Out of the Ashes (Marked as His Book 1)

by Rossi, Monica

  “Come on up her kids, all of you,” she said pointing directly at Fern, “Yeah you too, get up here.

  Sandy, Dex, Joker, Dax, Fern and Katy made their way up to her and stood looking up at the woman they all called Ma.

  “Look, we’re here tonight to wish Sandy well in a new town, at a new job, and everything that comes with that, because she’s awesome and she deserves all the good things she wants,” the crowd cheered and Ma egged them on, raising her hands to get them to yell louder.

  But when the crowd died down she began again, “But I want y’all to know that amazing things are happening for all my babies,” there were some awes in the crowd as she looked down at the people she considered her children, “Most of you already know, Dax is marrying that beautiful girl there, Fern. And I get a smart and funny and wise and precious new grandbaby to go along with the deal.” Ma pointed down Katy, who grinned back up at her. The two had become instant BFFs the first time they’d met. “But not only that, Dax is thinking about opening up a new location, so stay tuned for more news on that. Then there’s Dex, man I tell ya, I’ve never seen somebody so smart. He’s going to graduate this year Summa Cum Laude.” She paused for the lukewarm cheer that followed. Dex wasn’t a talkative guy and she gathered he wasn’t well known amongst his sibling’s friends.

  “And last but not least we have Joker. If I had been a betting woman I’d have put good money on the fact that Joker wouldn’t settle down until he was in a wheel chair. Well, y’all know how Joker is,” The crowd laughed, knowing Joker’s infamous ways, “But it must be that the love bug is going around biting because he just told me tonight that he’s gotten engaged too. Belinda, come on up here honey.”

  The party cheered as a beautiful young woman walked up and joined Joker at the front of the room. Dax and Sandy looked stunned, Sandy most of all. To Fern it looked like she was so shocked she might be sick.

  Oblivious, Ma continued, “I’m so excited about these new additions to our family and for the new things that the future holds. I know it’s going to be nothing but sunshine and roses, because that’s what happens when you put family first! I love you all!” Ma beamed as the crowd clapped and she stepped down off the counter and tried to hug them all at once.

  But there was one she wasn’t going to get a hug from. Sandy had already run from the room.

  Fern was going to have to figure out what was going on there. Dax wrapped his arm around her and smiled down at her as he pulled her close. And just like that all thoughts of anything or anyone else fled in an instant.

  Whatever happened, she knew she was right where she needed to be to face it, surrounded by her family.

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  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  A Sample of Wounded: Dogs of War MC Book One

  Chapter One

  The rolling green hills passed by in an unnoticed blur as Sidney made her way home in the dying light. Work had been fine, home was going to be fine, everything was just fine, fine, fine. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes.

  When she’d moved to the small town of Three Rivers she had been hoping for a clean break; from her family, from her past, from who she had been, and she’d gotten it. What she hadn’t counted on was the long stretches of boredom, tinged with loneliness, that plagued her constantly. It wasn’t as if she’d expected to move into town and immediately have a close knit circle of friends who lauded her every Facebook post with fanfare and a celebratory night out, but it had been three months and she had yet to meet anyone she clicked with, male, female, or some creative combination of the two. She’d been to bars, fundraisers, neighborhood barbeques, she had even joined the Junior Charity League for the love of God!

  Maybe I’ve unknowingly stumbled into an episode of the X-files where everyone in town is in some sort of Satanic cult and they’re just waiting until the annual harvest festival before sacrificing me to their patron demon, Zi’ kukuloo. The Greater TriCity Apple Festival was in a couple of weeks, and as improbable as was that a cult would decide to roast her with an organic apple shoved in her mouth, she made a mental note to start a new diet. She didn’t want to look too plump and juicy, just in case.

  Even her freaky little assistant at the clinic didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with her outside of work, or during work for that matter. Having asked the black clad, dour faced waif to go out for after work drinks on three separate occasions, Sidney had given up on making friends with her.

  Granted, she hadn’t been the belle of the ball back home but if nothing else she’d had several people she could have called who would have gone to a movie with her, or would have even come over and had a few glasses of wine while they played a few rousing hands of Uno. Here she was stuck in her little rented home, unsuccessfully browsing Netflix, looking for something to distract her before giving up and deciding she would just go to bed. Not that she didn’t like her home, she actually loved it. Tiny as it was, it fit her needs perfectly. It was just so… empty.

  She was even beginning to miss her sister. Ugh. David, mother, unsustainable emotional turmoil, and miserable working conditions, she reminded herself why she’d moved.

  David. He was the key to all of the other problems. All of them. The POS.

  Purposefully she tried to clear her mind, she hated it when he popped into her train of thought uninvited, which he did often. Instead, she focused on the scenery. She really had picked a beautiful place to relocate. If she had to be away from everything and everyone that she loved, at least it came with a nice view. She watched the changing colors of the leaves as they whizzed by in a muted blur of Autumnal glory, the lone mountain off in the distance, the lump of dead deer she was about to hit in the road.

  She swerved to avoid the huge bloody mass at the last minute. Had it been a deer? A bear? Was it dead or just almost dead? Or was it hurt and laying there in pain?

  She cursed her soft heart as she slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. She might be walking up to a disaster of gore that was going to haunt her dreams or maybe she could ease the suffering of a badly wounded creature...or she could have her arm ripped off by a hurt and angry bear. She mentally shrugged as she got out of the car, what would be would be, and what was the point of becoming a veterinarian if she didn’t help animals when there was need?

  She had driven further away from the lump than she realized, and in the dim light she still couldn’t make out what it was, all she could tell was that it was large. As she got closer, she slowed down, looking for any signs of life that would indicate she wasn’t wasting her time. There it was, the stilted rise and fall of the chest, the animal was breathing… but for how long? She had to
get closer and see what kind of wounds it had.

  As she got nearer, she realized that its back was to her, making it harder to be sure that it wasn’t a bear that was going to tear a hole in her torso for her trouble. The hair was a dark auburn and mottled with dirt and blood, she could see the movement of the chest better now and the breathing looked steady, that was a good sign. If she could just get close enough to see what she was dealing with she’d know if she needed to call a game warden to hit it with the tranquilizer gun or if she could use some of the tranks she had in her medicine bag. If it was unconscious that would be a godsend.

  She slowed down, wondering if she were seeing things. The hind legs looked like… no that couldn’t be right. Could it be? Her mind dismissed the idea of a dog out of hand, no dogs or wolves got that big, but the closer she got the less she could deny what she was looking at.

  She was shocked into stillness; it was a wolf, or a wolf bear hybrid. How could it have gotten so large, surely it must weigh two hundred and fifty pounds. A genetic mutation? A rare breed of superwolf? Eating too much engineered chicken?

  A whine pulled her out of her questioning and she found herself staring into huge bright golden eyes. She walked a little closer and its tail thumped halfheartedly and its head fell back to the ground, obviously too tired to hold it up.

  “Crap.” Sidney resigned herself to her task and ran back to the Jeep for her bag. Approaching the wolf again, this time with less apprehension and more of a mind towards her job, she warned with it the last of her caution, “If you eat me I swear to god I’ll give you indigestion.”

  All the gashes she could see were superficial, after warily feeling his legs she could tell that one of them was broken, he also probably had a few broken ribs, but the light wasn’t good enough to thoroughly assess all of his injuries. There was no denying was pretty banged up though. She needed to get him somewhere she could examine him properly. Who did she know who would come help her? If she called the game warden he’d probably shoot the poor creature on sight as a public, nuisance and she didn’t know anyone well enough to call and say, “Hey this is Sidney, I’ve found an injured wolf on the side of the road that could probably kill us with very little effort, could you come help me pick him up?” There was no way she could pick him up herself.

  She put her hand on his shoulder, still staying well away from those powerful jaws and tried to speak reassuringly, “Hey, wolf. Hey boy,” He picked his head up and looked at her, “I’m going to back the Jeep up here and I’m going to try to get you into the back of it. If you feel like helping out that’s fine too. Just keep those sharp teeth to yourself.” His tail thumped twice against the ground and she took that as assent.

  Quickly she backed up as close to him as she could without actually running over him, and threw open the back hatch, chunking clothes and all the random debris that always seemed to collect in her car into the front seat before laying the back seats down flat. In the clutter she’d found a muzzle and held it in her hand speculatively. Was it large enough and was she daring enough to try to put it on him while he was still conscious?

  “Hey, there’s a good boy. I’m just going to slip this on your face and hope you don’t decide to take off my hand while I do it, is that ok? Because it’d make me feel a lot better about trying to heave a wounded wolf into the back of my car if there were a piece of leather between me and your razor sharp teeth, even if it wouldn’t actually stop you from doing anything.” She slowly extended her hands toward his face and as she got closer he lifted his head up off the ground as if to help her get the muzzle on him. “Now that is a good boy.” She stood up and sighed in relief, squaring her shoulders to the task at hand and squatting back down in preparation to hoist him up with nothing more than sheer willpower and thigh muscles that hadn’t seen a gym in months, but before she could even get her arms under him, he started trying to lift his own weight.

  “Ok, ok, easy now, I’ve got you,” she helped him get on his feet but he did most of the work himself, “Steady now boy, just a little lift into the Jeep and I’ll get you home and all fixed up, come on, come on.” Amazingly, it was as if he understood what she wanted, he got himself mostly into the back with very little effort on her part. Which was good, considering she’d probably have thrown her back out trying to pick him up, not to mention the pain her inevitably clumsiness would have caused him. Maybe he could sense that she wanted to help him. “Alright brave boy, we’ll get you straightened out,” she patted him quickly before closing the hatch. Now all she had to do was get him home, unload him, get him into the house, sew him up, bandage him, and spend the rest of the night worried he was going to tear her throat out in her sleep. Easy peasy.

  Chapter Two

  The second half of her nightly commute was considerably more interesting than the first half. She’d driven very slowly since every bump or turn she made caused a whine of pain to emit from behind, reminding her that she had a very large patient in the backseat, and bumps were hard to avoid. The old Jeep wasn’t known for its superior shocks, after all.

  Getting him in her house had been easier than she’d thought it would be, again he seemed to sense what it was she wanted from him and only needed minimal help getting himself out of the backseat and into her kitchen, where he was taking up the majority of the floor and panting heavily. The short walk had probably taken the last of his energy. Watching him limp into the house, whimpering with each step almost brought her to tears. He was trying so hard.

  “It’s alright now boy, we’ll get you fixed up,” his golden eyes stared up at her, full of what she imagined was trust and thanks. She had a problem with anthropomorphizing her patients but she couldn’t shake the feeling that this one really was different. Be-gloved, sterilized and surrounded with all of the equipment she could scrounge up from around her house and car, she began a more thorough examination. Broken leg, probably broken ribs like she’d guessed, and large gashes around his throat area and stomach. Her immediate assumption had been that he’d been hit by a car, but that was wrong, he had been in a fight. What in the world could do this much damage to an animal this size? He must have gotten away and collapsed on the road, his body just too beat up to continue.

  After she’d given him a good dose of pain medicine, she began talking to him as she gently cleaned his wounds and sewed them up. Working slowly and steadily, she hoped she wasn’t causing him any more pain than necessary.

  “You know you really shouldn’t be fighting anything big enough to harm you. Who’d you pick a fight with? Big Foot? The Abominable Snowman? Godzilla? You should be at the very tippy top of the food chain and yet here you are, broken and bleeding all over my kitchen floor. It’s a shame really, that good sense and size in mammals doesn’t have a higher correlation.”

  Finished with her ministrations she rubbed his head between his ears, his eyes blinking as he fought off unconsciousness. “You really are a beautiful boy, with all this red and cream hair. Cleaned up you’re probably a sight to see, majestic as hell, king of the mountain, hmm?” He made a sound deep in his throat, “Oh you like that description do you? Well, next time try not getting your ass kicked and laying down in the middle of the road where someone without the compassion of a saint might run right over you without a thought in the world.”

  Sidney stood up and surveyed herself and her surroundings. She was covered in blood and wolf hair and so was everything else in the kitchen. Letting out a huff, she started cleaning up the mess strewn around the large sleeping shape on the floor, “No good deed goes unpunished I guess.”

  Chapter Three

  Showering had felt marvelous after such an exhausting, and dirty, experience. She wrapped a big fluffy towel around herself and another one around her hair and walked into the kitchen to check on her patient. He was still lying on the floor but upright instead of on his side, his eyes alert and on her. A shiver of fear raced down her spine. How stupid was she to have brought a wild animal, a wolf, into her house? Very, sh
e concluded. She was a very very stupid girl. The pain medicine she’d given him should have knocked him out for at least half the night, but obviously she hadn’t given him a large enough dose, because it had only been an hour since she last checked on him and he was fully alert. It was hard to gauge for an animal that size when she was used to treating 25lb yippee dogs and 35lb lazy cats. At least he still had the muzzle on.

  “Um, hey there buddy, awake already?” He wagged his tail. “So you must be thirsty huh? Maybe a little hungry too?” Did she dare take the muzzle of to let him eat? Did she dare let him get hungry while he was in her house? She pondered her choices. She would definitely take a full wolf in her house over a hungry one. Careful not to make any sudden movements, she walked around him to the freezer and shuffled through the pitiful contents. Among the graveyard of half eaten pints of ice cream and unwanted Lean Gourmet dinners, she found one pound of ground beef, a solitary chicken breast, and some fish sticks. Well it’d have to do, she pulled it all out and laid it on the counter, at least she’d given up on being a vegetarian in high school or she’d really have a problem.

  “Well it’s not fresh off the bone and bloody, but microwaved and lukewarm will have to do for you tonight.” She unwrapped the food and deposited it all on a plate before shoving it in the microwave. Leaning against the counter while she waited, she studied the wolf and the wolf studied her.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. I can’t keep you here and when you’re better I can’t just release you into a neighborhood full of people. And tasty children.” What was she going to do with him? She should think things through better before acting so impulsively, this lesson, if nothing else, should have hit home by now.