by Holley Trent
Esther put her head down on the deli table and sighed. “And my father.”
“Don’t sweat it,” Adam said. “They’re gonna give you just as hard a time as they do Nixon, because that’s what parents do when they’re allowed to. Just ask Vic. He never had the luxury of being away from us. We’ve been around to witness every part of his life, and I’m sure sometimes he wishes that weren’t the case.”
“Ashley doesn’t seem to mind.” Esther sat up in time to see Adam shrug. “I think she’s just happy to be happy. If that makes any sense.” It made plenty of sense to Esther. She certainly understood what happiness felt like.
Finally.
She squeezed Nixon’s knee under the table, and then pushed back her chair. “I guess I’ll head back to the bookstore and try to get some work done. I’ve got to fill a bunch of eBay orders before the mailman comes for the day. That should distract me from looking at my phone every ten minutes to see how close to Jersey Anton and Vic are.”
“Sounds like a good idea to me.” Adam shuffled over to the soda dispenser and topped off his Coke. “Challenge yourself not to check again until it’s time to pick the kids up from school. Your anxiety level will be lower.”
“Just get your boss started on one of her talking marathons,” Nixon said under his breath. “That’ll distract you for sure.”
She gave his shoulder a poke and hitched her bag onto her shoulder. “Be nice.”
Nice. A nice wolf. If she hadn’t been in Norseton, she wouldn’t have thought such a thing existed. Nixon proved they existed every day, though.
He was a little better than just “nice.” He was wonderful, and everything she could have wanted in a mate, if she’d known she had options at all. He was the best sort of option.
She pulled in a deep breath, let it out, and tried to smile. “Not gonna worry.”
Nixon kissed her cheek on his way past and held the deli door open for her. “You shouldn’t.”
“But how long do you think it’ll be before my old alpha notices they’re missing?”
Out on the sidewalk, Adam checked his phone, and then slid it into his jeans pocket. “You said yourself that today is the start of a new dues cycle. He probably won’t notice they’re gone until a week after they haven’t paid, right?”
“That’ll probably be how long it takes for his accountant to notice.”
“Once they’re on the way here, you don’t need to worry.”
“I just hope Anton and Vic don’t do anything reckless. I know they said they were going to try to get as many wolves to leave as they could convince, but I worry about them being watched and about the pack’s enforcers getting suspicious.”
Nixon kissed the top of her head and gave her a squeeze. “Don’t worry about those two. They’ve been doing gigs like this for going on twenty years now. They know the geography. They know who all the major players are. Trust they’re not gonna do anything stupid. They’re not gonna do anything to compromise the safety of this pack, or the folks they’re nudging out of the Jersey pack. They’re good at their jobs.”
“I believe you. I just worry if something goes wrong, it’ll be my fault. Everyone was so eager to help me, and they volunteered to. I shouldn’t be worried about people’s motives anymore, but—”
“Hey.” Adam gave her chin a gentle chuck. “Sooner or later, someone would have brought the idea up. We’ve got a new pack here, and we’re settled. The time has come for us to start putting our families back together. You just reminded us it’s a priority item we can’t ignore.”
“Sorry to be a troublemaker.”
Nixon got her moving toward the bookstore, chucking in chorus with Adam. “Seems to run in your family, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t proud I married into it.”
“Aw.” She wanted to cover her flushed face, but accepting compliments was something else she was trying to get used to. Coming from Nixon, the encouragement was so much sweeter.
SERIES NOTE
Dear Reader,
If you joined me for the first five Norseton Wolves novellas, you may already know that these stories were spun off from my Afótama Legacy series. The wolves show up in The Chieftain’s Daughter having tracked a threat to Queen Tess, who later offers them jobs. The wolves show up throughout the series, as do the modern Vikings in the Norseton Wolf stories.
I’ll include the full list of stories below.
You might be asking now, “What’s ‘Reckless Desires’?”
In a nutshell, it’s a multi-author collection of stories about wounded alpha shifters and the beauties who soothe them. My Norseton Wolves stories Elder, Scout, and Seer are all a part of that collection, as are eighteen stories from authors Anna Lowe, Jacqueline Sweet, J.K. Harper, Liv Brywood, Elianne Adams, and Olivia Arran. They’ll be rolling out through the end of June 2016.
Learn more about the Reckless Desires collection at the series website.
OTHER NORSETON WOLVES STORIES
Beast
Loner
Idler
Scion
Maker
Scout (coming June 2016)
Seer (coming June 2016)
Turn the page for a sneak peek of Scout.
SCOUT
-FROM CHAPTER ONE-
Paul Berger suspected his bedside demeanor could use some brightening, but not once in the ten years since he’d graduated from medical school had he been accused of intentionally aggravating a patient. There was a first time for everything.
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered.
As the wild woman in his care snarled and charged at him, he dodged and weaved around her. He wasn’t running from the nude werewolf. In the past, he’d tackled far more fearsome patients who were plain-old human. He was trying to find a safe angle to grab her from. The wolf lady, though, was agile and wasn’t afraid to throw a punch.
“She wouldn’t have swung at you like that unless you’d done something to her.” The man called Arnold, who was the wild woman’s twin, blocked the door of the bedroom—the only real favor he’d done for Paul in the week since Paul had started making house calls for his sister.
His sister. The wild woman. Petra.
Petra had been comatose until a few hours prior, and Paul had been tending to her in spite of the fact that he wasn’t a veterinarian. He worked in the small, sleepy emergency care department of the Norseton community hospital, and he’d never in his life tended an animal. Or even a person who was just an animal sometimes.
Before Norseton’s wolfpack had moved into the community to head up security for his clan leaders, Paul had never encountered a shapeshifter face to face. He thought he would have known if he had. If all of them put off the same kind of energy as the wolves in Norseton, there was no way he wouldn’t have pegged them. He was a witch, though. Or at least, something close enough to one. He was probably a little more attended to weird shit than the average E.R. doc.
“You know damn well I didn’t do anything to her,” he snarled at Arnold in response to the snarl the other man had targeted at him first.
Paul’s bedside manner perhaps wasn’t the sunniest of all the medical care providers in the community, but he was a good doctor and everyone knew that. They didn’t call on him because they wanted someone who’d be tender. They called him because he didn’t back down from challenges.
He didn’t appreciate Arnold’s accusing tone. Paul was doing him a favor.
Petra charged at Paul again, white teeth bared and dark almond eyes narrowed. She made some wordless, screeching sound, and reflexively, he bent.
He rammed his shoulder into her belly and hauled her—flailing limbs and all—to the bed.
That’s enough from you, she-beast.
“Arnold, grab my bag,” Paul said.
The bed she’d hadn’t moved more than an inch in on in the entire week since she’d arrived had become a chaotic swirl of torn covers and dented wood. She’d waked and gone wild, and Arnold had claimed Paul had been the trigge
r.
Paul hadn’t done shit but to step into the room, warming the end of his stethoscope just like he had fifteen other times.
He narrowly missed the swipe of her hand near his cheek, but not the nasty words coming off her sharp tongue.
“Degenerate bastard. Fucking loser. Sadistic asshole.”
“Yeah? I’ve been called worse.” He turned her over onto her belly, pinned her arms behind her back, and pressed his knee to the top of her shoulder.
Still, she writhed and fought—very nearly throwing him off. She might have been tiny at barely over five feet, the best he could tell, but Paul wasn’t a small man. He probably had eighty pounds and at least ten inches on her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Arnold stood at the end of the dresser lamely holding Paul’s bag. Halfway across the room instead of next to Paul where the bag could have done him some good.
“What do I look like I’m doing? I’m trying to keep the wild woman from hurting herself. Perhaps you could let her know that I’m not here voluntarily so she can direct her vitriol to someone more appropriate, hmm?”
“…the fuck off me!” she shouted.
“The angel has such a spirited voice.” He scoffed.
For a week, he’d imagined that the voice would have been bell-like and sweet, but there was a huskiness to it—an unexpected strength coming out of that small body that extended no welcome to strangers. She probably considered Paul strange enough.
The feeling was mutual.
Look for SCOUT on June 6.
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ABOUT HOLLEY TRENT
Holley Trent writes contemporary and paranormal romances ranging from sensual to erotic that are usually set in her home state. Her humor is sometimes subtle, often ribald, and regularly inappropriate. If any of her stories seem overly serious at first glance–keep reading.
She’s a winner of the inaugural CIM-RWA Abalone Award (for My Nora) and a three-time Colorado Romance Writers Award of Excellence finalist (My Nora, Calculated Exposure, and A Demon in Waiting). A Demon in Waiting was a RomCon Readers’ Crown finalist in 2014. Her Den of Sin novella Winterball was a 2015 Passionate Plume award winner.
To see her full list of books, visit holleytrent.com.
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COPYRIGHT AND CREDITS
ELDER
Copyright © 2016 by Holley Trent
Excerpt SCOUT © 2016 by Holley Trent
Cover art by Jacqueline Sweet
Copy edits by K. Stein, Missed Period Editing
All rights reserved. Reproduction of any part of this book in any format, except for reviewing purposes, is allowed only with prior consent of the author.
ELDER is a work of fiction. Names, places, entities, and scenarios in this book are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
