Rating: 4 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | All Romance | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
David is the second in command to pack Alpha River. He’s been going to the city with a human representative from the human/werewolf congress to try to stop a war between the two factions. The humans think the werewolves are brutal monsters, and they also can’t seem to understand the idea of the pack being all gay men…and men bearing children. Most wolves believe the humans are out to kill them all and take their land. David takes his job very seriously. He’s not comfortable in the big city, but he believes what he’s doing will be helpful in the long run. David is also in love with Jax, the aforementioned human representative to the human/werewolf congress. He didn’t intend for it to happen, but the heart wants what it wants, right?
Jax is in love with David. He wants their relationship to work. However, he doesn’t want David to give him the bite that would transform him into werewolf. In order for the transformation to be successful, Jax would actually need to welcome it, or else he’d become a feral wolf…and feral wolves are the monsters the humans are afraid of. He also doesn’t want to completely give up on life in the city and his family. He’s content to live part time with David at the wolf compound, and part time in the city. Of course, most of David’s pack don’t want a human living amongst them, and would like nothing more than to drive him away. It also appears the animosity between the humans and the wolves is becoming worse, and Jax and David have to work together to try to stop it.
That’s as far as I’m going to go involving any sort of spoilers. If I go any further, I’ll give it all away, and I think you have to read this one for yourselves. I liked Second Alpha a bit more than I did First Omega. It’s not that I think David and Jax are better characters than River and Josiah. They’re about equal in my mind, but I enjoyed reading more about the human/werewolf congress, the conspiracies, and the struggle to maintain a love relationship as the tension between the two species continues to grow.
David is a grumpy Alpha. He loves Jax, but it’s almost as if he’s loving him begrudgingly. I could feel his confusion and insecurity. He continues to question whether it’s worth it to stay with Jax because Jax doesn’t want to be bitten, even though he claims to love David. David wonders if he should just mate with Brooks, a werewolf Beta who has wanted David for years. This isn’t a light and fluffy romance. There’s angst, and sadness, jealousy, and even a bit of anger. I found myself really feeling sorry for David. He wasn’t my favorite character in the first book, but in Second Alpha, he really spoke to me.
Jax was ok. I understood his reluctance to take the bite, but couldn’t help but feel he was being a brat about it. As I said, I cared so much for David in this story, and I hated to see him suffering. Jax was making him suffer a bit. Of course, relationships are give and take but…for instance, Jax complained he didn’t want to leave his family, but they’d already dismissed him for being gay and loving a werewolf. Why would he want to stick around for them, if they don’t want to be there for him? David’s pack family loved him, so it seems to make more sense (at least in my mind anyway) to have Jax take the bite and live with the pack.
There’s a lot more going on in Second Alpha than in First Omega. Rebecca James really kicked it up here. The heart of the story may be David and Jax’s relationship, but it’s all happening within the pressure cooker of human/wolf issues. There is hatred on both sides, and conspiracies abound. All of this, plus quite a bit of action, captured my attention and held it.
There are quite a few background characters involved in this story. River and Josiah make appearances, along with the Beta Brooks I mentioned, an angry Alpha who is determined to unseat River as the leader and is abusive to his mates, and a few humans on either side of the conflict. However, just because there are a lot of background characters, it doesn’t mean the story is too busy to understand. All of them play an important role, but they don’t distract you from David and Jax and the rest of the plot.
David and Jax are very sexy together. Their scenes were hot! Not going to say what it is, but there is a bit of confusion on David’s part over certain aspects of their sex life. I thought that added a little bit of realism to the fantasy. It’s something I could easily see happening in a “real life” relationship.
I enjoyed this book, but I’m going to recommend you read First Omega before you read this one. If you try to jump in here, you will be lost. There is some exposition, but in order to fully grasp what’s going on in this world, you need to start at the beginning. This one is definitely worth it.
