Odd Wolf

by Virginia Nelson

  Odd Wolf

  The Odd Series #3

  Virginia Nelson

  Odd Wolf

  The Odd Series #3

  By: Virginia Nelson

  Published by Virginia Nelson

  © 2015 Virginia Nelson

  ISBN-13: 978-1512318685

  ISBN-10: 151231868X

  Cover Art by Virginia Nelson

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  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  To obtain permission to excerpt portions of the text, please contact the publisher at virg_nelson@yahoo.com

  DEDICATION

  For Goobob

  ODD WOLF

  Book Three, The Odd Series

  Being the new wolf in town isn’t easy, but Lynwood Pierce is used to being on the outside. He often finds himself buried knee-deep in politics before he can figure out where the best place to grab a cup of coffee might be, but this small town is different—she is different.

  Dara is a bitch in more ways than one. Running a pack might not have been her dream job, but she’s a firm believer that life happens while you’re making other plans. A rogue on her turf means she’s going to fight, and she is ready to face the challenge.

  A woman with no plans to be tamed and a rootless wolf with no plans to stick around shouldn’t have more than a brief encounter and be done. However, when Dara meets Lynwood, the call to mate might drown out logic altogether.

  CHAPTER One

  Darkness shrouded the bricks lining the road of the narrow alleyway cutting the shortest path between the street and his new apartment, but Lynwood Pierce simply blinked twice to allow his wolf to peer out his human eyes. With the enhanced vision, he still couldn’t see anything to make the animal uneasy. However he couldn’t blink his nostrils to allow the creature to sniff, a fact which grated on both the animal and man’s nerves.

  Something about the damned alley put his wolf on edge, fur practically prickling him beneath his flesh. Blinking again, he went back to merely human vision. He hoped—likely a foolish thought, but there nonetheless—his animal was simply paranoid.

  After all, they’d moved more in the past year than they’d stayed put. Steadily tracking north, he’d been shoved out of territory after territory by angry males sure he intended to pull some kind of dominance bullshit or otherwise tear apart pack structures. No one cared to hear about how he didn’t desire to take over any given pack. Nobody bothered to ask why he didn’t join them in drinking authority Kool-Aid.

  He’d thought—hoped—northeast Ohio, butted up against the shores of Lake Erie, might offer a place he could stay for a while.

  But his wolfy-senses were tingling. Hopefully this pack would allow him to at least visit his rooms and get his stuff before they ushered him out of town, tail between both his literal and proverbial legs. Lifting his chin and straightening his shoulders, he began to whistle as he strode into the constricted space between buildings.

  The man stepped out from behind the dumpster first, gray hoodie pulled low over his face and eyes glittering yellow in the illumination from a nearby window. A miasma of menace radiated from the guy as he cracked his knuckles. Lynwood barely restrained his sigh. Pack always jumped into things ready to fight—something he really thought they should be past in this modern day and age.

  Then the woman stepped out. His first impression of her? Tiny. Dark hair hung almost carelessly around the oval of her face and shadows hid her since the light from the window didn’t manage to catch her in its illuminating glow. No sooner did he mentally remark on her size than the punch of alpha supremacy practically streamed through the night like a beacon.

  Instinct turned him to face the man, ready for a fight he knew he’d lose. The wave of charismatic power promised him it’d be futile. He was about to have his ass handed to him on a platter, but he braced anyway. “Hey, lovely night we’re having. Am I right?”

  He wasn’t sure why he’d bothered with the words, since most wolves tended to charge at things, claws flying, and disregarded words spoken. Still, he tried to talk things out. He couldn’t be the only rational wolf out of his kind. The odds alone were stacked against it.

  The woman moved closer, ever steady in her advance, still looking small and almost fragile. She wore a light gray, cable-knit sweater at least a couple sizes too big for her petite frame. It hung low on her hips over black leggings. Her brown hair picked up almost auburn highlights as she moved through the meager light from the window, and her eyes…

  Something about her eyes raised protective instincts within his wolf he’d not experienced for longer than he cared to admit. He’d fought—and lost—the last time he’d tried to defend a woman. He wasn’t inclined to repeat a wasted failure of an experience.

  Yet, this woman? Temptation twined with the urge to protect in a strange and unprecedented coil within him. Icy determination replaced the submissive nature of her posture with one tilt of her head. Her eyes, a wild and unusually blue color for a wolf, seemed to burn a tattoo on his very soul.

  Shaking his head and hoping to dispel the illogical response to her, he spread his hands in what he hoped would appear a universal gesture of peace. Hopefully they would recognize the body language held no threat to them in this form.

  Still she didn’t speak, continuing her unthreateningly even pace, and seeming to scrape past the veneer of civility to look deep inside him with her unchanging azure eyes. “The weather has been unseasonably warm. Then again, Indian summers aren’t unheard of in these parts.”

  Her voice…he clenched his hand to his chest as both he and the wolf recognized it on some visceral level. Canting his head, he smelled the night, suddenly desperate for the slightest whiff of her scent. Another wave of the alpha power nearly bowled him over, and he couldn’t smell anything past the reek of the dumpster, so he bit his lip and looked away from her. Perhaps if he wasn’t looking at her, he’d remember who he was, why that mattered, and why he wasn’t interested in protecting some she-bitch from a pack in Ohio.

  Instead, not looking made him more aware of the power thrumming the air around him.

  “Look, I know what you’re probably thinking…” He wasn’t sure, actually, what they were thinking, but it was worth a shot.

  “That you didn’t ask permission to step foot on these lands? Because it does lead to some interesting questions, wolf.” The man by the dumpster spoke, although he’d not bothered to come closer.

  The protective urge arose again inside Lynwood, the brush of fur under his skin becoming nearly urgent. What kind of alpha allowed a woman to walk this close to a strange wolf? Sure, Lynwood knew he didn’t mean any harm to the small lady, but the alpha by the dumpster didn’t know his intent or what level of control he maintained over his beast. The woman was clearly unclaimed. If he were a different kind of wolf, the irresponsibility of the alpha alone would make him challenge the bastard.

  But Lynwood wasn’t that kind of wolf. He’d fled his pack, sworn off authority, and he certainly didn’t do so to simply go find some other pack structure to join. Gritting his teeth against instinct, he shot another look at the woman, now only a few short steps away.

  Close enough to touch, his wolf pointed out with single-minded intensity. Close enough to claim.


  The man, however, long ago conquered the beast, so Lynwood simply looked at her again. With a blink, her wolf peered out at him and he hit his knees before he realized he planned to move. The impact of knees on brick jarred him and seemed to give him a tiny measure of his mind back.

  Enough so, he recognized the alpha in the alley wasn’t the man by the dumpster. As he gazed up at her, he saw her lips curl into a feral smile. “That’s better, don’t you think?”

  Her voice shivered over him, rich and ripe with her power, and he trembled before dropping his chin to his chest. “Unexpected is the word I’d use.” With her power still gliding over him with an invisible weight, he caved and his palms hit the cold grit of wet bricks. His arms trembled as the wolf longed to drop and show belly, an outward recognition of her utter dominance.

  “Your name,” she demanded.

  More of her strength rippled over him until he did collapse, looking at her shoes in frustration. “Lynwood Pierce. Look, about trespassing on your pack property…”

  He didn’t get to finish. The man’s boot rammed between his ribs. The kick alone wasn’t enough to silence him, but combined with her power, the blow left him blinking back tears and grinding his teeth together.

  “I think we’ll go someplace more private to talk, if that is okay with you, Lynwood.”

  Although she’d phrased it as a question, he understood the lady alpha issued a command.

  What disturbed him most, however, wasn’t her decision. It was the fact his wolf didn’t mind following any orders she might give—something he’d sworn never to do again.

  ***

  “Look, we don’t know why he’s here. I don’t think we should kill him for stumbling onto our lands.”

  Glaring at Charley, Dara huddled next to the dumpster and waited for the rogue to show up. The night was moist, chilly, and she’d rather be home with a book than huddling in an alley. For that alone, she was tempted to gut the bastard. “We also don’t know he ‘stumbled’ here. He could have come here with bloody and planned intent, his goal to strip me of my holdings and claim the pack. If you weren’t paying attention, which would mean he claimed you, too. In general, new leaders aren’t big fans of upper management, so to speak. As my beta, he’d likely kick your ass or kill you, simply as proof he’d dethroned me. Since we have better things to do with our night than screw with this, I vote blood first and talk later.”

  Charley snorted, pulling a fingernail file out of his back pocket. The man spent more time filing his claws than a woman. “You always vote blood first.”

  “And this isn’t a democracy,” she pointed out. She could scent him, the new wolf. The male was near. Her hackles rose under her skin, her wolf ready and willing to carve her initials in the hide of any man who dared step foot on her lands.

  “Okay, so you want me to go out first? Let you get a look at him before you show yourself?”

  Nodding briefly, Dara tilted her head back to better smell the night. The nuances of the wolf were lost to the reek of the dumpster, but her power kindled anyway. The wolf recognized interloper and possessed no qualms about making him pay for trespass.

  The woman could afford to be a bit more circumspect. After all, they’d spent the better part of the day cleaning up a mess which some other shifter left— a blinking neon light to alert the human authorities of their presence. She surely didn’t waste all afternoon to simply leave a mess of her own in an alley in the Harbor district.

  Dara never planned to become alpha of their pack. When she’d been a girl, she’d always figured their alpha, Dread—the name a testament to the eighties, if nothing else—would stay in power until she bounced grand pups on her knee. Instead, the old bastard went mad. When no one else rose to fight him, and he’d gone after her mother, Dara puffed out her chest and challenged him.

  She’d been so sure—positive, really—someone would stop her. After all, at the time she’d been weeks away from turning eighteen. A kid, really, and no way in hell would she expect anyone of age in her pack to have the presence of mind or control over their beast to challenge anyone. But no one stopped her and no one else jumped in to help her fight off the mad dog.

  As if a red hazed her vision, the fight itself was little more than a blur in her memory. She remembered claws, teeth, blood and pain. She remembered what it looked like to split open the belly of a wolf with a stray claw. She’d never forget the feel of fur and copper filling her mouth until she thought she’d choke on the musk and wet.

  Then it was over and power filled her so full, she thought she’d burst like an overripe tomato with the weight of it. It seemed a thousand voices filled her mind in that moment, all wanting her to decide for them when she didn’t know what she’d wear to classes at the local community college the next day.

  In seconds, she’d gone from girl to Alpha. The learning curve was steep and full of potholes, which might have led to disaster, but she’d learned to reconcile clinging to shards of herself and still managed to fill the role the community required of her.

  She didn’t regret her choices, not most days, because she understood what Pack meant for so many. Pack offered safety, order, friendship and family to a lot of people who depended on her. The world was full of things bigger and badder than wolves, many of whom shared their small town and the wooded outskirts nearby. It was her job to keep her pack safe while navigating the waters of political treachery within the area. It was not simply a right she earned with tooth and claw, but for the most part a pleasure.

  Still, night generally meant she went home alone. No other wolf dared get to close to the alpha, after all, not even Charley. In the hours between being surrounded by too many voices to only having her own to answer to, she realized how very tenuous her position remained.

  As a woman, she would likely one day be claimed by a man. It was the way of her people, and a destiny she’d watched play out among many of her year mates. Although she’d held the pack for quite some time, each day upped the odds of some man striding up on four paws, wanting to mate with her.

  Unfortunately, she’d never be willing to risk her pack for love. If given the choice of someone to call her own or a people who needed her, she must always choose her people first, regardless of her personal desires. It was different for men…

  Only lately had the thought of mating filled her with melancholy. Hers was a social animal, and both wolf and woman wished for someone to not only share their bed, but to share the weight of responsibility for their people.

  A luxury an alpha female couldn’t afford, since men liked dominance. What man could love her without wanting to prove his superiority over her?

  Charley stepped out and Dara braced herself, focusing on the task at hand. No sense borrowing trouble when plenty found her on its own. The rogue’s scent was still occluded because of the damned dumpster—ripe because of the warmth of the days lately. Wrinkling her nose, she shed the thoughts of what could never be and instead pulled her power around her like a shawl. Now isn’t the time for introspection, it is time for action.

  Her beta joined her in the same maneuver many times over the past few years, making this portion of the plan almost rote. For some reason, men often assumed Charley to be the bigger threat while she reeked of dominance. All the while, they ignored instinct screaming from their primordial inner wolves. It seemed even their kind could be led astray by sight. More often than not, rogues would let her walk right up to them without the slightest complaint, so long as they could keep eye contact with Charley who they’d determined to be the greater threat.

  It saved a lot of unneeded bloodshed, since if she was close enough to overwhelm them, they often landed belly up before they realized Charley was there for show.

  She gave Charley a few seconds to look menacing, gathering her pack bonds close before exhaling and stepping out. Head bowed in a façade of submission, she slowly approached the male as she let her senses stretch into the night. Well-dressed, their newest trespasser didn’t g
ive off much dominance himself. It could be he tucked what he was close, hiding behind civilized veneer until he was sure of their aggression. It could be he wasn’t dominant—it’d be impossible to tell until she was much closer. The trick was getting near…

  He allowed her movement, hands spread at his sides and nothing in his posture suggesting he intended to attack her. Tracking her gaze higher, she noticed he was a handsome man. Almost aristocratic, but not soft, his face pleased the woman. The woman, however, currently took a back seat to the wolf. The animal sized him up, struggling to take in weaknesses and possible strengths before they attacked.

  His scent reached her without the garbage’s interference and Dara was surprised when the animal seemed to pause her internal pacing to drag the aroma deep into their lungs. Something about that smell…

  It wasn’t unusual. Soap, man, animal, musk…all familiar to both woman and beast, however something about the bouquet of it jarred them. Realizing he’d spoken, some part of her mind must have been paying attention as she grated out a civil response past teeth clenched in confusion. “The weather has been unseasonably warm. Then again, Indian summers aren’t unheard of in these parts.”

  Small talk. She never bothered with small talk, mostly because she didn’t have time for bullshit in her life. Past the buzzing in her ears, since her pulse raced so fast she was dizzy with it, she heard Charley address the stranger. The man answered and something about his voice reached inside her, stroking down the side of the wolf with delicious seduction neither wolf nor woman could afford.

  Snapping the reins of her gift, she practically flooded him with her dominance. Shoving it at him as if she hoped to choke him with her power alone, she smiled when he dropped to his knees before her. “That’s better, don’t you think?”

  She wasn’t sure if she addressed him or her wolf, but both sides of her personality agreed they liked him bent over and looking up at them.