Pack Wolf (Wilde Brothers Ranch Book 3), page 1
Pack Wolf
Wilde Brothers Ranch Book 3
Scarlett Grove
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
More Wilde Brothers Ranch
About the Author
Free Books
Chapter 1
Heath Wilde set the pig feeder down in the new location as the spring piglets ran to eat their feed. They were getting fat and would be ready for harvest in just a few more months. It had been a good season for hogs. They’d helped to restore a whole new pasture on the farm. Every year the grass got deeper, lusher, and denser with nutrients.
The sun was high overhead and tipping toward afternoon. Heath cut the engine on the tractor. He pulled out a wet nap from his pack and washed his hands. He’d brought a grilled chicken sandwich and apples for his lunch. He watched the hogs chow down on the apple waste he'd traded with his neighbor as he ate his food.
There was an increasing chill in the air lately that indicated the coming of autumn. Fall was a busy time of year on the ranch, when all the work of the spring and summer came to fruition. It was the season of harvest and the season of completion.
He loved the scent in the air as the fall leaves began to change. As the second oldest of the six Wilde brothers, Heath had worked his whole life on the ranch, and he’d never wanted anything else.
He had everything he ever wanted: a beautiful three-bedroom home that he’d built with his own hands, meaningful work that kept him busy and occupied, and his brothers were close by to support each other and lend a helping hand.
Indeed, he had everything a man could want and need in life. Everything but the most important thing of all.
He pulled out his cellphone and opened the Mate.com app. He checked it too often, he knew. It would send him a notification if he and his mate had been matched. But he couldn't help checking. He'd been waiting so long.
At thirty-six years old, he wasn't an old man by any means. Unlike his younger brothers Cal and Cash, who didn’t join until they’d reached their twenty-fifth birthday, he had been on Mate.com since he turned eighteen years old, which was the earliest age when most shifters were ready to find their match.
But Heath believed even very young shifters could sense their match. His brother Austin and his mate, Cheyenne, had known each other since they were children. He hadn’t needed the dating website to confirm Cheyenne was his mate way back when they met in kindergarten.
And Heath had been sure at eighteen that he could find his mate. Now, almost twenty years later, he still hadn't found anyone. It filled him with sadness on an almost-daily basis, and sometimes he thought he would never find his mate. But he couldn't give up. He wanted a mate and a family more than just about anything. All he could do was wait.
After he ate his lunch, he drove the tractor back to the main barn and hopped out. Cal and Cash had the job of cutting hay in the fields they’d designated for hay production this year, and although Heath had been up since four o'clock in the morning and had already been working for many hours, he went out to the field to help his younger brothers harvest. When the twins saw him approach, they waved as they squinted in the bright afternoon sunlight.
“What's good, big bro?” Cal asked as he stopped the baler.
“Just moving the hogs to the new field. The grass is looking fantastic out there. Already up to my knees.”
“Did you come to help with the hay?” Cal asked hopefully.
The twins were as hardworking as any of the brothers when it came down to it, but they would hand over a task to Heath at the soonest opportunity if he'd take it. Heath grunted at his younger brother. He wasn't going to let him get out of his assigned task for the day, but he had come out to help.
“I just came out here to make sure you two do the job the right way,” Heath said with a good-natured jab to the shoulder.
“I've been baling hay since I was twelve years old,” Cal said with the slightest hint of defensiveness. It was a tone that Heath was happy to hear. It meant his brother took pride in his work. Cash drove up in the farm truck and trailer and came to a stop.
“Why don't you help me buck this hay?” Cash called to Heath.
“I think Cal needs more help than you do,” Heath said. “You’re just sitting on your ass.”
“Probably true,” Cash conceded. “He's been bellyaching about doing it on his own all morning.”
“Where is Gunner? He was supposed to help with this.”
“Hell if I know. Ever since Shane gave him his house, Gunner’s been acting like the world owes him a living. He’s taking off on his motorcycle when he should be helping with work.”
“I had a feeling that him getting a free house without having to build it himself was going to backfire,” Heath said.
Each of the brothers had built their own house with their own hands. But Gunner, the youngest of the Wildes, had been living with Austin until recently.
After Shane had found his mate, he decided to follow his heart and build a much smaller cabin off the grid, deeper in the forest and farther away from the ranch.
Austin had been giving him time off to focus on his writing. Heath didn't disagree, since Shane had always had a true sense of himself and of what mattered to him. But Heath had predicted that Gunner would feel entitled upon inheriting Shane's old house. His prediction had come true.
“I'll talk to him the next time I see him,” Heath said.
He walked back over to the trailer and began helping Cash load hay to be taken to the barn for the winter. He lifted the bales onto the trailer, and Cal slowly pulled the truck forward. They took turns bucking and driving. Heath didn't mind hard work, but he wasn't just going to do everything, no matter how much his younger brothers would like to be able to get away with it.
Once they had a full trailer, he climbed into the front seat of the truck, and Cash drove them back to the hay barn. Once they arrived, he spotted none other than Gunner himself pulling his motorcycle up outside his new house.
“Speak of the devil,” Heath said.
“That little dick,” Cash said.
“I'll go talk to him. You start unloading the trailer.”
“You got it,” Cash said.
Heath let out a long sigh and rubbed his sweaty forehead under his Denver Broncos baseball cap. He walked across the road just as Gunner trotted up the front steps of the house and grabbed the doorknob to the front door.
“Where have you been?” Heath asked.
“Out,” Gunner said.
“You were supposed to be helping Cal and Cash with the haying.”
“They had it under control.”
“You know we all have to pull our weight around here, or the farm will become less productive, and that will affect all of us. The legacy of the Wilde ranch is the responsibility of everyone who lives here.”
“I never chose to be a rancher,” Gunner said.
His words made Heath blanch. He never would have expected Gunner to say something so dismissive about the shared legacy of the seven brothers. The family had owned the ranch for generations. It had been handed down from father to son for a hundred years. It was one of the oldest ranches in the state. For Gunner to be so flippant was totally unacceptable.
“How can you say that about what our family has dedicated the last hundred years to build? Look at what we've been able to accomplish here just since Dad died. You’re part of that legacy, whether you like it or not.”
“Yeah, whatever. I've heard it a million times.”
“What's gotten into you, Gunner?”
Gunner could be rebellious, and he wasn't the hardest worker among the Wildes. But Heath had never heard his brother speak so irreverently about the farm or their duty to the land.
“I know how you feel about the ranch. You do spend every waking minute here. But I’m not you, Heath. Not all of us want to spend our lives in the shadow of our older brothers, doing what's expected and getting nothing in return.”
Gunner turned and slipped through the door into his house. Heath’s mouth dropped. He was ready to slap the kid.
Gunner was young and hadn't bloomed into full manhood. Heath would have to talk to Austin about it. Gunner's attitude would affect the whole family, and it would affect the whole production if he didn't fulfill his daily workload. That was not acceptable. The ranch was the most important thing in Heath's life. It was the most important thing for all of them.
Chapter 2
Rose Winter sat in the conference room of the law office, across the table from her now ex-husband. The marriage was over, and she had lost everything.
She felt numb inside as she grabbed the files and walked out of the room with her lawyer. It had all been wrapped up today— the divorce, the bankruptcy. She couldn't believe it was happening. She stood in the hallway, staring at the light streaming through the window. Everything she'd worked for—the house, her car, her beautiful things—it all had to be sold to pay off her ex's debt.
He walked past and turned to her, saying something she didn't hear. She mumbled a response. He turned to go. Had he just apologized for ruining her life?
Her lawyer squeezed her arm, and Rose looked up at the woman like she was a stranger Rose was seeing for the first time. The lawyer wore a sympathetic expression on her face, and Rose knew that she'd done everything she could to help her through this mess.
“It could have been worse,” her attorney said.
But Rose didn't think that it could possibly have been any worse. Her ex-husband had invested all their money in terrible business deals without telling her. He’d cashed out their 401(k)s. He’d taken out loans he couldn't pay back. And now… everything she'd worked for, everything she'd been so proud of accomplishing, it was gone. All gone.
“Are you going to be all right? You look pale,” her attorney said, trying to put on a reassuring smile.
Rose knew that she should try to make the woman feel better about the situation, but she just couldn't bring herself to care about her attorney’s feelings at the worst moment of her life.
“I'm going to be fine. I should feel lucky to get a chance to start over like this,” she lied. No one would ever feel lucky to be getting a divorce and going bankrupt on the same day. Especially after finding out that the man who had stolen all her money and effectively ruined her had also been cheating.
“That's the spirit,” her attorney said, giving her the look that you give to a sad child.
She knew she was being pitied. That was literally the last thing she needed. What she really needed was a stiff drink.
“I'm going to celebrate,” she said. “I saw a bar around the corner. You want to celebrate with me?”
Her attorney looked at her watch. It was noon.
“You know what they say, ‘It's five o'clock somewhere,’” Rose said.
“I wish I could. But I have another client meeting. You're going to be all right, Rose. I've seen this happen a dozen times, and the victim of this kind of thing always comes out stronger on the other side.”
“Well. I’d get myself a bottle of champagne if I could afford it, but I think that I'll be drinking the house wine.”
Rose Winter was not the kind of person who catastrophized. She generally had a good outlook on life. She’d worked hard and believed in maintaining a positive mindset. That was how she had gotten so far in life.
She'd grown up poor. She’d made good grades in high school and managed to get into college. With a combination of loans, grants, and scholarships, she'd gotten through school with top marks. She had immediately landed a job at one of the leading investment firms in Denver.
The irony of her current situation was not lost on her. But she hadn't had any idea of what her husband was doing. He'd hidden it from her, and she was completely blindsided by the creditors who'd come calling. At first, she’d thought it was a mistake, but then she came to see it as a cruel joke.
The condo would have to be sold to pay off her husband's debts. She'd had to move into a small apartment an hour’s commute from work. All her clothes, all her handbags, all her jewelry and shoes. All of it was gone to pay the debts.
She couldn't imagine showing up at her office in the clothes that she could now afford. It was so humiliating. It was a reminder of the life she'd worked so hard to overcome.
Another cruel irony was that her husband had grown up wealthy, in one of the most prominent families in Colorado. But he'd squandered his opportunities. Too greedy to work hard, too entitled for patience. Now she was paying for trusting him and for believing that a wealthy man from a good family was somehow a safe choice. But she'd been so wrong. So very wrong.
Down in the bar outside the law offices, she ordered a glass of house red and slowly nursed the drink while staring at the screen above the bar. She didn't even realize it was playing a football game until almost an hour later when she ordered a second drink.
As she was taking a sip of the wine and focusing on the football game, her phone rang. She picked it up and recognized her boss’s number. She hoped there were no problems at work. They knew she had the day off to settle the divorce and bankruptcy.
“Hello?” she said.
“Rose.” Diane's voice was tentative and nervous.
“Is there a problem at work?” she asked.
“Rose, I hate to do this over the phone. But the partners were adamant that this happen today. Do you think you could come in?”
“I had a full day of drinking planned, but I could probably come in if I needed to.”
“Maybe I should send you the paperwork…”
“Paperwork for what?”
“Like I said, I would have preferred to do this in person, but it has to happen now. Rose, we’re going to have to let you go. With all the scandal over your husband's investments, it just wouldn't look good to have you continue working here.”
“You can't be serious,” Rose said, laughing at the absurdity. “I had no idea he’d made those investments. He hid it from me. It's not like I knew anything about it.”
“I know that, and you know that. But our clients…”
“You can't do this. I've worked at the firm for ten years. My clients' portfolios are stronger than any other advisor’s. I've earned us millions, and I brought in millions more in business. How could you possibly turn me away like this? I have a contract.”
She knew that she was blubbering and begging. They could do whatever they wanted. The firm had a clause about scandal in the employment contract. And it seemed that they were enacting it now.
“I wish there were some other way, Rose. You know how much I appreciate you and everything you've done for the firm. You truly are gifted. It's just so unfortunate. We are prepared to offer you six months’ severance pay. That should be enough to last until you find another position.”
“How generous,” Rose said. She didn't care how she sounded anymore. She had thought her life was over before, but fate had to deliver just one more blow to really drive it home.
“I'm so sorry about everything, Rose. I know that you're going to land on your feet.”
“Right. Thanks.”
She was speechless. This can’t be happening, she told herself. But it was happening. She’d lost her marriage, all her possessions, and now her job, all in one day. What else could possibly go wrong? Maybe she would get hit by a bus on the way home, and it would put her out of her misery.
Rose was anything but a fatalist, but in that moment, getting hit by a bus seemed like a best-case scenario.
“Can I get you anything else?” the bartender asked.
“No. I'm going to go run out in the street and play chicken with a bus.”
“Should I call someone?”
“No, it's fine. I should go home to my new luxury apartment. Wait, no, my new slum apartment.”
She grabbed her purse and pushed away from the bar. She felt bad about making the poor guy worry about her. She wasn't really contemplating running in front of a bus. It hadn't gotten that bad. It was just money and a job and a marriage—nothing too important.
She called an Uber and got a ride back to her new apartment. She’d had to sell her Mercedes and hadn't bought a new car with the transportation budget that the bankruptcy had allowed her. So she was currently wasting money on Ubers until she could buy some used piece of crap that she could afford. The driver dropped her off outside her new apartment, and she looked up at the brick façade. It reminded her so much of the buildings she had grown up in.
It's not that bad, she told herself as she climbed the musty stairs to the third floor.
Inside, she found the rudimentary furniture she'd gotten to keep: a couch from the sitting room, the kitchen table and chairs, the bed from the guest room. Everything else had gone to pay off her ex-husband's debts. She sat down on the couch and turned on the TV.
“Make your dreams come true and find your soul mate on Mate.com,” a commercial said.
Rose cringed at the commercial for that ridiculous shifter dating website she'd been hearing so much about. It claimed to match shifters with their fated mates. Rose had read the stories and the magazine articles about shifters. She knew enough about their traditions and culture to know that they actually believed there was one special person for each of them. A fated mate was a perfect match in every way. Rose thought it was pure delusion. But the shifters seemed to believe it, and she wasn't one to interfere with other people's fantasies.
