by Celia Kyle
As unimpressed as he tried to appear, a touch of pink colored what she could see of his bearded face. He shrugged and pushed away from the bar.
“Yeah, well, I have a family to feed so…” He trundled off to fill more orders before she could tease him any further.
As she sipped her beer, Val’s fingers found their way to Fang’s fluffy little head and she scratched the spot the dog loved, right behind her left ear. Time to figure out her next move now that it looked as if Chloe had moved.
Val had met Chloe Soren on their first day of college when they were randomly paired as roommates. On paper, they couldn’t have been more opposite. Chloe was a relatively short, pale-skinned, curvy redhead who was as sweet and caring as a soul could be. Valerie, on the other hand, was a towering mash-up between her white trash mom and some nameless, African American aerobics teacher. She couldn’t recall ever having been called “sweet” in her life. The most common adjective used to describe her over the years was “bad ass”—sometimes “bitch.” They were synonymous, as far as she was concerned, and she took them as high compliments.
But the more Val got to know Chloe, the more she liked her. Though Chloe was thoughtful and kind, she wasn’t a pushover, and Val respected that. They also bonded over their shared poverty throughout school. While all of their classmates had moved to off-campus housing their junior year, the roommates had remained in their same dorm room, year after year. To say they were best friends minimized their connection. By the time graduation had rolled around, Val had taken to calling Chloe her “sister from another mister,” and she meant it.
Over the past decade, they’d only visited each other a handful of times, but they wrote old-fashioned letters and spoke on the phone at least a few times a year. Every time they did, they picked up right where they’d left off, as if no time at all had passed. Most women probably talked to their besties daily, but Val wasn’t just any woman. Neither was Chloe, for that matter.
The thought brought a soft smile to her lips, but it was whisked away almost instantly. She’d called Chloe’s number a dozen or so times over the last several days, but she hadn’t been able to reach her. Desperate for some advice from the sanest person she knew, Val decided to just drop in unannounced. Chloe would be delighted—or would have been, if she hadn’t moved. The small rental house Chloe had lived in just a few months earlier sat completely vacant, with a “For Rent” sign in the front window.
Chloe was gone and Val had no idea where to find her.
So instead of crashing on her friend’s couch as she’d planned, she’d been forced to check into a local motel—which, to the surprise of no one, was also wolf-themed. In fact, her room at the Lupine Inn was devoted to the horribad ‘80s flick Teen Wolf, complete with a poster of a young and very furry Michael J. Fox, as well as a yellow-and-blue basketball jersey with the number “42” on the front mounted and framed on the wall. Kitschy as hell, but far from the worst accommodations she’d ever slept in.
A shiver of warning shimmied down Val’s spine and she stiffened on her perch. Even Fang’s upper lip pulled back in a tiny snarl. Someone was closing in on them and they both felt it. Ready to attack if necessary, Val whipped around on her stool, only to find the lumberjack guy from the end of the bar displacing her jacket and sliding onto the open stool next to her, a smarmy grin on his face. Good lord, couldn’t a girl just have a few minutes of peace?
“What’s a pretty little thing like you doing in a shit hole like this?” he held out a large, calloused hand for her to shake. “Name’s Newman. Yours?”
He wasn’t used to being ignored by women, that much she could tell. Once he set his sights on his prey, he wouldn’t relent, so ignoring him wasn’t going to work. Since beating the living shit out of him wasn’t an option either, she took her doctor’s advice and took five slow, deep breaths to clear the red fog from her brain. Forcing a hard smile, she turned to Newman and did her best to speak calmly and clearly.
“Listen, Newman. Thanks for the compliment, but I’m not interested in whatever it is you’re selling.” He opened his mouth to protest, but she talked over him. “I just want to sit here, eat my burger, and drink a beer. Maybe even have a shot. But not with you, or anyone else for that matter. Now, if you don’t mind…”
She left the rest of her dismissal unspoken and returned her attention to her nearly empty beer. Newman stared at her for a long moment, probably not believing she’d meant what she said, and then finally sighed in disappointment and returned to his old barstool, utterly defeated.
With that distasteful chore completed, Valerie drifted back into her own thoughts. She’d wake up bright and early the next morning—assuming she didn’t stay up all night with nightmares about Michael J. Fox—and head over to the school where Chloe taught. Surely someone there would know how to track down her friend.
She was jolted out of her thoughts when Hux set her greasy burger down in front of her, followed by a shot of amber liquid. Confused, she looked up at the bartender. “What’s this?”
“Tequila,” Hux answered brusquely.
“I can smell that much, but I didn’t order it.”
He jerked his head toward Newman, who was holding up his own identical shot in a grinning salute. It was a nice gesture, so instead of sending it back, she gave him a neutral nod of gratitude and downed the shot without so much as a grimace. It wasn’t top-shelf, but it wasn’t remotely close to the nastiest she’d ever tasted. That honor was reserved for the homemade rotgut she’d shared with some locals in Guatemala a few years earlier. That shit had burned all the way down… and through!
As warmth spread through her body, Hux moved to refill the glass, but Val grabbed the top of the glass. She preferred to keep a relatively clear head, even when she was supposed to be on “vacation.” Safer that way.
Hux shrugged and ambled off, and just as Val loosened her fingers to release the shot glass, Fang snarled. A split second later, a very large hand grabbed Valerie’s shoulder. What happened next came from pure instinct.
Without taking even a moment to think, Val’s right hand tightened its grip on the shot glass as she jabbed her left elbow up and back, connecting hard with someone’s nose in a satisfying crunch. In one fluid motion, she spun around on her stool and smashed the butt-end of the shot glass into the broad forehead of…Newman! The guy let out a yelp of pain and then toppled to the floor like a fallen tree. Wide-eyed and heart pounding, Val winced when she saw he was flat on his back, knocked out cold.
Uh oh, not good.
When Newman fell, he’d bumped into another patron, who’d spilled his beer on the guy next to him. That guy didn’t care for that one bit, so he took a swing at the guy Newman had bumped. In a matter of minutes, the entire bar had erupted into an all-out brawl. And it was all her fault.
“Shit, not again!” she muttered, grabbing her bag and tucking Fang deep into its recesses.
Digging a twenty out of her pocket, she threw it on the bar, took as big of a bite from her burger as her mouth could hold, and ducked as a chair flew over her head and into the mirror behind the bar.
The sound of shattering glass was her cue.
Using her training, she looked for the safest route out of the bar and edged her way around the room, ducking and side-stepping as needed. When she reached the back door, she didn’t hesitate to push it open. She’d dash to her Jeep, race back to the Lupine Inn to grab her bag, and then hightail it out of this godforsaken town. Chloe would understand.
But the moment the chilly night air cooled her overheated skin, she stopped in her tracks. A large man in a cop uniform blocked her escape.
Behind her, Hux shouted, “That’s her, Levi! She’s the one who started all this!”
How in the hell had Hux gotten the cops to the bar so fast? Dammit.
Valerie knew better than to resist a police officer. She sat quietly and safely ensconced in the back of his cruiser—handcuffed and completely pissed off—until he finally managed to break up
the fight. Once they were on the road for the station, she asked for her phone call.
His dark brown eyes glanced at her in the rearview mirror, a smirk on his face. “Let me guess. Your lawyer?”
“No,” Val snapped. With Tremble being so small, she figured everyone knew everyone’s business and hoped the cop knew how to get in touch with her BFF. Chloe would bust her out even if a few hundred miles separated them. “Chloe Soren. Ever heard of her?”
She caught the wince as it crossed the man’s face. “Shit.”
Chapter Two
Zeke pressed his lupine nose into the moist soil beneath his paws and sniffed deeply, drawing in the scents stained into the dirt. His senses were overloaded with a mixture of the rich, fertile Georgia earth he knew so well coupled with traces of alcohol from the local teens who sometimes partied in the Wolf Woods, but that wasn’t all. He caught the faintest hint of that damnable wolf again.
He raised his coppery head to survey the quiet, still clearing. Moonlight shone down from the starry sky and gave him all the light his keen eyes needed. He visualized the outsider wolf slinking along the edge of the open space, probably following the day-old trail of the yearling deer. Zeke followed in its path with light steps.
The alpha of the Soren pack moved like a ghost through the woods, following the faint scent until he reached a brook not far from the clearing. There, the trail disappeared.
Not good. Using the creek meant the outsider knew what he was doing when it came to avoiding detection.
It wasn’t a Blackwood wolf, that much Zeke knew. Sure, he’d kidnapped their healer, but Drew had found his fated mate in Zeke’s sister, Chloe. Everything had turned out fine in the end. Now, less than a week later, another outsider encroached on Soren territory.
Worse, the new wolf had come alone and uninvited—or un-kidnapped, as the case may be. Based on the size of the paw prints, the male was large though not larger than Zeke. And the scent told him that the intruder was still mentally stable. That last part troubled Zeke more than it should have. When a wolf broke away from a pack, they normally went feral over time. Some took longer than others, but only an exceptionally strong wolf could stave off insanity altogether. He stared at the last few heavy paw prints that disappeared into the water. Using the water to mask his scent was a smart tactic. This lone wolf was no crazed lunatic wandering the woods lusting for blood.
That just made him even more determined to find the wolf and learn why he was hanging around. It wasn’t just the safety of the humans in Tremble, nor Soren territory rights. Zeke’s very reputation as alpha was on the line.
A year had passed since his father’s death when he’d stepped up to become the Soren pack’s alpha, and Zeke still struggled to find his bearings. He had a hard time admitting that to himself, and even when he did, it was only when he was alone. No chance he’d expose his own self-doubt or weakness to anyone else.
He was certain none of the wolves in his pack would challenge him for the top spot, but this lone wolf might have other ideas. If that was the case, Zeke would kick the guy’s ass to hell and back and show the rest of the pack what he was made of.
Zeke turned away from the stream and moved almost silently over the moss-carpeted slope toward his SUV that he’d parked at the entrance to Wolf Woods. An owl hooted, the bird hiding in the still pines overhead, and he paused to cast one last glance around the area before moving on.
A lone wolf lurking near his pack lands, while a potential threat, was the least of Zeke’s worries. Don’t get him wrong, he loved his late father, but the old wolf’s leadership had been totally old-school. Including some sketchy dealings with humans. Boyd Soren had been a good man, deep down, but he would have been better served in the role of alpha sixty years ago instead of modern day.
Zeke had no intention of following in his father’s footsteps, and such a radical change in leadership style required finesse—not his strong suit. He also had to give the pack time to adjust. Naturally, some took longer than others. Like Boyd’s old beta and enforcer, Shull Bonsall and Knox Witbeck. Out of respect for their former positions of influence, Zeke had invited them to several Ruling Circle meetings. Unfortunately, while he appreciated their counsel, they continued pushing him toward the track his father had laid out.
For the most part, he was pretty happy with his Ruling Circle. He couldn’t have chosen a better beta in Warren Edgecomb. Sure, the guy had been acting like a lovesick, kicked puppy since Chloe ran off with her new mate, Drew, but when he wasn’t nursing his bruised ego, Warren gave sound advice. Zeke valued that kind of reliable stability in his beta. But a week of moping over whatever fantasy Warren had built in his head was enough. If he didn’t snap out of it soon, Zeke would have to slap him out of it. With everything going on, he needed his RC to have all their wits about them.
Or as many as they could rustle up, in the case of his enforcer, Levi Walker. Levi had been an outstanding sentry while under Knox’s reign as enforcer, but once Zeke had promoted him, he’d discovered Levi wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. But as the only wolf on the tiny Tremble police force, he fed Zeke reliable intel on the goings-on in town. All in all, a reasonable trade-off.
Zeke’s SUV waited for him right where he’d left it, and he gave it a quick sniff to make sure the lone wolf hadn’t messed with it while he’d been off scouting. All he caught was the scent of a long-gone hare, making him drool. He grumbled over losing out on a late-night snack as he shifted to his human form and pulled his clothes from the backseat.
His thoughts drifted to his sister. It killed him that he hadn’t been able to convince her to stay in Tremble, but he couldn’t fault her for joining Drew’s pack. Drew had built a good life in the Blackwood pack, and Chloe deserved a fresh start. After all Drew had done for the siblings, Zeke trusted the healer would keep his baby sister safe.
It would have been nice to have mourned their mother together, but even though Deidre Soren had only died last week, they’d both mourned her for the past twenty years while she was in a catatonic state. Drew had given them a few precious moments to say goodbye to a lucid Deidre before she passed, and for that Zeke would be forever grateful.
Once he was dressed like any other semi-respectable human hanging around the woods in the dead of night, he hopped in his SUV and checked his phone.
“Asshole,” he muttered as he deleted yet another voicemail from Tremble’s mayor, Bertrand Calhoun.
A year had passed since his father’s death, but Calhoun had yet to get it through his thick skull that Zeke wasn’t going to play the same games as his dad. Greasing Calhoun’s already slick palms to get any public works contracts wasn’t going to happen, no way, no how.
Boyd had started Full Moon Construction before Zeke’s birth, and had earned a reputation for delivering quality work on time. Zeke had taken the reins after his father’s diagnosis, and Full Moon had been running in the black ever since, thanks to his savvy business decisions. The most important of which was to stop paying bribes to sleazy politicians.
Pulling out of the hidden nook at the entrance to the woods, Zeke’s lights glowed on the clay track ahead of him. He bounced and rolled over the worn path, finally reaching the main road only to have what little peace he’d attained shattered by the ringing of his phone. He clenched his jaw and looked down, expecting to see Calhoun’s name and number. Except another name flashed across the screen, causing the rest of him to tense.
Levi.
“Shit.” No matter who you were, late-night calls from the police rarely delivered happy news. Punching a button on his steering wheel, he spoke into the air. “Talk to me, Levi.”
“Sorry to bother you so late, Zeke.” Levi’s agitated tone echoed through the sound system. “I’ll cut to the chase. There was a brawl at The Lair tonight. Half the guys sitting in our holding cells are wolves.”
“Fuck!” Zeke grimaced and struggled to tamp down his anger.
He would have preferred for the Soren pack to remai
n completely isolated from the human population, but that wasn’t reasonable in this day and age of urban sprawl. Tremble was a mixed community, and despite the town’s distasteful theme, only a couple of humans knew about their existence, including the smarmy town mayor. Zeke worked very hard to keep it that way.
“If they can’t control their dumb, drunk asses when they’re in town, I’ll just have to ban them from public bars altogether,” he growled. “And if they think I’m bailing them out, they can just get comfy in those jail cells. We don’t need that kind of attention, and maybe sitting in the drunk tank overnight will drive that home. Who started it?”
“Team effort. Newman was hitting on this knockout of a human at the bar, but apparently she wasn’t feeling too social.”
“He get kicked in the nuts or something?” Zeke chuckled, wishing he could have seen someone knock the cocky sentry down a peg or two.
“So, here’s the thing,” Levi spoke in a completely unamused tone. The sound of him scratching his chin stubble rasped through the SUV’s speakers. “I’ve seen Newman deadlift a tree trunk and this gal laid him out flat on his back with two moves in as many seconds, Zeke. Wasn’t even a fight. It just kicked things off.”
“Damn, he’s our best sentry. He must have been drunk off his ass if a human could take him down so easily.”
Levi didn’t sound convinced when he spoke. “According to Hux, Newman only had half a beer and a shot of tequila. Certainly not enough to incapacitate a wolf. I don’t know who this human is, but she knows how to handle herself. Easily. Put Newman in his place like he was a pup.”
“Who is this bad-ass chick? Local?” Zeke rubbed his forehead, a headache easing forward.
“Not local. Her name’s Valerie Logan. And Zeke? She’s in town looking for Chloe.”
The faint smile lingering on Zeke’s lips evaporated. Valerie Logan… The name sounded familiar and he let it roll around in his head for a minute. Then it came to him. Chloe’s college roommate was named Val, but he couldn’t recall ever meeting the girl.