Damien’s Dilemma
Broken Shifters
Julie K. Cohen
Julie K. Cohen
Damien’s Dilemma
Summary
His enemies left her for dead. Now she’s his.
Damien needs to blood-bond a shifter to retain control of his wolf and his pack. He would blood-bond Tess in a second, except his enemies have destroyed her ability to shift. And they're not done with her. . .
Tess is determined to navigate this new world without her shifter abilities. She won't let anyone get in her way, least of all Damien, the alpha who's determined to make her his. . . even if it kills him.
* * *
Fight Hard. Love Harder.
Damien’s Dilemma is the first book in a wolf shifter romance series full of romance, intrigue, and deadly heroes.
Immerse yourself in a romance that is dangerous, steamy, and exhilarating.
DAMIEN’S DILEMMA
Copyright © 2019 by JULIE K. COHEN
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, institutions, organizations, agencies, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, institutions, organizations, agencies, places, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, screenshot), or stored in any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in printed reviews.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this work via the Internet, email, audio, or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Thank you for supporting the author’s rights.
Damien’s Dilemma (Broken Shifters series) 1st ed. (copyright July 2019)
Published in the United States of America by:
Julie K. Cohen, July 2019
JulieKCohenRomance.com
Cover Art by: KUDI-Design.com
Edited by: Nichola D. Moretti
The author and publisher do not have any control over and do not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my editor Nichola Moretti, beta reader Susan Hudson, and all my ARC readers for all of your input, guidance, and support!
Julie
For BSN
My one and only… I couldn’t follow my dream without your love and support. y3
* * *
The Packs
In the mountains of Colorado, west of Boulder, three wolf shifter packs rule. Each pack has its own territory and laws. Very few rules are universal between the packs, except the laws of nature… and these alphas like to defy nature.
Black pack
Pack alpha: Damien Black
Location: SW of Boulder and NE of Devil’s Peak, CO. North of Novak’s pack, and West of Greyson’s pack.
Novak pack
Pack alpha: Drake Novak
Pack’s nickname: “White Wolves”
Location: S of Damien Black’s pack, SW of Greyson’s pack
Greyson pack
Pack alpha: Liam Greyson
Location: East of Black’s and Novak’s pack
Contents
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
Epilogue: Damien & Tess
Thank You!
Blade’s Battle - summary
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Chapter One
DAMIEN
Damien tore the neck out of the last guard standing between his team and the hostages inside the research facility. Faint cries, human and shifter, came from two distinct directions. With a nod, he sent Blade and Callen to the right, in the direction that reeked of fear. They bounded down the hall, their claws making tiny clicking sounds as they touched the polished marble floor.
With barely a thought, Damien shifted to his human form. A moment later, Frank and Pryce shifted behind him.
“It stinks here,” Pryce said, noting the obvious smell of humans.
“Check out that hall,” Damien ordered, pointing left. Normally he would have one of his men guarding his back, but they were short one shifter today, and he wouldn’t leave Frank or Pryce without backup.
“Kill or capture?” Frank asked as he pushed his dark-blond hair off his face.
“Neither. Just free our people. If you see any files or laptops, grab them, but don’t waste time searching. The WSSO will have reinforcements here soon enough, and our people are our top priority.”
Frank and Pryce shifted back to their wolf forms. With streaks of tan and light gray respectively, the guard and medic leapt down the hall and through the first in a series of ten doors. Seconds later, more screams echoed through the building. Humans. Shifters wouldn’t scream at the sight of wolves.
The other direction, where Damien had sent Blade and Callen, was rather quiet: a good sign. They probably had the hostages secured and were preparing them for transport out of this hellhole. Damien would join them shortly, after he investigated that one smell that piqued his curiosity. No, not a smell, a scent that had been hidden by the guards’ foul body odors, urine, and blood.
The hallway was quiet and dark, but that smell drew him forward. The floral scent tickled his nose, making him inhale deeply, to reach past the stench of pain and despair that filled the halls of the Wolf Shifter Suppressor Organization. The WSSO had become too bold of late, kidnapping shifters who were minding their own business while shopping in the nearby town of Devil’s Peak. Did the fools who worked here think he wouldn’t rescue his own shifters?
Damien quietly padded down the corridor, focusing on the scent that had caught his attention. He didn’t have much time to investigate, not after a guard had hit the silent alarm before Callen could kill him.
Damien had probably caught the scent of a human female cowering behind a desk. His eyes had already adjusted to the dark, allowing him to scan each lab and storage room he passed. Another sniff confirmed the presence of a female, alone and afraid, was inside that last room. With his foot, he slowly pushed the door open to an empty lab.
Turning on the lights revealed nothing additional, except maybe that he was losing his touch and following scents that led nowhere.
As he turned to leave, he heard a slight scratching, like a squirrel sharpening its teeth against the wood siding of a house. There was nothing in the room except a storage cabinet filled with vials, a series of machines that were way beyond his high school education, and several cages with rats. That explained the sound. He’d wasted his time on rats, fucking rats. They were common in research facilities and most buildings in nearby Boulder. He had allowed himself to be distracted by rodents.
/> Damien scented the air again, to make sure he hadn’t missed any other signs of humans nearby. Chemicals, dirt, waste. The humans hadn’t done a good job cleaning out the rodents’ cages. Hardly a surprise.
“All clear,” Frank said from the doorway.
As Damien turned to follow Frank, he caught that scent again—a most enticing essence hidden beneath layers of dirt. It was so subtle, masked by the astringent odors of the chemicals and waste, that he’d almost missed it.
“You smell that?” Damien asked.
Frank scented the air. “Rats. I hate rats.”
Damien was sure he hadn’t imagined the floral scent. As Frank opened his mouth to speak, Damien signaled for quiet. He could hear it now. Breathing. It was faint, but definitely coming from something larger than a rat. Damien motioned to the tarp over a large crate, and Frank positioned himself on the other side, waiting for Damien’s signal.
With a swipe of his hand, Damien pulled the tarp clear. It was a dog cage. A fucking dog cage, with a woman inside. A naked woman who’d been beaten, starved, and God only knew what else. Red-brown hair, dirty and matted with blood, cascaded over her neck and breasts as she lay on her side. Her skin was filthy as if she hadn’t bathed in weeks, months. Tears streaked her dirty cheeks. From the rise and fall of her chest, he could tell she was breathing.
“Get Pryce,” Damien said as he bent over to get a closer look.
Slowly, as if her lids were too heavy to lift, she struggled to open her eyes. They were a light green that held a warmth despite her condition. He half expected her to stare through the bars, without truly seeing him. But those soft green eyes held him in a way that he knew would forever haunt him if he didn’t save her. Frail and beaten, she was quite aware of what was happening to her, and she was making him responsible for her from this moment forward.
“What the fuck,” said Pryce seconds later when he entered the lab. “Why would the humans do that to one of their own?”
“Maybe she’s a shifter?” Frank said, even as he scented the air again. “Never mind.”
Damien had already taken in her scent several times now. As delectable as it was, he found no trace of wolf in her. She was human and in bad shape. Already, she was losing the battle to keep her eyes open.
“Find me a way to get this damn lock off,” Damien said to his shifters as he squatted down to her level.
“Naked,” she said, somehow managing a slight smile.
Carrying clothing along on a raid wasn’t practical and being naked as a shifter was commonplace. His squatting before her in the cage gave her a rather vivid and up-close view. That damn cage didn’t give her any room to turn away. Then again, she was naked too, but he wasn’t going to point that out to her, not when she was struggling to survive.
“It was a tough fight getting through security,” Damien said. “You know how it is. Everything sets off the scanners these days. Remove shoes, belt. Eventually, there’s nothing left to set off the alarms.”
She laughed, slight as it was. He found himself smiling. Then her eyes shut, and her face twisted in pain.
Damien felt her pain as surely as it was his own. His wolf howled inside, angry that she was still in the damn cage. What was taking Frank and Pryce so long to find a set of bolt cutters or even a wire to pick the lock?
When Frank and Pryce returned, Pryce nudged Damien aside and tried to slip a hand through the bars to take her pulse. She didn’t pull away or resist as Pryce reached for her, and Damien had a feeling it wasn’t because she didn’t want to. She was too weak.
Frank uncapped a small vial, fouling the air with the stench of rotten eggs. Shit, sulfuric acid.
Frank cocked his head. “It’s the best I could find,” he said, as if knowing what Damien was thinking.
“Listen, Sweetness…” Where the hell did that come from? She hadn’t given him her name, but still ‘Sweetness’ was a bit too familiar, especially coming from him. He glanced at Pryce and Frank. If they said anything, Damien would hang them from a tree by their tails and let the kids use them as piñatas. “I need you to scooch to the back of the cage. Can you do that for me?” There was all of five inches back there, not even enough for her to stretch her legs out, but he needed to get her face away from the lock when they dropped the acid on it.
“Tired,” she said, closing her eyes again.
“Shit,” Damien said in frustration. He needed her to hold on a little longer.
“Language,” she mumbled, the corner of her mouth twitching up ever so slightly.
He didn’t hide his chuckle. She had spirit, this one, he had to give her that. “Sorry, Sweetness,” Damien said as he pulled the cage out from the wall. Frank grabbed the other side, and together they lifted the front end until she slid to the back of the cage. She let out a high-pitched cry when her right shoulder, already bent at an odd angle, struck the iron bars.
The shifters set the cage down, with her scrunched at the back. Her face betrayed her pain, though her eyes remained closed as Frank dripped acid into the lock.
Gunshots sounded in the distance. “Go!” Damien ordered Frank and Pryce. The guard and medic shifted and ran toward the commotion.
The smell of burning metal made Damien’s nostrils flare as he took up a position by the door and watched the corridor. The acid was taking too long.
“Please,” she said, her eyes wide open and begging him not to leave her behind.
His shifters were out there facing bullets, while he remained inside waiting for acid to eat through metal, but he wouldn’t leave her behind. He didn’t care that she wasn’t shifter, she had no one else to fight for her.
Damien wrapped his bare foot in the tarp and started kicking at the lock. She barely reacted to the lurching of the cage, and that gave him a sinking feeling that she wasn’t going to survive much longer. After three blows, the lock fell off with a loud clank as it struck the floor. Damien pulled the door open and covered the bottom with the tarp, to protect her from where the acid had dripped.
He hated that she cried as he gripped her arms and pulled her out, but there was no time to be gentle. She didn’t complain though, not once.
In the distance, Hayden was yelling orders. Damien grabbed a sheet from the rat cages and wrapped it around her as he cradled her in his arms. She had passed out. Maybe that was a blessing, given the pain she was in.
Damien was running down the corridor when a human wielding a scalpel charged out of a room, threatening not only Damien but the precious female he carried. Damien stepped aside far enough to place his hand on the man’s back and use the man’s momentum to slam him into the wall.
A second later, Blade was at Damien’s side, guarding him. “I thought you said we couldn’t take home any spoils,” Blade said.
“Not funny. The researchers had her in a cage.” Damien was doing a lousy job containing the wolf that raged within. If he hadn’t been holding the woman, he’d punch a wall or toss a chair out a window right now. Or better yet, shift and find some asshole guard to tear to shreds.
Blade’s nostrils flexed slightly, enough for Damien to know his scout was taking in her scent. At least he had the good grace not to point out that she was human.
“Report,” Damien said.
“Seventeen shifters are alive and in various stages of health. Good call bringing the truck. A few have broken limbs that haven’t finished healing. They’re in no shape to walk, let alone run to get away. Eight more shifters are in the morgue: some shifted, others not. It’s not clear what killed them, but their scents were off.”
“Off?”
Blade met his eyes straight on, as few tended to do. The scout had never been afraid of Damien, or anyone, though Blade knew his place. “Hard to explain. Diseased maybe.”
At least they had a scent. The woman curled against Damien didn’t smell of wolf. What the hell was he going to do with her, a human of all things?
“Hayden and Callen are almost done loading everyone into the truck. Frank a
nd Pryce had to contain those two guards who had surrendered earlier. I guess we didn’t do a great job of knocking them out. Still, I never thought they’d be stupid enough to get up before we cleared out of here.”
“I won’t make that mistake again,” Damien said.
Blade arched his neck to get a closer look at the woman cradled in Damien’s arms. “We can’t take her with us, Damien. It’s against the rules.”
“Screw the rules,” he said as he kicked the last door open and strode through. Callen was standing at the back of the truck, his eyes locking on the woman the second Damien stepped outside with her. Hayden was probably already behind the wheel, itching to leave.
“She’s human,” Callen said.
“I’m so glad we can all scent the difference between human and shifter,” Damien said as he handed her to Blade to hold while Damien climbed up into the back of the truck. Blade hesitated in hoisting her up to Damien. “Problem?”
“There’s a reason we made a rule not to bring humans back to our territory,” Blade said as he handed her to Damien.
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