Heir Alight by Mazzy J. March

A Battle to the Death

I’m lying in a pool of my own blood. My vision is fading. I can hear my mates, but they sound so far away. I probably never thought I’d be able to win this battle, and I knew the stakes, but
Belen is a bitten wolf, an unnatural creature unable to control her urges or fight her ever-growing need for power. She’s taken over this pack. Imprisoned my mother. Is likely responsible for the disappearance of my father the alpha.
She has also displayed violence and cruelty to lesser members of our wolf pack. So I did what any true heir to the alpha would do—I challenged her.
Except she’s stronger than me and fiercer. She’s got the fighter instinct and, before I know it, I’m on the ground with a gash the size of Russia on my belly.
My mates might just have to live without me. They will go on; they haven’t known me that long. And surely the goddess will be kind and grant them another mate. Was that possible? I’d only known I was a wolf shifter for a few months, and I hadn’t learned all the rules yet. I thought I’d have time! My breaths rasped, my vision nearly gone, I was ready to accept my fate until I remembered the young wolf Belen had whipped with her riding crop. If I died, she would make my people’s life hell. And there would be no one else with the lineage to stop her. As my father’s heir and my mother’s daughter, I owed it to fight until every drop of blood drained from my body.
I will win or die trying. And dying is not an option.