by R. E. Butler
Angie shook her head.
“The head of the bear den is Adriel, and his mate’s name is Filene.” Cinder peeked over as Angie typed on the small keyboard attached to her iPad, where she took notes. “Then, you have Jesuit, the falcon prince, and his mate, Danika, and the male who shares her, the white lion prince Chance; Midas, the tiger king; and Tosh the dragon prince, and neither of them are mated. Of course I don’t have to tell you about Mishka, the master of the vampire coven.”
Angie giggled. “He’s on the news a lot.”
“Well, he’s really photogenic.”
“That’s code for gorgeous, right? I mean, those golden eyes.” Angie fanned herself exaggeratedly.
Cinder smiled. “If any of the big dogs, or their mates, call here and want to speak to Dr. Whalen, he will automatically take their call unless he’s in surgery, and any pack members too. Everyone else has to leave a message or call back.”
“Are you sad to leave your job?”
“Yes and no. There’s a lot to do in the pack. It’s been a while since you’ve had an alpha female who was actually a wolf, and I have a ton to learn. I miss the Wiccans, but we’re still in touch, and I won’t actually miss being up on the bluffs, naked, for the ceremonies.”
The front doors opened, and a young couple with a small, crying boy rushed in. The male was carrying the boy, who had a blood-soaked bandage on his arm. Cinder stood immediately, with Angie in tow, and she led the parents to one of the exam rooms while she sent Angie to get Dr. Whalen.
She sniffed and caught a scent of tiger.
“He was on the slide at the park, and he went too fast and slid off. He tried to grab hold of the slide, but his arm slipped underneath and was ripped open,” the father said as he set his son on the table but kept his arm protectively around him.
“Aw, poor sweetie,” Cinder said. As Dr. Whalen and two nurses rushed in, Cinder slipped out of the room to where Angie watched from the hallway. They walked back to the reception desk.
“My heart is pounding,” Angie said, as she took her seat.
“It’s like that here – really boring with the occasional emergency. You get used to it. Dr. Whalen is really great to work for, and because you’re a wolf, it will help put the supernatural patients at ease.”
“Could you heal that little boy?”
“No, because he’s a tiger and not a wolf. My lygisa won’t help him. If he were a wolf, though, yes.”
“Do any of the other groups have special shifter witches for themselves?”
“Not that I’m aware of, but I didn’t even know about lygisa until I turned into one.”
There was a creak as Solan, who had been sitting in the waiting room during Cinder’s shift straightened. He cracked his neck and walked to the desk. “I’m going to trade with Joe and patrol outside, Alpha.”
Cinder smiled. “Thanks, Solan.”
The two wolves traded places, and Solan walked briskly around the building as Joe settled into one of the chairs. Cinder’s phone beeped. She opened the drawer and pulled it from her purse.
“It’s from Arissa,” she said, reading the text from her Wiccan friend who was the beloved mate of a vampire named Brone. Keeping her voice low so Joe wouldn’t hear, she said, “Arissa said that you can come to the club before sunset on Saturday night. She’s going to send her friend Alli, a fallen angel, to bring you to the club and keep an extra eye on you.”
“I’ve never met a fallen angel before, have you?”
“Arissa has a guard who’s an angel too, his name is Darien. Because she works at the store two nights a month and has to be there before sunset, her mate sends her with four guards he chose and two dragons she is personally tied to. Two of her chosen guards are wolves, but they’re not from our pack, and the other is a leopard.”
Angie drummed her fingers on the desk. “I can’t believe I’ll actually get to meet vampires.”
“Alli will be your special guard, and Arissa will make sure that you’re well looked after. Don’t wear anything white, because that’s the color the humans who let the vampires feed on them wear. Also I am going to make you a protection ward just to be safe.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a little something extra to make sure you’re going to come back to the pack in one piece.”
Angie rubbed at her neck absently and stared out the front windows. “Adam wants me to go to a multi-pack gathering to try to find my mate. He even said we might host one in the spring.” At Cinder’s confused look, Angie clarified, “It’s when single wolves from neighboring packs gather in one place to basically see if any of them are mates. Our pack hasn’t ever hosted one.”
“It makes you nervous?”
“Adam wants me mated. I think he doesn’t want to worry about me anymore.”
Cinder gave Angie a hug. “He’ll always worry about you because you’re his sister. I’m sure he just wants you to be happy.”
Angie said nothing, but her risen brow was evidence that she didn’t really believe the sunshine Cinder was trying to blow her direction. She didn’t know what it was like to have a protective older brother, but she did know that Adam had good intentions when it came to his sister.
A young male entered the clinic, and their conversation stopped as he signed in. A discreet scent told her that he was a falcon.
“Dr. Whalen is dealing with an emergency. It could be a little while,” Cinder told him.
“That’s okay,” he said, running his hand through his dark hair. “I need to get a physical for my job, and this is my only free night. I don’t mind waiting.”
Cinder told him to have a seat as she took the paperwork he handed to her. She let Angie fill it out for the doctor and make copies, and then they discussed the filing system. The evening passed quickly, and they weren’t able to pick up their conversation again, but Cinder was confident that Angie would be safe.
The following morning, Adam gave Cinder the oldest book of pack laws he had, and she sat on the couch in his office while he worked and read. In the old, old days, the pack had rules for everything, from how old pups should begin their hunting training to divvying up the patrol duties.
Adam sat down next to her after a few hours and kissed the top of her head. “How’s it going?”
“Pretty good. This book reads kind of like a diary with rules sprinkled in between. The alpha who wrote it gives reasons for all of the laws. Like this one, where the pups can’t begin training for hunting until they’re twelve, because a ten-year-old pup was chasing a rabbit and fell down an embankment and got hurt. The alpha said that he was too young to hunt and pay attention to his surroundings at the same time, so an age limit was made.”
Adam leaned over and looked at the open page. “Guidelines keep the pack safe. A lot of it is common sense, but there are always people who don’t have enough of it and need some help.”
She closed the book and set it aside, snuggling against him. “Our kids will shift, right?”
“We’re both shifters, why wouldn’t they?”
“I wasn’t born a wolf, though. My shift came through the power of my lygisa.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re not a Wiccan anymore. You’re a shifter, and that means that what you are at the core of your being is a shifter. It’s my understanding that our sons will be alpha-powerful and, if we should have any daughters, they will become lygisa when they meet their mates.”
“If?”
He shrugged. “Male births are more prevalent than females. It has to do with how dominant our species is. For every ten males, only one female is born. Add in the number of non-shifters because of human mates, and that means even fewer females that have the capability of creating shifting children.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that unless our pack suddenly starts having a lot of baby girls, the next generation is going to be fighting for eligible females. And that means eventually there won’t be wolf shifters, because the males will l
ook elsewhere for mates and pure wolves will become a thing of the past, even with our very long lives.”
“That totally bums me out.”
He leaned, pushing her flat to her back. “We can just have a lot of kids, sweetheart, and cross our fingers for females.”
He nuzzled under her ear with a soft growl that sent shivers racing up and down her spine. She eased her hands under his shirt and ran them up his strong back. “I like the sound of that.”
Their lips met, and her wolf howled in happiness. She put aside the thoughts of the future state of the pack and the idea that their sons might end up fighting over females and concentrated on her sexy mate.
She found it difficult to believe that only a month ago she’d thought she was happy, living a life with no real emotional entanglements. The truth was, though, that her happiness now was proof that she’d never really known what being truly happy was. She couldn’t explain the soul-deep connection to Adam, but she knew that she’d never really been complete because a part of her heart had been missing and she hadn’t even realized it.
Somewhere between him making her friends disappear and coming to save her, he’d shown her that being a mate meant being there in every capacity. It wasn’t just about love; it was about commitment and loyalty. She had a lot to learn about being a wolf, but she had a great teacher who was currently slowly unzipping her jeans.
“I’m so lucky,” she whispered, as he kissed the space just below her navel.
He gave her jeans an experimental tug. “I’m the lucky one, sweetheart.”
She mentally declared it a tie as she stroked her fingers through his hair and bit her lip while he pulled her jeans down her legs. She’d found heaven in the arms of an alpha male, and she never wanted to be anywhere else.
The End
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Bad Boy Alphas
My alpha isn't the only bad boy looking for love, the Bad Boy Alphas series continues with The Alpha's Justice (Huntville Pack Book 2) by Michelle Fox!
What’s an alpha to do when he’s found his fated mate, but she reacts to the news by kicking him in the balls?
Gretchen Halbmond became a diehard Daddy’s girl the day her mother ran out on them both. She doesn’t believe in love and isn’t looking for it, but when her ailing father is attacked and left bloody by wolves on the wrong side of the law, she goes out in search of what she does believe in: Justice.
Sheriff Talon Garde has way too much on his plate. Humans have breached shifters' carefully guarded privacy and are about to go public. If he can’t stop them, what happened to Gretchen’s father is going to be the least of everyone’s worries.
More importantly, despite Talon’s rep as a bad ass alpha whose growl strikes fear in the hearts of criminals, Gretchen’s scent makes him go all squishy inside. She’s THE ONE, he’s sure of it. There’s just that small matter of convincing Gretchen it’s pointless to fight fate…and surviving the way she fights it.
Standalone novel with NO cliffhanger.
Michelle Fox’s Blog
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Contact R. E. Butle r
Website: http://www.rebutlerauthor.com
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @rebutlerauthor
Facebook: www.facebook.com/R.E.ButlerAuthorPage
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Also from R. E. Butler
Wiccan-Were-Bear Novella Series
A Curve of Claw
A Flash of Fang
A Price for a Princess
A Bond of Brothers
A Bead of Blood
A Twitch of Tail
A Promise on White Wings
A Slash of Savagery
Awaken a Wolf
The Wolf’s Mate Series
The Wolf’s Mate Book 1: Jason & Cadence
The Wolf’s Mate Book 2: Linus & The Angel
The Wolf’s Mate Book 3: Callie & The Cats
The Wolf’s Mate Book 4: Michael & Shyne
The Wolf’s Mate Book 5: Bo & Reika
The Wolf’s Mate Book 6: Logan & Jenna
The Wolf’s Mate Book 7: Lindy & The Wulfen
The Necklace Chronicles
The Tribe’s Bride
The Gigolo’s Bride
Ashland Pride Series
Seducing Samantha (Ashland Pride One)
Loving Lachlyn (Ashland Pride Two)
Marking Melody (Ashland Pride Three)
Redeeming Rue (Ashland Pride Four)
Saving Scarlett (Ashland Pride Five)
Hyena Heat Series
Every Night Forever (Hyena Heat One)
Every Dawn Forever (Hyena Heat Two)
Every Sunset Forever (Hyena Heat Three)
Wilde Creek Series
Mate of Her Heart (Book One)
The Alpha’s Heart (Book Two)
The Protector’s Heart (Book Three)
The Omega’s Heart (Book Four)
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