Wrangled Fate
Book One: Black Claw Ranch
Cecilia Lane
A Shifting Destinies Novel
Copyright © 2018 by Cecilia Lane
Cover Art by Kasmit Covers
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Wrangled Fate: Black Claw Ranch #1 by Cecilia Lane November 2018
Contents
Wrangled Fate
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
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Next in Series
Newsletter
About the Author
Also by Cecilia Lane
Wrangled Fate: Black Claw Ranch Book One
The gorgeous cowboy has plans for her...
Desperate to find her missing brother, Tansey Nichols journeys to Montana's Black Claw Ranch. She intends to question the owner, Ethan Ashford. Ethan's her last hope, but the tall, rugged bear shifter claims he doesn't know her brother. Never met him. Tansey's sure the smooth-talking cowboy knows more than he's letting on.
Good thing she brought a gun.
Ethan's sultry smile suggests he's imagining a hundred dirty things. He's amused by her gun, not at all concerned. If the handsome cowboy wants to pretend he can't recall seeing her brother, she'll fire off a round or two. A teensy bit of gunfire might jog his memory. He doesn't think she means business? Her brother's life is in danger.
She'll show him business.
The little whiskey-eyed spitfire pulls the trigger...
Good thing she misses his boots by a country mile. Ethan had been having fun until that point, teasing her a little, trying to get to know her. But Tansey isn't interested in flirting. Most women think he's hot. Not this one. Tansey has questions and she demands answers.
First off, her little, girly pistol has got to go. Her next shot might scuff his best boots. One quick move and she's his. The curvy girl is no match for his brute strength. Of course, she's mad as hell. He's got her wrapped up in a tight hold, keeping her prisoner. She'll need to stay put because he has a few questions of his own.
Ethan's shifter instincts warn him Tansey's a terrible danger to the delicate balance he maintains with his shifter side. She squirms, fighting him hard. His bear stirs and snarls. Her lush curves and the honeyed scent of her silken skin confirm exactly what he suspects.
This little spitfire is his mate.
Then gunshots ring across the Montana range. Ethan knows Tansey's been set up.
The danger to his feisty, fated mate is closing in...
* * *
Step into the world of Shifting Destinies, where the men and women you meet might just be a little more than human. Their towns are protected by magic, and their hearts are open and ready for love. But watch your step - more than darkness lurks in the shadows.
* * *
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Chapter 1
Tansey Nichols blasted through the door of the bar with the fury of a woman intent on getting answers or committing murder, and promptly bounced off the enormous chest of a Vagabond enforcer.
The wolf shifter crossed his arms and stared cold eyes down at her. “Club meeting. Get gone.”
Tansey glared right back. “I need to see Viho.”
She tried to lean around the man, but he shifted to block her view of the rundown bar.
“Club meeting. Get gone,” he repeated.
Anger clenched her teeth so tightly she thought they might crack. She’d been building up to this all morning and afternoon. No way would she be chased away so easily. “Viho. Now.”
“Let her by, Bryce.”
Viho Valdana, alpha and grand president what-the-fuck-ever of the Vagabonds, waved her into the bar. A bottle rested at his elbow and a barmaid perched on his knee.
He was attractive, she guessed, but not her type. Straight black hair hung to his shoulders and the time he spent on the back of a bike darkened his natural olive skin. He was big and fit like the rest of his men, but they didn’t have his speed or the intense bad boy undercurrent that always radiated off him.
Tansey didn’t have time for bad boys. She didn’t have time for good ones, either. The only man that concerned her at that moment was her brother.
Straightening her shirt, Tansey shot Bryce—who rode in a motorcycle club and kept the name Bryce?—a smug look and stalked across the creaky wood floor.
The bar was exactly the sort of place she’d avoided her entire life. Low lights made it hard to see, though the shifter crowd didn’t have that problem. Dust covered everywhere that wasn’t regularly used. She didn’t have an enhanced sense of smell, but she could still identify spilled beer left to air dry.
All the current patrons wore leather vests with Vagabond patches. All were shifters. They shot her carefully calculated glances made to say that she was noticed and deemed nothing more than an annoyance.
Tansey focused on her target settled in a booth where he could see everything. She slid across from him, dismissed the barmaid with a flick of her eyes, and met Viho’s blank look. “We’ve been here three days. Do you have any news?”
There was no mistaking what she was after. Rye had been missing for a full month. The first week saw her worrying and calling his friends and coworkers, then poking around the police station in their tiny, Minnesota hometown.
A chance encounter outside the station brought her face to face with Viho. He wasn’t scared to track down a new shifter because he was one himself. For a small, inconsequential finder’s fee, he’d take on her case and find her brother.
Only Tansey wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t about to hand over her cash and hope for the best. She agreed to the weekly fees with the condition that Viho let her tag along.
She hadn’t expected the journey to be a slow crawl with stops to drink and fuck in every shithole bar that caught their fancy. Nudging Viho along was like pulling teeth from an impossibly wiggly crocodile, especially when all he wanted to do was fondle the barmaid.
Viho gestured to the bar filled with his people drinking long before it was five-o’clock anywhere decent. “What do you think I’m doing now? I’m working for you as we speak.”
And yep, those were his fingers dipping under the barmaid’s skirt. Her head dropped back, her eyes slid closed, and a tiny sigh escaped her lips.
Gross, but Tansey wouldn’t be put off by the public display of horniness.
She’d been around the wolf pack enough to know they liked fucking with her. Shaking their dicks around after a shift, catcalling, and staring her down like mad dogs were everyday occurrences to test her limits. She also knew not to back down. Backing down was weakness and made them want to attack.
“It looks like you’re wasting away another day when we could be on the road and hunting for leads. I thought you were supposed to be a good tracker.”
Viho’s carefree attitude slipped for a brief second and a too-long stare. Then his knee jerked and he spilled the barmaid to her feet. His hand squeezed her ass and urged her forward. “Get us refills, will you, darlin’?”
The woman glared at Tansey as if it were entirely her fault for the case of blue balls, and not the man who got her going merely as a ploy to drive someone off. Not that she was alone for long. Two wolves hopped off their barstools and followed in her wake.
“Dawn’s a good girl,” he said as if reading her mind. He watched Dawn’s progression through the pack and around the bar. “She’ll tease them till their dicks could cut diamonds, but she won’t let them touch her. Unless I say. She’d let the whole damn pack take a turn and still come crawling back to me on hands and knees as long as I gave her what she wants.”
Shifter blood. Vampires weren’t the only supes that could share. Hell, they all could, as far as she knew. She’d never touched a drop herself, but the Vagabonds made good money for opening up a vein and letting humans ride the high of increased strength and libido.
For the millionth time, Tansey wanted to drop her head into her hands and scream. Her life really took a nosedive into an already impressive downward spiral about a thousand miles ago.
Rye never before made her worry. Even after she moved to the big city, he kept her updated on small-town happenings and news about their overworked mother. They’d been close since childhood. Rye wasn’t the sort to pull a vanishing act.
But then, she never thought their father would walk out on the family. And when she started dating, she never thought she’d see each and every relationship end the same way.
Maybe it was her. A not-insignificant part of her raised the question late at night, while she showered, and anytime her mind drifted. That miserable voice rang louder every day she didn’t hear from her brother. She was rotten inside and eventually everyone had to get away from the smell.
“Do you have anything for me, or not?” Tansey asked testily. She didn’t want to scent the air with her unease. She’d already pushed Viho once.
“My pretty flower, you really need to learn to multitask.” Viho grinned around the bottle of beer and pointed a finger at her. “I, and a few close friends, know just how to teach you.”
Gag. She hated being called a flower. And double gag for his innuendo.
She didn’t respond, though. That would prove he’d gotten under her skin, and he would keep at her like a dog with a bone.
Finding Rye was the goal. No one else would take the case. Viho was her only option.
Silence stretched between them until Viho grew tired of the game. “This ain’t the only joint Dawn tends. Couple of other folks she works with might have seen your brother with a local recently. Unless I’m very wrong, this man holds the key to finding your brother.”
Blood pounded in Tansey’s ears. She couldn’t believe Viho’s words. Sightings never materialized into anything more than a path to the next town. Bits of Rye’s scent didn’t lead anywhere. Now, though, she knew where to find him.
“Where? Who?”
“Don’t go doing anything stupid. You don’t know this place like I do. A little human like you will get eaten up in seconds.”
“The name, Viho,” she demanded.
“I’d hate to see my pretty flower crushed. These are dangerous people capable of horrible things. No, we’ll all be needed and we’re not at our full strength right now.”
She rolled her eyes. Meaning, they weren’t done getting loaded, sleeping it off, then doing it all over again. “I’m going. What difference does it make to you?”
“The difference to me is you haven’t paid up for the week.”
Tansey expected that. She dug into her back pocket and slapped the wad of bills on the table between them. Her fingers still hurt from scrubbing dishes at a little diner connected to her shitty motel. Work was work and money didn’t last forever, especially on the road. “I’m good for it. Give me the name.”
Viho’s flashed her a predatory grin. His hand closed over the cash and dragged it toward him slowly. “On the other side of these mountains, in a little place called Bearden, you’ll find a man named Ethan Ashford.”
Viho said more, but Tansey had already shoved to her feet and made a break for the door. Howls followed her outside to her tiny little junker parked next to a long line of motorcycles.
Bearden was a shifter enclave. The shifter enclave. And this Ethan would be made to tell what happened to Rye.
Chapter 2
Ethan Ashford crouched at the side of the cow and pressed a hand to her neck. Still warm. That gave him comfort. Whoever kept killing his cattle wasn’t in his clan. He wouldn’t need to put any of his men down today. Thank fuck.
That this one had been cut from the herd and sent running through the night filled him with fury almost as much as the wasteful death. She’d been the first to get heavy with a calf out of the entire enclave. If she’d dropped early, she’d have brought him some desperately needed prize money as winner of the Calving Celebration.
Instead, she’d been bled and left entirely alone. Whatever killed her hadn’t even taken a nibble. At least the others made a fine meal.
Three had been taken in the last month. The ranch ran at near zero profit already. Losing cattle only exasperated his problems.
Which meant another year of working with Trent, the unbearable alpha of the lion pride on the next ranch over. Trent wasn’t any good with humans, and Ethan didn’t have extra horses. They’d been bullied into an arrangement where Trent loaned Ethan the horses and they split the profits from running trail rides for tourists curious to see how the shifter menaces lived.
Only with Becca, their bully, focused on her newborn cubs, Ethan had no one to run interference with Trent when the deal inevitably blew up as it had the past two years. The dead cattle and the vanishing prize money meant no extra money to invest in his own extra mounts.
His inner bear fed on his frustration and growled. Dammit. Holding his hand out to anyone was the last thing he wanted to do, but it was either that or let the ranch and clan shrivel into nothing. He’d rather die than give up on the place.
Black Claw Ranch was his birthright. He’d worked it from the time he could walk. His sweat and blood covered every inch of the land. Some years were better than others, but they were still his. The bad went along with the good, and he wouldn’t turn away from his responsibility.
Still didn’t solve his current problem, though. Someone was killing his cattle and showed no signs of stopping.
At the snap of a branch, Ethan twisted and hauled up his rifle to point it at the threat. Even in an enclave full of apex predators, their natural kin made an appearance. With the press of human civilization on one side and being on the edge of the enclave territory, he saw more than most.
Nothing natural glared back at him in the golden eyes staring him down. The size of the wolf, too, gave the shifter away. The thick, black coat rose with its snarl. Head lowered and tail between its legs, the beast was making the threat known.
Ethan tried to catch the scent of the shifter. Downwind. Fuck. No telling who challenged him until he pushed closer. He bared his teeth and growled.
The wolf wasn’t the first he’d seen. They lurked in the shadows, and always downwind. Too often, he only caught their scent long after they’d passed through his territory.
Watchers in the woods. Dead cattle. The oppressive air f
elt just like he remembered of the days before his father’s war. Only then, the threat came from within.
The wolf took one step forward.
Ethan let his bear’s growled warning enter the air. Together, man and beast, they laid claim to the territory.
The wolf stepped forward again.
Pushing for territory always carried a risk. Playing it safe meant caring for a clan in the space already carved out for them. Expanding, that could mean war. War and death went hand in hand.
Ethan prodded at the tiny studs in his brain. Each of his clan, they were there. Tied to him. Didn’t matter how far they were apart, he could feel them. And if a life ended, the bond snapped back into him like a rubber band. The sting remained forever.
War was a risk. Too many snaps could destroy a man. He’d seen it happen when his father lost everyone.
The wolf stepped onto his land, killed his prize cow. That couldn’t go unpunished.
But then the pack might hit back.
Ethan juggled the ideas. Safe, and being trampled. War, and death madness.
He aimed carefully. Just a brush of his finger against the trigger…
Wrangled Fate: Book One: Black Claw Ranch Page 1