kicking up dust as my bear stomps over.

  That’s close enough, I tell him. Just give him a warning.

  My grizzly goes right up to his face and the wolf winces as he lets out a thunderous roar.

  He’s all whimpers and high-pitched cries as my grizzly gives him a warning look, letting him know that if his crew comes back, he won’t be so kind.