Paranormal Historical Romance Take 2

 A Most Unusual Duke by Susanna Allen

This was better than the first book in this series, but that's not saying much since the first book was such a mess. This was a paranormal historical romance. The paranormal is all over the place. The historical does not follow the appropriate conventions. It's all over the place and doesn't do either genre particularly well, but I laughed at the absurdity of it, suspended my disbelief (mostly) and enjoyed it (usually). Nobody was wearing trousers that shouldn't have been so that was good. Now, we have Beatrice, who was the unfortunate woman who married the guy that Alfred's sister was supposed to marry but he put a stop to that (we learned all of that in book 1). She is human and was very surprised when she caught him shifting. His household gave her this oil that was supposed to help her conceive, but we learn from Ben, her new husbands brother, that it actually stopped her from having a scent signature and caused her to not get with child. So, Arthur has been neglecting his duties as duke ever since he watched his father get challenged and die at age 6 and the pack dispersed. Now Prince George decides it's time for him to step up and take over his duties, so he forces them to get married. They agree to have a marriage in name only. Then his brother shows up along with his wife and three kids. They are rebuilding the pack without Arthur's permission. From conversations with Charlotte, her sister in law, Beatrice learns that Arthur can give her children so she proposes amending their agreement. Then she runs out of the oil and her natural scent comes back. And guess what? They are true mates. He finally decides to tell her that he's a bear. They start making plans to form the pack for real when the smallest of the children, and future Omega, goes missing. They search for her and Beatrice finds her. Turns out the guy that killed his father captured her. Well, he's in bad shape; has mange, missing teeth, not all there mentally. Anyway, Beatrice keeps calm until help arrives and it arrives in force: Arthur and Ben, plus Alfred and part of his pack, plus Prince George (who is also a bear). George deals with the problem. Arthur finally makes his pack whole. He names Beatrice his Beta (not sure how that works, with with her being the Alpha female and all but that's what I mean when I said the paranormal aspect isn't that great). And the book ends.  I thought this book was going to be about Bates, the Beta from Alfred's pack, but I was wrong. We barely saw him. And they set up book 3 to be about a different Duke with a last name similar to Alfred's. That's another thing that irritates me, the male leads all have very similar sounding names. There are other options besides the letter A! Anyway, I will continue this series mainly in hopes that Bates will FINALLY get his own book.