by Anna Lowe
A firefly flitted past, drunk on the serenity of the night. Rae rubbed her palm against Zack’s thigh, ready to wrap up the subject and file it away. The past was past, the future was theirs.
“What happened next?”
Zack shrugged. “I told them it was time to hunt, and we left—me and Ty.” He leaned in for another kiss. “We can’t keep the pack waiting.”
Rae smiled against his lips. “How many tonight?”
“Depends if you count Cody. He wants to know if we get to kill anything tonight.”
She play-smacked his arm. “Men.”
He pulled her into a hug that pinned her arms safely to her sides. “Don’t blame all of us.”
She melted into his body in spite of herself, and then jerked her mind back to the hunt. Business first.
Followed by pleasure, her wolf added.
Yes, there’d be that, too. Guaranteed.
“So how many?” she asked, trying to get back on track.
Zack rattled off a list of names so long, Rae ran out of fingers to count them on. A handful of wolves had tagged along her first hunt as a member of Twin Moon pack, and the number had doubled the second time around. From the sound of it, there would be even more tonight. Some of them were already trotting to the hills and yipping in anticipation, waiting for the Mistress of the Hunt.
Waiting for her. Rae took a deep breath and found the scent of a destiny fulfilled. She had her mate, her pack, her duty.
Just like the old days, her wolf nodded, when the huntress led her pack in the chase.
“No,” Zack said, reading her mind. “These are the new days. And you know what?”
“What?”
He kissed her. “Something tells me they’re going to be good.”
* * *
Thank you for reading Desert Hunt. If you enjoyed the story, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Reviews are the best way to thank an independent author for a story you’ve loved.
Desert Hunt is the prequel to Anna Lowe’s Twin Moon series. Book 1 is Desert Moon, Ty’s story. Will this lonely alpha ever find his mate? Get your copy of Desert Moon today or click here for a sneak peek!
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Sneak Peek: Desert Moon
“If a romance novel focuses on the relationship between characters, then Desert Moon is a full-blown love affair between Ty, Lana, and the Arizona desert. I got all tingly in the right places. ”
–Dirty Discourse Book Reviews
Lana Dixon knows well enough to steer clear of alpha males, but Ty Hawthorne is as impossible to avoid as the sizzling Arizona sun. Her inner wolf just won’t give up on the alpha who’s tall, dark, and more than a little dangerous. One midnight romp under the full moon is enough for Lana to know she’ll risk her life for him — but what about her pride?
Ty puts duty above everything — even the overwhelming instinct that says Lana’s the one. She’s the Juliet to his Romeo: forbidden. And with a pack of poaching rogues closing in, it’s hardly the time to yield to his desires. Or is love just what this lonely alpha needs to set his spirit free?
* * *
Lana fidgeted next to her grandmother as the plane banked over the harsh landscape and slowly descended. Arizona. She almost muttered it aloud. She’d vowed never to return, and yet here she was.
The desert. All that open space, that sky. It had taken something out of her on her first visit, long ago, leaving her with a thirst she could never quench. So why go back?
The plane landed, and she moved stiffly to baggage claim, already wishing for a flight home. Catching herself grinding her teeth, she willed her jaws to relax. She would be calm and serene, damn it, even if she had to fake it. For one week, she could manage that much. She’d get her grandmother settled into her new home and then return to the East Coast. The desert had nothing for her.
She glued on a smile as an older woman hugged her grandmother, then turned to her with sparkling eyes and a secret smile.
“Lana, you look just like your mother!”
She gave a little internal sigh but didn’t drop the forced smile. This must be Jean, her grandmother’s old friend. She’d met Jean once before, but her memories of that time were hazy. All she remembered was the sense of loss her first visit had left her with. Which was crazy, because how could you lose something you never had?
“The eyes of her mother, the nose of her father,” her grandmother winked, and Lana couldn’t help but wonder what private joke they were sharing. But the older women breezed right over the subject and started chatting away about friends and family and times gone by. Lana tapped her foot, waiting for the baggage to roll past. The sooner she got this visit started, the sooner it would be over.
Twenty minutes later, she wheeled the luggage cart toward the exit, trailed by the older women. She sucked in a deep breath before stepping into the furnace outside the airport doors. The heat smothered her like a wool blanket, and the dry desert air seared her nostrils.
“One of Tyrone’s boys is coming to get us,” Jean said, looking up and down the road.
Lana looked too, gnawing her lip. It figured the kid would be late. While the two older women stood in the shade of a bus stop, catching up on twelve years of news, she paced. Out into the piercing sun, then back into the muted shade. Out and back, out and back again, each footfall a step into the past, then a determined about-face into the future. She tried to numb her senses, but they kept darting around, tasting the arid flavor of this place, listening to its emptiness. Everything felt so familiar, yet so strange, like visiting a childhood home after someone else had moved in.
That was the strange part. Arizona had never been her home—and it never would be. She’d only visited once before. She went stiff at the memory, as if the old emotions might creep up and carry her away. Emotions like hope and love and unexpected passion, blazing bright. She’d been so young and impressionable back then. Only twenty, and that was the problem. Too young to know better than to fall in love with a vague scent in the hills. For a while, she’d even imagined the scent came with a man.
But it had been a siren song at best, and it had ruined her. There was no man, no promise. Only a ceaseless whisper that stirred her during the day and haunted her at night. And now she was back again, right in the thick of it: the heat, the dust, the lying air.
“Oh, there he is,” Jean called.
A faded Jeep Wagoneer pulled up to the curb and creaked to a stop. From what Jean had said, Lana had been expecting the driver to be a newly licensed teen—a kid delighted for any excuse to get out on four wheels. The type with narrow shoulders, a pocked complexion, and gangly limbs.
She was not expecting this.
Lana gaped as the “boy” emerged from the car with a smooth, easy step. Evidently the state of Arizona was now issuing driver’s licenses to rugged, six-foot-two slabs of muscle and raw power. Authority bristled off him in waves, as if he were facing an entire platoon and not just a couple of guests. Dark. Sensual. More than a little dangerous. This was their ride?
“Hello, sweetie.” Old Jean gave him a cheery peck on the cheek. The gesture made Lana’s inner wolf hiss so fiercely that she wobbled and took a step back. Since when did a man affect her like that?
Since right now, apparently.
But why? She didn’t want or need a man in her life, especially one who was so…so…alpha.
<
br /> And yet every molecule in her body was screaming Mine!
* * *
The last thing Ty needed was to play chauffeur to a couple of old women. He had a million things to do, not only in town but home on the ranch.
It always seemed like things came to a head when his father was away and he was on watch—a role he was taking on more and more often in a gradual changing of the guard. This time his father was in Utah for a week, give or take. Not that Ty minded the old man’s absence or his chance to finally take charge. He was born to stand down the dangers threatening his pack: vampires, rogue wolves, and even humans. The latter were weak, but their overwhelming numbers and powerful fears made them an unpredictable risk.
Lately, though, it seemed as though the only problems he was being called upon to solve were petty quarrels that called for people skills, not power. Not his forte. Ty almost wished a real problem would arise to put things back in perspective. Then he could step into action and show them all.
He rejected the thought with a sharp shake of his head. His job wasn’t to prove himself; it was to lead and ignore the rest. So what if it seemed that everyone was waiting—hoping, almost—for the first son of the alpha to show some weakness? It had been that way for as long as he could remember. The fact that he hadn’t screwed up just upped the ante: now they expected perfection. Was he a wolf, or a magician?
Ty forced himself to take a deep breath. He was his father’s son. He would do a good job—even better than his father, if that were possible.
So what the hell was he doing as taxi driver to a couple of old women?
That question, he could answer. Aunt Jean—his great-aunt, actually—had practically raised him. She was the only person other than his father who could give him an order, even though hers came covered in cream and honey and with a tickle of the cheek as if he were still a cub. So ninety minutes ago, he had dropped her off at the airport to await her friend before going off on his own errands, gnashing his teeth the whole time. Now he pulled up outside the arrivals area, tapping his fingers on the wheel. Where were they?
Then he spotted Jean with a heap of luggage, chatting in the shade of a bus stop with another gray-haired woman. He stifled a yawn, picturing the cobwebs of their conversation. Too bad they weren’t with that leggy brunette who was pacing nearby. The one with the chiseled calves and no-nonsense stride. Now that would be his kind of chauffeuring. Or more like his womanizing brother’s kind of chauffeuring, because he wouldn’t allow himself to be affected by any woman again.
Not even this one.
Except that he sniffed as he drove past, trying to tease her scent out of the complex symphony of city smells.
What if…what if… his wolf tried.
Part of him quivered in hope; the other part snorted in disgust. Give it up. It wasn’t as if the woman he’d lost his heart to so long ago would simply walk back into his life.
He killed the engine and unfolded himself from the cab.
“Ty, sweetie, this is my dear friend Ruth,” Aunt Jean said.
“I remember you as a little cub!” Ruth exclaimed. “My, how you’ve grown.”
He squeezed his lips and endured.
“And this is my granddaughter, Lana.” She gestured to somebody standing behind him.
He turned and found himself stuck midway between inhaling and exhaling. It was her—the brunette, wearing light capris and a V-neck T-shirt that offered the barest hint of an athletic figure. She looked to be about thirty, a little younger than him. There wasn’t a brush of make-up on her face or a speck of jewelry in sight. She didn’t need any. She was perfect just the way she was.
Luckily, she was a little slow to react, because his joints seized up along with his breath. When her hand finally reached out to grip his in greeting, all his synapses fired simultaneously.
“Hi,” she said in that clipped East Coast way. Her eyes locked onto his, wide and blue as the desert sky after a welcome rain. He felt dragged in, dropping like a skydiver. The hand she offered was warm and fit his so perfectly, he couldn’t let go.
A voice vaguely registered behind the roaring in his ears. “Get the luggage, sweetie,” Jean called, one foot already in the car.
Luggage? Right. He snatched a bag off the cart and loaded it into the Jeep. Then he turned for the next one, taking it from Lana’s hand. It was a light, sporty duffel, not a girly thing; either she packed ultra-light or she wasn’t planning on staying long. The layers of muscle surrounding his ribs tightened at the thought.
“I can get it.” Her protest came too late. When he spun back to face her, her eyes were swirling like the sky before a summer storm, angry as all hell.
He got caught up in that tempest for a moment before she let out a muffled growl that snapped him back to the moment. Crap. She must be one of those stubborn, independent types capable of opening her own doors and giving herself a hernia carrying heavy things just to prove she could. One of those stubborn women who…who had the most enticing scent. Fresh. Promising, like a west wind. Familiar, almost.
He was still savoring her scent when Lana pushed past him and heaved another bag into the car. Great. He’d managed to antagonize her already.
He pulled his lower lip in tight and clenched his jaw. He was good at that—pissing people off. Keeping them safely at arm’s length. Too bad she was one of the few he might be interested in keeping close.
Very close, his inner wolf agreed.
He slammed the door a little too hard, cursing the long drive home.
* * *
Within minutes, Ty was shifting around and wishing for his own truck. But since his open-bed pickup was hardly the vehicle for chauffeuring old ladies, here he was, stuck in one of the ranch cars.
It wasn’t just the vehicle, though. Lana was driving him crazy, sitting right behind him while the older women crooned on about old times. With the wind whipping through the open window, he couldn’t quite capture her scent. Her posture was stiff, her expression carefully schooled. Everything about this woman spoke of discipline and control. She was pretty, too, in her wildcat way. Everything about her made him hungry to know more.
He wanted to say something, just to hear more of her voice. But words had never been his thing, so he tightened his hands around the steering wheel and resigned himself to a long drive.
As they left the heat of the city for the cooler, higher altitudes of the north, Lana sat as taut as an over-tensioned spring. She appeared to be caught between wanting to inhale all of northern Arizona and forcing herself to hold back. He knew that feeling intimately. Keeping passion a slave to self-discipline, never letting too much of yourself show. He knew why he did it, but why did she?
“Maybe when we get to the ranch, you can show Lana around,” Aunt Jean chirped.
I can definitely show her around, his wolf murmured. And I bet she can show me a thing or two, too.
He leashed his inner animal and dragged it kicking and screaming into one of those stupid pet crates provided by his imagination. He could practically hear the scrape of claws across a slippery linoleum floor. Then his eyes strayed to Lana’s in the rear view mirror and promptly vaulted away. He would definitely not be showing this woman anything.
“Got work,” he grunted—and immediately regretted it.
Resisting his pack’s matchmaking efforts was second nature to him by now. Even his father had pulled a little stunt a few years back, trying to stick him with an arranged mate. He bit back a growl just thinking about it. What little private life he had was none of their business. He’d found and lost his destined mate. There could be no other. Case closed.
“Oh, Lana,” her grandmother chirped from the front seat. “Look at the pretty cactus.”
Lana leaned forward to see, and her hair swayed tantalizingly close to his shoulder. He swallowed, hard.
“And oh—what a magnificent falcon!” Ruth went on.
Just as Lana ducked to get a view out the windshield, the truck hit a bump, and her ha
nd gripped the seat at his shoulder, making his blood surge through his veins.
The drive stretched on in the same way, every mile a tease and torture. Lana barely uttered a sound, and he was tempted to start up his own commentary, just to see how she reacted.
Lana, he’d say, see those hills? Behind them is where we’re headed. She’d lean so close he might even feel her sweet breath on his ear. That’s the ranch. A little rough around the edges, but the most beautiful place on earth.
He wanted to hear her coo in wonder and squint for a better view. He wanted her to know what the place meant to him.
Or maybe he’d say, Lana, you should see it in spring, when the desert’s in bloom Then maybe she’d turn her head from left to right, glowing in wonder in spite of herself, just like he used to do when he was little.
He wanted to throw an arm across the back of his seat, twist around to glance at her—right at her—and say, Lana, you remind me of someone, only I don’t know who.
He got as far as releasing his death grip on the wheel with one hand and opening his mouth. Lana leaned forward, her eyes following his lips in the rear-view mirror, her head tilting to catch his unspoken words. An instant later, she caught her blunder and threw herself back into her seat, crossing her arms over her chest.
He sighed. Like he’d even manage a full sentence around her. Not with his pulse spiking just watching her. Not with her studying everything in the desert but him.
Ruth gestured out the windows at the last of Phoenix’s outlying suburbs. “I can’t believe how the city has grown,” she said. “Remember it, Lana?”
He was all ears. What was there for her to remember?
Lana murmured vaguely. Had she been there before? His mind went into a digging spree, throwing dirt everywhere without managing to find any trace of her. Then Ruth shifted to another topic, and his chance to ask was gone. Probably the old woman was simply mixed up. He would have remembered if Lana had been in Arizona before. He would definitely remember.
Every animal instinct in him was stirring, wanting to touch and taste her. To pull her out of this truck and over to some private place where he could study her up close and personal. And not just her body. The rest, too. What was going on in her mind? Her heart? Her soul?