by Celia Kyle
With a melodramatic sigh, she shrugged. “Fine. Take me home, Jeeves.”
Chapter Four
Zeke held the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip during the drive to the pack house. Valerie’s intoxicating scent filled the small space to the point of making his wolf insane with lust. The dumb beast seemed to think the human sitting in the passenger seat was their mate.
Ridiculous.
It was his own damn fault for inviting her to stay with him. He’d clearly been thinking with his cock, rather than his brain. At that moment, he regretted asking Levi to make her arrest disappear from the official record. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t be sitting inches away, driving him wild.
But she wasn’t his mate, despite the way his body and inner wolf reacted to her. Anyone with eyeballs would be hot for her, just like Newman and Levi. Zeke nearly bared a fang at the thought of Newman touching her, but he brushed his wolf’s silly jealousy aside. She wasn’t his mate, so there was no reason for the wolf’s emotions.
The idea a human could be his mate was beyond laughable. Zeke was an alpha, which meant his mate would be the baddest she-wolf in existence. Period. It wasn’t lost on him that Valerie had just taken down one of his toughest sentries, but that didn’t sway his thoughts. Big deal—she could have the title of “baddest human” and leave him the hell alone.
If he’d been even mildly fond of humans in general, he might have explored his desire for her, but he was neck-deep with Valerie’s kind in Tremble. They had the weirdest obsession of turning the town into a werewolf sideshow tourist trap. So much so that his father had played along when he named his business Full Moon Construction. Plus, who could trust a species that didn’t keep to a pack? No one, as far as Zeke was concerned. It was downright unnatural.
The one thing Zeke liked less than humans was awkward silences, such as the one he endured at that very moment. Valerie had immediately been hostile, only loosening up a tiny bit after Levi had made the charges go away. Talk about gratitude! But he felt a responsibility to Chloe to at least keep her best friend out of trouble—if that was possible.
“So,” he finally grumbled, scrambling for some way to break the ice with the ice queen, “you and Chloe met in college?”
“Roommates.”
Oh goody, the one-word response game. This was going to be fun.
“Did you get together much after college? I don’t remember you ever visiting Tremble.”
Val shrugged, her toned, bronze shoulders glistening in the dim light from the dash. “Not really. I was ROTC and went straight into the Army after graduation. Moved around a lot. The Army doesn’t give day passes for brunch with your bestie. It can be tough to stay in touch. Unless you’re on leave for something stupid, in which case…”
She trailed off, her tone bitter, as she turned to glare out the side window. Zeke waited a minute for her to elaborate, which never happened.
“How long are you on leave?” he asked, wondering what her stupid reason was.
More silence.
“Just curious,” Zeke muttered. It didn’t make a difference to him if she wanted to be difficult. It wasn’t like he had a stake in her life, or anything.
“Chloe talked about you sometimes,” she finally replied, taking pity on him by changing the subject.
“Everything she said is a complete lie,” Zeke said with a smirk. To his utter surprise and delight, she actually laughed. Well, snorted actually, but he’d take it.
“You must be a real son of a bitch then.”
Zeke laughed and then frowned. “You’re shitting me, right? Chloe hated all of us at that age.”
“Don’t get a big head or anything. She didn’t talk all that much about her life back home, but you sounded okay, as far as brothers go. Were you two close growing up?”
Zeke focused on the glowing yellow stripes in the road for a few seconds as he struggled to form an answer. His heart grew heavy as he thought about those bad days.
“Yes and no. Things were good when we were young. Then… they weren’t. Do you know about Chloe’s accident?”
Val met his eyes, her gaze intense and deadly serious, and nodded.
“That was hard on all of us,” he continued, “but especially her. The last year hasn’t been particularly easy, but in a strange way it got better for Chloe.”
“How?” Her brown eyes danced with excitement at the mention of her friend’s news.
“Dad died about a year ago. Cancer. I stepped up and took over his construction business, but he’s a hard act to follow. He was a sort of… community leader in our village.” It was the easiest way to describe an alpha to a human outsider. “The transition has been challenging. Then our mother passed away a little over a week ago.”
Val gasped and buried her hand in the fur of the little dog sitting in her lap. He glanced over at the happily panting pooch and rolled his eyes over its name.
“I had no idea,” she said, her tone softening. “I’m sorry for your loss—losses.”
He flashed her a grim smile. “Thanks. Dad was rather unexpected, but Mom was a long time coming, as I’m sure you know. She was in a coma for many years. Thankfully, we got the chance to say our goodbyes before she passed.”
Val stared at him with sadness in her eyes. It was really the first time she’d appeared vulnerable and it suited her. His wolf reacted to that softness by howling with need for her. He had to do something to ease the tension building inside him.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to unload all that on you,” Zeke said with an easy shrug, pretending that the stress of the last year—both parents dying, taking over leadership of the pack, his sister moving away, and now that fucking construction developer Dick McNish causing problems—hadn’t taken a toll.
Apparently, she didn’t buy it. His heart nearly burst from his chest when her warm fingers gently wrapped around his forearm and gave it a little squeeze.
“Don’t be sorry. That’s a hell of a lot for anyone to suffer through. Especially so close together like that. Must have been tough.”
He worked overtime to keep his emotions under control. Life had really thrown him some curveballs, and then she had walked into his town and gotten his wolf all worked up. No wonder he was a mess. Except alphas weren’t supposed to be weepy wrecks. They were expected to be tough leaders, not whiny babies who mourned their parents. He’d be damned if he’d show anyone in his pack how the year from hell had affected him.
But somehow Valerie—a human, for chrissakes—had shown him more compassion than almost anyone in his pack. Which came as a bit of a surprise. Not only because of how she’d given Newman a tidy little smack-down, but also because most of the humans Zeke had ever met were selfish assholes with no consideration for anyone else.
Get ahold of yourself! It was far too late, and he was far too sober to get all mushy with a stranger. Not even one as tempting and infuriating as Val. Quirking an eyebrow at her, he glanced pointedly at her hand on his arm.
“Good thing I’m not a soldier.” He reminded her of how she’d reacted when she’d been touched.
She chuckled and pulled her hand away, leaving a void where her warm touch had been. “Ha! I’d like to see you try and lay a finger on me.”
Damn, her sass was sexy!
He gave her a suggestive smirk and said, “Oh, would you now?”
Any other human female would have blushed and shifted her gaze away, embarrassed at setting herself up like that. Not Valerie. Her smoldering gaze locked onto his and her full lips eased into a smile that set his cock throbbing.
Training his gaze back on the road, Zeke was acutely aware he’d just reacted the way he’d anticipated she would. Sassy and smart. He liked that in a woman. What he didn’t like was the fact she was human. Things were moving in a dangerous direction, and he needed to get them back on track before the unthinkable happened.
“Gotta say,” he said, giving her dog a hard look, “I don’t believe for a second that mutt’s a trained service a
nimal.”
As if to prove his point, Fang scrambled over the armrest and into his lap. She planted her ridiculously tiny paws on the bottom of the steering wheel and barely managed to peer over the dash. The dumb dog thought she was driving!
This time Val did look embarrassed, though it was too dark to see her cheeks pink up. He imagined it, though, and he couldn’t get the image out of his mind as she plucked Fang from his lap.
“Sorry. I let her do that sometimes when I’m driving.” She gave the dog a quick snuggle before plopping her back on her lap. “Yeah, I might not have been entirely truthful about her service animal status. But this sweet girl has had a tough time of it, and I’ll be damned if I let some backwater bartender call her a rat.”
“Maybe Hux deserved a thump, too.” Val seemed to appreciate his suggestion. “By the way, I didn’t mean anything with that question. I don’t care one way or another if she’s certified. You just don’t seem like…”
He couldn’t think of a good way to finish the sentence without sounding like an ass. He just let it hang there, like a slab of smelly meat. In addition to her many admirable attributes, Val also appeared to have a decent sense of humor.
“Like the kind of woman who’d own a teacup Pomeranian? I wasn’t, until a few days ago, actually.”
“Did you rescue her?”
Val stared out the window for a long moment before answering. “I think under Georgia law it would actually be considered theft. But we both consider it a rescue. Don’t we, Fang?”
Fang reached up and licked Val’s face happily. Val smiled and looked over at him, fire glinting in her eyes.
“And I’d like to meet the cop who’s man enough to try and take her from me.”
A woman who didn’t take shit. Remarkable. Why hadn’t Chloe ever brought her around?
Oh. Right. Human.
“Sounds like an interesting story?” he prodded.
Fang returned her beady black eyes to the road, allowing Val to give him her full attention. “Not much to it, really. After I left Virginia, my first stop was my mom’s place back home in Jacksonville. Of course, the minute I stepped into her single-wide, I remembered why I’d been so desperate to get out in the first place. And it wasn’t because we lived in a shit-pot trailer park.”
Zeke snorted, but otherwise kept his mouth shut.
“My mom… Let’s just say she doesn’t have the best taste in men. Her latest live-in loser thought I brought just a little too much color to the table.”
Zeke grimaced. “Sounds like a real winner.”
She shrugged, as if that was the least of her worries. “Whatever. I’ve lived with people being assholes to me all my life.” Her tone softened as she stroked Fang’s fluffy fur. “But when he kicked Fang across the trailer and Mom didn’t say anything… That was it.”
Considering how she handled guys hitting on her, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she’d done to her mother’s racist boyfriend. Curiosity won out.
“What did you do?”
She gave him a sly smile. “I did what any proper young lady would do. I kneed him in the nuts so hard they probably ended up in his throat, and then I scooped up Fang and hit the road.”
Zeke burst out laughing so hard he almost pulled over. Great belly-wrenching guffaws. He hadn’t laughed like that in… he couldn’t even remember. Eventually wiping the tears from his eyes, he gave her a grin. “There are worse ways to start a friendship. Take Drew, Chloe’s… husband.”
He caught himself before he said “mate” again. Werewolves were strictly forbidden from revealing their existence to humans. Accidents were inevitable, but wolves couldn’t tell just anyone what they really were without expecting hellfire to rain down on them from the National Ruling Circle.
“What about him?”
“Well, I’m not exactly proud of this, but I brought him here in the first place.”
Val’s brow crinkled in the cutest way. “Why wouldn’t you be proud of that? I thought you liked him.”
“Because it wasn’t exactly a mutual decision.”
The crinkle grew deeper. “Huh?”
Zeke sighed heavily. “I kidnapped him. He wasn’t too happy about it either. Until he laid eyes on Chloe. After that, all was forgiven.”
It was Val’s turn to laugh hysterically. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“It was impulsive and stupid,” he explained, leaving off the part that nagged him most—it wasn’t how a good alpha should behave. “The short version is that I heard he might be able to help our mother. Maybe I didn’t handle the situation very well, but now we’re friends. I’m still recovering from whiplash over how fast they ran off together, but damned if they aren’t over the moon in love. Right now they’re off camping in the wilds of Colorado for their honeymoon. No phones, no TV, no internet.”
Val gave a wistful sigh. “Oh, man, that sounds like bliss. Always loved being in nature. There was this time on my first deployment, I was out in the desert at night. Dead silence and nothing but the brilliant starry sky overhead. It just kind of hit me that, even though I had a team with me, I was out there on my own. Removed from so much of everything I grew up with. I expected to feel sad, but it was surprisingly lovely. Peaceful.”
“All right, don’t get all poetic on me.”
“Being out there gives you time for that too. When people aren’t shooting at you, of course.”
“Of course,” Zeke agreed.
As they approached the pack house, it occurred to Zeke that he was honestly starting to like her. He could count on one hand the number of people he could shoot the shit with so easily, and not a single one of them was human. Val was scary smart, funny as hell, and as tough as his best sentry. Tougher, he reminded himself. Of course, it didn’t help that he could smell her growing desire for him. His damn wolf might as well have been doing a victory lap.
But another scent lingered under her passion, especially when she spoke of her time in the Army. Pain… but even his wolf couldn’t figure out where exactly she was injured. That in itself was unsettling.
Parking at the side of the house, Zeke hopped out and hurried around toward the passenger side. To his surprise and irritation, she was already on the ground waiting for him.
“What?” she asked when she caught sight of his face in the porch light.
“Nothing,” he started but then thought better of it. “I was going to get the door for you.”
Val’s face squinched up as if she’d just bitten into a lemon dipped in Fang’s shit. “I can kill a man with my pinky. I think I can manage a fucking car door, Boy Scout.”
Without waiting for him to lead the way, she sauntered past him. Maybe Zeke should have been insulted, but instead he found himself chuckling as he followed her.
The view was incredible. Her tall frame moved with purpose, like a lioness on the hunt for prey. The oddly feminine bag and the puffy head that poked out of it were at complete odds with her bearing. Not to mention her choice of clothes—a tank top that showed off her impressive arm and shoulder muscles and jeans that formed to her muscular ass and thighs like they were painted on. If she’d taken the time to shrug into her sexy motorcycle jacket, he might have driven them straight to the Lupine Inn instead of the pack house.
Thankfully, Warren stepped out onto the porch, dragging Zeke back into reality. Warren nodded to his alpha and then let his curious—and far-too-appreciative—gaze rake over Val’s powerful frame for a second longer than Zeke liked.
“Everything okay?” he spoke to Zeke, but his eyes never left Val.
Zeke held on to his feral emotions. “We have a guest for the night,” he shoved the words through clenched teeth.
Warren had been suffering a bit of a broken heart ever since Chloe had rejected him in favor of Drew. Zeke felt sorry for his beta, but that didn’t stop him from giving Warren a low, meaningful growl as they passed on the porch. Nothing else needed to be said. Warren averted his eyes and nodded in understand
ing.
Val stopped in her tracks and tipped her head as if she was listening for something. “Did you hear that?”
Zeke shot a look over to Warren. “What?”
“It sounded like growling.”
He moved up beside her and pressed a hand to her lower back to keep her moving, the simple touch setting his arm on fire. “Probably just my stomach. I missed dinner.”
After a very short tour downstairs, he led her upstairs to the room right next to his. “Bathroom’s right there.” His voice was tight with the insanity boiling inside him. “Holler if you need anything.”
Val held his gaze, incapacitating him with her intent stare. It seemed as if she searched for something. Something he couldn’t give.
Then she gave him a soft smile. “Thanks for everything.”
He shrugged but still couldn’t tear his eyes from her. “Don’t mention it.”
Only when she turned away could he breathe again, thank god. Reaching for his door knob, he said, “Night.”
“Night,” she replied as she eased her door shut. “Sleep tight.”
Her door clicked home and Zeke pressed his forehead to the cool wood of his own. Sleep would not be happening.
Chapter Five
Smoke burned Valerie’s eyes and ear-shattering blasts filled the murky red air. Chaos surrounded her. Men shouted in a language she didn’t understand, and children screamed. Bodies lay sprawled on the ground, their faces blurry, as if they had no identities. She pushed through it all, determined to find a way out, a way home. Strong hands reached for her. She fought them off with every ounce of strength she had, but there were too many coming from all directions. A blast of light blinded her, and she screamed.
“No!” came a strangled, breathless little yelp from Valerie’s throat.
Startled by her own voice, her eyes fluttered open, blinking in disbelief at the strange—but blissfully peaceful—environment surrounding her. Not a battlefield. No bloody hell scape. Just a quiet, modestly decorated bedroom.