“The Alpha” is a beast of a harem adventure from Eric Vall. Our hero, Jesse Rafe, is just an average college guy. He likes to hang out and play Dungeons & Dragons with his friends, and his most prized possession is his violin. He’s not the kind of guy one might expect to be the alpha of anything, let alone the Alpha of everything.
But when he gets caught in the middle of a convenience-store robbery, Jesse finds new strength he never knew he had. And that’s not a metaphor. He literally gets stronger, by hulking out into a big mamma-jamma of a werewolf and murdering all the bad guys. Dang, dude. This book goes from zero to sixty in chapter one!
Vall does a great job with the “zero to hero” angle of this story as we follow an ordinary man who is thrust into extraordinary circumstances and forced to adapt to survive. And it’s not just his survival on the line, but the survival of those he loves. Because when you’re the legendary capital-A Alpha who is destined to bring peace to the long-feuding shifter tribes, everyone is gunning for you. Well, not gunning so much as claw-and-toothing, but you get the idea.
As the Alpha, Jesse accumulates power by finding and mating with special shifter females known as omegas. Surprisingly for a haremlit story, Jesse only finds one of them in this first book. But what an omega he finds! Nikita is a drop-dead gorgeous girl who is physically unable to resist giving her entire heart and body to the newly minted Alpha. And the sexytimes abound!
If you’re looking to scratch that shifter-lore haremlit itch, “The Alpha” has the claws you’re looking for.