Her Loner

  Fiona Davenport

  Copyright © 2022 by Fiona Davenport

  Cover designed by Elle Christensen

  Edited by Editing4Indies

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Her Loner

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Her Loner

  Thora Ferguson didn’t know shifters existed until she moved to Timber Ridge. But seeing how mates treated each other, she couldn’t help but want one of her own.

  After a decade as a lone wolf, Rome Coinin didn't expect the pack he joined five years ago would eventually lead him to his mate. But there was no doubting the pretty little chef was fated to be his. And now that he’d found her, nobody was ever going to come between them.

  Prologue

  Rome

  Being a loner for a decade had been hard on my wolf. It yearned for the comfort provided by a pack. My animal did not understand why I was cast out after my father was defeated by the alpha when he challenged him for the position after my mother was shot by hunters during a run. He feared I would eventually want to avenge his death…and I couldn’t really blame him. He was probably right. If I’d stayed with my pack as I aged and grew in strength, I would’ve been tempted to follow in my dad’s footsteps at some point. And I would have made damn sure I succeeded where he had failed.

  Instead, I roamed the country, moving from state to state until I stumbled across Keane and his small pack in the wilderness. He’d shocked the shit out of me when he’d let me stay in one of the cabins. Even more so when he asked if I wanted to join their pack after being there for a month.

  But I never forgot what it felt like to be a lone wolf. When an injured falcon shifter came to us after she’d been tortured for a year, I was plagued by dreams about my time spent on my own. Ramsey had been a loner when she was taken, and her vulnerability reminded me of the time when I had nobody at my back. Which was why I found myself promising her new mate that I would infiltrate the prison where the human was being kept to kill the bastard. He should’ve already been dead, except the alpha of the local pack hadn’t wanted to get involved in the clusterfuck because Ramsey was just a loner he’d allowed onto his territory. The fucker.

  Aero couldn’t go after the evil human himself because he needed to stick close to Ramsey during the early stages of their mating. But I had no qualms about throwing myself into the line of fire to make sure she was safe. With no family or mate, if my plan went sideways, there wouldn’t be anyone to mourn me beyond the other five members of my pack. Not that I expected anything to go wrong.

  Flashing a wolfish smile at the guard I’d pinpointed as the one most likely to accept a bribe, I yanked an envelope thick with cash out of my back pocket. Removing the bills, I fanned them out so he could see how much I’d brought. “It’ll be the easiest five thousand dollars you’ll ever make.”

  His gaze remained locked on the money as he asked, “And all I have to do is get this guy outside in the yard by himself?”

  “Yup.”

  He looked up at me, but only for a second. The lure of the cash was too much for him. “What’s gonna happen to him?”

  My inner animal pushed against my skin, beyond ready to scare the guard into doing what we asked if the bribe wasn’t enough incentive. “Do you actually care?”

  The scent of his greed was thick in the air. “Not really.”

  “Then all you need to know is that this won’t come back on you in a way your bosses will think you were involved.”

  My reassurance was enough for him to reach out and grab the money. The deal had been made, and the bastard who’d hurt Ramsey would be dead soon.

  I spent the next fifty-two hours in the forest surrounding the prison, waiting for my opportunity to strike. The inmates had been outside for two hours when the guards started moving them toward the door. The guard I bribed glanced over his shoulder before he stalked toward the human who had captured Ramsey. My moment had finally come.

  I called my wolf forward, and cracking and popping sounds filled the air. I dropped to my paws when my human form retreated. My muscles bunched as I crouched low and moved slowly through the tall grass toward the fence topped with electric wires. It was tall enough to keep the prisoners inside, but my wolf would be able to leap over the barrier.

  I waited until the other prisoners were led inside while the guard tugged on the bastard’s arm to separate him from the group. My keen hearing picked up their argument as I stealthily approached the fence.

  “I didn’t do nothing, man.”

  “There are reports of you selling contraband. Turn out your pockets,” the guard I’d bribed commanded.

  “What the hell? Talk to Simmons. I’m supposed to have protection from him,” my prey complained.

  “Simmons is off today,” the guard snapped, yanking the prisoner close. “I don’t care about your deal with him.”

  “I paid him two days ago,” the bastard whined.

  “Yeah, well…that’s not my problem. You haven’t paid me shit.”

  Even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered. The five grand I’d given the guard would’ve been more than what my prey could’ve paid him.

  While the man who’d kept Ramsey in a cage and butchered her wings turned out his pockets, my gaze locked on the guard in the observation tower to my left. He carried his rifle on his shoulder as he paced back and forth, and his gaze had been scanning the yard while the prisoners had their allotted time outside. But as they filed through the door, his attention was focused on the group.

  More than half the men were already inside. My window of opportunity was closing, so I lunged forward, closing the remaining distance between the fence and me in a few seconds. Then I pushed off my hind legs and leaped through the air, sailing over the electric wires with a few inches of clearance before landing. My muscles bunched as I powered forward.

  The guard spotted me, and his head jerked in shock. I took advantage of his stunned disbelief and went for my prey’s throat. As much as I would have loved to make his death a slow one, I didn’t have time for the torture he deserved for his crimes. Instead, I slashed at his chest with my claws and sank my teeth into his neck with a bone-crushing bite. Ripping through his jugular vein and carotid artery, I felt the blood spurt from his neck. They were both completely severed, and his limp form dropped to the ground when I released my hold on his neck.

  He was already unconscious when I bounded away from him toward the opposite side of the fence. The wounds were too severe for him to have any chance of survival, no matter how quickly help arrived. He would bleed out before anyone had the chance to help him.

  Ramsey’s enemy had paid for her suffering with his life. He would be leaving the prison in a pine box instead of with his freedom after a ridiculously short sentence of only six months. He couldn’t hurt her anymore. I savored the coppery taste of his blood as I raced across the yard and leaped over the fence, reaching the safety of the woods before the guards realized what had happened.

  This would be a mystery the human authorities would never solve. An animal attack that would spark rumors of a beast living in the nearby wilderness…land claimed by the local pack. I took comfort in the fact that the alpha and his wolves would no longer be able to run free. Not when people would be drawn to the forest to hunt for the beast for many years to come. It was a small price for him to pay for his prejudice against loners.

  1

  Thora

  I normally enjoyed talking with my parents on the phone, but my mom was laying the guilt trip on me extra thick today.

  “But if you were still in Chicago, we could celebrate with you.” She heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t like to think about my baby girl being all alone on her birthday.”

  I was a grown woman with a career and my own home, but my mom treated me as though I was still a teenager whenever she didn’t get her way. The blame for her self-absorption rested squarely on my dad’s shoulders. He always gave her whatever she wanted and pushed me to do the same.

  “I came up for my birthday last year,” I reminded her.

  “But not for Thanksgiving.”

  She was never going to let me forget about that perceived slight, but it was a small price to pay for spending the holiday with Peppa and her growing family. Although we’d made a feast fit for kings, it had been the most relaxing Thanksgiving I had ever experienced. Mainly due to the fact that I didn’t have my mom looming over my shoulder, trying to tell me that her method of cooking the turkey was better than mine. Even though I was a chef who specialized in the preparation of roasted and braised meat.

  “I had to work the day before and the day after. If I’d come up for the holiday, I would’ve only been able to spend half the day with you and Dad before I needed to turn around and head back to Timber Ridge.”

  She sniffed at my explanation—one I’d given her many, many times already. “If you’d stayed at Castagna like I told you to do, spending the holidays with your father and I wouldn’t be a problem.”

  None of my friends or family had understood why I’d left one of the very few restaurants in the world that had earned three Michelin stars for a job at a start-up in a small town almost two years ago. No matter how much I tried to explain why I was following my former sous chef—who’d only had the position for six months before she resigned—they just didn’t get it. Peppa had protected the other female chefs of the misogyny in the kitchen as much as she could, but there had only been so much that she could do.

  When I heard that she was leaving to take the executive chef position at a new restaurant, I hadn’t hesitated to jump at the chance to join her. No matter how much my parents tried to talk me out of the decision, I hadn’t budged. Although I knew I’d miss them when I left Chicago, I couldn’t ignore the voice in my head urging me to move to Timber Ridge.

  Not even when Peppa sat Larken—Castagna’s pastry chef and a good friend of hers—and me down to explain that we would be surrounded by shifters if we moved with her. That she could change into a lioness, and the other two chefs who’d resigned with us—Bexley and Aero—were shifters, too. A polar bear and a falcon.

  It had taken a lot for me to wrap my head around the existence of shifters, but there had been no denying the truth when she changed into a lioness in front of us. Knowing that she could’ve killed William—the head chef at Castagna—with one swipe of her powerful paw had made me respect Peppa even more. She had put up with a lot of crap from him before she resigned, and the jerk would never know how close he’d come to dying. Unfortunately.

  “I know you don’t agree, but I made the decision that was best for me, Mom.”

  I took some small comfort in the fact that William had come to regret treating Peppa as though she didn’t belong in his kitchen. I had been giddy when I learned that Armand—Castagna’s executive chef—had come to Timber Ridge only four months after we had left to ask her to return to Chicago and offered to fire William if she came back. He’d apparently managed to destroy the morale of a kitchen that had just earned its third Michelin star in that short amount of time, and nobody skilled wanted to take the positions we’d left.

  Not that I blamed any of them. I would have been miserable working for him without her there to act as a buffer. Leaving had been the right choice. Knowing the restaurant had already lost one star without us reinforced that I’d made a good call.

  “While I’m willing to admit that Timber Treasures is more successful than I expected, you could still do better if you came back home,” she insisted with a huff. “There are so many more options here. Chances for you to move up to sous chef and eventually executive chef. Or even to open your own place. I’ve told you time and time again that your father and I would be more than happy to give you the money to do so.”

  “I appreciate the offer”—although I’d never accept it since the number of strings attached meant any restaurant I opened with their money would be hers more than mine—“but I’m happy where I’m at.”

  In all the time since I’d moved, I hadn’t second-guessed the decision. Until today. My birthday.

  I was close with my coworkers, but I missed having family near to celebrate with. My mom had sent a package with a present and Fannie May mint meltaways, but it wasn’t the same. No matter how delicious the dessert Larken would most likely make for me was, it wouldn’t be the German chocolate cake she had baked every year until I moved. Luckily, her favorite was also mine, so I enjoyed the cake as much as she did.

  “Fine. Enjoy your birthday with your friends.”

  She didn’t sound as though she really meant it, but I thanked her for the birthday wishes before ending the call. The last thing I wanted was to get into a fight with my mom today of all days.

  When my phone rang again right away, I assumed it was my dad calling to back her up. I didn’t look down at the screen as I answered, so I was surprised when Peppa responded to my stilted greeting. “Happy Birthday!”

  As soon as I heard my friend’s voice, the tension drained from my body. “Thanks.”

  “Do you have any special plans other than our breakfast?”

  I was meeting up with her, Larken, Aero, and Bexley to celebrate my birthday before the restaurant opened. But since only one or two of us could be off at the same time, I was going to be on my own tonight. “Nope, I think I’ll probably watch a chick flick, drink a glass of wine, and demolish the box of chocolates my mom sent.”

  “That sounds heavenly.” Although she sounded wistful, I knew Peppa wouldn’t give up the hecticness of her life for the solitude of mine. She had found her fated mate—the one person every shifter was destined to spend the rest of their lives with—after we moved to Timber Ridge. Their son, Cyrus, was a handful now that he was able to toddle around everywhere he wanted to go.

  “I can’t complain too much.”

  My plans paled in comparison to everything Cason had done for her last birthday, but he tended to go overboard where she was concerned. All of the shifter males were like that with their mates. They loved their mates and children with a fierceness I wished I’d be able to experience someday.

  Shortly after she’d met him, I had asked Peppa how shifters knew they’d found their fated mate. When she had explained to me that they only ever responded sexually to each other, I had wondered if maybe there was a shifter out there for me. I figured the odds were slim since I was one hundred percent human, but being the fated mate of a shifter would explain why I’d never been interested in dating—much to my mother’s chagrin—and was still a virgin at twenty-five.

  “Darn, that makes what I have to ask so much harder.”

  My brows drew together. “What?”

  Her sigh was filled with regret, unlike my mom’s earlier. “I tried like heck to figure something else out since it’s your birthday, but Ramsey isn’t feeling well, and Aero wants to stay home with her. But we’re fully booked, so being short-staffed in the kitchen would be tough.”

  I couldn’t blame Aero for wanting to watch over his mate. She’d just recently given birth to their son, and her inner falcon was still recovering from her ordeal last year. My understanding was that the process was moving more quickly than they’d expected, most likely due to her pregnancy. But from what Aero had said, it had been too long since she’d been able to let her inner falcon fly free. Soon, though. At least that’s what we all hoped.

  If going to work on my birthday would help her get there faster, I was happy to do it. “Tell Aero to stay home tonight. Of course, I’ll come in.”

  2

  Thora

  Although I knew I’d made the right decision to cover for Aero at work, my feet still dragged as I trudged down the sidewalk toward Timber Treasures. Since the weather was gorgeous, I’d decided to walk instead of drive. At least then I was able to enjoy some fresh air before I spent the next six hours in a sweltering kitchen.

  Aero had come in and done the prep work before heading back home to Ramsey, saving me a couple of hours to enjoy my birthday. But when I neared the restaurant, I spotted her at a booth near the window. My brows drew together until I realized that Aero must have been more worried about her than I thought. I should’ve told him to skip the prep work so he didn’t drag her and Arbor out of the house to keep an eye on them while he was working.

  I picked up my pace as I headed for the back door that led directly into the kitchen so I could avoid walking through a packed dining room. Flinging it open, I called, “I can’t believe you made Ramsey and Arbor come in with you, Aero. Get outta here. I’ve got your station covered now.”

 

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