Month: March 2018

If you missed the beginning, click here to start on chapter 1.

I really thought I was home free, key already in the door of my battered Toyota Corolla and mind three towns away. But I should have known any alpha worth her salt possessed a sixth sense that would alert her when an underling tried to carry purloined goods out of her territory unhindered.

“Wilder-Young!” Dakota called from three doors down. And maybe it was my guilty conscience or my inner wolf’s intuition, but I somehow knew she wasn’t hailing me to shoot the breeze.

Still, it would have looked suspicious to tear out of the parking lot without answering. So I left the bin of cupcakes balanced on the car’s metal roof and turned to face my employer. “Any luck?” I asked, referring to the lawbreaker she and a third of the pack had set out to capture earlier in the afternoon.

…Or, rather, to kill. Because Dakota licked what I’d previously assumed was red nail polish off one sharp fingernail in lieu of a reply, teeth glinting wickedly in the late afternoon light. “Plenty,” she answered at last. Then her eyebrows rose as she took in the bin of cupcakes only partially shielded by my head. “Are you sure Daddy Dearest would approve of you bringing sweets back to your fuck buddy?” she added, tone remaining emotionless and cool. “Perhaps I should call and make a report.”

In lieu of a response, I inhaled sharply through my nose, refusing to grace Dakota’s assessment of either relationship with a verbal reply. The poke at me and Wolfie rolled off my back like syrup over a hot pancake—if anything, it proved that my cover was still holding months later. But the jab at Sebastien….

So what if we aren’t mated the way shifters would be by now? I thought rebelliously. Yes, the professor and I were dating in a human manner that felt subtly wrong to my inner wolf. But Sebastien was human. It made sense to get to know each other in a human fashion before we chose to commit in a bond unbreakable even by death.

Or so I told myself every time doubts cascaded over my head, threatening to drown me in their dark, malodorous depths.

Only when I smelled sweet humor rolling off Dakota’s slender body did I realize I’d been played yet again. Dakota didn’t care who I was dating or whether I was dating. She just liked to see if twisting my metaphorical underwear would make me jump.

Once again, she’d goosed me precisely where it hurt.

Well, two could play at that game. “Yeah,” I responded as easily as I could, picking up the big round container I’d filled with presents for Sebastien then sliding into the driver’s seat with cupcakes in tow. “Some of us have a life outside of work. Speaking of which….”

I started easing the door shut between us, but Dakota was too fast for me. In the time it took to slip fingers into the door handle in preparation for a door-slamming escape, she’d swooped forward and snagged a cupcake right out from under the plastic lid

Only when the irregular line of frosting on the far side of the chosen pastry made jagged shadows against my employer’s incisors did I realize that I’d been right from the beginning—this supposedly chance meeting wasn’t random at all. “Don’t…” I started.

But I couldn’t think of a single excuse sufficient to wrench the pastry out from between Dakota’s fingers before her teeth crunched against the pills inside. And, sure enough, the sound of enamel pulverizing pre-powdered chemicals emerged from her mouth like the sharp crack of rabbit bones on a January night. Meanwhile, the air filled with the harsh haze of incipient fur.

Despite my best intentions to stand my ground, I cringed back into my vehicle, expecting a vicious tirade the like of which had left an underling bed-bound last week. But my boss didn’t flinch or spit the tablets out. Just chewed thoughtfully, swallowing drugs and cupcake as easily as if the pastry was oven perfect.

Her eyes didn’t dilate either. Three pills would have been excessive for anyone else’s body, but they didn’t impact my small-framed boss’s behavior in the slightest. Instead, Dakota moved as easily as ever when she dropped the rest of the cupcake to the pavement and ground it into mush beneath one booted foot.

“I told you I’d hook you up if you ever wanted any,” the other female told me, her voice just as sugary sweet as it had been a minute earlier. “Offer’s still open.”

Only then did her eyes narrow, the bloodthirsty wolf I knew was inside making itself evident at last. “But here’s the deal,” she added, enunciating carefully to overcome the lupine tendency to lisp. “Pharmaceutical improvements in this pack come only from me. You’re not irreplaceable, so don’t act like it.”

Then, warning concluded, Dakota yawned and dismissed me as easily as she’d threatened my life. “Have fun with your fuck buddy,” she finished, turning away without another word and disappearing back into the maze of buildings that housed her pack.

And even though she’d dismissed me after only a minor tongue lashing, I could barely fit the key into the ignition due to the shaking in my fingers. I’d failed yet again in my attempt to gather evidence for the Tribunal. Perhaps my task was simply impossible to achieve.

***

Still itching to hear from Sebastien? Our favorite professor shows up on the very next page. Nab Huntress Unleashed on the retailer of your choice and keep reading using the links below:

Did you stumble across this page without reading chapter 1? If so, click here to start at the beginning of Huntress Unleashed.

Five months later…

I loaded the last dirty plate into the industrial-strength dishwasher and exhaled for what felt like the first time in five endless days. It was Friday at 4 pm. Dakota’s pack could catch their own dinner tonight—likely on the hoof, with no cleanup required—and leftovers would tide them over for the rest of the weekend. Which meant I could finally head out to my other life, the two days that made my current gig worthwhile.

“Hey, Ember, save me anything?”

Ryder’s shoulders were so wide that he had to turn slightly to pass through the doorway, and his face was scarred and pitted from the hard life of a member of the regional enforcer’s pack. Still, I smiled rather than cringed as he towered above me. This hard-edged shifter was a softy where it counted and he was always appreciative when I saved him a treat.

To that end, I bent to peer behind a stack of mixing bowls in search of the small tupperware container I’d hidden away from the ravening hordes who blew through the door in search of a snack two hours earlier. “Of course I did,” I told him, then waited as he cracked open the plastic lid to reveal the donut therein.

The scent of licorice and sugar made my nose crinkle in protest, but Ryder rolled the same air around in his mouth like a wine connoisseur. “My favorite,” he rumbled, breaking off a tiny piece between thumb and forefinger and nibbling at the tidbit with all the dignity of a debutante.

He was watching his waistline, he’d explained last month. So he preferred to make this one treat last for days rather than sucking it all down at once the way most wolves would have done. Despite everything—my human not-quite-mate three towns over, the perilous secrets I hid behind my easy-going smile, and my deep-seated aversion to the flavor of licorice—Ryder’s obvious appreciation of well-formed baked goods filled me with an abiding sense of satisfaction.

The zing of awareness as my patience paid off, though, was twice as sweet. “You still on the hunt?” Ryder asked after his Adam’s apple bobbed once to mark the passage of donut bite from mouth to rather flat stomach.

“For my brother?” I asked, heart lifting at the thought that Derek had resurfaced at long last. Because my gut told me that Dakota was the key to finding my missing sibling. And even though I was really here as a mole for my father, I kept hoping Derek might pass through the compound if I waited long enough….

But Ryder’s eyes slid sideways rather than meeting mine head on. “Naw,” he elaborated. “I meant—are you still looking for those pills?”

This time, it was my turn to raise my brows even as I breathed out a cautious “Yeah.” Because I could have understood Ryder coming to me with information regarding Derek’s sentencing. But the current change of tune felt like a trick.

After all, when I’d first asked Ryder about the drugs in question, he’d told me “No can do, pup.” The gift of a licorice-studded scone hadn’t softened his initial stance one bit, and I certainly hadn’t blamed him for the refusal. Not when Dakota doled out her pharmaceutical treats with ruthless efficiency, watching as avidly as any ER nurse to make sure the pills went down the gullet rather than being spit back out into waiting hands.

But perhaps there’d been a policy shift in the interim. Or maybe weekly licorice pastries had worked their magic in a cumulative fashion. Either way, I could barely believe my eyes as three white tablets clanked down onto the counter beside me, one nearly rolling away before it landed at last on its flattened side.

I reached out to nab them, but Ryder’s hand settled atop mine. “Careful, pup. This shit can really fuck you up,” he warned.

The haze of licorice and testosterone surrounding the words tickled my nose into a near-sneeze. But I squashed the urge and instead nodded vigorously, hoping a gestured reply would suffice since I wasn’t quite able to untangle my tongue.

Sure enough, acknowledgement was answer enough. Without another word, Dakota’s second-in-command picked back up his precious donut and ambled out of the kitchen, leaving behind contraband that would not only fuck me up but might actually get us both killed.

Good thing I had a tray of cupcakes on hand to cover up objects that shouldn’t have rightfully been in my possession. Poking a finger into the side of one pastry just beneath the line of frosting, I tucked the pills away in the handy hidey-hole then smoothed the icing back into place. Within seconds, the subterfuge was complete.

No one would have guessed that the pastry originally intended for my house mate was now sullied with illegal narcotics. No one except me and—soon, I hoped—my patiently waiting father.

Click here to head to chapter three in my next post, or download your own copy on the retailer of your choice.

The grand finale of the Wolf Legacy series is now available and I’m about to regale you with the beginning below. But this has spoilers for the entire rest of the series! So if you haven’t read the other three books, I highly recommend you start with Huntress Born and work your way through in order. Enjoy!

***

“I can’t, Dad.”

“You can, Buttercup.”

Across the gleaming conference table, the room’s third occupant cleared this throat, the electricity of an annoyed and extremely powerful shifter permeating the air. But Wolfie and I both ignored our audience, leaning closer in a father-daughter noggin knock we’d perfected when I was a mere pup.

“I’m not saying I won’t try,” I elaborated for both of their sakes. “I will, of course. But Dakota will never let me onto her property, let alone into her pack.”

After all, the female in question was my precise opposite. Left to my own devices, I spent most of my time baking goodies to cheer up friends and family. In contrast, Dakota had been responsible for my cousin’s death, had slaughtered an entire compound of humans, and had taken my only brother into custody where he disappeared without a trace…all within the same week.

Unbeknownst to me, she’d also started selling large quantities of never-before-seen pharmaceuticals to dozens of innocent shifters around the same time period. As the region’s enforcer—the one in charge of making the rules, not breaking them—she might have gotten away with the trick, too…if she hadn’t spread out her net to include the clan I used to call my own.

For an alpha like Wolfie who lived by his duty to protect, finding out that two of his pack mates had become hooked on empathy-squashing medications must have been a punch to the gut. For the other male in the room, who was legally responsible for Dakota’s actions, the female’s power-hungry manipulations came as an even more personal affront.

So this time, it wasn’t just our obliviousness to his presence that brought our companion’s wolf into existence as a shadow beneath his human skin. Instinctively, I ducked my chin down tighter to keep my jugular inside my throat where it belonged. Only then did I close my eyes in total submission, hoping that what I couldn’t see wouldn’t kill me.

Dad wasn’t oblivious to the danger. Still, the entirety of his interest remained fixated upon his only daughter—which is to say, me. “You’ve been through enough already, Ember,” he said, offering me a way out while ignoring the quivering ball of rage at his elbow. “I know this. You know this. If you want to come home and let someone else solve this problem, no one will think any worse of you….”

Wolfie’s voice trailed off hopefully, but I merely pursed my lips and shook my head. No, I couldn’t leave Sebastien’s side, even if the professor didn’t want me present. And I also couldn’t let someone with fewer connections infiltrate Dakota’s pack, only to sit back and watch as the luckless spy failed at her unenviable mission.

The fact that I’d be forced to deal with overbearing alphas like the third inhabitant of the room during the course of my spying was irrelevant.

“I’ll do it,” I repeated when both males seemed to be waiting for a verbal reply. “The only problem is—Dakota and I have history. If I apply for a job with her pack, she’ll laugh in my face then boot me out the door.”

True or not, my words were apparently not what Albert Chamberlain wanted to hear. I’d learned the Tribunal member’s name when Dad introduced us at the beginning of this negotiation, but as the pall of dominance that had been pressing against my cheeks for the last several minutes darkened and deepened, I stuck to the initial assessment I’d made when meeting the older male via video chat two weeks earlier.

His name might be Chamberlain, but to me he would always be Scary Guy.

Now, my shoulders creaked beneath overwhelming pressure as the male spat out words intended to bring our discussion to an abrupt close. “Dakota will welcome you if I tell her to,” Scary Guy retorted. And that, he figured was that.

Want to keep reading? You can move on to scene 2 here, or download your own copy on the retailer of your choice.

In the meantime, maybe you’d like to spread the love with a share?