by R. E. Butler
Dancer’s Heart
Wilde Creek Book Six
By: R. E. Butler
Copyright 2016 R. E. Butler
Dancer’s Heart (Wilde Creek Six)
By R. E. Butler
License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Cover by Ramona Lockwood
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.
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Editing by Alexis Arendt
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To Joyce who always tells me when my books make her cry, which makes me cry. Love you!
To Shelley for her time and support, thank you for beta-reading!
For my Aunt B.L. and my husband B. B. I love you both!
Table of Contents
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
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Other Works by R. E. Butler
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Dancer’s Heart (Wilde Creek Six)
By R. E. Butler
Adam Cruz has spent the last twelve years of his life wondering if he’d ever find his truemate. As a low-ranked omega wolf, with a body full of scars from a firebomb, he’s had more than his fair share of trauma and shame. All he wants is to find his truemate and settle down, even though he wonders if his mate will care about his scars, or that he can’t hunt as well as other wolves because of them.
As the only reindeer shifter in a bear den, Dancer Grayson knows what it’s like not to fit in. When she runs into her truemate in the woods of Wilde Creek, she discovers that she fits right in with him. Adam’s not ashamed to have prey as a mate, and she’s not ashamed of his scars. Together, she’s certain they can survive anything.
When Adam’s gambling-addict dad hits him up for money and Adam refuses, his dad does the unthinkable, and Dani ends up kidnapped. What the kidnappers don’t count on is that there isn’t just a wolf pack looking for Dani, but her own kind. Can Adam get to her before she’s harmed, or will she be lost to him forever?
Chapter 1
Adam Cruz watched his friend Jeremiah and his new mate, Honey, as they were introduced to the Wilde Creek wolf pack during the February full moon. The pack clapped and cheered as the two kissed. Adam was happy that Jeremiah had found his truemate – it gave him hope that he’d find his own mate someday.
Alphas Acksel and Brynn wished the pack a good hunt, and Adam went to congratulate Jeremiah and Honey.
“I’ve been worried about you,” Jeremiah said. “I’m sorry that things got crazy, and I wasn’t able to be there for you.”
“I’m cool,” Adam said. He tried to smile, but he knew he’d failed by the way that Jeremiah looked at him with suspicion.
“We can talk later if you want.”
Adam glanced at Honey. “Maybe I’ll take you up on that. Have a good first hunt, man. If anyone deserves to be happy, it’s you.”
Jeremiah grabbed Adam’s arm and stopped him as he turned away. “You deserve to be happy, too.”
He chuckled darkly, casting his gaze up to the dark sky. “Maybe my mate will fall out of the sky tonight, and she won’t give two fucks about my scars or my place in the pack.”
Adam moved away quickly, before Jeremiah’s concern became his undoing. Seeing Jeremiah so happy made something ache deep inside him. He wanted to shake it off as full-moon jitters, but he knew that his wolf was truly aching for a mate. Someone to love. Someone to protect. A female who wouldn’t care that he came from crappy stock, with a gambling-addict dad and a body covered with scars. Ducking into the woods, he wove his way into the darkness and looked for a place to shift.
When he was a teenager and new to shifting, he’d pretended as if his scars hadn’t completely ruined his life, but they had. His skin ached in his human form and his wolf form. There was hardly a time when he wasn’t thinking about how shitty his life was, although he tried to project a confident attitude about his appearance. He didn’t want people to think all he did was complain, even though inside he cursed his dad frequently.
Stopping in a secluded area, he stripped and stretched fully, allowing his skin to warm naturally before he shifted. He’d been burned at age fourteen, when a man his dad owed money to tossed a Molotov cocktail through Adam’s bedroom window. Apparently the man had mistakenly thought it was his dad’s room. Because he wasn’t old enough to shift, he’d had to go through painful skin graft treatments. By the time he was old enough to shift it was too late. His body hadn’t been able to heal the remaining damage.
He still had scars, and some of the muscles and tendons in his leg hadn’t healed right, so he was unable to run well in his shifted form. He had a limp in his human form as well. He’d never looked at his dad the same way again, and from the moment he’d been able to move out of the house, he hadn’t looked back.
Fortunately, his dad wasn’t part of the Wilde Creek pack any longer. Richard had moved back to his parents’ home pack, four hours south, to escape his debtors and start over. In the thirteen years since Adam had turned eighteen and moved out, he hadn’t seen his father once. He could stay the hell down there forever as far as Adam was concerned.
He closed his eyes at the burn as his skin stretched and made the change into his wolf. Waiting for the ache to ease, he lifted his muzzle and inhaled, sorting through the scents to see what lay in the darkness. In the distance he could hear members of his pack hunting, but he knew he was all alone in this large stretch of woods.
His wolf growled, happy to be let free. Adam gave in to the urge to hunt and took off in the direction of the nearest game. The February night air was cold and crisp, snow fluffing up around him as he moved. He thought about catching a few rabbits to take home and butcher to make stew and decided that was a good plan. He could take a batch over to Jeremiah and Honey to make up for his grumpy attitude earlier. Jeremiah had always been a good friend to him, and someday maybe Adam’s mate and Honey would become friends, too. If he ever found someone to call his own.
He hoped to fuck he would.
Shaking off his depressing thoughts again, he chided himself for letting his physical situation control his attitude. He normally wasn’t so moody, but he couldn’t seem to shake the melancholy tonight.
As he rounded a tree on the trail of a rabbit, he caught another scent on the night air and paused, his claws digging into the cold ground as he raised his muzzle. Something smelled like peppermint, and it made every protective and possessive instinct inside him roar.
With a warning snarl, he wheeled and moved as quickly as he could in that direction, the only thought on his mind a single, growled word: mine.
Chapter 2
Dancer Grayson loved her adopted brother, Row, but he was a total downer sometimes. Always worried for her safety, never impulsive. Of course, it wouldn’t be good to have two impulsive people right no
w – someone had to be the adult. Well, Dani was an adult, but Row was the more adultier adult.
They’d been traveling for two days from their home in the bear sleuth to the last known whereabouts of a reindeer shifter herd. When she was found wandering alone in the woods at age three, Dani, a reindeer, had been adopted by Row’s mom Alice. She had very little memory of her parents and their herd, who had all been killed by natural coyotes. There were times when she ached for the camaraderie of her own kind, but despite being entirely different from her adopted mom and brother, she’d grown up in a very loving home. Alice was an amazing surrogate mother who had always treated Dani as her own, and Row was the best big brother around.
As Row filled the SUV with gas, she got out and stretched, complaining about the trip. To her dismay, her outdoors-loving brother had insisted they camp out at night. “Can we get a hotel at least once?”
“No.” Row shook his head. “After we find your people, then we’ll see, okay? We used to camp out all the time, when did you become such a priss about sleeping outside?”
She huffed indignantly. “I’m not a priss! It’s cold out. There’s snow! No one should camp when there’s snow. Plus, you snore.”
He grunted. “It’s plenty warm in the tent with the heater. And I don’t snore.”
The attendant gave Row change and Dani asked him, “Where are we?”
The human said, “Wilde Creek.”
Row asked, “Is there any place in town to get a meal?”
“Not this late,” the attendant said. “Unless you want junk food, which there’s plenty of in the mini-mart.”
“Ugh,” Dani said, pressing a hand to her stomach. The idea of eating another bag of salty, fried food made her want to throw up. “No more chips and snack cakes.”
“Thanks,” Row said to the attendant. He and Dani got into the SUV, and he suggested, “It’s a wooded town. We could go hunting.”
“You mean you could go hunting and I could graze? What if there are hunters? I don’t want to get shot.” Deer were very likely to be shot by hunters. Not that Row wasn’t also a candidate for being shot, because he was a big bear, but she was definitely in danger if humans with guns were around.
“I’ll keep you safe.”
Using the map program on his phone, he found a heavily wooded area nearby. It took twenty minutes to find a road that skirted along the woods. Row parked and opened up the back to get their camping supplies ready for after they shifted, and Dani got out. Excitement coursed through her at the thought of shifting and running.
The sound of wolves could be heard in the distance, and Dani’s heart sank. Row would never let her shift if there was a wolf pack nearby.
“Ah, damn it,” he muttered. “We must be in pack territory. Get back in the car, Dani.”
Dani opened her mouth to respond when something caught her attention. She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. Sorting through the scents of winter and woods, she found a deep, spicy smell that made her heart pound and her skin tighten.
She was aware that Row was calling her name, but she didn’t answer. He stepped around the side of the vehicle as she stared into the dark woods. “Dani?”
She turned her head slowly and looked at him. “I smell him.”
“Him? Him who?”
“Mine. My…mine.” Her whole body shook, and she exploded into her shift, far faster than she’d ever done before. One moment she was standing on two legs, and the next she was in her shifted form, pawing the ground with a snort. She glanced at Row for a heartbeat and then leaped toward the woods.
Row yelled after her, “Dani! Wait, it’s too dangerous, they’ll kill you!”
Dani didn’t stop. She couldn’t. The source of the spicy scent was calling to her, and she couldn’t ignore it. Every feminine instinct within her demanded she find it, told her that the male who belonged to the scent was her truemate. She’d never been more certain of anything in her life than she was that the spicy-scented male was hers.
She could hear Row bellowing after her in his bear shift, but she was unable to stop racing through the woods. She darted this way and that, around trees and shrubs, as she zeroed in on the scent, leaving Row behind. Her heart pounded in anticipation.
Shifting into her human form, she stumbled to a stop and fell to her knees, catching herself on her hands. The ice and snow bit into her skin, but she was too distracted by the wild thoughts banging around in her mind to care. A large wolf with gray and black fur stalked through the shadows toward her. She could see him clearly in the bright light of the full moon. A million years of instinct as prey told her to flee from him, but as she stared into the amber eyes of the male whose scent had captivated her, she was unable to run away.
She straightened, settling back on her heels and shaking the snow from her hands. The wolf growled, but she knew it wasn’t meant as a warning. He drew close, lowering his head and whining softly as he laid on his belly and crawled forward.
She smiled. “I know who you are, and I’m not afraid.”
He stopped moving and lifted his head, canting it slightly. Blinking bright amber eyes at her, the wolf nodded and then began to shift. She watched with anticipation as he changed from wolf to man, slipping to his knees as he transformed entirely.
She drew in a sharp breath. “You’re beautiful.” He had muscles on top of muscles and short, dark hair. There appeared to be something wrong with the skin on the left side of his body – it was mottled and rough-looking. Immediately her heart went out to him for whatever he’d suffered in the past.
He snorted. “Look in the mirror, sweetheart. You’re beautiful.” He glanced around them, tilting his head as if he were listening. “I think we’re alone, but I don’t want you to be cold. I’m Adam.”
“I’m Dancer, but you can call me Dani.”
He grasped her hands and stood, and she moved with him. As she rose, she ran her fingertips up his arms to his shoulders, feeling the marks on his skin, which were oddly smooth. “Adam?” she whispered.
“They’re burn scars,” he said roughly.
She stared up at him. They were so close that their bodies were almost touching chest to hip, but a few inches separated them. She felt anchored to him as his hands tightened on her hips.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shook his head slightly. “Why?”
“Because you were hurt and I wish I’d been there to help you.” She closed her eyes and inhaled. His spicy scent wrapped around her, making her weak in the knees.
His fingers dug into her flesh, and he snarled. “Where have you been all my life?”
“Too far.” She grasped his shoulders, standing on her tiptoes to close the distance between them. He pulled her close with a wolfy growl, and their lips met as their bodies touched. Everything inside her turned to liquid heat as he drew her even closer, pulling her against him, his erection trapped between them. She wanted to touch him everywhere at once, but she couldn’t stop holding on, afraid he would vanish, and she’d wake up and find it was all a dream.
He tasted as good as he smelled, and every time he chased her tongue with his own she found herself falling further into the spicy scent of him. Adam growled in warning as he lifted from her lips.
Row’s voice echoed behind her. “Let my sister go.”
Dani, still breathless from Adam’s amazing kiss, rolled her eyes and said, “Go away, Row.”
“Dani,” Row snarled, “come to me. We have a journey ahead of us.”
Adam growled darkly, his grip tightening on Dani possessively. “Mine.”
Dani looked at Adam and saw he was furious, ready to kill. She didn’t want Row to be hurt, or for Row to try to hurt Adam. “It’s okay, Adam,” she whispered. “That’s my brother.”
She pressed herself to Adam’s side, wrapping her arms around his waist and holding him tightly. She saw that Row was holding a female behind his back, and she heard the woman say softly, “Please don’t hurt my friend.”
&nb
sp; Row’s growl cut off abruptly, and he straightened from his defensive stance. He glared at Dani and Adam. “You’re my responsibility. I promised our mother that I would take you to your people.”
“What if we get out of the woods and talk?” Dani suggested, trying to be helpful. “Adam isn’t going to let me go, Row. No more than you’re going to let that female behind you go. My name is Dancer, by the way, but everyone calls me Dani,” she added to the other woman.
The female giggled softly and leaned around Row to smile at Dani. “I’m Kammie. I’m not sure where we are exactly, but maybe Adam’s house is close? My apartment is on the other side of town, and I really don’t want to traipse naked through the streets.”
Dani laughed. “Me either. Adam?”
“My house is about a half mile that way,” Adam said, jerking his head to the right.
“You might have mentioned your house was nearby, instead of letting me molest you in the woods,” Dani said, chuckling as she tweaked Adam’s side.
“I had no blood left in my brain,” Adam said.
Row made a disgusted sound. “She’s my sister, man.”
“Sorry,” Adam said, not sounding one bit sorry. He swung Dani into his arms and began to walk, not seeming to care if the others followed them. Dani looked over Adam’s shoulder and saw Row pick up Kammie and fall into step behind Adam.
“We should talk,” Dani said, resting her cheek on Adam’s shoulder.
“We will, sweetheart,” he replied. He limped slightly as he walked, and she could guess that the burn scars she’d felt under her fingertips had somehow messed up his leg as well. She wasn’t about to ask him to put her down to let her walk on her own, though. She’d only just met him, but she had a feeling that her mate was a proud male who wouldn’t want her to question his ability to take care of her. And she had no doubt he could, and would, take good care of her for the rest of their lives. He’d held her close and growled fiercely when they’d been interrupted. He was ready to defend her against anything – that much she was sure of.
