Dark Succession: True Mates #2

Dark Succession
True Mates, book 2
ebook
Published April 20th 2010 by Freya's Bower

Nora Hunt is the daughter of former pack leader Sean Hunt and niece to Kieran Hunt. Emotionally and physically scarred after being held captive for weeks, she's finally ready to move on with her life. But when she meets Ryland, she discovers not only a world of darkness and pain, but discovers Ryland may not be any better than those who held her captive all those weeks.

When Ryland Keegan steps in as Alpha of his dead brother's pack, he inherits a pack of savage rogue wolven, as well as a legacy of violence, lies and five women held captive within the pack's confines.

But when Ryland's pack members start dying one at a time, he must decide if Nora is the catalyst or the killer. Can he trust his True Mate? Or will he be relegated to a life of leading the dregs of Wolven society?

“Just let me hold you for a while, mate.”

How do you turn a villain into a hero? Give him a chance to tell his side of the story.

Ryland is altogether a different man in this book in comparison to the first. Not that *he* changed. Just the perspective. With his brother now dead, Ryland has inherited the pack (a group of misfit rogues) and a den (an underground concrete stronghold). His life as a shifter is totally screwy. Then he finds his True Mate in Nora, the she-wolf tortured by hyena shifters in the first book. She's also the niece of Kieran, the alpha mate of the woman Ryland once tried to claim.

He escaped and strode across the hall to his own. Inside, he closed the door, leaned against it, and shut his eyes. Now what?

Meeting his mate hadn’t exactly been on today’s agenda. He wasn’t sure how to proceed. Just like their wolf cousins, shewolves chose their mates, despite the rare paring of True Mates. And like the wolves, they usually chose the strongest in a pack. But it wasn’t always the case. Sometimes, they chose entirely by their heart. That’s what scared him. Ryland didn’t know how to court a female. They’d always come running to him. And since none of those females had managed to touch it, he was sure he didn’t have a heart.

Ryland's feelings toward finding Nora teeter a bit in the beginning. He's proud when she stands up to him but later, as he doesn't know what she's been through, Nora shows fear from the memories of her past and Ryland is disgusted by it. His True Mate is a coward. Nora, too, is humiliated by her terror but the stronger emotion is the attraction she feels for Ryland. For the first time in her life, she finds herself wanting a male's attention, even wanting a mate.

Facing a threat to his status as alpha and working to correct the errors of his predecessor, Ryland is torn between what's right and what's best for the pack and for their kind. All the while Nora is there, slowly bonding with him on an emotional level as the need to claim her only exacerbates his very fragile predicament. This one had more of a murder mystery side to it with a very interesting shock factor. Joshua isn't who Ryland always thought he was. And Nora has known Ryland for longer than she remembers.

Then when Nora finds out the truth about Ryland's attempts against Anna... And Ryland sees Nora's scars for himself... OMG goodness! I'm not even sure what it was about this story that hit just the right spot for me. It just did.

I was all about some Ryland though. Anna and Nora are on about the same level with me but Ryland blew Kieran so far out of the water you might want to look for him along the stratosphere.

"You have to see what you are before you can see what you are to me."

Uh huh. Smexy. Ryland is probably the first character I seriously wanted to gobble up. The desk sex was smoldering. The battle of wills that joined the ride just upped the heat. The suspense, though, was going to be the death of me. 5 out of 5 stars.