Warrior Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 3)

by Amy Green

  He grunted. “I suppose.”

  She traced the letter on the back of his neck again, and he went still, as he sometimes did when she touched him. “So if you had a son, he’d be given the same mark?”

  He was so silent for so long that she thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he said, “I won’t have a son.”

  Her throat was dry. “Why not?”

  “Because you need a mate to have a son.”

  The sting of that surprised her. Some woman, somewhere, would be Devon’s mate. A mate is a wolf listening to his heart, to his blood and his bones, and choosing his other half for the rest of his existence, Heath had told her once—it seemed years ago now. What would it be like, to have someone like that? She’d never know. “So how does that work?” she asked, hoping she sounded at least a little bit casual. “You just wait around, and when you meet your mate, you know it’s her?”

  He didn’t turn to look at her, but reached to the floor for his jeans. “It’s the wolf that knows, but that’s pretty much it.”

  “And in the meantime…”

  “In the meantime, you pass the time with other women,” Devon said roughly, standing up and pulling his jeans on. “But that’s not what I’m doing.”

  She had never pretended this was anything but casual—had made that clear—but she still felt offended that she was the fill-in woman. “I don’t understand. It seems like that’s what you’re doing to me.”

  “It isn’t,” he said, giving her a dark look before he bent to the floor to find his shirt. He seemed almost angry, though not at her.

  “Devon, you can tell me the truth.”

  He froze, looking down at her. He was holding his shirt in his hand, though he hadn’t put it on yet. “Tell you the truth? You think I’m lying?”

  Nadine shrugged. This conversation hurt. “I think you’re not telling me something.”

  “This,” he said, the anger in his voice low and controlled. He pointed to the tattoo of flames on his arm, his hand, his neck. “This isn’t a pack marking. You asked me about this, when we were up on the mountain.”

  She could feel her heart speeding up. “You didn’t have that when I arrested you five years ago.” Visible tattoos were always logged as part of the description on file when a prisoner was arrested.

  “I didn’t have it then because I didn’t need it,” Devon said. “I do now. I’ve needed it every day since.”

  “You need a tattoo? What does that mean?”

  “When a wolf meets his mate, he knows her,” Devon said. “The problem is, she doesn’t know him. She may not see a reason to pay any attention to him. She may not even like him.” He paused. “She may even be a cop who arrests him for murder.”

  Nadine’s stomach dropped. She stared at him.

  “Once a wolf meets his mate, he can’t be with anyone else,” Devon continued. “He can’t look at anyone else. He can’t even consider it. It’s against everything in our nature to betray a mate, even if she hates you. And if she doesn’t want you, doesn’t even like you, it leaves you alone for as many years as it takes.” He pointed to the tattoo again. “And you burn.”

  “Devon,” she managed. God, that tattoo… that tattoo was about her. About them. She didn’t want to believe it. “That was five years ago. We met five years ago.”

  “Yes, it was.” He pulled the shirt on and tugged it down. “Now you’re starting to see.”

  “You didn’t…” She scrubbed her forehead, trying to make sense of her shock. Five years? He hadn’t been with anyone in five years because of her? “You didn’t say anything. Do anything.”

  “Do what?” he asked. “Kidnap you? Ask you on a date? I was scum to you. You would have said no. The only thing you wanted was to be rid of me as soon as possible.”

  He was right. She was ashamed of how simple she’d been, but that was a long time ago. “You never talked to me,” she said.

  “I’m talking to you now,” he said. “And I can already see in your face that the answer is still no.”

  “That isn’t fair,” she said. “You want me to—to just turn my life upside down? Like that? I have a job, responsibilities. I’m the sheriff, for God’s sake. I’m supposed to just become a—a werewolf mate?”

  “A mate is never just a mate,” he replied. “That isn’t her identity. She’s herself, and she’s a Donovan, the same as any full-blooded alpha. But she has to choose it. It has to be what she wants, and if it isn’t, then there’s nothing more to do.”

  Her head was spinning. Choose? She was supposed to tell her father, her fellow cops, the mayor, the people of Grant County that she was a werewolf’s mate? Was he supposed to live here, with her? Or she was supposed to go to Shifter Falls? Both seemed like a crazy fairy tale. “You’re asking too much,” she said to him. “I like you. A lot. You’re… you’re amazing. But you’re asking too much.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. He leaned forward and tilted her chin with his fingertips, staring into her face with such intensity she felt like crying. “I’m asking you for nothing. I’ve had nothing for five years, and I’ll go home to nothing now. I’m used to it. It’s how I live, until I go rogue and I either end myself or my brothers put me down.”

  She stared at him, shocked.

  “It doesn’t matter what you do,” he said. “I am your wolf. It doesn’t matter if you never speak to me again, if you find someone else, if you get married and have kids. It doesn’t matter if you don’t love me, if you hate me. It doesn’t matter if I never see you again until we both die. I’m still your wolf. That’s how it works.”

  “Devon,” she whispered.

  But he let her go. He turned away. And a minute later, she heard the door close behind him.

  He was gone.

  21

  Two Months Later

  The woman in the mirror was definitely Nadine Walker, sheriff of Grant County. The uniform fit. She had the hat under her arm. It was the same face, pretty enough but glamour-free, and the same braid of brown hair. She’d looked like this for as long as she could remember; she’d never had a wild period in high school, with lip piercings or purple mohawks. In fact, she’d been teased more than once about her braid, even in high school. Because she’d worn her hair this way even then.

  She put her hat on the ladies’ room counter and lifted the braid from her neck, looking at it in the mirror. She didn’t wear it because her hair was particularly long, but because she’d always thought it was pretty—plus it was a convenient hairstyle she didn’t have to think much about. Maybe I should go blonde, she thought. she thought. That would shock all of those men out there.

  She pictured it for a second, their faces when she walked in one morning as blonde as Marilyn Monroe. They’d probably send her for a psychiatric evaluation, because everyone knew that if she so much as changed her hair color, Sheriff Nadine Walker had probably lost her mind.

  She dropped the braid again. She wouldn’t go blonde. It was too wild, and a hairstyle like that was frivolous and probably a load of trouble. Her daddy had raised a sensible girl, not a foolish one.

  Maybe she’d get a tattoo instead. She tugged at the collar of her uniform shirt, showing a small slice of her neck. Flames, perhaps. Something that showed she was on fire.

  If she hates you… you burn.

  That would shock everyone too, but only if they could see it. Maybe she’d get a wolf on the cheek of her ass instead. There was no chance anyone would see that one, probably until she was dead and being dressed for her funeral.

  She didn’t really want anyone to see her naked, ever again, unless it was Devon Donovan.

  She didn’t know how he was. Where he was. She hadn’t contacted him, hadn’t gone to Shifter Falls. There had been so much to do in those days after the disaster in the mountains. Tate’s funeral, for one. Then Ben had taken retirement straight out of the hospital, instead of coming back to work. That had left her with no deputies, and she’d had to recruit.

  The mayo
r had taken a deep interest in which deputies were hired, which was both unusual and unpleasant. He had a particular candidate he wanted her to hire, and since she wasn’t the sole person making the decision, he’d had his way. So she ended up with a deputy named Gary, who she was almost certain reported back to the mayor about her every move. The other new deputy, Seth, was competent enough, but he was the father of young kids, and work came second to his home life. Which was funny, because over the years she’d heard that plenty of times as reason she, as a woman, shouldn’t be sheriff at all. What will happen when she starts having kids? She won’t do the job.

  I’m getting cynical, she thought. She’d been a single spinster cop for so long, no one even thought she’d bail on the job to go have babies anymore. How shocked would they all be if she stood up one day and told them she’d had an offer to be the mate of a werewolf five years her junior, and that they’d had incredible sex, and he wanted her to live with him and have his children?

  No one would believe that either. She was starting to wonder if it had ever happened, herself.

  There was a polite knock on the door. “Sheriff? You in there?”

  Nadine sighed. Since she was the only woman on the force, the ladies’ room was her sanctuary, the one place she could be alone at work. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “Oh, okay.” It was Seth, one of her new deputies. “You’ve been in there a while. The mayor and your dad are here.”

  Her father? She was expecting the mayor—he’d requested a meeting. But no one had mentioned her daddy coming. “I’ll be right out.”

  Seth wasn’t mistaken. Both Mayor Archer and her daddy, Aaron Walker, were sitting in her small office when she walked in. They were chatting quietly, and something the mayor said made her father laugh.

  She shook the mayor’s hand, then kissed her father’s cheek. “I didn’t know you were coming here, Daddy.”

  He looked a little uncomfortable, which was a bad sign. Her father was one of the friendliest people she knew. “Well, I know Michael,” he said, indicating Mayor Archer, “and he suggested I come by for this meeting.”

  Nadine looked from one man to the other. “I thought this meeting was just routine,” she said to the mayor.

  Mayor Archer met her gaze, but his own expression was solemn. “Nadine, have a seat.”

  This wasn’t good. The mayor looked calm, in his well-tailored suit and tie, but her father looked pained, like he had a burr in his pants. He wore navy Dockers and a flannel button-down shirt—his usual outfit in retirement. He’d been a cop, but that was in a different county, and he wasn’t anymore. She hadn’t known her daddy knew the mayor so well, and she couldn’t think of a reason for her daddy to be here right now.

  So she did as she was told and took a seat behind her desk. She put her hat down and kept her chin up. “What’s this about?” she asked.

  “You know we’ve been investigating this rogue werewolf,” Mayor Archer said.

  Nadine blinked. “There is no rogue werewolf.”

  “Considering we have several dead bodies that were ripped open, the people of Grant County believe there is,” Mayor Archer replied.

  She couldn’t believe she was repeating this yet again. “A werewolf killed Christopher Wagner, yes,” she said. “But Christopher Wagner killed both of the others. We have the evidence of that now.”

  They’d gone back to the mine with a search team and combed the area until they found Wagner’s campsite containing his belongings. Included in the few items that were the only things the man owned was a long, sharp filleting knife, with traces of both Kyle Bryant’s and Scott Kraemer’s blood on the handle. Wagner, never believing he’d be caught, had been careless, washing only the blade and not the handle.

  “That evidence is circumstantial without a confession,” Mayor Archer said.

  Nadine stared at him. “Considering the suspect is dead, because he died in an attempt to kill his second police officer, I think a confession is out of the question,” she said. It had been good police work—hard, but good. She herself had been part of the search party, and had spent so many hours in the cold rain on the mountain that she’d been sick for a week afterward. She looked at her father. “Daddy, back me up here. You know we did it by the book.”

  Her father shrugged. “He was a vagrant, and mentally ill. He could have found the knife.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Nadine said. “Daddy, I—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mayor Archer said. “What matters are the optics.” Nadine silently wished she wasn’t stuck in a conversation with a man who said optics, but apparently she was. “The deaths were gruesome, and made to look like werewolf deaths. And there is no question that Wagner himself had his throat ripped out by one of those things. The coroner nearly had to put his head back on.” He leaned forward in his chair. “The point is, Nadine, people are scared. They know those things live only a few miles away, and can come through the mountains at any time. And they know one of them has a taste for human blood.”

  Nadine was biting back her words so hard that her jaw hurt. “What is your point?”

  “My point is that my constituents are concerned about this animal, which makes me concerned about this animal. And that makes me concerned about you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Because you’re the sheriff, and you don’t seem to be looking for him at all. In fact, I’m quite certain you not only know who he is, but that you’re the reason he was in those woods in the first place. And your father agrees with me.”

  Nadine tore her gaze from the mayor and looked at her father. “Daddy?”

  But his gaze had gone stern. “You’ve been consorting with one of those things, Nadine,” he said. “The evidence is there.”

  “Consorting?” Did they know about the night Devon had spent in her apartment? Was that what they were talking about? If she was about to get a lecture on her sex life from both her father and the mayor of Pierce Point, she was going to get up and run out of here as fast as she could. “This is crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Mayor Archer leaned back in his chair again. “Tate’s murder was called in by an anonymous man,” he said. “Someone claiming to be a hiker in the woods. This conscientious hiker, it seems, did not stick around to wait until the police got there, but simply left. So I had the call data dug up. It turns out that particular phone call was made from your phone.”

  Nadine stared at him in shock. She remembered crouching in the woods, handing Devon Donovan her phone. Telling him to run until he found a signal and call it in. He’d said he was a hiker who had found the body.

  Shit. Oh, shit.

  “So tell me,” Mayor Archer said, his calm gaze fixed on her, “Who was the man who borrowed your phone in the middle of the wilderness?”

  She said nothing. There was nothing to say, really. She wasn’t going to tell the truth, and she wasn’t prepared to lie. So that left her with silence.

  “Nadine,” her father broke in. He looked stiff and so, so disappointed she felt like crying. “You took one of those beasts up into the mountains with you. A werewolf. A shifter. A civilian. You took him with you on a police investigation.”

  “It wasn’t a police investigation,” she managed, her voice sounding weak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Not yet, it wasn’t. We just had some information about an abandoned silver mine, and we thought—”

  “We?” the mayor asked. “Who is we?”

  She was getting it now. She snapped her mouth shut. “I’m not saying anything else.”

  “You had a lead, and instead of talking to one of your deputies, you talked to a shifter,” her father said. “You took him with you alone, and did God knows what with him.” His cheeks were red. “That’s not the cop I taught. That’s not the girl I raised.”

  This was crazy. “Daddy, I’m thirty-one,” Nadine said. “You have no say in who I spend my time with. I was investigating a case, not picking a date to the junior prom
.”

  “So you admit it?” her father said.

  Nadine looked from him to the mayor again. Mayor Archer looked concerned, but secretly pleased. This had been his plan from the beginning, she realized. This was why he’d brought her father here. It made things emotional, made her look worse. Put her in the position of having to admit breaking the rules or lying to her daddy.

  So she took a breath and kept her calm the best she could. She had the feeling she was going down today, but she would go down fighting. “It wasn’t a lead,” she said clearly, looking straight at the mayor. “What I had was a tip from a source. I needed my source to lead the way.”

  “That isn’t how it comes across,” Mayor Archer said smoothly. “Not at all. It comes across that you went into the mountains with your werewolf lover, and in the end both Tate and your suspect were dead. And now you’re covering for him.”

  She could feel her cheeks getting hot. He was twisting everything based on his precious optics. “What do you want?” she asked. “Disciplinary action?”

  Mayor Archer shook his head. “That won’t do, Sheriff. The people have trusted you to keep the law in Grant County. But if you’re a woman who consorts with shifters”—he made it sound like she was some kind of slut, taking part in shifter orgies—“instead of protecting us from them, we can’t trust you anymore. Your shifter boyfriend tore Christopher Wagner’s throat out in front of witnesses. He could kill any one of us. And you won’t tell us who he is.” He gave her a look that was both disapproving and sympathetic. “There’s nothing else to be done. I’m afraid you’ll have to resign.”

  “Or what?” she said.

  “Well.” Mayor Archer glanced at her father, who was still silent. “I could certainly look at legal action for endangering your prisoner. An arrest isn’t out of the question.”

  And suddenly, Nadine was done. She was sitting with the mayor and her own father, both of whom were stopping just short of calling her a slut, fighting to keep a job that no one wanted her to do anymore. If she wasn’t forced out today, she would be forced out tomorrow, or the day after that. That was how it worked. “Who is it?” she asked the mayor.