Wolf At The Door
Soulmate Shifters in Mystery, Alaska Book 5
Krystal Shannan
Praise for Krystal Shannan
"Wonderfully imaginative. Vampires have never been so sexy or dangerous."
Liliana Hart, NYT Bestselling Author
Highly recommended Krystal Shannan for anyone who loves a good story, some romance, hot sex and action all around.
Reviewer
"Of Spells and Shadows is just what I need in a fantasy saga--alpha wolves, a steely heroine, and a plot that makes you turn the page faster and faster."
Carrie Ann Ryan, NYT Bestselling Author of the Talon Pack Series
“Hot sexy sassy women hot sexy alpha strong men!”
Reviewer
"Krystal Shannan and Camryn Rhys cast a wicked spell! Of Spells and Shadows is a refreshingly, richly imagined, captivating paranormal romance. With a novice witch heroine and a pair of werewolf half-brothers vowed to protect her--one lowborn, the other royal and a captain of the magick Court's guard--this book held me enthralled."
Lara Adrian, NYT Bestselling author of the Midnight Breed series
"Shannan weaves a sexy, action-packed tale sure to keep you turning the pages late into the night."
Liliana Hart, NYT Bestselling Author
"Rough and tough Texan cowboys meet stuffy court deceit and politics in Of Spells and Shadows. The Court of Draiochta series promises an entirely new set of possibilities and conflicts. I'm not sure where the authors plan to go next with this series but I'm definitely on board for the ride."
Xtreme-Delusions Blog Reviews
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t have happened without so many people. Becca you kept me going. You kept telling me it was okay to take a break. Thank you for that reminder. You kept me sane. I love you, girl.
Thank you to my family for supporting me. My husband for for not expecting this book to go as quickly as others. My family for being so open-arms with our choices and taking our new kids into the family so completely. I’m going to cry. I’m so lucky and blessed to have the family I do.
To my kids who lived through the biggest transition of their lives. My youngest daughter who gained a brother and sister. And my now two oldest children who have become part of our family this year. So many changes. We are still learning about each other and I’m still trying to figure out how all the pieces are going to fit between family and work and school. Thank you for being patient with me and your father.
Huge thank you to Summer for helping me figure out the end of this book. I was so stuck and it needed something I couldn’t put my finger on and you found it and organized it for me when I was struggling to organize anything. Thank you for that. And thank you for setting up the retreats that gave me the much needed downtime to just be a writer and not wear all my other “hats” for a couple of days. You are such a good friend and I can’t wait to get to know you better and spend more time hanging out as friends and writing.
To my fans who have sent emails and kind notes and loved on me through this whole year. Thank you for sharing about your experiences. Thank you for all the words of encouragement. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Knox and Katherine are for you. This whole series is for you.
Soulmate Shifters bares my heart and soul and how I feel about how powerful and amazing and beautiful adoption is and also how hard it can be.
I started writing this series before I knew my family was going to move forward with adoption, but somehow I already knew that was the theme of this series—Adoption.
This Tribe was built from loss. And through great loss, the Tribe is building a new and beautiful family and showing through each story how commitment and choice is more important than who’s blood you share or where you come from. The loss however is recognized and not dismissed. Some characters already know this and some are on their journey of discovery.
Thank you for coming down this path with me and with this amazing cast of characters from Mystery.
Wolf At The Door
Join the Tribe in Mystery, Alaska again as survivors of the wolf pack start appearing and chaos ensues. Blood will be shed. Betrayals will break hearts. Find out who will be left standing after all the fur starts flying.
A prince without a pack.
A woman who will fight tooth and claw for those she loves.
The day Katherine Manitok finds out werewolves are real is the day she finds out she's in love with one. When she comes home from a long day of work at the Mystery, Alaska community center, she finds a bloody and battered wolf stretched across her front porch. Except when she gets up the nerve to touch the wolf, his fur turns to skin beneath her fingertips.
Then those glowing golden eyes look up at her and she knows she's a goner.
Knox Li'Vas is alpha to a pack that no longer exists. He barely survived getting down off the mountain. And now he's risking everything to see Katherine again, but she's his shuarra--his soulmate. She glows for him and he can't leave town. His wolf won't let him. Not without her.
But how's a mostly-dead werewolf barbarian supposed to convince a woman who single-handedly runs the town's social calendar to up and run away with him so the neighborhood dragon doesn't finish him off?
Oh, and did we mention that something is trying to kill her?
All that and more in Wolf At The Door! The exciting fifth book in the Soulmate Shifters in Mystery, Alaska series. Where you will find protective alpha heroes with fangs and strong sassy heroines who are perfectly capable of saving the day without any help at all.
Contents
Prologue
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
Epilogue
Afterword
About the Author
Prologue
We are losing them.
His wolf whined in his head.
He skulked in the shadows. Away from the fighting and blood and the notice of the dragon. No one knew he was here in this world except a few loyal wolves.
Wolves who were likely dying at this very moment. All his best laid plans were being shredded by the dragon and his merry band of misfits.
Raish had ruined everything.
Raish always ruined everything.
And this time it’d cost even more of the pack’s lives. A pack that should’ve been his. Would’ve been his already, if it hadn’t been for the damned end-of-the-planet and Exodus Day ruining his carefully laid plans.
Blood stained the white snow as far as he could see. His heart raced in his chest, beating against his ribs like the thunder of a thousand hooves on the prairie.
Wolves yelped and cried out as the snow swirled and the wind drowned out their deaths. But their pain would forever be etched on his soul.
He couldn’t help them now. He had to survive to fight another day. He would pick up the pieces of whatever and whoever was left alive. He just had to be patient. He was good at that. He’d been waiting in the shadows for years. Waiting for the right time
to take back what belonged to him.
Hide.
Something was coming. The crunch of the snow made his heart freeze in his chest. He slipped between two large grey rocks. The crevice was tight, but it would do for now.
A wolf passed by the crevice, wounded and limping, but alive. He could only hope more of the pack would be able to escape death.
With any luck Raish wouldn’t be one of them or his brother, Knox. If both his cousins died, the pack was his free and clear. No more fighting. No more being an outcast. No more scraps for him.
He would lead.
Wolves would rule in this new world if he had anything to do with it. They wouldn’t be banished to the forests again this time.
That vision filled him with hope. And that hope filled him with enough power to wait…just a little longer.
1
Katherine
Katherine Manitok climbed out of her ten-year-old black Ford pick-up truck and narrowed her gaze at her typically pristine white front porch.
No way.
She walked forward slowly. Her boots crunched in the slushy gravel of her driveway. The snow from last weekend’s freak storm had quickly melted and then they’d had some rain to top it off. Welcome to spring in Alaska. There would be about a week of mutant mosquitos hatching and then it would officially be summer. But the weather wasn’t what had her attention.
Nope.
What had her attention was the oversized bleeding animal sprawled on her porch in front of the door. Its fur at one time had been white, but now was stained bright red and brown and matted in ugly clumps from head to foot. The poor thing looked like something had gone after it with a chain saw. The slash marks were monster-movie-worthy.
Her heart pitter-patted and her breathing sped to semi-hyperventilating. Adrenaline flooded her system sparking along her skin like mini-electrical shocks.
Wild animals came into town from time to time. They weren’t to be messed with—especially wounded ones—and her rifle was in her damn house. Not in her truck.
And not only was there a wild animal on her porch. It was wounded. And it was enormous. Larger than any wolf she’d ever seen before—in person or on TV.
A more cautious girl would call the sheriff. Or even her over-protective neighbor Harrison from next door to bring his rifle, but something inside her made her keep walking.
Curiosity.
Foolishness.
Something she didn’t recognize tugged deep inside her body.
Her feet kept her moving closer and closer. She needed to be closer.
“What am I doing?” The words slipped out between hurried breaths. The wolf still hadn’t moved. She was within ten feet now and the animal’s shuddering shoulders came nearly to the doorknob. “What are you? You can’t be real?”
Katherine took another step. And another. And another until she had climbed the wooden porch steps at her doorway. She knelt beside the wolf, easily twice her size, maybe closer to three times.
She wasn’t scared.
It was stupid.
So stupid.
This was a wounded animal.
And still she reached her hand toward the wolf’s side.
“What happened to you?” Her fingertips connected with a patch of blood-stained-dried fur. It was crusty and filthy and…then the wolf’s eyes opened, and its body changed beneath her hand. Fur became skin. His eyes changed from gold to brown. His face was covered in blood and dirt and swollen all over. He was wearing a leather kilt-looking thing, some ancient-times-looking boots and nothing else. His torso was covered in long ugly sets of gashes from some type of claw. Maybe a bear?
“Katherine,” the man’s voice groaned.
She knew that voice.
Knox.
Her heart tripped over the next couple of beats, fell out of her chest, and landed on the porch next to the man she’d had a crush on since she met him. The man who’d been visiting her at the community center for weeks. The man who would barely tell her anything about himself, but always wanted to hear about her.
Well.
Now she knew.
Knox was a werewolf.
How was that a thing? Bitten couldn’t be real. All those television shows about monsters and shifters and vampires. It was all crap, right?
But now…
Katherine pulled her cell phone from her back pocket and dialed her best friend. Then hit cancel before the call went through. How the hell was she going to explain this to Tara? ‘Hey, girl, Bitten is real. I have a werewolf on my porch.’
Yeah. No.
That wouldn’t fly in a million years. Tara was cool, but there’s no way she would understand. And she was still recovering from being kidnapped and dragged up a mountain by some weirdos. And then after all that, she had immediately moved out of her parent’s house and into a cabin with her new boyfriend Owen and some other new people who had moved in Mystery, Alaska in January.
It was too much too fast in Katherine’s opinion. But Tara was her friend and if Tara wanted to move in with a guy she just met. Then that was her choice. Besides, it wasn’t like Katherine had been completely forthcoming with Tara about Knox’s visits to the community center.
She looked down at Knox again. Good thing too.
Proof of real live supernatural creature/man was definitely out of Tara’s ballpark for a while. Katherine could keep her barbarian werewolf Tarzan to herself for a while.
Right?
Yes, I can.
Katherine missed her best friend. But right now she had a dude on her porch who made her question everything she’d thought was real in the world and she couldn’t talk to Tara about it.
Not yet.
And she was still kneeling on her porch next to the guy—correction, a werewolf. And he was beaten and bloody and half naked and beautiful.
She wasn’t afraid of him. And he wouldn’t hurt her.
She knew it so deep in her soul that there wasn’t a closet, nook, or cranny in her heart for any doubt to hide.
“Come on, let’s get you inside and start cleaning up those gashes. You look like you’ve been outside for days without tending to them. Where have you been? Up on the mountain fighting with bears?” Katherine gingerly took his arm and slid it over her shoulder. “You’ve got to give me a little help here.”
Knox shifted his weight, biting back another groan, but he got his feet beneath him and they wobbled up to the cobalt blue front door. Katherine got her key from her pocket and got them inside quickly.
The living room wasn’t much. An old grey couch that’d come with the place. A rocker Mrs. Sampson—one of the grandmas of Mystery—had given her for making sure the knitting circle always had a place to meet at the community center. The rustic coffee table was just a few scrap boards from Harrison’s falling-down barn next door set on top of a couple of cinder blocks. But the hardwood floors were clean. The walls were a freshly painted soothing shade of sky blue. And the wood stove in the corner kept the front of the house warm and cozy.
It was a spartan type of life. But as long as she had the Community Center and her laptop, she was set. She didn’t need stuff.
“This way to the bathroom.” Katherine pushed to the right a little. The first thing that needed to happen was a shower. He was covered in dirt, dried blood, and who knew what else. Knox shuffled along, surprisingly carrying most of his own weight, though Katherine felt the sway of unbalance several times. She didn’t know how he was still able to move, but she was grateful. The man would’ve been nearly impossible for her to move by herself.
“You used your phone,” he said, his voice an angry growl. “Whoever you called…They will kill me.”
Katherine’s heart slid to a stop and she sucked in a quick breath. “I didn’t. I almost called Tara, but I didn’t. Figured we should keep the whole wolf-man thing between us. No one would’ve believed me anyway. I still barely believe it and I saw you change. Plus, she’s a mess after what happened this week between her and Owen.”
He growled again. “You know the bear? Bear will kill me.”
Katherine swallowed down the rising bile in her throat. “The bear? What bear? Owen is a guy. He’s her boyfriend. I mean, he is a giant dude, but—” Even as she said the words, she realized what Knox was revealing. Fear twisted and snaked up from her booted feet to curl and writhe in her stomach before pushing further, settling into a tight ball in her throat. Men who were…animals. All those TV shows and romance books weren’t real. They couldn’t be.
Except Knox was living proof that they kinda were.
They struggled for a few moments, Knox’s spurt of energy failing him. Finally, she was able to maneuver his enormous body in her tiny bathroom and help him sit on the padded toilet seat next to her claw-footed tub.
“He’s a—” she started again.
“Bear,” Knox said the word that she wasn’t able to yet vocalize.
Katherine wiped her clammy palms on her jeans and drew in a shaky breath. Her skin prickled. Adrenaline shot through her body like someone had fired NOS through a suped-up race car engine.
Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy fracking shit.
She took a deep breath and tried to douse the internal flames revving her instinct to flee. Calm down Manitok.
“Okay.” She forced another breath in and out. “So…”
Scenarios rushed through her head of Owen and Knox fighting. Knox didn’t have a chance. He was already beat to hell.
Wolf At The Door: Soulmate Shifters World (Soulmate Shifters in Mystery, Alaska Book 5) Page 1
