"Arlo, you don't really have to tell Fionn, do you?" Caley gasped, coming to join us while rolling up her apron and shoving it into her backpack. "We can just drop her at the county hospital and be done with her, can’t we?"
"You know the rules, Caley," Arlo shrugged, standing from his seat and glaring down at me like I’d somehow managed to disrupt his afternoon. “Anyone that sets foot in the diner that’s not one of ours gets checked out by Fionn--human or no. Take her to the hospital and then bring her by the clubhouse.”
As he turned away, I saw that the back of his leather vest had several patches. There were the letters MC, a small patch that said 1%er, another that read New Orleans, LA, and the largest, central image featured a winged skull. The words The Wild Hunt were scrawled across the top.
Now, why did the fuck did that one sound so familiar?
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PACK EBON RED
The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf #1
By C.M. Stunich
I am wolf; I am human; I am neither; I am both.
I am werewolf.
And I have seven Alpha Males as my mates.
All mine to kiss and hold and touch, seven handsome men for my bed.
My boys represent the biggest packs in North America.
But I am the Alpha Female and I rule them all.
One day, the packs might force me to choose.
But my heart, it won't allow it. Things could get … bloody if I have to fight for my boys.
For now, three glittering dark courts threaten our existence with their glamorous cruelty: the vampires, the witches, and the fae.
Werewolves are missing from all the packs, and my boys and I, we have to find them.
Or find out who's killing them.
Because I'm the mistress of my men, my packs, a girl known simply as White Wolf.
I've promised to protect the men I love, the family and friends I cherish.
And the White Wolf … always keeps her promises.
PACK EBON RED
CHAPTER 1
They were coming for me.
I knew it; I could smell it. The metallic copper tang of blood came to me on the wind, like pennies and citrus, mixing with the ever present sweetness of pine. I paused, the fingers of one bare hand brushing gently down the rough bark of a tree, the other still warmly encased in a mitten and tucked in my pocket. Except for the slow, deliberate movement of my hand, I was completely still, listening, waiting.
The soft whisper of boots warned me that Nic was coming. If he hadn't wanted me to know he was behind me, I probably wouldn't.
“How many?” he asked, coming to stand beside me, close but not too close. It didn't pay to get too close to the next alpha unless you'd been chosen.
My heart sunk as I glanced over at Nic, at the proud, straight ridge of his nose and those high, sculpted cheeks. Everything about him said Ebon Red, said too close to home to be chosen. I dropped my hand from the tree and curled my fingers into a fist at my side.
“Sixteen, at least,” I said and then sighed, reaching into my left pocket for my phone. It was doubtful I'd get any reception out here, but it was worth a try. “And they've killed something,” I said, paused, pursed my lips. “Recently.”
Nic let out a low growl that curled my fingers tight around my cell, made my throat go dry. I shouldn't let myself be so affected by him; it would only end in heartbreak and pain. I knew firsthand how dangerous it was. I was daughter to a woman who'd literally killed the man she'd loved most.
I wouldn't find any sympathy back home.
“Are they trying to cause trouble?” Nic asked, reaching up to grab the zipper on his jacket. “Or are they just too inbred to realize that Friday means Friday. Your mother,” he continued because nobody who'd ever met the woman would call her 'Mom'—least of all me, “will probably cut them out of the ceremony altogether when she hears about this.”
I shook my head, my heart fluttering with hope and dropping just as fast.
“No,” I said, thinking aloud, watching with a practiced detachment as Nic shrugged his coat to the forest floor and sat down on it to start taking off his boots. If I listened carefully, I could hear my professor and my fellow Intro to Wildflowers classmates chatting about a mile off. The pack—whoever they were, I didn't recognize their scent—was farther off, maybe three or four miles out. If Nic and I stood here and waited, they'd be on us in minutes. “She needs this alliance. We need this alliance,” I said, a thousand reprimands rolling through my head all at once. It's always us and we, Zara, not me and I. “It would take a serious breach of etiquette for her to even consider cutting anyone out.”
I took a deep breath and tried dialing my mother's phone—no reception. Ridiculous. I kept trying to explain how important satellite phones would be for communication. Spending as much time as we did in remote wilderness, I felt like they were essential. But … old habits die hard. The pack—and especially my mother—they didn't trust technology.
I glanced down at Nic—shoeless, sock-less, shirtless. I had to swallow hard and look away as he stood up and dropped his jeans to the moist dirt beneath our feet. Nakedness was as easy as breathing for me, for all of us, but when it came to Nic … I felt the undertones there, the unspoken things we'd both like to do to each other in the dark. It made it hard, really hard. And then to stand here and talk about the ceremony? The implications of what, exactly, that ceremony meant were hard to ignore. Five suitors, five possible mates, five guys that I'd be doing things in the dark with that weren't Nic.
“Yeah, well,” he said, pushing a hand through his dark red hair as I looked back at him, carefully avoiding looking at anything below his waist. “If forcing me to get naked in the middle of class doesn't count as a breach of etiquette, I don't know what does. Wait here, I'll be back.”
Nic flashed a tight smile at me before taking a breath and shaking out his hands, fingers curling as the wolf reared to the surface, desperate to get out, to run, to chase, to fight. I stepped back, the nearness between us too much for me to handle. It was hard to watch anyone shift, to let them morph and meld and melt while I was stuck standing still, encased in a single form, skin itching for release. But with Nic? It was like there was this pull between us, this irresistible urge to touch and feel, to lay my hands on his bare chest and feel the change happen beneath my fingers.
I turned away fully and leaned my right shoulder against the tree, waiting for the quiet whisper of paw pads before I looked back. I only caught the tail end—quite literally—of Nic before he disappeared into the trees, his auburn fur whipping past the brown and green and blending into the shadows.