The Alpha's Missing Mate

Chapter 1

1.

She screamed as a searing, white hot pain lanced itself through her body. Black spots filled her vision as nausea twisted her stomach. Confusion raced through her as she desperately tried to figure out what could be wrong with her, but she forgot all about it as another shooting pain caused her to double over. All thought left her when she heard first one crack and then another.

Her bones were breaking.

The pain that accompanied the breaking bones made the previous agony seem like a day in the park, and she finally did end up throwing up, although by this time, there was hardly anything in her stomach to come back up. This ordeal had started the night before with a few cramps, and she'd automatically assumed her cycle was about to start. When the cramps had moved from her lower abdomen and migrated all over her body, she began to suspect it was something else altogether. Only once they'd reasserted themselves in her stomach again, did the strength of the pains increase from an annoyance to something terrifying. Never once during the whole painful night, did she believe her life was about to change.

Now, her bones had been breaking for what seemed like hours, but in reality, it had only been thirty minutes since the first one snapped on its own accord. She felt as if half the bones in her body were shattered and she still had no reason why as she lay limply on the floor of her tent gasping in pain. Another loud crack had screams echoing in the still night of the surrounding forest.

She normally hated camping, but something within her had pushed her to grab her sleeping bag and tent the day before, and she'd left without telling anyone her plans, not that she had anyone to tell. She had no friends to speak of except Tabitha, and she had enough problems of her own. Her foster parents only cared if she was around when the social workers came by to check on her placement, so she only saw them if she was unfortunate enough to be in the room when they walked in.

She had never known her real parents. They abandoned her when she was born. She had been two hours old when her father had sent her to the nursery so her mother could get some rest, and it had been another three before anyone on the hospital staff realized they were both gone. When they had contacted the police, it was discovered they had given false names to the administration. Child services had been called in, and she had been placed in the system.

She supposed it could have been worse. There were always horror stories of children being tossed in dumpsters when their parents didn't want them; she'd gotten lucky. Her birth parents had left her someplace safe. At least until she was adopted.

The couple that had adopted her had been great. They'd showered her with love, been caring and kind. She couldn't have asked for a better childhood, but when she was ten, they'd started fighting and arguing. Her mother had turned to pain pills as a way to escape the tediousness of her life, while her father stayed out almost every night and drank. When he wasn't drinking, he was busy sleeping with different women. Her mother had found out and tried to commit suicide by taking a whole bottle of sleeping pills.

She had been the one to find her mother laying in a puddle of vomit. Child services came in to make sure she was being properly taken care of, but her father had convinced them she would be better off in another home. He never wanted her, he'd told them. It was all his wife's idea, and she was now mentally unstable. So she was uprooted from the only family she'd ever known, and placed back into the system. This time, however, she was not a cute baby, and it was difficult to find a new family willing to adopt her, so she'd been put into foster care where she'd been for the last seven years.

The Shepard's, her foster parents, were the latest in what seemed a long line to her. But then, when you grow up assuming you're going to only have one set of parents, any number other than that is a long line. This was her fourth home in seven years. Sadly, they were the best, other than her adopted parents, but she knew it wasn't going to last much longer. She knew as soon as she turned eighteen, she would be released from foster care, and they wouldn't take care of her after that. She would be on her own.