Howl & Growl: A Paranormal Romance Boxed Set

by Various Authors

  Sara saw Caleb take a swipe at one of the rogues, his lethal claw tip stopping just short of taking out an eyeball. Like a coward, the rogue wolf yelped and tried to duck his head rather than fight back, now that he was totally outnumbered and his pseudo leader had fled.

  She turned her back, knowing Caleb wouldn't dare do anything more brutal, not with his father there. She vaguely sensed a small contingent head out after the speckled rogue wolf who'd escaped, but she no longer cared. The only thing still holding her attention lay motionless on the ground.

  She flung herself beside Rafe, nosing him, licking at the small wounds he seemed to have everywhere despite her efforts to protect him. Sand and dirt coated some of them. Crushed sage flooded her sensitive nose, along with the alarming coppery scent of his blood. Nudging his face very gently, she whined.

  “Get up, Rafe. Get up, I love you, don't you dare do this to me now.” Her scratchy wolf voice half-howled, half-whined, setting other pack members to howling along with her in distress.

  She barely heard Alpha issuing terse commands to the rest of the Guardians. Curling her body around Rafe's, she aligned her heartbeat with his, drew her breaths with his, sent every damn ounce of healing strength into him she could.

  A woman with dark reddish-brown hair pushed through the wolves, who immediately parted for her. Otsana Bardou knelt beside by her son and ran quick, practiced hands over his body, checking his wounds. Face grim, she gently felt his limbs for breaks. She paused at the lump on his head. Using the lightest touch, she grazed it with her fingertips.

  Rafe groaned.

  Another chorus of howls and yips ricocheted around, this time encouraging and excited. Sara pushed herself into Rafe's body.

  Slowly, his eyes opened. Glassy with pain, they blinked. He groaned again, panting a bit and flexing one paw. Carefully, he reached out and touched his mother's human hand with it.

  Otsana smiled.

  Sara cried and whined and wrapped herself around her mate as tightly as she dared. He leaned back into her, weak but sure.

  Her heart expanded to overflowing, she cried over his head from sheer relief, soaking her mate with a rush of grateful tears.

  Epilogue

  One Week Later

  “Ow! That still hurts.” Accompanied by a smile, Rafe's complaint dissolved into a tease.

  Sara giggled at him and proceeded to keep gently pulling away the bandage on his upper thigh. Seven days of enforced bed rest at the den, mostly in his faster-healing wolf form, had brought Rafe back to fighting shape. Almost. He still felt a wincing pull in his left leg where one of the rogues had nearly ended his life by slicing him deeply about a centimeter from his femoral artery. The wound had mostly healed, as had the concussion from getting solidly knocked on his head.

  Most importantly, something inside had healed in an staggering rush. Rafe wasn't one to dwell on emotions. But he was pretty sure this was a damn big emotion rippling through him every day whenever he looked at Sara, thought about her, talked to her, heard her voice, felt her tender yet very promising kiss on his lips.

  Better yet, his mate was at peace. Something changed in her after the fight. Calm, centered, and sure of herself, Sara now carried herself with the assurance he'd already believed in. It made her even more stunning in his eyes.

  Still angry at himself for being careless enough to get jumped and knocked out by the rogues, leaving her to handle them on her own, he also kicked himself for missing Sara in action. Apparently she'd been at the top of a game no one else had thought her capable of.

  “Thing of beauty, bro,” Caleb had told him with enthusiastic admiration, after Rafe had been with it enough to receive visitors and hear stories. “We came charging in to save the day, and I was so sure she'd be dead or at least ripped to pieces by those bastards.” Rafe's mouth tightened into a thin line at the thought, but Caleb hadn't noticed, engrossed as he was in recreating the scene. “But there she was, and I swear, for a second I actually didn't recognize her. You wouldn't have either, man. She was this fierce she-devil thing. Totally possessed. I have never seen a wolf just sort of—float—over the ground the way she was. She was fighting like some sort of ninja! I might have been scared of her if I had to go up against her myself.

  “Now she's probably the best Guardian we have, and you're stealing her away.” His brother had shaken his head. “Oh, well. Good thing, since she probably would have handed my ass to me if we sparred on the mat.” Caleb laughed.

  The large rogue wolf, the one Rafe intended someday to rip apart limb from limb, had managed to escape. His final warning message to Sara promised more darkness to come, which boded more fighting.

  For right now, though, Rafe had only one very sexy thing on his mind.

  He looked at his mate, letting his frank appreciation and admiration show on his face. She noticed, despite keeping her hands busy removing the bandage, because that rosy flush he loved to see crept up from her delicate neck to her adorable little nose.

  “What?” she asked, smiling. He reached out a hand to tuck a few golden strands behind her ear.

  “Just thinking what an amazing mate you'll be. What a strong pack we're going to have. And how every single wolf in it would die for you, knowing how tough and fearless you are.”

  She pulled the bandage off, face completely flushed now.

  “It's all because of you,” she said. The crystal blue eyes finally looked up at him. She was so beautiful it snagged his breath.

  “And I'm what I am all because of you,” he said back. The truth of that statement hammered in his chest. He leaned forward to pull her closer for a long, wet kiss that ignited his skin and sent a message straight down to his stirring cock.

  Sara sighed into his mouth, then pulled back a bit. Her breathless laugh brushed sweetly over his lips.

  “You're not healed all the way yet.” The murmur of her voice stroked his every nerve ending.

  “I'm healed enough, my beautiful wolf. Besides,” he said as he ran a finger along her bare thigh and enjoyed her gasped breath and the way little goosebumps popped out on her skin. “It's about time I have my mate in an actual bed, isn't it?”

  She laughed softly, although the ragged note in it promised a hot, panting tussle in his very near future.

  “If you insist. Mate,” she said, drawing out the word long and firm.

  “As your alpha wolf, I definitely insist.” He grinned at her. “I've got to make up for lost time.”

  “I like the sound of that,” she said, and proceeded to prove she could kiss him senseless.

  END

  ***

  What's next? Read Caleb and Rielle's story in Hunting Wolf, Book 3 in the Black Mesa Wolves series.

  Thank you so much for reading Alpha Wolf: Black Mesa Wolves #2! If you enjoyed it, I would so very much appreciate it if you would consider taking a moment to review it.

  To find out about new releases, sign up for the newsletter (http://eepurl.com/Gp-qv)

  Visit J.K. Harper’s website (http://www.jkharper.com/) for more information about the Black Mesa Wolves and other books.

  You can find all of J.K.'s work at:

  AMAZON

  About the Author:

  J.K. Harper writes about paranormal romance and urban fantasy because despite a lifetime of wishing, all the cool supernatural book characters of her childhood just don't seem to be real. Besides, it's really fun to make stuff up. She lives in the rugged, gorgeous canyon country of the Southwest, which is a great place to let her imagination run wild.

  If you are interested in finding out more about J.K. Harper and her latest writing projects, please visit her website: http://www.jkharper.com/ or sign up for the newsletter: http://eepurl.com/Gp-qv

  ***

  A Wolf in Geek's Clothing

  By Amelia Faulkner

  Chapter One

  Richmond was glorious in the summer. A breeze fell from the mountains and caressed all it touched, elevating the heat to a sublime experience.


  Ryan adored his home town. Richmond born and bred, he’d left for a few years for the height of Seattle, but once his BSc was completed he came straight back. His town blended city life with small-town happiness, and had killer opportunities for a guy who liked to get his mind into the guts of difficult technical problems.

  The trouble with trying to reach the convoluted brain-twisters was that he had to wade through the vast lake of simple errors: users who accidentally dragged their files into the wrong folders; PCs which needed to be rebooted after an update; people trying to wriggle around the corporate firewall and wondering why they couldn’t Facebook all day long.

  He hung up from his latest call and typed an update into the ticket log, then flagged it as closed.

  A low growl broke past his lips, and he tugged his headset off.

  His boss lifted her head and her honey-colored eyes met his across the low partition. “Pebkac?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes briefly, then pointed to his screen. “Andie, we need second line to actually solve these meat and potatoes problems. They’re supposed to catch tickets like this instead of fling them over to us.”

  “What’s the ticket number?”

  Ryan rattled it off as he stretched his arms overhead. A satisfying set of cracks popped from his shoulders and spine.

  Andrea’s gaze fell to her screen. He watched her eyes scan back and forth. She read the entire ticket in under a minute. “Yeah,” she agreed. “This shouldn’t have reached us. I’ll raise it with their TL.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No worries.” She typed blind as she looked his way again, her fingers zipping across her keyboard with confidence. A grin spread, and she added “So, how’d it go?”

  “Eh?” Ryan licked his lips. His mind was still ticking over the call he’d just closed.

  “You look like you had an awesome night.” She smirked at him.

  Ryan couldn’t help but laugh. His night had been anything but awesome.

  It had been weird.

  “You’ve got a filthy mind,” he chuckled.

  “Oh come on, Ryan! You’ve been saying you gotta get out and chase some tail. Now you’re sitting here looking totally zombified. Who was he?”

  “Nobody!”

  “Uh huh.” Her eyes twinkled. “He better be good enough for you. I’m not having you settle for anything less than amazing.”

  Ryan’s phone rang, and he scooped up his headset.

  “Ooo, timing!” Andie laughed and looked to her own screen.

  He eyeballed her, tapped a button on his phone, and answered “Ryan Miller, Third Line Support. Could I take your ticket number, please?”

  Ryan was ten when he got his first computer. It was “well-loved”, that was for sure, and came with a whole host of problems. Its favorite pastime was to beep in protest before it shut itself down at random, and it took him some serious detective work to figure out the machine had a faulty RAM module.

  It was Ryan’s first experience of putting his money where his mouth was. RAM wasn’t cheap back then; he had to work his socks off to save up for a replacement module. Every weekend he patrolled the neighborhood and offered to mow lawns, wash cars, and fix other people’s computer problems. It took weeks to save more money than he’d ever held in his life, only to spend it all on a single, small, fragile circuit board with precious chips soldered to its surface.

  Nothing in his short life had been as fantastic as solving his first serious puzzle. The hard work, saving money, and rigorous research had all paid off.

  He was right.

  Looking back, Ryan was well aware that he’d been lucky. The problem was fundamentally a simple one to solve, but to his ten year old self it had blown his world wide open and lit a fire that saw him into college, through university, and out into the world into a job he loved. Now that he was 25 he was self-sufficient, his school debts were well under control, and his parents loved to tell him how proud they were of him.

  He had no way of knowing whether they’d still shower him with praise if they had any idea that he was gay.

  This was, he would tell himself, the reason he was single; if he held down a relationship, he’d have to introduce his boyfriend to his parents, and there would be stony silence. After his parents had supported him through his whole life, he wasn’t sure he was ready to face them across the dinner table while his mother sobbed about her failure as a parent and his father yelled at him never to come visit again.

  He had no reason to believe that would happen, true. There was no scientific evidence to suggest that either of his parents were at all homophobic, but conversely he had zero guarantees that they weren’t.

  This was a one-shot deal. There was no undoing it, and there could be no trial run on an offline system before the patch went live.

  Do or die.

  Andrea knew him, though. He’d been working for her for two years, and she hadn’t batted an eyelid when he came out over lunch. He’d asked once whether she knew during the interview, but she just laughed and waved her hand at him.

  “Why would I assume anything about anyone’s sexuality?” had been her answer. “It’s only my business if you want it to be.”

  Since then they’d been the best of friends. They’d head out for lunch and check out cute guys together, then go to the movies and watch cheesy horror or underrated science fiction. If he’d been straight she would’ve been the perfect girlfriend.

  Ryan wasn’t afraid of commitment; he yearned for it. He couldn’t do the one night stands, the casual encounters and meaningless hookups.

  Fear. That was his problem. He was afraid of rejection, and equally afraid of spending the rest of his life alone.

  The air was thick with unfamiliar scents. They wove around one-another like ribbons of color, parading through more than merely three dimensions. The scents each carried a story, bearing information of place and identity, time and space. They painted pictures that turned the gray world into a vibrant spray of light. Everything Ryan needed to know about each one was laid bare to his sensitive nose: he could smell three day old incidents as clearly as those which had occurred only seconds ago. The freshness of each strand allowed him to peel back time layer by layer and watch how events interacted and unfolded until they met the present moment.

  One stood out above all others. It seeped into his nostrils and laid talons of need into his every thought. The sharp, urgent lust coursed through him and consumed him whole.

  Moonlight filtered through the leaf canopy above. Its silver sheen flowed over the dark forest, but Ryan didn’t need the light to see by; his nose dragged him forward and he loped after the single trail which screamed to him. It was irresistible, and he was insatiable.

  He needed to reach the end of it. Whoever had laid it would be there, and Ryan’s body burned for him. He could smell muscle and sinew, power and strength. This was no prey.

  This was a mate.

  Ryan’s mate.

  He ran on, desperate.

  The world was a blur. He felt hands grip around his biceps; a rough tongue ran over his flesh. Soft skin wrapped around his shaft, and he howled in ecstasy.

  Teeth closed in on his throat and he cried out.

  The salty tang of sweat and cum saturated his smell, overriding all else. Ryan gave a strangled gasp and woke.

  There were no trees. Morning light streamed in through thin curtains. The world was both flooded with color yet robbed of it all at once.

  Ryan’s sheets were discarded, bunched up on the floor. His body was slick with sweat.

  His stomach was splattered in his own ejaculate.

  He lay shuddering as he stared blankly at the ceiling.

  What the hell was that?

  Chapter Two

  Sauri’s limp grew worse. He leaned against a tree to catch his breath, but didn’t dare lift his hand away from his side to check his wound. Blood oozed between his fingers; the scent was driving him mad.

  The injury would
heal in time, but time was something Sauri lacked.

  If the wounds had been caused by an animal he would be recovered by now. The weapons of humans were no threat to him either. But these had been done by the claws of another werewolf, and such claws were almost as potent a weapon against their own kind as silver itself.

  Sauri was still alive, and he intended to stay that way.

  His mother had spoken quietly about how his life would be forever altered when he came into his first change. The pack’s Alpha could make no allowances for Sauri being his son; no leniency could be offered. There was no mercy to be had, and none could be expected. Sauri’s options would be to either accept his father’s position of Alpha or leave the pack.

  It made no sense to him as a child. He felt none of the pressure that his mother warned him of, and he could not see or smell as the pack did. In their eyes he was nothing more than a cub even when he passed his twentieth year.

  Sauri’s change came so late that they had begun to wonder whether the boy was a changeling and the real Sauri was a prisoner of the Fae.

  Then Sauri’s wolf had finally come, on the cusp of the full moon. Everything he had ever learned gained relevance, and he understood.

  His mother had misled him; there was a third way.

  Sauri could challenge his Alpha and claim the pack as his own.

  He grimaced down at the claw marks that ran across his ribs. Yeah, the challenge hadn’t gone well. He’d suffered a humiliating defeat at the claws of a man twenty years older than him. He had sustained agonizing injuries and been forced to leave his own pack.

  His family.

  He swallowed down a block in his throat and drew a deep breath. This was it now. He was packless; a lone wolf with no protection and no territory. It was nature, but it wasn’t kind.