Desired by the Pack Part Six: Peace River Guardians

By Emma Storm

During a desperate mission to rescue her Beck and Cross from a deadly fate, January comes eye to eye with madness, loss…and a bond that might break, but will always be rebuilt. 

This is the sixth and final installment of DESIRED BY THE PACK, a paranormal romance serial that follows the complex relationship between January and the Peace River Guardians werewolf pack. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Emma Storm
• Release date: Feb 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516352203

Book preview

1

Cleo ran along Peace River, keeping pace with the swift current. The cold ground beneath her paws was nearly part of her.

Six years she’d spent exploring and guarding this half-magic place. Peace River was her first adult home. She’d watched the trees grow taller, and she’d helped strengthen the Moon Gate hidden behind the waterfall roaring at her back.

The idyllic calm had shattered when a monster had followed the alpha pack’s mate into their haven. The scientist inside her regretted that Prince, who shared the werewolves’ genes but lacked their shifting magic, had driven himself into destruction before she could fully analyze what had happened to his mind in the drug-induced changing of his body.

Her deeper spirit, the fey wolf she became under the Moon’s silvery gaze, craved the hot taste of Prince’s blood on her tongue. She hadn’t been involved with his final fall, and once a werewolf died there was no making him live again, but the damage Prince had wrought was worthy of a second death. Prince had brought Hunters, and then the foreign female, Alanna, who had taken Peace River from the Guardians’ alpha pack. Cleo believed Beck would have won a challenge against Alanna but she respected his commitment to eradicating the drug threatening all shifters. She could only hope Beck would return soon to stake his claim. In only a few rises and falls of the Moon, Alanna and her pack had turned the land foreign. Hostile. And now Cleo thought of following in Beck’s steps and leaving Peace River behind.

But too many things stopped her. Her pack. The Moon Gate.

A man.

Cleo’s loping gait stuttered and she lost her footing. She slid down a leaf-slicked incline. The thin, scratchy fingers of naked underbrush raked through her fur. By the time she reached the bottom of the incline, her skin stung from the abrasion. She shook her head and cleared it before scrabbling her way back up the hill..

Pack and the Moon Gate were constants, and she’d chosen them first. The man would be gone before long. He might not even want her at all—she’d taken what he hadn’t offered, and the consequences for that...

Before guilt overwhelmed her, she pushed the thoughts away. She had to focus because tonight, things would begin to change.

After driving the Guardians’ Alpha pack from the river, Alanna and her mean-eyed, snapping wolves had set about marking the entire vast territory with their scents. The scent of the stranger filled Cleo’s nose as she loped along the river to join her pack for a meeting under the private cover of night. Hardly any time had passed since Beck had taken his new mate and his pack into the city, but already the alpha pack’s signature had been erased.

But Alanna’s pack wasn’t the only one newly marking the forest. A different scent set the fur along her spine on end.

Cleo followed the new scent into a clearing crowded with wolves. At the sight of the Viking pack mingling with her pack mates, Cleo’s heart clogged her throat.

The Warriors of Valhalla, whose alpha she had brought back from the killing burns of Solenne, were represented by Luka, the alpha-second, and Jesse, the lieutenant. Their alpha, Fin, was still incapacitated, recovering from the burns that had nearly killed him. Luka and Jesse fell silent and stared as she entered the clearing. Cleo shivered. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they knew what she’d done even though knowledge was next to impossible. Fin had been conscious, but not himself.

The Warriors couldn’t know what she’d taken from them.

Avoiding the Warriors’ gazes, Cleo took her place with her pack. A moment later Star, her alpha, gave the signal to shift. A single pack could communicate without human words, but this meeting wasn’t the work of a single pack.

Cleo took her human shape and shook her long red curls forward to conceal her bare breasts. Star, tall and proud in her nakedness, shot Cleo a questioning look before addressing the group.

You’re all here—we’re all here—because our sole responsibility to this territory is to present a united force of protection for the Gate. We’re not united anymore, and that has to change. Star spoke to everyone but she watched the Vikings.

The Warriors of Valhalla were only one of the packs of shifters who had dragged themselves, badly injured, through the Moon Gate.

The other group, known as Loki’s Devils, had suffered too many burns. All but two of them had succumbed to their wounds before Cleo could work her special brand of healing magic. The Devils were now only a pack of two. Ingar, the alpha, raised a massive hand in acknowledgment of Star’s words. Soren, his second, wasn’t among the wolves in the clearing.

The Gates are all of ours to protect, Ingar said, his speech slow. English wasn’t his native language.

Staring intently at Cleo, Luka spoke for the Warriors of Valhalla. We are not men who leave our broken ones at the mercy of violators.

Heat crawled up Cleo’s neck and shame dragged her gaze to the ground.

The Warriors knew. Moon, they knew.

* * *

The sounds of fucking were torture. Beck hung by his arms in the dark, humid holding cell, listening to Cross and the she-wolf who wallowed in Heat a few feet away. Cross had managed to push the female,