by Dakota West
Nearly a dozen pairs of eyes just looked at her, eyebrows raised.
“We’ve got a baby sitter until midnight, and I intend to make the most of it,” she said. “Who’s in?”
Sloane looked around. Part of her thought that she probably shouldn’t get drunk the first time that she met a lot of Austin’s family, but on the other hand, she was sure finding Cora hard to say no to, particularly because the other woman was now going around the circle of cousins, pointing at each person, and asking them if they wanted a shot.
Hunter and Ash just nodded, clearly amused at their mate.
“Sure!” said Charlie.
Her mates, Kade and Daniel, just shrugged, and Cora rolled her eyes at them.
Next she pointed at Olivia, but answered her own question before Olivia could say anything.
“You don’t have to,” Cora said.
“I’m okay,” Olivia answered, brightly. “I don’t want to get hammered, but I can do a celebratory shot.”
When it was her turn, despite her possibly-better judgement, Sloane nodded.
“Atta girl!” shouted Cora, who’d clearly already started partying. “Someone come help me carry these.”
Without waiting, she grabbed Sloane and Daniel by the wrists, seemingly at random, and Sloane let herself be pulled along.
Next to her, Daniel smiled.
“Welcome to the family,” he said to Sloane, and Sloane couldn’t help but laugh.
It took another ten minutes to organize everyone, and then a few more to coax the newlywed triad over, but at last, the fifteen of them stood around in a big circle, each of them with a shot glass of tequila in their hands.
“Okay,” Cora said, holding up her glass. “Here’s to Quinn and Julius and Hudson. May they always… have good stuff happen to them!”
Everyone laughed.
“The best stuff!” Olivia joined in.
“And may the best stuff get you through the worst stuff,” Austin said.
Sloane lifted her glass, trying not to cry again. Then she tilted her head back and let the tequila burn down her throat, shaking her head just a little as she did.
As everyone went to put their shot glasses on a tray, Sloane saw Trevor, out of the corner of her eye, put a hand on Olivia’s shoulder.
“Hey,” he said, tentatively.
Don’t eavesdrop, she told herself as she eavesdropped.
Olivia looked up at him and smiled.
“Hi,” she said.
Trevor swallowed and folded his hands in front of himself, cracking his knuckles.
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said. “I should have done better when you were in that cage.”
Olivia looked down for a moment, like she was considering something, and then looked back up at Trevor.
“You were the only bright spot I had those days,” she said. “Honestly, I barely remember anything else, but I remember that you were the only one who was nice to me.”
Trevor looked down now.
“I wish I’d let you out,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t.”
Olivia just sort of shrugged, then half-smiled, sort of laughed, and looked at the floor again.
“If you had, who knows if any of this would be happening,” she said.
She reached out and, very tentatively, put a hand on his arm.
“I’m glad Austin picked you,” she said, quietly. “I wish I’d known sooner.”
“Olivia!” someone shouted. Then a middle-aged woman in a purple dress bustled through the crowd and took the girl’s elbow. “Find Jasper and Craig,” she said. “It’s picture time. And the rest of you,” she said, pointing at the cousins, “Get your drinks, you’re on deck for photos.”
“Yes, Aunt Lydia,” Hunter shouted.
Aunt Lydia looked at him. He had a drink in each hand, and she raised her eyebrows.
“One is Ash’s,” he said, just a little defensively. “He went to the bathroom.”
“Sure,” said Lydia, as she hustled off.
“Lush,” teased Austin.
He put one hand one Sloane’s back, rubbing her shoulders, and the other on Trevor’s.
“You want drinks before pictures?” he asked.
Sloane and Trevor exchanged glances.
“Are we in the pictures?” Trevor asked, slowly. “I mean, we’re not…”
“I barely know Julius and Hudson and Quinn…” added Sloane, letting her words trail off.
Austin hugged them both tight.
“You’re mine, so you’re family,” he said. “That’s how this works.”
Sloane looked at Trevor again, and couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were a little too bright.
“Now,” Austin said. “What do you want from the bar?”
THE END
Shifter Country Bears
Read the whole series!
Book One: A Bear’s Protection
Book Two: A Bear’s Nemesis
Book Three: A Bear’s Mercy
Book Four: A Bear’s Journey
Book Five: A Bear’s Secret
Shifter Country Wolves
Book One: Running With Wolves
Coming July 31
Book Two: Betting On Wolves
Coming August 7
Book Three: Fighting For Wolves
Coming August 14
Book Four: Uncaging Wolves
Coming August 21
Book Five: Longing For Wolves
Coming August 28
Copper Mesa Eagles
Book One: Predator
Coming September 4
Book Two: Prey
Coming September 11
Book Three: Pariah
Coming September 18
Contemporary Romance Novels
(As Roxie Noir)
The Savage Wild
An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance
The Dirtshine Trilogy: Rockstar Romance
Never Enough (Dirtshine Book 1)
Always You (Dirtshine Book 2)
Ever After (Dirtshine Book 3)
Slow Burn
A Bodyguard Romance
Torch
A Second Chance Romance
Convict
A Criminal Romance
Reign
A Royal Romance
Ride
A Cowboy Romance
Loaded
An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance
EXCERPT: Chapter One of Running with Wolves
Shifter Country Wolves, Book One
Greta
The door to the bar opened, and a gaggle of too-perky blond girls walked in, wearing tank tops, tight jeans, and heels that were a little too high for them to walk in, so they tottered like newborn giraffes.
Behind the bar, Greta rolled her eyes.
Huh, she thought, filling a pint glass with Coors Lite. Is college back in session already?
The girls stood near the doorway, looking around the dark bar and blinking like they’d never seen the inside of a dive before.
Summer sure does fly by, Greta thought grumpily. Summer meant less tips, true, but also less of these girls, the humans who pouted and showed too much skin and thought that all the men there would just fall at their feet. She put the Coors down in front of the man who’d ordered it and he thanked her, nodding.
Greta moved down the bar, keeping an eye on the girls as she filled beer glasses and poured shots of whiskey and tequila. They seemed unsure of what they were doing, and they hung back a little, wearing their too-tight, too-skimpy outfits, their three heads huddled together as they plotted and planned together.
Greta sighed inwardly.
Sorority girls, she thought. They’re either here on a dare, or because they want some wolf tail.
She sized up their outfits again as she wiped her hands on a bar towel.
They’re here for the wolves, she decided.
The more adventurous college girls were the ones that ended up at the Tooth & Claw Saloon. Most of their lives, th
eir parents had warned them about shifters — that shifters were total perverts or sex maniacs, just because they mated in triads instead of pairs. For shifters, two men and a woman was normal. Greta herself had two dads and a mom. All the wolves did.
The head blond must have caught her staring, because she finally came forward, leaning against the bar in a coquettish way, like she thought she was being cute, batting her eyelashes at Greta without looking her in the face.
“Hi?” she said, her voice swinging upward at the end. Unconsciously, she toyed with a strand of blond hair as she talked. “Could I get three Long Island Iced Teas?”
Greta wanted to just kick the girls out of the bar. Nothing pissed her off quite like the pretty, skinny, blond humans who strutted in there, swished their hips and tossed their hair, and then left with a wolf on either arm.
The same people who came into her bar looking for a good night were the same ones who treated wolf shifters like second-class citizens the rest of the time. These girls would probably be happy to let a mated pair double-team them all night, but later, when the sex was over? They’d keep crossing the street to avoid shifters on the sidewalk.
It made Greta’s blood boil.
“Can I see your ID please?” she said to the girl, as sweetly as she could. The bar couldn’t afford to just throw people out, but she could sure make them work a little harder for a drink.
The girl blinked, then started going through her tiny, cute bag.
“I’m going to need to see all three IDs, actually,” Greta said.
The girl frowned, a pout forming on her overly made up face.
Greta tried not to smile.
Sometimes, it’s the tiny victories, she thought.
The girl went back to her friends, and a few moments later, all three of them presented their IDs. Greta made a show of holding their driver’s licenses up — one from Cascadia, two from California — and comparing the pictures to the girls, but she’d never have been able to tell if the pictures were three other blond sorority types. They all looked exactly the same to her.
Just as the girls were starting to look alarmed, Greta slid the IDs back across the bar and nodded, once. Then she got out three pint glasses and started pouring the liquor: vodka, gin, tequila, rum, and triple sec, followed with a splash of coke.
“Twelve each,” she told the girls.
The lead one raised her eyebrows.
“Twelve?” she said.
“There’s lots of liquor in there,” Greta said.
Also, I don’t like you, she thought.
Reluctantly, the girls paid, and Greta got their change. None of them tipped, but that was fine with Greta. They’d gotten the Sorority Surcharge, and $2 went into Greta’s pocket.
“Saw that,” drawled a familiar voice.
Greta turned her head and looked at Zeke, who sat at the bar, nursing a coke and whiskey.
“Keep it on the down low, will you?” Greta said, half-smiling.
Zeke winked, and Greta tried not to make a face.
“You got it,” he said.
Thankfully, more customers came in before Zeke could say anything else to her. It was ten at night, the college students were back in town, and things were finally starting to perk up.
As she poured more drinks, collected money, and chatted with all her regulars, Greta kept an eye on Zeke. He didn’t do much, just sat quietly at his end of the bar, sipping his drink and pretending not to watch her. It was the same thing he’d been doing once every few nights for a month now, and she was suspicious.
After all, he was single and she was single. Greta suspected that he’d figured this out and decided that, since she didn’t have any other takers, she was ripe for the plucking, and apparently he thought that sitting, drinking, and staring at her was the best seduction method around.
Greta wasn’t impressed. She and Zeke had grown up together in Rustvale, and just because she was thirty and unmated didn’t mean she was going to pair up with the next available guy who came along.
She had standards, dammit. Zeke was nice enough, but Greta wanted someone who’d make her heart pound and her head swim. She wasn’t about to settle.
Now the sorority girls were pretending to play pool, holding cues in their hands and bending over the table, acting confused about the rules. In the corner of the bar, two shifters exchanged glances, picked up their beers, and then went over to the pool table.
“Y’all know how to play?” one of them asked.
Greta turned her back and rolled her eyes, thankful that it was getting busy.
Soon, Greta could barely turn around without someone shouting for her. The regulars all knew her name, and the people who weren’t regulars learned it fast. People leaned across the bar, dollars already in hand, and she moved from patron to patron, pouring beer and whiskey and even the occasional mixed drink.
Mixed drinks weren’t exactly a specialty of the Tooth & Claw Saloon. Greta’s specials were more along the lines of “a pint full of beer” or “a shot of whiskey.” If someone wanted a drink in a glass with a stem, they could go into Canyon City and drink at the fancy cocktail bars there.
Right in the middle of everything, there were two men, leaning sideways against the bar, talking to each other and ignoring the hubbub all around them. Neither had a drink yet, but when Greta planted herself in front of them, wanting the two to order a drink and make room for other patrons, they didn’t seem to see her.
She pushed cardboard coasters across the bar toward them, “accidentally” nudging their elbows.
“Hi there,” she said, too brightly. “What can I get you two?”
They turned to face her, and she swallowed hard.
Greta got a lot of good-looking customers — it was a shifter bar, after all, and the sort of place where college girls came for a good time — but there was something extra good-looking about these two. She couldn’t put her finger on it, not immediately, but for a second her heart stopped before it started again, and she felt like some emotion hooked her under the ribcage and jerked.
Definitely new in town, she managed to think.
The taller wolf, who had dark hair and a short beard, looked at her for a long minute, his eyes narrowing slightly. The other one, who had floppy light brown hair and a wicked scar curving around his left eye, looked at her, looked away, then looked at her again.
“Could I get a beer?” he asked.
Normally, Greta would have rolled her eyes and pointed to all the taps, asking what kind he wanted, since it wasn’t like she just had one spigot in the back labeled BEER.
But right now, she licked her lips, smiled at him, and asked, “What kind?”
“You got Pabst?”
She shook her head, her curly dark hair bouncing. Down at the end of the bar, someone leaned in and tried to get her attention, but she ignored them.
“Bud, Coors, Miller, and a fancy IPA that I got from a brewery on the coast,” she said.
“I’ll take the IPA,” said the guy with the beard. “Please.”
They locked eyes for a moment, and Greta felt like there was a warm, fuzzy glow around her head.
“Coors is good,” said Scar. “Thanks.”
Greta just nodded and turned to the taps. Facing away from them, her head cleared just a little, and she grabbed two pint glasses, put them under the taps, and started filling them.
What just happened? She thought. Did someone drug the air? Am I high? Is this what being on drugs feels like?
She glanced quickly around the bar, but everyone else seemed to be acting normal.
I guess it’s just me, she thought.
As she shut the taps off again, over the din of the bar, she heard a loud, horrible slurping sound, the noise of a straw sucking up the dregs of a drink. Greta turned her head toward the noise, almost sure of what she was going to find.
It was Zeke, his lips around the short straw that was in his drink, slurping up the very last of his whiskey and coke.
He
was staring at her, and Greta made a face despite herself. Then she put the beers in front of the newcomers and smiled her biggest, best smile.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“I don’t believe so,” said the one with the beard.
“Not for me,” said the one with the scar.
“Six dollars, even,” she said, her hands on her hips. The bearded one handed her a ten dollar bill and narrowed his eyes.
“Greta, right?” he asked.
Greta stopped and blinked at him. She looked from the bearded one to the light-haired one, then back.
She had absolutely no clue who they were, but he’d said her name like they were old friends, or at least old acquaintances.
“That’s right,” she said, hesitantly.
“I thought that was you,” he said. “It’s been about thirteen years.”
Greta tried frantically to place him, but there was no way she’d ever met this man before, in high school or not. She flipped through her mental address book, but came up totally blank.
She shook her head. “I don’t think I know you,” she said.
“Elliott Whiting,” he said, grinning.
Greta’s mouth dropped open.
“No way,” she said.
“I swear,” he said.
“You got—” she started, and then swallowed the rest of her sentence. She’d been about to say hot. “Older!”
“I could say the same for you,” he said.
Greta blushed, then laughed.
