Escaping Monsters: A Reverse Harem Wolf Shifter Romance (Grayhaven Book 1)

by Rita Stradling

  “How old are you?” Lucas asked.

  I rolled over just enough so I could see his handsome face without looking directly at my hand. “Is this for my chart?”

  “I’m on my lunch break.” His eyes shone with his interest. “This is the closest thing I’ve had to a date in a long time.”

  “Well, if you think cutting women open is a date, there’s probably a reason for that.”

  Lucas burst out in a laugh that made his shoulders shake. “Fair point. Don’t make me laugh after I get my scalpel out, okay?”

  “I won’t, and as for your question, I’m forever twenty-seven and technically thirty-seven. How about you?”

  “Forever thirty-seven, technically much… much older,” he said.

  “Thirty-seven,” I looked over his features. I would have put him at a damn sexy forty-five.

  He inhaled deeply. “Life aged you faster back when I was human.” Lucas pulled a ring off his hand, setting it on the counter, and my stomach squeezed as I realized that I hadn’t checked for a wedding ring before I started flirting with the sexy veterinarian.

  “Beautiful ring,” I said with a nod to the intricate band on the counter. “Is it a wedding ring?”

  “Yes. It was.” Lucas’ brows lifted and he nodded back. “It was my mother’s band. I wear it on my pinky.”

  I bit my lip. “Ah… I thought you took it off your ring finger.”

  “Nope.” Lucas held up his hand, showing me a little ring indent on his pinky finger and nothing on his ring finger. “I was married once before, a long time ago, but this ring here was only ever my mother’s.” His gaze traveled far away again as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves. The look faded quickly, and his gaze returned to mine. “So, Teagan, I’m going to need you to direct me on how to immobilize you without anesthesia.”

  “Command me and mean it. It’s as simple as that. It’s going to feel really good. Dominating me is the werewolf equivalent of cocaine, and you shouldn’t feel bad about feeling good, because I told you to do it.”

  He licked his lips. “Can you tell I’m nervous? It’s been a long time since I used my dominance on another wolf.”

  “We don’t have to do this if it makes you uncomfortable,” I said, even though, damn, it was going to be a serious problem if I had a glass shard in my paw.

  “No. I can handle this. I just like to be honest when I can.” His gloved finger rubbed over the pad of my hand, almost absently. Lucas’ eyes met mine, and he said, “Keep your right hand completely still.”

  The order pressed down on my will, and, fuck, it was strong. The soft-spoken vet was hiding a wealth of dominance. Automatically, my hackles rose to fight it, but I let the impulse pass.

  “It worked,” I whispered as his emotions washed over me. I could feel the spring of confidence and pride swelling up in his chest like he could do anything. With it, his pride laced with a deeper cold shame.

  “Lucas, I asked you to do this. You’re helping me. Everyone experiences that ego-boost feeling.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’re feeling my emotions right now?”

  “Sorry. I should have clarified that before you started. Whenever werewolves dominate me, I can feel their emotions. I felt the emotions of your alpha and that bartender Ace last night while they dominated me, and they likely felt some fraction of what you’re feeling now.”

  “I guess it’s only fair that you feel my emotions, because that means we’re both vulnerable.” It was kind of him to say, but truly, he was the one doing me a favor. “Are you ready? I’ll go as fast as I safely can.”

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  There was pressure, and then pain sliced through the meat of my palm. I closed my eyes as the sharp ache thrummed through my body. The pain stretched, like nails biting into my skin, and I sucked in my breath.

  “Maybe if you talk?” Lucas suggested.

  “So, Grayhaven is a supernatural town? I didn’t know that that was a thing,” I said quickly.

  “I’m not sure it is a thing. So far as I know, it’s only Grayhaven,” Lucas said, his voice sounding distracted.

  That was good. I wanted his attention on the painful, throbbing things he was doing to my hand.

  “So, I’m assuming the bus is the best way to leave the town.”

  “The bus doesn’t leave town, it only comes here when a supernatural needs refuge—or something along those lines. From what I’ve observed in the years I’ve been here, is that supernaturals only find Grayhaven when they’re fleeing for their lives. Sometimes they run into the forest in New York, run for a mile, and arrive here. Sometimes they drive in and their car breaks down. If there’s a rhyme or reason to it, no one has explained it to me.”

  “That makes absolutely no sense. And, fuck that. Fuck a fucking duck. Anyway, what did you eat for lunch?”

  Lucas chuckled. “I told you not to make me laugh.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what I’m saying at this point.”

  “Well, I didn’t eat yet, but I did find your shard of glass.” There was a clinking sound, and I glanced over and immediately regretted it. My hand was split down its length and there was a stretcher to keep the cut open. The blood drained from my face in a rush. Acid churned in my stomach as my forehead prickled with sweat. I was going to be sick.

  Lucas’ dominance pressed down on me, keeping my hand in place, which meant that I was trying to move it without meaning to.

  I looked up at the ceiling and counted down from one hundred, keeping my breathing even.

  Lucas kept working on my hand, and my palm throbbed, pulsing with a sharp discomfort.

  “I’m going to stitch up your wound now.” There was a pinching and pulling sensation, mixed with the constant throbbing. “There was muscle damage in your hand, Teagan. Meaning, if you’re heading back to those vampires to heal this wound, my stitches will dissolve, and the muscle damage will remain, scarring under your skin. If you turn into a wolf and try to run on it, it will split, and your paw will become useless to you.” As he talked, he sewed up my stitches and sprayed my wound with disinfectant. “I release my order, Teagan.” The pressure on my hand lifted, and Lucas wrapped up my wound in gauze.

  “Thank you...” I tried to slide off the patient chair, but my head swam and stomach lurched. “Whoa. Sorry, I meant to say thank you so much, Lucas.”

  He stood and inspected my face. “When’s the last time you ate?”

  “Last night, but I’m fine.”

  “What did you eat last night?” Lucas asked.

  I bit my lip. “Dinner…?”

  “That’s what I thought. You’re sharing half of my sandwich,” he said as he gathered his supplies from the table next to the bed. His will pressed down on me, and I felt a pulse of worry from him, coupled with the heady feeling of his dominance. “Crap… I’m sorry, Teagan. Will you share half of my sandwich with me? Ignore any order I’ve ever accidentally given you. I’m asking you.”

  “Okay, yeah. I’m fucking starving. Thank you,” I said as I grinned over at him. “Does this make this an official date then?”

  “Sure, just let me put away my blades and toss out my blood-soaked gloves.” Lucas shot me another grin as he tossed his latex gloves into the trash.

  “Lucas, how does one leave Grayhaven?” I asked.

  “I’ve never tried to leave. The forest surrounds Grayhaven. If you go far enough, you end up right back in town. People have left though. One person I know even left and came back.”

  “And who was that?” I asked, even though I somehow knew the name he was going to say before Lucas uttered it.

  “Jasper, the Alpha of the Grayhaven pack. If you want to know the best way to leave town, he’s the one you should talk to.”

  “Where I come from, they call that a trap,” I said as I cradled my hand. “The kind that lures you in and chomps down on one of your legs.”

  “If you say so.” Lucas shrugged. “I honestly can’t fathom why a wounded werewolf on the
run from the most contemptible alpha in North American history would want to leave an enchanted town that very few can enter. Especially when that town has a dashing local veterinarian who’s offering free surgery dates, which includes aftercare and sandwiches.”

  Even though my hand was throbbing in pain, I couldn’t help but smile at the word he chose to describe himself. Dashing. That word probably saw its last popularity while the Sanguine Inn was being constructed. Contemptible was popular right around then too. “When you say that you’re old, Lucas… do you mean like ‘hey daddy-o’ years old or ‘the car is such an amazing invention’ years old?”

  “I’m not answering that,” Lucas said as one dimple creased his cheek. “Hold tight. I’ll be right back.”

  As the good doc left the room, my mirth faded. There was a very real reason why I couldn’t go to Jasper or be around werewolves for very long, even if they were a good pack. Honestly, I had been craving the companionship of a pack since the moment I became a werewolf. It was a near-constant ache, a wordless loss. But it just took so much as a small demand like Lucas telling me to eat his sandwich to snatch my will from me, and Lucas did it on accident. He clearly avoided dominating others at all costs. Most wolves reveled in their dominance games.

  It hadn’t taken me long to realize that only alone would I ever be free.

  Chapter Five

  Lucas had said the exact words to convince me to stay another few nights in Grayhaven, and those words were “muscle damage.”

  An hour later, I found myself standing across the counter at Cat’s 24-Hour Drugstore, facing down the irritated shop clerk with the bull ring piercing. As Lucas had suggested, there wasn’t a bus stop up the street. There wasn’t a highway. From what I could tell, there was only a pine forest on all sides of the town.

  “So,” I said as she rang up my incredibly overpriced instant noodles, “About that help wanted sign in your window…”

  The woman glared at me and held a hand out. At her feet, the magic feline fluff ball watched me like the cat was expecting to have to pounce at any minute.

  When I handed her a ten-dollar bill, the woman threw it in the cash register, slammed it closed, and said, “You don’t have the qualifications for that job.”

  I pressed my hands to both sides of my noodle package. “I worked in customer service at one location for ten years, five of which, I was the manager.”

  “You stayed in one thankless job for a decade? Is that supposed to impress me?” She watched me, chewing her gum and looking entirely unimpressed. “All right, when you were a manager, did people try to eat you when you caught them shoplifting?”

  “It was a coffee shop… but, my personal life probably qualifies me to deal with situations like that, and I’m a fast learner.”

  Her nose twitched back and forth. “Sorry, but no. You don’t qualify. And, you obviously didn’t read the fine print on the sign.”

  Three minutes later, I crouched down outside the store window, glaring at the help wanted sign.

  “Homeless werewolf bitches who dye their hair in my bathroom are not qualified for this job. Ever,” I read.

  The words hadn’t been there when I walked into the store ten minutes ago, and I had been meticulous about not leaving a single drop of hair dye behind. Clearly, it wasn’t only the woman’s cat that was magical.

  “If you’re trying to find a job, the Grayhaven pack has been looking to hire someone,” a low voice said from just beside me.

  I yipped and jumped to my feet, spinning around to find the massive tatted-up werewolf from last night grinning down at me.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He held big hands up in surrender, and I could see colorful tattoos peeking out of his jacket around his wrists. “I’m Declan. I don’t think I introduced myself last night,” he had the slightest accent, Irish maybe. I hadn’t noticed it in the noisy bar, but today, I could hear the lilt of a brogue.

  “It’s not you, Declan.” I touched my nose. “I’m just used to having a little advance warning.”

  This was probably the third or fourth time someone snuck up on me in the last twenty-four hours, and that was inexcusable. I was just so used to depending on my sense of smell to alert me of predators long before I heard or saw them, and I definitely didn’t hear so much as a single footfall before this werewolf was just behind me.

  “Grayhaven takes some time to adapt to,” Declan grimaced and shook his head. “It’s the fae… or maybe the witches with their spells going in every which way…” He waved his fingers in the air. “Also probably the ghouls have something to do with it. It could just be Grayhaven too. There’s something weird about the land. Actually, I’m full of shit. I have absolutely no idea what it is, but you can’t even smell vampires out here until they’re breathing down your neck, and then you get the full-blown death breath in your face, at the bar, wanting to toss your cookies all over the woman asking you for a dance. I mean, sometimes it makes your life flash before your eyes, you know what I mean?”

  “No.” I couldn’t help but laugh as I slung my bag over my shoulders. “It sounds like your nose is better than mine. To me they just smell like something that’s died but is inedible, I guess.”

  “Oh, damn. You spent the night in that vampire hotel, didn’t you? Did I just put my foot in my mouth, then? I have been deemed highly offensive by the town… at large. Just ask anyone, and they’ll say, ‘Oh, that Declan, he’s the town asshole—the town’s sexiest, smartest, funniest… asshole.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll be sure to ask around about you.” I laughed. “Anything I shouldn’t believe?”

  “Several people might say that they’ve seen me doing my morning runs in only an American Flag thong. Don’t believe them... I’d never do something like that.” From his tone, Declan would definitely do something exactly like that. His smile broadened, making his golden-brown eyes sparkle mischievously. “Wait…are you joking, or am I joking?” he asked, pointing between us, “Or are we both joking, or is this a serious conversation?”

  I pulled up the straps of my backpack and nodded to him. “Oh, I never joke about American flag thongs.” Smiling up at him, I rocked back on my heels. “It was nice to see you again Declan, but I have to get going.”

  As I turned to head toward the forest, Declan kept pace with me. “See, here’s the thing, Teagan—I’m sorry about this, but Jasper ordered me to watch over you until he’s ready to take over. His orders were that I’m not to give you anything resembling an order on pain of having my nut sack ripped off and fed to me on a bed of rice. However, I do need to make sure you’re safe while you’re still in Grayhaven. Jasper was protecting you up until this point, but he needed a rest, so I took the second shift. I’m also supposed to make sure you have something to eat.”

  I held up my dry package of noodles. “Got that covered.”

  “Sweet baby Jesus.” He snatched the package out of my hand. “This is not food.” He tossed it over his shoulder, and the package landed squarely in a trashcan on the street corner.

  “The fuck?” I spun. “That right there was my dinner. Do you have any idea how much that store charges for food? You think I won’t go fishing through the trash and eat that, but I will.”

  “No, don’t… ah, shit.” Declan rubbed his hand over his buzzed head, clearly struggling not to issue me an order. “Listen to me, Teagan. I can’t order you not to, but you’d likely lose your hand before you found your packet of noodles. Most of the town’s trashcans have ghouls living in them, and that’s if there isn’t something worse in there.”

  “Ghouls?” I stepped over to the bin, and sure enough, there was something in there. Well, there was more of a great mass of nothingness in there. The filthy metal cylinder seemed to defy the laws of light. My package of noodles floated just at the top of a well of deep darkness, but, somehow, I got the impression that something within the bin was quivering in anticipation.

  Declan’s hands were up, halfway reaching toward me. “My
head is literally exploding right now. I want to order you not to touch those god-forsaken noodles, but I don’t want to ingest my own ball-sack. Please believe me when I tell you ghouls will eat pretty much anything—which is wonderful for mother nature but a bitch for your fingers.”

  “That darkness is a ghoul?”

  When I leaned in to get a closer look at the trashcan, Declan tensed like he really might explode into action. “Unless it’s a shade,” he said in a measured voice, “Which is much more dangerous than a ghoul.”

  “It looks like liquid darkness.”

  He peeked in. “Yep. That would be a shade. In five seconds, I’m just going to move you a few feet away. Damn it. If I end up having to eat my testicles, tonight...” He started making unintelligible sounds of frustration.

  “Declan, I’m not going to reach for the noodles.” I stepped away from the trashcan, turned, and pointed up into his face. “But, don’t touch my things again, werewolf.”

  “On my honor, I will never touch your nasty-ass packet of noodles again. The lesson is learned. I’ll buy you another one if you were attached to eating meat powder on freeze-dried noodles.”

  “How about you buy me a real meal instead—if you’re still offering.” I laughed. “The only attachment I had to those noodles were that they cost ten dollars and were my only food.”

  We ended up three blocks away in a little burger take-out window, sitting at a picnic table loaded up with burgers, fries, and chocolate malts.

  I dipped a fry in Declan’s ketchup. “Sorry, I just did that without asking. Do you mind?” I asked after I did it. For some reason, I just felt so comfortable around this massive, tatted up werewolf.

  Declan shrugged nonchalantly. “My ketchup is your ketchup, Teagan.”

  “So…” I pointed my fry at him, “When you said that Jasper was protecting me up until you took over, what you were really saying was that Jasper has been watching me this whole time since the bar, and I didn’t know it, right?” I asked before popping the delicious, salty french fry into my mouth. This very well could be my last meal for a long time, and I was savoring every bite.