Wild Cowboy Wolf, page 27
“Yes!” his friends all said in unison.
Blaze nodded. “Oh. Okay.”
He should have seen this coming. He was more than a bit confident he deserved it.
It was Maverick’s turn to speak now. The packmaster always led the way. “All of this to say, it’s going to take more than the love of Dakota to heal you over the coming days.”
Dakota nodded in agreement.
“Weeks.”
“Months,” Malcolm added.
Blaze waved his hand as if he were holding an auction ticket. “Anyone have the card for years?”
Peaches yowled in response, leaping from Dakota’s arms. The cat scampered across the tiling of the hospital-room floor, up onto his bedside, and onto his chest. He thought she might bat him across the nose like her favorite jingly mouse toy or at least hiss at him, but to his surprise, she simply curled her legs underneath her and sat there.
She flicked her tail at him before she gave a prolonged slow blink.
Blaze was surprised at the bit of emotion that caught in his throat, but apparently his cat and his packmates weren’t done.
“I told them all, Blaze,” Dakota said. “I told them everything.”
Blaze froze. Peaches remained perched on his chest. His initial reaction was to swear or to make a joke of the whole thing, but then he felt himself hesitate. He glanced from face to face at all his packmates present, realizing that like Dakota, every one of them still looked at him the same. He hadn’t even noticed when they walked into the room.
They still loved him. In spite of all of it.
“It’s our turn to save you,” Malcolm said, like he wasn’t exactly pleased about it. “Even if that little stunt did ensure that we only have the vampires left to defeat.”
For a moment, Blaze couldn’t breathe. “What am I supposed to do?”
Dakota crossed the room to his side, placing a hand on his arm. “Let us love you. Let us carry the weight for you, and we’ll teach you how to love us back.”
And for the first time in his life, Blaze didn’t know what to say. He didn’t have a single joke or sarcastic comment that could help him come back from that, that could shield him.
And strangely…he was okay with that.
Chapter 22
It’d taken nearly a month for him to walk again, which concerned Dakota at first, but Belle insisted that with the level of damage there’d been, it was normal. Dakota was out in the stables tending to one of the horses who’d managed to get an infected shoe when she realized something on the ranch was different. It was the third time one of her packmates had passed her, and every time, each of them had given her a little secret grin as if they knew something that she didn’t.
What was going on with them?
Dakota quirked a brow.
A half hour later when even Malcolm passed her and cast her an uncharacteristic smile, his with a hint of I told you so, she quickly finished her work on the horse, resigning herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to get much else accomplished today if she didn’t figure out what was going on with everyone—and soon.
Wandering around Wolf Pack Run was even stranger. The smiles and giggles she received made her blush, though she couldn’t bring herself to ask what everyone thought was so amusing. Was there something in her hair? Did she have a bit of food stuck in her teeth? Whatever it was, she hadn’t seen the whole of the pack this happy and actually smiling like this since the Volk had come. Immediately, she felt a lift in her own spirits.
It wasn’t until she reached her pack mailbox and saw that there were identical letters in each one, a handful of them missing, that she started to realize. She compared the one in her box to the others. Hers was the original. The rest were simply copies, but every one of them looked as if they’d been handwritten by…
She tore hers open, unfolding the paper inside and reading the words scrawled across the page.
Dakota,
You said you wanted to do this in front of the whole pack, so here it goes… We both know how our packmates enjoy a good love story. Chalk the public nature of this up to yet another thing I’m asking you to forgive me for, but I think the whole of the pack will benefit from hearing exactly how I feel about you. I won’t have anything to hide behind anymore, not even Jasper’s name—sorry, Jas—so forgive me, Dakota? Please?
I told you that you didn’t know me, but what I neglected to say that day is that even if that were true, it wouldn’t really matter, Kotes, because I know you.
I know that you’re smart and fierce. Funny and kind. Brave and loyal.
That when you set your mind to a goal, it’s only a matter of time until you reach it, because you know exactly how to persevere and make all your own dreams come true, even without me. You’ve never needed any help from me on that front, even though I’m willing to let go of the hero complex and be your support whenever you need me to. I know I want to be there by your side always.
But most importantly, I know that I want to fall asleep with you in my arms for the rest of our days, because you’re my person, my safe space, my everything, and though I’ve spent the last decade by your side, I haven’t told you nearly enough how I feel about you. I wish I had told you before…
That I love you.
That you’re my best friend, and my mate, if you’ll have me.
And I don’t want to live another moment of my life without calling you mine.
Yours always,
Blaze
P.S. Peaches is a part of the whole package, too. Just don’t let that change your mind because she also loves you. She’s just not great at showing it.
Dakota smiled, laughing to herself even as tears of joy ran down her face.
Good Lord, he was a fool, but she loved him.
“I’ll take it that smiling is a good sign.” The familiar thrum of her mate’s voice warmed through her.
She turned to see Blaze with his Stetson tipped onto his head, leaning against the corral, low-hung jeans showing off those narrow, muscular hips in a way he knew drove her wild. His shirt for the day was a cobalt blue that brought out the deep-sea color of his eyes and read: “I’m kind of a f*ckup, but you put up with me.”
Blaze pointed down to the graphic. “I’m kind of hoping this one is true.”
Dakota shook her head, even as she laughed. “You are by no stretch of the imagination a fuckup.”
Blaze cast her a smile of his own. “I’d like to believe that, only because you do.”
“I do believe it. You’re also brave, and kind, and funny…”
He pushed off the corral fence and stepped toward her. “Brave before funny, huh? I wouldn’t have thought that.”
“The order isn’t specific.” She grinned. “The only thing that is specific is how I feel about you.”
He came to her side, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her in to him. He glanced toward the sky, pretending he was struggling to think. “Like I’m an impulsive, sarcastic moron who tells far too many lewd jokes and totally screwed things up and hurt the only person who really mattered to him?” He glanced down at her.
Dakota wrapped her arms around his neck. “No, but now that you mention it, that’s part of it, too.”
He winced. “I knew you wouldn’t let me off scot-free.”
“Oh no. You’ll be hearing about all this for a long time. That’s for certain.”
Blaze pawed at the back of his neck with a sheepish grin. “Yeah, I didn’t figure I’d make it out alive, so I hadn’t counted on the PTSD flashbacks afterward, or…”
“Or scaring me half to death?”
He winced again. “Yeah, that too.” He tugged her closer, backing them both up against the mess-hall wall next to the mailbox in a way that instantly seared heat through her. His eyes flashed to their wolflike gold. “As long as I have you by my side, I think I can manage to get through it.” He dipped his head low, the scruff on his cheek brushing against hers as he laid a kiss on the side of her neck before he pulled back to look at her again. “So how do you feel about me?”
She batted at him playfully. “Blaze, be serious. I already told you. I love you. I still do.”
The wry smile that crossed his face was full, genuine. No hint of darkness hidden beneath it. She hadn’t seen him smile like that in a long time.
She bit her lower lip, and he growled his approval.
“Is this the part where I’m supposed to grovel some more, or can we just skip it so I can finally tell you I love you and make love to you while I’m not bleeding to death?”
She smiled. “I think we can skip the extended grovel for now. It’ll take too long, considering the amount of groveling you have to do.”
“I’ll be sure to take it up with management.” Blaze grinned, casting her that handsome, sexy grin. “I love you, Dakota. You’re my best friend, but I’ve always been in love with you, so I won’t pretend being by your side all these years wasn’t a little self-serving, but I hope you’ll forgive me for that, too.”
“I think I can forgive you on that account because I love you, too. Happiness is marrying your best friend after all.”
“Friends really do make the best lovers.” Blaze grinned. “Me told you that, too, huh?”
“She did, but she didn’t have to. I’d already figured that out the first time I kissed you.”
Dakota pulled him down toward her, covering his lips with her own as she kissed him like she was trying to make up for all the time they’d missed, for all the years they’d spent trying to hide how they felt for each other. His tongue parted her lips, seeking entry, and she gave it to him. Their mouths mingled until the heat that’d always been between them grew, and Dakota felt that all-too-familiar strain against his jeans. She knew what came next, and she couldn’t wait for it.
Blaze hauled her into his arms, throwing her over his shoulder like a caveman again in a way that made her laugh. She banged her fists on his back playfully in mock protest before he smacked her square on the ass. She squealed. Beneath her, she felt the shake of his shoulders as he let out a true laugh of his own. The sound of his deep chuckling filled her ears, throatier and more full-hearted than she’d heard it in years. But this time, it wasn’t because he was hiding behind his humor but because he wanted to make them both happy, together, for the rest of their long, shared life.
For human rancher Naomi Evans, a clash with bad-boy rancher Wes Calhoun opens up a whole new world—a supernatural world on the verge of war…
Book 1 in the Seven Range Shifters series
Available now from Sourcebooks Casablanca
Chapter 1
It was more than a hunger for fresh steak that filled Wes Calhoun’s belly. Violence brewed in the night air, and he sensed it. As he prowled through the stable, rays of moonlight lit his path, flooding in through the open doors. The scent of freshly baled hay, mucked stalls, and the oiled grooming polish he’d brushed into the foals’ coats this morning hung heavy in the air.
When he reached the wrought-iron gate of Black Jack’s stall, he paused. He had half a mind to turn back now. Just a pivot of his foot, and he could walk back into Wolf Pack Run and listen to the voice of reason. He could already hear the roar of Maverick’s rage. When the Grey Wolf packmaster returned from the western packlands, he wouldn’t take Wes defying his direct orders lightly. But as hard as Wes’s logic yelled his life would be a helluva lot easier if he marched his ass back inside, he couldn’t do it.
Kyle would be waiting, and Wes needed to know. For the Grey Wolves. For the safety of the Seven Range Pact. For his own twisted reasons.
Black Jack let out a frustrated huff, the heat of the horse’s breath swirling in a visible dance around his face.
Shit. Wes jumped back, anticipating the blow before it came.
The horse reared up on his hind legs and kicked open the old stall gate with elegant ease. The weight of the massive beast fell back to the ground with a thud of his hooves, his long, black mane whipping about his face. The fierce mustang trotted out of his stall and pegged Wes with a look of I haven’t got all night, as if it were normal for a horse to regularly escape his hold. Though Wes supposed for this animal, it was.
He was damn near untrainable.
A devilish smirk crossed Wes’s face as he placed his hands on Black Jack’s shining coat and mounted the horse bareback. Black Jack had never been very good at following the rules.
And neither was he.
As soon as Wes’s leg was over his back, the horse bolted out the open stable door and into the night. Wes buried his hands in the mustang’s mane for leverage, leaned forward, and gripped hard with his muscled thighs, trying his best to move with the galloping beast. The cool night air washed over his face. The fresh scent of the mountain evergreens, hinted with pine and cedar, filled his nose along with the earthy dampness of moss upon shale rock. The encroaching cold of the coming winter’s first frost hung in the air.
Yes, this was what he needed, despite the trouble it would cause him. With each pounding leap, Wes felt all four of Jack’s hooves connect with the cold mountain ground as they bounded into the trees, running with an abandon that only fueled Wes’s defiance. Maverick refused to see the danger right in front of him, but Wes knew firsthand what waited in that darkness.
Black Jack bounded through the mountains with speed and agility the likes of which Wes couldn’t replicate, even as his wolf. When Wes finally caught Kyle’s scent on the distant breeze, he pulled back on the wild horse’s mane, and they skidded to a stop among a dense band of evergreen trees. His ears pricked for the slightest hint of noise. Nothing but the sounds of the forest. It was a quiet October night. With the light of the supermoon bright in the night sky, hunger filled Wes, and the forest’s cacophony of sounds echoed in his ears—birds snuggled in their nests, a far-off stream just starting to slow and ice around the edges in the mountain cold, a nearby fox hunkered in wait for an approaching hare.
Quickly, Wes dismounted, then inspected Black Jack with a firm stare. “Stay close.”
The horse let out a pissed-off huff and started to rear up on his back legs. Wes’s eyes flashed to his wolf’s, and he leveled a don’t-fuck-with-me stare at Black Jack.
Not tonight, bud.
The horse released an angered whinny before stomping off to forage on the remaining autumn short grass.
Wes rolled his eyes before he headed down the mountainside on two feet, slipping through the familiar pines in search of the clearing where he and Kyle had agreed to meet. The surrounding noises of the forest filled his wolf with keen, sharp awareness. He stepped through the opening in the tree line and into the clearing.
Kyle waited for him. “How goes it, my man?” Kyle extended his hand and his other arm for a brotherly half shake, half hug.
Wes towered over Kyle by nearly four inches. With a bandanna under his flat-brimmed hat and tattoos peeking out from underneath his heavy winter coat, Kyle looked like the city slicker he was. Judging from the abundance of clothing, he must have driven up on the nearby highway. Something about the oddity of that raised the hairs on the back of Wes’s neck in warning suspicion. A lone wolf from Los Angeles who’d moved up to the mountains several years earlier, Kyle maintained close ties to the Wild Eight but had never sworn in. Wes saw Kyle for exactly what he was: a two-faced snitch who played any side to fuel his raging coke addiction.
True men, fierce werewolves and warriors who fought real battles, formed the Grey Wolf Pack versus the violent wolves who comprised the new members and associates of the Wild Eight, men who were now barely better than loosely organized street thugs. They were lost and weak in the absence of Wes’s leadership. It was his fault. His decisions that had led to the demise of his once-mighty pack and the shared dream of freedom they’d fought for.
Seven mountain ranges surrounded Billings for seven shifter packs—grey wolves, black bears, bobcats, grizzly bears, coyotes, lynx, and mountain lions alike. Since as far back as their history was written, the shifters who roamed Big Sky Country and called Montana’s vast mountain ranges their own relied on the Seven Range Pact to govern their law, enforced by the Grey Wolf Pack’s rule.
Wes’s great-great-grandfather had formed the Wild Eight faction, the eighth and only illegitimate pack among these mountains. Residing in downtown Billings, the Wild Eight had wreaked havoc on the inner city and the humans dwelling there in opposition to the Seven Range Pact’s sanctions. But with Wes’s surrender as packmaster of the Wild Eight, the war within their species had become dormant. The packmaster of the Grey Wolves, Maverick Grey, interpreted this to mean the eventual dissolution of the Wild Eight in the absence of a Calhoun to lead, the end of their civil war. But Wes knew better. The Wild Eight would resurge, even in his absence. And when they did, they wouldn’t stop until they’d claimed Wes’s life for his betrayal.
“How’s life?” Kyle asked, as if they were there to shoot the breeze.
Wes ignored the question, pulled the cash out of the pocket of his jeans, and held it up for Kyle to see. “You said you had information for me.”
“Always down to business, huh, Wes?” Kyle swiped under his nose with an obnoxious sniff. He was jonesing alright. “So I was at the clubhouse the other day when I heard Donnie saying that there’s a new alliance forming.”
Wes’s eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. “Between who?”
Donnie’s name alone pissed off Wes. All too quickly, his one-time loyal friend had jumped in as the Wild Eight’s packmaster in his absence. Under Donnie’s leadership, the Wild Eight had become street scum.
Kyle leaned forward and whispered as if they weren’t alone. A sly grin crossed his lips. “Word on the street is the vamps.”
