Lone Wolf’s Attack
Bobbie Jo Hart
Contents
Blurb
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
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 Bobbie Jo Hart
Cover Art by Moonstruck Cover Design & Photography
Editing by BBB Publishings
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in print or electronic form without the express, written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to any organization, event, or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Adult Reading Material
Created with Vellum
Blurb
Werewolves are anything but a fairytale for Melanie Lopez. Men with wolves in them are as vicious and rabid as they come, for only wild animals can truly tame their beasts. Women who carry wolves get ripped up from the inside out, unable to shift and sentenced to a painful death.
Mel’s mother is on her deathbed, fighting back her wolf as it tries to claim her. The same thing will happen to Mel. She can already feel her wolf getting stronger. So she sets out on the hunt for a miracle cure, plus a bonus—the head of her mother’s rapist. He told her to send his son to the Wolf Point Academy. Here, men—and only men—learn to control their wolves. Women are never welcome.
Until Mel forces her way in.
The customs are barbaric, the men even more so, and the treatment is hellish. The clock is ticking for her dying mother, but so is Mel’s anger. These men are set on taming her. If that fails, they’ll kill her without hesitation. Most of them are rich, muscular, brooding men with feral wolves prowling inside of them. Quite frankly, they’re all assholes. Not to mention the only slightly trustworthy professor, Dr. Aspens.
Every girl’s dream if she has daddy issues.
These men could be her and her mother’s salvation… or her doom at this Academy. Besides, Mel doesn’t have time for love or lust.
This lone wolf is on the attack and nothing will get in her way.
1
Hospital coffee tasted like hot tar. Wincing, I made myself take another sip and rested my head back against the wall. Actually, more like tar that had been boiling for thousands of years. La Brea level shit.
I’d still drink it. It’s not like I had the luxury of another option.
The sharp bite of antiseptic burned my nose. It was all I could do not to bolt for the exit. The steady, low drone of beeps and whirs from countless machines keeping people alive up and down the hallway had become my entire existence.
Literally. I had nowhere else to go. We lost the apartment when Mom first got sick. Luckily, most of the nurses were cool about letting me sleep in her room. They knew I didn’t have much more time with her. Not that anyone would actually tell me that to my face.
The low murmur of voices from inside the room stilled and metal rings jangled as Dr. Sympathy opened the scant privacy curtain. I hated her on principle, though she’d done everything she could to keep Mom comfortable. All the medical tests and CAT scans in the world wouldn’t tell them why she was sick.
I knew, but they wouldn’t believe me if I told them. They’d hustle me to the west wing for a mental evaluation if I started babbling about there being a wolf trapped inside of her. However, it wouldn’t matter if I did tell them, and by some chance, they believed me. It wasn’t like it would change anything.
Mom would still be dying.
Dr. Sympathy gave me a grave, gentle smile and squeezed my shoulder as she passed. A meaningless compassionate gesture that made me want to scream and throw the steaming cup of tar in her face.
Mom was dying, and I would be next. No amount of shitty shoulder squeezes could fix that.
Gritting my teeth, I fought down my rage and stepped into the room. My fierce grip demolished the flimsy paper cup, leaking hot coffee over my fingers. Pissed that I’d wasted a whole quarter on the shitty coffee, I made myself slam back the last few swallows and crushed the cup in my fist. I wanted to tear it into a thousand pieces while bellowing and snarling like a maddened beast. Maybe if I ripped apart this entire room, this wouldn’t be her death bed.
I had to settle for slamming the balled-up cup into the tiny trash can. I stared down at the trash, mentally taking note of all the rubbish. My destroyed cup, discarded latex gloves, and juice boxes, which were the only sustenance Mom could keep down.
My hands shook, and I fought for a breath. I couldn’t have a breakdown in here. Not in front of her.
“Mellie,” Mom whispered gently. “Come, sit with me.”
Only she could get away with calling me such a ridiculously girly name. Melanie was my given name, but I went by Mel. The name Mellie belonged to a girl in a pretty pink dress and shiny white shoes with satin ribbons in her perfectly curled hair. With a healthy mother and a devoted father who hadn’t disappeared before she was even born.
Mel fit me so much better. An angry, bitter girl with a dying mother and a beast inside her.
Turning without meeting her gaze, I walked closer and sat down on the edge of the hospital bed. It was easier than taking a seat in the nearby chair because then I didn’t have to face her. I wouldn’t have to see her thin, pale face with her skin drawn tight over her cheekbones. Her skin had become fragile and almost transparent, showing all the tiny blood vessels beneath the surface. She looked as if she was eighty-five years old, not thirty-five. My badass mother who’d taught me to ride a bike and then a motorcycle, who’d arranged for me to meet dozens of street fighters so I could learn how to protect myself.
Struck down in her prime.
I could hardly look at her.
The unfairness of it all made me so angry that I couldn’t breathe through the constriction in my throat and chest. I clenched my fists, digging my nails into my palms, trying to use a bit of pain to cut through the fury.
Danny—one of Mom’s boyfriends who’d taught me how to protect myself with a knife—always said not to fight angry because it would cloud my judgment. I’d loved him more than any of her other boyfriends, but I still thought he’d been full of shit.
I did my best thinking when I was pissed off. I had to. If I waited until I was calm to make a decision…
I would’ve died a long time ago. I was never not angry. My rage sustained me. If I ever stopped being angry, all this shit would get to me. We didn’t have time for that, and I especially couldn’t do that in front of Mom.
“I’ve never lied to you, right?”
Swallowing hard, I nodded. She’d told me the truth when it would have been easier for us both if she’d lied. When I was younger, I’d wished she’d never told me that my father had raped her when she was only seventeen. She still bore the scars from his attack. I’d never understood why she’d told me. How could she be glad that she’d had me?
How could she love me, when half of me was a monster?
But she did. She’d given me all the lessons and tools at her meager disposal to make sure I’d be able to survive on my own. Even then, she must have known she was dying. Now that my wolf was stirring, I was fucking glad she’d told me. So I could be on the lookout for skank-ass shitheads like him who might try to “tame” my wolf the same way.
>
So help me god if I ever found the asshole who’d sired me, I’d cut his heart out. I’d fucking destroy him.
“Dr. Sampson said my heart is failing. Alone, that wouldn’t necessarily be enough to kill me, but my other organs are starting to shut down too. My kidneys aren’t working like they should. My white-blood-cell count is through the roof. There’s no way they can try a heart transplant unless they can get the infection under control.”
“It’s not an infection,” I choked out, the rage churning inside of me. How could such brilliant doctors be so fucking stupid? Could they really do nothing to help her? What was the point of all their schooling if they just watched her die with me?
She laid her hand on my thigh. I stared at the bruises from the IV, and my eyes burned. “They don’t know that, Mellie. Medically, what’s wrong with me doesn’t make any sense to them. They’ve pumped me full of the strongest antibiotics known to man, and I’m still dying. Nothing’s helping.”
A tear dripped down my cheek and splattered on her hand. This was fucking bullshit. So we just had to stand by and watch her die?
“I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”
Wiping my cheeks furiously, I scrambled to my feet and paced in the narrow space between her bed and the wall. A caged wolf. Trapped. My heart thudded so hard I could hear the jackhammer thumping in my skull with every beat. My skin crawled.
But what shamed me to my core was the matching spark of excitement in my blood. My wolf wanted to run the countryside and hunt in new territory. She wanted to be free and wild without a care in the world. Let alone worrying about a sick, dying mother. It made me hate myself even more.
Guilt churned my stomach. I loved Mom with every ounce of my being. There was no way I could leave her. Even though watching her die a slow, miserable death scared the shit out of me, I’d rather be here holding her hand than out roaming the countryside completely alone. I wanted Mom to know that someone cared—that I cared.
“Your only hope is to find the academy your father told us about.”
I whirled around, lips twisted in a snarl, and my teeth bared. “The motherfucker said to send his son to Wolf Point Academy. Girls are better off left to die of exposure, right? Isn’t that what he said? Fuck that guy.”
Mom might be dying, but the wolf-light in her eyes still burned as brightly as my rage. “You’re going to prove him wrong. You’re going to prove them all wrong.”
We’d researched Wolf Point Academy for years and still didn’t know much about the small, private school in the wilds of Minnesota on the shore of Wolf Point Lake. Public records and Google searches proved the place existed but not much else. It wasn’t a high school, but it wasn’t a college either. There weren’t any articles or announcements about their many success stories and graduations, but one general interest article did say it was a men-only campus. Color me shocked.
So we’d gone back to our family history, trying to find a few more clues about our heritage. Lopez, my mother’s line, had countless legends about violent, early deaths. Her mother had died when Mom was only five, torn apart by wild dogs according to the police report. She had no idea who her father was. Her uncle had raised her, a gruff man of few words, who’d flat out refused to ever discuss her parents. The All-American Dream if you asked me.
He’d managed to hide what he was until she was fifteen. One night, Mom saw him shift into a huge gray wolf. She’d never forgotten the way his eyes burned when he turned and looked at her. He’d never come back after that, leaving her to fend for herself. Until the man who fathered me had found her.
His eyes had burned the same way. His wolf had glared out of his human eyes, betraying what he was. She’d wanted to learn more about our kind, because by then, she’d known there was a wolf inside her too.
Instead, my father had raped and abandoned her without even telling her his name. She’d only been able to learn a few basic things from him—but it was all we had to go on.
Like I said, fuck that guy.
According to him, only men shifted. Women ultimately died, unable to control the growing beast inside them. Females were only good for siring more wolves. Yeah, my asshole rapist father was a real winner. No surprise there.
The most important lesson he’d taught her, of course, was trust no bitch, but especially one who carried a wolf inside him.
The last thing I wanted to do was go to this academy—where a bunch of young male wolves were probably frothing at the mouth to get at a female and tame them. I would rather die than be tamed.
“Your wolf is stirring,” Mom continued. “You need to learn how to control it, or you’re going to end up just like me and Mama and god only knows how many other women.”
“We’ve been over this. Women aren’t accepted there.”
“Fuck ‘em,” Mom retorted, her voice breaking with emotion. Her face twisted in pain and desperation—a feeling I now knew all too well. “You’ve got nowhere else to go.”
I clenched my jaws, fighting down the scream of rage that boiled inside me. The wolf made my emotions more feral and uncontrollable. Although I knew she didn’t mean it that way, it almost sounded like pity. Like despite it all, she felt sorry for me. She’s the one who’s fucking dying, but sure, let’s all worry about poor, homeless, soon to be orphaned Mellie. The thought made me sicker than the hospital coffee.
“Go, Mellie. Learn how to tame your wolf, and then come back and show me how it’s done. You’ll be able to save me.”
It was a lie. We both knew it. Even if I managed to do the impossible and become a full wolf shifter, it might take weeks or months or even years.
Time that she didn’t have. We both knew how this ended, no matter how much we fought it.
I shook my head sharply. “I can’t leave you alone." To die.
Mom looked back at me steadily, her eyes burning with strength and determination despite her failing body. When her eyes burned like that, I almost forgot she was sick. “It might be too late for me, but it’s not too late for you. I need you to do this for me. I don’t mind dying, Mellie, but I need to know you’re safe.”
Gathering her strength, she lurched up and cupped my face in her hands. Her fingers dug into my cheeks with her determination.
“He’s out there, Mellie. I want him to pay for what he did to me. What he did to us. I want vengeance. I want that fucker’s head on a platter.”
She gasped, her hands trembling. I wrapped my arms around her, cradling her against me. She was so thin. So frail. Crying, I gently laid her back onto the bed. Her fingers tangled in my hair, holding me close so she could stare into my eyes.
“Go. Learn how to free your wolf. Hunt down the motherfucker who sired you and rip his throat out. Then I can rest in peace. Promise me, Mellie.”
I swallowed hard and nodded. Every shred of humanity in me begged me not to go, but the wolf was stronger, and I was angrier. Logic told me that regardless if I were here or not, Mom would die. The least I could do was grant her dying wish. “I will. I promise.”
“I love you, baby,” she mumbled, already drifting off into unconsciousness as if she’d used up the last of her reserves. My hands started to shake when her eyes fluttered shut.
“Love you too, Mom.”
I stared down at her, trying to memorize her face. It was easy—we looked like sisters, though my hair was red thanks to a drugstore bottle of dye. The bit of curl and wave I had must be from my father, and I was slightly taller. I was already a year older than she was when she’d had me, but I couldn’t even fathom what it must be like to be a mother. To be responsible for another human being.
She’d sacrificed so much to keep me, when it would have been easier to leave me somewhere. Now, she was sacrificing her own comfort in her final days to make sure I was taken care of. The thought of her dying alone while I was gone…
A snarl rumbled out of my mouth. Just another log to fuel my rage and hatred for the man who’d sired me.
I kisse
d her forehead and tucked the sheet up around her chin. I hoped this wouldn’t be the last time I saw her. Then I picked up my backpack with the last of my belongings and strode out of the hospital without a single glance back.
It was time for this lone wolf to go on the hunt.
2
An old weathered sign with a barely-visible wolf’s head in the corner was the only indication that I might be headed to the right place. They sure didn’t want people stumbling across Wolf Point Academy by accident.
As I rounded a curve, a small mom-and-pop gas station came into view. I checked my fuel gauge and groaned. My rebuilt Harley got great gas mileage, but I was almost running on fumes. So was my wallet. I had one Jackson left and I was starving too. Feed the bike… or feed myself?
It all depended on how much further the academy was. Though it’d be smart to have enough fuel to ride hard and fast if I needed to make a quick break. I settled on putting half my cash into the bike, and then wandered into the store hoping to find something decent to eat. I’d been living on hospital vending machine junk food for weeks. My body wanted something hot and meaty. A real rib-sticker.
My wolf thought something bloody would be even better.
Suppressing a shudder, I scanned the store and made a beeline for the small deli stand in the corner. I had enough cash to order a foot-long with double steak and cheese. My stomach rumbled as I watched the lady make my sandwich. She gave me a wink and put another strip of cheese on the bread.
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