by Eliza Gayle
ONE CRAZY WOLF
A Southern Shifters Novel
eliza gayle
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
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue Part 1
Epilogue Part 2
Also by eliza gayle
Books Writing as E.M. Gayle
ONE CRAZY WOLF
By ELIZA GAYLE
A Southern Shifters Novel
© 2019 ELIZA GAYLE
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Chapter One
Simon took another swig of beer as he surveyed the room from the shadowy corner of the Dark Moon bar. This was about the last place he wanted to be and yet here he sat pissed off and drinking because of circumstances out of his control. Most of his life’s work into shifter genetics had disappeared overnight and since then he couldn’t settle down.
Months of hard work, long nights and diligent research gone up in smoke all because the Alpha of the Blackwood pack had tangled with a fucking bear.
A low growl formed in his throat. Said bear stood behind the bar of Dark Moon right now, serving drinks and laughing it up with his friends, practically taunting him. Before now he’d had nothing against Calder and his presence here, but as he prepared to pick up the ashes of his undercover mission and return to his own pack after months of being away, bitterness threatened to choke him.
How easy had his life been before the Blackwoods? Before Kitty, a cougar shifter, showed up in their territory and got them involved with the entire Dark Moon crew? He sighed. That wasn’t fair.
He didn’t blame Kitty, the now mate to his alpha and best friend, Rafe. She’d been terrorized by her own clan after an unfair ruling that left her ostracized and relegated to the neutral zone—the one tiny strip of land that sat between the borders of the cougar clan and the wolf clan. That allowed for all kinds of shifters to congregate without fear of overstepping clan boundaries, or persecution for dozens of other bullshit crimes the councils might have in place at any given moment. The heart of said territory being the very place he sat in now.
“Hey Doc, you going to sit there all night and glare at Calder, or what?” Gage, another member of the Dark Moon crew questioned as he slid into the empty chair next to him.
“Fuck off,” he retorted. He normally liked Gage, but tonight he wasn’t in the mood for company even if the shifter had a point.
The shifter laughed, taking a swig of the beer in his hand. “You’d like that wouldn’t you?” He suddenly leaned forward. “But here’s the thing. Calder is a part of our crew whether you or anyone else likes it. And the tension running between the two of you is making people uncomfortable. Hell, it’s making me uncomfortable and I like you. So what’s it gonna be Doc? You going to join us in a round or are you heading home now?”
The thinly veiled threat in Gage’s question did not go over his head. He might be the only doctor in these parts, which gave him a wide berth, but that didn’t mean they were going to let him start trouble in their own bar.
Not that he’d come her for that.
Why then? Why was he still sitting here feeling sorry for himself? The Blackwood pack had taken him by force and tried to make him a prisoner. He’d allowed that illusion because of the breadth of research and equipment those men had at their disposal. He had no idea how they’d gotten their hands on all of it, but he refused to pass up the opportunity to do real research on his clan’s serious fertility issues. And because his Alpha had agreed it was a good idea.
“Relax. I’m just having a beer. Your bear is safe from me.”
Gage snorted. “It wasn’t the bear I was concerned for. I swear, Simon, for such a smart guy you sure can be thick sometimes. Lucky for you, his bear is patient and he appreciates how you check up on his pregnant mate. We shifters get a little crazy when it comes to our women you know.” The shifter stood and clapped him on the back. “You and Calder are both good guys, you just need to let the dust settle and the time you spent with the Blackwoods to fade. Until then, stay out of trouble, okay?”
With that, Gage left the table and disappeared through the door that led to the kitchen and the access to the upstairs where most of them lived in the second floor apartments.
He did want to forget about the Blackwoods, but for now that was all but impossible. The rogue pack had also been experimenting with a new breeding program no ruling council would have ever approved. Especially considering it included the humans. The working theory of it all hinged on the idea that when one of them bred a human, the shifter DNA would be so completely dominant the resulting child would be as close to pure shifter as possible.
Unlike the crossbreeding of shifters, where DNA competed for dominance and resulted in mixed shifter species that the councils deemed volatile and dangerous. Their stance made Simon’s blood boil.
Any shifter could be volatile and dangerous. He’d yet to be presented with any scientific evidence that suggested cross species mating would result in an unacceptable shifter.
Fuck, he hated those bastards sitting on the council and their antiquated rules.
Their refusal to progress with the times made it easy for these rogue groups to flourish as they abandoned the clans and the rules that governed them.
Of course, there were always exceptions to be made, particularly when science and power got involved. Case in point, the white cougars. They’d all been secretly bred in a lab with a specific set of criteria and chemical enhancement that did actually lead to shifters with superior skills. That decades long experiment had also come to a screeching halt when one of their shifters stopped toeing the line, got pregnant and refused to be a test subject again.
Niki had proved to be more extraordinary than anyone had known, even if she did scare the hell out of most of their kind. He smirked. He liked the idea that she kept many of their kind on their toes.
He didn’t believe the Blackwoods weren’t completely off the range with their ideas about humans. It might have worked too, had he not learned their intentions with the first human test subject. They didn’t just want her to get pregnant and bear wolf cubs. Nope. That breakthrough wasn’t good enough for that criminal element. They were also going to use her to re-invigorate the warrior program that had been used to breed the white cougars.
They wanted to manipulate the DNA so that their wolf young would be born superior to all other shifters. They basically wanted super soldiers. Not only would the council not allow this, but he and Rafe were also against it and he’d done his best to sabotage the effort by making sure the human’s invitro didn’t take. Unfortunately, they took that failure personally and when the woman tried to leave, they went after her and their actions wound up costing the pack everything. Including the death of their alpha.
Now science would have to wait for nature.
Which wasn’t going to take
long, considering two of the Dark Moon crew had recently mated humans. They were both currently pregnant. One by a hybrid shifter and the other the bear.
He was most interested in the bear cub since the whole point of his experiments were to discover whether a non mixed shifter could breed successfully with a human.
Which all led him back to his original frustrations and role in his clan.
The infertility issues plaguing them.
The failure to procreate certainly wasn’t for the lack of trying. He leaned back in his chair, stretched out his long legs and crossed his ankles. He’d certainly done his part in the effort and earned a variety of nicknames because of it.
Hounddog, Romeo, Casanova, etc. etc. Whatever. Was it his fault that so many of the females of his pack were attracted to him? It wasn’t as if they didn’t know what they were getting themselves into. Whatever instinct many of his pack mates had that made them want to settle down with one woman seemed to be missing from his DNA. He was fine with that. His work as a doctor had become the most important thing in his life and that required a lot of attention.
Bonafide doctors who knew of and could treat a shifter were few and far between. For the last few months his facility had been barely able to handle the workload without him. He should be happy to have returned. What happened to a now fractured pack of rogue wolves who refused to operate within council rules and regulations wasn’t his concern anymore.
It was time to let it all go. Wait and see would have to be his new motto. And yet, that unsettled not sure what came next feeling clung to him like an unwanted virus.
It kept him rooted in his chair for a while longer as he contemplated what came next. Another beer, a female in his bed, or his new reality. He made no move towards any of the females, nor did he move towards the door or his motorcycle that sat outside waiting to carry him to a home he hadn’t seen in months.
Simon blew out a hard breath. This inexplicable turmoil stirring him up made no sense. He didn’t need the danger of living with the Blackwoods, nor did he need the stress of living a double life. All he had to do was get his ass back home and get back to his old life.
Simple and easy. And just going to the clinic for work wasn’t enough.
He glanced over at the bar again and a surge of anger fired through his blood.
This was all because of a bear.
It didn’t help that his logical brain knew that his anger was misplaced. Calder had simply defended his new mate. There were some things that easily superseded the bullshit breeding contract she’d made with the Blackwoods.
For one, her status as a true mate. That kind of connection was often coveted and quite rare. And for two, as far as anyone other than him and Rafe knew at the time, she wasn’t able to conceive. That had made her useless to the pack and their grand experiment. The whole point of them recruiting humans had been to test different fertilization theories, not start a stupid war. Unfortunately, their first attempt had made them possessive and blown the entire operation.
As he sat there lamenting his current situation, the door of the bar opened and a woman he didn’t recognize swept in. Every patron in the place turned and stared, including him. The room grew deathly silent as Simon joined the crowd in checking out what had to be the most unexpected newcomer to town.
The first thing he noticed was the fiery red hair. Hell, it was kind of hard not to when it was the radiant color of fall leaves at their peak and it flowed all the way down her back and past her ass. And while he couldn’t quite see more than the side from this angle, he got the impression of a curvy butt that made a man like him want to take a bite.
His inner wolf growled.
He fought the urge to straighten in his chair and instead raised his glass for a deceiving lazy sip of his beer while he continued his perusal.
She was unusually tall too. Nearly as tall as him and he was almost six-four. As she stilled and placed her hands on her hips, his eyes were drawn to her beautiful face.
Fuck.
Porcelain skin, lush lips almost as red as her hair and green eyes that flashed in the dim light of the Dark Moon. At least she wasn’t a female tourist who’d wandered off the beaten path. No. This one was all shifter. Only he couldn’t quite tell which kind.
He closed his eyes and inhaled the scents of the room deep so that he could filter them out until he was left with hers. Only he didn’t need a damn filter to catch hers. It was fucking potent. More so than anyone else in the room.
There were many layers in fact. Fresh air and cold bitter wind. That didn’t exactly make sense considering it was early fall but still felt like summer. He also caught pine and flowers, which made perfect sense. The Dark Moon was just far enough away from town to be surrounded by trees and wildflowers, making it the perfect retreat for many shifters to come and go. Even unseen if that’s how they preferred and they knew Bhric, the alpha here at Dark Moon, well enough to use the back door.
Next he catalogued the spicy scent of the woman before him. That came with attitude and somehow didn’t surprise him at all. The majority of shifter women were neither meek nor mild. They were generally as strong as the men and willing to fight for what they wanted. And he didn’t totally doubt that there was some science behind the red-headed gene that made them extra saucy, especially considering hers came with an extra sexy layer of smokiness to it.
Simon shifted in his chair and tried to ignore his growing erection. While he did have a thing for red hair, the same could be said for any pretty woman willing to temporarily walk into his sphere no matter the color of her hair. As long as they were prepared to walk back out when all was said and done.
Below all those layers there was one more scent he hadn’t quite identified. It was almost as if it was playing coy, as if trying to hide from him. Yeah, he knew that made no sense, but that’s where his mind went with the elusive scent anyway.
He pushed everything else from his mind and took another deep breath. This scent was much darker than what he expected. Even a little desperate in its intensity. Almost palpable even. And it made his cock go suddenly so hard he almost couldn’t breathe. As he felt an overwhelming pull from that scent alone that he almost couldn’t control, realization dawned…
“What? Have you never seen a woman before?”
Her saucy question came out on an accented lilt that made his body instantly harden more. She might not have been talking directly to him and instead addressing the entire room who sat staring at her, half with their mouths hanging open, but he wanted to tell her no. At least not one like her.
This woman—a stranger to these parts—wasn’t just a shifter. She was THE shifter. A dragon. The nearly fabled creature said to be the origin of all shifters. A creature who hadn’t existed in these parts in more decades than he’d lived.
And she was in heat.
Chapter Two
Kenzie shifted side to side before settling her hands on her hips, uncomfortable being the sole focus of attention at the moment. Being surrounded by a roomful of shifters, even if they weren’t dragons, put her on edge. These men might not automatically know about her—uhh—situation, but they were red-blooded men on shifter steroids nonetheless.
They could affect her without them even knowing why.
And she wasn’t here to fight or get laid. She just needed to take a minute before she went up the mountain in search of her brother. Steel herself, so to say, before dealing with that confrontation.
So the first thing she did was dial up the sarcasm. Men were men no matter what country she stood in and very few of them enjoyed being called out for acting like assholes.
In fact, most of them ignored her question and went back to what they were doing. A few grunted first and then turned away. Although one in particular stared at her from the corner with an intensity that constricted her chest and made it difficult to breathe. Not that she would turn and give him the satisfaction of her full attention. But from what she could tell from her excellent peripheral
vision, he wasn’t making a move to look away or come near her either.
Fine. She could live with that for now. Instead of dwelling on him, even if he was damned good looking from what she could see, she focused on putting one foot in front of the other as she headed toward the long bar that ran nearly the full length of the back wall. It had been one hell of a long journey and she needed a beer.
She headed for a stool at the far end, as far away from the other patrons as she could get, and took a seat. While much of the tension still winding her tight didn’t leave, some of the stress from traveling melted away as she propped her arms along the scarred, wooden surface.
Desperate to relax and let her gaze wander, she took in everything about her surroundings. From the basic, but clean concrete floor with tables scattered all across the main room, to the area in the back where there were multiple pool tables set up and currently surrounded by shifters drinking heavily while they played their games.
Didn’t seem like the bars in America differed all that much from her home across the pond.
The entire time she observed, she got the distinct feeling her single mystery shifter still stared at her relentlessly. The raised hairs on the back of her neck proved it. Although why she cared she didn’t know. He didn’t know her. Couldn’t know anything about her. A dragon’s ability to mask themselves from other shifters was one of the things that made them superior.
Her secret was safe—for now. There were no dragons in this establishment. If there had been, she wouldn’t have made it two feet inside the door before they’d attacked. As it were, she could finally relax. She’d left Scotland and dragon country far behind and here she could be anonymous.
