Two brave women Essential to their pack But don’t they deserve a love to call their own? When Marisa Halley’s brother leaves their pack to start one of his own, she’s frankly a little jealous. Children might be the last thing Ray wants, but Marisa has recently received confirmation she will never have her own. But as Ray’s life rapidly descends into chaos, Marisa cannot do anything but offer her support by moving in with him to help bring up his children. But what’s the price of giving everything to those you love? Irina Lupu is adrift. She’d always wanted to travel, and England is far away from her parents’ expectations. But her new English pack comes with a lot more rules than she assumed, and as a beta with no important relatives, she has very little say in what those are. When her cousin asks if she’d like to cross the river and join his new pack, Irina doesn’t hesitate. After all, what’s a river after an ocean? Marisa is young and ready to change her new pack into her perfect image. Irina is old enough to know that the best she can hope for is to find a place where she mostly fits… But no matter how different they are, they are newcomers to a pack recovering from an unimaginable tragedy and about to be struck by lightning for a second time. Can they band together to protect them? And can they go through it without seeing a lot more in each other than two women more than a decade apart in age should? “Betas Aside” is a standalone companion novel in “The Stars of the Pack” series, contains spoilers for all other books and shorts. This edition includes the 2023 short-story “Around the Hearth”.