Rebel Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 1)

by Amy Green

  “What do you think he wanted?” Devon asked, and then he glanced at Ian. “I mean, aside from the shit we can already guess.”

  “It was a message,” Brody said. He followed Devon’s tracks, but took the time to gaze through the trees, around and behind them, always scanning for possible trouble, his dark eyes seeing everything from beneath the brim of his baseball cap. “Or it was supposed to be, anyway. I think Ronnie was sent by his father to scare us. To show us we can be gotten to. To show us who’s boss, so we’ll roll over and let him lead.”

  “By using Anna as an innocent victim,” Ian growled.

  Brody glanced at him, then said what they were all thinking. “It’s what Charlie would have done.”

  They were quiet again. Even Devon couldn’t argue.

  “What are we going to do about it?” Brody said as the ground sloped downward. All three of them leaned back, stepping carefully to keep their balance.

  “We have to avenge this,” Ian said. “Not just because I want to, though I do. But because if we don’t, then John and Ronnie get their way. If we show weakness, others are going to follow the Marcus boys. Even though it’s against the rules. Strength always wins—Charlie proved that. They could lead the pack if we back down. And then it’s Charlie all over again.”

  “I agree,” Devon said. “Aside from being cruel—and we are going to avenge it—it’s actually a good strategic move. If they’re planning a coup, and Ronnie says they are, then it makes sense to target Ian’s mate. If he succeeds, if he takes her and Ian backs down, it proves the Donovans are weak.”

  “She’s not my mate,” Ian said.

  “You sure about that?” Brody asked. “It could happen, you know.”

  “I don’t think it will.”

  “You two seemed awfully close.”

  Ian ground the words out. “She sees me as a research subject.”

  Brody winced. “Ouch.”

  “Does she understand how it works?” Devon asked. “Did you explain the system?”

  “She lives in the human world,” Ian said. “She’s going back to it. She doesn’t care about the system.”

  “If she’s studying shifters, she’s going to learn about our mating habits,” Brody commented. Ian glared at him, and he shrugged. “Sorry, but it’s true.”

  “Let’s get back to the problem here,” Ian said. “If we’re going to put down this coup the Marcuses are planning, if we’re going to show our strength, then we need an alpha. One we’re unified behind.”

  Devon glanced at Ian and said, “True. Maybe we should fight for it.”

  “What’s your problem with me?” Ian said to him, his anger rising to the surface. “Is it because I’m better-looking than you?”

  “Stop it, you two,” Brody growled. “Ian is right. We can’t defeat the Marcuses if we’re busy fighting each other. We need to come up with something. And we need to do it without being at each other’s throats.”

  They had reached the bottom of the ravine. They all stood and looked where the trail led, and Devon cursed.

  Ronnie Marcus had done what anyone wanting to lose his hunters would do: he had gone into the stream at the bottom of the ravine, a knee-deep runnel of cold, icy water that trickled over a series of rocks. The trail was a dead end.

  Devon splashed into the stream and across it, his wolf’s insensitivity to cold shielding him from what would probably give a human frostbite. On the other side he roamed up and down the bank, searching. He came out of the bushes again and looked at Ian and Brody from across the water, shaking his head.

  Ian knew that this stream originated in the mountains and ran for miles, sometimes deep and sometimes shallow, full of melted snow running off from the far-off peaks. Ronnie could have followed the stream in any direction for the past hour, gotten out anywhere.

  “All right,” Brody said when Devon had come back across the stream, his jeans soaked to the thighs. “We’ve gone as far as we can, and the sun is setting. We’ll need to be careful. I just hope that no one else dies tonight.”

  18

  “So you’re saying,” Anna said, “that werewolves don’t get drunk.”

  Heath hauled a box full of wine bottles onto the bar, lifting it as if it weighed nothing, and started emptying it. “Nope.”

  “But I saw drunk grizzly bears last night.”

  “Bears can get drunk,” Heath said. “Wolves are made different. We can get drunk, technically, but it would take so much liquor it’s hardly worth mentioning. Enough liquor to kill a human, I’d guess.”

  The door to the bar had been fixed, some replacement furniture had arrived, and Heath had decided to open for the evening after all. Workmen were sweeping up the last of the mess from the floor, and the Tucker brothers had moved on to one of the shops down the street, sweeping up the plate glass from a broken window. They had cheered up considerably when Heath had given them each a beer for helping to clean, though he’d been careful to give them only one.

  One of Heath’s employees had been sent down the street to the Four Spot Diner and had brought back supper for Anna: a bowl of hot, savory beef stew, accompanied by a slice of thick bread. She was still shaky at first and she hadn’t thought she was hungry, but then she had smelled the food. She’d demolished the meal and now sat at the bar with the empty takeout bowl in front of her, watching Heath work, feeling better for the first time since Crazy Ronnie Marcus had grabbed her.

  She should probably protest at being left for Heath to babysit, but she couldn’t summon the outrage. She didn’t particularly want to be alone at the moment—she wanted company. It turned out that Heath Donovan was amusing company, aside from being easy to look at. And Anna was starting to appreciate the safety she felt when her guardian was a full-grown, full-blooded Donovan werewolf.

  She had no desire to be caught unguarded and unaware, ever again.

  “Okay,” she said, watching Heath put away the bottles. “I have another question.”

  Heath leaned a hip on the bar, crossed his arms, and looked at her. He’d taken off his leather jacket, and he wore his well-worn jeans and white button-down shirt open at the throat. His dark blond hair was worn longer than any of his brothers, long enough to curl down the back of his neck and for a lock to fall tousled over his forehead. Even though he was less rough and more manicured than Ian—his scruff of beard was carefully trimmed, and he wore leather bracelets, a leather necklace, and an earring in one ear—there was still the definite air of werewolf about him, especially in the way he moved and the sharpness of his gaze. “Shoot,” he said.

  Anna tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Well, I find that I’m a little confused about shifter mating habits.”

  Heath’s eyebrows went upward, and Anna felt her cheeks heat. Still, she made herself lift her chin. This was part of the research she needed to do. It was business. She really had no personal stake in this at all.

  Despite the fact that Ian had kissed her. Naked. But she wasn’t going to think about that.

  The gorgeous blonde Anna had noticed before—Tessa was her name—approached from behind Heath. “Hey,” she said to him. “We’re out of Cuervo.”

  He gave her a brief glance. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “Tonight?” she said. “Because people ask for it.”

  Heath spared her a second look. “Well, since someone should have told me when we were low, not when we were completely out, then yes, I’ll take care of it when I have the time.”

  “You have time now,” she pointed out.

  “Actually I don’t. I’m answering research questions about my mating habits.”

  Anna blushed harder.

  Tessa rolled her eyes. “Oh, gross,” she said, backing away.

  Heath leaned in closer to Anna. “I haven’t slept with her,” he confided. “She’s jealous.”

  “I heard that,” Tessa barked from behind him. “And I’m not.”

  “Continue,” Heath said to Anna, ignoring her. “What do you wa
nt to know?”

  Anna looked around the bar, which was deserted except for a couple of workmen in the corner, and tried to remember that this was a chance few humans ever got—her chance at information that wasn’t in her textbooks. “Well,” she said, “shifters don’t marry, in the human sense. With the wedding and the church and all of that.”

  “We don’t,” Heath agreed.

  “But you take mates,” Anna said. “Human women, since women aren’t shifters. You take mates for life.”

  Heath nodded. He was so close she could smell him, a pleasant tangy smell that included the aroma of wolf. “True.”

  “And I’ve heard that—that cheating is against shifter code.”

  Heath’s brows drew down, and Anna instantly suspected that he guessed she had a personal reason for asking that. “No shifter ever cheats on his mate,” he said. “The mate bond is sacred.”

  “But,” Anna said, “you, for example. You seem to—” she waved a hand, embarrassed.

  Heath’s eyebrows went up again. “Get around?” he supplied.

  Anna shrugged.

  “Hmm,” Heath said. “I suppose that’s confusing. Let me explain.” Behind him, Tessa appeared with a tray of clean glasses, but he ignored her. “When we start out, you could say we’re a little like humans,” he said. “We date. We hook up. We have sex with whoever we want to, as often as we want to. Which, in my case, is a lot.”

  Tessa banged an empty glass down on the bar. “Gross,” she said again.

  “I’m not talking to you,” Heath said. He turned back to Anna, leaning on one elbow on the bar, his big body relaxed. “None of that is mating—it’s just dating. But even when we’re dating, we never cheat. If you need to break up with someone, you do that first, and then you move on. If all you want is a one-night stand, you make that clear, and if she doesn’t like it she can tell you to go stuff yourself because she’s looking for something different. Are you following?”

  “Sure,” Anna said. “Humans do that, too, except we get our signals mixed up all the time. Feelings get hurt. It gets complicated.”

  “Humans don’t have our sense of smell,” Heath said. “I never approach a woman unless I know she’s interested in me the same way I’m interested in her. We can smell interest, arousal in all of its different forms. We can also smell when a woman already has a man, or several. We pay attention to all of her signals. And if we’re unsure about something, we ask. Dating, for us, is not just about getting laid in a meaningless way. It’s a way for us to learn about women—what they do, how they act. What they want.”

  Anna felt herself straighten. When Ian had taken her back to the apartment to change her clothes and clean up, before they came here… he had asked her something. It had felt significant, but she wasn’t sure why at the time. “And what about your mate?” she asked Heath. “Can you smell her when you meet her?”

  “No,” Heath explained as Tessa put glasses away behind him. “It isn’t instant. That’s why we date. You’ll meet a certain woman, and after you’ve been around her a while, you start to realize… almost like humans do. Except in our case, your wolf is the one who tells you you’ve met your mate. When that happens, there’s nothing for you to do but give in. Your wolf only makes that decision once in a lifetime, and when he does, there is no one else for you. Ever.”

  Anna listened, fascinated. “And what about the woman?” she asked.

  Heath ran a hand through his hair. “That’s where it gets complicated. It isn’t good enough that your wolf chooses her, you see. The woman also has to choose you.”

  Alarm bells were going off somewhere in the back of Anna’s mind. “Choose you how?”

  “Ideally, she falls in love with you,” Heath said, as if this were an everyday plan, “and then she tells you you’re what she wants. Forever.”

  Oh. Anna ran a finger over her scraped chin.

  When they’d been back at the apartment, she’d said to Ian, I think we should talk about what happened, don’t you?

  She’d meant the kiss, of course. That scorching, hot, completely inappropriate kiss.

  Ian had given her an unreadable look from his green eyes, and then he’d come close to her, tilting her chin up and looking down into her face. Anna, he’d said, answer me one thing. What do you think of me?

  She hadn’t known what to say—she thought a lot of things about Ian, none of which she could put into words. The moment had felt like too much, and she’d needed space. So she’d looked into his eyes and answered, You’re my research subject.

  His face had given nothing away. He’d nodded and stepped back. And then he’d brought her here and left her. She’d thought he was giving her space. But now that she knew how shifter relationships worked, she wondered. Was it possible—

  Maybe he—

  “What is it?” Heath asked her.

  Anna shook her head. “What happens if she chooses you?” she asked. “What happens then?”

  “Ah, now.” Heath smiled a wicked smile. “I guarantee you, that part is not in your textbooks.”

  “No,” Anna said, her throat dry. Behind Heath, Tessa had stopped pretending to put glasses away and was leaning against the other side of the bar a few feet away, listening. “It isn’t in the textbooks. Though there are rumors that you do something weird.”

  That made Heath laugh, a low rumble. “Weird to humans, maybe,” he said. “Compared to us, humans aren’t very good at pleasing their women.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not going to get into specifics,” Heath said. “It isn’t perverted, if that’s what you’re thinking. But it’ll sound strange if I explain it—it’s something best experienced to be understood. But I will tell you this much.” He gestured with one graceful, leather-braceleted hand. “When a shifter is mated, his mate becomes his top priority in life. To protect her. To care for her. And most of all, to please her. In every way she desires. Constantly.”

  Anna stared at him, speechless.

  “He becomes,” Heath continued, “so finely attuned to his mate’s desire that she never needs to ask. He already knows. He lives for it. He becomes an expert in what arouses his mate—what makes her blood pulse, what makes her breath come fast. When she wants to give and when she wants to take. When she’s tired, and when she’s ready again. When to woo her slowly, and when to wake her out of sleep and be rough. If it takes time—years, even—it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. He will take her to bed as many times as needed, and do whatever is needed, until his mate comes, screaming his name.”

  The workmen had left some time ago, and now there was such perfect silence in the bar, Anna could hear her own breath. She didn’t think she could move. She could see Tessa, standing there with her mouth open, and knew exactly how she felt.

  “That is why,” Heath continued, seemingly oblivious, “the mate bond is sacred, and cheating is the lowest form of disrespect. When a man has made giving pleasure to every inch of his mate’s body his life’s work, when she has given him the honor and let him do such a thing, he does not look elsewhere. Even my father, dear old Charlie, never cheated. He knew the pack would evict him if he did.”

  Anna cleared her throat, trying to gather her scattered thoughts. “But Charlie had children with four different women,” she said. “Were none of those women his mate?”

  “He let them think so,” Heath replied. “At least for a time. Maybe he even believed it. But he always left them and moved on, found someone else, and started over. He was immune to the usual wolf instincts. That was what made him such a powerful leader.”

  “He sounds awful,” Anna said.

  Heath looked at her, and she remembered she was talking about his father. Something painful flashed across his eyes and was gone again. “He was,” he said. “The day he didn’t wake up was the best day of my life.”

  The door of the bar swung open, and Ian walked in, followed by Devon and Brody. Ian’s gaze went to Anna first, staring at her sharply,
and then to Heath. “Nothing,” he told his brother shortly. “The trail ends in the stream.”

  “Worse,” Devon said, “there’s snow coming. A lot of it.”

  Ian came close to her on her bar stool. His stance was protective, but his face was carefully blank. “You okay?” he asked her quietly.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” she said. She was strangely glad to see him. “Wolves can smell weather?”

  “Not usually. But big storms, yes.” He watched her carefully. “We can’t do much for now, but it won’t make any difference. Want to get out of here? You’ve had a hell of a day.”

  “That sounds good,” she said, watching him give her a half smile that made her a little weak. “I’d like to.”

  19

  She’d been leaning in toward Heath when they’d walked in, her chin in her hand, her expression rapt. Whatever Heath was saying, she’d found it fascinating, and it pissed him off.

  Not that he had any claim on her. You’re my research subject, she’d told him. She couldn’t have made herself more clear. Whatever his wolf wanted, she didn’t want the same thing.

  He led her outside and down the sidewalk, back toward his place. To his wolf senses, the oncoming snowstorm was almost overpowering—the crisp, cold smell of snow, almost metallic in its intensity. They’d get six inches, maybe more, and it would start soon.

  He glanced at her, walking at his shoulder. Her cheeks and nose were red, and her long hair was down, tangling in the wind, wayward curls brushing over her face. Her blue eyes were thoughtful. He caught different scents coming from her—confusion, agitation, the aftermath of fear from the earlier attack, and now arousal, warm and feminine. It was a very, very good smell. Damn Heath, he thought.

  “If you’re still upset about earlier,” he said, “when I kissed you, we can forget it. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “It isn’t that,” Anna said. “I’m not sorry you did it.” Her cheeks flushed redder, and he caught embarrassment and more arousal from her at the same time. “But we didn’t talk about it. And Heath just explained some things to me.”