Copyright © 2021 by Sybil Bartel

  Cover art by: CT Cover Creations

  Cover Photo by: Wander Aguiar

  Cover Model: Andrew Biernat

  Edited by: The Ryter’s Proof Editing Services

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Books by Sybil Bartel

  Seal

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Alpha

  Preview of Alpha

  About the Author

  BOOKS BY SYBIL BARTEL

  The Alpha Elite Series

  ALPHA

  VICTOR

  ROMEO

  ZULU

  The Alpha Bodyguard Series

  SCANDALOUS

  MERCILESS

  RECKLESS

  RUTHLESS

  FEARLESS

  CALLOUS

  RELENTLESS

  SHAMELESS

  HEARTLESS

  The Uncompromising Series

  TALON

  NEIL

  ANDRÉ

  BENNETT

  CALLAN

  The Alpha Escort Series

  THRUST

  ROUGH

  GRIND

  The Alpha Antihero Series

  HARD LIMIT

  HARD JUSTICE

  HARD SIN

  The Unchecked Series

  IMPOSSIBLE PROMISE

  IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE

  IMPOSSIBLE END

  The Rock Harder Series

  NO APOLOGIES

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  SEAL

  Navy SEAL.

  Team Leader.

  Warrior.

  Men are born. Warriors are made. Honor is earned.

  I was sixteen years old when I first heard those words from my best friend’s father. The Vice Admiral took me in, taught me about integrity, and gave me what I’d never had—a family.

  But it wasn’t just my best friend and his father who changed my life.

  The emerald-eyed blonde with an innocent smile stopped me dead in my tracks. Wanting to be a man worthy of her, I enlisted and became a SEAL. Except not even the Trident I’d earned changed the fact that she was the Vice Admiral’s daughter and my best friend’s much younger sister. She was strictly off-limits.

  Then tragedy struck, and I found myself in the one position I never should’ve let happen—with my arms around her. Now I had one objective.

  Code name: Alpha.

  Mission: Retreat.

  SEAL is a prequel to ALPHA, the first standalone book in the exciting Alpha Elite Series by USA Today Bestselling author, Sybil Bartel. Come meet Adam “Alpha” Trefor and the dominant, alpha Navy SEALs he serves with!

  For my beloved son, Oliver.

  You are still, and will always be my entire world.

  I love you, Sweet Boy, and I miss you beyond words.

  Oliver Shane Bartel 2004–2020

  Adam

  Standing shirtless at the kitchen sink in a pair of sweats, I downed the glass of water as a small hand landed on my back.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” she asked like there was familiarity between us. “Come back to bed and I’ll wear you out, sailor.” Her lips touched my shoulder as her hand drifted to my abs and headed south.

  I spun and grabbed her offending wrist. “Not a sailor.” I was a SEAL. Not that I’d told her that, but my best friend and teammate, Billy, had told both her and her friend last night in the bar that we were Navy. The idea of a uniform had been enough for both of them.

  It always was with women like her.

  Not that I gave a damn. Sex was sex, and she was just another nameless means to an end.

  “I thought you said you were in the Navy?” Pouting, she tried to lean her naked body into mine.

  Ignoring her question, I held her away from me. “I have an early morning.” I didn’t. “Time for you to go.” Stepping back, I dropped her wrist.

  “But Angie drove and I don’t have a car,” she whined, reaching for me again. “We have time for another round.”

  I didn’t do second rounds, and I didn’t do this. “Already told you last night what this was.”

  Finally cutting the act, she crossed her arms and dropped the higher pitched baby voice. “Seriously?”

  Her fake breasts that were pushed together having zero effect on me, I didn’t even glance at them. “Seriously.”

  “Oh my God, I’m standing here naked and you’re really going to hang on to your one and done line you fed me at the bar?”

  I really was. Not commenting, I gave her nothing except my locked expression.

  “I take it back.” She scowled. “You aren’t the best sex I’ve ever had. You’re just an asshole. I’m out of here.” Spinning on her heel, she strutted toward my bedroom but yelled at my closed guest room door. “Angie! Let’s go, we’re leaving!”

  I should’ve felt like a dick, but I didn’t. She got hers, three times.

  I was many things, but selfish in bed wasn’t one of them.

  No remorse for the angry woman banging on my guest bedroom door before she headed into my room, I leaned against my kitchen counter and fought the same damn bullshit in my head I fought every time I bedded a woman over the past year.

  Bullshit I had no business thinking about.

  But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t wipe it clean.

  Blonde hair and green eyes crept into my conscience like a fucking barometer for honor which was zeroing out with every additional thought I let slide into my screwed-up head.

  If I had some respect, I wouldn’t be thinking of her smile.

  If I was a better man, I wouldn’t be thinking about her at all.

  But I was.

  All the damn time.

  Every time we came off a mission, she was the first person I wanted to call. The first and only voice I wanted to hear. The woman I wanted to come home for. But she wasn’t a woman.

  She was seventeen years old.

  And she was my best friend’s little sister.

  Maila “Emmy” Marie Nilsen.

  Fuck.

  I shook away thoughts of her and the shit that was making me feel guilty as hell for fucking the woman tonight whose name I couldn’t even remember.

  Not that I remembered any of their names.

  On purpose.

  Because I didn’t want to.

  The Team was my focus and only one female mattered to me. The same one who’d mattered for the past eleven years.

  Still leaning on the kitchen counter, my arms crossed, I held position as the brunette walked out of my bedroom in her dress from last night with her purse slung over her shoulder, and her heels in one hand.

  With an open palm, she banged against the guest bedroom’s door again as she glared at me. “Angie, let’s GO!”

  A muffled moan came from the room before Billy chuckled and called out. “Angie’s busy right now!”

  The brunette’s glare, still aimed at me, amped up like my best friend fucking her friend was my fault. “Don’t make me bust this door down,” she warned.

  I thought about the two grand in security deposit I had on the place, wondering if I gave a damn if she kicked the door in.

  I’d kicked so many doors down on missions, I’d lost count.

  I glanced at the door. Then at the woman.

  Definitely didn’t give a damn.

  Walking past her, I aimed for my bedroom and a hot shower to rinse off her cloying as fuck perfume.

  “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she demanded.

  I didn’t answer.

  Shutting my door, I cursed myself for not seeing this one coming. Women like her had tells. Tempers, clingers, Frog Hogs—they all had warning signs and I’d learned to spot them and avoid them. But last night, I’d apparently been off my game.

  Who the fuck was I kidding?

  I hadn’t been off my game. My head wasn’t even in the game. Squarely focused on a blonde back home in Miami, this was the precise reason why I hated these short bursts of downtime between missions and training. It wasn’t enough time to catch a flight home, but twenty-four hours was too damn long to be obsessing about things I had no business thinking about.

  Stripping my sheets and tossing them into a laundry basket in the closet, I grabbed a new set and dropped them on the bed. About to step out of my sweats to hit the shower, I heard my cell vibrate on the nightstand.

  My pulse fucking kicked and I reached for the phone.

  Only six people had my number, but none of them would call at oh-two-hundred. Not unless something was wrong.

  Picking up my cell, I saw her name flash and my adrenaline spiked.

  I answered immediately. “Emmy, what’s wrong?”

  Choking sobs filled my ear.

  “Emmy, take a breath.” Alarm spread and I was already grabbing a T-shirt. “Are you hurt? What’s going on?”

  “D-d-daddy,” she stuttered, crying hard. “Adam, pl-pl-please. Wh-wh-wh-where’s Billy? He-he’s not answering. Y-y-you ha-have to h-help, Adam, help me!”

  I rushed out of the bedroom and kicked in the guest bedroom door myself. Holding the phone to my ear as the door banged on its hinges, I spoke in a controlled calm I didn’t fucking feel as Billy jumped off the woman he was fucking. “Emmy, sweetheart, take a breath, what’s going on?”

  “Fuck,” Billy cursed, reaching for his boxers. “What’s going on? Give me the phone, Alpha,” Billy demanded.

  “D-d-daddy,” Emmy cried on a wail.

  Holding my hand up to Billy, I spoke to Emmy. “What’s wrong with your father, Emmy?”

  “He-he-he’s gone,” she choked out. “He died.” The line filled with her gut-wrenching sobs.

  Adam

  My heart fucking stopped as I looked at my best friend. “Emmy, listen to me, we’re on our way. Billy’s here with me. Who’s with you right now? Where are you?”

  “Hospital,” she sobbed. “Pl-pl-please, hurry.”

  “We’re on our way.” Her tears fucking killing me, I grabbed Billy’s shoulder. “Here’s your brother. Just hang tight, we’re coming down.” I held the phone toward him, but before I let go of it, I gave Billy words we both knew would do nothing. “It’s your father. I’m so fucking sorry, brother.”

  Billy’s face fell as he took the phone. “Emmy, what happened?” He listened for a second, then sunk to the bed and dropped his head into his hands.

  I glanced at the chick he’d been fucking.

  Standing on the opposite side of the bed, holding the sheet up in front of her, she looked like she’d seen a ghost. “What happened?”

  “Both of you need to get out. Now.” Not giving her or the other woman in the doorway a second fucking glance, I grabbed Billy’s cell and scrolled the contacts.

  As the girl grabbed her clothes, I dialed.

  Our teammate and friend, Zane “Zulu” Silas, answered on the second ring. “I’m not fucking picking you up from some bar, asshole. If you’re drunk, walk the fuck home. I’m busy.” A woman giggled in the background.

  “It’s Alpha. How fast can you get your hands on a private plane?” Zulu had his private pilot’s license before he’d joined the Navy, hell before he’d gotten his driver’s license. “Billy and I need to get down to Miami ASAP.” A commercial flight would take until tomorrow and I didn’t want Emmy waiting for us to make the fourteen-hour drive from Virginia Beach to Miami.

  “Is Emmy okay?” Zulu asked immediately. “What the fuck happened?”

  Ignoring the irrational jealously that he was asking about her, I told him what I knew. “It’s not her, it’s the Vice Admiral.”

  “Jesus Christ,” he drew the two words out with the same tone I fucking felt deep. “How bad?”

  “As bad as it gets.” Emmy and Billy’s mother had died before I met them. The Vice Admiral was their only living parent as well as their last remaining relative. “Can you get us in the air?” Zulu had told me once he co-owned a small plane, but I didn’t know if he still had it. We’d been neck deep in back-to-back missions recently and none of us had had much downtime.

  “Yeah, fuck. Let me make a call and see if my Cessna’s available. How’s Bravo?”

  I glanced at Billy.

  His head still in his hands, he was quietly talking to his sister.

  “Holding it together.” But a fourteen-hour drive would send him over the edge. His little sister was his world. “Make that call. Rent a plane if you have to. I’ll foot the bill. We just need to get down there.”

  “Good copy. Give me two minutes. I’ll call you back.” Zulu hung up and Billy’s cell rang almost immediately with an incoming call.

  Glancing at the screen and seeing our CO, Lieutenant Commander Davis’s number, I took the call. “Sir, it’s Alpha.”

  “Put Bravo on the phone,” Davis demanded.

  “He’s on another line talking to his sister.”

  Davis dropped his usual authoritative tone and audibly exhaled. “So he knows.”

  I walked out of the room. “We don’t know much. I just got the call from his sister. She’s too upset to give details. I’m trying to get us down to Miami. Any intel you have would be appreciated.”

  “I just got the call myself. Friend of mine is a surgeon down there at the Miami VA and happened to be on duty when the Vice Admiral was brought in by ambulance after collapsing. He was DOA. No cause determined yet, but the doc’s guessing heart attack or aneurysm or something similar. Is someone with Bravo’s sister? I know she’s young.”

  “She’s seventeen, sir, and I’m not sure. I couldn’t ascertain that information which is why I’m trying to get us down there ASAP. I’ve called Zulu to see if he can take us so we don’t have to wait for a commercial flight or transport.”

  “Understood. Do what you have to do, Alpha. I’m clearing you, Bravo and Zulu for leave. I’ll come down myself when you know the arrangements. This is going to hit the ranks hard. The Vice Admiral was well known and respected. He made an impact on a lot of lives.”

  “Agreed, sir.” The Vice Admiral and his influence had changed my life.

  Davis exhaled again then his tone filled with concern. “I’ve known Erikson Nilsen a long time, Alpha. He was a good friend. I also know your history with him and I know what you meant to him. He was proud of you. Damn proud. Same way he was proud of his own son. I know this must be hitting you as well. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Years of training, and too much experience with loss, my tone stayed even. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Get Bravo down there. Call if you need anything. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Ten-four.”

  Davis hung up.

  I pulled my rucksack out of my closet and Billy’s phone rang again.

  “What’d you find out?” I asked Zulu.

  “Cessna’s fueled up and ready to go. Meet me at the Executive Airport, west entrance. I’m on my way now. We can be wheels up as soon as I do prechecks. Flight time is two hours. We’ll get in before sunrise.”

  I threw clothes in my bag and grabbed my dress blues. “Good copy. I’m getting us packed up now. We’ll be there in twenty.”

  “Ten-four. I’d be surprised if Davis hasn’t already heard, but I’ll call him.”

  “He just called.” I grabbed some toiletries then dumped my bag by the front door. “He already knows and he’s clearing you, me and Billy for leave.”

  “Copy that. See you in twenty.”

  “Thanks, Zulu, owe you.”

  Zane paused for a moment, then in a rare show of emotion, he let his guard down. “You don’t have to ever fucking thank me, Alpha. We’re brothers, man. I got your six.”

  “Brothers,” I agreed.

  Adam

  Billy scrubbed a hand over his face as I pulled into the private airport’s west entrance.

  “I can’t fucking believe this. How the hell did this happen?” Billy looked at me with grief in his eyes. “He was only fifty-fucking-seven.”

  Shoving my own shit down, I glanced at him. “I wish I had a better answer, but I don’t know.”

  The only thing I’d been acutely aware of since before I was old enough to vote was that none of us got out of this alive. We all had an expiration date. The only difference between any of us was what you decided to do with the time you had.

  “Fuck, Alpha, is this what you’ve had to deal with all these years? No parents, no relatives?”

  “You have Emmy.” We had Emmy.

  “That’s not what I meant. My sister’s my world. You know that. But beyond that, I mean a whole family. You have none.”

 

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