by Kamryn Hart
THE HOLIDAY SHIFTER MATES BOOK ONE
KAMRYN HART
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Kamryn Hart
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Any unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
This book is a work of fiction.
kamrynhartauthor.com
Summary
A wolf howls on the mountain.
Austin’s heart skips a beat.
It’s been a long time since he heard that sound.
And it brings back memories.
Some are good.
Some are bad.
It was the usual Halloween fun.
Then it was two “werewolf” pelts flaunted on a viral video.
All of it conjures up memories of Mateo, Austin’s first love.
When Mateo disappeared four years ago, Austin tried to let him go.
He tried to forget about the “werewolves.”
But he couldn't.
Mateo is one of them.
That howling means Mateo is back.
And Austin has no intention of letting him leave this time.
Table of Contents
Copyright
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
Epilogue
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CHAPTER ONE
MATEO DIAZ SPED THROUGH the trees, away from the little town of Eurio, Alaska and the Tanana River. Newly fallen snow coated the ground, and it was cold against the pads of his big, powerful paws. He was a blur of gray, brown, and white fur. His yellow eyes gleamed in the dark, catching and reflecting the light of the moon. His black lips were curled back to show sharp white teeth. A snarl was trapped in his throat.
Why couldn’t he control anything?
He tore through trees and bushes, looking for prey, a fight, anything to soothe the rage burning away at his chest like a wildfire. He needed to attack something or run himself ragged. The latter would ensure the pads of his paws came out raw and bloody. Regardless, there would be blood.
He let loose a challenging howl. He didn’t expect a reply, but an answering howl echoed in the trees behind him. He planted his paws and dug in deep into the frosted ground. His claws left noticeable grooves in the frozen dirt as he skidded to a stop. When he turned around, a muddy-brown wolf emerged from the trees. His head was low, and his yellow eyes were bright as he kept his steady gaze on Mateo. As Alpha of Toran Pack, Weston Pratt was often the one to answer Mateo’s calls. Someone had to keep him in place—or try to.
Weston slowed his pursuit and began circling, closing in on Mateo’s wide personal space cautiously. Mateo stood tall, growled, and snapped his aching jaws. He didn’t think. His body moved forward, and he was aiming for Weston. Weston was an alpha wolf, but Mateo had comparable or better strength and speed—though he was probably technically ranked a beta wolf; sometimes rankings weren’t so clear, and he didn’t give a damn about them anyway.
Mateo’s jaws grazed the Alpha’s flank when he darted away. Unlike other wolf shifters, Mateo didn’t know how to hold back. He lunged at the same second the Alpha tried to dodge, ensuring he got a firm hold on the Alpha’s flank this time. He bit deep into fur and flesh until he tasted iron. Weston growled his disapproval and twisted around, catching Mateo’s tail in his own teeth and yanking him away. But Mateo’s jaws were locked, and he took a chunk of flesh with him.
Weston let go of Mateo’s tail and put some distance between them. Blood dyed his brown coat red, and he limped. Mateo spit out the Alpha’s fur and meat. The sight of blood satisfied something in him and made him sick at the same time. The others used to wonder if Mateo was on the brink of going Berserker because his wolf seemed broken. But it wasn’t just his wolf. He could be in human form and act the same way, but not because his wolf was fighting through and trying to take control of him or consume him. This was just how he was.
And he couldn’t stop now. He needed more. He needed more blood, more pain, to discharge the energy overload making every inch of him hurt. He went for the Alpha again on a whim. The Alpha couldn’t read his movements and reacted slowly. Blind rage made Mateo unpredictable. He switched targets without rhyme or reason. He went for Weston’s throat, and he got it. He buried in his teeth and bit down hard. Rage told him to yank it out, to spill more blood.
He didn’t think.
The next thing Mateo knew, he was looking down on the Toran Pack Alpha, watching him bleed out from his flank and his throat. A chill raised the fur on his back as he nosed the Alpha’s neck. The wound didn’t look good, and he was passed out, but Mateo hadn’t ripped his throat out. He hadn’t wanted to kill the Alpha, and he didn’t. But what if these wounds were so bad he died anyway?
Shaking his head, Mateo sunk to the ground behind the Alpha. He covered his snout with his paws and whined. He was trying to think, to be sensible and normal, but he couldn’t. His mind was frayed. He responded to physical stimulus. He was unreasonable and dangerous. He understood that, saw it clearly, after going through an episode like this, after his heightened senses faded back to normal. But still, he only knew how to act.
He licked the Alpha’s bleeding neck and nosed his white chin. The Alpha didn’t stir.
The nearly silent crunch of snow underfoot caught Mateo’s attention. His ears perked up and he swiveled his head to find the source of the sound. He smelled the potent scent of tiger, sharp like the most fragrant, and almost unpleasant, flowers. But it was a scent he was used to, and it held no threat.
Two human figures showed themselves in the light of the moon. Their gaits were even and carefree as they approached the wolves. Mateo’s tail wagged, an involuntary reaction to the presence of his friends: Yuri and Lance Lenkov. They were twin tiger shifters. They were built similarly with the same heavily muscled frames and chiseled facial structures. They were also both covered in tattoos—not that they could be seen underneath their winter gear—but that was where their similarities ended. Where Yuri was dark, Lance was light. Especially lately. There were dark circles under Yuri’s orange-tinted brown eyes.
Suddenly, Mateo’s insides tightened, and pain surged through him again. He growled. Yuri shouldn’t be here.
Mateo’s wolf called to the human part of him, relinquishing control easily and purposefully. His bones snapped and cracked as his frame started rearranging itself first. His flesh and skin followed, and his fur receded in place of tattooed, brown skin. His ears rested on the sides of his head, his snout pulled in. In no time, he was standing cold and naked, as human-looking as the tiger shifters.
“What are you doing here?” Mateo demanded. He was snarling again.
Lance ignored the snarl, like he wasn’t threatened by Mateo being unpredictable, and carefully examined the limp Alpha. He crouched low to the ground and set a pack he was carrying beside him. Little snowflakes drifted from the sky, and clouds hid the moon.<
br />
Yuri’s eyes were unseeing as he stared at Mateo’s mouth. Mateo touched his lips to get Yuri’s attention on his hands and signed: You should be resting. At least, he signed it well enough that Yuri understood. He wasn’t good at American Sign Language—he wasn’t good at a lot of things—but he studied as well as he was capable of for Yuri’s sake.
Yuri shrugged his reply and said, “Not tired.”
Mateo growled, and Yuri narrowed his eyes at him. Yuri was used to Mateo’s growling. He made sense of other sounds when he couldn’t make sense of spoken words. At least he was smart, unlike Mateo.
“Did I kill him?” Mateo asked.
Lance replied, “The tone of your voice makes it sound like you’re expecting me to say yes. You didn’t kill him, but we should get him back to town so someone can take a look at him. He probably needs medical attention. We’ll need to carry him.”
“Will you take care of it?”
“Do it yourself.”
“I’m leaving. Going somewhere I can be in control.”
Lance scowled, icy blue eye glinting, and signed to Yuri, bringing him into the conversation. Lance signed and said, “No one’s ever really in control of anything, Mateo.”
Mateo squeezed his eyes shut. His skull was pounding. His eyes snapped back open when Yuri grabbed his shoulder. “You’re not broken,” the tiger said.
Mateo shook his head.
“I’m okay.”
Mateo shook his head again. Yuri was a liar. Mateo saw that last seizure for himself, and it was worse than any of the others. Yuri was dying and there was nothing he could do about it. No, a doctor didn’t come out and say Yuri was dying, but Mateo’s wolf could feel it, sense it.
He wasn’t in control.
Lance signed to Yuri. Mateo caught and understood the last part of what he said: Let go.
Yuri released Mateo’s shoulder reluctantly. He went to Lance and Weston, bent down, and gingerly lifted the passed-out Alpha into his arms. He was especially careful of his head and neck. “Bye,” he said in monotone and walked away.
“Bye,” Mateo echoed, though the word was lost on Yuri. He made no indication he even heard it as he became nothing more than a shadow, disappearing into the trees. There was a name for Yuri’s disorder: Pure Word Deafness. He wasn’t deaf to anything but spoken words. He wasn’t born that way. It happened after one of his seizures, years before Mateo knew him. Mateo didn’t get all the science behind it—apparently no one really did—but that seizure fucked up a part of Yuri’s brain. That was the simplest, truest explanation. To some, it made Yuri hard to understand, a freak, but Mateo got him. That was all that mattered.
Mateo shivered in the freezing wind, a reminder that he was naked and vulnerable. It was time to move.
“Wait,” Lance said. “I know prolonged goodbyes are shit, but you might need our help sometime.”
“Help? You mean trouble.”
Lance dusted off the snow from his pants and picked up that pack he had set down earlier. He retrieved a thin glass-faced cell phone from one of its pockets and held it out to Mateo. “Know how to use this?”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to check in on you from time to time, and not with our public landline phone. It’s too conspicuous. I’ll put my cell number in here. Come here.” Mateo cocked his head as Lance moved closer and wrapped an arm around Mateo’s shoulder, bringing him in. Touching him. Unless they were wrestling, Mateo and the tiger twins weren’t all that touchy. He didn’t think about that though. He was too busy sighing out relief with Lance’s welcoming warmth against the bitter cold.
“I’ve got clothes and cash in here too,” Lance said as he messed with the phone. He grabbed Mateo’s hand and pushed his thumb to a sensor at the bottom a few different times. “Now you can unlock it with your thumbprint. Put in a code you’ll remember.”
“What the hell, Lance?” Mateo murmured. “How did you know I’d be leaving tonight? I didn’t know I was leaving tonight.”
“It’s been coming. I just like to be prepared.”
He did. Lance was smart and normal aside from his pale skin and reddish eyes. Mateo and Yuri could count on him for anything.
“I can’t take your money,” Mateo said. “I worked. I have money.”
“Not with you,” Lance countered. “If you go back to town, Gale will stop you. You can pay me back later, connect your bank account to your phone.”
“How?”
Lance kept Mateo warm while showing him all the necessary functions of the phone he was shoving on Mateo. Since it all had a purpose, Mateo would probably remember most of it, or at least enough to fumble his way through it all. He wasn’t completely inept when it came to technology, but he had lived out in nowhere Alaska for the last four years where phones and other technology were fickle. He mostly used computers and the internet when he took trips to Fairbanks, but that was about it. Lance took the most trips to Fairbanks. That was probably why he had this fancy phone and other random fancy things—compared to the rest of Eurio’s residents—in his and Yuri’s house. They had a beefy generator too.
“Why are you doing this?” Mateo asked when Lance finally seemed satisfied. Mateo’s brain was fried from all the information, but he did his best to pay attention.
“You’re our brother, too,” Lance said. “Brothers gotta stick together.”
“I might not come back.”
“Doesn’t matter. Be safe, Mateo. I did what I could.”
“I’m glad you use your brain.”
“One of us has to.” Lance smirked.
Lance handed Mateo the pack. Mateo dropped it onto the snowy ground. Lance kept him warm enough for the time it took to explain the phone, but the soles of his feet were so cold, they were almost numb. He was going to shift back into his wolf and run all the way to the edge of Fairbanks to make sure he was good and tired before catching a flight to Utah at the airport.
He was about to shift, but then he stopped. There was a frown on his lips. He was reluctant to go even though he had to, even though this was what instinct demanded.
“It’s okay,” Lance said, hiding his hands in his pockets. He let out a long breath, a visible cloud of white in the night. “You’ve waited long enough. Make the bastards pay for what they did. Gale should have taken care of them years ago. It should have been a priority after he took you in. Maybe it’ll make you feel… better.”
Mateo grinned. “My brain is fucked, too. Nothing will ever really fix it. Mom tried. Gale tried. Weston tried. Everyone tried. And they get tired of me bleeding them out. Even you and Yuri. And Yuri…”
“He doesn’t want to be treated any differently,” Lance murmured. “And we don’t get tired of it. We’re used to it. We’re used to you. If this is about some—”
“I know that. But I don’t… I’m always gonna be a dangerous motherfucker.” Mateo smirked.
Lance’s lips quirked up to return the smirk, but it was half-hearted. “Good luck, Bleeder. Shift and get out of here before you freeze your balls off. And come back.”
Mateo dropped down to his hands. The cold penetrated his skin and threated to freeze his insides. “Bye, Lance,” he said.
He shifted again, starting at the innermost level of his physical form. His bones. His flesh. He was naked, and then he had fur all over. Heat enveloped him with the raised temperature of his wolf form. His blood always ran hot, but it ran hottest like this, and the numbness was replaced with heightened senses.
Mateo snatched up the pack in his mouth, and he ran through the wilderness. He didn’t look back. Fragmented thoughts played like static in the back of his mind.
Make them pay.
Can’t watch Yuri die.
Will he still be there?
Maybe some people had time for regret, for second-guessing, for running what-if scenarios, but that wasn’t Mateo. He tried to do and be what everyone expected. He tried to be normal, but he wasn’t. He never would be, but he could do his best. An
d there was one thing in particular that had been pressing on his mind since four years ago: He had a blood debt to repay, a blood debt Gale kept telling him to forget. Maybe the polar bear shifter had a point. He usually did. But this blood debt was something tangible, something Mateo could control. He was good at bleeding others. He was good at ripping things apart. If that was the way he could be useful to those he loved, if that was the way he could keep them safe, then that was what he would do.
He may have been bloodthirsty, but hurting those he loved was never something he ever wanted to do. Maybe that was why Weston was still breathing. He got erratic, he got overloaded, but he cared, and he loved.
Austin, Mateo thought. Then he surrendered to his wolf. He thought no more. He only felt.
CHAPTER TWO
THE BELL RANG, AND the last class of the day was over.
“Okay, class. That’s it for today. Don’t forget your homework assignment! You have to turn in your Halloween essay on or before Halloween this Friday. Then you can think about the dance all you want,” Austin said as he pushed his thick-rimmed glasses up on his nose. It was a habit of his when he was nervous—which was apparently all the time. He was scrambling to get the juniors’ attention—though he knew he had already lost it to the bell. But what could he say? He remembered high school well enough. He was only twenty-one.
Austin Cheshire was a new English teacher this year, and he was feeling the weight of responsibility. He wanted to give these kids the best, to be one of those teachers who changed a kid’s life. To do that, he listened to his students. Really listened. He went the extra mile and helped them one on one, giving them all the time they needed. He made sure he was a teacher. And a friend.
“Bye, Mr. Cheshire!” Timothy, Austin’s biggest and most boisterous student shouted as he left the room like a wrecking ball, slamming his thighs against the desks. The rest of the class followed him out, and the last student to leave shut the classroom door behind them.
Austin smiled and shook his head. It was quiet now, aside from the noise in the hall. From under his lecture material, Austin pulled out a free-verse poem he had been working on during breaks. The working title was “The Moon In Your Eyes.”