Elder Wolf
Wilde Brothers Ranch Book 1
Scarlett Grove
Contents
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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Also by Scarlett Grove
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Chapter 1
Austin Wilde put the tractor into gear and slowly rolled forward, unfurling the large round hay bale attached to the back of the tractor. The herd moved in around the feed as his brothers walked along in the distance, checking beneath the trees for any new calves.
Austin Wilde was the eldest of the seven Wilde brothers. He’d inherited the alpha position and become head of the ranch when his father had passed away a year ago. It was a job that he had prepared for all his life, and he’d taken on the role as alpha and head of the farm in stride.
In his father’s later years, Austin had spearheaded the change from traditional ranching to regenerative ranching. Instead of long-term rotations of his pasture, he and his brothers were moving the cows from small pasture to small pasture twice a day. And behind the cattle came the sheep, and behind the sheep came the chickens. At the other end of the property, they were rotating hogs. In the last ten years, Austin had increased yields and pasture fertility a hundredfold. It was something that his old-school father and his grandfather and great-grandfather before him never would have believed until Austin had made it happen.
He finished unfurling the first bale and then stopped the tractor. During calving season in the early spring, they were supplementing the heifers’ feed with stored hay. But most of their pastures were stocked with lush winter grazing that was still hearty and healthy through the long, cold Colorado winter.
The land hadn’t always produced so well. When Austin was a boy, his parents had almost lost the farm multiple times. But he and his six brothers and parents had all worked diligently to make it through, pay their property taxes, and keep their herd.
Now that Austin was head of the family and his brothers had all transitioned from childhood into adulthood, they each had specialties around the farm. Everyone but his youngest brother Gunner had their own section of land on which they’d built their own homes.
Austin lived in the original farmhouse where his parents had lived before him, near the largest barns and the main road. He was proud of what he’d accomplished. But there was still something missing from his life.
His memory drifted far back into his childhood. He couldn’t believe that he was thinking about her again. How many years had it been, he wondered? Twenty? Twenty-five? He’d been in love with Cheyenne Bailey since the first day of kindergarten, with her big green eyes, waves of ruddy red hair, and pale, freckled cheeks. She’d been a tomboy back then, with patches in her jeans and dirt on her elbows. But to Austin at five years old, Cheyenne Bailey was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.
They used to steal away together after school when they were twelve, running through the forest, catching frogs, and hunting rabbits with slingshots. Cheyenne had been the best shot of any kid he knew. They would take down a few rabbits and barbecue them out in the forest all by themselves.
As they grew from children into adolescents, their deep, loving friendship turned into something more. And when they were both sixteen, they made love together for the first time in an old secluded cabin out in the hills. It had been magical, the most beautiful moment of Austin’s life. But only two weeks later, Cheyenne Bailey had died tragically in a car accident. Her family left Fate Rock after that day, broken and despairing from the loss of their daughter and their mother only months before.
Austin had never gotten over it. He knew that as the alpha of his pack, the Wilde clan, he should find a mate to settle down with and start a family. The next generation of Wildes had not yet begun, and Austin wasn’t getting any younger.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to even look. Most of his brothers had joined Mate.com a long time ago. Not Austin. Cheyenne Bailey had been the true love of his life. And while he had been too young at the time to know for sure if she was his mate, according to the old shifter tales, Austin did know. And he suspected that his chance at love was past.
His twin brothers, Cal and Cash, were inspecting a calf that one of the young heifers had just dropped that morning. The mother was in good health, and the calf was doing well, already standing and suckling. Cal held the calf while Cash administered a vaccination. His other brothers, Heath, Shane, and Dylan, were also spotting calves and administering vaccinations.
His youngest brother, Gunner, was herding the sheep from one field to the next with the family’s herding dogs, Will, Rusty, and Butch. The sheep would be lambing soon, and another round of work would begin.
The calves were the first to come for the Wilde brothers each year now that Austin had the ranch on such a precise schedule and rotation. Having only one major project at a time made it much easier to manage.
Austin took note of the black Angus calf on a notepad while Cal tagged it with its brand-new number: 1442. Austin noted the number of its mother and the sex of the calf. Part of managing the herd was keeping precise records so that their breeding stock grew stronger, more resilient, and fatter each year.
“She’s a beauty,” Cal said.
“Just like her mother and her grandmother before her,” Austin said.
“It’s always so satisfying to see the new little ones on the ranch each year,” Cash said.
It was an odd thing to hear his bad-boy brother say. The twins spent most of their life carousing in town and playing around with human females who were not their mates. Austin tried not to judge his brothers. For all their flaws and indiscretions, the twins had joined Mate.com years ago.
“When is there going to be
a new little Wilde born on the ranch?” Cal asked Austin.
“Well, it won’t be for any lack of trying on our parts,” Cash said. The twins high-fived each other as they stood and looked at their oldest brother.
Austin rolled his eyes and shook his head. “I know what you’re getting at,” he said.
“Why haven’t you joined Mate.com yet, Austin? You’re the only shifter in town who isn’t on the site. And you’re the oldest of us Wilde brothers. You’re supposed to be setting an example.”
“I don’t think I could be setting an example for the two of you if I tried,” Austin said.
“That’s not true,” Cash said. “Just because we like to have a little fun with the ladies doesn’t mean that we don’t want to settle down with our own mates. We just haven’t found anyone yet.”
“We both check Mate.com every single day.”
“So you’d give up your womanizing ways to settle down with one woman?”
“I think you overestimate how much human tail we chase,” Cal said, his tone turning serious.
“And it’s not like they don’t want to fool around with us,” Cash said.
“Most of the time, we have to beat them off with a stick,” Cal said.
“I’m sure you do.”
“Seriously. You know what it’s like out there.” Cash flashed a smile and flexed his muscles. “These human ladies are all over us. It’s like they haven’t seen a man in their entire lives. I think the pool of good human men is slim.”
“I just don’t want you two bringing down the reputation of the family or the Wilde name.”
“We’re not.”
“Not with anyone except the McCoys,” Cash said.
Austin cringed. The McCoys were another old Fate Rock ranching family. The Wildes and McCoys had had a feud that went back generations over the borders of their properties. Things had settled down between them over the last few decades, but the bad blood ran deep. Austin couldn’t help but bristle at the mention of their name.
“But seriously? Why don’t you join Mate.com and at least try to find someone?” Cal asked.
“Are you still pining over Cheyenne Bailey?” Cash asked.
Austin grumbled.
“You are, aren’t you?” Cal snorted.
“Cheyenne Bailey passed away twenty-five years ago, Austin. You have to get over it,” Cash said.
“But what if she was my mate? What if there’s no one else for me, and it would all just be a waste of time?”
“You’re not going to know until you try, big brother,” Cal said.
“But what if I can’t love anyone else like I loved her?” Austin said to himself.
He couldn’t let the words leave his mouth. He wasn’t in the mood for any more ribbing from his brothers. But he knew deep down that they were right. He had a duty as the oldest Wilde brother to carry on the Wilde name and bring the next generation of Wilde wolves into the world. He’d been pining over his childhood sweetheart for far too long. Maybe it was finally time to let her go and move on.
After the new calves had all been tagged, the sheep brought into the next pasture, and the chicken houses rotated, Austin went back to the house to finish some administrative tasks for the farm.
The brothers were packing deliveries in the storehouse. They did a lot of business with the restaurants in town and delivered farm-fresh meats all the way to Denver. Working directly with customers had increased their profit margins substantially. He’d found that customers would gladly pay the extra few dollars for organic, grass-fed, regeneratively raised meat and eggs.
Business was booming, but Austin’s love life was definitely stagnating. He had tried to date a few women, as Cal and Cash did, in his twenties. But it had always fallen flat. He could never stop thinking about Cheyenne. He had been alone ever since.
He put down his reading glasses and rubbed his temples. Maybe Cal and Cash were right. Maybe it was time for him to move on. Maybe Cheyenne wasn’t really his mate and there was someone else out there waiting for him.
He clicked on his mouse and opened up a new tab on his Internet browser. He typed Mate.com in the search bar, and the website immediately loaded. He grumbled to himself as he made a profile and answered the questionnaire. Part of him couldn’t believe that he was really doing this. But he knew that it was well past time.
When he was finished with the questionnaire and had filled out his profile, his matches slowly began to load on the screen. He scrolled through the less-than-perfect matches. Only a 100% match was his fated mate. When he got to the bottom of the screen, what he found shocked him to the core.
Chapter 2
Cheyenne Bailey clicked away at her keyboard and checked the time. She was staying late yet again to fulfill a quota at her middle-management corporate job. She’d wanted to get out of this position for years. But every time she looked for something else, she found that the only thing she could replace it with was basically another version of the same thing.
Her boss sauntered by, the seventy-year-old man who had very old-fashioned ideas about women in the workplace. He leaned over her work and stared at her computer screen. But Cheyenne knew that he was trying to stare down her shirt. She forced herself not to roll her eyes.
“Did you have a question, Mr. Strong?”
“You’re doing a fine job, Cheyenne. I’m sure that you can handle things from here. I have to head home to the wife. But I’ll check in with you later this evening.”
Mr. Strong strode away, satisfied with himself. Cheyenne cringed. She could only imagine what it was like to be “the wife” in that situation.
God forbid she needed a personal life. She wouldn’t be able to leave until she finished this project. Mr. Strong would of course be bothering her during off hours. After already expecting her to work late for the tenth time this month, he sauntered off to go golfing or whatever it was he did with his crotchety, misogynistic buddies. She’d never met Mrs. Strong, but she had a hard time believing that Mr. Strong spent any quality time with her whatsoever.
Cheyenne checked the time again. Her date was supposed to start in about an hour. She had hoped to freshen up after a long day at work before meeting this guy. He seemed handsome and interesting on his online dating profile. But Cheyenne knew from experience that that wasn’t always a good indicator of what a man was actually like.
She’d been doing this song and dance for a long time. At forty years old, she was beginning to think that she would never find anyone. Her mind traveled back in time to when she was an innocent sixteen-year-old one hot summer night in Fate Rock.
She sighed at the pleasant memory. Austin Wilde. The wolf shifter, best friend, and high-school sweetheart. He had been the only man Cheyenne had ever really loved. But after her mother had died in a hyena terrorist attack, her father had forbidden her to see Austin.
When she wouldn’t stop spending time with the love of her life, her father had packed up the whole family and moved away. She’d been forbidden to contact him. She had one message pounded into her head every day for decades: if she loved a shifter, she was betraying her mother’s memory.
Her brothers had told her that Austin had found his true mate only two years after she’d moved away. She had been too messed up and heartbroken to even try to cyberstalk him when that became a thing years later.
She pulled herself out of her memories and buckled down on her work. She got the project done only fifteen minutes before she was supposed to meet her date at the bar around the corner. She hurried to the ladies’ restroom, freshened up her makeup, ran a brush through her hair, and unbuttoned the top button on her blouse.
She smiled at herself, thinking that she looked okay. Her red hair wasn’t quite as bright as it used to be, and her curves were a little bit curvier. But underneath, Cheyenne Bailey was still the same active, reckless tomboy she’d been when she and Austin had first met back in kindergarten.
She remembered those long summer days of traipsing through the forest,
picking huckleberries and shooting rabbits. It had been the best time of her life. Then she worried that she would never again feel the happiness she felt back then. When she mentioned it to her brothers, they tried to convince her it was only because she’d lost her mother.
She had missed her mother dearly all the time, but even twenty-five years later, it was the loss of Austin and the question of what could have been that haunted her most. She’d tried to put her energy and attention into her career. She’d gone to school and gotten a good job. But it never seemed to go anywhere. The older management didn’t retire, and all the younger kids coming into the workforce were leaping up the corporate ladder faster than Cheyenne ever would have imagined possible.
That left her feeling that she’d hit a dead end. She put all her life into her career, and it had turned out to be for nothing. After a string of terrible relationships with one self-centered narcissist after another, she was approaching middle age without ever having been married, having children, or achieving anything of value.
She left the office and took the elevator downstairs. The cool spring air of the Mile-High City hit her cheeks, and she braced herself against the oncoming anxiety of a first date with a stranger. She’d been on so many that they all seemed to run into each other like a perpetual dating Groundhog Day.
She made it to the bar five minutes early and glanced around the place for the man she’d been matched with on one of the many dating websites of which she was a member. It looked as if he hadn’t arrived yet, so she made her way to the bar and ordered a glass of Merlot.
Elder Wolf (Wilde Brothers Ranch Book 1; Tate Rock Shifters) Page 1