by Odessa Lynne
SALVADORE’S LUCK
WOLVES’ HEAT
BOOK 5
A Novel
Odessa Lynne
ODELYN PUBLISHING
SALVADORE’S LUCK
Copyright © 2015 by Odessa Lynne
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for quotes used in any review, the reproduction or utilization of the work in whole or in part by electronic, mechanical or other means is forbidden without written permission of the author.
Cover design by Odessa Lynne
Cover photo © Andreiuc88 | Dreamstime.com
Published by Odelyn Publishing
odessalynne.com
First Electronic Publication April 2015
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, events, and incidents portrayed in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales are entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
About this Book
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Also by Odessa Lynne
About the Author
About SALVADORE’S LUCK
Once every three years, humans become sexual prey to a species that has no control over the urge to mate because of a devastating attraction to human scent.
Bad luck has dogged Salvadore for far too long, and this time it’s put him in the midst of his worst nightmare. He’s trapped inside the protectorate where the aliens called wolves roam free—and heat season has started. He’s terrified and he has good reason to be: if he doesn’t submit, he’ll end up with teeth at his throat and claws in his spine.
Between the memories that haunt Salvadore and the secrets he carries with him, the chances of him making it out of heat season alive aren’t looking good.
But Salvadore’s about to have the first lucky break he’s had in years...
Book 5 of the Wolves’ Heat series follows Ian’s Choice, Devon’s Gamble, Brendan’s Fate, and Matthew’s Chance…
Chapter 1
Salvadore clenched the edge of the hard, flat seat of the chair he sat in with cold, numb hands. Thick, old fashioned ratchet straps created an unyielding pressure against his ribcage and across his chest and arms.
He wasn’t sure why they’d brought him here, or why he wasn’t dead yet, but so far no one had answered his questions. Instead, they’d manhandled him into the chair despite his violent objections, strapped him down, and blinded him with a bright light shining directly at his face.
The light shifted and Salvadore blinked.
“We need a favor from you,” someone on the other side of the light said. A woman’s voice.
There hadn’t been a woman in the room a moment ago, he was sure of it.
Hinges creaked. A door clanged shut. The stabbing light blinked out completely.
Salvadore squinted against the shadows the bright light had left behind until the woman leaning against the edge of the table in front of him became more than a blur under the remaining dim light filling the room from overhead.
“Where’s my family?” he demanded, his voice echoing off the walls hard and unpleasantly loud. “What’d you do with them?”
His eyes finally adjusted and the features of the woman standing in front of him came into focus. She wasn’t much older than him, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five. Her hair had been pulled back into a pale braid and her clothes fit tight. Cargo pants, a tucked in t-shirt. Brown boots and a visible bulge under the leg of her trousers.
Probably a knife. Pistols weren’t that easy to come by. Owning guns had been against the law until a few years after the wolves had arrived. After that, there hadn’t been enough to go around.
“Your sister’s sitting in a room a lot like this one, having a bite to eat. Your brother’s being more difficult, so he’s been locked in another room so nobody gets hurt. That’s how it’ll stay if you cooperate.”
“Are you kidding me? Why the fuck would I cooperate with somebody who’s strapped me to a chair?”
“What we want from you is for the greater good of everyone,” she said. “You won’t be doing anything you weren’t already prepared to do for Gage Rawlins.” She placed her hands on the edge of the table beside her hips and sighed. “We’re not planning to hurt your sister, brother, or you. But you’re going to have to cooperate.”
“I don’t have to do anything.”
She tapped her finger against the table’s edge. “Okay, let me put it this way. We’re not planning to hurt any of you if you cooperate. If you don’t, we might not have a choice.”
“I knew you were a goddamn bitch.”
She pushed away from the table, leaned forward, and gripped Salvadore’s chin, pushing his head back so she could stare into his eyes. He almost closed them just to piss her off, but up close he could see the dark circles under her eyes and the pallor in her cheeks and curiosity made him stare back.
“I’m not your enemy. Gage Rawlins is eventually going to get you killed. You know that.”
“I don’t know who or what you’re talking about.”
Her steady look reminded him that she’d already mentioned Gage’s name once and he hadn’t thought to deny knowing him. “You’ve been running with Rawlins for nearly a year,” she said. “We know you joined up with his renegades.”
“Who’s this ‘we’ you keep talking about?”
“Nobody important.”
Salvadore’s laugh sounded almost like a bark it was so abrupt. “Fuck you.”
She released his chin and straightened, taking her time leaning back against the table. “You’re in over your head with Rawlins and his crew. You want out, your family wants you out, but he won’t let you go without trying to make an example out of you. I can get you out.”
Salvadore’s heart started to pound at his chest. When he spoke this time, he couldn’t help sounding cautious. “Who are you?”
“Someone that can help you, Sal, if you let me.”
“Don’t call me that. We’re not friends.”
“Salvadore, then. I’d like to think we could become friends.”
He didn’t say anything, just strained against the straps holding him down and glared at her.
She gave him a slow headshake that could’ve meant anything. “You know what kind of person Gage Rawlins is.”
He swallowed, thinking about Paul and what had happened to him just that morning when Gage had decided Paul was a traitor.
Salvadore didn’t remember ever feeling as sick as he’d felt that morning after watching Gage and some of the others beat Paul nearly to death. He’d watched Gage crush Paul’s hand under his boot and kick Paul until he’d screamed so loud Salvadore had felt the tremors bone deep. He’d never been so scared in his adult life as he had been at that moment. For Paul, for him
self, for his sister El, whom Gage had stared at too long last week when El had made the mistake of following Salvadore back to the old elementary school where Gage had set up his headquarters.
Gage had wanted her, and Salvadore had known he couldn’t let Gage near her again.
But Salvadore hadn’t known what to do to stop it. So Salvadore had planned to run, taking El and his brother Chen with him. He’d tried to leave once before but Gage had stopped him, reminding him of everything he’d done to help Salvadore out last year—the money, the lawyer, the fucking alibi.
So this time he’d planned for all of them to go. Chen and El would leave before him, get out when heat season started, and he would follow. Gage would be too busy with the wolves to try to hunt him down. Only he’d screwed up, unable to stand the thought of leaving Paul’s body in the woods for the coyotes.
Salvadore had never met anyone like Paul, so self-assured and strong-willed but who wasn’t also a sociopathic asshole. Paul didn’t exactly stand up to Gage, but he never quite seemed to bow down to him the way the others did either. Maybe there’d been some hero worship in there, but Salvadore had liked Paul more than he’d ever liked any man he’d let fuck him.
He’d been planning to ask Paul to go with him when he ran, but he hadn’t had the chance to bring it up because Paul had been making himself scarce the last week or so. And then this morning all hell broke loose and Paul had turned out not to be Paul, and Salvadore had been forced to watch Gage, Cary, and a few of the other guys almost beat Paul to death.
In fact, until a few hours ago, Salvadore had been sure he’d seen Paul alive for the last time.
After a moment’s hesitation, he asked, “What do you want?”
“There’s one of the wolves’ ships in the area. We saw it come down. We want you to stumble into whoever came off that ship so we can track them—and you.”
A wave of cold hard dread made him lightheaded. “No.”
She looked at him with very little emotion and said, “I’m afraid so, Sal.”
He stared at her and fought the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “I’m not stumbling into a group of wolves. Heat season’s started.”
“We know that.”
“I’m not doing it.”
“We’ll ask either your brother or your sister to do this if you don’t cooperate.”
He jerked against the straps. “Don’t you fucking dare send either one of them in there.”
“Then agree to cooperate so we don’t have to.”
“Goddamn you!”
“The greater good,” she said simply and waited.
“You fucking bitch. You goddamn fuck—” He snapped his mouth closed, clenching his fists with the effort it took to keep from yelling at her some more. His fingers ached at the pressure, stiff and cold because of his impeded circulation where the straps bit into the muscle of his arms above and below his elbows.
He cleared his throat. “You can’t ask El.”
Because El might agree. She had a tendency to jump first and ask questions later. Too much heart, too little fear. Too much like her and Salvadore’s mother, his father had said too many times to count. Salvadore was supposed to watch out for her. He’d held his father’s hand, watching him die, and he’d promised he and Chen would keep her safe.
El and Chen were the only people in the world Salvadore had left.
“If you’re careful, they might not hurt you. You know I can’t promise more than that, not with heat season here.” She leaned forward again just as the door in the wall across the small room creaked open. She spared one quick glance over her shoulder, raised her chin in acknowledgement of the man who stepped inside and turned her attention back to Salvadore.
Salvadore glanced over just long enough to recognize the man’s shadowed profile as one of those who’d ambushed him, El, and Chen on the road as they’d been trying to get outside the protectorate and away from the wolves’ territory. The darkness had made it impossible to notice the ambush until it was too late. His captors had stepped onto the dirt road ahead of them and aimed a directional electromagnetic pulse generator at his truck and stopped it cold.
Fucking assholes had dragged him and his sister and brother out of the truck, split them up and shoved Salvadore into the backseat of a small car even as he’d demanded an explanation he hadn’t gotten. He was sure this guy was the same guy who’d been sitting up front, with the faint glow of the interior lights highlighting that same profile.
The woman started speaking, and Salvadore’s gaze zeroed in on hers again.
“It’s a little thing. No one will know there’s a tracker on you. That, I can guarantee. It’s something we’ve been working on for a very long time and by the time anyone realizes you might be sending a signal, the tracker will be gone. The only thing you’re going to have to worry about causing you trouble is the wolves’ heat.”
Salvadore’s gaze flickered toward the man again, but he hadn’t moved away from the wall beside the door where he stood leaning on his shoulder, arms crossed over his chest, pale eyes fixed on Salvadore.
Those oddly colored blue eyes seemed to stare right through Salvadore. He wondered if the man was wearing contacts.
“He has the tracker.” The woman’s words jerked Salvadore’s attention back to her. “We don’t have much time. Do you agree?”
“Don’t you fucking pretend you’ve given me a choice. Of course I agree.”
She waved the man forward without taking her gaze off Salvadore. “We’ll know if you run.”
Salvadore’s only response was to stare at her. What kind of an idiot did she think he was? They were going to put a tracker on him—or in him, more likely. They’d know every step he took before he walked out of here.
A few minutes later, the pale-eyed man stuck him with a needle right over his ear under the edge of his scalp. He winced at the sharp sting as liquid burned its way under his skin.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
But then it was over. Half an hour later, he was headed deep into the woods not all that far from where his truck had been left hours before.
The sons of bitches hadn’t even given him anything to eat and his stomach rumbled in the rising light of morning.
He glanced down at his compass again, stared up at the tops of the tall trees, breathed in the earthy scent of oak and sweet gum, and continued east, knowing he was probably walking into something he couldn’t handle but determined to do what he had to do to keep his sister and brother safe.
He’d been awake for over twenty-four hours, hadn’t eaten in at least twelve, and he had a long hike ahead of him.
This was going to be one fucking long day.
Chapter 2
Salvadore had his first hint that he might have found the wolves he was looking for at about mid-afternoon. He eased down behind a thicket in the sparse woods and tried not to breathe too loudly. He was going to have to work up the nerve to make a sound or something at some point, but he wasn’t ready.
Not yet.
The wolves were far enough ahead of him in the still air that they probably hadn’t picked up his scent yet. He wouldn’t have even realized he was about to stumble into them if a flock of crows hadn’t taken to the air in a rush of wings and fluttering leaves, their cawing so loud it drowned out the sound of his startled search for a hiding place and his thudding heartbeat.
He hadn’t told the woman who’d forced him into this that he’d seen one of the wolves’ ships just hours before her people had picked him and his family up. He’d seen the ship when he was racing toward Chen and El and Paul, after finding out that Paul wasn’t actually dead. He’d known then that time was running out. They had to get out of the protectorate while they still could, before some wolf came across them and decided he—or she—wanted to mate and expected either submission or a fight none of them could win.
Salvadore couldn’t be sure these guys were the same wolves who’d come off that ship, but he figured they were one and th
e same. The wolves didn’t send many ships to Earth. The chances they’d send two seemed slim.
Something popped behind him and he jerked around on the balls of his feet so fast he nearly fell. He grabbed at the ground and rocked back on his heels.
A wolf stood less than three feet from him, eyes bright under the late afternoon sun, cheeks shadowed as he stared down at Salvadore.
Salvadore swallowed hard and a trail of sweat tickled his spine. “Shit.”
He wasn’t ready for this. Not even a little.
Yesterday evening, before he’d been caught by whoever those people were that had sent him on this fucking mission, he’d had a run in with a wolf—the first one he’d met face to face since he was ten years old.
The run in with the wolf had come after Chen and El had found Paul’s body in the woods. Chen had sent Salvadore a message and Salvadore had called Chen, because he couldn’t believe what Chen had told him. But Chen had been right. Paul had been alive. Salvadore had managed to get away from Gage and the others to meet Chen at Chen’s mother’s old cabin where they’d all lived for the last sixteen years.
Not only had Paul not been dead, but he hadn’t been in nearly as bad a shape as Salvadore had expected.
He’d confronted Paul, and Paul had as much as admitted that he was a spy for the wolves, that his name was definitely not Paul. And even though the notice had gone out that the heat that came around once every three or so years for the wolves had started, Paul hadn’t wanted to leave with Salvadore. He’d rather stay inside the borders of the protectorate, where the wolves refused to acknowledge anyone’s right to refuse to mate with them during their heat.
Salvadore had convinced Chen and El to help him force the issue. Obviously Paul wasn’t thinking straight after all the injuries he’d gotten from the beating.
But Paul had escaped, running into the woods when he shouldn’t have even been able to stand. Salvadore hadn’t known what was going on but he hadn’t been willing to leave Paul to the wolves in the shape he was in.
So he’d given chase. And then found himself confronting a wolf in the dark woods over a man who didn’t want his help.
