The Alpha's Daughter (46 page)

There were other businesses in the works as
well. Brad and his tow truck now made enough to call it a living
and while he worked all hours of the day and night, the young
wolver had a good head on his shoulders and his priorities
straight. He'd hired a part time driver for every Saturday so he
could spend his time with Livvy.

Six months ago, Gilead Castings - What's good
for the garden is good for the soul - became a reality with Miz
Ezzy as its titular head. Local sales looked good and there were
already plans for expansion with the addition of more of 'the boys'
as the business grew. More people employed, more money in the
village, more hope for the future.

It wasn't perfect, but they were heading in
the right direction and Jazz's days were filled with family,
friends and planning.

Planning was part of the purpose for the tea
party today. Jazz was about to launch a campaign to put a woman (or
two) on the Alpha's Council, something unheard of in the wolver
world. Griz hadn't openly supported her plan, but his response was
encouraging.

"What am I going to do with you, Hellcat?"
he'd laughed while shaking his head.

Rocking chairs in their place and the table
set for company, Jazz went into her house to put her broom away and
put the kettle on to boil. On her way to the kitchen, she stopped
to wash her hands in the little addition to the side of the house
with the doorway under the stairs.

This was her mating gift from Griz. With all
the turmoil surrounding that day, it was a week before she noticed
the toilet topped with a huge white bow that sat beside the porch.
Next to it was a pedestal sink along with the wood and pipes needed
to build the room.

Once it was built, there were no more trips
to the hated outhouse, but better than that, her grizzly had
designed the room to hold the huge tin tub now properly fitted with
hot and cold taps and a drain. Windows surrounded it and on quiet
nights they could share a bath and look out at the trees and stars.
It was almost as good as the back porch.

Griz was outside now, adding a second story
to the addition for another bathroom upstairs. The tin tub was too
deep to comfortably bathe Wesley and he'd grown too large for the
kitchen sink. It was his tired cry that had Jazz running back to
the porch.

"Nap time," she said, reaching over the rail
to take her crying son from his father. "Come to Mama,
sweetheart."

"Careful," Griz warned, holding their pup
high so she didn't have to bend. "Don't hurt yourself."

"Worrywort," she laughed as she settled her
pup on her side so his leg draped over her bulging belly.
"Everything's fine."

As if to prove her point, the pup in her
belly rolled and kicked out and her shirt jumped with his motion.
Wesley, named after Griz's father and called Wes, giggled.

"See? Everything's fine," Jazz repeated, but
she knew her Griz would worry until their pup was born. At least
his worry came from being a good father and mate and not from his
concern for the pack.

Jazz's wolf had been right about that, too.
Strong Alpha, strong sire, strong pups. There were eight new
additions to the pack including a set of twins and all had been
born without trouble. Jazz was already counting up possible numbers
and making plans to convert the old church to a school, though
there was talk of finding a preacher.

Tired from traipsing after his father all
day, Wes fell asleep almost immediately, but Jazz continued to rock
and enjoy the quiet moment with her son. Her eyes slid to the table
set for company and to the mating gift she cherished most.

She'd found it on the corner of her dresser
in the room she shared with Griz, wrapped in brown paper and tied
with string. Each piece of the tea set was lovingly wrapped in a
scrap of fabric from her mating dress.

"Love don't die with the person who bore it,"
the old Mate had told her. "It changes, but it don't die."

Jazz knew this to be true, because she felt
Miz Mary's love every time she brought the tea set out for tea and
talk with the women of her pack.

"You're crying again," Griz said softly as he
reached for their sleeping son.

"I know," Jazz said, not bothering to deny
it, "They're good tears, though."

This was another thing she had learned. Tears
weren't a sign of weakness as long as they came from your heart.
She'd shed a lot of tears these last two years and she was no
longer ashamed. Sometimes they were the tears of anger and
frustration and sometimes from sorrow and pain, but mostly they
came at times like this when she opened her heart and
remembered.

Jazz smiled up at her mate as she ran her
fingers through the gold-brown curls that covered her son's
head.

"They gave us all this, Griz. We wouldn't be
here without them."

She didn't have to say who it was. Leonard
and Mary were never far from their thoughts. It was months after
that awful day before Griz and Jazz could talk about it and it was
then they realized what happened.

Knowing it was his last battle, the old Alpha
had reserved his last bit of power to bring himself home, but
Ellie, Livvy and Brad were in mortal danger on the porch and there
was no one near enough to save them. Except Jazz. He'd used that
last bit of strength to flash her over the moon, choosing to risk
his immortal soul for the safety of the members of his pack. When
Miz Mary said he gave everything, she meant it literally.

The kettle whistled inside and Jazz wiped her
eyes. "Come on, Papa Bear, let's put our pup to bed."

Jazz paused at the door of the crooked house
that still listed a little to the left. It was the most beautiful
house in the world. It had to be because it was filled with
everything she treasured most. She rose up on her toes to give her
grizzly a kiss and opened her heart to the Gilead pack so that
they, too, would feel how grateful she was to have been born an
Alpha's Daughter to become their Alpha's Mate.

#####

About the Author

Jacqueline, known as Jackie to her friends,
lives in rural southern Ohio with one lovable husband, one spoiled
dog and one disinterested cat. She believes coffee is a food group
and always has a pot brewing. When not writing, she can usually be
found with her nose in someone else's book or working in her
garden. She also spends a great deal of time chasing deer and
rabbits who apparently also like gardening.

Jackie loves hearing from
her readers and is always willing to chat. She can be reached
through her website at
http://jacquelinerhoades.com
or
at
mailto:[email protected]

Other
Books by Jacqueline Rhoades

Thanks for reading
The Alpha's Daughter
. I
hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Reviews at your place of purchase are always welcome.

Paranormal Romances by Jacqueline Rhoades

Available at
Smashwords.com

And all other major ebook
retailers

The Guardians Of The Race Series

Guardian's Grace

Guardian's Hope #2

Guardian's Joy #3

Alpha's Mate Series

The Alpha's Mate

The Alpha's Choice

Contemporary Romances by the author

Hidden Mountain Series

Preston's Mill

Excerpt from Guardian's Faith

A Guardians' of the Race Novel

Coming in 2013

Having only recently crawled from the dark
cavern of her madness, Faith Parsons seriously considered crawling
back in. At least it was quiet there. For a while, her mind had cut
off most sight and sound, most thought for that matter, and Faith
found she sometimes missed the absolute silence. The silence within
her mind wasn’t deafening as some writers claimed. She thought of
it more as restful, serene, and healing.

There was a lot of healing going on in this
House of Guardians lately and while she didn’t mind using her
powers as a Daughter of Man to help repair the injuries they
inflicted upon each other, she wished they could batter and bash
each other a little more quietly. When they weren’t screaming at
each other in mock battle rage, they were laughing and joking and
thundering around the house, egged on by the twins, Dov and Col,
who weren’t yet Guardian’s but were full-fledged trainees and
certainly old enough to begin acting like sensible adults.

Following the recent trouble at Moonlight
Sanctuary, the Paenitentia enclave several miles outside the city,
and the popularity of Nardo’s video games, there had been an
upsurge in young Paenitentia men signing up for long-unfilled
positions within the Guardians of the Race. This House had become a
clearing house for these recruits where they were put through a
rigorous initial training meant to weed out those who didn’t have
the right stuff. Those that passed would be sent on to other Houses
to complete their instruction.

Faith wasn’t sure how Canaan, the Liege Lord
of this House, had earned this dubious honor, but there it was.
There were eight new recruits living here now along with the seven
people who called this House their home. Add to that number her
sister Hope and Hope’s Guardian mate, Nico, who lived across the
alleyway and the old, but harmless vampire, Otto, and his mate
Manon, and you had quite a crowd around the dinner table and none
of them were quiet.

The place was like a damn bus station with
people running in and out, in and out and like those in the bus
station, most of them, most of them were strangers. Faith hated
strangers. They frightened her and she'd had enough fright in her
twenty eight years to last a lifetime, thank you very much. It was
her problem, she knew, and no one else's fault, but there it was;
strangers coming in waves of two or three or four. She would no
sooner get used to one batch than another would be flowing through
the door, coming upon her unawares, bumping her with the door while
she was doing laundry and they came in, laughing or shouting to
each other, from the garage. It was a good thing she had no voice
or she would have spent half her time screeching from
startlement.

And that was another thing, she thought as
she stripped the sheets from one of the guest rooms' beds, guests.
At least that's what everyone else called them. Faith thought of
them as cattle buyers coming in from out of town to get an up-close
look at the House's current stock of muscle bound bulls. Every week
or two, someone new arrived.

None of the other women seemed to mind.
Grace, Lord Canaan’s Lady and pregnant with their first child,
fussed over them all like a mother hen, clucking over the recruits'
injuries and stuffing the visitors with the goodies that constantly
flowed from her oven in the huge kitchen at the back of the house.
Hope spent her days taking care of the business end of Nardo’s
games. She closed her office door and didn’t come out until it was
time to set the table for supper. JJ, Faith's best friend and the
only known genetic mix of Paenitentia and Daughter of Man (other
than the child Grace carried) was Nardo’s mate. She worked beside
the men in the gym, training recruits. For Faith, it was the only
thing she enjoyed about the comings and goings of the House; the
look of shock and awe on the faces of the new recruits when JJ set
them on their all too macho asses.

She smoothed out the wrinkles of the fresh
sheets and pulled up the blanket, making sure it was perfectly even
on either side of the bed before pulling the downy comforter into
place. She dusted the dresser and night stands, straightened the
pillow on the overstuffed chair and resolved to vacuum later when
she did the hall. This was all she was good for; hotel maid for a
House of Guardians.

Faith felt her job as healer was
superfluous. Yes, the golden glow from her fingertips aided the
healing process, but the Paenitentia were remarkably fast healers
to begin with. Unless a bone was broken, or a wound was
particularly deep, her services weren’t really necessary. As a
matter of fact, things outside the House had been so quiet lately
none of the Daughter’s talents were necessary.

Like Faith, all the women were Daughters of
Man, an ancient collective of women whom some called blessed and
others called witches. No one knew how many Daughters still existed
in the world. History had not been kind to their numbers and many
succumbed to insanity or death if their powers weren’t fully
realized. Faith tried not to think about that too deeply. There was
a time, not too long ago, that she would have preferred death to
the life she was forced to lead.

“
Why the pensive face,
poppet? Have the Terrible Two been leading their band of miscreants
on another rampage?”

Broadbent, also known as the Professor and
the Guardian Faith felt most comfortable with came down to stand
beside her, his long beaklike nose preceding his head around the
corner to look into the parlor and then down the hall to see why
she hesitated at the foot of the stairs. There was no one
there.

“
What is it,
then?”

Faith sighed, smiled and
signed. “
Nothing unusual. Too many people.
Too much noise. Wondering what I’m doing here. What purpose do I
serve?”

Her body had healed and so had her mind, but
her voice was gone. Sometime between her rescue and her return from
her emotional exile, her voice had disappeared. Working with JJ,
her best friend among the women, she developed a sign language,
part American Sign and part her own, that allowed her to
communicate with the members of the House. Even the recruits caught
on quickly.