by Sam Crescent
He had shared his deepest secret with her and saved her life. Happiness and love filled her.
I saved your life by biting you.
His voice echoed around her. His lips didn’t move, but she could hear him, and it was the most natural thing in the world.
You aren’t like me, he continued. You won’t change. But you will have a long life, like me. Heal faster. We are mates. We are one.
Gabrielle smiled.
And woke up.
Jaeger held her hand, eyes closed, head bowed. She lay in her bed at the lodge, nice and warm. She touched the top of his head and he opened his eyes. They looked at one another.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Mates.”
www.evernightpublishing.com/beth-d-carter
WOLF HUNTER
Elena Kincaid
Copyright © 2017
Chapter One
Logan sat with his feet propped up on his desk in his office. His chair squeaked as he swiveled in it. “I need a new fucking chair!”
“I’ve been telling you that for months,” Hannah called out from the front office.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” he grumbled. “Damn nosy shifter hearing.”
“I heard that!”
He hadn’t meant to say that last part aloud, but couldn’t bring it upon himself to give a crap at the moment. He was bored. Very fucking bored. The last few cases he took on were way too easy and now he just wanted to get his hands a bit dirty and meet a challenge. He flung the copy of Men’s Magazine he had been holding onto his messy, mahogany desk and smiled wickedly at the small photo on the lower right hand side of the front page. “Asshole thought he could hide from me, did he?” Then again, perhaps the asshole in question was just messing with him and wanted to be found. There was his next challenge, he thought. It had, after all been three years since he had lain eyes on the rat bastard.
He heard the front door open. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air, detecting a human male. He smelled faintly of expensive cigar smoke and peppermint, mixed in with a bergamot-scented aftershave. The man introduced himself to Hannah, Logan’s annoying but indispensable secretary, and though he would never admit this to her, she was someone he considered a friend.
He heard Hannah lift the receiver. “Your two o’clock is here, Mr. Munro,” she said into the phone, though it was only for show. The intercom went nowhere considering the fact that he had smashed his landline several years ago. He hadn’t bothered to replace it yet and wondered if the human would notice the absence of a phone on his desk.
Logan had actually forgotten he had an appointment today, and humans tended to be boring clients, however, he had nothing better to do. “Send him in,” he said quietly, knowing that only Hannah’s ears could hear.
“Go on in, Mr. Petridis.”
Logan stood after his potential client opened the door to his office and entered. He extended his hand for the man to shake when he reached his desk. “Have a seat, Mr. Petridis, and tell me what I can do for you.”
“Call me Constantine, please,” he replied with a moderately pronounced Greek accent as he sat down. The human, despite being a good six inches shorter than Logan’s six-foot-three, gave the impression of being a formidable man—or he would to other humans, at least. He had a head full of thick salt and pepper hair mixed in with black, he wore a serious expression, his face was sparingly lined with age, and his eyes were a bright bottled green, shrewd, assessing, and the brows above them were now furrowed in confusion as he stared at Logan’s desk.
Yep, he notices there is no phone.
“Ah,” the man said, though he did not elaborate on whatever revelation he had just had. After a beat, he added, “My girls are missing. I need you to find them and bring them home safely.”
“How long have they been missing?” Logan asked. “And wouldn’t this be more of a matter for the police?”
“One has been missing for three days now, and the other went after her yesterday,” Constantine replied. “I do not think it would be a good idea for law enforcement to get involved.”
Logan leaned back in his chair, mentally cursing the annoying squeak it made, and exhaled loudly. This was all he needed right now! It was true he usually got hired by independent contractors rather than bondsmen—wealthier clients who wanted to deal with their wayward family members their way, and most of whom were shifters like him—but he didn’t deal with family drama or love-struck teen runaways, that was for sure. “So let me get this straight, Constantine. Your daughter runs off and then your other one decides to chase after her and you want me to find them and drag their asses back here? With all due respect, sir, do I look like a private dick to you?”
The middle-aged man in front of him arched his brow at him sardonically.
Touché, Mr. Petridis. Logan would be the first to admit that he could definitely be a dick sometimes. Regardless. “I’m a bounty hunter, Constan—”
Before Logan even had time to finish his sentence, Constantine took out a stack of cash from his inner coat pocket and threw it down on the table. The hundred dollar bills were neatly wrapped in a currency strap into what Logan assessed amounted to ten grand.
“There’s your bounty,” Constantine said matter-of-factly. “You’ll get another ten thousand for each of my daughters once you return them safely to me.” He paused for a moment before adding, “She didn’t run off, Mr. Munro. She was taken.”
Taken! Now that sounded more up his alley. “Call me Logan.” Ten k was ten k, Logan thought as he leaned forward and folded his hands on top of his desk. Thirty grand in total would be even sweeter. “Start from the beginning,” Logan prompted. He saw the man visibly relax and that made him feel sorry for the guy. Logan wasn’t a father, but he understood the bonds of family, even when on the outs with one of his. Pack life had become considered antiquated, even cult-like amongst most shifters, and pretty much non-existent as of about a century ago, so it was family, including extended and close friends that were at the forefront for shifters. Someone had messed with Constantine’s family and due to his calmness and assuredness, and his lack of wanting to go to the police, this kidnapping was personal.
“I know what you are,” Constantine suddenly blurted, shocking the hell out of Logan. Wolves may live amongst humans, seamlessly blending in, but for the most part, their existence was kept secret.
“And what am I?” Logan asked.
“Twenty-three years ago,” Constantine began, “when my wife Maria and I still lived in Greece, I came outside to find a wolf cub in my backyard. My heart nearly stopped. That was because the wolf was playing with my then four-year-old daughter Theodora. Just as I was about to approach, prepared to take my daughter to safety, I heard my little Thea giggling as she cuddled the cub, and I saw that the little wolf meant her no harm. It was scared of me though, trembling when I approached. The clouds were looming on top of us, about to let loose a storm, so I decided to offer the cub shelter and food for the night.
“Imagine my surprise when I brought the wolf inside and it transformed into a ten-year-old girl before my very eyes. The child, Teresa, she told us about your world and about the rare True Alphas among them, like you are, born even stronger and faster than even most of your own kind. She told us that her parents were murdered by a teenaged alpha’s family when they refused to give up their daughter to them. The family claimed that since she was the mate of their alpha, then by all rights she belonged with them.”
“Whose rights exactly?” Logan snorted with disgust. These wolves definitely sounded like the cultists he detested, the ones who thought themselves superior with the desire to rule in packs once again and subjugate humans.
“I didn’t presume to know your ways then, nor do I now,” Constantine said. “She was only a scared little girl and we all fell in love with her. We left Greece and claimed Teresa as ours when we came to America, and now they have found us.”
Now Logan understood why this man needed his help. Constantine must have
heard about him—his track record after all, was impeccable, whether he was hunting a wolf or a human. He smiled, feeling the blood lust from his inner wolf. This day had definitely gotten more interesting, he thought. “I’ll get both your daughters back. Teresa may be a lone wolf, but her senses are sharp, and I’ll intercept her before she tries to take on the pack on her own. And don’t worry, Theodora will be kept alive since they are more than likely using her as bait…” Constantine suddenly furrowing his brows caused Logan to pause mid-sentence.
“You are mistaken, Logan. It is my Teresa who has been taken. My Thea has gone after her.”
Constantine reached into his pocket and produced a photograph of his daughters. It was a close up, what appeared to be a possible selfie. The sisters were smiling brightly, and though they were not blood related, and bore no resemblance to each other, it was still easy to spot something familial about them. Logan felt his cock jump to immediate attention when closely examining the features of the one Constantine pointed out to be Thea. She very much resembled her father with her bottle-green eyes, heart-shaped face, and long, wavy, jet-black hair. Her nose was small and a little upturned, her lips full, and the dimples in both cheeks only added to her somewhat exotic-looking beauty. He couldn’t recall ever having such an immediate visceral reaction to a woman, let alone from just a photograph.
Definitely a lot more interesting!
Chapter Two
Time was of the essence. Logan knew that. Which was precisely why he was currently flooring his Harley on I 287. As soon as Mr. Petridis left his office, he began his research. Constantine told him what he knew of the wolves from Greece as relayed to him by his shifter daughter, and it didn’t take long for Logan to trace the Kostastakis wolves from Greece to New Jersey. Through his contacts, he also discovered they had several properties scattered throughout Northern Jersey as well as some in upstate New York. What he hadn’t yet figured out was in which one of them Teresa was being held and how much of this information Theodora had pertaining to these locations.
His reaction to the photograph notwithstanding, the human girl would have to be his first acquisition. She was the one in more immediate danger. “What the fuck was she thinking?” he muttered into his helmet not for the first time since learning of her brazen act. A human girl going after a pack of shifters, and one of them an alpha no less, was on a suicide mission.
He managed to re-trace her steps to one of the houses in New Jersey and when he finally arrived there, leaving his bike out of sight, what he saw puzzled him. A few wolf-shifter men lay twitching on the ground. He then heard a piercing scream coming from inside of the cabin, making his hackles stand, and his inner wolf furious.
He rushed inside. Thea was on her knees with her hands restrained behind her. The man in front of her had his hand poised to slap her … again, by the looks of the red mark on her cheek. He saw one more twitching shifter in his peripheral vision but paid no mind to him for the moment. The fact these men dared to lay hands on a woman had already signed their death warrants, but as he sniffed the air, inhaling the intoxicating scent of Thea, he immediately resolved to make their deaths that much more excruciating.
“Mate,” he said aloud. There was no mistaking it. Her earthy feminine musk permeated his senses, along with a distinct ambrosia underlining it that would call only to his wolf. His body shook with need and fury. He growled loudly as his canines dropped and his nails elongated into sharp claws. The two men instantly turned in his direction and then he smiled wickedly at their identical fearful expressions as they must have realized an alpha had just stepped into their presence. He could see their legs shaking, and the pair of them fighting to keep upright instead of falling to their knees in submission.
Logan’s almost maniacal bloodlust and the need to protect his mate prevented him from doing anything calculated like he would have wanted. Before the two wolves even understood what was happening, they fell dead to the floor, their throats ripped out. He turned to Thea, who was shaking on the ground in undisguised fear—of him. He wondered if she actually thought he’d hurt her, but then again, he had just single-handedly dispatched two men in front of her without so much as a scratch on himself.
He smiled at her, trying to reassure her that she was safe and extended his hand to her after wiping off his blood-stained hand on his shirt. “Come with me if you want to live,” he joked, in a poor imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Austrian accent.
Instead of taking his proffered hand, Thea just stared at him, her eyes unblinking, and then she reached for a pink object beside her and lunged forward with it, making contact with his thigh.
“Ow! Fuck!” He growled as shockwaves ran up and down his leg.
He saw Thea’s eyes widen. “You didn’t … you didn’t fall.”
“Was I supposed to?” he asked, his voice rising an octave. The pain in his leg was starting to subside, but it still fucking hurt.
He then glanced over at the still-twitching figure on the floor and recalled the men outside in the same state. When he looked back at Thea, she had just managed to stand. He reached for her when she swayed a little, but she swatted him away.
“Don’t you touch me,” she spat at him. He could see that she was still afraid of him, but she squared her shoulders determinedly and lifted her chin. “And stop looking at me like that!”
“Like—”
“Like you own me. Like I’m your mate.” She emphasized the last word as if it was something dirty. “I heard you call me that, and I am telling you right now, that ain’t happening. No one owns me!”
Logan shook his head. It wasn’t hard for him to come to the conclusion she could only associate the word to mean something negative, given what had happened to her sister, what had been happening to Teresa since she was just a small child, but he had no time right now to go into detail with her on what being mated truly meant. Instead, he was just about to tell her they needed to get the hell out of Dodge before the twitching figures stopped twitching—not that he’d have too much trouble dispatching them as well, but he didn’t want the unnecessary bloodshed or for her to be more afraid of him than she already was—when she bolted.
****
Thea wasn’t surprised when the psycho wolf easily caught up to her. What did surprise her, however, was that the tall, and extremely handsome, she begrudgingly admitted to herself, brute swiped her feet from under her and ran the rest of the way cradling her in his arms. He then gently deposited her on the back of a motorcycle.
She immediately brought her leg around and hopped off. “You can’t just kidnap me,” she squeaked.
“I’m not kidnapping you, Theodora. I’m rescuing you.” He huffed in frustration. “Your father hired me.” He reached for a helmet. “Now let’s get this thing on you and get out of here.”
She was about to protest again about not getting the answers she came here for, when her supposed savior interjected. “I’m going to get Teresa back, too. I promise.”
Thea could sense the sincerity of his words and she also didn’t put it past her father to hire someone, especially given how frantic he sounded on the phone when she last spoke to him, but there was also the small matter of this lunatic thinking that he owned her. She realized, though, that she’d have to deal with that after he helped rescue her sister, especially since she now knew her weapons would not work on all wolves.
“My car,” she stated. “It’s a rental, but they’ll be able to trace it to back to me.”
“I am going to assume the men twitching on the ground will recover eventually—I’ll have questions for you about that later,” he said. “They won’t need a rental car to identify you. They’ve seen your face, and no doubt knew who you were the minute you stepped foot here.” He shook his head at her again. “What the hell were you thinking? Never mind. No time for that now.” He practically shoved the helmet into her arms. “Put this on,” he ordered.
Everything in her wanted to defy him, just as further proof he had no
claim on her, but protecting her head won over. She dutifully put on the helmet.
“Tell me where the car is and I’ll have someone come get it.”
“Don’t you need a helmet?” she asked petulantly.
He gave her a sly smile. “I only wear one for show … and to avoid getting a ticket.” He knocked on his head and said, “Hard head. Let’s go.”
She put her hand out, palm facing forward, to stop him from lifting her. She was perfectly capable of getting on a motorcycle on her own. He held up his own hands in acquiescence, but she could see that he was warring with himself not to throw her onto his bike. Once again, she had to begrudgingly admit how incredibly hot he looked as he straddled his Harley. She had to clear her throat before speaking, and then she told him the location of her car, which was about a half mile away, before climbing on behind him.
“Hold on,” she heard him say before they sped off.
Chapter Three
It had been far too long since Thea rode on the back of someone’s motorcycle. Her high school boyfriend of two years had had one, and it made her dad go ballistic every time she was even five minutes late coming home. To say that her father was ecstatic when they broke up would be an understatement.
She envied the man in front of her for being able to feel the wind blowing through his tousled dirty-blond locks as they zipped along the highway. He was right, of course, from what she knew about shifter physiology, about her head being a lot more fragile than his.
He leaned back into her as she hugged him tighter, his hard muscular back pressing up against her front. She cursed her own traitorous body for its reaction to him, and she couldn’t help the shivers coursing through her at his nearness. Not only did he smell amazing with his clean, fresh scent, mixed in with a little woodsy spice, but when she closed her eyes, all she could see was the penetrating gaze of his soft baby-blue eyes. The man was gorgeous, boyish and yet rugged looking, and he definitely gave off the vibe that he was not to be messed with. He was very tall, muscular, and his presence quite imposing.