Two Alphas and a Rabbit

Kaylie finds her situation utterly impossible. Here she is, an eighteen-year-old Rabbit Shifter marooned on an uninhabited island in the middle of nowhere, alone with two Alpha Werewolves with completely different personalities.

There's William, who is gentle and kind and has no trouble showing his affections towards her. She trusts William unconditionally to keep her safe, as he had done her entire life when everything was working against her. And there is this other man, so wolf-like that he makes her shudder just with a single look. He has a dislike for Rabbit Shifters, thinking all of them nothing but pampered and spoiled creatures, pathetic and weak.

She should despise him, but he's so confusing, gentleness peeking out from his hard shell as he holds her injured foot in his large hand and kisses away her small hurts, promising to keep her safe and then turning away as if he had not meant to say those words out loud and wishes to take them back.

~~~~~ Excerpt ~~~~~

“Mind if I ask a question?”

“Depends on the question,” she says, ears lifting high. The sun is getting higher, drawing sweat from her brows.

He grins, amused. “Do you feel indebted to William?”

Somehow, she had expected the question, yet put into words, it becomes terrible to answer. “I don't feel indebted to Will, I know I am,” she says at last. “I don't suppose you've ever been put in a situation where you know everything and everyone is working against you and you're powerless to do anything about it?” she doesn't need him to answer to know that it's no. Alpha Werewolves so seldom find themselves disadvantaged about anything. They're just as rare as she is and their natural leadership skills cultivated from a young age in a special School. It is the opposite for her kind. Rabbit Shifters are meant to submit and serve. “Our government thinks rabbit Shifters are good as wives and breeders and very little else,” she says. “They were grooming me to be a wife and Will offered me a life outside of that.”

He listens to her as he strikes the tree again, pausing to catch his breath after she's stopped talking.

She feels like she's shared too much, but it's too late to eat her words.

“And you don't see the hypocrisy of doing exactly that?” he asks.

She frowns and tilts her head, his question making little sense to her. Until it does and her cheeks go beet red at the implication. “Don't be ridiculous. Will seems me as a surrogate daughter. He practically raised me! He doesn't seem me like that.”

“Would you like me to help fix that?” he asks, like he's offering to help her with her nails.

“You're a terrible person,” she exclaims, to her own surprise.

He comes towards her and gazes down at her, one dark eyebrow lifted. “Isn't that why you've decided to go with him, even after he's set you free?”

“You seem to be under the assumption that I could go anywhere I set my heart to as long as I work hard enough,” she asks, unable to keep the mocking tone from her voice at the last phrase. The counsellor at school had been under the same impression and thought it wasteful when she didn't apply for that 'special school' the government set up for Rabbit Shifters in the city. She refuses to be the one to look away. “How many Shifters like me have you met who's not a wife or a housekeeper? A mistress or some sort of sex worker?” she demands.

He falters for the first time she's seen him, blinking like he hasn't thought of that at all. “You're right,” he says, and then, softer, because it probably causes him physical pain to not be in the right all the time, he adds, “I'm sorry.”

She stops bristling. “Being under Will's guardianship is the safest I can be. I'm young, not stupid. Even if the system didn't manage to swallow me and spit me back out the way they want me, there are obstacles well beyond my powers in the world. People like me considered exotic,” she says. “I've had— offers, even before I became of age and that is bound to worsen now that I'm legal in the eyes of the law.”

He looks outraged by that, which was how Will reacted when he received the first offer for her hand in marriage too. He had been offered a ridiculous amount of money that only continued to climb higher as she got older.