Wicked Cowboy Wolf

by Kait Ballenger

  “You deserved it,” she said, reaching out to accept the gift.

  “You’re right. I do. I deserve a lot of things, Mae, and your forgiveness isn’t one of them. But I do want it, and I promise I’ll earn it. In time.”

  There was a note tucked on the outside, scrawled with a familiar script. Jared’s writing.

  Twenty years ago, this lay between us as I swore a promise to you, Maeve Grey. I’m sorry it took me so long to deliver that promise. I hope someday you can forgive me.

  Carefully, she unwrapped the cloth from around the item. As she stared down at Jared’s dagger in her hand, the dagger his father had given him, she stifled a gasp. The memory of the night he’d sacrificed everything for her gripped her. The words he’d whispered to her echoed in her ear as fresh as if he were standing right there beside her.

  “If you want freedom, I’ll give it to you. Someday I’ll take you away from here, Mae. As far as you want to go.”

  And he had. He’d kept his promise. He’d not only given her the taste of freedom she’d always wanted, but he’d given up his hard-earned revenge, the revenge he rightfully deserved, to do it. Her only regret was that it’d taken her so long to realize his intent, that she’d doubted him.

  Mae breathed out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  He was a hero.

  She’d suspected it, but it’d been hidden so far beneath the dark outer shell of a villain that there’d been moments when she doubted it. But she’d been right.

  The Rogue. The Dark Devil. The King of the Misfit Wolves.

  He was all those nicknames and more.

  But he was also the defender of the vulnerable, protector of abused women and orphaned children…hell, any underdog too weak to fight for themselves.

  And more importantly…

  He was her Rogue.

  A man she loved, whether he was or wasn’t Jared, her dearest childhood friend.

  Because as hard as she’d fallen for Rogue, theirs was a tragic love. She didn’t think that out of pity. In fact, she counted herself lucky that she’d experienced two great loves in her life, even if unfortunate circumstance forced her not to keep them. Like Orpheus and Eurydice, her and Rogue’s time had been limited, but she’d allowed herself to fall for him anyway. Parting ways with him without looking back would be painful, but even though she didn’t want to live that pain, she knew she could, because she was prepared for it.

  She had been from the start.

  The only thing more painful than losing Rogue, the man she loved, would be to resurrect Jared, her best friend, from the dead, only to lose him again…

  She couldn’t finish this conversation with Maverick. “I have to go.”

  “What do you mean, you have to go, Mae? You just arrived back home. You—”

  “And I’m not coming back,” she interrupted as she rushed toward his office door. “Not for a long time.”

  “You’re going to go to him?”

  “Of course I am,” she said. “I love him, despite everything. Maybe even because of it.”

  “And you’d leave your pack, your family for it?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “If that’s the choice I’m forced to make, then yes. I’d give up everything for him. He’s already given everything in his life for me. It’s only fair I return the favor.”

  Maverick looked stricken, but he didn’t protest. “Then go,” he said. “You’ll still be a Grey Wolf when you come back.”

  Mae smiled. “I don’t forgive you for lying, Brother, not yet. Honestly, I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive you. But I’ll forget, that I can promise you, and that might well be the same.”

  Maverick nodded. “I’ll take what I can get.”

  “I love you.”

  Maverick smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I love you too.”

  Mae turned to leave, but his next words stopped her.

  “Just promise me you’re not going to have little rogue children running around. The thought makes me sick to my stomach.”

  “There are already rogue children running around,” she said.

  His eyes grew wide. “Good Lord, you’re not pregnant. Are—?”

  “No.” She laughed. Though she supposed there was a hint of possibility, all things considered. “No, they’re not mine. They’re orphans. He took them in.”

  Maverick scoffed. “Of course he did. A criminal who cares for orphans. You were doomed from the start.” He swore.

  Mae couldn’t help but chuckle. “You’re right. I was doomed, but only because I wanted to be.” She moved to leave again. “I’ll see you around, Brother.”

  “Stay safe, Sister.” Maverick waved a hand in dismissal. “But, Mae,” he said, causing her to pause again. “One last thing.”

  She quirked a brow. “What’s that?”

  “Tell Rogue, or Jared, or fuck, whatever his name is now, that he wins.” Maverick’s eyes flashed to his wolf’s. “This time.”

  Mae smiled. “I love you, Brother. But when Rogue sets his mind to something, you wouldn’t stand a chance against him.”

  She ran from her brother’s office, not bothering to look back.

  Chapter 25

  It’d been nearly two weeks since Rogue and his men had left Wolf Pack Run with the reassurance that Maverick would work to widely distribute the antidote among all shifters of their kind—pack wolves or not. The antidote would prevent shifter blood from having any effect on the vampires, regardless of whether the vamps had received their dose of the serum. Additionally, once Maverick had agreed to loosen the restrictions the Grey Wolves had on allowing rogue wolves to join their pack, Rogue and his men had made their way back to Black Hollow. After the vampire raid, the barn had needed a significant amount of rebuilding, and they had been working on it ever since.

  The summer days were still long. In the past, he’d been grateful for that. It’d allowed him to escape himself and his identity as the Rogue as he buried himself in ranch work. Now, every time he headed out to replace one of the boards in the barn and glanced toward the hayloft, or especially any time he had the misfortune to be tasked with slopping and caring for the pigs, he couldn’t escape thoughts of a certain Grey Wolf princess who thought the little pink beasts were appropriate pets.

  He was aware that thinking of Mae in relation to pigs wasn’t the most romantic of notions, but he couldn’t help himself. She’d dragged that little, pink hell beast along the entire time she’d been with him. But most frequently, he thought of her at night. As he sat in the library, attempting to read. Every time his eyes scanned over the page, he’d have to force himself to reread it, because instead of the words before him, all he saw was her face. Her kind smile. The freckles across her cheeks, and those gorgeous green eyes, so beautiful and stunning they stole his breath, despite how they resembled her brother’s.

  Rogue knew the nature of deep pain. It never lessened over time. It was only something a man learned to live with. But for a cowboy like him, a criminal in every sense of the word, he had no doubt he’d live through it. He was made of far tougher stuff than to allow the loss of a woman to break him, even a woman he would always love.

  He could live without her. He had for twenty years.

  But he’d never want to.

  Not by a long shot.

  Rogue tilted his Stetson off his head, swiping at the sweat on his brow with a handkerchief he kept tucked in his back pocket. It was hotter than Hades inside the barn, and considering he’d been hammering away at these boards for the past two hours, the summer heat wouldn’t allow him to forget it.

  He grabbed the hammer to set to work again, but as he did, he heard a distressed-sounding whinny from where Bee was tied up just outside the barn. He followed the sound, taking the hammer with him as he went to investigate.

  When he fou
nd Bee where he’d left him tied, the mustang was stomping and fussing at a small squealing animal on the ground. Rogue raised a brow.

  No. That couldn’t possibly be Tucker, could it?

  If it was, he’d grown to nearly twice his size in just as many weeks.

  “Put down the hammer and step away from the pig.” Mae’s voice sounded from behind him as she approached from the other side of the barn.

  She’d come for him. He’d known there was a possibility. After the way he’d hurt her, he hadn’t anticipated it. But she was here.

  Which meant she’d chosen him.

  He’d gifted her with all the freedom the world had to offer. She had it all: a pack to love her, yet the freedom to do whatever she chose. No restrictions. And she’d used that freedom to come back to him.

  “You mean the hog?” he drawled without turning around. The question was playful, intended to tease.

  “You know what I mean, Jared.”

  The sound of his real name on her lips and not said with contempt shook him to his core. He dropped the hammer into the grass and turned toward her.

  She was leaning against the barn, cloaked in the building’s shadows. Her cowgirl hat was tipped low over her eyes and her boots crossed at the ankles, mirroring the same position he’d been in when he’d shown up unexpectedly in her bedroom.

  “Evenin’, Prince,” she greeted.

  He chuckled. “Mae, it’s not evening.”

  “Obviously,” she said with a shrug. “Just go with it.”

  He didn’t have it in him to protest.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Observing,” she said, mimicking him again. “I’ve found I have a taste for shirtless cowboys.” Her gaze raked over his bare chest suggestively.

  An amused smirk crossed his lips. “Do you now?” he said.

  She shrugged again. “It’s to be expected. I did grow up surrounded by them—mostly gorgeous ones at that.”

  “Of course,” he replied. “The Grey Wolf warriors.” Any woman would have to be blind not to think such. He’d at least give the bastards that.

  She removed her hat from her head, casting it onto the grass. “But there’s only one Grey Wolf I’ve ever had eyes for.” Pushing off from the barn where she leaned, she eased toward him.

  Rogue shook his head. “Mae, you don’t have to do this. I hurt you. I know I did, and fuck if I don’t regret it, but when I negotiated your freedom with Maverick, it was no strings attached. I want you to be happy, with whoever it is who will give you happiness. You don’t have to choose me. You—”

  She was standing in front of him now. She gripped the buckle of his chaps with one hand and pulled him toward her as she used the other to press a single finger to his lips. “Hush,” she shushed him. “It’s my turn to talk.”

  When she looked at him with that sultry gleam to her eyes as she bit her lower lip, he would have listened to her for hours—days—if she’d let him.

  “I’m here to make a deal with you.”

  Rogue shook his head. “I’ve done enough deal making for a lifetime.”

  She shook her head at him. “I told you to go with it.”

  “All right. All right.” He shook his head. “What kind of deal?”

  “The kind of deal that gives you my love, past, present, and future.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, dropping the charade in favor of seriousness. “I don’t forgive you for how you hurt me, but I know that you lost so much of yourself over the years to being the Rogue, to fighting to survive, that I’m willing to forget it. I’m not even sure you know how to love.”

  Rogue’s stomach dropped. So she wasn’t here for him after all. But then why was she—?

  “But the deal is, I’m going to teach you how,” she said, drawing in close enough that her lips brushed against his. “As long as you promise to try to love me back.”

  Rogue kissed her with all the weight of everything he felt for her. He kissed her like she meant something to him, because she did. She had all along, and he’d never allow himself to forget it.

  He deepened the intensity. Drawing her toward him, he hoisted her in his arms and carried her toward the barn, pressing her against the outside wall. He didn’t care that they were out in the middle of the pasture; he’d take her right then and there.

  A hungry growl rumbled in his throat. He intended to take her in so many ways before the sun set that night that she’d be riding sidesaddle for weeks. But first he had one last deal to make.

  “You have yourself a deal, Princess. But I need you to understand something,” he said.

  She traced her knuckles gently over his scars before she cradled his cheek in her hand. He’d never consider himself deformed again. Not if she kept touching him there like that.

  “And what’s that?” she asked.

  “There’s no try about it, Mae-day.” He smiled at her as he shook his head. “I’ve loved you for the past twenty years. Longer even. But I promise I’ll find better ways to show it.”

  At the sound of her childhood nickname on his lips, she grinned. The wholehearted smile she gifted him with filled the dark, cavernous hole that had consumed his chest for so many years, bringing in light, casting out the dark. As she always had done for him.

  With a single look, she made him whole.

  “You better,” she warned, but the censure was belied by an amused grin. “Though there’s something else I need to understand before we seal this deal,” she said.

  Rogue prepared himself for any number of questions—about his dark past, the men he’d killed, any number of horrible things that might scare her away from a wicked cowboy like him. “And what’s that?”

  She gestured to where Tucker was now nipping ferociously at Bee’s ankles. The horse was stomping furiously at the little monster as his teeth bared in a growl.

  “Why do you dislike Tucker so much?”

  She had to ask?

  “He’s a good little pig.”

  Tucker released an angry-sounding grunt as he dove for Bee’s back ankle.

  Rogue frowned as Mae forced a smile. “Okay, so he’s more than a bit territorial—”

  “Territorial? He’s attacking Bee,” Rogue countered. “On my land.”

  “Our land, if you’ll allow me to stay here with you,” she corrected. “But be serious.”

  “Be serious while discussing my feelings toward your pet pig?” Rogue laughed.

  But she wasn’t going to kiss him again, or allow him to do anything else for that matter, until he gave her an answer. He could see that. “Mae, the only reason I don’t like Tucker is because he interrupted our first kiss. It was a kiss I’d waited twenty years to steal from you”—he cast her a devilish smirk—“and no criminal like me can forgive that.”

  About the Author

  Kait Ballenger hated reading when she was a child, because she was horrible at it. Then by chance, she picked up the Harry Potter series, magically fell in love with reading, and never looked back. When she realized shortly after that she could tell her own stories and they could be about falling in love, her fate was sealed.

  She earned her BA in English from Stetson University—like the Stetson cowboy hat—followed by an MFA in writing from Spalding University. After stints working as a real vampire—a.k.a. a phlebotomist—a bingo caller, a professional belly dancer, and an adjunct English professor (which she still dabbles in on occasion), Kait finally decided that her eight-year-old self knew best: she was meant to be a romance writer.

  When Kait is not preoccupied with writing captivating paranormal romance, page-turning suspense, or love scenes that make even seasoned romance readers blush, she can usually be found spending time with her family, being an accidental crazy cat lady (she has four now—don’t ask), or with her nose buried in a good book. She loves to travel—espec
ially abroad—and experience new places. She lives in Florida with her doting librarian husband, her two adorable sons, a lovable, mangy mutt of a dog, and four conniving felines.

  And yes, she can still belly dance with the best of them.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from You Had Me at Wolf by Terry Spear

  Coming soon from Sourcebooks Casablanca

  Prologue

  Fort Meade, Maryland

  No one on Warrant Officer Nicole Grayson’s special agent team had a clue what she was—a gray wolf shifter, or lupus garou—or that she had a decided advantage in locating criminals: her sense of smell. Not that she could use that in a court of law, since humans didn’t know shifters existed. She loved that she could sniff out a perp but hated that she couldn’t use that scent match as evidence. An eyewitness account could be inaccurate. Her sense of smell was extremely accurate.

  She had just started working as a special agent in the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, also known as the Criminal Investigation Division (CID), and was paired with a senior agent to learn the ropes in the field. Today, Nicole was on her own, interviewing a female second lieutenant who had alleged that a military police sergeant, wearing civilian clothes and a ski mask, had pulled a 9mm gun on her in an attempted armed robbery at her apartment off-post. Nicole was determined to learn if the case was legitimate.

  When she arrived at the lieutenant’s apartment, a dark-haired woman answered the door, identifying herself as Roxie Wolff. She stood about five four, her hair in a bob. Her large, dark eyes widened when she took a deep breath. Nicole knew the lieutenant had smelled her scent and realized Nicole was a gray wolf, too, surprising the hell out of her. Nicole had never met another wolf while serving at Fort Meade.

  “I’d say the man was six foot one, about the same height as my brothers. And muscular.” A finance officer, Roxie was pretty and petite, and she didn’t look like someone who could overpower an MP with criminal intent, especially one who was so much taller, a muscular male, and trained in taking down suspects. Because Roxie was a wolf, the sergeant could have worn any disguise, and the lieutenant would still know him by scent if she ran into him again. That would definitely help. A suspect’s appearance could change, but their scent wouldn’t.