by Zoe Chant
Tropical Wounded Wolf
By Zoe Chant
Copyright Zoe Chant 2017
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
A Sneak Preview of Tropical Tiger Spy
Chapter One
“I cannot vacation at a nude resort,” Mary North said in horror. “I even have to change into my swimsuit in a toilet stall at the health club.”
Her co-worker Alice, a bear shifter, rolled her eyes. “It's not nude, it's clothing-optional. There's a big difference, and if you're shy, you can spend the whole time in animal form.”
“Oh, I don't know,” Mary sighed. “The pictures are lovely, but I'm not sure I like the idea of a shifters-only resort. And it's in a foreign country, and they have poisonous snakes there, probably. Plus, two women traveling alone? We might get robbed, or kidnapped!” She shuddered dramatically, and sniffed the coffee pot cautiously. Like the deer she could shift into, Mary was wary of everything. She suspected it had been sitting out for hours on the burner.
“I'm sure they don't have poisonous snakes at a fancy all-inclusive place like Shifting Sands Resort,” Alice scoffed. “And it's not like Costa Rica is some third world nation. Did you see the photo of the pool?”
“I did,” Mary admitted wistfully. She loved swimming, and the brochure made the pool look amazing: huge and crystal-blue in the sparkling sunshine, with pseudo-Greek columns, waterfalls, and palm trees around it.
“And the snorkeling!”
“I couldn't swim in the ocean,” Mary said swiftly, deciding to dump the coffee out and wait for a new pot. She had just enough time before the next block of classes to brew one.
Alice snagged a cup before she could pour all of the coffee out, but Alice lived dangerously like that.
“Have you ever been in the ocean?” Alice asked, taking a sip of the molten sludge.
“They have sharks in the ocean! And stinging jellyfish and eels and things. Besides, this resort sounds expensive.” Mary measured the coffee grounds carefully, shaking each scoop perfectly level.
“It's not so bad, once you realize that you don't have to pay for any food, and it even includes massages and kayak rentals and guided hikes...”
“A tippy little kayak out on the ocean? You have to be kidding me!”
“... And I know you aren't spending your whole salary, living like you do. You haven't taken a vacation in years.”
Mary smiled down at her second hand outfit. Alice wasn't wrong about her spending habits, and she did have a nice little nest egg put aside specifically for a vacation, someday.
Still…
“I'm not sure. It's so far away!”
“That’s a great deal of its charm,” Alice said dryly. “And I'll be with you, so it's not like you'd be going alone! I speak Spanish like a native, and I can protect you from eels and poisonous snakes and strange men.”
“But...”
Alice shook her coffee cup threateningly at Mary. “If you don't come with me, I will undoubtedly do something reckless and regrettable, and you will have to live with the guilt of not being with me to keep me from being foolish forever.”
“I can't even keep you from drinking terrible coffee,” Mary said plaintively, pouring her own fresh cup as the ancient coffee pot beeped its tired announcement of completion.
Alice grinned, probably sensing her victory. “But at least you won't have the guilt of not trying hanging over your head.” She drained the last of her bitter cup defiantly, just as the class warning bell rang.
Mary blew at her superior java as she gathered her teaching plan and purse. “I'll probably catch some terrible tropical disease and end up spending the entire vacation desperately ill,” she predicted direly.
Chapter Two
Neal Byrne turned the bottle of water in his hands. Even this early, the heat and humidity left a cloud of condensation on the cold surface, and he traced a pattern in it until he recognized the tattoo he was drawing and wiped it entirely out with his thumb.
That wasn't his life anymore.
He lifted his gaze and looked out over the green lawn and tropical foliage. His life now seemed equally absurd: a gazelle cropped at the grass nearby, ignoring him.
“Aren't we a pair,” Neal told her.
Neal made a point of searching her out every morning, offering an anchor of humanity and familiarity from which to start her path back to civilization.
The gazelle had been imprisoned in Beehag's horrific shifter collection for longer than Neal had been there, and he had spent ten wretched years in that place. Freedom and speech still felt strange to him, and clearly the gazelle had not yet acclimated either, never shifting to her human form, barely tolerating bipedal presence at all.
Neal, by contrast, now refused his own animal form. Beehag had forced him to be a red-maned wolf in his zoo, for his entertainment. Neal rejected everything that reminded him of that captivity, burying his wolf so deeply now that he couldn't even hear its voice.
Mostly, he was ignored by the gazelle, his rusty conversation entirely one-sided, but he noticed that she came to this part of the grounds every morning, despite having the run of the island, so he continued to return, too.
“Breakfast is out,” a cheerful voice announced. The gazelle moved swiftly to the far end of the lawn, ears twitching in alarm, then put her head down to graze again.
Breck, head waiter of the resort and a leopard shifter, came over to the bench where Neal sat, holding a heaped plate of food from the gourmet buffet, followed by Graham, the groundskeeper. Although the staff was allowed free rein of the resort food, they were not permitted to eat it in the guest dining room. The picnic table where Neal met the gazelle every morning had become a gathering place for a few of the staff, and somehow, despite his attempts to remain aloof, Neal had found a new place to belong in their motley ranks. He did whatever odd tasks were assigned to him, and used his free time to work at getting the remaining survivors of Beehag's prison back to their lost families.
Strangely, he could face helping them, but not the idea of returning to his own life.
Graham, a lion shifter, sat down opposite him, grunting wordlessly in what Neal now recognized was a greeting.
Breck filled any conversational space left by the surly landscaper and the
quiet refugee with practiced ease. “Avoid Scarlet today,” he advised needlessly.
Scarlet, the owner of the resort, had a short temper and a ferocious will. Neal knew that he and the other rescued shifters were there by her generosity and was grateful for it, but kept out of her way as much as possible. He didn't want a reminder that he and the others were costing her money to keep, and he couldn't tell her when he was going to be ready to leave the insulated island.
Breck continued despite the stony silence. “I guess there are some legal inheritance issues with the island property now that our friend Beehag is out of the picture, and there may be some uncertainty for the long-term lease of Shifting Sands,” he said conversationally, eating a slice of quiche with a fork. “We're over capacity in free guests, and under in paid.” He paused, giving an eloquent shrug and nod at Neal. “No one blames you, but you might want to keep out of her way, just the same.”
Neal shrugged back, and Graham put an entire slice of the quiche in his mouth.
“What needs done today?” Neal asked, snagging an extra slice of the egg pie from Breck's plate over his feigned protest.
Neal hated any reminder of Scarlet's charity and avoided the dining hall whenever possible. It hadn't escaped his notice that Breck's breakfast plate had doubled in size since they first started meeting at this table, but none of them actually mentioned it out loud. Neal pretended he was stealing Breck's food, Breck pretended he was bothered by it, and Graham studiously ignored it all.
“There aren't enough guests to need any extra waitstaff,” Breck answered him, picking a questionable vegetable out of his food with a fork and setting it aside.
Neal was glad. While he could feign good manners and keep from swearing, he didn't fit the dining hall any better than the waitstaff uniforms fit him.
“Always weeds,” Graham growled. “And the pool needs to be scraped.”
“I'll do the pool,” Neal volunteered. The last time he had tried to help Graham with the gardening, he'd pulled up a domesticated vine, and he actually thought for several moments that the lion shifter was going to deck him over the mistake. He could probably hold his own against the groundskeeper, but he didn't want to find out.
After eating half of Breck's plate of food and listening the resort gossip, Neal stood up.
“I want to get the pool done before it gets too hot,” he said.
“Catch you this afternoon,” Breck said cheerfully.
Graham grunted.
The gazelle gave him a long soulful look from across the lawn, then wandered away through the brush.
Neal shed his resort shirt at the supply shed, and exchanged it for the long-handed algae scraper and net he would need for the pool job. It wasn't glamorous labor, but it was physically intense, and the sun on the pool deck would be brutal later in the day. It was good work, requiring attention, and Neal tackled it with all of the frustration and bitterness that boiled in his blood.
He was about halfway down the first side of the enormous pool, sweating profusely and enjoying the burn in his muscles, when he felt his red maned wolf stir suddenly, deep inside.
“No,” he said ferociously out loud, and he scraped at the tile more vigorously, the thin velvet of algae dissolving before his assault.
To his surprise, his wolf growled back, the urgency of his message too keen to back down.
Without wanting to, Neal looked up, and found his head swiveling to the deck by the bar.
A figure stood looking out over the bar deck, and Neal was grateful that she hadn't noticed him yet, because he had to stare for a long moment.
She was the kind of pale that only very new visitors to the resort could be, with mousy blonde hair and big, terrified eyes under a wide-brimmed hat. She had a bag clutched to her chest, and one sandal-clad foot was tucked behind the other, rubbing nervously at the opposite heel.
She had the timid, diffident body posture that usually made Neal want to roll his eyes and avoid, but there was something about her – something more than the incredibly sexy curves that she seemed be trying to hide. Something that inflamed his senses and made him acutely aware of every pore of her perfect skin.
She's ours, his wolf told him firmly, and the conviction was so deep and determined that Neal had to turn away to fight it back down.
The worst part was, Neal knew it was right. That woman – that gorgeous, petrified woman – was his mate. He unexpectedly knew the iron core of her soul, and could imagine the gentle sweetness of her mouth. He wanted to know how it tasted, more than any urge he'd ever had, and was already fantasizing the feel of her pale skin under his calloused fingers.
He drew himself up short.
There was no way in hell he was going to subject her to himself. He was too broken from his years of captivity, his control of himself was too tenuous. It would be best for everyone just to keep his distance.
He shouldered the pool tools and headed the long way around the water, to the service entrance where he would be able to avoid looking back at her. Don't meet her eyes, he told himself. Don't let her see you.
No matter how much he longed to.
Chapter Three
Mary had never felt so alone.
The owner of the resort, Scarlet Stanson, had been outwardly welcoming, but Mary couldn't help but feel like a grubby child in her tidy office. A grubby child who didn't quite measure up to the incredibly high standards of Shifting Sands Resort.
She had never been somewhere so polished and gorgeous. Even the walkways and steps were beautifully tiled, every plant groomed into the perfect shape. The buildings were all meticulous, even the ones clearly under renovation were well-contained and neater than a construction site had any business being.
Alice would have loved it here, Mary kept thinking, and she longed for her friend's boisterous company. Alice would never have felt intimidated by Scarlet's flawless hair.
But Alice had gotten chicken pox, of all the ridiculous things, and been forced to stay home. After everything she’d done to convince Mary that this would be the holiday she needed, Alice hadn’t even been able to go. Getting on the plane by herself had been the bravest thing that Mary had ever done. At first, she’d considered refusing, but Alice had been adamant. At least one of us is getting some enjoyment out of the cottage I booked, so you’d better go, or I’ll come back as a ghost and haunt you for the rest of your days!
Even pointing out chicken pox was rarely fatal hadn’t put a dent in Alice's fervor, and in the end Mary had reluctantly decided she didn’t have a choice.
Clutching her map and her bag, already regretting her decision to come alone, Mary decided to go to the pool first, to familiarize herself with the layout and see if it was really as impressive as the photographs had made it out to be. The closest access was through the bar, but when she stepped out onto the deck, the ocean view arrested her before she even noticed the pool.
Even as far away as it was, she could feel the magnetic power of water, and hear the waves crashing on the reef that protected the bay. There was a scent and a quality to the air that she'd never experienced before, salty and metallic and alive.
She couldn't even imagine swimming in such a thing. It was full of power and secrets and strength. Her shifter-self felt strangely stronger here, more alive than it had ever been in the sleepy little town of Lakefield.
She turned her gaze to the pool, but before she saw the pool itself, she saw him.
He was looking away, in that swift way people do when they've just caught themselves staring, but Mary was sure it couldn't have been her that he was staring at.
He had a shock of short red hair, mussed from exertion, and a stubborn tan you rarely found on redheads. That tan spread over muscles unlike any Mary had ever seen before outside of sports magazines. He had wide shoulders knotted with strength and arms like small trees. His narrow hips were clad in utilitarian shorts and his feet were bare. As Mary tried not to stare and failed, he gathered up his pool cleaning equipment and stalked
away, never turning his face to her.
His exit left Mary feeling lonelier and full of longing than ever. Within her, something awoke and uncoiled. Part of her wanted to drop her bag and run down the stairs after the gorgeous man, even as the practical part said that was ridiculous, and she was just reacting to a stunning male specimen after a dry spell in her life. It wasn't like she really believed any of that nonsense about fated mates or destined love.
Mary sighed and finally looked at the pool.
It was long enough for laps in either direction, with two waterfalls cascading from small pools at the bar deck she stood on down to the water level of the pool. Palm trees lined both sides, leaning over massive boulders on the left and spaced along a wide walkway to the right. At the far end, the poolside deck was peppered with chairs and umbrellas and guests lying out in the sun, and beyond that lay the terrifying ocean. Elevation hid the beach from her, but Mary guessed it lay below the pool deck; the island was quite steep.
The surface of the water was still – no one was currently swimming in it, and the last agitation from the gorgeous pool cleaner's efforts had already died down. Mary could see the deep bottom, the curved steps at the far end, and the globes of the lights that would illuminate the water at night. Would it be too scary to swim at night? It didn't look like there were very many lights around the pool.
As hot as the day was, the water looked deliciously cool. It was supposed to be unheated, something that Mary had been hesitant about until she stepped off the plane into the tropical Costa Rican heat.
A swim would have to wait, though, because she wasn't planning to change into her swimsuit here on the pool deck, no matter what kind of lax clothing rules there were at this strange place.
Mary took the exit that her map indicated was closest to her cottage and followed a pristine path to a charming little house with a beautiful private deck. It looked like something straight out of a tropical-themed issue of Good Housekeeping, and Mary had another pang of loneliness and nervousness glancing at the bed in the empty second bedroom. If Alice were with her, she probably would have chased down the hunky man by the pool and insisted that he give them a tour of the resort and meet them for drinks afterwards.
