by Ariel Marie
Dani’s Return
Ariel Marie
Contents
Before you begin
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Ariel Marie
Copyright © 2016 by Ariel Marie
Cover Design: SelfPubBookCovers.com/FrinaArt
Editor: Dana Hook at Rebel Edit & Design
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, businesses, events, and incidents are a figment of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any similarities to real people, businesses, locations, history, and events are a coincidence.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Created with Vellum
This book was originally written for the F*ck Cancer Anthology, that benefited a current breast cancer fighter in hopes that all monies raised would help with the costs of treatments.
I would also like to dedicate this book to anyone who is battling against the nasty disease. Keep fighting and kick cancers ass!
F*ck Cancer!
Before you begin
WARNING: Due to the explicit language and graphic sexual scenes, this book is intended for mature (18 years +) readers only. If things of this nature offend you, this book would not be for you. If you like a good action story with hot steamy scenes with shifters, then you have chosen wisely…
Chapter One
Dani
She would never tire of the aroma of the early morning fresh air, or the blooming spring flowers.
Mother nature at her best.
Daniella Harper smiled as best she could in her wolf form. She trotted back towards the fence that separated her backyard from the open land of the Tennessee State National Forest.
She reached the stairs of her back porch before slowly morphing back into her human form. The warm rays of the sun felt amazing against her naked skin. She was lucky that she didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing her in all her glory; her neighbors on each side of her home were about a half a mile down the road each way.
And that was how she liked it.
She walked into her back door, directly into her kitchen, and went over to the fridge to pull out a chilled bottle of water. A good long run always left her parched. She grabbed her smartphone and hit the app that controlled her music, blasting it through the surround sound speakers throughout her home. She danced her way to her room and grabbed a towel so she could jump into the shower.
Twenty minutes later, she reappeared from her shower feeling refreshed. She threw on jeans and an oversized T-shirt that she tied in a knot at the base of her back. Another one of her favorite songs began to play as she grabbed her laptop and cell phone, and danced her way into the living room.
“Hello…it’s me,” she sang along, plopping down onto her couch. She booted up her computer when the old ringtone ringer of her phone cut the song short, signifying an incoming call.
“Aw, come on,” she whined out loud, laughing at herself. But once she saw who was calling, her smile grew even wider. “What’s up, BFF?” she answered.
“Hey, Dani,” a familiar voice greeted her.
Hope Foster had been her best friend since they were six years old. They met at the beginning of first grade, and were inseparable while growing up. Hope and her family were human, and never treated Daniella, a shifter, any different.
Humans were well aware of the existence of shifters, and both species tried to live in peace with one another. Shifters preferred to live near the outskirts of towns and cities, or even out in the country to be near the open land in order to have safe places to run in their animal forms.
Of course, there were those anti-shifter groups that protested and rallied against shifters on the platform that shifters were a danger to the public, and should be made to register and live on reservations, away from humans. The pro-shifter groups argued that like humans, there were good and bad shifters. These groups felt that shifters should have the same treatment and rights as humans.
The Fosters’ had always accepted Daniella, as if she were their second child. Growing up, she probably spent more time in their home than she did her own.
“How the hell are you, Hope?” she asked, logging into her job’s website to fill out a few reports for work. She was a social worker for the local county children and family services in the shifter division. She needed to finish filling out her reports from her home visits that she did yesterday.
Hope’s deep sigh reached Dani’s ears and grabbed her wolf’s attention. Something wasn’t right. “Dani, it’s Mom.”
“What?” she almost screeched. Her heart pounded hard in her chest as she thought of the wonderful woman who was like a second mother to her. “Is she okay?”
Thoughts raced through her mind at the possibility that something was wrong with Mrs. Foster. She didn’t think she would be able to handle it.
“She found a lump in her left breast a couple of weeks ago,” Hope said, her voice sounding strained.
Her usual high-pitched, jolly voice was now dull, and almost lifeless. Dani’s wolf whined, scratching at her from the inside, sensing that their best friend was in pain.
“Oh my God,” she breathed into the phone. She squeezed her eyes shut. This could not be happening. “What is going on?”
“They did a mammogram, and it came back abnormal. There was a dense mass, and they suggested an ultrasound guided biopsy.”
“Why didn’t anyone call me sooner?” Dani whispered into the phone. Her vision blurred from tears that threatened to fall, and worry filled her chest, as she had already lost her parents tragically in a car accident. She couldn’t lose Mrs. Foster too. She sat her laptop down on the coffee table and perched on the edge of the couch to listen.
“She didn’t want anyone to know,” Hope said, a small sniffle escaping. “She said she thought it would turn out to be nothing, and she didn’t want to worry anyone. But it’s been downhill since the mammogram.”
“Did she have the biopsy yet? What did it say?”
“Yes, she had it,” Hope paused again. Dani could hear her blow her nose before she came back to the phone. “It’s cancer, and the mass is big enough that they want to try some chemo, or some type of drugs first before considering surgery. It has been a blur to me ever since we sat in the doctor’s office when he explained everything.”
“I’m coming home,” Dani said without hesitation. She had been gone for too long from their small town of Wakefield, Ohio.
“You said you could never come back—”
“It doesn’t matter. You are my family, and I must come home. I have to see her,” she whispered into the phone. It was true. After her parents’ died her senior year of high school, it was the Foster family who took her in so that she could finish out her last year of high school.
When she was twelve years old, her parents entered into an agreement with the alpha for her to mate with his son. She never got it out of them why the alpha wanted her for his son. They only insisted that it was an honor for her to be chosen for the future alpha of their pack, and with her as the alpha’s mate, she could help turn their pack around. This had been the only thing that her and he
r parents had ever disagreed about. She begged and pleaded for them to break the arrangement, but they refused, stating that the arrangement was already made. There was nothing they could do to change it.
After graduating from high school, she packed her things and left Wakefield. She ran away, scared of what her future held as the mate of the future alpha. She didn’t care about the agreement that that the alpha and her parents had. Her parents had died, and she refused to uphold that agreement.
Evan Torres, the alpha that made the mating arrangement with her parents, was a cruel, heartless man that was known in the Midwest as Crazy Torres. Junior, the alpha’s son, was quickly following in his father’s footsteps, and Dani refused to be mated to such an evil wolf.
Her life would have been a living hell if she had mated with Junior. He tormented her as a child, and she refused to spend her entire life with him. The Torres family had been in charge of the Blood Moon pack for generations, and drove the pack into the ground.
The Blood Moons were once a thriving pack, and had once held a reputation of being one of the strongest packs in the Midwest, but under the reign of the Torres family, the Blood Moons barely garnered respect.
Once she ran, she had always had to look over her shoulder for fear that Junior would show up and drag her back to Wakefield, which would have been his right in the eyes of shifter law. They had been promised to each other since she was twelve, and he was fourteen years old. The human laws upheld most of the Lycan laws, so whenever Junior decided to come for her, the human police would have no jurisdiction.
She knew that Junior had his wolves had been watching her. She always had a creepy sensation that someone’s eyes were on her. Her wolf was always on the defense, never knowing if someone would jump out of the shadows to grab her and drag her back to Junior. She was always moving, trying to get away from Junior and his wolves, but no matter where she went, they would somehow find her.
About a year ago, she no longer had the sensation that someone was watching her, and the fear of being discovered vanished. One morning she woke up and just felt…free. She didn’t know what was different, but she had taken advantage of it. She had even went out and bought her dream house, and had finally begun to live life.
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, her voice growing stronger. “I’ll be just fine.”
Chapter Two
Ace
One would have thought that he had not eaten in a week; he was downright famished. Ace Levatino found himself ordering almost everything off the menu for dinner. Tiny’s was the popular hole in the wall diner to get a decent meal in Wakefield.
The young, short blonde waitress paused to assess him after he placed his order. Her smile turned seductive once she finished taking in his six foot five, two hundred and sixty-pound frame. He knew this routine. Before he left tonight, he was sure that she would be trying to slip him her telephone number.
As a wolf shifter, he tended to be bigger than a human male, and as an alpha, he was still larger than most shifter males. Females, human or shifter, were naturally drawn to him due to his size, his muscular build, black hair, and smoky gray eyes. He would take her number if only to scratch his itch later, but he wouldn’t be promising her anything. There had only ever been one female for him, but he had never been able to approach her or tell her.
Daniella Harper, or Dani, as her friends had called her growing up, was his mate, and he longed to find her. Dani was the sexy caramel skin shifter that had been promised to the old alpha’s son. Just thinking of her took his breath away, and he hadn’t even seen her in twelve long years.
Ace’s wolf had recognized that Dani was his destined mate the summer she had turned thirteen and shifted for the first time. Ace had been a scrawny eighteen-year-old at the time, and couldn’t do anything about it. If he had, the alpha would have killed him for just looking at his son’s betrothed.
Each year, the pack held a traditional shifting celebration. The party was to celebrate the teens that experienced their first shift. For natural born shifters, the first shift was brought on by puberty and the surge of hormones. He remembered that night as if it were yesterday.
Her honey brown wolf pranced around the bonfire, proud to finally be able to join the rest of the pack in their wolf forms. He’d had to excuse himself from the celebration due to the mother of all erections as he watched her that night. He never knew if she knew who he was, much less that they were fated mates.
After all of these years, she was never far from his mind. He often wondered where she was, if she was safe, and if she was happy.
“I hope you left some food for me to order,” his beta, Brett Walker, said, laughing.
“If not, they can run to the grocery store,” he joked.
“So, what’s the plan for tomorrow?” Brett asked after ordering his dinner. The waitress took their menus and promised to return soon.
“I have to meet with the accountant again to go over the packs financials again,” he said, rolling his eyes. “It’s a fucking mess. They didn’t keep track of anything, but I think Tom and I have almost straightened everything out.”
“What do you need me to do?” Brett asked, getting straight to business.
They may be best friends, but Brett was also the beta of the pack, Ace’s second in command. When Ace decided to challenge for the alpha position, Brett was the first person to support him.
Five years ago, Junior Torres challenged his father and killed him, taking over the Blood Moon pack. He turned out to be even worse than his father as an alpha. Greed and money had been his motivation for wanting to be alpha. He never cared for any members of the pack.
One year ago, Ace returned to Wakefield after being sent away at the age of twenty. His parents recognized the alpha in him and knew that the Torres’ would kill him because he would have been seen as a threat to their alpha seat in the Blood Moon pack. There could only ever be one alpha in a pack, so that meant if he wanted to live, he had to leave.
He went to live with his mother’s brother’s pack, the Sacred Valley pack, where his uncle was alpha. Under his uncle, he learned how to rule as an alpha properly.
He had made a promise to himself that he would come back to Wakefield, the small town that he loved, and where his family remained. Once he returned, he knew he needed to act immediately, and challenged Junior to be alpha. The challenge for alpha was one that was taken seriously, and was a fight to the death. Junior’s wolf was no match for Ace’s wolf. The fight was over within minutes, with Ace tearing Junior’s throat out, thus winning the challenge.
The past year, he had worked his ass off to fix everything that Junior and his father had ruined. His plan had been to correct all the wrongs done in the pack, and then he would go look for her.
His mate.
He had heard that the minute Dani was legal and graduated from high school, she had run from the pack in order to escape Junior. Members of the pack had shared with him that Junior had kept tabs on Dani and had her followed everywhere she went. She may have thought she had escaped Junior, but there wasn’t ever a moment when he didn’t know what she was up to. That was no way to live. His wolf growled at the thought of their mate being terrified and alone.
According to Ace’s cousin, Junior was whoring around, spending the packs money, and didn’t want to take a mate, but kept his eyes on his betrothed while she continuously ran and tried to hide. He didn’t want anyone else to have Dani. Junior would boast to the pack that he kept his eye on his runaway bitch, and would claim her when he was good and ready.
Ace’s wolf didn’t like that and scratched feverishly at his abdomen to get out. His wolf was ready to go find their mate and bring her home, but it wasn’t time yet. The pack was doing well since his takeover, and he had been bogged down with meetings and negotiations. He was slowly rebuilding the torn relationships with the neighboring packs.
“You have that look in your eye again,” Brett interjected, breaking through Ace’s thoughts.
<
br /> “What look?”
“That look you get when you think of Dani,” he clarified, his eyes not wavering. His best friend knew him better than anyone else. Brett was the only person that Ace had ever told about knowing that Dani was his true mate. “When are you going for her?”
“Not yet.” He shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “I’m not ready yet. The pack is almost ready—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Brett interrupted as the waitress appeared with their food. It took two people to bring out their order. Ace’s stomach growled as the smell reached his nostrils. He could practically feel his wolf lick his chops as he looked down at his two triple cheeseburgers, extra-large loaded fries, and an order of wings.
The bell rung over the door to the diner, but Ace and Brett were too busy digging into their food to notice the newcomer that had entered the establishment. All conversation about going after his mate stalled. He was in food heaven as he dug into his loaded fries.
A light scent of lavender and vanilla floated around Ace, gaining his wolf’s attention. He sniffed the air. Ace would know the scent from anywhere. It had been twelve years since he had last smelled it. He inhaled deeper, taking the scent in.
It can’t be!
He put his burger down and wiped his hands on his napkin before letting his eyes wander around the diner in search of the newcomer. Humans and shifters both filled the diner, but there was one particular figure at the take-out counter that caught his attention.
She was here.
His heart felt as if it wanted to jump out of his chest as his eyes took in the flawless caramel complexion of the sexiest woman he had ever laid eyes on. It had been twelve long years since he had last seen her, but he would know her from anywhere.
