Wolf in Sheep's Clothing_BBW Paranormal Wolf Shifter Romance

by Lauren Esker

  And—it was more than that, Damon realized. Whether she knew it or not, Julie was helping him through the link, using her own stubbornness and defiance to fuel Damon's attack.

  Renner fell back under Damon's psychic assault. Damon pushed his advantage, forcing the bigger wolf into the edge of the woods. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Julie was with her siblings again. They'd all three shifted to their human form and were huddled together, watching the fight.

  The wolfpack crouched in place, silent as big shaggy statues, as if trying their best to evade notice.

  Damon bared his teeth at Renner. Just give up. I don't want to have to kill you!

  If he'd caught Renner in the act of hurting Julie, it might be different. But the idea of sinking his teeth into an enemy's throat and opening up their veins to pour out their lifeblood made him sick. He'd never known for certain what kind of person he was, but right now, facing a losing opponent, Damon knew down to the bottom of his wolf soul that he didn't want to be the cause of Renner's death.

  Yield!

  They faced each other, only a few feet apart. Renner's eyes flashed; saliva dribbled from his jaws. Damon's entire body was rigid, aching with strain. He'd never known it was possible to put this much willpower into anything.

  But the tide had turned. It ultimately came down to a battle of raw will, and Renner was losing. He couldn't prevail against Damon and Julie's combined strength. Damon could feel the difference—like pushing an impossibly heavy burden to the top of a hill, then starting to feel it slide down the other side.

  Renner's legs trembled as he fought not to give in to the urge to flatten himself to the ground.

  No—he was crouching to—

  A spike of alarm from Julie stung Damon just as Renner leaped.

  They rolled over and over in the leaf litter on the forest floor, thrashing and snarling. Damon knew this was more than an alpha dominance struggle; he was in a fight for his life. Renner would never let Damon live if he won.

  Renner's teeth lacerated Damon's ear and the side of his face; fresh pain seared his side. But Renner was too busy attacking to pay attention to his defense. Damon chose his moment, snapped his jaws, and felt his teeth grind down on Renner's neck.

  Finally, he had him.

  Yield, you bastard. Yield!

  Damon shook him like a prey animal. Renner's resistance began to slip, crumbling as Damon's grip on his throat cut off oxygen to his brain. Damon tasted blood and tried not to think about how much damage his teeth were doing. Even if he didn't mean to kill Renner, he might do it by accident.

  Slowly, Renner went limp, lying on his back on the forest floor.

  Damon gave him a final shake and then released him.

  Renner shifted back to human. His face was bruised, his throat bloody. His chest rose and fell in harsh gasps for air.

  Damon rested his full wolf-weight on Renner's chest and then shifted. Now he was man-shaped, kneeling on the former alpha. "Who attacked my father?" he asked.

  Renner didn't answer. His body twitched as if he meant to get up and keep fighting.

  Damon curled a hand around Renner's damaged throat. "I'll ask one more time."

  "It doesn't matter if he admits it," Brad's voice said shakily.

  Damon looked over his shoulder. He hadn't even been aware of his cousin shifting. Most of the pack had shifted back to human form now. They all looked badly shaken.

  "It doesn't matter," Brad said again. "It wasn't you, Damon. It was him, and the rest of us ... We just ..." He shook his head. "It's like ... I couldn't think right, before. And now I can."

  "Cain lost," Gray said softly. "We can all feel it. You're the alpha now."

  Damon stood up. His legs wobbled.

  Cain Renner's slitted eyes opened. Pure hatred burned in them. He rolled over slowly, then struggled to rise. After a moment, and with wary glances at Damon, two of his packmates moved forward to help him.

  "I don't want to be alpha of the Renner pack," Damon told them. "I never wanted that. Take him home, and don't bother us anymore. If you leave us alone, we won't bother you either."

  As the words left his mouth, he realized he'd imbued them with alpha command, wielding it without even noticing. They had to obey; they didn't have a choice. The Renner pack helped their wounded alpha stagger away into the woods. In a few moments, all the wolves were gone except the remaining members of Damon's pack: Brad, Barry, Gray, and Vanessa.

  "How many others were in on it with you?" Damon asked Brad.

  Brad shook his head, eyes on the ground. "Just me and Barry. The others weren't involved."

  "What were you hoping to get out of it?"

  "What do you think?" Brad demanded, defensive for the first time. "I know you and Vanessa were putting together your own conspiracy. Do you truly think the rest of us didn't know?"

  He'd underestimated his cousins. That had been a mistake—one he wouldn't make again. "I'd never have tried to murder Dad. Or framed you for his death."

  "It's like my brother said," Barry put in. "It was hard to think. We went to Renner hoping to find an ally."

  Instead they'd fallen under his alpha control. Something that would never have happened, Damon thought, if they'd been loyal to his father as they should have been. But an alpha had to earn that kind of loyalty. As with humans, seizing power and maintaining it through violence only produced resentment and rebellion.

  Barry shifted to wolf form, followed by Brad. Both wolves flattened themselves at Damon's feet.

  "Get up," Damon said, embarrassed. "I'm not my father. I don't believe an alpha should be the pack's despotic overlord."

  Brad shifted back. On his knees, he frowned up at his cousin. "It's going to be a different kind of pack with you in charge."

  "If I stay in charge," Damon reminded him. "I don't know what's going to happen with Dad—oof!"

  Julie had quit holding back; she came running to throw her arms around him. Damon staggered under the impact, wincing.

  "Sorry!" She'd felt the pain through their link. She released her grip immediately and replaced it with a careful arm around Damon's waist, below his injured ribs. "You're hurt! Uh, I mean, hurt more."

  Now that the adrenaline was ebbing out of him, Damon reeled under the impact of the pain and exhaustion he'd been suppressing. Blood trickled down his ribs beneath his shirt, and the side of his head hurt fiercely where Renner's teeth had slashed his ear. He raised his hand to feel the stickiness there. "How bad does it look?"

  "Chicks dig scars, remember?" Julie said with a faint smile.

  "Cousin," Gray said through the fence, "take it from the family med student: you need a doctor. Or, at least, some basic first aid."

  "Are you volunteering?" Damon asked, mustering a smile. Julie kept her arm around him. He hoped it wasn't terribly obvious that her support was most of what was keeping him upright.

  "Sure," Gray said, "but I suggest that we don't do it in a pasture. It's not the most sterile environment."

  "Word," Vanessa agreed, brushing mud off her stylish pants. She smiled at Damon. "I knew you could do it."

  Terry approached Damon with his hand held out. "Hey, so. About how you supposedly owe me one for helping save your life last night? I think I owe you two now."

  Damon shook Terry's hand, while Julie leaned into his side and wrinkled her nose at her brother.

  "I think maybe we should stop keeping count," Damon said. "After all, if I marry your sister, we're family, aren't we?"

  "Oh God," Ava said. "We still haven't told Mom and Dad yet."

  Damon laughed, and then gasped when the movement sent a stabbing pain through his ribs. "Ow. You know, I think your parents' wrath can't possibly be that bad."

  "We can worry about that later. You need to sit down." Julie helped him hop over to a tree stump—his injured leg no longer wanted to support his weight. "Guys, what have we got for transportation?"

  It turned out Vanessa and Gray had arrived on Vanessa's motorcycle, whic
h was parked back at the road. Brad and Barry had their bikes, and the Capshaw siblings had Ava's car. Sort of.

  "It's probably stuck so deep it'll still be there next week," Ava mourned.

  Damon glanced around at his packmates. "With this many people to push it out, I think we can handle it, can't we?"

  Gray and Vanessa shifted and trotted off along the fence, to retrieve the motorcycle and meet them at Ava's car. The rest of them trooped through the woods. Julie kept her arm firmly around Damon, supporting him and helping him over any obstacle he couldn't easily navigate.

  Brad and Barry brought up the rear, ignoring the Capshaws as best they could. They were both subdued to the point of total silence. After a lifetime of being shunned or bullied by his bigger, meaner cousins, Damon found it deeply disconcerting to have them both deferring to him now.

  Disconcerting ... but also kind of nice.

  Careful. This is how you end up like Dad.

  Or Cain Renner.

  Ava's car was where she'd left it, sunk to the axles in sticky clay soil. All around it, tires had churned the hayfield to mud, but the only other vehicles currently in attendance were Brad and Barry's motorcycles. The Renner pack had departed.

  Good, Damon thought. Hopefully they stayed gone.

  Vanessa and Gray showed up on Vanessa's bike while Terry, Brad, and Barry were rocking the car back and forth, trying to get it unstuck, with Ava behind the wheel. Damon's offer to help had resulted in Julie literally sitting on him—in his lap, actually, which was nice enough that he decided not to worry whether he was failing in his alpha duties already.

  "I can't believe you drove all the way here in that," Gray said, impressed.

  Ava leaned out the window. "It wasn't like I planned to! When there's a homicidal wolfpack chasing you, suddenly bad life choices like driving through someone's hayfield in a Toyota seem sensible."

  Momentary awkwardness settled on the group at the reminder that, not too long ago, two of them had been hunting the rest.

  Then Gray and Vanessa came forward to join those pushing the car, and this time it all but flew out of the mud. Ava jolted a little ways forward before slamming on the brakes. "Oh, my God," she moaned. "How did I ever drive out here through all these ruts? How did my suspension survive?"

  "It's probably held together with rust and mud anyway, like the rest of the car," Terry suggested, dusting off his hands.

  Ava patted the steering wheel. "Don't listen to the old grouch, sweetheart. You did great."

  Damon was starting to drift, listening to the banter with Julie's head tucked under his chin. Still, even in his semiconscious state, he was aware of his newfound alpha connections to the nearby members of his pack. It was like a much milder and less emotionally charged version of the link he had with Julie. He couldn't tell what they were thinking, but he could sense their presence and feel occasional flashes of emotion.

  Then his head came up abruptly as he realized it wasn't just Vanessa and the cousins.

  "Hey, I can feel you guys."

  "We can feel you, too," Vanessa said. "It's weird."

  "No, not you guys." He looked at Terry and Ava. "You guys."

  Ava looked puzzled, while a flash of Terry's old belligerence showed for a minute. "What are you talking about?" Terry asked.

  "My instincts think you guys are pack," Damon explained. "I don't know if it's because you're related to Julie or because you were there when I took over as pack alpha. But I feel the same connection to you that I do with the rest of my pack, except a little weaker. Do you feel anything?"

  Ava tilted her head to the side. "You know, now that you mention it ... well, I'm not sure. It's not anything I've ever felt before. But there is something there, that I don't think was there before."

  "Does this mean you can tell us what to do?" Terry asked. "Because, I gotta say—"

  "I don't think so," Damon said quickly. Actually, he was fairly sure that if he pushed his alpha dominance on them, he would be able to enforce it. But he wasn't positive; it might work differently for sheep shifters, just as Julie seemed to interact with the mate bond a bit differently than a wolf would have.

  And besides, as he'd told Brad and Barry, he didn't want to be that kind of alpha.

  "Okay, this is weird," Barry said, giving the Capshaws a nervous sidelong look. "Does this mean we're packmates with a bunch of sheep now? Because, I don't think I like that."

  "I don't think you have much of a choice, bro," Gray said, though he looked faintly queasy too.

  It was very obvious that Brad and Barry wanted to be anywhere other than here. Damon decided to take pity on them. Besides, they might be his pack betas now, but he still didn't like them all that much.

  "Why don't you guys head back to the family farm and tell Mom what happened? I'm sure she'll be glad to hear about Renner."

  If she doesn't already know. All the members of the Wolfe pack, even far-flung relatives that Damon hadn't seen in years, would have felt the shift in leadership—first to Renner, then to Damon. Still, he'd need to visit each of them in person to let the alpha bond kick in and confirm his leadership. Assuming they all decided to accept him as alpha; some of the older pack members had been strongly loyal to his father.

  Great. Just what I need: more headaches.

  The cousins, at least, didn't need much encouragement to leave. They both straddled their bikes and roared out of the field.

  "You want a ride back to the house?" Vanessa asked Gray, kick-starting her bike.

  Gray hesitated.

  "I am not going to bleed to death without your tender ministrations between here and the farm," Damon told his cousin. "Besides, I don't think there's room for you in the car."

  Proving the point, he and Julie piled into the back, which provided an opportunity for more snuggling and possibly a bit of groping—to a soundtrack of sibling expressions of disgust from the front.

  Gray mounted Vanessa's motorcycle behind her and laced his arms around her waist. She threw the others a smile and then put the bike in gear, leaving them behind. Ava began to carefully ease her car over the ruts, jolting back toward the road.

  "So what does it mean, having the rest of us as part of your pack?" Julie asked, settling in a soft little curl against Damon. "Is it all of the Capshaws, or just the three of us?"

  "I don't know. I guess I'll know for sure when I meet your parents."

  "Oh good," Terry said from the front seat. "I forgot Mom and Dad still don't know about all of this. More to look forward to."

  Julie threaded her fingers through Damon's. "Everything's happened so fast. I can't believe it's only been a day since I saw you at the farmer's market."

  "How are you holding up?" Damon asked.

  "I don't know. I think it's probably all going to hit me hard at some point. Right now I'm just glad we're all okay."

  "Me too," Damon told her softly. "Me too."

  13. Julie

  Julie still flinched inwardly every time she looked at the blood drying on the side of Damon's face, but she tried to keep her reaction to herself. She was starting to realize that she could, after all, hide things from Damon through the mate bond.

  She hoped she'd never have to do it over anything important. But she was glad that the mate bond had not, it turned out, laid her every emotion bare to him. She loved Damon, and she loved the idea that their souls were forever linked now. Still, a girl needed her mental privacy sometimes.

  And she didn't want him to know how scared she'd been when Cain Renner was attacking him. Fear for her own life had paled in comparison to her devastation at the thought of watching her newfound mate die before her eyes.

  But he'd made it through, even if he wasn't entirely unscathed. She couldn't tell how bad the damage to the side of his face was, and she was well aware that Damon, whether he was aware of it or not, had been turning his face to make sure she couldn't get a good look. Even now, he was settled on her left, keeping the injured side turned away from her.

/>   He didn't seem to understand that her reaction wasn't because the sight of blood bothered her—she'd grown up on a farm, after all—or because she couldn't handle the idea of scars on that beloved face. Damon would be beautiful to her no matter what. She just hated the idea that he'd come so close to losing his life today.

  All she could do was send love and reassurance through the mate bond. You're so brave and wonderful. Alpha or not, I love you forever, no matter what.

  Secure in her mate's arms, she drowsed a little, lulled by the rocking of the car and the voices of her siblings bantering in the front seat.

  Damon's voice rumbled through his chest, stirring her awake. "What the hell?"

  Julie sat up. Ava was just pulling into the Wolfe driveway. The Renner pack's motorcycles and monster truck were gone, but the driveway was full of vehicles anyway. Grandma's old farm truck was there, as well as Vanessa's motorcycle and ... oh Lord ...

  "That's Mom and Dad's car," Terry said, speaking before Julie could say it herself.

  "I could do a one-eighty and head out before they know we were here," Ava said. From the tone of her voice, she wasn't joking.

  "No," Julie said. Her hand had never lost its grip on Damon's, and now she squeezed tighter. "We've got to get this over with sooner or later. I'd rather do it now."

  "Maybe they'll be less likely to kill us with witnesses around," Terry muttered.

  Damon had stiffened up in the car, and Julie had to help him out. He tried to cover, but she could feel his pain through the mate bond. She sidled under his arm, allowing him to lean unobtrusively on her and still maintain an outward show of strength.

  They trooped up the steps to the front door. It was hard for Julie not to think about how things had ended the last time. From Ava and Terry's nervous glances around, they were thinking the same thing.

  But, this time, the lurking Renners were gone, and the sense of menace hanging over the Wolfe farm had evaporated along with them. The front door opened before they reached it. Damon's mother hurried out onto the porch.