by Lynn Red
WOLF ON THE ROAD
Alpha werewolf romance
A Jamesburg Shifters Story
(c) 2016 Lynn Red
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Also by Lynn Red
Jamesburg Shifter Romance
Bear Me Away
Kendal Creek Bears
Can't Bear To Run
Can't Bear to Hide
Mating Call Dating Agency
Hare Today Bear Tomorrow
The Fox and her Bear
Bear the Heat
Bear Arms
Mating Call Dating Agency Box Set
The Broken Pine Bears
Two Bears are Better Than One
Between a Bear and a Hard Place
The Jamesburg Shifters
Bearing It All
Bear With Me
Bearly Breathing
Bearly Hanging On
Bear Your Teeth
The Jamesburg Shifters Volume 2
Wolf on the Road
The Jamesburg Shifters Volume 1
To Catch a Wolf
Standalone
Lion In Wait
Horns for the Harem Girl
Watch for more at Lynn Red’s site.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Also By Lynn Red
WOLF ON THE ROAD | by Lynn Red
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Special Excerpts and offers! | The Fox and Her Bear
Hare Today, Bear Tomorrow
Can’t Bear to Run
Lion in Wait
Bearly Hanging On
To Catch a Wolf
Two Bears Are Better Than One
Further Reading: Bear Arms
Also By Lynn Red
About the Author
WOLF ON THE ROAD
by Lynn Red
Sometimes the only thing a girl needs is a throbbing, thumping motorcycle clenched between her knees. Other times, she’d prefer a gentleman in the same place. Or, what the hell, who says he needs to be a gentleman?
Mali Alexandra has the first part of that down pat. She’s a little rough around the edges, and her job as a night-time security guard isn’t enough. She might not know exactly what she wants, but why not start with the whole ‘gentleman’ thing? The bike she has, but Mali figures she might like trying a different sort of ride.
Ahem.
Sometimes, all a werewolf wants to do is howl at the moon then drink a bunch of beer and fight until the sun comes up.
Jake Danniken’s the kind of werewolf with a case of wanderlust even bigger than his very respectable biceps. He’s never found a place to call home. But when his brother, the alpha of shifter-filled Jamesburg, needs his help with a bunch of bikers causing trouble in his neck of the woods, Jake ain’t gonna let him down.
After a long, lonely ride, Jake finds his marks. The mangy pack’s got a girl surrounded, and it looks like they aren’t being too friendly. Instinct takes over. It’s a bloody fight, but Jake’s biggest surprise isn’t that he survived... it’s that in the space of four breaths, he’s fallen in love.
With any luck, the unlikely pair will make it out alive, and with a little more? They’ll have a chance to see what life can really taste like before they’re both ripped apart.
1
Air whipped past the windscreen in front of Mali Alexandra’s slightly sharp nose and rounded cheeks. The throbbing of the engine between her thighs and the slight sting of mist ripping past the bared skin on her neck was more than a brief taste of relief before another long night behind a desk.
The water tearing past her like bullets in a hard-boiled detective novel made her feel alive.
Drooping low on the horizon behind her Indian Custom 1977 bike, which she spent more to pay for and maintain than she did her house, the sun painted the desert behind her with a slow, almost syrupy orange. There wasn’t a soul in front of, or behind her, so she turned her head for just a second to stare back at the glowing orb.
She took in a deep breath and let it out with a sigh trailing her exhale.
These times didn’t make her feel alive... they brought her to the edge of really living, and showered her in hopes. It wouldn’t be long before she was back at the security desk out front of the Grand Carlton Tower Hotel and Resort, and then life would be back to normal.
For a moment, she thought about not taking exit 199. She thought maybe she’d just sail past it, ride her back all the way to Colorado, maybe New Mexico. Get some roasted peppers from someone off the side of the road, eat ‘em all and get sick.
The familiar bumps of the pavement gave her a slight jolt, but her mind didn’t let her drift back to reality just yet.
After New Mexico, she’d just keep going east. She’d never been past El Paso. Maybe head all the way to New Orleans and see the Mississippi? Take a steam boat tour? Get a Bloody Mary and head into Biloxi to gamble on the riverboats?
It all sounded good. It all sounded real good, if she was being honest.
Her bike tilted and glided to the southwest, down the exit ramp and off the highway. No adventures today, anyway. Mali threw a quick glance back to make sure she wasn’t about to get pancaked by some inattentive driver. Her hair flew behind her in a so-black-its-purple curtain, and a deeply upsetting flopping sound hit her ears. “Son of a bitch,” she grumbled as thunder rolled overhead. “Why don’t I ever get flat tires when it’s sunny?”
With a grunt, she heaved her bike to the shoulder. With a poke of her toe she ascertained that it was her front tire, and that it was indeed flat. Suddenly, as a sheet of rain beat against her helmet, that Bloody Mary was sounding real good. Hell so was running away and never coming back. Anything to get out of this rain and out of this town. She looked back up the road, trying to puzzle out what had popped her tire, but couldn’t see anything for the darkness and the rain.
“It’s really coming down,” she remarked to herself as she pulled off her helmet and shook out her hair. The drops on her skin were sweet and cool, and for a moment, she forgot about the whole issue with her motorcycle tire and just enjoyed the refreshing chill. As she looked up to the sky, the moon poked out from behind a bank of clouds. It looked, she thought, a little like a penny stuck in a loafer; the shape was visible, but not entirely. It was mostly making itself known from the halo of light radiating out of the clouds around and behind it.
Mali gave herself a few more moments to watch the sky before her clothes were wet enough to begin clinging to her skin, and she decided that maybe it was time to pop open her big, canvas umbrella, and get to work patching the tire. With a flick of her wrist, she snapped the huge umbrella open and leaned it against her bike. Safe from the rain, she set to work. She flicked on her flashlight and stuck it in her mouth to examine the damage.
She saw the gash in her tire, and let out another long, trailing sigh. “Somehow I don’t think a patch kit and some Gorilla tape is gonna do much for that.” She stuck her finger into the gash and flopped the cut part of the tire like the skin on a wound. Mali grabbed her phone and dialed.
“He-hello?” it was an unsure, slightly shaky voice. “Hello?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Mali asked. “Derrick? Are you okay?”
He laughed shakily. “Uh, just late, you know.”
“Sorry, it never even occurs to me anymore. Listen, can I ask you a favor?”
“Are we ta
lking like you want me to get some burgers, or you want me to co-sign on a mortgage?”
Mali snorted a laugh. “Somewhere in between. I was on the way to the hotel, and something blew out one of my tires.”
“Oh shit, girl,” Derrick said in his concerned voice. “Are you okay? You didn’t flip the bike, did you?”
For a moment, Mali just stared, blinking. No, she hadn’t, of course, but how the hell hadn’t she? The front tire had a gigantic gash in it, and...
“No,” she said. “I’m fine. It didn’t even throw me.”
Her thoughts were instantly a thousand miles away though. How on earth had she managed to survive that? And how in the world did her bike not even pitch over? It was like something had just sliced straight through the tire.
“If it were me, I woulda been turned into a greasy stain,” he said, referencing his legendarily bad luck. “Well what can I do? Need a ride?”
“Yeah,” she said, still trying to piece together the completely unlikely chain of events. “How the hell did I...?”
Derrick coughed lightly. “Best not to think about stuff like that,” he said. “Where are you?”
“The exit,” she said. She didn’t need to expand – they both worked at the Towers, that’s where they met – and both took the same route to work. And past that, this far out in the middle of Cratburg Hole, a desert town with a prison, the casino, and not much more, the exits were few and far between. “And did you notice this rain? Something weird’s going on.”
“Don’t try to spook me now,” Derrick said. “I get enough of that watching those goddamn ghost shows on Discovery before I drive to work. Can you stay dry? I’ll be there in about fifteen.”
“Thanks, and yeah,” Mali said as she scrunched down under her umbrella. “I’ll be on the lookout.”
“You got it, babe,” Derrick said, and hung up.
Mali shivered, suddenly very aware of her complete isolation and the fact that she was absolutely, totally alone in a world that most people would feel just about as strange as the moon. To the east were rocky dunes, and to the west, where the moon was once again peeking out from behind a cloud, was a salt flat that had been used for speed tests back in the day. For a moment, she looked off in the distance, watching the moon glint off the rocks with silvery flecks of light.
Once more, she stuck her finger in the gash in her tire and let her mind wander. “Cut’s clean,” she said out loud, like she always did when trying to puzzle out something strange. “How can that be? It’s like someone cut this thing with a knife.”
She couldn’t shake the feeling that something very strange had happened. When Mali got in one of these moods, the only thing she could possibly do was to indulge in a little detective work. After all, Derrick was still almost a quarter-hour away. Umbrella and flashlight in hand, Mali made her way back up the exit ramp. “Didn’t feel a bump,” she said, in an almost dreamy, distant way. “Didn’t feel anything. How the hell could that have happened?”
Sweeping the light back and forth, she plodded along until she was back up on the highway. She shined the light all the way up, and huddled her arms around herself as a shiver coursed through her. “Doesn’t make any sense,” she whispered. “None at all, but something had to do it. Something cut that tire. It isn’t like they just open up on their own.”
Try as she might, when there’s just nothing to find, then there’s nothing to find.
On the way back to her gimped bike, Mali slipped a couple of times on the rain-slicked asphalt. The second time she tripped, a nasty pain shot up her ankle. “Great,” she grumbled. “Magical flat tire, in the rain, and now I sprained my ankle.” She limped back to her bike and leaned against it, shielding herself with the umbrella. Just then, she noticed something very odd—lights.
Not just one set of lights, either. A random trucker coming across the desert wouldn’t be anything strange, but as she stared up at the highway, she counted twelve spots of light. She squinted at them, not quite believing what she was seeing.
The smell hit her first.
Acrid, bitter and foul, it stung her nostrils and made Mali recoil at once. She was nauseated but didn’t understand how or why. The scent was a mixture of old grapes, Pepto-Bismol and decay.
And the lights came closer by the second.
Her heart thudded heavily against her ribcage, but with every passing second, Mali felt that her sanity was slipping more than her physical wellbeing. She’d heard of ghosts making people feel strangely when they appeared—well, she’d seen it on Derrick’s stupid ghost shows—but she knew that wasn’t real. She passed it off as just a weird feeling, or maybe an oncoming panic attack. She shook her head, roughly, to try and clear her thoughts, but she couldn’t.
And the lights just came closer. There was no sound with them, though; only the pale headlamps piercing the darkness and reflecting raindrops. It was possible they were much farther away than she thought, but that didn’t make any sense. Not a damn thing did, if she was being honest.
Suddenly she got the most horrible thought—what if those ghosts on the stupid TV shows were real? What if she was about to be set upon by a gang of specters intent on grinding her into dust... whatever it is that ghosts did to people for fun. Eat brains? No, that was zombies.
A jet of cold shot up Mali’s spine. The frigid sensation ran all the way down to her fingertips and prickled the back of her neck, reminding her of a cat that got concerned about something. She’d gone about a mile from the exit ramp, which was itself a mile long, before she had to shoulder her bike.
Her stomach sank into her toes, almost audibly hitting the ground.
The lights turned toward the exit ramp.
“Shit,” she swore, under her breath.
She had a million thoughts going through her brain right then—although none of them were that these lights were a AAA roadside assistance team. Something was coming, and whatever it was, Mali got the very strong sense that she didn’t want any damn thing to do with it... with them, whatever.
Mali gathered herself, and decided to leave the umbrella propped up on her bike as a distraction. She didn’t know why that made sense, but it did. She felt at once very stupid, for thinking that whatever was on the road cared at all about her, and at the same time, absolutely terrified because she knew that they did.
She took two steps before her ankle gave.
Sticking her hands out in front of herself, she managed to keep from knocking her head on the ground, but in the process, carved bloody scratches into her palms. She pushed herself to her feet and hobbled toward the nearest dune, thinking that maybe she could cross the hundred yards before whoever was out there, whoever it was giving her the worst chills she’d ever had, figured out where she was.
Either way, as slowly as she was going, it still felt good to be doing something, even if she hadn’t a clue what it was she was running from.
It was just out of reach. The dune was fifty yards, and if she made it that far, there were all kinds of rock outcroppings to hide underneath. Then again, she had to make it that far in the first place. Mali looked back and saw the lights gliding down the exit ramp toward her bike’s resting place. Still, there wasn’t any sound, which of all the strange things that had happened in the last ten minutes, struck Mali as the strangest.
She gave up on the idea of limping toward the dune and had instead taken up just dragging her foot behind herself. It was faster, sure, but she was also leaving a track behind that anyone with half a brain would be able to follow.
Half a brain.
“Derrick!” she said with a start. She pulled her phone out and as she dragged her foot, dialed her friend. If those things—whatever they were—really were after her, she didn’t want him to get hurt. Then again, she had no idea why they’d be after her anyway, which added yet another ridiculous angle to this whole mess.
She was still dragging her foot along behind her like a really sad, old dog, when Derrick answered. She didn’t give him a
chance to talk. “Stay away from here,” she hissed. “There are all these lights and I have no idea what they’re—”
The lights surrounded her bike, and stopped. Now she could see. They were headlights and they were mounted on motorcycles and there were, of course, riders on top of said motorcycles.
“Mali?” he asked. “What’s going on? You’re freaking me out.”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, still trying to drag herself to the dune. She saw one of them turn, and point. A bike swung around, highlighting her against the starkness of the desert. And then they were coming toward her.
She swallowed, hard, and stood her ground. What the hell else was she going to do? Run away from people on bikes? Or rather, limp away?
“Hello?” she called. “Hi! Uh, I have a flat tire and uh...”
There was still no sound from the engines. The only thing she could hear was the chirp of crickets, the hum of desert toads calling out and... something running?
She turned back quickly toward the dune, and saw a shape, something vaguely humanoid, come up the hill. It stood, but with the lights in her face, she couldn’t make out anything but an outlined silhouette.
And then they were on her. She didn’t feel any pain, but she felt herself flying. Mali was vaguely aware of the sound of rubber hitting her body, of the sound of her limp form flopping onto the hard scrabble desert. She felt like her consciousness was somewhere outside her body, looking down and watching her being thrown around.
Her head hit the ground, and she snapped straight back into her own body. Her eyes were wide open, her throat burning like hell, and she realized that when she screamed, nothing came out. She tried to suck air, but couldn’t; something stopped her lungs from filling. She blinked dumbly, and tried to move her useless arms. She heard a hissing sound, that she thought must’ve come from her own mouth, but couldn’t understand what it was.
She was on her back, staring up and just watching the stars. It seemed at the time, the best thing to do. Finally, she heard a sound. It was just a whisper, just a terrifying, ugly whisper, from one of the bizarre things that chased her.
