Lost Wolf: Wolves of Angels Rest, #5

By Elsa Jade

The harvest moon is rising…

Corrine Ayres was a werewolf with a charmed life. Until her love was taken from her in a place called Mesa Diablo.

Javier Roque’s wolf never rose, so he left Angels Rest to make his own way. Until a deadly threat to his pack brought him home.

Can the widowed she-wolf and the tattooed bad boy missing his wild side find what they desire? Or will they lose everything before they can claim their fate?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Circle Ink
• Release date: May 3, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524220457

Book preview

Wolves of Angels Rest: Book 5

LOST WOLF

Elsa Jade

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The harvest moon is rising…

Corrine Ayres was a werewolf with a charmed life. Until her love was taken from her in a place called Mesa Diablo.

Javier Roque’s wolf never rose, so he left Angels Rest to make his own way. Until a deadly threat to his pack brought him home.

Can the widowed she-wolf and the tattooed bad boy missing his wild side find what they desire? Or will they lose everything before they can claim their fate?

Copyright © 2015 by Elsa Jade

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

Wolves of Angels Rest

Elsa Jade

Get all the Wolves of Angels Rest

HERO

JOKER

ROGUE

WARRIOR

LOST WOLF

GHOST WOLF

CRY WOLF

FIGHTER

WISH UPON A WEREWOLF

Prologue

Who are you?

No one.

Where are you?

Nowhere.

What are you?

Werewolf.

Wrong. Answer again. What are you?

Werewolf.

No. What are you?

Werewolf.

Do you want another dose? Then quit fucking around. What are you?

Nothing.

Exactly. Fucking werewolves.

Chapter 1

Waking was like being a shipwreck victim marooned on an island the size of a double bed. Everything in his head was scattered about, some of it lost forever to the depths. Before he opened his eyes, he groped across the waste, gathering up what torn and waterlogged pieces of himself he could dig from the sand or salvage from the waves.

He clutched the precious scraps to his chest, at once pathetically thankful for what he’d found and desperate to recover any of what was still missing.

And every night, the tide came back.

When he truly opened his eyes, even the water was gone. He stared out at the desert that had once been an inland sea and breathed the myriad scents of the ebbing autumn darkness. Sometimes he slept during the shortening days, hoping more pieces of himself would remain when he woke.

But it made no difference.

He rose and shook himself from nose to tail, settling his black fur, then trotted off in search of breakfast.

When he first came to this new place, they offered him food and water. He always refused. He could not be sure what was on the dishes. Besides the obvious.

But they did not force him. And there were no locks on the doors. No limitations at all, as far as he could tell.

Except for the nightly tide.

So he stayed with them. Because at least when they said werewolf, their voices did not drip with hatred and disgust.

Because they were werewolves, he reminded himself. As he was. That piece was always one of the first he found when he woke.

What are you?

Nothing.

He growled to himself. At himself. For a heartbeat, he felt all their loathing as his own. He was nothing.

Then a careless mouse ran across his path and he pounced, forgetting everything in the crunchy goodness of tiny bones.

A slow, old ground squirrel—fat with the riches that would tide it through a winter it would now never see—took the edge off his hunger, and three frogs from the creek running through the willow-choked canyon completed his meal for the day. He circled back toward his den. Every day he took a different path, ate and drank from new runs. It would be impossible to poison every little spring and vertebrate mouthful in this roadless territory. Distantly, he was aware his meandering travels must look insane.

Just as distantly, he suspected that he was insane.

He returned to the den and folded himself into a patch of sunlight filtering between the pinyon pines. He closed his eyes to see if any more detritus of himself had washed ashore.

The sun had risen to its peak when a familiar scent roused him.

Potent spirit. Not a threat right now. Thunder.

The last impression puzzled him because the sky was bright and cloudless, until he remembered it was a name. Thunder stood politely upwind, waiting for the breeze to carry his greeting. He smelled of petrichor—the scent of earth after the rain.

When he saw that he’d been acknowledged, Thunder approached the den. He stopped at a respectful distance and sank to the ground beneath a juniper, long legs crossed in a way that made it seem as if he would be slow to rise. Which was a lie, though not a deliberate one.

But he was fortunate he was out of immediate reach, for liars of any sort were not to be tolerated.

Hello, Zane, Thunder said. He rested his forearms on his knees. Fine traceries of black ink made a pattern like feathers over the corded muscle. Good to see you taking this shape.

For a long moment, his words made no sense.

Then… Ah, this two-legged shape was called a Zane. The memory had been made since he came to this place, so it was easier to retrieve. He remembered Thunder and the others passing around an object and saying words from it.

Adam… Bruno… Charlie… Do any of these sound familiar?

When he hadn’t replied, they kept going, pawing at the object’s leaves one at a time. On the last leaf, the female who smelled of Thunder—and who was sometimes called Elizabeth and sometimes Betsy or Bets, but also aunt and more rarely honey, which was wrong when she was not sweet like honey but tart like huckleberries—announced, We can’t keep calling you the lost wolf. Until we find out who you are, you’re Zane.

But my name is Kane, protested their alpha. That’s too close.

Betsy had only laughed. What better for our foundling than to have a name so near and dear to the heart of the pack?

And so he was Zane.

At some point during the morning, Zane had taken his two-legged shape. But when had that happened? After the froggies or before? Not that it mattered.

With a rough edge, as if the frog was still croaking from his throat, he said, This shape is weak.

In some ways, but it has its advantages. Thunder didn’t elaborate.

Just as well, since the black wolf wasn’t interested in hearing the list. He rose, stretching until his limbs creaked, circled once, then sat again. The fallen pine needles, usually so soft and fragrant, poked his hairless backside, and he growled in annoyance.

You could try jeans again, Thunder suggested.

Zane turned his snarl on the other male.

Jeans had been a disaster. Who would put so many small, metal teeth so close to that part of himself? Anyway, the blue fragments would make better bedding for the mice. At least until he ate them.

Thunder grinned back at him, and the black wolf’s snarl faded.

It was too nice a day to be angry. He had no memories, no past he knew of, no tasks ahead of him except, perhaps, a rabbit for supper and then only if he was hungry enough. What did he have to be angry about?

Never mind the clothes then. For now. Have you thought about the elixir?

Strange though it was, Zane knew that word instantly. Maybe because Thunder had explained it to him so recently that the memory hadn’t had a chance to wash away yet.

Or maybe because the thought of the elixir roused such a churning in his gut that he feared the frogs would escape.

All the other poisons given to him had erased who he was, where he had come from.

Thunder said the elixir might give it all back, as if the shipwreck had never happened.

Of course, it might also kill him.

When Thunder had told him that, Zane had wondered if he would have to fight the other male as he’d tried to fight the ones who kept him in the murk. But then he realized Thunder was giving him a choice.

In some ways that was worse. What if he chose wrong? Not that the wolf feared dying. But it was wary of what leviathans lurked in the gloomy depths.

Some fates are worse than death, he said abruptly.

Thunder eyed him. True. Don’t suppose you remember where you heard that? Was it when you were with the Kingdom Guard?

Poked by the pine needles and by memories that refused to come into focus, Zane rose to his feet. He paced in front of his den.

No, it wasn’t a den. It was a storage shed. With no door. He’d torn the door off its hinges in a blind panic when he’d forgotten how the latch worked and found himself trapped inside.

In this two-legged shape, his mindless violence sent a writhing worm of shame through his gut. So many froggies and worms. No wonder there was no room for memories.

He let out a slow breath. I will take the elixir. He strode toward the other male with his hand out. He would do it now, before he forgot again.

Ah. Thunder leaned backward. I don’t have it with me. You’ll have to come to the house.

Zane slammed his fist into his thigh. Not the house. I might…

He had been sent there to attack them. He had nearly killed. They had stopped him.

Barely.

Thunder held out his empty hand in a calming gesture. No one will hurt you, Zane.

No one will be hurt by me. Wrestling with his thoughts was like trying to empty the water from a hole