Desert Heat (Complete)

{Third Person P.O.V.}

When the realization hit Michaela that she wasn’t actually an Alpha’s daughter, it felt like a meteor hitting the Earth’s surface. All of her life, she lived as though she was above everyone, and in doing so, she rejected J.D. because she felt that she deserved more, something she never had any problem voicing and felt zero shame in her admissions. But now, here she is, sitting on the sidelines as the life she once envisioned herself having with her mate was being lived by someone else. Vivienne had everything Michaela ever wanted. A loving mate, the Luna title, and to top it all off, she was pregnant.

If that weren’t bad enough, Michaela’s own mother could no longer protect her. Hearing the words that the true Alpha of Red Mountain would determine her fate, Michaela’s life flashed before her eyes, and she saw just how wrong she had lived her life. Sadly, it didn’t matter anymore because it was too little, too late. Not only had she conspired to have Jedediah’s mate kidnapped, but she also inadvertently had a future Luna kidnapped, a pregnant one at that. With that information now swarming around in her head, Michaela had but one person to turn to, and it was the one person she never wanted to turn to in the first place—Claude.

While everyone around her was busy passing judgment on her father and reveling in the news that Bartholomew Ricard was very much, in fact, alive, she took the opportunity to crawl away in silence and slipped back into the packhouse. She was planning on returning to her room, and she thought she was home free until Seth stopped her. “Where do you think you’re going?” he said to her while grabbing her arm.

“Let me go, Seth!” she commanded.

“Don’t think for a second that I don’t know what you’re trying to do, Michaela. The way you screamed for that vampire, the way your eyes teared up when you thought that he might die from the sunlight. It’s obvious that you care for him on some deeper level,” Seth told her while squeezing her arm even tighter. Her worst fears were realized when her mother exposed who Claude really was, so it came as no surprise to her that Seth, too, had figured it out.

“Let.me.go,” she gritted her teeth at him.

“Sure.” Seth let go of her arm and stepped back, giving her an evil smirk. Michaela was confused but didn’t question it. She turned her heel to keep going. “Oh, before you decide to run away to your vampire lover, I’d be sure to stick around to see what happens to your father.” Michaela snapped her head back to face Seth.

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, from what pack members are saying through the mind link, your dad isn’t a true Alpha. Apparently, he cheated his way to the Alpha title by kidnapping Jed’s birth mother and threatening to kill her if Alpha Ricard didn’t give up his title to him.”

“You’re lying!” Michaela shouted.

“No, I’m not. Your dad is being called out as we speak.” Michaela hesitated a moment but ultimately went back outside to see if Seth’s words were true. When she got back to the door, Jedediah was still speaking to the pack members.

“Zachary Scanlan is nothing but a fraud! He’s lied to everyone in this pack! Including the Elders of this state!” Jedediah shouted with authority. “He’s burned the pack hierarchy records and created false ones to hide his treachery! The Scanlan’s are not the reigning Alphas of the Red Mountain Pack!”

“LIES! THEY’RE LYING! DO NOT FALL FOR THEIR DECEIT! YOUR LUNA EVEN FAKED HER DEATH! THEY’RE ALL CONSPIRING TO DESTROY MY PACK!” Scanlan defended himself. Pack members began to mumble amongst themselves, trying to decide who was telling the truth. Some had already decided that they would rather believe Michaela’s mother and have changed sides. Yet, a good number still didn’t know who to trust.

“Really?” Brandon challenged him. “Have you already forgotten that you admitted to everything in your office not even twenty minutes ago and that it’s all recorded on your security cameras?”

“Someone get the recordings!” a pack member shouted from within the crowd.

“Gladly,” another said. Michaela whipped around to see Isaac break away to head for the security office within the packhouse. Not knowing just how treacherous her father is, Michaela decided she had to stop Isaac before he ruined her life even more. So what if her father had cheated his way to the Alpha title? He was still the Alpha, and she was still an Alpha’s daughter. She wasn’t going to let anyone else take something away from her. She refused to be anything less than an Alpha’s daughter.

As she stalked him to the security office, she made sure that he didn’t know someone had followed him. She stayed low and kept her distance. When she saw him go into the security office, she made sure that no one else, especially Seth, was nearby. She was going to get the recording and destroy it; that way, the evidence against her father wouldn’t exist. Then Jedediah’s and her mother’s claims would be just that—claims without evidentiary support. She slowly turned the knob on the door, and as soon as she did, she could hear the recording playing. She was willing to risk everything to save her father, but what she didn’t expect to hear was her father’s voice talking about her. She paused when she heard him and the others talking about her.

She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Her very own father, the one who loved her and cherished her, calling her a brat, spoiled, annoying, and saying how he had to coddle her because of how spoiled she was. Calling her a w***e like her mother and complaining that he’s stuck with her because she had chosen to reject Jedediah. Not only that but insinuating her incompetence for ruining his chance at an alliance with Desert Moon. That’s when he began to admit his crimes against the rightful Alpha of the pack. Tears filled her eyes. The one person she felt that she could always rely on had never wanted to be there for her in the first place.

It was then, at that moment, that Michaela felt even more stupid than ever before. She gritted her teeth and decided that her initial plan of action to turn to Claude was her best option. All she had to do was find his hiding spot and hope that he hadn’t died from his earlier injuries.

{Jedediah’s P.O.V.}

As Isaac went inside to get the recordings of Scanlan’s admission of guilt, that was when I had noticed Michaela following him. I figured she would go after him to try and stop him. Then I remembered that the recordings not only had Scanlan admitting to all of his crimes but also him talking s**t about his own daughter. Michaela definitely needed to be humbled some more, so I figured hearing her father call her a mistake and everything else in between was necessary.

“She does realize that we see her, right?” Vivienne asked me.

“No, because she’s stupid like that. It’s okay, though. I bet once she hears what her father says about her, she will turn her back on him as well. I could care less about her anyway. If she wants to run away, then let her. It’s not like she’ll have anywhere to go.”

“But she will have someone,” Vivienne replied.

“If she wants to be with that fucker, then let her. They f*****g deserve each other.”

“He’s injured, and badly. Seth made the sun hit him. I don’t think he will survive the burns. They were pretty bad.”

“Even better,” I retorted. A few minutes later, Isaac came back and handed me a thumb drive. He smiled and bowed his head before he went back to where he was standing earlier. I smiled at the object in my hands and clutched it tightly. “You have one chance, Zach, to come clean about your crimes. Or I send this,” I said as I held up the drive, “to the Elders of Colorado.” His eyes bulged out of his head as if he were actually surprised. Did he honestly think that he could just get away with everything he had done?

“GIVE. ME. THAT. DRIVE!” he snarled at me using his Alpha voice, which sounded more like a gurgle.

“Wow, you sounded like a teenage boy who hasn’t hit puberty yet,” Brandon mocked, making everyone snicker.

“Brandon, can you seriously stop being such a d**k?” Dorian scolded him.

“What? I’m just going to use Gizmo as my voice of reason and say, ‘I’m just saying what everyone is thinking’.” Dorian rolled his eyes, and so did I.

My temporary distraction to Brandon allowed for Scanlan to get the advantage, and I soon found myself pinned against the packhouse wall, and Vivienne had been completely knocked over. I was furious to see that he had assaulted her in a split-second decision to try and take the drive from me. One hand was around my throat, while the other held the wrist of my hand that was clutching the drive.

“Give me that drive, Jedediah!” he snarled in my face and showered me with his saliva while he pressed against my larynx. I was trying to keep pressure off by holding his wrist with one hand and had to maintain my grasp on the drive in my other. Even though I was technically stronger than him, I wasn’t skilled in multitasking the way he was. I wasn’t a trained Alpha, and that was my only disadvantage. The fact that he could differentiate the amount of pressure he put on my neck and the amount he put into my wrist holding the drive was what was making me falter in my defenses.

“f**k you,” I spat and kept trying to push him off. He started to dig his claws into my neck, and I could feel the b***d flowing from the wounds.

“ZACHARY, STOP IT!” I heard Luna Lynnette shout at him, but her pleas were futile.

“Dorian, help him!” I heard Vivienne yell.

“I can’t! This is between them! It’s an Alpha’s challenge; I cannot interfere!”

“But I can.” As soon someone unfamiliar spoke those words, I felt Scanlan’s grip on me loosen. I took the opportunity to shove him off of me. He lost his footing a bit before composing himself. I fell to the ground and coughed as I tried to get oxygen in my lungs. I made sure my grip didn’t crush the drive, and I felt my neck to see if the wounds were deep.

“Mon Loup!” Vivienne came to my side.

“Vivienne, are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?” was the first thing I asked when I felt her near me.

“Me? You have claw marks on your neck!” she exclaimed.

“I’m fine, Mon Coeur,” I replied and stood to my feet. I looked over at Scanlan, who looked as if he had just seen yet another ghost. I looked past him and saw three new individuals standing at the forefront of all the rogues. That’s when Gunner reached out to me.

Jed, they are not rogues.

What? What are you talking about?

They don’t smell vile or dirty.

I paused a minute before taking a quick whiff and realized that he was right. They didn’t smell vile at all. They didn’t have that rotting dirty dog smell. I sniffed again and came to the realization that they smelled like a pack. I looked up at the three newcomers again.

“Mon Loup, who are they?” Vivienne asked me.

“I have no idea,” I answered. But then, the man standing at the front spoke.

“It’s been a long time, Zachary.”

“You should have just killed me,” the woman next to him said. I had the strangest feeling that whoever these people were, it was going to cause a major uproar. I quickly gave the drive to Vivienne for safekeeping before I stepped around Scanlan and addressed the unknown trio.

“Who are you?” I asked the man. It was then I realized how large he really was. Instead of answering, he just smiled at me approvingly.

“Jedediah, this is your family,” Luna Lynnette said, coming up to me and pointing to them. I snapped my head towards her and then back at the three people. “This is your father, Supreme Alpha Bartholomew Ricard. This is your mother, Supreme Luna Adelina Prewitt Ricard, and your little sister, Paulette.”

“Little sister?” I looked back at the young woman in front of me who gave me the biggest smile ever. We had the same eye and hair color. “How old are you?” I asked her.

“I just turned 22,” she answered. She was the same age as Vivienne. “It’s so good to finally meet you, big brother,” she gushed as tears filled her eyes.

“Son,” my father said as he put a hand on my shoulder. “I know you must have a lot of questions, and we will answer them in due time. But first, we need to take care of this scoundrel,” he directed towards Scanlan. I turned around to see Scanlan was shaking in pure rage, and at this point, all of the Red Mountain pack members, along with Dorian and the others, were standing by my family and their pack.

“All of you will pay for your betrayal!” Scanlan shouted at them.

“The only person who will pay for their betrayal is you, Zachary!” my father’s voice boomed and echoed into the skies.

“You think you can take me on just because you’re a Supreme Alpha!? I beat you once before!”

“You didn’t beat me, you sorry excuse of a wolf. You kidnapped my wife, this pack’s Luna, and had her beaten nearly to death! You used her to leverage me into giving you the Alpha title in exchange for her life! And the only reason why I even entertained your threat was because she was pregnant with my unborn son!”

“That’s right,” my mother interjected and joined my father by his side. “When you had your men kidnap me during my afternoon walk, I had just left the pack hospital. It was confirmed that I was indeed pregnant with our first child. Bart had Alpha duties to attend to, and I was on cloud nine, having just learned about our pup. I wanted to bask in the warm rays of the sun and dwell in my happiness.”

“Her being with child was the only reason why I even submitted to you, you backstabbing son of a b***h. I chose you above everyone else in our lives to be my Beta, and that’s how you repaid me!? I should have killed you right then and there, but I had to think about Adelina and our pup. I concocted a plan in the split second that I would give you the title, but only if you agreed to spare her life, not letting onto the fact that she was carrying. That’s why I agreed to leave with her and never to return.”

“And leave we did. We left, and four months later, I gave birth to a son. The next in line in the Ricard bloodline for Red Mountain. The true heir to the Alpha title. But in order to allow for him to fight for his birthright, he had to grow up within the pack. Because of this, when he was a week old, I put him somewhere I knew a pack member would find him. I never expected it to be your newly found mate and the new Luna of the pack. I could tell after one sniff that she was nothing like you. So, I entrusted her with my son’s life. For 18 years, we watched from afar as he grew up an Omega turned pack warrior, only to see him leave to further his education. Then, we witnessed the heartache he had to endure upon returning when your spoiled rotten daughter trampled over his poor heart. To make matters worse, he left! He left his pack!” my mother cried. “All of the planning we did, wasted because of one single she-wolf!”

“When I saw how hurt my brother was, I couldn’t just idly stand by and watch, so I decided to follow him,” my sister said. I snapped my head towards her.

“You what?” I asked.

“I followed you,” she replied. “I followed you all the way to Desert Moon. Even though I had to watch from outside the pack boundary, I could see that you were well accepted there. I kept an eye on you while you were getting settled in there when you met your second chance, and even when that b***h Michaela decided to rain on your parade.”

“You … You watched me for over two months?”

“Yeah, it sounds creepy when you say it like that. Anyway, not only did I get to witness your happiness being with my future sister-in-law, but I also got to witness the moment Michaela met her vampire mate,” she revealed while wiggling her brows proudly. I looked at Dorian, who was just as confused as I was.

“I thought Simba and Nick threw her out after Gizmo threatened to have her shot?” Brandon asked.

“Yeah, I watched her get thrown out, and it was glorious! But when she was driving out of the pack territory, she pulled over to throw a hissy fit. And as she was doing that, she stopped suddenly and looked into the shadows of the tree line. She left her car on the side of the road and went snooping around. I followed her from a safe distance, and when she got into a small area completely within the shadows, that’s where she found Claude snooping around as well. I heard her say mate, and they f****d right then and there. I swear, I wanted to gauge my eyes out. After a five-minute quickie, she rejected him, but he didn’t accept it. She left, and you know, came back here.”

“And when did you stop spying on me?”

“When you left for your first job. I figured I had no reason to follow you to Europe, so I came back home.”

“How in the world did you go unnoticed for that long?” Dorian asked her. She turned to him, smiled, and winked. “After I came back, I noticed the vampire around, so I started to spy on them. It’s how I found out about the kidnapping. I’m also the one who filmed their little porn scene the other night.”

“Paulette, enough,” my father insisted and turned his attention back to Scanlan, who was trying to back away. “And where do you think you’re going!?” he bellowed at him. “Guards! Seize him until the council of Elders is summoned!” he commanded. Without hesitation, four men from his pack came around from behind him and immediately arrested Scanlan.

“GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME! I AM THE ALPHA! HOW DARE YOU!”

“You can’t be an Alpha when you don’t have a pack,” Dorian sneered at him. “How to Run a Pack 101—whenever there is a pack mutiny, the pack can vote to have their Alpha replaced effective immediately.”

“All in favor of getting rid of this a*****e, raise your hands!” Brandon sang with joy and raised his hand first. Everyone else followed suit. Without another word, the guards dragged him away as he kept kicking and screaming.

“Gag him and pump him full of wolfsbane!” my father yelled after them.

“Hm, that wasn’t how I expected my Alpha challenge to go,” I muttered, sounding a little more disappointed than I expected to.

“You’ll still have your challenge, son. After the Elders get here,” my father consoled me. I looked back towards Scanlan, who was still being dragged, and saw Seth come out of the packhouse. The moment he turned to face me, I heard Paulette gasp and hide behind me. I looked behind me, wondering what she was doing.

“Why are you hiding?” I asked her.

“Don’t let him see me!” she whisper-shouted to me. As soon as she said that Seth jogged up to me with a huge smile on his face but then frowned when he saw Paulette behind me.

“What!? You again!?” he snarled. He grabbed her from behind me and pulled her out forcefully. “I thought I told you to never come back here!” he screamed in her face.

“Seth, unhand my sister!” I shouted at him.

“Sister?!” He looked between Paulette and me a few times before letting her go. I glanced at her, and I could see tears in her eyes. I looked at him and noticed that he was acting really uncomfortable.

“Pauly is he the one!?” my mother asked her. Pauly just nodded. My father roared, grabbed Seth by the neck, and strung him up in the air.

“DAD! What are you doing!?” I exclaimed in shock.

“YOU’RE THE INGRATE THAT REJECTED MY DAUGHTER!?”

“REJECTED?!” me, the guys, and Vivienne repeated in dismay.

“YOU’RE MY SISTER’S MATE!?” Before he could even answer me, Dani appeared out of nowhere.

“Dani!?” Andre exclaimed.

“Oh, thank god I finally found you guys!” she shouted.

“What are you doing here?” Andre asked her. She didn’t answer him but instead turned to Dorian.

“You need to come with me now!” she shouted as grabbed his arm.

“Why?”

“Allie went into early labor!”

“What!? How!?”

“Heather attacked her!”