by Celene Lowe
The
Wolf
Inside
Me
by
Celene Lowe
MADONNA
Copyright 2014
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
This book contains adult themes, explicit language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature audiences.
DONNA
COPYRIGHT
Please respect the work of this author. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any similarities to events or situations are also coincidental.
The publisher and author acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks and locations mentioned in this book. Trademarks and locations are not sponsored or endorsed by trademark owners.
©2014 by Celene Lowe
All Rights Reserved
Mobilisim
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Chapter One
Selina
"Selina!"
My mother was shrieking from the back room, her cigarette-strained voice strangled and raspy. I pricked up my ears, straining to hear her over the noise of the bar. There were too many conversations swirling around me and I struggled to focus on just her.
It was Saturday night, always our busiest, but my mother refused to hire anyone else to help with the crowd. She didn't trust people, didn't trust anyone but her own flesh and blood.
That's how she kept me tethered to the bar.
"Yes, Mom!" I chirped. I hoped she couldn't hear what I really thought, but in nineteen years my mother has never read my thoughts. I could be angry around her but as long as I masked it well, I was okay.
Masking it was a problem, though. I looked down and saw that my fists were clenched. The awful crawling sensation under my skin was annoying but manageable.
"Table fourteen ordered nachos fifteen minutes ago. Quit flirting and get your fat ass over there."
I blinked. Tears pricked at my eyes, and that made me even angrier.
I wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I knew I could handle her cheap insults most days. But tonight I was just too tired to keep up my normal defenses. I was nineteen years old and my back ached like an old lady's from standing behind the bar twelve hours a day. My feet were freaking killing me.
I leaned back, pressing my fist into the small of my back to work out a kink and I heard a low whistle from the one of the loggers seated at the bar.
I whipped my head around to see who was ogling me. The man lifted his pint glass and waggled his eyebrows suggestively, letting his eyes fall straight down from my round face to my generous breasts.
Harmless. I sniffed the air, testing him for danger. There was no malice in his eyes and no aggression in his thoughts. I relaxed slightly and shot him a smile.
Times like these I was grateful for my talents.
Other times not so much.
How can I explain it? I barely understand myself. The best I can tell is that there is a part of the world that lies unseen to most other people, but to me it is as clear as the nose on my face. People's intentions, I know them, usually before they're aware of them themselves. It has made it really hard to trust anyone. I was always on high alert.
"Selina!" My mother sounded even angrier. If such a thing was possible.
I sniffed again. My mother was really pissed. I needed to smooth things over. "Sorry Mom!" I shouted, then listened for a second. Like a radio tuning in through static, I narrowed in on her until I found her frequency. The alcohol dulled everything about her until she was as indistinct in my head as my childhood memories. But I could still tell when she was about to blow up. And she was teetering on the edge of that right now. "I've got it right now, Mom!" I called. "I'll get it right out...Mommy"
As usual the word stuck in my throat. But my mother liked it when I called her that. I sacrificed everything to keep you safe, girl. You needed discipline and a firm hand and that's what I gave you. Where would you be without me?
Where would I be? I thought grimly. Anywhere but here.
As usual, that thought brought with it a frission of fear along with a strange, crawling feeling. Like I needed to run. It was another one of those feelings that I couldn't quite put in to words. Just that sometimes it feels like my skin is stretched too tight over my frame. Like something bigger inside of me is trying to come out. I think my mother knows what it is. I could tell by the way she would grab me when I got the "crawlies" as I called them as a kid. Stop it right now, Selina. You get ahold of yourself.
Get ahold of yourself, I echoed in my head. It was a mantra that I lived with, my mother's words sounding in my head like they were my own thoughts. And her words were always filled with fear.
Don't ever go into the woods.
Don't forget who you are. You're human. You're my little girl.
Don't ever lose control of yourself.
Don't let anyone get too close to you. You'll only hurt them.
I gritted my teeth as I balanced the tray of nachos and carefully stepped out into the crush of men. My heightened senses made moving through the crowd without upending the food an elegant dance. For a big girl, I'm pretty damn graceful.
"Here you are! Sorry about the wait!" I lowered the tray to the table while flashing my most dazzling smile, hoping that my charm would make them forget how cold the nachos were.
I froze when I finally set down the tray and looked at the table. Four men sat there, loggers by the looks of their clothes, but they were the biggest and frankly the handsomest, loggers I had ever seen. They were squeezed into our tiny booth, looking ridiculously oversized.
Then one of them turned to me. When his green eyes hit mine I shuddered as a bolt of pure desire electrified my core. I felt his intentions swirling around me like a whirlwind and every single one of them was focused on me.
Steadying myself on the table, I tried to calm the thumping of my heart. Get ahold of yourself, Selina. Don't lose control.
But there was something inside of me that was bursting to get out. It had been woken from a dreamless sleep like it had been summoned and it was those green eyes that called its name.
Chapter Two
Zev
"Stop the truck!"
Marrok growled, but immediately pulled over to the side of the road. "We ain't got time for this shit," he muttered, speaking his words so that Zev could hear just how irritated he was.
But Zev didn't give a shit. He rolled down the manual window and sniffed the air. His wolf leapt inside of him, itching to be freed. But this wasn't the right time. They were in town, the human's territory, and they were all crammed into Marrok's broken down pickup truck. This would be a very bad time to shift into a wolf.
"We gotta get a move on," Gray thought at him. The old man was more wolf than human. He was agitated by being in the human's territory, no matter if their mission dictated it or not.
"Will you shut the fuck up?" Zev barked. The three other men fell back into resentful silence. They recognized him as their alpha in spite of Zev's young age. "Th
ere's a wolf here."
"Here?" Dolf piped up, speaking his words out of deference to Zev. "There ain't no wolves in Alpine Springs. If there were, we wouldn't have to be doing what we're doin'."
"I swear I smell one," Zev retorted, leaning his head further into the cool mountain air. It was there, a faint scent of one of their own, but unfamiliar too. "I'm getting out."
He slid from the passenger door, confident that his three fellow wolves would grumble but follow. They had a few hours until nightfall. Their sabotage mission could wait.
Zev paced quickly across the gravel parking lot of the tumbledown bar. The scent was rising off of it in waves, calling to him. It flowed over his nostrils and into his throat so that he could taste it on his tongue. It permeated every cell in his body, drawing him forward like he was being pulled on a tether. He didn't understand it.
"Zev!" Gray shouted in his mind. "We can't go in there!"
Zev had reached the door and placed his hands on it. This was as close as the four of them had been to actual humans in months. The noise, the smells, the cacophony of thoughts and feeling and intentions, they whirled around him, making him momentarily dizzy. He longed for the peace of the woods.
But that scent wouldn't let him go.
"Let's just go in," he thought to all three of them. "We're shifted into human form right now, they won't know and they won't notice, I guarantee. Humans are too caught up in themselves to really see what's going on around them."
"That's why they're letting the mountain be destroyed," Dolf thought darkly.
"Stupid fucking humans," Marrok agreed."
"We're dealing with it," Zev thought, and let them feel the finality of his decision. Maybe he wasn't acting wisely right now, but that smell was driving his wolf crazy. He felt it shudder and slam against his skin, howling to be let out of its human prison. The only way he could see about calming it was to find the source of that scent.
Inside of the bar was even more confusing than the outside. The wash of sensations flooded over him, a cacophony of sights, smells and noises. He heard Dolf's mind whimper and he sent him thoughts of strength and coping. "Find a quiet corner," he instructed Gray. "Shove them outta the way if you have to."
He felt his second in command move forward, but his eyes were locked across the bar. The source of that intoxicating scent was there, shining like a beacon in front of him. As he looked at her, he felt the whole world collapse down into a pinpoint, with her being the entire reason for its being. She was all there was and suddenly he recognized why her smell had called to him from so far away.
His mate. He was looking at his mate.
The older wolves in the pack had told him stories of this. Tales of that moment when your mate was revealed to you. He had always scoffed at the idea that it would be so clean and easy. That it was like the clouds would part and a shaft of pure sunlight would fall onto the face of the one you were fated to be with.
And yet here she was. Through the gloom of the bar he saw her spotlighted, her dark hair falling down her back, her eyes as blue as the sky in October, her generously curved body made for cupping close to his. He felt desire like he had never experienced before tug at his groin even as his heart ached with longing.
"Your mate?" Dolf said softly in his mind. "Well fuck, why didn't you say? We'll stay then."
"I don't know what to do," Zev thought humbly. He was the alpha, the leader. He was the one who made the decisions. He didn't want his packmates to see him so indecisive.
"Whatever you need to do," Marrok spoke, clapping a hand on his shoulder. Zev felt the warmth of Marrok's wolf pulse beneath his skin and felt some calm return.
"Let's order some food and see if we can get her to come to us," Zev decided quickly. Gray was already sitting in a booth, having snarled at an embracing couple until they scurried away.
Marrok went to the counter and waved down the sallow faced woman behind there. Zev sat rigidly in the seat, unused to having to sit at a table. His wolf was going crazy to know that his mate was right there, only feet away from him. But he needed to proceed with caution. Why was a wolf shifter working the counter of a divey bar instead of loping through the forest like the animal she was?
Zev steadily ripped his napkin into tiny pieces as he kept his focus trained on her. If he didn't keep his hands busy, he would shift right here in the booth, revealing himself as a wolf and ruining centuries of secrecy. "Let's talk about something else," Gray thought to him. "You need to steady yourself."
"I want to know our next move...." Marrok interjected then thought better of it. "Please."
Zev exhaled inwardly. As much as it pained him to drag his thoughts away from his mate, there was business to be discussed.
"The loggers are getting suspicious of us," he thought, and heard his packmates perk up attentively. "I don't know how much longer we can safely work on the inside."
"Good," thought Dolf. "I'm tired of this low-level sabotage crap. Let's just blow up all the dozers and be done with it."
"Then we'd be no better than the Sandulf pack," Zev thought darkly and he heard his packmates' minds growl. The Sandulf had lost their humanity ages ago. They viewed the encroachment of the loggers on to their territory as a declaration of war, putting at risk the secrecy the Falls Creek pack treasured. As alpha of the Falls Creek Pack, Zev had sworn to the Sandulf that they would drive the loggers off the mountain without revealing themselves. But the Sandulf were growing impatient. Radulf, the alpha of the Sandulf had made it clear that if the Falls Creek methods didn't work, then he would be ready to apply his own.
With teeth and claws and blood.
"It's difficult to bring supplies up here," Zev explained patiently. "If the operation becomes too expensive to continue, they'll abandon it and our territory will be left alone. We just have to keep at it...cautiously," he admonished them as he sensed their grumbling impatience. "It won't be long now," he encouraged them and let them feel some of his resolve to buck up their own.
He was absorbed in sending out that strength, so he didn't feel her approach. Not until she was only a few feet away from him. But then her presence hit him like a lightning bolt.
She moved with the easy, loping grace of a wolf, but her thoughts were not available to him. She's been human too long, he suddenly realized. Maybe her whole life. Maybe she doesn't even know what she really is.
He needed to get her in to the forest as quickly as he could. It was only there on the side of the mountain, with the power that radiated out from the earth, that he could reawaken the wolf inside of her.
But first he needed to introduce himself.
Chapter Three
Selina
I tore my gaze from his, trying desperately to find something else to focus on. The sensations inside of me were terrifying. Was I losing my mind?
I forcibly turned my head and tried to take in the rest of the group. The three other men barely acknowledged my existence, diving for the plate of nachos like drowning men after a life preserver. I swear I heard one of them actually snarl as he fought for the greasy, congealed chips.
But the green-eyed man wouldn't allow me to turn from him. His rumbling voice called me back in spite of my struggle to free myself from his magnetic pull. "No problem about the wait," he smiled politely, flashing a row of pearly white teeth. "I see you have a rush on. You guys could really use some help." I felt his gaze travel down my body and I shivered in spite of the heat. Even in the low light of the bar his eyes still flashed like emerald beacons. "Is it really only you working?" he asked, but his tone sounded like he wanted to know something more.
I struggled to keep my voice even and professional. I could see his jaw working as he bit into the food. There was something about the way the strong muscle stretched powerfully over the sharp outline of his cheekbone that held my gaze and made the crawling sensations inside of me even worse. "Yep," I sighed, shaking my head to force myself to stop staring. "Me and my mother."
"You're the only
bar in town," he said incredulously. He grabbed another chip and I saw that his hands were huge. He could have covered the entire platter with one giant paw.
"I know," I nodded, amazed at how steady my voice was. I didn't sound like I was slowly crumbling to pieces, even though it should have. "It kind of sucks."
He leaned forward and cast a conspiratorial look around him. A wicked grin spread across his face and I felt myself smile too. "Don't wanna say this too loud, but this whole town sucks. The people are horrible."
I burst out laughing. "You got that right," I agreed. "I can't wait to get out of here."
"Where do you want to go?" He was looking at me with frank interest, something I was not used to seeing in a man. He was looking at me like what I had to say was the most important thing he had ever heard. I had been flirting with guys for tips since I was old enough to have my mother shove me behind the bar, so I thought I knew everything about the game of men. I knew how to ward them off; to keep them just interested enough to tip me but off-kilter enough to leave me alone.
It never occurred to me that I could actually enjoy a man's attention. In fact, it flustered me slightly and I felt an awkward flutter in my tummy. My body was sent into hormonal overdrive like a silly virgin.
Probably because I was a silly virgin.
I tried to calm my fluttering hands. I leaned forward, placing a hand over my cleavage, but his eyes went there anyway. "Anywhere," I breathed, finding that I didn't mind him seeing me like that. "I've never been out of this town."