Wolf Pack
by Bridget Essex
Synopsis:
Let your imagination run wild as you read this collection of three romantic lesbian novellas featuring werewolves. Best-selling author Bridget Essex offers a trio of heart-stopping tales of women transformed by love.
Wolf Pack includes these three novellas:
Wolf Queen: When high school sweethearts Amber and Stevie are reunited, sparks fly. But Amber still hasn't forgiven Stevie for disappearing seven years ago. Once the shocking truth is finally revealed, will the women be able to give love a second chance?
Wolf Heart: Abby Reynolds needs some R&R, so she's camping alone at her family's cabin. But her quiet getaway takes a strange turn when she finds Shannon, a gorgeous stranger, lying naked in the park bathroom. Little by little, Abby comes to realize that there is more to Shannon than meets the eye...
A Wolf for Valentine's Day: Lonely veterinarian Trish Dalton has reluctantly signed on to attend a singles retreat in the Rocky Mountains. There, she finds herself attracted to yoga instructor Kennedy, a woman with a secret. Can Trish overcome her own reserved nature to risk a relationship with wild, free-spirited Kennedy?
"Wolf Pack"
© Bridget Essex, 2016
First published as Wolf Heart, A Wolf for Valentine’s Day and Wolf Queen
Rose and Star Press
All rights reserved
No part of this e-book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Rose and Star Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews. Please note that piracy of copyrighted materials is illegal and directly harms the author. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Dedication:
For Natalie, always.
Contents:
Wolf Heart
A Wolf for Valentine’s Day
Wolf Queen
More from Bridget Essex
About the Author
-- Wolf Heart --
“Honey, I'm not trying to dissuade you or anything, but it's common knowledge that people who go camping alone in national parks around Halloween almost always end up murdered.”
I burst out laughing as I put on my turn signal. My cell phone headset crackles with static as I pull off the main highway, route 86, and head deeper into the mountains of Allegany State Park.
“But what you're saying right now is that my camping alone is definitely going to lead to my murder. I think that counts as dissuading, Mom,” I tell her with a shake of my head, chuckling into my Bluetooth headset. “Thanks for the confidence, by the way,” I smirk. “Didn't you camp at the family campsite alone when you were sixteen?”
“That was a different time,” my mother tells me dismissively, and I can almost see her brandishing her coffee mug as she launches into, “There were far fewer serial killers when I was a young woman.”
I laugh again as I turn on my brights. The moment I coast beneath the brooding pine trees surrounding the entrance to the state park, the darkness eats up my headlights, and putting on my brights does very little to help with the visibility. I roll down my windows to smell the autumn leaves and the bracing, chill October air; it makes me shiver. Everything here is muffled and dark, which probably sounds much creepier than it actually is...
Okay. I'm lying. It's actually pretty creepy right now. I've never arrived at the park so late in the day, or you know, night, and I didn't expect it to be this pitch black. And, to add to the creepy ambiance, I'm driving down a deserted, dark road in the middle of nowhere the day before Halloween. This moment is pretty much a reenactment of the opening of every Halloween movie I've ever seen...
Even as I have that thought, a deer darts out right in front of me, bounding out of the thick forest of pine trees to the left, long legs flexing as she hurtles across the pavement, scrambling with her dainty hooves for purchase on the road, skidding on it since she's running so quickly. She is right in front of the nose of my car, and there's probably not enough time to avoid hitting her, but all I am in that moment is one giant reflex.
I gasp as I slam on the brakes.
Thankfully, I was already reducing my speed; the speed limit is thirty-five miles-per-hour through Allegany, and I already got a ticket here once—issued by an unhappy park ranger/security guy. And I'll be damned if I'm getting a ticket again! So when I slam on the brakes, the car slows down quickly, and nothing terrible happens. I'm able to stop my car just shy of the doe, who actually came to a halt in front of my fender, staring at it with wide, unblinking eyes. Apparently, deer aren't the smartest of creatures.
I pant, gripping the steering wheel tightly as we stare at each other, the doe and me. Her wide, wet eyes are framed by long, delicate lashes, and I'm so close that I can see her small nose wrinkling in distress as she huffs a breath that curls out into the air like smoke. Breathless, I watch this gorgeous creature—this gorgeous creature that I almost just turned into roadkill. I swallow, trying to quell my adrenaline, and then the spell is broken: the doe darts off again, taking a single, powerful bound to clear the rest of the road and disappear on the other side, into the thicket. And, that fast, in a single heartbeat, she's gone.
“Abby? Abby, honey, are you okay?” comes my mom's panicked voice from my headset. Crap—with all the adrenaline pouring through me, I completely forgot I was on the phone. My mom says, all in a rush, “I just heard the brakes screeching!”
“I'm okay, Mom,” I tell her, forcing out a laugh that sounds fake even to me, the one faking it. I gulp down air and take another deep breath, letting it out slowly. Then I adjust the earpiece. “Sorry. A deer just jumped out in front of me, but I didn't hit her. I just had to brake hard. I'm fine, car's fine, deer's fine. It's all good.” I grip the steering wheel, my knuckles white in the dark.
“See, that's one of the million reasons you shouldn't be doing this,” my mom frets. “If you wanted to play at Annie Oakley, you could come camp in our backyard! Heaven knows it's a jungle out there,” she tells me with a long sigh.
I'm laughing again, and my body begins to relax as I put my foot on the gas, crawling into the park now. I'm going so slow that my speedometer doesn't even flick over the number “5” for a few minutes.
“I'd hardly call your tiny backyard in south Buffalo a jungle, Mom,” I tease her gently, smiling as I grip the steering wheel a little less tightly now. I roll my shoulders back. “Just remind Dad that I'll be visiting you guys after the camping trip. I'll be breaking camp on Monday morning, so I'll drive into town and expect Tim Hortons coffee and donuts pretty much right away.”
My mom is chuckling, but I can still hear the worry in her voice. “Just don't eat a half dozen Boston creams in one sitting like last time, okay?”
“I'm offended,” I smile. “You know Jack helped me.” Jack is my parents' very, very elderly Boston Terrier, and by “helping me,” I mean that he might have licked a drop of custard off of my finger, if I remember correctly.
“Abby...” my mother starts, and I know she's about to launch into one last-ditch effort to keep me from camping alone this weekend.
So I beat her to it.
“Look, I just really needed to get away,” I tell her, my voice calm, soothing, the exact voice I use when my dog, Peanut, sits quaking under the bed during thunderstorms and I have to coax her out. “I'll be safe,” I say, smiling, reassuring, calm. “I mean, I'm staying in our cabin; it's got two locks! An impenetrable fortress with two locks. And I'm sure there are other people camping, because seasoned campers know that the week before Halloween is less crow
ded. And there are park rangers all over the place... Besides all of that, the park just isn't full of serial killers, no matter what you say, Mom,” I tell her with a sigh. “Deer, yeah. There are a lot of deer,” I concede with a chuckle. “But I don't think murder is on their agenda. Unless they try to run into my car again.”
“Well,” says my mother, sounding very unsure. “I know you're going to do what you want to do, Abby,” she finally tells me, with a very long-suffering sigh. “And I know you can take care of yourself.”
“I didn't take all those karate lessons when I was a kid for nothing!”
“Just promise me you'll be careful?” she says, with another very long sigh.
“I promise,” I tell her soothingly. And then, very quickly, I belt out, “I love you and Dad. I'll see you very soon! And I'm going up the mountain, so I'm losing the signal. I'll have to let you go! I love you! Bye!” I tell her all in a single breath, and before she can tack on another, “I'm not sure this trip is a good idea” speech to the three dozen that she already gave me on the car ride here, I cut the connection, tossing my Bluetooth onto the seat next to me.
I take a deep breath and roll my shoulders back again; I'm stiff from the long drive—and from being so tense throughout the conversation. I mean, I knew my mother wouldn't be happy that I was taking a camping trip alone. Camping alone is Not Done so late in the season, according to her. But I also know that I'm perfectly safe here. After all, I've been coming to Allegany State Park since I was a baby—literally. My parents brought me to the cabin for the very first time when I was thirty days old. And, completely TMI, but when my mother was drunk at my uncle's New Year's party once, she told me that I was conceived in that very same cabin, so you could kind of say that camping is in my blood. I've been here so many times that I know this place like the back of my hand. Yeah, there are bears here, but they're small black bears who crave wild-grown blackberries and campers' trash, rather than, well, the campers themselves. There is nothing dangerous in this entire park except for bad compasses and a bad sense of direction: a few folks died here while hiking, after getting lost.
But other than that...I'm perfectly safe.
And, hell, I've gone two years without taking time off from work. I've won so many attendance gold stars at this point (I work in telemarketing, and they love handing out gold stars to the drudges who manage to show up every day), I could fill a jar with them.
I need this vacation.
I could never tell you exactly why I put off taking a vacation during the nice, summer months, the months when the cabin was completely empty, when I could have gone swimming in the pond, eaten ice cream and popsicles from the General Store and sunned myself on the little spit of beach. Maybe it's because I wanted time alone, time to myself, not to have to fight the crowd for the best spots. Autumn's my favorite season, so that factored into it, too. Autumn in Allegany State Park, straddling the border of New York and Pennsylvania, is breathtaking. The trees are a riot of colors, a treasure trove of autumn-hued gems, and even though it's dark out, I can smell autumn in the air. I can't wait to wake up tomorrow morning and look out my window at the beauty that surrounds me.
I guess I feel silly saying that I felt called to come to the park this week, but that's the absolute truth of it. I had a dream one night, a dream of me walking through the woods in the twilight hours, beneath the amber-colored trees, feeling perfectly happy and content. I woke up, and I still felt that happiness and contentment, at least for a little while. It lasted in me like a memory, even though I hadn't experienced it. And that sealed the deal. I wanted that. And now, here I am.
Much to my mother's dismay.
I roll through the Quaker section of the park. Allegany State Park is divided into two distinct areas, with a mountain in between. One side is called Red House; that's where the “rich” people go to camp. Well, they aren't necessarily rich, but that's what it seemed like to me when I was a kid. And then there's the Quaker side, what my mother calls “the plebeian side” of the mountain.
I turn my car into the small gravel parking lot for the rental station.
Our family has owned a cabin on the Quaker side for at least two generations. The cabin was here before they offered camping at the park, so we were sort of grandfathered into the whole park system. I don't need a key to get into our family cabin—I have one—but it's just common courtesy to tell the rangers that I'm here and give them some sort of time frame for how long I think I'll stay.
I turn off the engine and my headlights. Immediately, I'm plunged into thick darkness. Gingerly, I open the car door, and as the cold air gusts into my car, I'm surprised—as I always am at this time of year—that there's not a single sound in the forest surrounding me. All of the bugs are dead or sleeping for the winter, and the smaller forest animals have gone to bed for the night. The birds have either flown away or are nestled asleep somewhere. So, right now, the woods are still, so quiet that I can hear myself breathing. I can even hear my heartbeat in my chest, the steady thump-thump, thump-thump speeding up a little, just because the woods, at night, would make anyone's heart beat a little faster.
It's a disconcerting feeling—especially for someone used to the hustle and bustle of Rochester—as I shut my car door, and the sound of it echoes away into the darkness, muffled into silence by the close, brooding pine trees. I burrow my hands deep into my jacket pockets, turning up my fleece's collar to stave off the chill that's rolling in off the pond, and I trot up the three steps to the station's front door. I'm glad to see that there's a small light on inside, the tiny warmth of it spilling out onto the wooden boards of the porch. But when I peer through the window into the station itself, my heart sinks.
I was kind of hoping that Bob or Sherri or Alex would be on duty tonight. I've been camping here for so long that I know every ranger, and most of them I love.
Except for one.
The one in the station right now.
Barbara.
Barbara has been a park ranger here at Allegany since I was a kid, and she knows my family and me pretty well. And because of that, and because I love the park so much, I kind of feel like it's my duty to say all the usual, nice things about her, like Barbara is perfectly...well, nice, and she's always treated my family well, going so far as to track down my childhood dog, Socks, when she slipped out of the cabin one night when I was thirteen. I mean, that's nice. She didn't have to do that for us.
But even when I was little, there was something about her that made me uneasy. Maybe it's the way that she would look at us kids disapprovingly, like we were always up to something bad, even though we weren't. Maybe it's how she dragged my dog back when she found him, his tail between his legs as she gripped his collar so hard that there were brush-burn marks on his neck when she handed him over to us.
Barbara is also majorly into hunting, and as a vegetarian, hunting isn't really my favorite topic. But it was more than opposing views on things, more than the way my dog collapsed into my arms when Barbara returned him, as if she'd terrified him completely.
It's just that, sometimes, when Barbara looks at me—okay, I know this sounds weird. But it almost looks like she's staring at something, well...delicious. Like she's hungry, and I might be the sort of snack that's perfectly acceptable to devour before dinner.
Granted, these are the stories that kids tell each other when they're staying up past their bedtime, using flashlights like props, beams aimed under their chins while they mutter in spooky voices about the scariest scenarios they can come up with. And I did exactly that with my cousins when we'd camp here each summer. We would always try to outdo ourselves, coming up with the creepiest tales we could imagine...
And when we'd bring up Barbara (because of course we'd bring up Barbara), we'd talk in hushed tones about how she ate kids and stray pets. That last part was added onto the story after she brought our dog back. We said that she was part beast, because her teeth were a little sharper than everyone else's. Which wasn't actually tr
ue, but that's how it felt to me. There was something almost animal-like about Barbara.
Something that felt...amiss.
Even now, thinking about those childhood stories we'd tell each other...it makes me shiver as I glance in the window, as I see Barbara sitting at the ranger's desk, typing something up on the monolithic desktop computer, her eyes narrowed as she frowns at the screen.
There's something off-putting about her. Something that makes my mouth go dry.
Okay, okay, I know that's crazy. And I'm blaming all of my mother's talk about serial killers and cannibals for my reticence to raise my hand and knock on that ranger station door. Barbara is just...intense is all. And she doesn't have that many social skills, which is why her intensity always comes off as something uncomfortable. It's not her fault. But as I do fist my hand, poised to knock, I have to take a deep breath to still my thundering heartbeat.
C'mon, Abby, I cajole myself. What's the worst she's going to do? She's not going to bite you.
But, still, it takes me a moment to summon the courage to knock on that door.
The knock, knock, knock of my knuckles against the heavy wood sounds extra loud in the stillness of the night. I take a step back from the door, and I can hear someone with heavy boots moving across the floor inside. Thump, thump. I turn up my fleece collar even more, shivering in the cold air, and then I take a deep breath as the door opens in front of me, the soft light inside the ranger station spilling out onto the front porch.
“Abby Reynolds,” says Barbara, her voice low, her tone disapproving. She has the advantage of the light being behind her, and of my eyes being adjusted to absolute blackness. So when she speaks to me, I really can't see her face; it's shrouded in darkness. But it doesn't take sight to understand that she's pretty unhappy to see me; her tone clearly conveyed that. She practically spat out my name.
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