{"id":1326,"date":"2016-03-19T12:53:44","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T16:53:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2018-06-19T15:56:49","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T19:56:49","slug":"half-wolf-chapter-1-scene-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/?p=1326","title":{"rendered":"Half Wolf Chapter 1, Scene 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Half-Wolf-original\"Ready to dive into the\u00a0<\/em>Alpha Underground Trilogy<\/a>? Enjoy this excerpt from Chapter 1 of Half Wolf<\/a>, the first book in the series!<\/em><\/p>\n

Chapter 1 Scene 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

Three shifters walked into a bar.<\/em><\/p>\n

It sounds like the beginning of a corny joke, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s a little more information for you. I was those shifters\u2019 alpha and den mother rolled into one. Two of the barhoppers were jail bait or close to it. And the establishment in question was filled to the brim with horny, lawless, outpack males.<\/p>\n

No wonder I wasn\u2019t laughing and was<\/em> in a big hurry.<\/p>\n

I breezed past the bouncer with a show of entirely human teeth, then rolled my eyes at his laxness. The employee wasn\u2019t being remiss by not checking my ID. Not in a werewolf bar. But he still wasn\u2019t really doing his job.<\/p>\n

I was twenty-one\u2014barely\u2014which is all humans would have cared about when allowing entrance to a drinking establishment. But the guy at the door in a shifter bar was supposed to turn away anyone without the ability to don fur and howl at the moon. And even though I was technically a shifter, my half-human heritage meant my wolf was too weak to rise up behind my eyes and prove her worth to the bouncer.<\/p>\n

Good thing I was accustomed to faking it.<\/p>\n

But I wasn\u2019t home free just yet. I\u2019d barely set foot in the sea of writhing bodies when one of those lawless males alluded to earlier grabbed my arm, swinging me around to collide hard with his chest. My chin thudded against bare flesh only slightly less hairy than it would have been in lupine form and my nose took in the over-ripe scent of unwashed man.<\/p>\n

Ugh.<\/em> Not that it would have mattered if he was cute. I was on a mission and Ginger, Cinnamon, and Lia had a half-hour head start on me. I could only imagine what kind of mischief the trouble twins and their tagalong cousin could get up to during thirty long minutes alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cNice to see another lady in the place,\u201d the male offered with a triumphant leer, clearly pleased with himself for having snagged one of the few females in evidence. His words made it sound like he was trying to pick me up, but his iron grip on my bicep presented a very different picture. Ten feet in the door, I was already in trouble.<\/p>\n

Luckily, I was up to the challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot interested,\u201d I replied sweetly, grinding the heel of one boot into the top of my assailant\u2019s arch. I hadn\u2019t dressed to impress and didn\u2019t particularly expect my hiking shoes to make much of an impression. But I was pleasantly surprised. This particular male must have shown up at the back door in wolf form because his feet were bare. And they were also apparently quite sensitive to being stomped on.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the shifter didn\u2019t so much release me as fling me across the room to land against the legs of another group of outpack males. This time I was the one initiating the collision, and the male I struck wasn\u2019t impressed. Snarling, he kicked me out of his path. But at least he didn\u2019t look down.<\/p>\n

I guess my weak wolf has a few things going for her<\/em>, I thought as I struggled to my feet. There had to be at least a hundred males in the room and most of them were almost certainly outpack werewolves with no clan\u2014or woman\u2014of their own. A lone female like me in a bar like this was akin to lighting a match beside a powder keg then standing there tapping my foot while wondering if anything would blow.<\/p>\n

Luckily, my half-blood skin didn\u2019t exude the same sort of come-hither charm as a pure-bred pack princess would have. And, in the dimness of the dance floor, my tomboy apparel probably made me look like just another shifter kid out on his own and hunting for a good time.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps the males\u2019 lack of attention to my skinny form was the result of vastly more enticing eye candy on the other side of the room. Because I soon caught sight of my three pack mates by dint of following everyone\u2019s gazes to a table off to the side of the bar. There, Ginger was belting out an accompaniment to the piped-in music and providing enticing visual aids to prove that tequila did indeed make her clothes fall off.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake it all off!\u201d one of the shifters beside me hollered, and the crowd surged forward in one enthusiastic mass. I figured it wouldn\u2019t be long before the first horny guy made it past Cinnamon\u2019s guard and turned this happy crowd into a bloodbath. So I gave up on pushing between chests and instead dropped down into a crouch, weaving my way around legs as hefty as tree trunks.<\/p>\n

Abruptly, I found myself pushed into a corner of the room, my trajectory losing perspective as Ginger\u2019s voice was drowned out by roars of encouragement. For a split second, I was back in the tiny cellar where I\u2019d been stuffed by bullying pure-breeds when I was barely old enough to attend kindergarten. Dark, close, no way out.<\/em> Sweat broke out on my forehead and I forced fingers between knees to stop the former from trembling.<\/p>\n

Okay, so I\u2019ll admit it. My knees were trembling too.<\/p>\n

This is absurd. They got themselves into this mess and they can get themselves right back out of it.<\/em><\/p>\n

My single glimpse of Ginger had proven that her brother was indeed at her back, ready and willing to take on the entire room full of shifters in her defense. The male twin had one hand on Lia\u2019s arm too, proving his intent to guard his cousin as well as his sister. Still, the kid had looked scared even as she did her best to mimic Ginger\u2019s gyrations.<\/p>\n

So, yes, I could pretend that the three teenagers would make it out of there alive without my assistance…even if that pretense would have been a bald-faced lie.<\/p>\n

But I just couldn\u2019t talk myself into the mental evasion. I\u2019d been abandoned too many times in my life to do the same for members of my own pack.<\/p>\n

Plus, I was ostensibly those teenagers\u2019 alpha, which meant I was in charge of keeping their flesh attached to their bones. I knew it and they knew it. Why else would Ginger have made the admittedly stupid decision to try out another shifter bar despite the fallout from her last similar attempt? Even she wouldn\u2019t have gone off half-cocked if backup wasn\u2019t on the way.<\/p>\n

So I pulled a deep breath into lungs that already ached from overexertion and I pushed my way back into the crowd.<\/p>\n

Do the twins and their cousin make it out of the bar with their alpha den mother? Find out in\u00a0<\/em>Chapter 1, Scene 2…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ready to dive into the\u00a0Alpha Underground Trilogy? Enjoy this excerpt from Chapter 1 of Half Wolf, the first book in the series! Chapter 1 Scene 1 Three shifters walked into a bar. It sounds like the beginning of a corny joke, doesn\u2019t it? But here\u2019s a little more information for you. I was those shifters\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,45,21],"tags":[14,7,27,23,8],"class_list":["post-1326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-excerpts-aimee-easterling","category-alpha-underground-series","category-urban-fantasy-paranormal-romance-fantasy-romance-reviews","tag-paranormal-books","tag-shifter-books","tag-urban-fantasy-books","tag-urban-paranormal-romantic-fantasy","tag-werewolf-books","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1326"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1355,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1326\/revisions\/1355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/aimeeeasterling.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}