Twin Wolf Trouble (Shifter Squad Six 2)

by Anya Nowlan

  TWIN WOLF TROUBLE

  SHIFTER SQUAD SIX

  BY

  ANYA NOWLAN

  A LITTLE TASTE…

  Both of them pulled the duffels up on the seat and unzipped them almost in unison. Madeline yelped and pressed herself against the seat as they pulled out matching assault rifles and ammo belts, hooking the belts around themselves and checking the contents of them.

  “Don’t worry, sugar, we’re the good guys,” Tex said, grinning like someone had given him a shot of endorphins.

  “I don’t know about that. But for the sake of this conversation, let’s assume that we are. At least this time,” Thatch commented with a smirk.

  “The hell’s going on? Who are you?!” Madeline gasped, her mind racing far faster than the train.

  “Your knights in shining armor,” Tex said, stepping closer to her and taking her hand.

  He kept his green eyes trained on her grays as he raised her hand to his lips and kissed the top of it. Her heart literally skipped a beat. It was ridiculous. His touch made a whole new kind of heat rush through her at supersonic speeds.

  “Come on, Prince Charming, let’s save the world and then flirt, okay?” Thatch growled, yanking Tex toward the door by his collar. “But I’m expecting to see you later, Miss Madeline. Don’t go too far,” Thatch said, giving her a quick salute and then disappearing out of the door along with his brother.

  Copyright © 2016 Anya Nowlan

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Twin Wolf Trouble

  Shifter Squad Six

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this work may be used, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means by anyone but the purchaser for their own personal use. This book may not be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of Anya Nowlan. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Cover © Jack of Covers

  You can find all of my books here:

  Amazon Author Page

  www.anyanowlan.com

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  A LITTLE TASTE…

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  BAD CAT BLUES EXCERPT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Tex

  Very few things got Tex’s blood pumping and his ears humming with irritation, but leaving a good party when it was just getting thumping was one of them.

  “I still think this is one of the shittiest ideas you’ve ever come up with,” Tex grumbled, loosening the tie that felt like a noose around his neck.

  He hadn’t slept since the previous day and the tequila and whiskey were still making rounds in his blood stream, though the alcohol was little more than an afterthought now. As far as he was concerned, no one could tell him that he was doing anything wrong. It had been Connor’s wedding after all – if he didn’t get a bit blitzed there, where was he supposed to party then?

  “Yeah, well, tough luck,” Thatch grumbled, slinging his heavy duffel bag over his shoulder and slinking through the crowd like a man on a mission.

  That wasn’t too far from the truth. Not with the Crawley twins, anyway. Lately, it seemed like they were always on a mission. Usually, nothing made Tex gladder than the chance of some rampant violence, but today, he was a little bit preoccupied.

  It was an odd mixture of relief and joy for Tex, seeing his squad leader get hitched. Walking through the train station now, following his twin Thatch, Tex couldn’t help but take a minute to think about it. With sleep in his eyes and his muscles heavy from the long day and night of tearing it up, his mind seemed to be as alert as ever for some ungodly reason.

  Happiness wasn’t something that was supposed to happen to guys like Tex, Thatch, Connor or the rest of Squad Six. All ex-SEALs, they had plenty of blood on their hands and with their jobs for The Firm, a large private security and army for hire establishment, it wasn’t like those rivers of red were going to stop any time soon. None of them wanted them to – that’s what kept them going back to the job.

  Not so much the carnage, maybe, especially since they prided themselves on getting in and out fast and doing their missions as smoothly as they could, but the danger, definitely. The adrenaline that pounded through Tex’s veins every time he was hiding from an enemy almost as sharp as he was, or setting up a trap for some unsuspecting schmuck was unlike any feeling he’d ever had. It was what life tasted to him like – if it didn’t have a dash of action to it, it wasn’t fun.

  But that didn’t make for a conducive environment to have a relationship in, let alone raise children. Somehow, Connor had made it work, though. He had the most stressful job out of all of the squad, seeing as he had to keep the rest of them alive and on point, yet he’d found the perfect woman, had a child with her and married her. And no one that didn’t deserve to die had done so in the process.

  It was mind-boggling, to say the least. It even gave Tex some hope.

  Weirder things have happened.

  “We can still turn back, you know,” Tex grumbled as Thatch made him stop in a long line, waiting for their tickets like they were tourists or something. “You can have that redheaded bridesmaid, I’ll take Connor’s estranged cousin, or whoever she was, and we’ll all have fun. Come on, live a little!”

  He didn’t expect it to work. One look from Thatch confirmed as much. Yet, there was a hint of amusement in the way the corner of Thatch’s mouth curved when he shook his head, fishing for his wallet in his pockets.

  The older Crawley was always the responsible one. They were Alpha twins, destined to form a triad and lead their wolf pack one day, but so far the only thing they were interested in leading was a quick charge with preferably a bunch of explosions and a thick wad of cash on the other side. One would think that nearing thirty, they’d be well on the way to growing up by now, but if anything, Thatch had started accepting a lot more missions than he had before, chasing the danger even harder.

  Only this time, his eagerness to work was fucking with Tex’s day and he wasn’t all that thrilled.

  Frustrated, Tex let the duffel crash to the floor and he sat down on it heavily, unbuttoning a button on his white dress shirt. They were both still in their suits from playing their parts as Connor’s groomsmen, dressed up like they had some sense of fashion outside of ripped jeans and combat boots, and the tight fabric felt like it was suffocating him. Tex shifted a little on the bag, feeling the butt of his assault rifle dig into his ass.

  I’m in no fucking state to go playing hero today, he thought glumly, glowering at Thatch.

  But Thatch had a point. They were supposed to go see the pack back in New Orleans during the squad’s break and if he knew anything
about himself then it was that if someone allowed him to go on a bender, he wasn’t going to crawl out of his fun comfort zone until they were tagged for another out of country mission. And if he didn’t show up at home, his mama was going to give him a real whooping.

  He might have been a werewolf commando, but even Tex knew that a mama wolf was not the right person to piss off.

  Tex yawned, trying to get those muddled thoughts out of his head. He heard as Thatch bought two tickets and then reluctantly, he hauled himself back on his feet again. He could almost feel the way his wolf was stretching and snarling and pacing in him, wound up as badly as Tex’s human side was.

  Wouldn’t have been so bad if he could have stayed at the party, had some shots with Grim, Dutch and Grant, gotten with some pretty young thing and then slept it off for a few days, but no. He had to sit in a train for the whole ride from California to New Orleans and hope and pray that something went wrong.

  “Come on,” Thatch said, nodding towards the platforms. “We don’t want to miss the train.”

  “Don’t we really?” Tex snorted back, falling into step with his brother.

  They passed through the crowd of bodies, most of them giving the two tall men way when they noticed them coming like two trucks down the highway. The Crawleys stood taller than almost anyone around them, both built wide and strong. The suits might have helped, giving them a certain debonair charm that perhaps their regular street thug clothes wouldn’t have conveyed.

  In any case, Tex was far too annoyed to enjoy the newfound attention and Thatch seemed to be preoccupied with scoping everything and everyone out. They reached the platforms in time to see the train pull in, New Orleans blinking in yellow lights on the little screens above the doors.

  Tex trotted along as Thatch went up the side slowly, walking past all of the cars. Lazily, Tex observed his surroundings, not putting too much enthusiasm into it. He did frown slightly when he saw three men crossing in front of Thatch and walking into a car, though, something about their stance catching him as odd.

  Straining his neck, Tex took another look at them and the reason why the trio had stood out to him was immediately obvious. They were built like brick walls, all three of them. And the matching haircuts didn’t leave much to ponder.

  Marines, Tex thought idly, running his gaze over the men that could have once been his brothers in arms.

  Now, that life was far behind him, but the work ethic and the camaraderie had stayed. A man didn’t serve years in the military and come out of it the same way he went in. Tex and Thatch had served together and as many shifters did, they rose through the ranks like wildfire, swiftly being snatched up as candidates for SEAL training. As with most things, they excelled at it.

  A twinge of discomfort went through Tex as Thatch finally stopped and picked a door to enter through.

  “Did you see those guys?” he asked, keeping his voice low and his hand firmly on his bag.

  It was loaded up with essentials. Handguns, an assault rifle, some basic communications and explosives devices – everything a warrior on the go might need. No one checked their bags and the security checks didn’t blink an eye, which had told Tex already that whoever Thatch had picked up the job from had been expecting them.

  Seeing the company on the train, Tex wasn’t sure whether this was going to be a small errand anymore, something to ‘waste time’ on the drive like Thatch had claimed it to be.

  “I did,” he noted dully, in his infuriating calm voice that he used when he knew Tex wanted a straight answer.

  “And?”

  “And it means we have less work to do. If there are Marines onboard, I don’t see any reason why two worn and weary paid brutes are needed,” Thatch said drily, shrugging.

  “Liar,” Tex scoffed. “You want to tell me what this job is really about or am I to find that out when something goes horribly wrong around us?”

  “I know what I told you,” Thatch said, his step much lighter than Tex’s at this point. “The client is someone who doesn’t want to deal with The Firm directly, but the contacts came from within. They wanted to keep it discreet. There’s something on this train that they want an eye kept on and I wasn’t privy to what it is. Our problem is to make sure nothing, you know, goes to shit.”

  “So, you’re telling me,” Tex started as they walked through the dining car, looking for a place to sit down and start the long journey. “That we’re on a train going across the country, protecting something from someone for someone and we don’t know any of said three unmentionables? And on top of that, you dragged me off of a perfectly hot blond for this?”

  He could feel the anger bubbling in his tone and he didn’t bother to hide it. Thatch glanced over his shoulder and Tex could have decked him then and there for the shit eating grin he was presented with. Leave it to his brother to know how to get a rise out of him.

  “Astute observations, brother.”

  “I’ll astute right up your ass when we get to New Orleans,” Tex huffed.

  Thatch chuckled and despite his irritation, Tex felt the weariness lift off of him. It always happened when he felt like there was something real going on. Seeing those Marines had lit a fire under his ass. This wasn’t any joyride, even if he could keep hoping to the last moment that it was.

  Hell, he could at least pretend to enjoy this. Who knew, maybe he’d find his future mate in the middle of a mission too. Apparently that wasn’t completely unheard of in Squad Six these days and spirits above, Tex could use a woman to team up against Thatch with.

  This better be worth skipping the after party, he thought grimly.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Madeline

  Madeline sighed, looking out of the window. The countryside was rolling by, speeding up bit by bit between the stations. The train shook and coughed as it trundled on, always on path, always moving forward. It seemed like a sorry cliché compared to her current state of affairs.

  She tucked her thumb between the pages of the book she’d been reading—though truthfully, she’d been chewing on the nail for the past five minutes without making any headway. At that point, it was pretty obvious that she was not all about concentrating on her research, and staring listlessly out of the window seemed like a lot more fun.

  Slouching on one elbow, she watched the gradual change in colors, moving from California to Arizona and onward through the whole forty-eight hour ride to New Orleans. She knew how it would be—the tiny slivers of greenery, kept up by people blissfully ignoring the water conservation pleas, would soon turn back into the emptiness of the desert, until moving east the green would return. She’d done it before.

  Madeline had always loved the trip from west to east, but this time, it made her uneasy somehow. There wasn’t any good excuse for why she was feeling like that, other than the fact that the hours she usually spent with a good novel tucked away in a cushy sleeping car had now turned into an eternity working on her thesis. She loved the work she was doing and she loved the fact that she was on the homestretch even more, but recently, there was just a little bit too much of everything.

  You got to get through this, Maddy. You can’t work as a waitress forever, she told herself, rolling her eyes at the fact that her internal voice was starting to sound a lot like her Dad.

  “A woman’s nothing without her education!” he would say, and she’d be damned if it wasn’t the first thing he was going to say the moment he heard that she still hadn’t finished all of her prep work.

  Of course, he wasn’t wrong to do it. Madeline Beaumont was the last woman to say that she had everything under control lately. She definitely did not. From the crazy hours she had to work at the restaurant, the oddly named Lazy Tuxedo Frog, to the constant fear of getting kicked out of her already too-expensive room in a shared apartment in San Francisco, to her recent man drama. It was the last bit that kept her the most distracted, she figured. And the part she needed to purge the fastest.

  God, it’d be so much easier if men just c
ame and went at the snap of your fingers, Madeline thought glumly, snapping her fingers for effect.

  Just then, the door to her so-far private sitting room was thrust open and two decidedly masculine figures practically fell in, chatting and laughing amongst themselves loudly. She tried to throw them a hateful glare for disturbing her peace, knowing that half the train was empty, but that notion was soon lost on her completely when she got a good look at them.

  Tall as hell, with shoulders too wide to reasonably fit in through the doors leading into the sitting room, they cut the kind of images of men she would definitely not mind popping in and out of her life. They both had deep green eyes with flecks of gold in them and strong jaws. For a moment, she thought she was seeing double, but when they sunk into their seats across from one another, she managed to wrap her brain around the situation.

  Twins. Really, really hot twins. Just my luck, Madeline thought, smiling privately.

  This was not boding well for her attempts to get any work done that day.

  “Sorry, Miss. Hope we’re not disturbing you,” one of the green-eyed devils said, leaning toward her.

  He had a little bit of that Mississippi-Louisiana twang she missed so much and it wasn’t hard to pinpoint him as a down Southern kind of man. Sigh. There it was. Butterflies in her stomach.

  Maddy, seriously. Stop it. No goo-goo eyes at the hunky guys! she chided herself, smiling shyly at the two expectant-looking brothers.

  “No, not at all,” she said, trying to keep her voice clear.

  She noticed one of them looking at her a bit too long, a glint in his eyes telling her that he was definitely trouble. It didn’t help that she loved trouble. Doing her best to keep to herself, she opened her book again and mentally scrolled down to the last line she’d been reading. There was something about mechanical physics that could really make her mind wander all over the place, even though that particular bit she was reading now about friction in metals was crucial to understand for her thesis. The fact that she kept sneaking glances at the brown-haired hunks sitting within a few feet of her was not aiding her in her quest for knowledge, though.