Mated: A Paranormal Romance Shifter Anthology

by Kerry Adrienne, Sionna Fox, Shari Mikels

  Her lungs burned, her legs threatened to give out, and she began hoping for another open meadow or field of some sort that she could use to not only slow down or stop, but get a final long glimpse of the only possible eagle she’d ever seen, because she wasn’t going to last much longer. She’d left whatever paths had been worn down by hikers throughout the years, and the uneven forest floor combined with her gymnastics and running were taxing every tiny muscle in her body to the point she wanted to collapse.

  The sound of rushing water came to her over her own gasping breaths just as the trees opened up to a river bank. She skidded to a halt down the incline, barely keeping her precarious balance. She gingerly stood and beat the dirt from her hands off on her jeans, then tried to wipe that dirt off as much as possible. As she worked on getting rid of the dirt on her art bag, the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and everything inside her froze.

  She carefully, slowly raised her head and met the eyes of a man who held a rifle against his shoulder, pointed in her direction. He stood across from her on the other side of the narrow river, up on the bank, looking down at her.

  His rifle was aimed slightly off to her right, back toward the direction she came from, which left her the options of going into the river or ducking into the line of fire. Or, what she did, remain in place.

  His medium brown hair stood every which way, giving off a “bed head” vibe, and his scraggly beard rounded out his unkempt facial features.

  The waves of menace pouring out of him flooded her system.

  “You’re in my woods, and I don’t take kindly to trespassers being on my property.” His orange, brown and tan flannel shirttails flapped easily in the light breeze.

  She opened her mouth to say something, to try to diffuse the situation, but stopped as two wolves exited the forest behind him. And then nonchalantly flanked him.

  She might’ve squeaked had her inability to breathe not tried to choke her.

  Those weren’t just wolves. She knew what typical wolves were.

  A childhood friend wanting to play with the “big doggies” had turned into a life-changing tragedy as Kate watched her friend get mauled by those dogs-that-were-really-wolves. Her friend survived, barely, but was never the same afterward, and Kate had learned exactly what wolves looked like that day.

  These weren’t the same as from her childhood.

  No.

  These were man-size wolves.

  Their huge heads, easily two if not three times the size of a human’s, reached the man’s shoulder, and their thick, furry bodies stretched out for many feet behind them.

  Kate couldn’t begin to grasp how long they were. Six feet? Seven feet? Eight feet long? More?

  Fuuu—

  And the man looking down at her stood between them, staying at ease, not recoiling. He continued glaring at her instead of the wolves, like it was a perfectly natural thing to stand between two vicious monsters. As if they were pets he could control without a collar or leash in sight. Was he out of his mind?

  He tugged at the dingy brown T-shirt worn beneath his flannel shirt and tucked into his loose-fitting, faded jeans held up by a rope tied at the waist. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Her mind began panicking, wanting to crumble in on itself.

  What could she possibly say to keep the crazy man calm and not shooting at her?

  “Hi. Um, I’m a little lost,” she said, trying to keep things light.

  Both wolves bared their teeth and growled while lowering into a crouch.

  Oh shit.

  Wolves. Wolves, wolves.

  Even though she now faced only two compared to the four that had bitten and chewed and pulled on her friend, each one of these wolves was easily equivalent to two or three of the wolves her friend had faced as a child.

  She was going to die.

  Chapter Two

  Anxiety hit Callan Mohan out of nowhere, and yet was subtle, as if the pathway wasn’t familiar or was unsure of itself. He reached out, tried to find the source, but the path wasn’t established and therefore he was blocked from being able to follow it. He kept the channel fully open on his end, hoping whoever it was attempted to reach out again, and next time he’d be able to grab the thread.

  He focused on his sister and her portion of the update meeting for how far along they were in being ready to open their lodges as a vacation destination. She’d been working on putting in place an advertising campaign and had been adamant about calling them all together today.

  “The cabins themselves are ready to go. We have staff lined up and some of the younger wolves will be helping out until we’re booked enough that we can afford to hire full-time human staff and not have to worry about letting them go due to low revenue coming in. However, when I was putting together the pictures for the pamphlet layouts, it hit me that there’s something missing that we’ve overlooked. Something huge.”

  Carleigh displayed an oversize collage of several pictures she’d obviously taken in one or two lodges, then looked around the room at each of them as if waiting for someone to venture a guess. Nothing but silence greeted her from each person gathered at the table.

  Callan sighed. “Just tell us, Car. We’ve obviously missed it, so we’re not even going to bother trying to guess.”

  She stuck her bottom lip out slightly, as if thinking about pouting, but pulled it back in and shook her head instead. She sucked in a huge breath before launching into her revelation at the assembled group. “Pictures! Decorations on the walls! We have nothing in the lodges except bare wood everywhere.” She looked exasperated with the whole lot of them.

  “Yep, you’re right,” Connor, their brother, answered her, all calm and smooth, not giving in to her need to stir everyone to action.

  “But we need to do something about this. The walls look incomplete. They’re bare. Ugly. Hideous—”

  “Now, Car—” Callan said.

  “Fine. Not hideous.”

  “Nor ugly,” Connor said.

  “Nor ugly. But they’re bare, which is almost as bad as ugly, so we’ve got to get on this right away.” Carleigh put her hands on her hips.

  Another wave of anxiety hit, this one stronger. The feeling came and went quickly, and Callan was so busy blocking the signals from going out to his pack, that he didn’t get the chance to grab hold of the thread to follow it. He also hadn’t covered up his reaction in time to hide it from his second in command.

  Everything okay? Grayson asked.

  A concerning mystery. Callan refocused on what his sister was saying.

  Nice try, Gray said. What’s going on? What do I need to know?

  That’s just it. I don’t know what’s going on yet. It feels like someone is in trouble, but I don’t know who.

  I’m going to do a few check-ins.

  Fine.

  Carleigh held up the mock-ups. “At the very least, we need artwork, pictures on the walls. I don’t care what we put up there. I don’t care if we frame cheap posters from Walmart. We need at least one large picture in the main room of each cabin, and we need at least one smaller picture in the bedroom of each cabin. I don’t care if every single one of them is the same right now. I just need something done so I can retake these pictures before I put out brochures and flesh out the website.”

  Callan would’ve usually thought the anxiety was coming from his sister, but he was used to her code-red dramas and they never hit him like this. He was one hundred percent certain of that when the anxiety switched to fear and hit him hard. Hard enough for him to suck in a breath. Hard enough that he could feel the tension ratcheting up in the room because they could feel the fear coming from him.

  And it wasn’t just the fear coming through to him. No. It was his own fear for her. Because he now had hold of the thread. Th
e thread that was now cemented into a bond, the strongest type of pathway possible.

  Callan needed to do things orderly first, because he had no idea who she was nor where she was except that she was close. So he’d have to start from the top.

  “We need to shift this meeting from artwork on walls to locations of people. Someone’s in trouble nearby and I need to find her.”

  “Her?” The question echoed around the room, both out loud as well as in his mind, but Carleigh was the loudest. “How do you know it’s a her?”

  “I just do. Gray. What’s going on at the plant? Any trouble reported in any parts of the distillery or the warehouse?”

  Grayson looked up from his phone. “None. At least nothing that Kelli is reporting. What are you feeling?”

  Callan had already done a quick mental check-in with several pack members working at their whiskey and moonshine plant to see if anyone knew of any problems or trouble that might be happening, but the responses had all been negative. Everything was fine from that direction. “Fear coming from someone.” And as long as there was no trouble at the plant, he could rule out his idiot cousin. Probably.

  Gray had his phone out, typing out orders left and right, Callan was sure. “What do you need us to do?”

  The fear he’d been feeling turned to terror. A silent, wordless scream forced Callan to one knee and he choked off the pack bond completely. He hadn’t been fast enough for the people trapped in the meeting space with him, and when he looked up, he faced a room full of wolves who hadn’t been able to control their shift. They smelled the terror emanating from their alpha and they’d shifted to protect him.

  Now he needed to find his mate to protect her before it was too late.

  He rose to his feet and leaned on the table with his knuckles. The wolves in front of him were pack. Family. And they were barely managing to stay in one place waiting for him to speak. The instincts triggering the shift resulted in an excess of restless energy and an abundance of tension, causing them to quiver. They were willing to take on the world to protect their alpha from whatever had caused him to reek of fear.

  Grayson tilted his head and gave Callan a don’t-b.s.-me look.

  “I have—”

  The conference room phone rang and they all jumped. It never rang. The only person who had the number was Callan’s assistant and she never interrupted him.

  “Yes, Ginger?”

  “Mrs. Brighton is on the phone. She has a guest who went for a walk in the forested area behind the hotel.”

  Callan wanted to interrupt and ask what this had to do with him, but something inside him clicked into place and he remained silent. Grayson let out a low whine, but cut it off quickly when Callan gave him the stink eye. “Put her on.”

  The call switched through. “Mrs. B?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, but last night’s storms must’ve knocked down the trail signs as well as the No Trespassing signs for your cousin’s property.”

  Callan got a sick feeling in his stomach. Maybe his idiot cousin was responsible for the trouble today. “Go on.”

  “Mr. Brighton was out working in the garden and then decided to clean up some of the trail debris when he saw the girl take off running. She of course outran him, but when he got to where he knows your cousin’s land begins, he stopped. He’s certain she kept on going, but we know we can’t step foot on there, not even to help out one of our customers. Mr. Brighton thought he heard another sound and he hurried back here as fast as he could to have me call you.”

  “What’s her name?” Callan barely kept his cool.

  “Kate Ballard.”

  Kate.

  “We’ll be right there.” Callan hung up and looked at his wolves. “Gray, I need you to pull yourself together enough to change back once we’ve left. Then I need you to take my truck down to the Brighton Hotel.”

  Grayson whined. Callan would get an earful later about his own safety as well as his decision to leave his number two behind. But this was important and Gray would understand everything soon enough.

  “Once you get there, meet the rest of them—” Callan glanced around the room “—behind the hotel. I want you to stay in human form as long as possible. Carleigh, I want you to wait for Grayson at the tree line behind the hotel. Everyone else can spread out along the property line. I’m not quite sure what I’m walking into, but I know Kate Ballard is important. Got it? Let’s go.”

  Callan knew his family would be right behind him as he ran for the front of their house. The house had been their family home and they’d turned it into the pack house when their parents had given up alpha status to allow their mom to recuperate from a serious illness in private.

  He shifted with a swiftness that gave lie to the calmness he was trying to project in what for him was the greatest emergency of his life. His mate was frightened and on his cousin’s property. Property that no one was allowed on, and if they did wander onto it, his cousin was more apt to shoot first than to ask questions at all.

  The terror she’d been sending through their bond was now at a controlled level. Back down to fear rather than mind-numbing, vomit-worthy terror. Why? Was she fading? It took every bit of his strength just to keep his footing as he tried to puzzle it out and run full-out down the mountain toward the small town at the base. Luckily, he’d been running these same paths ever since he was a child, both as a pup and as a boy. He knew where the rocks to avoid were, and he knew where the footholds that would give him the most traction were laid out.

  As long as she continued sending some amount of fear along their mental pathway, she was alive, and Callan would have to hold on to that.

  I need you to hang on for me. Do whatever it takes.

  He was going to have to kill his cousin.

  And it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that a pack war began over a situation with a mate.

  * * *

  The man let the rifle droop slightly, which caused his flannel shirt to catch on one wolf’s fur. The movement revealed a huge rip in his jeans where the end of the pocket poked straight through, matching the rips at both the knees. “Now, now, fellas. The lady says she’s a little lost out here in our woods.” He sneered at Kate. He even sneered at her in the emotions she picked up from him.

  Of greater concern to her was the fact that no one else was out here with them except for the wolves, and he was talking to them like they were pets. Like most people spoke to their cats and dogs.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know, Billy. She’s a might pretty thing. You think we can keep her? You think she’d even stay with us? She seems a little dumb, not speaking to us much. But she’s not tried running from y’all yet. I wonder if that means she knows anything or not. She’s definitely not from around here.”

  Okaaay. Who the hell was Billy? Was this guy talking to himself? Some invisible person? He still looked straight at her. None of this made sense. And he wanted to keep her? What kind of talk was that?

  “Who are you talking to?” She hadn’t meant to say anything. She hadn’t meant to engage the crazy, but sometimes her mouth did things before her brain gave it permission.

  He re-aimed the rifle, this time directly at her. “Don’t you never mind. You’re the one in the wrong and you need to hush.”

  “Hushing.”

  His face reddened. “You’re just like every other female. Gotta get the last word—”

  “Bobby, I think that’s enough.” From upriver, another man approached along the river bank, on the same side as rifle guy. Human and wolves, all, turned toward him at his words.

  The sound of his voice held a note of authority, but the note was off-pitch just enough that Kate barely held her flinch in. It was like listening to a familiar tune played on the bells, but one of the bells had a dent or ding in it, causing it to no longer ring true to the pit
ch it was meant to be.

  That was how this man’s voice hit her—as if he were almost complete, almost who he was supposed to be, except there was something wrong with him. Something wrong with his authority.

  “But, JT. She’s on our land. Running around like she owns it.” Rifle dude—Bobby—was looking at the newcomer but hadn’t dropped his rifle.

  Also, the wolf closest to her was back to staring at her instead of the new guy—JT.

  Never in Kate’s life had she thought there’d ever be a threat to her worse than a pack of wolves, but she tore her gaze from the two monsters and their master across the river, and turned her eyes just enough so that she could focus on this new possible threat.

  JT took measured steps, coming ever closer. “And what did she have to say for herself?”

  “I said I was lost.” She shouldn’t be in trouble just for getting carried away trying to chase an eagle. Said every victim in a horror or slasher movie ever.

  The wolves growled at her again and Bobby refocused on her. “I told you to shut your mouth. She can’t do that, JT, can she? She can’t go running around in our woods. You’ve said so.”

  JT, in his dark blue, almost black, denim jeans and tucked-in flannel shirt, hadn’t looked away from her since he’d first arrived that she could tell. He, too, didn’t seem fazed by the man-size wolves.

  His deep black hair shone in the late afternoon sun as he shook his head. “Nope. You’re right. She can’t.”

  “Well, so me and the boys was patrolling and were just now trying to figure out what we was going to do with her.”

  Kate tried to keep up. She still had no clue who Billy was. God. Could she really have landed in backwoods Appalachia? This kind of stuff didn’t really exist, did it?

  JT still didn’t take his eyes off her. “Let’s clarify one point, Bobby. It’s my land. My property. You’re supposed to patrol it. You’ve done your job and caught a trespasser. Let me do my job and find out why she’s here.” Every word was spoken calmly and with control. And yet, that dissonance in his voice continued to clash against her senses.