by Elsa Jade
Her wolf roared to life, pouring power through her veins even as Ethan fell, killed by her silver bullet through his brain. Apparently, that was the only way to kill a wolf with a bullet, even a silver one. Something she’d have to pass on to the department.
Her wolf saved her, closing her wounds. Clever critter. It had known she needed not to bleed out, and fixed some of the damage before restarting her heart. She’d heard everything Riley said. His plea to not leave him. His admission that he loved her.
He loved her, and she loved him.
Riley. Warmth filled her at the thought of her soon-to-be mate. He might be big and gruff as pack enforcer, scaring the crap out the rest of them, with her… He was a teddy bear. With awesome abs. And tonight… Finally, they would shift together and run under the full moon.
The door to the bedroom opened, and the man in question entered, carrying a tray and wearing an itty-bitty apron. His smile was pure wickedness.
“Breakfast in bed… Just as promised.”
“Perfect. But I have an appetite for more than food,” she smiled and beckoned him towards the bed.
Their first run was tonight… But they had the whole day ahead of them, and she had a naked man in an apron to keep her busy.
The End
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About the Author
Mina Carter is a USA Today bestselling author of romance in many genres. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and a bossy cat.
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Desert Moon
The Wolves of Twin Moon Ranch
Book One
Anna Lowe
Lana Dixon knows well enough to steer clear of alpha males, but Ty Hawthorne is as impossible to avoid as the sizzling Arizona sun. Her inner wolf just won’t give up on the alpha who’s tall, dark, and more than a little dangerous. One midnight romp under the full moon is enough for Lana to know she’ll risk her life for him—but what about her pride?
Ty puts duty above everything—even the overwhelming instinct that says Lana’s the one. She’s the Juliet to his Romeo: forbidden. And with a pack of poaching rogues closing in, it’s hardly the time to yield to his desires. Or is love just what this lonely alpha needs to set his spirit free?
There’s more than meets the eye on Twin Moon Ranch, home to a pack of shapeshifting wolves willing to battle for life and love.
Chapter One
‡
Lana fidgeted next to her grandmother as the plane banked over the harsh landscape and slowly descended. Arizona. She almost muttered it aloud. She’d vowed never to return, and yet here she was.
The desert. All that open space, that sky. It had taken something out of her on her first visit, long ago, leaving her with a thirst she could never quench. So why go back?
The plane landed, and she moved stiffly to baggage claim, already wishing for a flight home. Catching herself grinding her teeth, she willed her jaws to relax. She would be calm and serene, damn it, even if she had to fake it. For one week, she could manage that much. She’d get her grandmother settled into her new home and then return to the East Coast. The desert had nothing for her.
She glued on a smile as an older woman hugged her grandmother, then turned to her with sparkling eyes and a secret smile.
“Lana, you look just like your mother!”
She gave a little internal sigh but didn’t drop the forced smile. This must be Jean, her grandmother’s old friend. She’d met Jean before once, but her memories of that time were hazy. All she remembered was the sense of loss her first visit had left her with. Which was crazy, because how could you lose something you never had?
“The eyes of her mother, the nose of her father,” her grandmother winked, and Lana couldn’t help but wonder what private joke they were sharing. But the older women breezed right over the subject and started chatting away about friends and family and times gone by. Lana tapped her foot, waiting for the baggage to roll past. The sooner she got this visit started, the sooner it would be over.
Twenty minutes later, she wheeled the luggage cart toward the exit, trailed by the older women. She sucked in a deep breath before stepping into the furnace outside the airport doors. The heat smothered her like a wool blanket, and the dry desert air seared her nostrils.
“One of Tyrone’s boys is coming to get us,” Jean said, looking up and down the road.
Lana looked too, gnawing her lip. It figured the kid would be late. While the two older women stood in the shade of a bus stop, catching up on twelve years of news, she paced. Out into the piercing sun, then back into the muted shade. Out and back, out and back again, each footfall a step into the past, then a determined about-face into the future. She tried to numb her sense
s, but they kept darting around, tasting the arid flavor of this place, listening to its emptiness. Everything felt so familiar, yet so strange, like visiting a childhood home after someone else had moved in.
That was the strange part. Arizona had never been her home and it never would be. She’d only visited once before. She went stiff at the memory, as if the old emotions might creep up and carry her away. Emotions like hope and love and unexpected passion, blazing bright. She’d been so young and impressionable back then—only twenty, and that was the problem. Too young to know better than to fall in love with a vague scent in the hills. For a while, she’d even imagined the scent came with a man.
But it had been a siren song at best, and it had ruined her. There was no man, no promise, only a ceaseless whisper that stirred her during the day and haunted her at night. And now she was back again, right in the thick of it: the heat, the dust, the lying air.
“Oh, there he is,” Jean called.
A faded Jeep Wagoneer pulled up to the curb and creaked to a stop. From what Jean had said, Lana had been expecting the driver to be a newly licensed teen—a kid delighted for any excuse to get out on four wheels. The type with narrow shoulders, a pocked complexion, and gangly limbs.
She was not expecting this.
Lana gaped as the “boy” emerged from the car with a smooth, easy step. Evidently the state of Arizona was now issuing driver’s licenses to rugged, six-foot-two slabs of muscle and raw power. Authority bristled off him in waves, as if he were facing an entire platoon and not just a couple of guests. Dark. Sensual. More than a little dangerous. This was their ride?
“Hello, sweetie.” Old Jean gave him a cheery peck on the cheek. The gesture made Lana’s inner wolf hiss so fiercely that she wobbled and took a step back. Since when did a man affect her like that?
Since right now, apparently.
But why? She didn’t want or need a man in her life, especially one who was so…so…alpha.
And yet every molecule in her body was screaming Mine!
*
The last thing Ty needed was to play chauffeur to a couple of old women. He had a million things to do, not only in town but home on the ranch.
It always seemed like things came to a head when his father was away and he was on watch—a role he was taking on more and more often in a gradual changing of the guard. This time his father was in Utah for a week, give or take. Not that Ty minded the old man’s absence or his chance to finally take charge. He was born to stand down the dangers threatening his pack: vampires, rogue wolves, and even humans. The latter were weak, but their overwhelming numbers and powerful fears made them an unpredictable risk.
Lately, though, it seemed as though the only problems he was being called upon to solve were petty quarrels that called for people skills, not power. Not his forte. Ty almost wished a real problem would arise to put things back in perspective. Then he could step into action and show them all.
He rejected the thought with a sharp shake of his head. His job wasn’t to prove himself; it was to lead and ignore the rest. So what if it seemed that everyone was waiting—hoping, almost—for the first son of the alpha to show some weakness? It had been that way for as long as he could remember. The fact that he hadn’t screwed up just upped the ante: now they expected perfection. Was he a wolf, or a magician?
Ty forced himself to take a deep breath. He was his father’s son. He would do a good job—even better than his father, if that were possible.
So what the hell was he doing as taxi driver to a couple of old women?
That question, he could answer. Aunt Jean—his great-aunt, actually—had practically raised him. She was the only person other than his father who could give him an order, even though hers came covered in cream and honey and with a tickle of the cheek as if he were still a cub. So ninety minutes ago, he had dropped her off at the airport to await her friend before going off on his own errands, gnashing his teeth the whole time. Now he pulled up outside the arrivals area, tapping his fingers on the wheel. Where were they?
Then he spotted Jean with a heap of luggage, chatting in the shade of a bus stop with another gray-haired woman. He stifled a yawn, picturing the cobwebs of their conversation. Too bad they weren’t with that leggy brunette who was pacing nearby. The one with the chiseled calves and no-nonsense stride. Now that would be his kind of chauffeuring. Or more like his womanizing brother’s kind of chauffeuring, because he wouldn’t allow himself to be affected by any woman again.
Not even this one.
Except that he sniffed as he drove past, trying to tease her scent out of the complex symphony of city smells. Part of him quivered in hope; the other part snorted in disgust. Give it up. It wasn’t as if the woman he’d lost his heart to so long ago would simply walk back into his life.
He killed the engine and unfolded himself from the cab.
“Ty, sweetie, this is my dear friend Ruth,” Aunt Jean said.
“I remember you as a little cub!” Ruth exclaimed. “My, how you’ve grown.”
He squeezed his lips and endured.
“And this is my granddaughter, Lana.” She gestured to somebody standing behind him.
He turned and found himself stuck midway between inhaling and exhaling. It was her—the brunette, wearing light capris and a V-neck T-shirt that offered the barest hint of an athletic figure. She looked to be about thirty, a little younger than him. There was neither a brush of make-up on her face, nor a speck of jewelry in sight. She didn’t need any. She was perfect just the way she was.
Luckily, she was a little slow to react, because his joints seized up along with his breath. When her hand finally reached out to grip his in greeting, all his synapses fired simultaneously.
“Hi,” she said in that clipped East Coast way. Her eyes locked onto his, wide and blue as the desert sky after a welcome rain. He felt dragged in, dropping like a skydiver. The hand she offered was warm and fit his so perfectly, he couldn’t let go.
A voice vaguely registered behind the roaring in his ears. “Get the luggage, sweetie,” Jean called, one foot already in the car.
Luggage? Right. He snatched a bag off the cart and loaded it into the Jeep. Then he turned for the next one, taking it from Lana’s hand. It was a light, sporty duffel, not a girly thing; either she packed ultra-light or she wasn’t planning on staying long. The layers of muscle surrounding his ribs tightened at the thought.
“I can get it.” Her protest came too late. When he spun back to face her, her eyes were swirling like the sky before a summer storm, angry as all hell.
He got caught up in that tempest for a moment before she let out a muffled growl that snapped him back to the moment. Crap. She must be one of those stubborn, independent types capable of opening her own doors and giving herself a hernia carrying heavy things just to prove she could. One of those stubborn women who…who had the most enticing scent. Fresh. Promising, like a west wind. Familiar, almost.
He was still savoring her scent when Lana pushed past him and heaved another bag into the car. Great. He’d managed to antagonize her already.
He pulled his lower lip in tight and clenched his jaw. He was good at that—pissing people off. Keeping them safely at arm’s length. Too bad she was one of the few he might be interested in keeping close. Very close.
He slammed the door a little too hard, cursing the long drive home.
*
Within minutes, he was shifting around and wishing for his own truck. But since his open-bed pick-up was hardly the vehicle for chauffeuring old ladies, here he was, stuck in one of the ranch cars.
It wasn’t just the vehicle, though. Lana was driving him crazy, sitting right behind him while the older women crooned on about old times. With the wind whipping through the open window, he couldn’t quite capture her scent. Her posture was stiff, her expression carefully schooled. Everything about this woman spoke of discipline and control. She was pretty, too, in her wildcat kind of way that made him hungry to know more.
He wanted to say something, just to hear more of her voice. But words had never been his thing, so he tightened his hands around the steering wheel and resigned himself to a long drive.
As they left the heat of the city for the cooler, higher altitudes of the north, Lana sat as taut as an over-tensioned spring. She appeared to be caught between wanting to inhale all of northern Arizona and forcing herself to hold back. He knew that feeling intimately. Keeping passion a slave to self-discipline, never letting too much of yourself show. He knew why he did it, but why did she?
“Maybe when we get to the ranch, you can show Lana around,” Aunt Jean chirped.
I can definitely show her around, his wolf murmured. And I bet she can show me a thing or two, too.
He leashed his inner animal and dragged it kicking and screaming into one of those stupid pet crates proved by his imagination. He could practically hear the scrape of claws across a slippery linoleum floor. Then his eyes strayed to Lana’s in the rear view mirror, and promptly vaulted away. He would definitely not be showing this woman anything.
“Got work,” he grunted—and immediately regretted it. Resisting his pack’s matchmaking efforts was second nature to him by now. Even his father had pulled a little stunt a few years back, trying to stick him with an arranged mate. He bit back a growl just thinking about it. What little private life he had was none of their business. He’d found and lost his destined mate. There could be no other. Case closed.
“Oh, Lana,” her grandmother chirped from the front seat. “Look at the pretty cactus.”
Lana leaned forward to see, and her hair swayed tantalizingly close to his shoulder. He swallowed, hard.
“And oh—what a magnificent falcon!” Ruth went on.
Just as Lana ducked to get a view out the windshield, the truck hit a bump, and her hand gripped the seat at his shoulder, making his blood surge through his veins.
