by Laina Kenney
Vulfen Cadre 7
Vulfen Hunter’s Bride
When Iselle Carlin cleans out her new apartment and takes a load of someone else’s stuff to the dump, she doesn’t expect to want to take anything home. But the tall, gorgeous man who rescues her when some of the junk turns out to be a shipment of drugs awakens her heart and makes her want to break all her rules about men.
Balke Reitn, a warrior in the elite Vulfen Cadre, fights to defend his people every day. When he meets a human female whose enticing scent brings his wolf surging to life and smiles through her fear, her bravery captures a heart he thought was encased in ice. And with the Vulfen Queen about to give birth, Balke must find a way to balance a life of service with the protection of his new mate.
When he accidentally breaks the news that he is not human and his mate objects, Balke is in for the fight of his life.
Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves
Length: 26,015 words
VULFEN HUNTER’S BRIDE
Vulfen Cadre 7
Laina Kenney
EROTIC ROMANCE
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Erotic Romance
VULFEN HUNTER’S BRIDE
Copyright © 2014 by Laina Kenney
E-book ISBN: 978-1-63258-157-0
First E-book Publication: August 2014
Cover design by Harris Channing
All art and logo copyright © 2014 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
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
About the Author
VULFEN HUNTER’S BRIDE
Vulfen Cadre 7
LAINA KENNEY
Copyright © 2014
Chapter 1
“Holy,” Iselle muttered.
Her long brown braid fell over her shoulder as she took a breath and gave the chair another hard shove. It wouldn’t budge.
It didn’t help that she was cramped into her tiny car, one foot against the back of the driver’s seat. She couldn’t get much leverage in that position. She was giving it everything she had, but so far she hadn’t managed to even make the chair move, let alone get it out of her car.
Loading the old chair and the bags of garbage into the car back at the apartment hadn’t been this much of a problem, but her friend Emma had helped with that part of it. Getting it out once she reached the dump was Iselle’s part, and she couldn’t seem to make it work.
She knew one thing, she wasn’t going back to the apartment with the ugly old chair. Whatever she had to do, the chair was staying at the dump where it obviously should have been taken years ago. Now that she was so close to it, it had a bit of a smell as well. The damned thing had to go.
She looked out the window to see one of the dump workers watching while he sipped from a travel mug. How he could stand to eat or drink in the middle of the cloud of dump smell, she had no idea. His nose must have died long ago.
She muttered a few choice words under her breath about men who liked to watch women sweat, but she didn’t want to say anything out loud.
She might have to ask for his help as a last resort.
She looked at him again. The very last resort.
“Excuse me,” a deep male voice said. “I can see you are having difficulty. May I help?”
Iselle blew her hair out of her eyes and looked up to deliver a testy no. She even opened her mouth, but the word died, unvoiced.
It wasn’t the lazy dump worker.
The square-jawed face leaning into the open back of her car belonged on the big screen. His longish black hair stirred in the breeze as he leaned in further. With his leather jacket open and his thermal shirt pulled tight across a wide, muscular chest, Iselle could testify that the body matched that incredible face.
He had the eyes of a predator, fierce and focused, and she shivered for no reason.
Her heart gave a thump of interest. Imagine seeing a man like that at a dump.
“May I help?”
The helpless shiver that chased over her skin had nothing to do with the late March wind and everything to do with the dazzling green eyes and deep voice of the man before her.
Her dazed brain threw out several images of ways in which a man built like that could help a woman who had been alone for more than a year. Her body responded with an unseemly rush of heat, and she tried to shake the overheated ideas away.
“Uh, thanks,” she said. “I seem to be stuck.”
> * * * *
Balke could see that the young woman was struggling, but though there were men working at the dump, they didn’t seem inclined to offer aid.
He sighed. He lived and worked among humans, even counted some as friends, but he would never understand them as long as he lived.
“May I help?” he asked and the young woman blinked slowly. Behind her glasses, her lashes were impossibly long and dark over her tilted brown eyes, creating a striking resemblance to a startled doe.
His wolf took notice.
“Uh, thanks. I seem to be stuck.”
He smiled at the statement. That was the entire reason that he had offered his help. She had the determination, it was clear, but not the brute strength required to shift that behemoth of a chair wedged into her tiny car.
“If I move out of here, maybe you could get in and give the chair a shove?” she asked. “All I need is to get it started and then I’ll be fine.”
Balke shook his head.
“That will not be necessary.”
He reached into the car and grasped the chair firmly. With a great heave, he freed it from its confinement and pulled it out. He stepped back and tossed it over onto the side of a large pile of broken and similarly ugly old furniture.
It was perhaps too far for a human male to have thrown the heavy chair, but Balke’s wolf had decided to impress the pretty female. He tried to hold back but his wolf was determined.
That had never happened to him before. His wolf was normally very well-behaved.
The young woman scrambled out of the car and stood beside him, strands of hair blowing in the light wind.
“Wow,” she said.
Balke inhaled to speak but his smile froze in place as his cock hardened with a speed that shocked him, and his fangs dropped to full extension. His wolf lunged against his control, wanting to get closer to her.
That had never happened to him before, either.
He had seen beautiful women and felt the usual attraction, even arousal, but to have his body and his wolf lurch out of control at the same moment, and over a woman who looked almost too young to vote? He couldn’t credit it.
The young woman looked over to where he had thrown the chair.
Her slight movement brought her scent to him again and he took it in slowly, tasting every aspect. He looked her over from head to toe, taking in the slender, tempting curves, the glossy brown hair, and fine-grained ivory skin.
The gifts of his grandmother’s blood whispered in his soul in a powerful echo of what he already sensed. His instinct had awakened with a vengeance. It was unexpected, but there could be no mistake.
He was looking at his mate.
With wide eyes, she looked up at him and pointed over to the chair, seeming too startled to say a word.
He followed her aim.
When the chair had smashed onto the ground, the ugly upholstery on the seat had burst open. There was a large square bundle lying half on the ground, and another behind that. What Balke sensed from the packages outside of the woman’s layered sweetness made him grimace in disgust.
“Drugs,” he said flatly. The unpleasant scent set his wolf pacing, prowling to get out.
Her eyes squeezed shut for a moment. When she opened them, she sighed.
“Damn. No wonder it was so uncomfortable,” she said.
Her heartbeat picked up speed and her eyelashes fluttered as the realization of the trouble she could be in seemed to strike her.
Those soft doe eyes turned to him again with a hint of fear.
“Drugs? What am I going to do? There were drugs in my chair. I’ll be arrested for sure. Nobody in their right mind would believe I didn’t know about the drugs. Why else would I try to get rid of it?”
Balke thought it was much more likely that if she had known about the drugs, she would have been involved in selling them, but he stepped up and took her flailing hands in his.
“Have you touched this package?”
“No, I didn’t even know—how could I know—I’ve never touched it at all, unless you count sitting on it for a couple of weeks. And I didn’t even do much sitting because it’s so ugly I just wanted it gone. I’ve only had that apartment for two weeks and the chair was there when I got there. They didn’t take it when they moved out. Why didn’t they take it?” Her voice got faster and higher until she ended on a squeak.
Paradoxically, as she grew more panicked, Balke felt the tension leave him. He had seen the damage drugs could do and he would have been deeply disappointed if his fated mate had been involved with drugs in any way.
Her obvious anxiety made it clear that she had no previous knowledge of the drugs.
“I have not touched the package, either. So, the answer is simple. We call the police.”
He pulled out his phone and sent a text to his twin brother and to their police contact, a fox shifter, Officer John Commander.
“I have contacted the police. An officer will be along shortly.”
His mate wrapped her arms around herself and shivered slightly as she looked back at the chair.
“What do we do now?” she asked. Her voice was too high, worried.
Balke stepped closer and to the side so that his larger body shielded her from the cool March wind.
“Now we wait.”
Chapter 2
Tall and built on a grand scale, Officer John Commander took charge as soon as he stepped out of his vehicle.
His handsome face was set in stern lines.
Iselle could have told him the frown wasn’t necessary. She was already intimidated. Actually, terrified would be a better word.
She stepped a little closer to her new friend as the officer approached.
“Balke, what the hell?” were the first words out of the tall policeman’s mouth. “This better not be your usual garbage detail. Jesus.”
“I was asked to come here by my mother. Her dishwasher died a loud and horrifying death. It spit soapy water all over her kitchen.”
Her new friend Balke jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate an old machine.
The policeman seemed to relax.
“All right, then. What did you find?”
“Drugs,” Balke said. “This young woman was throwing out some things left behind in her new apartment, and stumbled upon some high class grass.”
The policeman snorted. “You’d know,” he said. He tapped his nose and both men laughed.
Iselle looked from one to the other, but couldn’t get the joke. He couldn’t be a drug user himself, or he wouldn’t be so friendly with the police, so that wasn’t it.
“Anybody touch it?”
Balke shook his head. “Neither of us have touched the packages, John. There may still be viable prints or traces from others, I cannot say.”
Officer John turned quickly to Iselle. The sudden movement surprised her and before she could stop herself, she had stepped back onto Balke’s foot.
“Oh, sorry,” she said, and tried to move off him. She stumbled and quickly stepped on his other foot.
Hard arms came around her and steadied her before setting her back on her own feet.
Iselle felt her cheeks heat. Of course, she would have to humiliate herself in front of the only gorgeous man she had spoken to in years. The day wouldn’t be complete unless she tripped or dropped something or spoke without thinking, but did it have to be in front of him?
“I’ll need your name, occupation and full address,” Officer John said. “Also, I need to know everything you know about the people who lived in your apartment prior.”
“Iselle Carlin, illustrator,” she said, and gave her address. “But I don’t know much about the man who lived in the apartment before me except that he didn’t have a maid. And man, he needed one. It took me a week of scrubbing to get that place truly clean.”
Officer John smiled for the first time.
“Do you know his name? Anything would be helpful.”
“Xander. I don’t know his last
name,” she said. “But, my friend Emma has lived in the first floor apartment for a couple of years. It’s an old renovated house, so there are only three apartments, one on each floor. She’ll probably know his name, at least.” Iselle hesitated. “Can I tell her why you want to know?”
Officer John frowned at her and Iselle stepped back again. Balke stirred by her side, an impression of danger, a predator just waiting for his chance, and the cop looked over.
“Settle down, for Christ’s sake. You know I have to ask these questions,” the cop muttered and Balke stilled.
“I won’t say anything to Emma, if you’d prefer that I didn’t,” Iselle said.
John nodded. “I’d prefer that you didn’t. Any information given out can potentially compromise an investigation. One person talks to one other person, and that one person mentions to one other person, and soon half of Boston knows.”
Iselle felt her temper rise and tried not to glare at him.
“I said I wouldn’t say anything. Emma wouldn’t blab, either.” Her voice sounded clipped, but she couldn’t help it. He just rubbed her the wrong way.
Her eyes cut over to Balke. He, on the other hand, would be just right. He saw her glance and smiled that slow smile and her internal muscles fluttered as if wanting to hold him inside.
She looked away quickly, afraid he would see her approval and take it the wrong way. Or maybe it was the right way, but she wasn’t ready for him to know how right. Her brain whirled in confusion, but her body seemed to know exactly what it wanted.
“Thank you,” Officer John said and flipped his notebook shut. “I’ll start with the landlord, and let you know what I find out. It may not be necessary to involve your friend at all. And I’ll have to take the chair into custody.”
