I Took the Tyrant Alpha My Twin Couldn’t Keep

My twin sister and I came back from the dead, and the first thing we did was trade mates.

Last life, we were sent off to be mated on the same day.

Juliet, soft-spoken and gentle, went north to Dane Halvorsen, the Alpha they call the Tyrant.

On their first bonding anniversary, he left her alone to spend his childhood friend's birthday with her instead. Juliet asked for one explanation. He said he had nothing to explain.

They lived like strangers for fifty years.

Me? I'd rather throw a punch than waste a sentence. I got Theo Ashby, a Sunhollow Beta.

He hated my loud mouth. Hated the motor oil under my nails. Hated that I never once wore a dress.

We fought every three days and screamed every five, until he stopped coming home.

Eleven months in, we broke the bond.

Then I opened my eyes, and Juliet and I were back on the morning we were sent away to be mated.

...

Juliet sat on the edge of her bed in her mating dress, staring at nothing.

One look at her face and I knew. She remembered too.

I pulled my saddlebag out from under the bed.

"I'm taking the North," I said. "You take Theo."

She jumped to her feet. For a second, her face lit up.

Then she bit her lip and shook her head. "No. Dane is cold, Jess. And there's that girl. I won't let you take my bad luck."

"Grandpa's pact says a Calder daughter mates the Halvorsen heir. It doesn't say which one." I shoved jeans into the bag. "And who says your sister can't handle a cold Alpha?"

"But if he—"

"If it works, it works. If it doesn't, I break something of his and ride home." I threw a punch at the air. "Theo's picky, but he's never raised his voice in his life. He'll love you the quiet way. And he lives an hour from Mom."

Last time, Juliet had no one up north to cry to.

She laughed through her tears and flicked my forehead. "You're impossible."

"Is that a yes?"

"...Fine. We swap."

...

Nobody in Sunhollow ever understood it, but I was made for a place like Grimfrost.

I'd ridden with the Gravel Fangs since I was sixteen. They were the roughest motorcycle club in the southern packs.

I was the only she-wolf in a club full of Betas. They thought a woman belonged on the back of a bike, holding on.

It took me one summer to change their minds.

I won the Ridge Run three years in a row. Black ice and all.

After that, the Betas brought me their bikes to fix. And a few Alphas quietly stopped racing me.

Juliet couldn't even kill a spider.

I was a Delta. I was born to fight.

If the North wanted to bite someone, it could bite me. Then it would find out how hard I bit back.

...

I left a letter on the kitchen table and rolled my motorcycle out at dawn.

Mom ran out in her robe just as I started the engine.

"Jessamine Calder, you turn that thing off right now!"

"Read the letter, Mom!"

"I read the letter! You don't swap mates like you swap tires!"

I hit the gas.

Her voice chased me down the pack road for a quarter mile. That was the only goodbye I was going to get.

...

The ride took four days.

The road turned to gravel. The gravel turned to frozen dirt. Then there was nothing but pine trees, sleet, and a gray sky.

On the last stretch, in the no-man's-land before the Northern Reach, three rogues dragged a log across the road.

They wanted my bike. They wanted my fuel.

The biggest one told me to get off. Slowly.

Then he saw the Calder crest on my saddlebag, and his grin turned ugly.

"That's the pact name." He spat in the snow. "You're going to Halvorsen? He hung my brother from a border pine last winter. Maybe we send you to him in pieces."

I got off fast.

The first one got my steel-toed boot in his knee.

The second one started to shift. He got my tire iron across the face.

The third one looked at his friends and ran.

But before the second one went down, his claws had torn through my fuel line.

I spent two hours on my knees in the sleet, fixing the hose with frozen fingers.

When the engine finally started, I was covered in grease. My jacket was soaked in gasoline. Rogue blood was drying in my hair.

Ten miles later, I saw that the stories were true.

Old rogue pelts hung from the border pines. Frozen stiff. Swinging in the wind.

Nobody had tried to hide them.

Good, I thought. I'd rather marry a wolf who means what he says than one who smiles while he lies.

The Grimfrost border post was a small stone hut with a woodstove and two sentries.

They took one sniff of me and decided what I was.

I told them my name and the words of the pact.

The older one mind-linked someone. Whatever he heard back made him glance at the door and wince.

"She's not going to like this," he muttered.

I didn't ask who she was. I sat down on the bench to warm up.

The door creaked open. Cold air rushed in, and so did a voice. Sweet, high, and full of disgust.

"Dane, there's a rogue in here. Can't you smell it?"