Matebranded, p.1
Matebranded, page 1
Matebranded
Rune Wolf, Book 1
Aimee Easterling
Copyright © 2024 by Aimee Easterling
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
Chapter 1
When is a wolf not a wolf? At home, where I played the adult yet still obedient daughter, keeping my inner beast under wraps for the sake of my adopted human family. At work, where I infiltrated dangerous shifter clans with practiced deception, using my furry scent to get in the door while wielding no obvious weapons other than a killer smile.
Tonight, though, I was neither at home nor at work.
I did need to touch base, though, before my time became entirely my own. Still, I toed off my shoes there at the edge of the wide-open desert, the cool night air making my inner wolf stir with familiar excitement. Then, before I succumbed to the urge, I forced myself to focus and text my boss.
Julius was not only my employer; he was also the closest thing I had to a father. Not that we were the touchy-feely sort. He’d be fine with me merely dropping a pin, ensuring he had my exact location if he needed it—fifty miles from where I was due to ferret out blood magic tomorrow and well within outpack territory where I was unlikely to run into anyone else.
Message relayed, I let my phone fall onto the driver’s seat and I closed my eyes, standing erect and listening to the dark.
The ping of a reply text tore through the silence, louder than it would have sounded before my ears started shifting. My fingers were still human enough to pick up the phone, though, and see that the missive wasn’t from Julius, but rather from his daughter.
Celeste was already thinking ahead to tomorrow, when I’d slide into the persona that made me into the Council’s secret weapon. There’d be lip-biting and lowered eyelashes. Feigned submission and, at just the right moment, a needle stuck into an unwary alpha’s arm.
Well, no, that’s what I was thinking about. Celeste was thinking past that to the moment when I’d bag the culprit then head home to the echoing mansion we shared with her father.
“Elspeth! Choose for me, please: Rom com or action flick? Pizza or popcorn?”
The answer was both, everything, obviously. My mouth watered and for one split second I could taste salt on my tongue, could feel our shared laughter filling the living room to bursting. Celeste was my opposite in so many ways, but whenever we were together we clicked.
We clicked...as long as I stayed human. As long as I kept my feral side under wraps, ignoring the way my inner wolf itched to stretch its legs and run wild.
As long as I never admitted that what I craved at the moment wasn’t popcorn but, rather, blood.
The distant scent of prey animals made my inner wolf itch now. My teeth sharpened as my hands curled into claws, reaching toward the sandy expanse beyond this isolated and silent gas station. I could almost see the terrified eyes of the critter I’d soon pounce upon, could almost feel flesh tearing beneath my fangs.
“You’re more than a wolf,” Julius had told me so many times. And that was true. I was much more than a wolf.
But, for one night, perhaps I didn’t mind being less.
Through lupine nostrils, the desert smelled like mesquite and sagebrush. No hint of wolf pee warned away outsiders the way it would have within a claimed territory. Instead, a hum of electricity I’d only felt in the outpack sped my feet to near flying while a distinct musk I’d grown familiar with during my previous visits to this region prompted me to lick my chops.
Peccaries were good eating. And, yes, I was well aware desert pigs had sharp tusks that could inflict significantly more damage than my canines. I knew their herds worked in unison just like wolf packs and that the largest grouping might contain four dozen individuals.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t have to mess up my takedown by looking small and meek the way I did on jobs. Game on.
Lowering my body closer to the earth, I transitioned from tracking to stalking. Swiveling my ears, I picked out the soft grunts and growls of the peccary herd, their vocalizations intermingled with chewing and digging. They didn’t sound alarmed, hadn’t noticed me creeping closer.
There was no moon to brighten the landscape. No glow of light pollution to assist my vision. But I could smell. My paws could feel. I could almost taste raw pork on my tongue.
And now I could see the faintest silhouettes of the animals I was approaching. A small one had wandered a good distance away from its neighbors. The meat would be tender. I angled myself toward the weanling. Tensed my muscles. Took off…
...and slammed directly into another wolf.
He was larger than me but for a moment I thought our collision was a mere accident. It was true that, with the wind blowing in such a way that I couldn’t smell him, he definitely should have caught my scent. But he didn’t growl. Didn’t raise his ruff in threat and pin back his ears the way wolves did during altercations.
Instead, he just got in my way. That time, then again and again as I tried to pad around him. I bared my teeth and he failed to return the threat, but he also resolutely refused to step out of my path.
Despite my best efforts, our standoff wasn’t silent. A peccary snorted. Teeth clacked together. Then they were stampeding away from us, disappearing into the desert. They’d be alert now. Not worth the chase.
I shifted, furious. Stayed on my knees so I could grab onto the wolf’s cheeks and drag him up until our eyes were at the same level. It was a dominance move, but he let me get away with it. Let me spit out my anger. “Cockblocker!”
Only then did he join me in humanity, my grasp on fur turning into fists cupping cheeks. A naked man not much older than my twenty-five years knelt knee-to-knee in front of me, his muscles and breadth making him roughly twice my weight.
Despite his daunting size, however, his scent was sweet as cactus flowers. The bristle-roughened skin of his face was warm beneath my knuckles. Warm and enticing. I found myself swaying inward before reality reasserted itself.
“Lone wolves are vermin,” a memory of Julius’s voice asserted.
Vermin might be extreme, but a lone wolf certainly wasn’t worthy of my attention. I settled back onto my heels just as the stranger’s lips curled upwards in a barely visible half-smile. His dark eyes glinted with starlight as he rumbled out a retort, “You intended to make love to the pigs?”
“I intended to eat one,” I back-talked, letting the spunk I usually hid turn even more audible. After all, wolves who hung out solo in outpack territory were generally those too submissive to survive in a clan. It wasn’t as if I was risking much. “Same thing you intended, presumably,” I couldn’t resist tacking on.
Abruptly, the stranger’s starlit eyes turned intense as he growled, “Smart wolves don’t hunt peccaries solo.”
My skin prickled. Maybe this stranger wasn’t so submissive after all. I’d acted without understanding the big picture and it was too late to pivot into dumb-brunette mode. I…
Then the flash of danger in his eyes faded so quickly I was left wondering whether I’d only imagined it. His hand rose, a single finger not quite touching my bare skin as it traced a line from my shoulder across my neck to the opposite shoulder. The heat of almost-contact made me breathless and my mind began playing crazy tricks.
What my eyes thought they saw: a strand of glowing dots momentarily rising upon my skin beneath where his hand drifted. What my body thought it felt: the same electricity that had seemed to buoy me up as I ran through the desert now coursing through my veins.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, crab-walking backwards then swearing as the sudden pain of a cactus spine embedded itself into the pad of my thumb. The jolt broke me out of the sensual daze the stranger’s attention had infused me with. Brought me back to the real world where even the earth bit back.
Bit and latched on. The spine didn’t want to come out easily. Instead, my efforts only worked it deeper into my flesh, the jerkiness of my motions not helping one bit.
I was furious with somebody. Perhaps with myself. Perhaps with the stranger. The spine was definitely part of it and I chose not to look deeper into my anger than that.
In front of me, the stranger let me poke at the spine until it became clear that I was only making matters worse left-handed. Only then did he gesture at my wound. “May I?”
I shouldn’t have, but I nodded. And when his long fingers encircled my much smaller wrist, luminescent spirals curled up from the point of contact. They slid across my forearm and veered toward my elbow, tickling at skin level while twisting and tugging deep within my gut.
I held my ground this time though. Whatever the light show was about, it wasn’t hurting either of us. It wasn’t a threat, so it was irrelevant.
Only once the stranger was sure I wasn’t going to jerk away again did he bend his head and close his teeth around the spine. As if he was a wolf, which should have been disgusting but...wasn’t. Instead, I watched, enthralled, as his lips brushed across the pad of my thumb, the resulting glow illuminating his face like Christmas lights.
He was beautiful, but not in the way one might expect. This wasn’t the rough attractiveness of a lone wolf or even the manicured perfection of a vain pack shifter. Instead, the lights erupting out of my skin cast tribal tattoos across the chiseled contours of his nose and chin, turning handsomeness into something otherworldly.
He was unlike anyone else I’d ever met.
Or maybe the vision was yet another trick of the night. Because the stranger tugged sharpness out of my flesh with one quick jerk. Lights dulled as pain flared. Cold replaced heat as his hand retreated.
“To answer your question,” he murmured. “I’m not doing anything. We’re mates.”
I didn’t feel tough, but toughness was all I had to fall back on at that moment. “Mates?” I forced myself to snort while reminding myself that wolves without a pack weren’t precisely rational. No matter how physically enticing this stranger might appear, I’d never see him again.
Which meant it was time to distance myself in the easiest way possible—with words. “So that’s how lone wolves get laid,” I finished, adding a twist of sarcasm to my voice.
I expected him to explode into anger. After all, hell hath no fury like a male werewolf scorned.
Instead, that tiny half-smile curled his lips again. “Think about it, then come see me. I live that way.” His gesture was vague. West somewhere. “My name is Orion. The bond will pull you where you need to go.”
I was too shaken to speak and I didn’t need words anyway. Letting my wolf body replace my human body, my receding rump said everything necessary. I trotted away in the opposite direction from the one in which Orion had pointed, back toward my car where granola bars would fill my belly and locks on the doors would prevent anyone from disrupting my slumber.
Three times along the way, however, I peered back over my shoulder to make sure the stranger hadn’t followed. He hadn’t.
I was oddly disappointed that he found it so easy to let me go.
Chapter 2
I feigned a mechanical breakdown fifty miles down the road the next morning. As soon as a distant silhouette of a sentry suggested I’d entered the monitored portion of the rotten pack’s territory, I braked aggressively, wobbling the wheel as I pulled over onto the shoulder of the two-lane highway. Getting out, I pretended someone on my phone was walking me through checking the obvious, which I did very badly. Far more adeptly and subtly, I flipped open the plastic cover to the fuse box and loosened the fuel-pump relay.
Because packs like this didn’t like outsiders sniffing around. But if my car wouldn’t start, they couldn’t very well send me away.
By the time I was done, the sound of a vehicle on the road behind me suggested I wouldn’t even have to walk to the closest mechanic to put my plan into motion. Tires slowed then stopped right in the middle of the road, a hint that the driver was a local well aware of traffic patterns, or the lack thereof.
Meanwhile, hairs prickled on the back of my neck. This wasn’t just a local. This was a wolf.
“Problem?”
I turned to find a thirty-something woman in braided pigtails considering me with her beast rampant behind her eyes. But I couldn’t smell her signature aroma, nor could I make out the pack scent that should have formed a foundation underlying that signature.
Instead, I smelled something very different. The subtle yet very present salty aroma of blood.
This was exactly what the Council had sent me to deal with. Blood magic at the alpha level rippling down to impact the entire clan—one of several issues too volatile for individual packs to handle solo. The werewolves involved were never glad to be intruded upon, but well-timed takedowns could prevent awfulness up to and including inter-pack warfare.
I was helping, not that the woman in front of me would see it that way. So I didn’t ask about the blood aroma, which clung due to her leader’s actions. Just got in when she offered me a ride and poured out my well-prepared sob story.
My car wouldn’t start. Could she possibly arrange a tow?
“Not a problem.” Empty desert flowed past outside our windows, but the woman didn’t look at me. Was she concerned I’d notice the wolf lurking behind her eyes, a wolf that should have been asleep during a situation that was far from perilous? “I’m Maya by the way,” she introduced herself.
“Elspeth,” I answered. Then, figuring I might as well go for broke, I added, “Could you possibly take me to your alpha? This is embarrassing, but I just don’t... I...”
“You’re a woman alone.” Her hand reached across the center console to cover mine, the contact deeply soothing in a way it shouldn’t have been with the scent of blood still redolent between us. “You’re asking for safe harbor, but you don’t have to ask. You’ll find what you’re looking for in town. There’s a cafe. Do you need any cash?”
Women were harder to hoodwink than men. Women understood that just because I was small and curvy, that didn’t mean I was defenseless.
But women also understood well-founded fears. I bit my lip and peered out the window, watching as the side road my research had suggested led to pack central passed by on our right. Then I continued to tell the truth—if not the full truth—while drawing upon the experience still at the forefront of my mind.
“I stopped last night in outpack land,” I told Maya. “I... There was a lone wolf... He expressed an interest and...” I swallowed.
The scent of blood grew stronger. “You’re concerned he’ll follow you. He won’t. We watch our boundaries.”
That assertion was hard to counter when Maya had found me mere minutes after I pretended to break down. So I didn’t argue. Just begged. “Please.”
“We’ll send someone out to handle the lone wolf,” Maya promised. “Just because no one owns the desert on the other side of our borders doesn’t mean we allow inappropriate behavior from vagrants. Describe him.”
Despite everything, my cheeks heated. I’d messed up. I couldn’t sic shifters dabbling in blood magic on a lone wolf who had, in reality, acted like a perfect gentleman, albeit a delusional one. “No, don’t bother. I’m overreacting. Orion didn’t do anything inappropriate.”
The lone wolf’s name tasted oddly sweet on my tongue, which might explain why I’d offered information that didn’t need to be offered. Maya’s response, though, was odder than my slip.
The car screeched to a halt so fast I would have slammed into the dashboard if my seatbelt hadn’t caught me. Then Maya stared at me with that wolf even more wide awake behind her pupils. “You met Orion in outpack territory? Orion scared you so badly you want to ask for help from our alpha?”
I nodded confirmation and she huffed out something that sounded an awful lot like mother of a whelp-mauler before yanking the steering wheel all the way to the left to make a U-turn.
“Where are we going?” I asked when an explanation didn’t appear to be forthcoming.
The scent of blood intensified further and Maya didn’t look at me as she answered. “Looks like I’m taking you to my alpha after all.”
The pack central I’d been sent to infiltrate resembled any other patch of desert until we were almost at its doorstep. Then, as our vehicle eased its way between close canyon walls, camouflaged gardens began to pop up amid the sandstone.
In satellite photos, the area must have looked like a few pockets of soil had provided a foothold for cliffrose and desert broom. Up close, however, I could see strawberries dangling from hanging planters. Crisp lettuce ready to turn into salads. A peach tree arching above everything else.
I’d been inside dozens of under-the-radar pack centrals and none had been as cleverly arranged as this.
