Category: Aimee Easterling’s Excerpts (Page 8 of 10)

Get caught up on Chapter Two before you finish it…

Wolf Landing was never quiet. But from the moment I stepped out of Robert’s government-issued SUV and waved farewell, two-leggers and four-leggers alike had whirled around me like a cyclone. And there, located at the very center of the storm, stood my mate.

Hunter was glorious as he shifted back and forth between lupine and human shapes with wild abandon, sometimes remembering to pull on a pair of jeans when two-legged and sometimes just showing off his chiseled muscles to all and sundry. Sure, when our paths crossed and his frosty fingers slipped beneath my sweater to caress bare skin, the digits resembled mini-icicles running up and over my hip. But the view alone was well worth a few shivers.

“You know, we can smell it when you’re getting all lustful,” Ginger complained, sneaking up behind me and slipping a party hat onto my head before I managed to dodge away from the colorful cardboard. The elastic snapped a little too forcefully beneath my chin and I playfully flicked my companion’s cheek by way of retaliation.

“If you’re jealous, you can always call your own girlfriend,” I countered, gazing fondly at the young woman who had been one of my initial pack mates way back when our clan was only five members strong and easily fit within the steel confines of my battered station wagon. Her usually sunny temperament had been missing in action for the last week, though, and I had a feeling I knew the reason why. “We’d all like to meet her,” I added.

Evasively, Ginger turned her head aside, and I sighed as her pain bit into my own belly. Both of us knew the twin was afraid of getting too attached to a one-body when our territorial rights—and ability to protect surrounding humans—were still up for grabs. After all, the letter that had come in the day’s mail only granted us probationary pack status. We still needed to attend the regional gathering and win the votes of the majority of the nearby pack leaders before we deemed the property our own from a werewolf point of view.

Since I couldn’t yet fix the underlying issue, I caved to my friend’s doleful body language and changed the subject instead. “Are you going to toss the caber for your team?”

“Hell yeah!” the twin answered, sounding much more like her usual self as she eyed the competition unfolding before us. Unlike me, Ginger saw no reason not to mingle with the big dogs, testing her prowess at each contest of might and agility that Hunter’s far-too-fertile imagination had managed to dream up. I, on the other hand, preferred to stay on the outskirts where my problematic wolf would go unnoticed by the shifters I happened to lead.

But my friend was as adamant and enthusiastic as ever. Slipping her elbow through mine, she dragged me closer to the center of activity before relinquishing her hold as abruptly as she’d first grabbed on. The caber toss was about to begin and apparently my companion’s concern about my wallflower ways paled in comparison with her interest in winning.

Stolen straight out of Scottish legend, the caber was a slender but tall tulip-tree trunk that Lia and Glen had dragged down off the mountainside that very afternoon. The goal was quite a bit trickier, though, than the simple equipment suggested. The winning contestant needed to be able to pick up the massive length of wood by the narrow end, carry it forward several paces in his arms, then flip the trunk end over end until it landed directly in front of him in the twelve-o’clock position.

Cinnamon, it appeared, wasn’t quite up to the task. Despite his lanky build, Ginger’s brother had no problem hefting the caber vertically off the ground. Carrying it forward without whacking the bystanders arrayed across the lawn? That proved to be a significantly more difficult feat.

Plus, gravity wasn’t the only force of nature the redhead had to contend with. “Hey!” Cinnamon complained as a bloodling from the opposing team slipped between his legs, attempting to trip him up.

Oh, did I forget to mention that, to werewolves, even the caber toss was a full-contact sport? Yeah, we weren’t really keen on rules at the best of times. And the twenty wolf-form adolescents making up the bulk of the current audience were growing weary of waiting for the next contest suitable for four paws.

“You lose,” Ginger said gaily as she shoved her brother aside to take his place at the starting line. “Gimme the tree!”

Despite my friend’s enthusiasm, though, I couldn’t help descending back into the brown study Ginger had so recently pulled me out of. The trouble was, I had a sinking suspicion we’d made the wrong decision in claiming the entirety of Arborville and the surrounding countryside as our proposed territory on the application form.

What if rather than winning the safety we all hankered after, our optimistic reach instead prompted other alphas to come sniffing around in such a manner they noticed our rule-breaking ways? What if Hunter’s powerful ex-mentor decided to wreak his vengeance by following the letter of the law and putting packless one-bodies aware of shifter existence—one-bodies like Ginger’s girlfriend and my mother—to death?

Still, I couldn’t mull over possible future disaster scenarios for long. Because a shirtless Hunter was hefting the discarded trunk onto one broad shoulder and approaching Ginger at a lope, making the dead weight of the eight-foot-long pole appear negligible. He nearly vibrated with virility, so I wasn’t surprised to notice that every nearby female, including those in lupine form, focused their complete attention upon his rippling abdominal muscles and narrow waist.

Hunter, however, ignored the larger audience. Instead, his gaze flew directly to mine…then he winked.

For a moment, the knot in my belly eased. And I smiled as Ginger bit her lip and blew on her hands in preparation for following in her brother’s footsteps. The other team had no idea what was about to hit them.

Four bloodlings closed ranks around my teammate, ensuring that no wily opponent could sneak past and throw Ginger off her game. Meanwhile, outside their circle, the larger pack was divided—half hoping Ginger would win the prize on their behalf while the other contingent was betting against the young female’s skill and strength. For my part, I just hoped no one got brained in the process.

So I held my breath as my friend slowly eased the caber upward and watched as she proved that anything she lacked in brawn she easily made up for in fortitude. Soon, the pole towered above all of our heads like a flagpole. Then, seemingly effortlessly, the trouble twin broke into a smooth lope.

Before my friend made her throw, though, Hunter’s chilled hands were pulling me back against his warm body. My mate’s breath teased through my mussed hair, then his broad palms began pushing circles of looseness into knotted muscles. Formerly cold flesh warmed by the minute as the uber-alpha’s inner furnace forced me to forget my worries and relax into his embrace.

“We’ll win,” Hunter whispered, his words barely audible above the cacophony of the crowd. “We always do.”

As if the uber-alpha was speaking directly to her, Ginger slid to a halt at the chalked line and tossed the log deftly forward. As the entire clan looked on with riveted attention, the heavy end of the tulip-tree trunk dipped down at the last moment so the caber struck the ground, sprang upwards, then finally thudded back earthward in the perfect orientation to win her team another twenty points.

And even though our pack was ostensibly divided into two warring factions, the howls of triumph and celebration that rose toward the clear blue sky were now universal. Wolf-form bloodlings frolicked with joy while two-leggers pumped triumphant fists into the air.

“You’re right,” I admitted, no longer certain whether I was speaking to my mate or just to myself. Because Hunter’s point was well made. Our clan was united, so how could we lose? “Together, we’ll find a way to protect our pack.”

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Chapter 2 Scene 1

“Do you want to talk about it?” Robert asked after we’d driven most of the way back to Wolf Landing without speaking. “Perhaps I shouldn’t pry,” he added. “But you haven’t complained once about my choice of music. Either you’ve become an appreciator of the Southern twang at long last or you have something seriously weighty on your mind.”

Despite my best intentions to brush his concern aside, I couldn’t help smiling at the human’s astute observations. Trust Robert to pick up on my internal struggle after only a few hours in my company when I’d managed to hide my lupine issues from every single member of my pack…including my mate…for weeks on end.

“It’s no big deal,” I said, then gave up on my attempt at minimizing worry. “Well, I guess it is a big deal, to me at least. My wolf is getting too big for her britches and she keeps trying to force me to do things I don’t want to do.”

Robert’s eyebrows twitched in response, but he didn’t pull over and push me from the car the way I thought he might have done. And when I sniffed at the air, I noted that there wasn’t even a hint of alarm in his scent.

Instead, my partner merely let the quiet rumble of the road roll between us for a moment before prodding gently. “What sort of things?” he prompted.

“Things like shifting in public. Things like going off to hunt butterflies when we have important pack duties to attend to.”

Things like gnawing on a corpse’s bloody arm…but I didn’t think that final failing was particularly helpful to mention in mixed company. Or, well, in any kind of company for that matter.

“And that’s unusual?” Robert asked. “I mean, I thought your wolf and human sides were allies, two minds sharing the same body. Surely sometimes even the best partners disagree?”

I expected my wolf to offer her own answer to Robert’s question. After all, she didn’t think we shared the same body. She thought our animal half possessed a perfectly functional body of its own, thank you very much, and one we should have spent quite a bit more time inhabiting.

But my inner animal’s hyperactivity earlier in the day must have worn her down because she remained resolutely silent. In fact, when I squeezed my eyes shut in an effort to focus on our shared inner space, I couldn’t even find my lupine partner at first glance. Only after I dug deep into our communal consciousness did I finally discover my previously unruly wolf curled up into a ball, a vague whisper of a whine emanating from her muzzle with each exhale.

Are you okay? I asked, nudging at the wolf’s comatose form the way a child might poke at the hole where a baby tooth had recently been located.

Sleepy, my animal half responded after a long moment.

Well, that was a relief. Her tone was sluggish, but at least she was no longer begging to transform at all the wrong moments. Maybe our partnership was looking up after all.

And then Robert’s voice brought me out of my worries with an abrupt change of subject. “Whose birthday is it?” he asked, an amused smile flickering across his usually solemn face.

By this point, we were winding along the gravel drive that separated the gated entrance of our new pack lands from the various buildings located therein. And when I gazed out at the view, I broke into a grin ten times wider than the one my companion currently sported.

Because Wolf Landing’s driveway was lined with paper streamers and helium balloons, a huge banner above the doorway of the community building lending a festive air even though I couldn’t read the words from our current vantage point. Meanwhile, the entire clan had assembled on the front lawn, a motley assortment of wolves and two-leggers united by the broad smiles stretching across all of their faces.

“It’s nobody’s birthday,” I answered, my wolf’s disobedience earlier in the day abruptly forgotten. “Except for Wolf Landing’s. It looks like our request to be granted probationary pack status went through without a hitch.”

Read the rest of Chapter Two of Wolf Landing…

Still reading after the beginning of Chapter Two? Find out how the chapter ends…

Chapter 2 Scene 2

Werewolves should be burned, not buried.

The words bounced around inside my skull as I hovered just inside the tree line that ringed the backside of the cemetery. I was here to tell my father goodbye and to meet my mother for the first time in over a decade. But I kept getting stuck on the incongruity of the scene before me.

I could smell shifters. Even with my half-breed nose, the distinctive aroma of fur and fangs was heavy on the air, proving that I wasn’t the only werewolf who’d been invited to this solemn occasion.

And yet, there were no flames. No praise for the fallen and howls of tribute for the dead. No ceremonial pyre to burn away our pain and warm our lupine souls.

Instead, a woman who seemed far too young to be my mother held court in front of a huge statue of an angel—an angel for crying out loud—that rose out of a ring of daylilies surrounded by perfectly manicured grass. Even from a distance, Celia was so absurdly human that I couldn’t quite imagine having spent nine months growing from egg to fetus within her womb. High heels, a black suit with tight mid-length skirt, red lipstick. She looked the part of a bereaved human wife mourning her lost husband.

But no one would have mistaken her for the mate of a shifter.

We should talk to her, my wolf murmured. Get to know her.

Unconsciously, I rubbed at the mostly healed bullet wound midway up my left arm. But the real pain came from within my chest.

Even though I knew I was lying, I told myself the ache was just heartburn. No way would I acknowledge the truncated memories of Celia that flickered through my mind.

But the recollections of my father were harder to push aside.

Harbor, the werewolf half of my parental unit, had done his level best to turn us into a real family. Even twelve years later, I still vividly recalled my father kissing away my boo-boos and trying to do the same for the pinched expression that came onto his wife’s face every time she glanced in my direction.

It hadn’t worked, though. It had never worked.

Instead, Celia exploded into regular bouts of tears and rage. A one-night stand turned into a surprise pregnancy turned into a marriage—that Celia could accept. She could also overlook her husband’s tendency to don fur as long as he did so far out of sight and never mentioned the bestial half of his personality in her presence.

But when her young daughter’s eyes turned feral every time a sparrow alighted on the family’s bird feeder…. That was too much to handle.

I wasn’t even old enough to shift for the first time when the tears and sighs gave way to screaming matches and finally to an ultimatum. Celia was leaving our clan, leaving me, leaving her mate.

For a werewolf, though, being separated from his mate was akin to driving hot spikes under his fingernails. So Harbor packed up alongside her and left me behind in his quest to make their relationship work.

Not fair, my wolf whispered. Daddy wanted to take us with him.

My inner beast had matured considerably during the last month, but she still possessed the naivety of a child. So, for her sake, I allowed one Celia-related memory to rise up and fill our joint mind. For the wolf’s sake, I replayed the final conversation I’d shared with the shifter who even now rotted in the ground forty yards away from the spot where my feet remained rooted to the earth.

“You know I love you, right?” Harbor asked as we sat together one summer evening on the stoop of our ramshackle single-wide. The landscaping was a bit shabby, dirt trails worn between residences and everything in need of a fresh coat of paint. But the pack’s territory felt warm and welcoming in a way this human cemetery never could. That night, nine-year-old me had been completely content.

“I know,” I answered cockily. I hadn’t known yet that Harbor planned to rip out my heart that very evening. So I parroted back his words easily. “I love you too, Daddy.”

My father smiled and pulled me onto his lap. But his voice was grim as he broke the bad news. “But your mother needs to be around people like her,” he started, and abruptly I wanted to be anywhere but there. My throat tightened with tears as I realized what was coming.

Still, my father wouldn’t continue until I spoke. So I forced out a single word. “Yeah,” I answered, itching to run away under the moon with a mason jar, to capture fireflies for bedroom illumination and pretend the current conversation wasn’t happening.

But I could hear my mother’s gut-wrenching sobs wending through the open window behind me. The sound alone was proof that something drastic needed to be done if we ever hoped to unify our own small corner of the pack.

Replaying the memory a dozen years in the future, I realized that my father had been painfully young then. Celia had gotten pregnant at fifteen and a half, and Harbor hadn’t possessed many additional years. Which meant the pair of them were only a little older than my current age when they’d broken all ties with their daughter.

Trying to imagine raising a kid of my own when I barely felt old enough to make my own way in the world, I felt a little more sympathy for the duo…even if the gut-wrenching pang of parting hadn’t faded one bit in the last dozen years.

Back in the past, Harbor’s lupine eyes bored into mine as he begged me to understand. “You can come with us if you want. Or you can stay here with a pack that loves you.”

See! my lupine half barked in my ear now. I shrugged off her jubilation because I’d been the one responding to Harbor then just as I was the one trying to decide whether or not to face Celia now.

My wolf still didn’t get it, but my human half had been savvy enough even at nine to understand what my father was saying between the lines. Harbor couldn’t bear to relinquish either of his responsibilities. He wasn’t an alpha werewolf, but he still possessed a deep-seated urge to protect his wife and daughter, the instinct like a heavy yoke dragging down his broad shoulders. Harbor would never leave me against my will.

But he and I both knew that I was the rotten apple tearing his marriage apart.

So nine-year-old me had puffed out her little chest and told Harbor what he needed to hear. “I’m old enough to take care of myself,” I said, simulating tween arrogance that I didn’t really feel. “Who wants to go live with humans when I have a whole pack to hang with?”

Behind us, the screen door creaked open then slapped shut with a bang. “Are you ready yet?” Celia asked her husband, averting her gaze from a daughter who she neither wanted nor loved.

The one-body clutched a cardboard box full of the few possessions she planned to take with her. Possessions that didn’t include the carton of baby photos and mementos I later found when I tore our little home apart in search of something to remember my parents by.

In contrast to my desperate clutching for the past, there was very little of our shared life that my mother hoped to remember.

“I’ll be right there,” Harbor soothed her, his voice calm and deep like the rumble of lullabies that lulled me to sleep every night.

For a moment, Celia hesitated, tapping one hard-soled sandal against the rough planks of the porch step. But then she turned toward our family’s car to stow her luggage in the trunk before sliding into the passenger-side seat. Keeping her eyes safely averted, she waited for the arrival of her mate.

My father sighed, but didn’t jump immediately to do her bidding. Instead, he rumpled up my short hair with one huge paw. “Never forget that I love you, Fen,” he murmured so quietly that Celia wouldn’t have been able to hear even if she possessed superior shifter ears. I could barely hear him, my half-blood nature meaning that my inner wolf slept most of the time. “If you ever need me, call and I’ll come.”

Then he’d turned away and walked toward my mother, leaving me shivering and abandoned in front of our little home. In the distance, I could hear the howls of our pack mates reminding me that I could turn up on their doorsteps for food or hugs at any hour of the day or night, no questions asked. It wasn’t as if I was alone in the world.

But it sure felt that way.

Years later, when I’d needed a father, Harbor hadn’t been present. I’d ached to turn to him when I grew into my own skin and ran away from the pack to spend eight months wandering alone through outpack territory. I’d needed him again when I returned to my clan and slid into a new role, slowly learning to guide teenage shifters not much younger than myself. And I could sure have used his advice at the present moment as I strove to figure out a mate bond that left me alternately giddy with joy…and on the verge of fleeing in terror.

Still, I’d never picked up a phone to call Harbor because I’d known he wouldn’t come. When I was nine years old, my father had chosen Celia over me. And now he’d fled beyond my ability to follow.

We still have a mother, my optimistic wolf whispered.

I only shook my head by way of reply. Because no matter what my inner animal thought, the one-body whose high heels were currently sinking into the sod before me was mother by blood alone. There was no point in poking my nose where it didn’t belong.

So I turned away from my father’s funeral even as I felt the electricity of transformation fill the air and heard my relatives howl out their eulogies to the clear blue sky. My wolf wordlessly yearned toward the possible companionship. But instead of pacing forward to join these family members who I barely recognized, I just retraced my steps back toward a shifter whose affections weren’t fickle and flighty, who cared for me with no strings attached.

I was plenty old enough not to need a parent. And I was better off without Celia in my life.

Want to read the rest of Fen’s story? Buy Lone Wolf Dawn today, the second book of the Alpha Underground Trilogy. Hope you enjoyed the excerpt!