Wrangled Fate: Book One: Black Claw Ranch

by Lane, Cecilia

  The man rose up from his barstool with a pissed off glare. Alex and Jesse jumped up from their spots and crowded against his back before he could get far.

  Ethan crossed his arms over his chest and pointed to the barstool. “You work for the Vagabonds?” Subtle went out the window after the third hour without his mate.

  He waved a dismissive hand. “Once or twice. I’m not going to turn away money.”

  “You know where they’re holed up?” The motel where he’d grabbed Tansey’s things the first night she blew into his life was another dead end. The nearby bars hadn’t seen Viho or a Vagabond in days.

  “No.”

  Ethan took a swig of his beer. “Lie.”

  The wolf growled and slammed the bottom of his bottle against the bar. He swung jagged edges at Ethan, only catching his shirt as he jumped back.

  He threw himself to the side and shoved the shifter off balance. A savage twist of his wrist dropped the broken bottle. Good. He wanted it to be a fair match.

  He wasn’t about to let old Hector ruin his fight again. He seized the wolf by the scruff of his neck and threw him out the door.

  Ethan followed right on his heels. He grabbed a handful of the man’s shirt and threw a punch into his face. Blood spurted from his busted nose, but Ethan wasn’t done. He shoved the wolf shifter into his own motorcycle, sending man and machine tumbling to the ground.

  Almost too quick to track, the shifter jumped to his feet and dove for Ethan. His arms locked around his waist and sent him falling hard on his back. His bear roared in his head to rip and tear and slice.

  Yes.

  No.

  Tansey. They needed information. A dead man would give them nothing.

  He threw a punch into the man’s middle and whipped them back over. “Where the fuck are they?” he snarled.

  The wolf grinned, blood coloring his teeth. “They’re going to destroy you.”

  Ethan roared and pounded the man with his fists. It felt good to let out the bloodlust that’d plagued his bear for the last twenty-four hours. While it wasn’t Viho, the wolf was a good stand-in until he could fight the real thing.

  “Where?” he demanded again.

  The wolf laughed, so he hit him again. And again.

  Fucking assholes needed to learn some manners and he would be the fucker to teach them. Taking a woman unconnected to their old fight? Taking her brother and wrecking her family? Using her to bait him?

  Tansey needed help. He needed her back. He didn’t care how many wolves he had to tear apart to find her.

  “Ethan.” Jesse grabbed his fist before he could land another blow. “Let him go.”

  “Fuck that,” he snarled at his second. The scent of blood was in the air and he wanted to feel bone crunch under his fists.

  “We have to get back to Black Claw. Hunter spotted something.”

  The pure, unadulterated rage pumping through him with each beat of his heart fell from a violent boil to a simmer. He let go of the wolf and stood, leaving him with one last sharp kick to the ribs. Whatever Hunter found was more important than one small-time asshole. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 24

  Tansey didn’t know where Rye and Viho and the rest of the scum-sucking Vagabonds took her. Once it became apparent that she wasn’t going to head into captivity willingly and cease all her kicking and struggling like a good little kidnap victim, Viho slammed his fist into the back of her head and poof—out went the lights.

  Everything hurt when she woke up the first time.

  Fire burned outward from her throbbing forearm. Blood flecked off from where it’d welled and dried during her unconsciousness. A ring of jagged cuts didn’t look as bad as she thought they should for all the pain that laced through her.

  The room swam. Blackness danced at the edges of her vision, then swooped over her with no care for what she wanted.

  Everything still hurt the second time darkness parted for a noisy, smelly reality. She thought she turned to her side and heaved out the entire contents of her stomach.

  The third time, that seemed to be the charm. Everything still hurt and her mouth tasted like she’d eaten the contents of a dumpster, but she no longer felt the overwhelming urge to give up the ghost.

  Weak, Tansey lifted her head and tried to get her bearings. The room was hardly bigger than a closet, with only one door. Her head ached anytime someone spoke or laughed on the other side. She lay on a thin mattress left on the middle of the floor.

  Her arm throbbed in time with her heart. She couldn’t put any weight on it. Until she rolled her head to the side, she thought it’d been taken clean off.

  Dried blood covered her arm. The marks she thought she saw earlier were almost hidden by the swelling.

  Tansey carefully pressed her fingertips to the angry flesh. Pain flared to life and left her gasping. Her stomach clenched hard enough to curve her in on herself.

  A high-pitched whine blew from her lips. That wasn’t normal. She needed help.

  The piercing sound of metal scraping against itself made Tansey wince. Smoke and fur and booze and unwashed bodies slammed into her as the door swung open.

  Rye slunk inside, eyes never lifting from the ground. He bumped the door closed behind him and shuffled to her mattress, then sank to his knees next to her.

  Something... soft brushed against her mind. She wanted to bare her teeth at her brother.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Rye told her. “You’re almost out of the worst part. I made it through. We have the same genes. You’ll make it, I know.”

  Tansey struggled to sit up. Her limbs didn’t want to move except in the most uncoordinated and jerky way. She felt like she’d downed half her body weight of pure alcohol and then gotten into a fight with a tank.

  Rye’s scent invaded her nose. She could practically taste the grease in his hair. Too many onions on his last meal, too. He’d always had a fondness for them.

  But more than that, she wanted to bite him. He’d hurt her. Betrayed her. Let her think something terrible had happened to him while she uprooted her entire life. And for what? So his new BFF could play head games with Ethan?

  That softness rubbed against her again and her stomach sank with longing. Even more than the desire to get away from wherever she was being held, she felt the need to get back to Ethan. She wanted his earthy scent in her nose and his arms caging her in protection.

  Ethan wasn’t there. Rye was. Viho. Other Vagabonds. They deserved to be put in their places.

  A growl rattled in her throat.

  Wait.

  A growl?

  Scared she knew the answer, she asked, “What did you do to me?”

  Rye cupped her cheeks to hold her head steady. She tried to push his hands away, but he had the strength of a grown man and a shifter while she felt about as strong as a day old kitten.

  “What, Rye?” She needed to hear the words.

  “Shush,” Rye chided. “You’ll be fine. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To help me? Soon you’ll do that on four feet instead of just two.”

  Four feet. Motherfucking Viho actually bit her. And Rye let it happen. Her skin crawled to be anywhere near him. He’d helped someone steal a big choice from her and talked like it was no big deal.

  “This isn’t how I hoped helping you would go.” She twisted out of his grasp and grimaced when her nose picked up a new scent.

  Nope. She hadn’t made it fully over the side of the dank mattress. Gross.

  Almost as gross as wondering what other messes had been made on the bed.

  “Where are we?” she whispered. Anything else sounded too loud.

  She needed an idea of where they were and what direction to head when she finally made it to her feet. No way would she stick around for whatever insanity Viho had planned next.

  “A place Viho keeps up. He has interests in the area. Don’t worry about that now. You’re doing so good.”

  “I don’t care about that!” she snapped.


  That new, inner instinct of hers whined out of frustration. Too weak. Still too weak for anything.

  Tansey squeezed her eyes shut and focused on herself. Her own thoughts. People thoughts. Unless she was going to sprout fur and fangs, she didn’t want anything else intruding.

  Not good enough. More of that other side pressed against her. It tried to devour her. Needles slid into her brain, under her skin. Darkness closed around her and tried to beat her down into nothing. She felt like her mind was being ripped in half.

  “Why?” Tansey growled. She wasn’t even sure which entity to direct the question. Her other half, her brother, any of the assholes in the outer room, they could all go to hell.

  Rye rocked back on his heels. His voice edged into the same whine he used when he spoke to Viho. “I need this, Tansey. Viho… He has plans and you’re a part of them now. I tried to keep you out of it, but you just couldn’t mind your own business, could you?”

  “No. You’re not blaming me for caring.” She cracked open one eye. “You’re my brother; that’s what I’m supposed to do. You didn’t have to do any of this. Rye, you still don’t. Get us out of here. Please.”

  “I can’t do that. I can’t disobey him,” Rye whispered. He shoved his hair out of his eyes and had the decency to look pained. “You don’t say no to a man like Viho. When you don’t have anything else to offer him, he’ll take your loyalty. He turned me, Tans. He let me get a taste of his blood, gamble everything away to afford that next hit, and turned me into one of them when I lost it all. Said he had plans for me to pay him back.”

  “What plans, Rye?” He shook his head, so she pressed again. “What plans?”

  Addict, in more ways than one. That was what Rye kept hidden from her. He let Viho put poison in her to pay off his debts. She’d worked her ass off to find her own path and then to afford to locate him. Yet when his world spiraled out of control, he took the easy way out and ran.

  The betrayal hurt almost as much as realizing he was just like their dad. Only instead of just disappearing, he had to drag her down with him.

  She must have said the last out loud, because Rye shook his head.

  “You shouldn’t have looked for me,” he insisted. “You should have left well enough alone. I ran to keep you safe. I didn’t want Viho snaring you into anything. You were a weakness. A liability. I tried to protect you.”

  “Fuck you, Rye.” She lifted her chin and tried to meet his gaze, but he kept ducking her eyes. That pissed her off even more. “You want me to cry for you? After you let him turn me, too? Own your shit.”

  She had all the sympathy in the world for him, but none of that changed the choices he made or the consequences he brought down on her head. He didn’t want to drag her into his mess? He should have picked up the damn phone and told her that.

  The door banged open and Viho stood in the middle, hands on his hips and a wild grin lifting his lips. “She awakens!”

  Gruff laughter rose from the Vagabonds in the outer room.

  Viho crouched next to her. “How is our pretty flower?”

  Tansey recoiled when his hands took hold of her much the same as Rye. Viho thumbed open one eyelid, then the other. She jerked her head out of his grasp before he could do anything else.

  “Good. Won’t be long now. We got eyes on your boyfriend. Wouldn’t want to keep him waiting.”

  “Fuck you,” she ground out.

  Viho clicked his tongue. “Mind your language when speaking to your alpha. Wouldn’t want to wash that mouth out with soap.”

  “Fuck you,” she hissed. “You’re nothing to me. I won’t have any part in your plans.”

  Something forceful slammed into her chest. She wanted to bite him. Rip him into pieces. Make him cower beneath her fangs.

  For a single second, she thought she saw worry in Viho’s eyes. Then the concern packed itself away, and he was all slimy confidence again.

  “What are you going to do, pretty flower? Can you even stand on your feet yet?” Viho favored her with an infuriating smirk then looked over his shoulder and whistled. All noise in the outer room snapped to silence. “Pack it in, boys. We’re going on a bear hunt!”

  Howls rose and fell into another round of laughter.

  “No. Leave them alone.” She wanted to force him to her will, make him give up his stupid quest. Years had passed and lives were settled since the original feud between fathers. It was time to move away from the past.

  Viho whipped his attention back to her with a growl. “I told you before. I’m going to strip everything away from that man just like his father did to me. I already turned his mate. I want him to see you submit to another before the life dies in his eyes.”

  Mate. The word felt... heavy in one part of her mind. The other recognized it, logically, as something between shifters.

  The logical side wasn’t the one itching to taste Viho’s blood for threatening Ethan.

  “You didn’t know, did you? Humans,” he scoffed. He cocked his head with cruelty in his eyes. “Or maybe he didn’t tell you. Poor, poor little flower. Your brother disappears without a word and your mate doesn’t even want you. You could say I’m doing you a favor. I reunited you with one and will save you the pain of another.”

  “You’re a dickhead and I hope you get your ass kicked tonight.”

  “You’ll be there to watch it, sugar.” He rose to his feet and walked backward into the outer room. “Bring her,” he ordered.

  Chapter 25

  Ethan stood in the center of his territory with his arms crossed and waited. For what, he wasn’t sure. Hunter spotted a single motorcycle scouting the road, then nothing else. The wolf at Defiant Dog was another clue.

  Electricity crackled in the air as if lightning struck the ground next to him. A storm was coming, and soon.

  The others spread out at his sides. Alex cracked his neck and shook out his arms. Hunter and Lorne grimaced into the darkness. Jesse folded his arms over his chest and waited with a blank look on his face.

  In his head, the tiny studs that connected him to each of them tensed. He needed to finish this once and for all. Viho had pressed and goaded until this was the only conclusion. He needed to keep his clan alive. War had come for them and it was his job as alpha to usher them to the other side.

  A rumble in the distance drew his attention. The noise of it built, louder and lower, strumming through his body like a deep bass.

  No headlights lit the road, but the unmistakable sound of tires clanking over cattle grates told when the Valdana pack crossed over to his land.

  Engines revved and roared as they neared. Most didn’t slow, following the lead in a wide circle around his clan. Ethan didn’t need more than a passing glance to know who rode at the head.

  On the second pass, Viho tossed a body off his lap.

  Blood tinged the air as the person bounced and rolled to a stop mere feet from his boots. Ethan’s heart faltered to a stop.

  Tansey.

  Not just her, either. There was something more to her scent under all the blood and sweat and sick. Something like moonlight and deep woods, and growing stronger by the second.

  “You turned her,” he said flatly, following Viho on another round.

  The clan at his side tensed. Boots scuffed in the dirt and fists clenched at their sides.

  Fuck. Fuck! His bear sounded off in his head with the same sentiment. Fucking Viho turned Tansey, no doubt against her will. The crime alone meant death for a shifter even without the heavy-handed laws humans tried to place on them.

  It wasn’t only the perverse act that hollowed his middle and pounded blood in his veins. She’d be a wolf. The intimacy of turning her himself—if she chose—was stolen.

  Survival wasn’t guaranteed, either. Women handled it better than men, but even that wasn’t a sure bet. The uncontrolled shaking of the woman before him didn’t bode well for her transition.

  His. Mate.

  His bear ripped him to shreds for the delay in taking
Viho apart piece by piece.

  He and Tansey had been thrust together and set up to be enemies from the start. Instead, they were drawn together like a pair of magnets. No matter the distance or obstacles between them, they were pulled back to one another.

  Did he know the future? No. But he knew she was in it and he’d fall to his knees if something happened to rip her from it. They needed to make everything up to one another. He needed to do more than just provide. He needed to put himself on the line and stay there. There was no backing up when shit got tough for a woman like Tansey. He needed to have her back through it all.

  She was the distraction he needed. The balance in his world. She’d keep him from tripping too far and winding up full circle in the place his father had ended. There was more to life than proving himself against a ghost.

  He glanced to one side, then the other. The men who stood with him and the woman on the ground at his feet were what truly mattered. He’d be the best damn person he could for his clan and family.

  At that moment, doing so required blood to spill.

  Viho hit the kickstand with his heel and settled his motorcycle into place. The others circled in a slower path than before, widening the path to cage in their leader.

  “Last chance, Ashford. Walk away with your life or see everything you hold dear burned to ashes just like your father did to my mother.”

  “He honored her more than your father ever did,” Ethan spat. “He could have left her to rot. She got the same sending off as mine.”

  Three sets of eyes shined in the night to his left. Four blinked at his right.

  “They’re everywhere,” Jesse muttered from his side.

  Distraction. The wolves on bikes clogged the air with roaring engines and the scent of exhaust to hide the streaming force surrounding them from all sides. How many answered to Viho, Ethan didn’t know. Viho’s pack, maybe others allied with him for reasons of their own, he didn’t care. They’d all be dead by morning if he had his way.

  They shouldn’t have threatened his mate and his clan.

  The last of the engines died and Viho’s enforcers joined him in snarling their victory. Too many eyes watched from the darkness with too many growls.