by Renee Rose
Wolf Ranch: Ruthless
Wolf Ranch - Book 6
Renee Rose
Vanessa Vale
Wolf Ranch: Ruthless
Copyright © 2020 by Bridger Media and Wilrose Dream Ventures LLC
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination and used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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 both authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Cover design: Bridger Media
Cover graphic: Deposit Photos: tolstnev; aarrttuurr
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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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
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1
RAND
* * *
I seriously couldn’t get my clothes off fast enough. The full moon was driving me fucking nuts this moon cycle. The last couple days, it felt like the monthly pack run would never arrive.
As we raced to strip off our clothes in the mudroom of the pack cabin, I tore my jeans getting them off my legs.
“Easy there, champ,” Boyd said to me with a lazy grin. Fucking easy for him to say—he no longer has the raging urge to mate since he found his female last summer.
Not that the sharp intensity I felt to run was about the urge to mate. I didn’t even crave the usual full moon joy-fuck with any of the unmated females. What I needed was to run, run hard. Push myself because I was desperate for something I didn’t even know.
I kicked off my second pant leg with a frustrated growl.
“Moon got under your skin?” he asked. The rodeo champ was too easy going for his own good.
“I guess,” I muttered, running a hand over the back of my neck.
Karen, the she-wolf who’d been trying to hook up with me for the last couple moons, tried to make eye contact, but I dodged the glances. I had zero interest in pursuing sex with her tonight. Or ever. My wolf snarled at the thought of touching her, and it wasn’t because she’d already tried to hook up with every other unmated male in the pack. It was normal for unmated wolves to screw around during the full moon, usually without any weird expectations, but Karen was clingy. And right now, I couldn’t wait to shake her.
That was the fucking confusing part. Usually the aggression with the full moon—the need to run and hunt—was equal to the need to fuck. And while the randiness was there—hell, my boner was swinging in the wind as I jogged outside—none of the usual choices sparked any interest from me.
No, this primal feeling that something had crawled under my skin had me running in human form before I’d even shifted, the ground hard beneath my bare feet.
“Race you to the other side,” my brother Clint said, goading me by smacking my bare ass as he dashed by. The fucker.
His mate, Becky, was human, so she didn’t shift; however, she was always amused by his antics on a run. And well satisfied when he returned. I’d put money on her expecting their second pup anytime by the way they got it on.
With a snarl, I dropped to all fours, pine needles skidding out below my giant paws as I shifted and took off at a sprint. The night air was cool, not a cloud in the sky. Perfect. I chased my older brother, nipping at his flanks like we were still teenagers, but when we finally reached the ridge, I dropped back. Stopped. Something pulled me in the opposite direction from him and the others.
I longed to go down the mountain. Toward the Sheffield ranch next door.
Where humans lived.
Where it was forbidden to run.
Boyd ran by, his wolf loping with an easy grace. He enjoyed these runs alone before heading back to satisfy his human mate, Audrey. He chased me for a moment, nipping at my heels to get me moving, but I snarled, showing my teeth, and he ran on without me.
What was down there?
It didn’t matter, I couldn’t investigate. Not in wolf form, and I’d been dying to let my wolf out all week.
I started to follow the pack, but every step I took made my agitation grow. I needed to go the other way.
Fuck it.
I turned back and trotted to the ridge again. Put my nose in the air to sniff. There was something on the wind. Nothing detectible, nothing I could describe to another wolf, but I would swear there was a scent calling to me.
I cocked my head, listening to the yip and howl of the younger wolves in the pack learning how to hunt. Rob, the alpha, would kick my ass for breaking a pack rule. We didn’t run in human territory. Ever. It was beyond dangerous for the pack.
No one could know there were wolves in this area. There’d been issues in the past, and none of us wanted more.
But I tore down the mountainside anyway, my paws scrambling through the loose gravel on the steep slope. I ran hard and fast, following my instinct, hardly noticing which direction I was going.
Not until I ran straight past the Wolf property line, where my alpha’s family lived and ranched. I found myself on human property, on Old Man Sheffield’s land where I used to work as a teenager. Even though it had been over a decade since I’d last worked here, I knew this terrain inside and out, and it felt as much like home as Wolf Ranch.
Every kick of my paws drove me into a deeper frenzy. A scent became clearer. Intoxicating. Maddening. What the fuck was out there that was driving me insane?
I reached the outcropping that overlooked the waterfall into a hot spring pool in the middle of the river and skidded to a stop.
Holy fuck.
There, in the pool below, was a female.
My female. In that instant, I knew she was mine. Her scent wasn’t strong, but it was there on the slight breeze.
Her bare skin glowed pale in the moonlight as she cut through the water, swimming in a circle around the secret spot. Every wolf in the area knew about that place. Some of us were lucky enough to use it in human form on summer days because we’d been friends with Old Man Sheffield.
I froze, staring in fascination at the long, slender slope of her bare back, the pale globes of her ass flexing with her kicks. Her hair was long an
d dark—although it was hard to tell what color it was with just the moonlight, but I remembered it as bright red—and thick, fanning out in all directions around her shoulders, floating on the water’s surface.
She dove down and disappeared under the waterfall, and I nearly launched myself over the edge into the pool so as not to lose sight of her.
Just like the scent, I instantly recognized her.
Natalie.
The name filtered through my hormone-addled brain.
My mate was Natalie—the new owner of the Sheffield ranch. A human. The great-niece of Old Man Sheffield, who’d owned the property for sixty years and left it to her when he’d died a few years ago. I remembered her as a kid when she’d come a few summers to stay. Hell, the last time I’d seen her, she’d been… maybe ten. But she wasn’t a girl any longer. Fuck no, every inch of her was all lush woman.
I dropped to my haunches in the stream and whined, my wolf going insane because she’d disappeared.
A moment later, she resurfaced.
I heard her breathy inhale and wondered if that was how she’d sound when my cock filled her for the first time. I nearly howled and gave myself away. My quarry had been cornered. My prey, found. I’d be ruthless in making her mine.
Even though I’d suppressed the sound, her head jerked up, and I found myself staring straight into her dark eyes. The waterfall was only fifteen feet or so, but she saw me nonetheless.
Surprise registered on her face. Her lips formed a perfect “O,” and she abruptly stood up, letting water rivulets run down her—aw, fuck—perfect breasts. They were full and high, tipped with furled nipples. I wanted to lick off every fucking drop of water.
I scrambled up to my paws to stare at her. I couldn’t look away.
“Hey, wolf,” she said softly.
Her melodic voice shocked me out of my trance. She didn’t scream. She didn’t even move. She wasn’t afraid. She was talking to me. Almost like she knew I was a shifter. That I’d understand her.
Fuck. I just let my wolf be seen by a human. One who lived next door to my alpha. Even though she was mine—I felt it, smelled it, sensed it—I was in deep shit. For two fucking reasons. One, Rob was going to kick my ass. Two, I had to leave her here. I couldn’t shift and go down to her. Toss her over my shoulder and carry her from the water like I wanted. Lay her on the soft summer grass and fuck her hard and long until she screamed my name. Until she had my seed deep in her and my mark on her neck. Then she’d know what I was. Who I was. The secret would be out.
Whirling, I took off at a run, back up the mountain, away from the scent that had been driving me wild. I would never be eased now. Not while I knew what the need inside me was. Not until I made her mine.
I’d figure out this fucking mess. Until then, I fled. Away from my mate.
2
NATALIE
* * *
It was real. The wolf was real. Holy shit, everything I remembered from when I was a girl had actually happened.
I hadn’t been sure. I’d been ten years old, visiting my great uncle—the only adult who ever really cared for me—and I’d seen something as if out of a movie. Something impossible.
I’d been upstairs in my bedroom looking out the window when I heard a shout. The ranch hand, Rand, had gotten pinned under my great uncle’s tractor, the wheels losing traction in the mud before it had tipped and rolled on top of him. I’d screamed from the window, opening it and calling to my uncle to help. Before my uncle got close, I saw a wolf scrambling out from the overturned tractor instead of a human. A wolf. I caught a glimpse of blue eyes, the thick gray fur. I’d never forget it as long as I lived.
It had startled at Uncle Adam’s approach, took off running on three legs, favoring an injured one for a few hundred feet and then running like normal. Like nothing had happened. As if he’d never been crushed.
I’d raced downstairs and out of the house to meet Uncle Adam by the tipped tractor.
“Rand was under there,” I’d sworn, pointing to where he’d been, my finger trembling. “I saw him go under.”
But there was no one there now.
“Uncle Adam,” I’d said, my voice shaky. “I saw…” I’d drawn a breath, swallowed hard. “I saw… a wolf came out the other side.”
Rand had turned into a wolf. Like magic. Or… something.
Uncle Adam had gone very still. Then he dropped a hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye. “There are strange things that happen in this valley, Natalie,” he’d said, instead of telling me I was lying or making up tales. “Come inside. I’ll tell you a story.”
He’d sat me down with a glass of lemonade and told me the wildest story I’d ever heard.
A story I never forgot, but one that was hard to believe.
All these years, I still hadn’t been sure if it was all made up. If my mind had played tricks on me. On what Uncle Adam had told me. What I saw. As if he’d embellished onto what I’d told him, to make it some kind of fairy tale. Something fun for a kid whose parents dumped her on a Montana ranch for summers because they couldn’t afford daycare. Like an adult telling a child about the Tooth Fairy or Santa, so there was some wonder in life.
Now, almost fifteen years later, I knew the truth. Actually, I’d known all along, but this proved it. Uncle Adam hadn’t lied or embellished or told tales.
Werewolves did exist.
A gray wolf specifically. The one I’d seen before. The one who’d popped out from beneath the overturned tractor. I knew who’d been at the top of the waterfall.
He’d seen me naked.
Even with only the full moon brightening the night, I knew. The silver fur. While I couldn’t see them, I imagined the blue eyes.
Rand.
I climbed out of the swimming hole, trying to calm the trembling in my limbs.
I wasn’t scared. It wasn’t like I thought the wolf would hurt me. Nor the guy the wolf would shift into. I didn’t know why I shook. Why I trembled with newfound interest in the ranch hand from all those years ago. Maybe it was just the realization that the supernatural was real. Paranormal happened—and to someone I’d known for such a long time.
Right here in Cooper Valley. Right on my property. Uncle Adam had told me the truth. Trusted me with it.
I grabbed my short terry cloth robe that doubled as a towel and wrapped it around my dripping shoulders.
My nipples felt abraded by the soft fabric, and my pussy ached. I was aroused. Strangely eager. Maybe it was the wild excitement of seeing a wolf shifter up close.
Or maybe because it had been Rand? He’d been sixteen that summer. Big for his age. Handsome, even to a girl of ten who hadn’t known what handsome was.
In wolf form, he’d been beautiful. Enormous. Broad shoulders and a thick coat of glossy fur. Intense. Tonight, his focus had been on me. Only me.
I slipped on my sandals and followed the path back toward the house, a small smile playing on my lips.
Werewolves were real. Rand was still around. Hell, he was on my land now.
Somehow, it made my decision to move to Cooper Valley feel less crazy. There was a reason I was pulled back here. A reason beyond the fact that I’d graduated with a largely useless master’s degree in music, didn’t have a cent to my name and had nowhere else to go. I’d wondered why Uncle Adam had given the ranch to me when I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years. Maybe now, I knew the reason. Maybe now I was the only one with the secret, the one human who could be a good neighbor and protect it.
3
NATALIE
* * *
“Hot water would be good, but first fix the leak on the roof.” I sat at the kitchen table making a list of all the things that needed to be done on the house. And talking to myself. The backdoor was open to the warm day. I’d forgotten how beautiful summers in Montana were. How peaceful. I was getting used to the lack of city noise. No cars driving by. No other tenants in my crappy apartment building yelling at each other or the sound of someone’s TV. No ambulance
s or dogs barking.
Nothing but the wind and an occasional bird, which had me having conversations out loud. Scratching out the line PAINT HOUSE, I moved it further down the to-do list. That could wait although I felt bad for anyone driving by who had to look at the place. The clapboard siding was faded and peeling, and every time I came down the dirt driveway, I felt even more weary.
I was thankful to Uncle Adam for leaving me this place. Hell, I’d be homeless otherwise because rent in L.A. was too expensive for someone without a good job. But the house was a project with a capital P. There was so much work to be done. More than the seventy-three dollars in my bank account could pay for. I hoped the tip money I got from working at Cody’s Saloon the night before would be enough to pay the electrician coming over.
“I could do a haunted house in the fall. I wouldn’t have to do a thing,” I muttered. The idea actually had some punch to it. Hell, I was game for any way to make some cash, but if the electrical issues weren’t fixed, I might be owning a pile of ash and rubble.
I put my arms up in the air, leaned back and stretched. Dropping them down, I ran a hand over my hair, tugged the tie from my wrist and put my hair up in a ponytail. Going to the coffeemaker, I grabbed the pot, stuck it under the faucet to fill it, then dumped the water into the back of the ancient machine. After adding grounds to the filter, I pressed the button to start the machine.
