Brink Of Passion (Alpine Woods Shifters)
Page 1
Back Cover Copy
He’ll do anything to protect his mate.
The last thing Laurie expects when she bumps into Max at the shifter convention is finding her mate. Certainly not that her mate can shift into a leopard. Wolves and leopards mix about as well as water and oil. Or should she say, dogs and cats. Mating him means leaving her family, her town, and the only home she’s ever known. But the possibility of a happily ever after is worth the risk, right?
Max couldn’t be happier with his brazen, feisty wolf, but returning home isn’t the welcoming affair he’d expected. In his absence, his brother has been attacked within the leap complex. Something must to be seriously wrong. Could someone be using his loved ones to get to him? When his worst fears prove true, his protective instinct goes into overdrive. Will keeping Laurie mean putting her in danger?
Other books by Sondrae Bennett
The Alpine Woods Shifters series
Arctic Winds
Chasing Paradise
The Wolf Within
Worth Fighting For
Covert Desires
Stand-alone books
Kalindra
Brink of Passion
By Sondrae Bennett
Brink of Passion
978-0-9863211-0-8
Copyright © 2015, Sondrae Bennett
Edited by Piper Denna
Book design by Sondrae Bennett
Cover Art by Renee Rocco
Firs electronic publication: February, 2015
Sondrae Bennett
http://www.sondraebennett.com
Ebooks are not transferable. All Rights Reserved. This book may not be reproduced, scanned, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
AUTHORS NOTE:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party Web sites or their content.
Published in the United States of America by Sondrae Bennett.
Dedication
To everyone who asked, “Will Laurie get her own story?”
Contents
Cover
Cover Copy
Other Books by Sondrae Bennett
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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
Epilogue
About Sondrae Bennett
Want More?
Chapter 1
“I still don’t see why I had to come,” Laurie complained as she walked into the lobby of the Tucson hotel where the multi-breed gathering was being held.
“We’ve been over this,” her brother, Danny, raked his hands through his hair with a drawn-out sigh. They had been over this. Many, many times. Their sister-in-law Samantha was six months pregnant and Laurie’s overprotective brother Jason refused to leave her side. Ethan, the second oldest brother, and his wife, Gwen, had left the day before on a belated honeymoon to Hawaii. Blah,blah,blah. All of that still didn’t explain why she had to come. Just because her oldest brother was the Premier of the pack, and her other two brothers were his officers, didn’t make her qualified for a leadership position.
Her younger sister’s mate, Brendan, would have been a better choice. Patient, cool-headed, and just a bit intimidating, he would have been perfect. Laurie, on the other hand, had the intimidation part down. The patience and level headedness…well, everyone had weaknesses, right?
Laurie rolled her shoulders, tuning in briefly to find Danny still in lecture mode. Jeez. Did he ever stop? Okay, granted, she was being crabby, like a pouting toddler. It wasn’t that she didn’t recognize it, but that didn’t mean she could stop it. Almost as if she had a missing filter between brain and mouth. She simply felt ornery.
No doubt Danny wanted to be here even less than she did. He had, quite literally, just mated his girlfriend Amber. Being separated from her must be dreadful. Yet, when she glanced at him, she could see none of the turmoil he must be feeling. One more illustration of why he ruled the pack, and she didn’t. Laurie didn’t have it in her to hide her turmoil. If she was miserable, everyone around her would damn well know it.
Rather than listen to yet another lecture on doing her part for the pack and for the family, Laurie turned away from Danny and glanced around. Damn. Swanky hotel. A chandelier, complete with dangling crystals that sparkled from candle-shaped lights, hung in the large lobby, and black tiles decorated the floor, giving the area a sleek, expensive look. White chairs and couches, made of some soft and inviting material, were artfully placed around the room, offering comfort and a false sense of privacy for small gatherings. With full human guests there might have been seclusion, but with a hotel full of shifters, the smallest whisper would be heard.
The pack must be paying a fortune for their room for this event. All pack members paid a due twice a year to cover incidentals, but even though Danny and she were only here for one night, the place must have taken a large chunk out of those funds. No wonder Danny had insisted they share a room.
Under different circumstances, partying with a bunch of unique shifters from all over the country sounded like one hell of a good time. But this was different. Instead of partying, she’d be going to lectures and debates on how to keep the communities safe, and how to interact with humans both inside and outside their communities. The Council governing all shifters had organized the event after a series of hybrid shifter riots almost exposed shifters to the human world.
All of which, if she were honest, did sound interesting and certainly useful. Except, unlike her brothers—and, she assumed, most of the other people here—she wasn’t an officer in the pack and had no real authority, which meant all she could do was look pretty and keep her mouth shut. Looking pretty, no problem. But she considered herself a very self-aware person. She knew her strengths. Keeping her mouth shut? Not one of them.
She wrinkled her nose as the scents of all the different shifters in the room assaulted her at once. None were particularly unpleasant, at least not on their own, but combine them all together and the whole lobby smelled like a barn. Or more accurately, a zoo. A human wouldn’t notice anything different about the smells in the lobby, but with an increased sense of smell, she’d bet half the shifters in the room were struggling not to cover their noses.
Her gaze slid over the room once more, this time absorbing more details about the people around her. To her left, a couple horses were making small talk with a trio of bears. In front of her, some deer eyed a lone coyote warily. Two felines of some kind walked through the main doors to her left. Definitely a zoo.
A group of men across the room snagged her attention. Holy crap, were those rhino shifters? Their foreheads protruded over small beady eyes as they scanned the room
, the look distrustful, almost skeptical. As if they didn’t quite know what they were doing there. They all had the same build, with large shoulders and a stocky frame. They probably all had mad football skills. If she saw one of them charging down the field toward her, she sure as hell would get out of their way.
Laurie had heard of rhino shifters before, but she’d never seen one. She had no idea there were rhino packs in America. Packs? What did one call a group of rhinos?
“What’s a pack of rhinos called?” A hush fell over the crowd around them, as Danny turned toward her, his eyes wide with shock.
She turned left and right to see similar looks from the people around her. Uh oh, had she done something wrong? Stumbled into some shifter no-no without realizing it? All she’d done was ask a question. But the accusing stares of the shifters around her told her she’d misstepped somewhere. Well, crap. She knew she wouldn’t be good at this diplomatic stuff.
“Tell me you did not just ask that, out loud, in a room full of shifters?” Danny’s whisper held disbelief, anger, and just a touch of incredulity. Laurie looked at more of the faces around her, all staring at her, each holding a different mixture of the same emotions Danny portrayed. Anger stronger on some, amusement stronger on others.
Risking a glance at the rhinos, Laurie tried to read their expressions, but their faces were masks of granite as they studied her right back. She lowered her head, something alpha wolves like herself really really didn’t like to do, and whispered a muted apology to Danny.
Apparently she’d screwed up. Hopefully Alpine Woods wouldn’t suffer as a result. Damn it, this was exactly why she hadn’t wanted to come. Well, okay, maybe not this exact situation. But something like this. There was a reason she’d let her brothers form their group of officers for the pack without including her, and it wasn’t because of her gender as some of the men in town liked to taunt.
No, she chose to remove herself because biting her tongue just wasn’t in her nature. If she’d tried to become one of the officers, her inability to work the political angle would have weakened the leadership as a whole. Her brothers were too good for the pack to risk them failing because of her.
Annoyance bled into Danny’s sigh as he turned back around to check them into the hotel, making Laurie feel even stupider. Not something she felt often, and she sure as hell didn’t like it.
A pair of large feet in old school brown tie-up dress shoes stepped into her line of vision. Her gaze moved up legs the size of tree trunks covered by a gray business suit, pausing at the overly large shoulders before moving up to collide with the slate gray eyes of one of the rhinos. For a moment, her stomach bottomed out. She was strong…for a wolf. But even she wasn’t crazy enough to want to go toe to toe with a rhino. Then she caught the slight up-curve of his lips, and a breath of relief slipped out.
“A crash,” he stated.
“Yeah, and burn,” she replied, her stomach calming at his friendly demeanor. Thank the Lord he wasn’t easily offended. It had seemed like an innocent enough question, but with this many different groups and sensitivities, she supposed everything needed to be extra PC.
“No.” His smile widened and a huff of a laugh escaped. “Well, yes.” Then he laughed for real, a deep bellow of sound that further settled her nerves. She wasn’t exactly sure what he found funny, but at least he seemed to have a sense of humor. “A group of rhinos is called a crash. Or a herd.”
“A crash?”
His protruding forehead wrinkled when he raised his eyebrows.
She sensed he wasn’t a person of many words. “That’s so cool. Why would you ever use herd if you could go by crash?” Laurie joked, smiling at the man.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Danny stiffen beside her. Great, had she stumbled into some other unknown shifter convention rule? Navigating this event was turning out to be trickier than a minefield.
“Hence the reason I said crash first,” the rhino joked back.
She smiled at him in gratitude.
“Hi, I’m Danny, officer of the Alpine Woods wolf pack in Colorado,” Danny interjected, holding his hand out to the man in front of her.
“Dominic.” The man took his hand and shook once. Concise and authoritative. She liked it. Similar to everything else about the rhino, the brief clasp shouted no-nonsense and power.
She was grateful he had been amused rather than offended by her innocent blunder. He was not a man she wanted as an enemy. Anyone with half a brain, including full humans, knew better than to cross a rhinoceros. Or a hippo, for that matter.
Wait, were there hippo shifters? She’d never heard of any, but that didn’t mean they didn’t exist. For years, she’d been more or less content to stay in Alpine Woods, so she hadn’t met a lot of other shifters besides those in the neighboring towns. Truthfully, if her brothers hadn’t pushed this event on her, she’d have been more than happy to stay in Alpine Woods forever.
She opened her mouth to ask about the possibility of hippo shifters when common sense prevailed. She looked around the room at the people still observing their group, rubber-necking as if they were a wreck on the highway.
Correction, as if she were a wreck on the highway. No doubt those that weren’t watching still had one ear tuned in to their conversation. Laurie had already screwed up once, and she wasn’t about the give these people more of a show. Not without charging a fee. At least she had a back-up plan if she ever needed quick cash.
“Your mate is quite amusing,” the rhino told Danny. Laurie looked around for Amber, Danny’s mate, wondering why she was here when she was supposed to be quitting her job in DC and moving her stuff to Alpine Woods. Then the meaning behind his words hit. Her? She made a face even as Danny rushed to correct the man.
“Sister.” He glanced over at her and Laurie focused back on the conversation. Something in his gaze turned Laurie’s stomach sour. What was it? Disappointment, maybe. Pity? Whatever she saw, she didn’t like it. “She means well, she just isn’t used to these types of events.”
Laurie tried—she really did—not to get offended by his patronizing tone, but she couldn’t help feeling smaller because of the words. She wasn’t a child. Or stupid. If he had such a low opinion of her, why was she even here?
“Unmated sister?” Dominic’s question pierced through her brain, scattering her annoyance at Danny and centering it squarely on the rhino.
“Excuse me?” she interjected. All well and fine if he wanted to hit on her, but he’d better ask her, not her brother. This wasn’t medieval times and she could make her own dates.
“I find you amusing. There’s not enough amusement in my life.” The rhino shrugged.
“Then get a Slinky. Hours of amusement.”
Beside her, Danny groaned and buried his head in his hands. His obvious distress dissipated some of her bravado.
Hadn’t she just decided smart people didn’t antagonize rhinoceroses? And yet, here she was doing just that. She’d always considered herself a smart person before, but maybe it was time to reconsider. Then the rhino laughed, and she once again thanked God the man had a sense of humor.
“I’ve had Slinkys before. But you… You’re unique, and much more amusing.”
Did that mean he wasn’t going to crush her with his massive rhino fist? Seemed so. But would he push her down the stairs just to watch her tumble? That was a different question. One she didn’t have the guts to ask.
“Your brother should have warned you. An unmated alpha female at these events is like a juicy steak in a tiger pit. Especially one as alluring as you.”
How was she supposed to stay mad after a comment like that? Laurie knew she was attractive, maybe not a beauty by traditional standards—her features were a bit too elongated for that—but she was comfortable in her own skin and with her own sensuality. She had her own style and it suited her. Still, a girl never got tired of hearing compliments. And as far as compliments went, alluring was a good one. Even the word itself sounded like a caress. In fact,
it might be her new favorite word. Alluring.
“Now you’ve done it. Her head is going to be inflated all day.” The words didn’t bother her, but the harsh edge to Danny’s tone burst her bubble of happiness. Irritation with a hint of ruefulness.
Why was he being so mean to her? Her rocky start with his mate, Amber, crossed her mind. Could that have something to do with the way he’d been treating her? She really hoped not. The last thing she’d wanted to do when giving Amber a hard time was compromise her relationship with Danny, but she’d been worried about him and had wanted to protect him. He was her baby brother. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t have reason to distrust Amber when she’d first come to Alpine Woods. But now, she was afraid she might have done irreparable damage.
No. She shook off the gloomy thoughts. They were family, and family always pulled through in the end.
“Maybe we could grab a couple drinks.” It should have sounded like a question, but it didn’t. Dominic didn’t seem like the kind of man to ask questions unless he was certain to get the answer he wanted.
Laurie assessed him, no longer clouded by the annoyance she’d felt when he’d asked Danny about her as if she hadn’t been standing right next to him. He wasn’t an unattractive guy. A little rough around the edges, maybe, but it suited him. And she couldn’t help but wonder how he’d be in the sack. Judging by the sheer size of him, he was probably hung like a horse. Or rather, a rhino.
Even as the thought came to her mind, her interest waned. When she gazed at him and thought about sex with him, she felt only mild curiosity. No tingle of awareness, or fluttering in her stomach. And Laurie was the type of girl who needed at least a small spark pretty much right away. Besides, she was almost thirty and the only unmated sibling in her family—which didn’t seem like such a big deal except that she was one of five, and older than both Julie and Danny, who had mated in the past year.