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WOLFEN
By
Madelaine Montague
© copyright by Madelaine Montague, Feb. 2008
Cover art by Jenny Dixon, Feb. 2008
ISBN 978-1-60394-146-4
New Concepts Publishing
Lake Park, GA 31636
Chapter One
Danika Whitney’s frustration had mellowed somewhat by the time she reached the edge of town. Pushing the worrisome puzzle of her latest defeat in tagging one of the wolves terrorizing the area to the back of her mind, she searched her pockets with one hand for the list she’d made for herself before she left the cabin.
“Shit!” she muttered when she discovered it wasn’t in her shirt pocket. When a similar search of her jeans pockets came up empty, she glanced at her carryall frowningly and finally let out a huff of irritation that ruffled the brownish blond tendrils straying from her ponytail over her brow and along her cheeks.
So much for thinking she’d let one trip into town suffice to hold her for another week! “I made a list,” she muttered to herself. “I know I did. I must’ve put it in the bag.”
She didn’t feel very reassured, but after contemplating turning around and heading back to the cabin she’d rented for her investigation, she dismissed it. She was hungry, damn it! That was probably why she’d forgotten the damned list. She’d had her mind on a nice hot ‘I didn’t cook it’ meal at the diner, and her latest failure, and she’d probably lain the note she’d made for herself down somewhere, or maybe just left it on the table where she’d sat down to write?
The roar of an engine behind her jerked her out of her preoccupation about her missing list. Danika flicked a glance in the rearview mirror of her truck and froze.
There was a pack of motorcycles roaring up behind her.
She stared at the leather clad men on motorcycles for several moments, feeling a jolt of adrenaline rush through her when it occurred to her that it didn’t look as if they had any intention of slowing down or stopping behind her. Transferring her gaze to the light at the intersection where she’d stopped on ‘autopilot’, she realized it wasn’t actually a traffic light at all but rather a blinking caution light.
Discomfited when it dawned at her that she’d been sitting at the intersection searching for her list while she waited for the light to change—which was never going to change—she took her foot off the brake. Before she could move forward, the men on the cycles, who did actually slow, whipped around her like the tide rolling around a bridge piling, three on one side, two on the other.
To a man, all five turned to stare at her as they moved around her.
Unnerved, Danika stared back them, glancing from one side to the other before it dawned on her she probably shouldn’t be looking at them at all. They looked rough, and dangerous, and it was never a good idea to encourage the notice of obvious gang members—probably felons and drug addicts.
They might think she was interested—as in flirting!
They might think she was angry because they’d broken the law by passing her at an intersection—on both sides—and consider it a challenge!
Averting her gaze as one unnerving thought after another flitted through her mind, she watched them surreptitiously as they turned the corner.
“Well shit!” They’d turned and headed down main street, which was where the ‘business’ district lay—her objective. “Now what?”
She didn’t want to appear to be following them, especially not when ‘the incident’ at the light might be something they could take exception to. One never knew with gangs, she was sure.
Not that she’d had any experience with gangs, or even studied gang mentality and behavior, but she did watch the news. People might think she was too out of step with the real world to notice things, but she did!
She decided to go straight instead of turning, hopeful that they meant to continue right on out of town. She was almost positive they weren’t local. Both the leather they were wearing and their bikes had looked dusty as if they’d been riding a while. Besides, she was pretty sure she would’ve noticed if there’d been a local biker gang even though she hadn’t been in the area long. It was something she felt certain would have stuck out in a community this tiny, particularly when it was mostly made up of farmers.
They’d looked a good bit younger than the bikers she’d seen riding up the interstate back home from time to time.
Not that she’d checked them out, but she’d been stunned enough to look and she’d seen a lot of shaggy hair that didn’t seem to be threaded with any gray at all and she’d caught a glimpse of smooth shaven faces that didn’t look weathered.
The hard muscles certainly didn’t look like anything that would belong to a more mature male. She hadn’t noticed any middle-aged, or beer, paunches.
Disturbed that she’d noticed so much when she’d been certain she hadn’t stared, she pulled in to the first parking spot she came to, grabbed her carryall and dumped the contents into the passenger seat, raking through it hopefully it in search of her list. Irritation flickered through her again when she saw it wasn’t in the bag either.
When she’d shoved everything back into the bag, she decided she’d delayed long enough the gang would’ve cleared town. She started the vehicle again. She would go eat first, she decided. It was never a good idea to go to the grocery store hungry and she could try to compile her list again while she was eating. It hadn’t been a long list. She didn’t need much, but she didn’t want to get all the way back out to the fishing camp where she was staying and discover she’d forgotten something it was going to be hard, or impossible, to do without, necessitating another trip into town.
Beyond the fact that she didn’t like to waste her time doing the same task two or three times because of something she’d forgotten, she had work to do and not much time to get results.
Truthfully, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on it, the locals made her uncomfortable. They seemed almost … hostile.
It didn’t make any sense. She’d been sent because of the wolf problem that had been reported. She was sure, given the fact that there’d been several cases reported of attacks on livestock, and even one on a resident, that they thought sending her was a waste of time, but she couldn’t see that that would account for the brooding sense of hostility she’d noticed when she’d arrived the week before. Mostly people just ignored her or considered her with amused contempt. She wouldn’t have been surprised at either reaction.
The antagonism she’d felt seemed out of place, but then it seemed to be a tight knit community pretty much isolated from the rest of the world. Maybe they just didn’t like strangers at all? Or maybe it was directly related to her purpose for coming. Maybe they thought sending her to do studies before they took action was just a way of paying lip service to their problem without actually doing anything?
She supposed she could understand how it could look that way to the casual observer, or that they might think they were being called liars for reporting the attacks at all. The behavior of the wolves was unprecedented, though.
Their existence in the area was startling enough when they were hundreds of miles from where there should’ve been any wolves, let alone a pack so large. She supposed that might explain the attacks—them being out of their element—but there seemed to be a plentiful food source in the forests. Why the wolves were going after livestock when they should’ve been content with the abundant wildlife, and should want to avoid men, was another mystery.
And then there was the man that had been attacked.
Of course, she hadn’t been able to verify that attack. Everyone had clammed up. She hadn’t even been able to learn the source of the original report let alone the victim.
Parking her vehicle near the diner, Danika got out and locked her doors by force of habit. Shoving her keys into her pocket instead of the bag, since it took too much time to search the thing for them, she headed into the diner, still mulling over the mystery she’d been sent to solve.
The bell over the door tinkled as she shoved the door open. The sound triggered earlier thoughts that had dogged her all the way into town, her latest failed attempt to tag one of the wolves. She’d been pissed off when she’d found the first tag but took it philosophically enough since she’d clipped it in his ear and figured it must have been loose enough for him to scratch it off. However, she’d brought the wolf down with a tranq the second time and embedded the tracker in his hip. He shouldn’t have been able to find it, let alone remove it, and yet she’d found that one discarded in the woods just like she had the first—discarded and mangled beyond use.
Wolves were intelligent, she knew, and she still found it almost eerie that she hadn’t managed to locate the pack—only the one lone wolf that she’d tagged, twice, because he’d been brazen enough to come almost right up to her cabin. Otherwise, they were almost like … ghosts—ghosts that left a lot of footprints and nothing else.
She came face to face with a local as she crossed the threshold. He narrowed his eyes at her, his lips tightening with anger. Surprised since she recognized him and he’d flirted with her when she’d first arrived, she moved aside for him to leave, turning to watch him curiously as he limped to his car.
Shaking her head to dismiss his strange behavior, she continued inside, allowing the door to swing closed behind her. The crowded diner quieted noticeably—enough that Danika become aware of it when she would ordinarily have been deep enough in thought to be oblivious. Feeling awkward at attracting so much attention, she struggled to pretend she hadn’t noticed as she moved further inside, since retreating didn’t seem to be a good idea. The restaurant appeared to be full, but, after glancing around, she decided to walk to the back to be sure before she beat a retreat.
One booth was vacant at the back and, as luck would have it, it was one of those huge u-shaped booths designed to accommodate a large group. She stared at it uncomfortably for a moment, undecided, torn between her growling stomach and her discomfort. Finally, she moved toward it, deciding she’d leave if they told her she had to.
Everyone seemed to return to their own interests as she slid into the seat and settled. Relaxing fractionally, she grabbed a menu and opened it. She’d been unnerved far more than she’d realized. It took her several moments to actually focus on the menu.
Her skin still prickled from all the staring eyes that had watched her progress through the diner. Trying to dismiss the feeling that everyone in the diner was still observing her, though more discretely now, Danika pretended an interest in the menu she didn’t particularly feel anymore.
She’d just managed to dismiss her uneasiness enough to actually begin reading when the bell over the door tinkled again. Focused now on trying to decide what she wanted off the menu she might’ve been oblivious except for the fact that the first tinkle was followed by another and then a third in quick succession. Suddenly aware that there seemed to be a lot of traffic at the door and that she’d settled her ass in the only available booth—built for a large party—she glanced up from the menu and froze when she saw that she hadn’t, as she’d hoped, heard people leaving.
The biker gang had just entered the diner.
The lowering volume she’d noticed when she’d come in was nothing compared to their reception. The diner went dead quiet.
They seemed unaware they had the attention of everyone in the place.
Her gaze collided with one of the men and a jolt went through her. For a handful of seconds, she couldn’t seem to drag her gaze away. Finally, the realization hit her that by allowing him to catch her gaze she’d drawn attention she didn’t want and she quickly averted her gaze to the menu again.
She couldn’t concentrate on it. Her ears felt as if they’d elongated with the intensity of their focus on the men. She heard the heavy tread of booted feet as they sauntered unhurriedly through the diner.
“Mind if we join you?”
Danika looked up automatically at the deep masculine voice. Startled when she discovered the man—the entire pack of men—was standing right in front of her booth and worse, the man was talking to her, Danika felt her eyes widen. Her thoughts went chaotic in a frantic attempt to find some reasonable excuse for why she minded that wouldn’t arouse their antagonism. “Well … uh ….”
The man who’d spoken to her slid into the seat. Frozen in place, she felt her eyes grow wider and wider the closer he came. Brought abruptly to the belated instinct to flee by the man’s proximity, Danika slid away from him, only to discover that three of the others had slid into the seat from the opposite side, pinning her in.
Wide eyed with panic, she stared at first one face and then another until she’d catalogued a mental photograph of each. It didn’t help that her imagination instantly kicked in and supplied her with a kaleidoscope of horrific images that all featured her as a victim and the pack as violent offenders.
“The name’s Balin.”
The voice was the deep rumble of a high testosterone male and it sent a wave of prickling sensation through Danika that she dimly recognized as a purely feminine reaction to an attractive male. She blinked for the first time in several minutes, realizing only then that she’d been staring slack jawed at the man who’d slid in beside her. Sucking in her first breath in as many minutes, which made it obvious by the dryness of her mouth that she’d been staring at him with her mouth open, she licked her dry lips and brought them together abruptly. Her eyes slid away as she pasted a nervous smile on her lips. “Danika,” she said weakly.
Where was a cop when she needed one?
“Con.”
Danika stared at the huge paw the blond man had extended across the table toward her, wondering if he was admitting to being a con man.
“Connor,” he amended as if he’d read her mind, “but everyone calls me Con.”
Or maybe it was just the blank look on her face?
Like a sleep walker, she extended her own hand, watching as it disappeared in the man’s clasp.
“Dakota.”
Still with the feeling that she was in the grips of a dream, or maybe a nightmare, Danika removed her hand from the man’s grasp and watched it disappear as the second enveloped it in a firm shake.
“Xavier.”
“Jared,” said the last of the five, who’d settled on the other side of Balin.
Marginally relieved when the five men grabbed menus and turned their attention to studying them instead of her, Danika tried to shift unobtrusively to put a little distance between herself and the men crowding her. She discovered it was useless. For all that they seemed more rangy than big, they were big men and the booth wasn’t nearly as big as it had seemed before they’d descended on her. There wasn’t much more than a couple of inches between her and the men now firmly entrenched on either side of her, Balin and Dakota.
Surprise flickered through her that she actually remembered the names. Ordinarily, she was very bad with names and it wasn’t as if she’d actually had her wits about her when they were making the introductions. For one, they were unnerving just by virtue of being a biker gang. She’d never been this close to the criminal element of society and she was sure she was petrified with terror, although she was in a state of shock that, fortunately, made it impossible for her to either faint or scream, and she sure as hell couldn’t run.
Secondly, although she was well aware that it was psychotic even to have such thoughts, despite their rough appearance and the fact that all of them were sporting at least a day’s growth of beard, Xavier was the closest to ‘just average’ of the bunch and he wasn’t actually average but several cuts above the best looking man she’d ever actually seen in person. They were all handsome enough any one of them could have made it as a model, or actor, despite the intimidating multitude of tattoos and piercings she could see at a glance that unnerved her more than she would’ve thought possible. Along with the unfashionably long hair they all had, though, the tattoos and piercings seemed to add to the wild, untamed air of the bunch.
The last time she could recall being this unnerved was when she’d looked up from taking notes in her wildlife studies and discovered one of her ‘subjects’ had noticed her and wandered close enough to study her.
Balin had a tiny ring at the outer corner of one eye brow she saw when she glanced at him again and her imagination took flight as to where else he might be pierced—his nipples, certainly. She couldn’t resist flicking a glance at the t-shirt molded to his rippling physique and the nipple rings brought her focus instantly to his hard pecs.
“What’s good?”
Her gaze jerked upward from his nipple rings to Balin’s face. She thought she saw a flicker of amusement in his hazel gaze. “What?” she asked blankly, her mind going wild at the question.
“On the menu.”
She felt her face heat. Trying to pretend she hadn’t been staring at his body, Danika frowned at the menu. “Uh … actually, I’m not from around here. I don’t really know.”
He dropped an arm along the back of the booth behind her, shifting to face her. “No?”
His hard thigh brushed hers when he shifted. Between the burning heat of that touch and her acute awareness of the arm behind her shoulders, Danika had to struggle to gather her wits.
“Maybe you’d know of a good place to stay around here, then? Or are you just passing through?”
She wanted to tell him she was just passing through in the worst kind of way, but his interest in a place to stay probably meant he was looking for a room for the night. If she lied and he found out, would he be pissed off?
She didn’t want to piss him off.
“I … uh ….”
“What will you folks be having?”
Relieved by the interruption of the waitress, Danika’s gaze snapped from Balin to the waitress standing over the table with a pad in her hands. “What’s tonight’s special?”
“Meatloaf.”
Gag! “I’ll take the baked chicken dinner, then.”
The men all ordered beef—thick steaks and all the trimmings—minus the ‘rabbit food’ they didn’t seem to approve of. They didn’t look like they had anywhere to put that much food, but then again, they were all painfully young and very muscular. They probably burnt up a couple of thousand calories just breathing.
Ordinarily, Danika didn’t pay much attention to her appearance or the passing years, but their youth made it impossible not to compare her age to theirs, and their beauty … well, she’d never felt quite as plain or unappealing, like a little brown duck that had found itself swimming in the midst of a flock of beautiful swans.
It didn’t occur to her until the waitress left that the woman hadn’t asked about dividing up the tickets. “Wait! Put mine on a separate ticket!”
The woman turned around to glare at her in irritation.
Balin waved her off. “Just leave it together. I’ll pay for hers.”
Struggling with indignation when the woman left without waiting to see if she was agreeable to that solution, Danika bent a tight smile on Balin. “I’ll just give you my share, then,” she said firmly.
He lifted the black, beringed brow. “Consider it payment for sharing the booth.”
Danika kept her smile with an effort. She didn’t want to argue with the man, not when he personified dangerous, but she wasn’t about to be obligated to a total stranger, especially a dangerous one. “That’s … sweet, but completely unnecessary.”
The comment provoked chuckles from the other men and she looked around at them in surprise. Con’s blue eyes were dancing with merriment as he divided a glance between her and Balin. “Sweet? Balin? Honey, you don’t have a clue.”
Honey? She might’ve taken exception to that, too, except some of her shock was beginning to wear off and, as it did, she was more and more uncomfortably aware that she wasn’t in the middle of a pack of swans.
They reminded her a lot more of a pack of … wolves, she decided, though she wasn’t certain why unless it had just popped into her mind because she’d been called in to study a wolf pack.
There was more to it than that, she decided. Balin was a bit more ‘solid’ looking than the others, not exactly stocky, but definitely more heavily muscled than the others. The rest of the gang, though, had the kind of builds that reminded her of wolves in the wild, muscular, but lean. Con was the only one of the bunch that was actually fair, though his complexion wasn’t. Every inch of skin exposed was tanned to a golden brown—which probably meant he spent a lot of time on that bike of his. Balin was almost his exact opposite. His hair was black enough it seemed obvious that his sharp features were the result of a lot of Native American blood or maybe Hispanic, although he looked more Native American and his name didn’t seem to be Spanish. Of the other three—Jared and Dakota were closest in coloring to Balin and Xavier, whose hair was a lot like hers, neither blond nor brown, but in between, was closest in coloring to Con.
They weren’t related that she could tell but then again not all siblings looked like peas from the same pod. She looked nothing like either her brother or her sister, fortunately for them, and unfortunately for her since she was the family ugly duckling.
More to occupy herself than for any other reason, Danika looked around for her bag and discovered Xavier had dropped it on the floor by her feet when he’d slid in beside her. Dragging it out from under the table, she dug around for a piece of paper and a pen while the men scanned the restaurant with keen interest.
Despite her optimism, she couldn’t think of anything to put on the list of things she needed.
“Taking notes?”
Startled at the low, husky voice near her ear when she was struggling to concentrate on recalling her list, Danika’s head whirled automatically in that direction and she found herself almost nose to nose with Balin. He stared back at her with patent interest.
Her instincts seriously impaired, her head finally recoiled on her neck and she leaned back to put a more comfortable distance between them. “Notes?” she repeated blankly.
He studied her a long moment and then flicked a glance at the envelope she’d pulled out of her bag.
“Oh. I was just trying to remember what I’d come to town to get. I forgot my list.”
A slow grin curled his lips. “You’re staying around here, then?”
Danika blinked at him, mentally kicking herself.
“Yes,” she mumbled, returning her attention to her project and staring at the paper hard to will her brain to function on a level above ‘female in heat’. The thought had no sooner flickered through her mind than she realized a good part of her jitters was exactly that.
It stood to reason, she excused herself. They were a damned good looking bunch and they practically wreaked of testosterone. She was a woman, after all, even though that wasn’t something she remembered very often.
“Is there a particular reason you don’t want to tell us where you’re staying?”
Danika felt her face heat again. She cleared her throat, searching for something to say that wouldn’t offend.
“We don’t bite … hard,” Con said with a husky chuckle.
“Just a little gnawing here and there,” Jared agreed with a wolfish grin.
“You’re scaring her,” Balin said coldly when she sent the two men a wide eyed look.
They were all scaring the shit out of her!
Unfortunately, it wasn’t fear that coiled in her lower belly, generating heat.
The men tensed at Balin’s rebuke—all of them. Danika flicked uneasy glances from one to another and finally looked at Balin, who seemed to be the focus of their brooding gazes. He’d tensed, as well, but she didn’t think she would’ve noticed if not for the fact that he was touching her. He looked singularly unimpressed by the fact that the other four men radiated hostility and aggression.
That thought sent a wave of cold through her.
Alphas, she realized, stunned. That was why she felt so uneasy. It wasn’t just the testosterone level at the table. It was the fact that she’d instinctively registered that all five men were alphas.
What in the world would bring five such dominant males together?
She dismissed the possibility that she figured into the equation just as she’d immediately dismissed the suspicion that either Con or Jared were actually flirting with her in reality. More likely, given the way they looked, they were just used to toying with whatever female came within their sphere.
“No, they’re not,” Danika lied, hoping to diffuse the situation.
Some of the tension eased from Balin. Amusement and something else she couldn’t quite grasp flickered through his hazel eyes. “No?”
She offered him a weak smile. “I know they’re just being playful.”
Dakota snorted, the sound a mixture of repressed amusement and mild annoyance “Con’s right. You are clueless, sweet thing,” he muttered in a rumbling growl of a voice.
She made the mistake of whirling to look at him when he spoke and discovered he’d shifted a lot closer than she’d realized. He was close enough she could see his eyes were dilated until she could barely discern the difference between the pupils and the thin, golden brown ring around the outer edge.
Her body, mindless thing that it was, still keyed more to animal instinct than sentient being, reacted with another wave of warmth at the blatant sexual interest in his eyes.
They must have been on the road a long time, she thought dimly, to have any interest in her.
Fortunately, the waitress arrived with their food, effectively distracting the men from her and each other.
“So … you’re not passing through and you haven’t been here long,” Balin said almost conversationally as they focused on their food. “Now I’m wondering what could’ve brought you to this little out of the way hick town.”
Danika flicked an uncomfortable glance around to see if any of the local ‘hicks’ had taken exception to the comment. It didn’t help her feelings when she noticed a number of people at the surrounding tables seemed to have their ears pricked to listen to the conversation.
She wasn’t certain why she got that impression. They seemed to be focused on their food and/ or their dining companions, but the impression resisted her efforts to dispel it with reason. “Work,” she said finally.
His black brows rose questioningly. When she ignored the silent command to continue, he pursued it. “What kind of work?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t be interested,” Danika said dismissively, not because she was concerned about telling him beyond a reluctance to get acquainted with an obvious gang member, but because she doubted he was interested or would be intrigued if she did tell him.
“Try me.”
She glanced at him in surprise and then looked around at the others at the table, discovering she had their full attention. Finally, she shrugged. “Wildlife management brought me down … or rather up, I guess since this is north of where I live … because they seem to be having trouble with wolves and I’m the closest they could get to an expert in that field on such short notice.”
Something flickered in their eyes, but it wasn’t surprise.
Why weren’t they surprised, she wondered?
Maybe they didn’t know wolves weren’t natural to the area, but surely they still should’ve been surprised at her vocation?
Jared, who’d leaned around Balin, studied her speculatively, then flicked an enigmatic look at the others. “I suppose from that,” he drawled after a moment, “that you’re supposed to observe and report back on whether to send trappers or hunters.”
Surprise flickered through her. “Actually, that’s pretty much it. They weren’t convinced there were wolves. This is a rogue pack—not native to the area and they’ve never had a problem with wolves. Their behavior is pretty peculiar for wolves to say the least.” She shrugged. “Not that I’m really an expert. I was doing a study on wolves in captivity in the Atlanta zoo. I haven’t actually studied them in the wild before … other animals, but not wolves,” she added quickly before they could get the impression that she didn’t have any idea of what she was doing.
She could only describe the expressions on their faces as grim, which both surprised and disappointed her—the grimness. Bored, wouldn’t have surprised her. People had a way of looking like they were searching for a polite way to scrape her loose the minute she got warmed up about her studies in wildlife.
“What were you doing the study for in Atlanta?” Dakota asked after an uncomfortable silence had descended at the table.
“Mating,” she said before she thought better of it. “They’re concerned—the zoo—that the wolves don’t have much interest in it.”
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