Rebel Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 1)

by Amy Green

  He was a very, very devious wolf.

  He walked her to her car and tossed her suitcase in the back. The day was cold and beautiful, the snow clean and white. It felt festive, like a holiday, even though Christmas was over a month ago. Nolan supervised a few of the neighborhood teenagers, bossing them around as they shoveled his walk and the driveway.

  Finally, there was nothing for her to do but get in her car and start driving. She looked up at Ian, at his gorgeous face with its high cheekbones and dark scruff of stubble, his soft mouth that she now knew so well, and lifted up onto her toes, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him, long and leisurely.

  A few of the teenagers hooted, but Anna didn’t care. She broke off from him to see Nolan watching them, grinning. “Keep going,” he called to them when he saw that they’d stopped. “You look good together.”

  “This is the most action you’ve seen in years, old man,” Ian called back, and the fox shifter barked laughter as Ian pulled Anna to him and kissed her again.

  “Be safe,” he told her when he let her go.

  She saw the calculating look in his green eyes and said, “What are you going to do?”

  “It’s a nice day,” he said. “I’m going for a run.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Running, huh? As far as the city limits?”

  Ian shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Your wolf doesn’t need to accompany me, you know.”

  “He disagrees.”

  “Okay. Just try not to get hit by a car or something.”

  That made him laugh. “Get in the car.”

  She kissed him one more time—she couldn’t help it—and reluctantly got in.

  The roads were snowy, but she drove carefully until she got to the highway, which was cleared. She kept glancing through her side windows, trying to catch a glimpse of the wolf following her, but she didn’t see him.

  Damn, she missed him already. This was not good.

  She became lost in thought as she drove the highway. First, she needed to meet with Margaret and sort out her thesis issue. And maybe her shifter research wouldn’t be wasted. She could write an article, or even a book. She had learned so much that humans didn’t know about shifter society. Surely people would find it useful. Surely it would be good to show that part of them to the human world, to help people understand that shifters weren’t the lazy, violent animals everyone thought they were. Their ways weren’t human ways, but they had a simplicity to them that worked.

  She was sure the Donovan brothers wouldn’t mind if she wrote about their ways, their lives. If they even noticed.

  She’d have to get a place to stay. She’d call her old roommate and ask if she knew of anyone who was looking to rent out a room for a week or so. She could always stay in a motel if she had to, because she wasn’t planning on being in Denver for long. Just long enough to wrap things up, reassure her mother she was fine, and—

  She jolted out of her thoughts at the sight of a huge, black wolf standing in the middle of the road.

  Anna slammed on the brakes, turning the wheel so she wouldn’t hit the animal. It watched her from its golden eyes and didn’t move, didn’t flinch as her car fishtailed and spun onto the side of the road. The movement wrenched her neck, and when the car came to a stop she groaned and blinked, trying to get her bearings.

  She looked at the road. The wolf was gone.

  Her door was wrenched open, and a man’s big hand came in, shoving her hard. Anna screamed and turned to see Crazy Ronnie Marcus staring her in the face, a grin on his mouth. He was naked.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” he said.

  She jerked away from him, but her seatbelt was still on and she couldn’t move fast enough. Ronnie reached over her and freed her with one hand, then put the other to her throat. “Move over,” he said.

  She spat in his face.

  He flinched, then slammed her back into the seat, his hand hard on her throat. She could see the thinly healed scar on his arm where she’d plunged the knife into him, the marks where Ian’s wolf had bitten his shoulder. Anna thought she heard a far-off snarl, coming from somewhere near the trees, but the sound was drowned out by Ronnie Marcus saying, “Move over or I’ll kill you. I can show your corpse to Donovan when I’m alpha. It’ll have the same effect. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  She gasped for breath and moved over into the passenger seat, as much to get away from his grip as anything else. He got into the driver’s seat, and as he slammed the door a wolf landed on the hood of the car, snarling through the windshield at them.

  Ian.

  Ronnie shoved the car into gear and drove forward, making Ian’s wolf scrabble on the hard metal. He turned the wheel back and forth, plowing the front of the car through the fresh snow at the side of the road. Ian’s wolf held on as long as he could, then lost his grip and rolled off onto the road. Anna screamed.

  Ronnie turned the car. Ian’s wolf was getting up, shaking the snow from his fur. His jaw was open, his teeth big and bared, and he was snarling, his eyes snapping. Ronnie aimed the car right for him and gunned the gas pedal.

  Anna reached over and tried to scratch his eyes.

  Ronnie cursed, the car swerved, and Ian’s wolf leapt out of the way. When Ronnie turned back to her, her nails had left red marks on his face.

  “Now look what you made me do,” he said. He backhanded her across the face, and she knew no more.

  25

  A howl sounded over the trees, long and throaty, echoing off the mountains and arching into the sky.

  Ian froze on the road, where he watched Anna’s car drive away. He wanted to give chase. Every part of him demanded that he give chase, even though it was likely hopeless.

  But his alpha was calling him.

  He lowered his head and snarled, frustrated. Two instincts were at war in him, pulling him in two different directions. He couldn’t think as clearly in wolf form as he could in human form—his logic was muddier, and he mostly followed his animal senses. And right now, he was overwhelmed with anger that Anna had been taken.

  Close. He’d been so close. If he’d just been seconds faster…

  The howl sounded again, and Ian snarled. Brody was howling, summoning him, and he couldn’t disobey his alpha. Besides, it penetrated through his animal senses that Ronnie had turned Anna’s car around and headed it back in the direction of Shifter Falls.

  So he left the road and loped into the fields, his wolf easily navigating through nearly a foot of snow. He followed the sound and the scent of his alpha for a long time, winding around the woods beyond the edge of town and to a clearing downstream from where they’d lost Ronnie Marcus. He passed the place where he’d shifted when he left town to follow Anna, so he took the chance to shift back into human form and put his clothes on. He could sense Brody and his brothers half a mile away, all of them in human form now. His alpha had never summoned him before, and he sensed he’d need to be human to deal with whatever was coming.

  He found all three of his brothers in a parking lot outside an old warehouse on the outskirts of town. They were in a semicircle, standing around something on the ground, looking down at it. As Ian came closer, his strides long and fast, he caught scent of what it was.

  Police Chief Will Oliver wasn’t dead, but he’d been beaten. He lay on the ground, tied up and moaning, his nose broken, blood in his mouth. Ian looked down at him coldly, unable to summon a single emotion other than his blaring, overwhelming concern for his mate. “What happened?” he asked.

  His three brothers looked at him. Brody had left off his baseball cap and wore a flannel shirt with a jacket over it, unzipped. “Devon found him while he was patrolling,” he said, his voice short and curt. “He’s been given a message. But his directive is to give it only to you.”

  Ian looked at Devon, and then at Heath. He couldn’t bring himself to care about Chief Oliver, even though the man moaned in pain as he lay on the ground. “Anna’s been taken,” he said to his brothers. “Ro
nnie took her. He’s got her in her car. I was too slow.”

  “We know,” Heath said. He pointed to the man on the ground. “This is Ronnie’s work.”

  Ian stepped forward and nudged the chief of police with his toe. “What do you have to say to me?”

  Chief Oliver blinked up at him. His hands were tied in front of him. None of Ian’s brothers had bothered to untie him, Ian noticed, nor had they picked him up from where he shivered on the ground. Oliver was a human man, and felt the cold.

  “Listen,” he said. “I had to cover for them. They’ve been staying in the old jail, in one of the cells.”

  Ian watched him. His heart was ice. Anna might be dead right now. Right this minute. Ronnie could be hurting her, raping her. His mate. There was nothing else inside him other than that. Nothing at all.

  “They threatened to kill my family,” Oliver said. “Ronnie and John Marcus. They told me I had to hide them until they were ready to make a move.”

  “Do you have a message?” Ian asked. “Or should I just kill you?”

  “Don’t kill me,” Oliver said. “John Marcus was your father’s trusted henchman. What was I supposed to do?”

  “I say we kill him,” Devon said.

  Ian glanced at him in approval. “I certainly will if he doesn’t stop babbling and tell me whatever the fuck he’s supposed to tell me.” He looked back down. “Five seconds, Oliver. I don’t have time to waste with you. I’ve got things to do.”

  “Ronnie wants to fight you,” Oliver said, shivering on the ground. “A cage fight. He beat me up this morning and told me to tell you. I knew he was going to go after your girl.”

  “And you let him,” Ian said.

  “I’m starting to agree with Devon,” Heath said. He was wearing a t-shirt and his suede jacket, his long, dark-blond hair tousled in the cold wind. “Let’s kill him.”

  “I’m not finished!” Chief Oliver shouted. “Listen. Two o’clock in the town hall. Ronnie wants to fight, one on one. The whole town is invited to watch. Winner is the new alpha of the pack.”

  Ian glanced up at Brody. Their agreement wasn’t public yet; a pack alpha had to be confirmed in a public ceremony in any case. Brody shrugged. Ronnie had no say in who became alpha anyway, because he wasn’t Charlie’s blood; he was just crazy enough to think he could bend the rules. But his challenge to Ian meant that he had no idea the Donovan brothers had agreed on a new alpha.

  He thought they were still fighting.

  Ian wasn’t going to split hairs. Not when he had the chance to get Ronnie Marcus’s throat in his hands in just under two hours.

  “Fine,” Ian said. “I’ll be there.”

  “You said they were staying in the old prison,” Brody said. His voice was almost as cold as Ian’s. “Are they there now? Tell us, or you’re dead.”

  Chief Oliver shook his head. “They knew they were going to be found out, so they moved hiding places. That’s why they did this to me before they left.”

  “Fuck,” Brody said. He looked around at the others. “I bet we could find them if we tracked their scent from the old jail.”

  “Let them come to us,” Devon said. “It’s better.”

  “They could be hurting Anna right now,” Ian said.

  “It’s unlikely.” This was Heath. “The whole idea is that they want her alive to make you give in.”

  “Alive but hurt,” Ian said to him. “That works.”

  “I couldn’t track them last night,” Brody said. “The snow messed up the scents.” He checked his watch. “Ninety minutes to the fight. I’ll go to the old jail and see if I can scent something. I’ll bring Heath for backup in case I come across the Marcuses. You two go to the town hall and scope it out. Learn every entrance, every nook and cranny, because you can bet the Marcuses already do.”

  “If you don’t find them?” Ian asked him.

  Brody gave him a look that told him he understood Ian’s pain. “If I don’t find them, we let them come to us, like Devon says. They have Anna, but we have what they want. We have leadership of the pack. So we’ll wait for them. And they’ll come.”

  26

  Anna woke up on cold concrete, her head throbbing. Her wrists were tied in front of her, the rope digging into her skin. She was shivering with cold.

  She pulled herself up to a sitting position and saw that she was in a damp, dark room that looked like it had once been a storeroom. There was no furniture, no window. She couldn’t hear any voices. She was alone.

  Ian, she thought.

  She could picture him in his wolf form, jumping on the hood of her car and snarling. He would be frantic by now, furious. She was his wolf’s mate, and she’d been taken from him. She already knew enough about wolves, and about Ian, to know that he would never rest until he got her back.

  She hoped Ronnie Marcus wouldn’t kill her before he got the chance.

  Anna gulped back a sob of panic and tried to think. She got to her knees and explored the room she was in. It was dark, but her eyes had adjusted, and there was a sliver of light coming from beneath the door. She moved slowly around the room, looking for furniture, a weapon, anything. She could already tell that the hunting knife Ian had given her had been taken from her boot.

  When she’d gone all the way around the perimeter of the room, she found it. Just a small scrap of metal, the size of a pull tab, with a twisted edge. Probably broken off of the shelves that had been in here when this was a storeroom. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Anna retreated to the corner, positioned the metal in one hand, and started to work on the ropes on her wrists.

  She was halfway through when she heard steps approaching, and the door opened. She blinked into the light as she slipped the metal into her palm, out of sight. A huge shadow loomed before her, unfamiliar. It wasn’t Ronnie.

  The man closed the door and approached. He was bigger than Ronnie, older. He wore dirty jeans, a long-sleeved black t-shirt beneath a black leather vest, and motorcycle boots. His hair was thin, brown mixed with gray, and tied back in a ponytail. He wore a mustache and goatee, also peppered with gray. His eyes were cold and hard.

  “You’re awake,” he said.

  Anna stared up at him, making an educated guess. “You’re John Marcus.”

  “Smart girl.” Marcus crouched and gripped her chin in his hand, staring into her face coldly. “We have a problem,” he said.

  “You have a problem,” she corrected him. “Ian Donovan is going to kill you.”

  “Maybe,” he said. He leaned in closer, then wrinkled his nose. “You reek of him, but he hasn’t marked you. You’re not his mate.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Darling, I’ve been a shifter for fifty years, and I know that smell. It means that he’s sure, but you’re not.” He shook his head. “Don’t try to hide anything from me. Ever.”

  Anna tried to look cool and defiant, but had no idea if she was fooling him. “He’s still going to kill you.”

  “My problem isn’t Ian,” John said. “My problem is Ronnie, my son.” He shrugged. “He likes you. When Ronnie likes a girl, he tends to go a little overboard.”

  Anna was still. She’d awoken fully dressed; she’d assumed that meant no one had touched her. But what if…

  “You just had to come here, didn’t you?” Marcus smiled, showing teeth that were mostly smoker’s yellow. “A nice, smart schoolgirl. You could have stayed home with your books. I bet you’re regretting it now.”

  Anna swallowed, her throat dry.

  “I worked for Charlie Donovan for thirty years,” John Marcus said. “I was his top man. Charlie was smart, and mean, but he was crazy. Paranoid. Tended to lose his temper, do things that threatened the pack. There were times I had to step in and take over, keep things in line before he destroyed everything. But I didn’t get any credit for that—not ever. I got no respect for it. No one wanted to follow old John Marcus, no sir. And I sure as hell didn’t get to be alpha.”

  He didn’t seem to want her to
say anything, so she was quiet. As long as he was talking, he wasn’t hurting her, and neither was Ronnie. As long as he was talking, time was spinning out, ticking by while Ian worked to find her.

  “You want to know what Charlie’s greatest strength was? The reason he was alpha for so long?” John raised his eyebrows at her. “He never took a mate. That’s the wolf’s weakness, you know. When he takes a mate, he can be broken. If she can be broken, then so can he.” He ignored her shiver of fear and continued. “My own mate, she died young. Twenty-six, she was. Maybe she wasn’t the world’s most beautiful girl, but she was mine. When Charlie killed her in front of me, that made me his forever. It broke me. I had nothing to live for anymore except Charlie and the pack. And my son, Ronnie.”

  “You need to stop this,” Anna said. “It doesn’t have to go any further. If you bring me back, I can talk to them for you. Maybe—”

  “No.” He shook his head. “It’s the way of things with us, pretty girl. As a human, you don’t understand. The strongest wins. The strongest leads the pack. Everyone else either follows or dies. Charlie didn’t take a mate, so no one could get to him. But he fathered sons. That was a mistake. No man should father sons if he isn’t prepared to either raise them to follow him, or kill them. Charlie’s sons were all as strong as he was, and because he wasn’t a father to them, they all grew up mean.”

  Anna licked her dry lips. She’d spent time with the Donovan brothers; she’d spent all of last night in bed with one of them. They were tough, but they weren’t mean. But it was better for all of them if John Marcus believed they were.

  “We controlled them the best we could,” Marcus said. “Devon wanted his father’s approval, so we strung him along to keep him under Charlie’s thumb. Heath doesn’t make trouble as long as he gets what he wants, so Charlie made sure there was a steady stream of women keeping him busy. That wasn’t a hard sell.” Marcus smiled. “Brody hated Charlie, but Brody’s mother…” He shook his head and sighed, as if it couldn’t be helped. “Brody’s mother died so horribly I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. With some boys, you have to make it clear, you see? You have to make them understand what the stakes are if they make trouble.”