The Wolf’s Concubine
Erin St. Charles
Copyright @ 2018 by Erin Martin
The Wolf’s Concubine
Gods and Concubines #2
Cover art by Erin Dameron-Hill
Editing by Raw Books Editing
Formatted by Toni Jackson
ISBN: 978-1-7323959-2-3
ASIN: B07JLY88QS
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or within the public domain. Any resemblance to actual events or actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental. No portion of this book may be reprinted, including by any electronic or mechanical means, or in information storage and retrieval systems, without express written permission from the use of brief quotations in a review.
Fated mates.
A fake engagement
What could go wrong?
Phelan
I met my fated mate and she turned my world upside down. She doesn’t believe we are fated to be together, but our chemistry can’t be denied. I thought when I met my fated mate we’d fall into each other’s arms, consummate our union in blissful passion, and step into the future as one.
Instead, she knifed me.
Lola
I have always taken care of myself, thank you very much, and even though I was attacked by the same creature that has been kidnapping women in my city, I don’t need a bossy, overbearing wolf looking after me. I have a plan in motion for my life, and the plan doesn’t include being mated to my so-called “protector.” It’s true, he’s got that irresistible wolf charm and he’s sexier than hot, buttered sin, but I have been on my own since I was a little girl, and I know I’m the only person I can trust. The moment I get a chance to get away, I’ll peace out this pushy dude and the nosy people in this backwater pack town.
An enforcer with a hero complex. A woman who doesn’t need anyone. An inconvenient mating urge that cannot be denied.
To my father, Charlie Harold Martin
When I was a little girl, I asked you to be my Daddy, and you said yes.
I miss you, Dad.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Epilogue
The End
Other Titles by Erin St. Charles
Prologue
Before recorded history, Earth was settled by a small contingent of extraterrestrial refugees, fleeing persecution on their home world. These aliens were reclusive, inventive and long-lived. They possessed technology far beyond what the native humans could comprehend. The early humans exalted these beings and worshipped them as gods.
Using their advanced technology and biological samples collected during their travels, the aliens set about manipulating the local inhabitants to suit their needs, creating servant classes of shifters, demigods and psychics with unusual traits to protect the gods and their privileged place in society. The gods coexisted peacefully with humankind.
Until Prometheus.
In 1870, the gods and their secrets were betrayed by one of their own in what became known as the Prometheus Incident. Latent psychics went underground, slipping into the human population to the extent that their unique culture was lost. The human concubines and their demi offspring were given official legal protection for the first time in history, leading to the legalized sex trade and with it, the armies of social workers, enforcement agencies, and the other industries created to protect and serve them.
Shifters were exposed, earning the suspicions of their human neighbors and leading to decades of segregation and forced relocation to reservations. Some shifters resisted resettlement and founded shifter towns. The oldest shifter town in the United States is Perdition, Texas, which is home to all subspecies of shifter, as well as the psychics and magic practitioners who prefer to live far from the prying eyes of most humans.
Chapter 1
Lola stepped out of the lusty confines of her workplace with a sigh of relief.
The bright neon sign from the Woodland Creatures Brothel throbbed in garish flashes into the night, blaring temptation onto the sidewalks. The sight was common on Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas’s red-light district. After two years of working at the brothel, she should be used to the scent of lust that clung to everything and everyone inside.
But it still got to her. The scents and the oppressive atmosphere of the brothel never went away. She filled her lungs with the brisk late winter air.
Lola trudged toward the Glide station, the scents of the club still hovering around her like an aura. She pulled her warm overcoat around herself to keep out the late-night chill.
She’d followed the same routine for almost two years. Tomorrow, she'd be back to work for another shift. She'd change into one of the slutty outfits she kept in her locker at work and clock in for her shift. For twelve hours, she'd ply the barflies with watered-down drinks and flirtatious looks while they waited for their choice of upstairs girl for the evening.
She sighed. Change clothes-clock in-serve drinks. Rinse and repeat. Four times a week. She'd work more, but that was the maximum number of shifts allowed to legal sex workers. The upstairs girls could only work three shifts a week. In the end, they didn't make much more than a really talented bar girl.
Which is what Lola was—talented at separating her clients from their greenbacks. Talented at titillation. Teasing, but not putting out. Every day brought her closer to reaching her financial goals and the day she wouldn’t have to walk home smelling like lust.
The wind kicked up and she pulled her coat closer, thankful she always changed into jeans and a t-shirt before leaving work, replacing the gravity-defying slut-shoes she sported during her shift with practical, comfy sneakers. When she'd put the shoes on, her calves had relaxed in painful gratitude.
She didn't notice the other establishments on Harry Hines any more. Lined up like department store windows filled with seasonal merchandise. Only these windows displayed the wares offered in the clubs: young, nubile women, nude and scantily clad. Lola herself had once been a window girl.
Her most memorable pose had been on an icy fake boulder wearing a toga. She'd enticed the customers by slowly opening her costume to expose her tits and cooter to passersby. Thank the gods those days were behind her.
The bright light of the elevated Glide appeared before her, only a block away. Heat lamps shined on the platform. Moths bumped against the bug screens, confused by the brightness against a moonless sky. She climbed the concrete steps to the platform.
&nb
sp; A chill pricked at her skin and she shivered in her coat. She frowned, uneasy, detecting something off about everything. She listened to the hum of the lights, the distant sounds of debauchery on the street below, and the pulsing rhythm of her heart. She didn't hear anything else, but knew she was being watched.
Without moving her head, Lola took in her surroundings. She casually adjusted her knit cap with her right hand, and with her left she fingered the blade she kept strapped to her left leg. If something went wrong, she could defend herself.
Her foster mother, Ruby, had told Lola her ability to sense danger was a sixth sense. Over the years, she’d found this ability had many names.
Clairsentience. Prey instinct. Spidey sense.
Lola could detect things that eluded the five human senses. Her abilities were the ghosts of many centuries of genetic tinkering by the gods, the space aliens who had colonized the earth millennia before.
Right now, she sensed danger.
"Who's there?" she called out sharply, forcing her voice to stay calm.
No one answered. But something was definitely there. Her voice didn't echo the way it should. Somewhere above her, someone—or something—dangerous blocked the sound of Lola's voice. She licked her lips nervously and steadied her breathing.
She glanced at the moths crashing into the lights and tried appear that she wasn't peering at the roof of the shelter to get a better look. As she got closer, she could tell the platform itself was deserted. Most brothel workers went home in AutoCabs these days, either in groups or in singles.
It didn't used to happen that way. It had started a few months earlier, after one of their own was abducted. The woman, Julie Wheeler, escaped by throwing herself into oncoming traffic, assuming her own faun shifter physiology would help her heal after the ordeal. Sex workers now avoided travelling alone, but Lola found that after twelve hours of intense interaction with other people, she needed time to herself. Besides, taking the Glide was cheaper than AutoCabs.
The Glide cars snaked into the station with a screech of metal wheels. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors opened with a hiss. The car was empty, and Lola let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She waited until the doors were about to close again before she hopped on the train.
The world went by in a blur of dark shapes highlighted with streaks of city lights. The Glide car swayed and Lola looked around to see if she was still alone. And she was. Completely alone.
With the persistent vibration of her danger instinct fading, Lola heaved a sigh of relief. Whatever had been back there hadn't followed her.
When the train pulled into the station near her home a few minutes later, Lola again paused before moving. At the open Glide door, something made her hesitate before stepping out. The doors started to close and she put out a hand when the doors were inches apart, causing the doors to bounce open again as the sensors prevented them from closing on her hand. She scrambled out of the train, her feet scraping the rough concrete platform, and silently chided herself for being uneasy over nothing.
She was looking forward to getting home and enjoying a hot shower, something to eat, then bed and sweet oblivion...until it was time to get up and go back to work again.
Another chill gripped her, but the air was utterly still. She breathed through the suffocating sensation of fear that overrode her senses. She was halfway down the steps when a wave of danger slammed into her. She staggered into the handrail, eyes on the long staircase leading from the platform to the street. It looked empty, but she knew something lurked there.
Goosebumps rose on her skin. She felt the same frisson of apprehension from when she'd boarded the train. She stroked the silver wristband of her Omni communications device, reassured by its presence should something bad happen to her. Taking a deep breath, she proceeded down the covered staircase, feeling the comforting weight of the switchblade strapped to her thigh.
A few steps from street level, she caught a dark shadow out of the corner of her eye. Lola grabbed her blade, fighting her own flight instinct, and let her body go lax as something landed on her shoulders.
Alarm shot through Phelan Cermak. He'd been on a routine mission to keep an eye on one of the sex-trade workers, Dolores Black. He watched from the safety of his old blue Tahoe as she got off the Omni and headed down the street, everything normal. Then she was attacked.
By the time his feet hit the pavement, she had brandished what appeared to be a totally illegal switchblade in one hand and was stabbing away at the scaly green creature perched on her shoulders. Its tail wound around her midsection like a boa constrictor.
He snarled in rage. A changeling. He'd been warned that one of these creatures might turn up to snatch the target, but he hadn't believed it.
Everyone knew changelings were an old wives’ tale, something told to small children to frighten them. He’d laughed when his cousin Bubba had warned him changelings were strong, mean fuckers.
Phelan rushed toward the altercation, adrenaline pumping at the sight of the petite woman struggling with the creature. Her blade stabbed at the scaly flesh and her face turned red under the smooth mahogany tone of her complexion. She grimaced and huffed with exertion as she struggled to breathe.
Tough little thing.
Tough, but inept. She fiercely stabbed at her assailant with one hand while clutching a beat-up fabric bag with the other. Using both hands to defend herself didn't seem to have occurred to her. Ear-splitting wails from the creature made him wince. Part of him wanted to watch the little warrior defend herself, but she clearly needed his help. Phelan charged in. The creature must have sensed Phelan's approach because it trained its large, bottomless eyes on him. Phelan shifted into his wolf form, clothes flying in all directions.
The creature furrowed its brow, cocking its head to one side in a look of genuine curiosity. Its dark lips curled away from fangs that were black at the roots, but alarmingly sharp and white at the tips. It hissed at Phelan as he charged it, then let out a high-pitched scream that almost made him stop in his tracks from the pain. He bit hard on the changeling's tail.
Even with the strength of his wolf's jaw, biting on the changeling's tail was like biting on a rawhide chew toy. Phelan struggled to gain enough traction to do damage, tightening his bite until his jaws strained, this time shaking his head to disrupt the creature's hold on the female.
It let out a startled, pained scream. The creature's tail muscles rippled and gave a tug against his teeth as it loosened the constriction around Lola's body. Phelan released the creature's tail long enough to open his jaws and get a better hold. This time when he bit down, bitter, rancid blood filled his mouth, the strong metallic taste making Phelan gag. The woman broke free from the creature's grip, sagging and falling to her knees, holding onto the ratty pile of rags in one hand, and the bloody switchblade in the other.
Phelan held onto the changeling and shook his head violently.
The creature suddenly gave a vicious snap of its tail and dislodged Phelan, who rolled and skidded into the side of a building, his claws scraping the concrete to stop his skid. Regaining his stance, he watched the creature bound over the canopy that protected the stairs to the Glide platform from the elements, moving too fast for him to catch. It jumped over the side and out of view, its long tail the last thing to disappear over the ridge of the shelter.
The woman sat on her haunches, catching her breath, still holding the switchblade and patting herself for injury. Phelan shifted back to human as he watched her. Relief ran through him when he didn't see any signs of bleeding. He touched her shoulder.
Instead of touching the rough wool of her coat, he felt a sharp pain across his palm. Puzzled, he turned his hand over and saw a bright streak of blood along the top of his palm, stretching from his index finger to his pinky. What the hell?
He looked at her, incredulous. She stared back at him, holding the bag and brandishing the blade. Her face was flushed and her eyes feral.
“Did you cut me?�
��
“And I’ll keep on cutting if you take another step closer.” Her gaze dropped from his eyes, boldly took in his nudity, and landed on his cock. “Next time, I may have to cut something you don’t want to be without.”
Chapter 2
This can't be good.
Lola could not tear her eyes away from the naked man standing on the sidewalk. He studied her with the piercing gaze of a predator, curious and assessing. And also, disbelieving.
“Did you cut me?” he’d said with incredulity—as if she had any choice.
His entire demeanor conveyed that it was perfectly normal to be naked on the street with dark red blood covering his mouth.
A horrible thought occurred to her. Was he with the...thing that had attacked her? Her gaze darted around, searching for the creature, terror chilling her blood
She looked back at the naked man to see him lift his head and sniff the air, nose twitching as if he were still shifted into his wolf form. She realized she might have a chance to get away. She held up her knife hand to warn off further attack.
"Emergency! I'm being attacked!" She screamed into her Omni, making the naked man jump, a reaction she wouldn’t normally expect from an assassin. He didn't look blood-thirsty, exactly, despite the blood covering his mouth. He advanced on her and she froze.
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