Ghost Wolf: Wolves of Angels Rest, #6

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: 9781533724441

Book preview

Wolves of Angels Rest: Book 6

GHOST WOLF

Elsa Jade

Website | New Release Alert | Facebook

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

Chapter 1

Her true mate was dead.

Corrine Ayres stared blindly into the flat beer clutched between her hands. Though it had been served to her in a frosty pint glass, it was still warmer than her numb fingers.

All of her felt numb. She hadn’t been warm since she arrived in Angels Rest two weeks ago and saw her mate kneeling at another female’s feet.

Though she hadn’t understood then what was happening, she’d known instantly that the mate bond was severed.

Forever.

Her chest ached with the pain of it. The mating mark emblazoned on the skin of her left breast ached like an open, weeping wound, never to be healed.

Because while the male she’d known as Felix was gone forever, every time she saw Zane, the werewolf that had risen from the ruins the Kingdom Guard murderers had left behind, she remembered what she’d lost.

Her best friend. Her soul. Her true mate.

Mahalia Booker had him now. And though the joining of mates was a moment of joy in any pack—it happened too rarely to be anything but—for Corrine, every glimpse of the couple was a shock and a betrayal and a funeral rolled into one toxic gut punch.

She’d promised the Mesa Diablo alpha that she would help find the Kingdom Guard outpost where Felix had been drugged and tortured until the wolf he had been died and the monster he’d been reborn as had been created. And she wanted to find those bastards more than anyone. Mahalia had saved him, but Zane still carried the scars; he was not the gentle, dreamy, bookworm Felix who she’d known was her true mate as soon as she hit puberty.

Back then, it had taken bashful Felix longer to figure it out, but they both had enjoyed the round-robin chase immensely.

Corrine crushed the memory like one of the empty peanut shells on the roadhouse floor.

Now when she ran, she was alone.

Despite her promise to Kane Villalobos, she couldn’t stay in the Villalobos compound—not with Zane and Mahalia there. Angels Rest had only one motel, and the middle of October was the start of deer hunting season, so every wolf and human hunter was in town to celebrate and then go kill something.

She wanted to rage and then go kill something.

She’d slept outside for awhile. Her fur coat was good protection from the cold desert nights, but as much as thinking of Felix hurt, feeling the lack of his presence with every breath when she was wolf was a thousand times worse. She’d tried sleeping in the car, but it still smelled of Felix. So tonight she found herself in Gypsy’s roadhouse, praying she could drink enough to forget.

It only works if you actually put the glass to your lips.

For a long second, she didn’t realize the remark was spoken aloud and directed at her. Gypsy’s was packed with hunters—she’d been lucky to get a seat at the bar so she could sit alone—and the flow of voices was almost loud enough to anesthetize her. Almost. This voice was low, stalking toward her under the alcohol-fueled chatter.

Slowly, she twisted on the stool to stare at the speaker.

He was rockin’ the tatted bad-boy biker look so hard she was surprised a chorus of screaming guitars didn’t accompany him. Over his broad shoulders—barely contained by the snug white T-shirt that showed off his full-sleeve tattoos to best advantage—a table of local human ladies was sneaking glances at him, their eyes wider than the rims of their martini glasses. They looked like willing groupies.

From the jukebox, the latest pop-country ballad wailed.

I’ve been with losers, and I’ve been with cheats.

I’ve had bruisers and the worst deadbeats.

But don’t feel bad, not for me,

Cuz I’m worst of all, you better believe.

Bad as they are, they ain’t bad as me.

I’m the black-hearted witch.

I’m the stone…cold…bitch.

The chorus went around again, and just as slowly as she’d turned, Corrine swiveled back to face her beer.

It was easier than forcing the words fuck off from her frozen throat.

Leave her alone, Javi. Gypsy swept down the bar, her hands always in motion. The roadhouse was too busy for one person, but she was working it.

The restless movement made Corrine want to slam her palms across the high-polished oak to stop it, stop everything. But she realized the bartender must’ve been keeping people away from her all night. I’m sorry I’m not drinking my keep. She pulled her ignored beer to her and took a long draught.

Hey, you’re blocking the alcoholics from getting too close all at once, so you’re actually doing me a favor. Gypsy swapped out the old beer for a tall shot of something golden and fiery-looking as the desert in high summer. Any luck with that search you’re doing for Kane?

Corrine figured most of the widespread pack around Mesa Diablo knew at least the basics of what had happened. A wolf pack was like a smaller town within a small town, so gossip that was rabbit-quick in a small town was wolf-jaws-around-a-rabbit-quick among the pack. But she didn’t know how many details Kane wanted shared, so she just shook her head.

Well, you need anything, holler, Gypsy said. She pointed a warning finger at the tatted biker. Start something, Javier, and I’ll tell your granny on you so fast your scrawny ass’ll be buckshot before you can say boo.

He gave an exaggerated shudder and held up his hands. That last incident was just blowing off steam, but I’m over it. Choir boy here.

The repetition of the word she’d been thinking caught at something in Corrine. She and Felix used to finish each other’s sentences all the time. And now that would never happen again…

Never again, I swear. The male flashed his white teeth in a smile until someone down the bar bellowed for Gypsy.

The bartender walked backward a couple steps, her finger still raised in wordless threat.

The male waved back as if at a long-lost friend then twisted to put his spine to the bar, lounging with his elbows propped on the oak, his long legs in worn denim kicked out into the aisle. He surveyed the crowd like an indolent, crownless king, though his dark, brooding gaze didn’t linger anywhere, not even on the would-be groupies.

They have no idea. That low, vicious voice again—more devil than choir boy. Not the humans. Not the wolves either. They don’t know what it’s like for us.

For us? How dare he? Corrine snaked her head toward him and didn’t care who saw the flash of furious crimson in her eyes. No one was allowed to share her anguish.

It was all she had left.

But the male only tilted his head away from her, rolling his eyes in a dismissive gesture, as if he didn’t even care if she ripped out his throat.

And maybe he didn’t.

I’ve known bastards, and I’ve slept with liars,

Always fighting hard and setting fires.

But feel bad for them, not me,

Cuz I’m worst of all, you better believe.

Bad as they are, they ain’t bad as me.

I’m the black-hearted witch.

I’m the stone…cold…bitch.

Her senses were dulled by the cacophony of sound, the stink of alcohol, and the numbness she kept even closer around her, but her wolf wanted to know whose blood they were going to spill.

She took her first deep breath in what seemed like forever, sifting through the oily tang of the peanuts, the wafting alcohol fumes in the air, the myriad body odors of humans and wolves alike. She separated out the closest whiff of male: musky, a hint of sweat in the close quarters, a sharper bite of the dust and cold from outdoors still clinging to him.

But no wolf.

She frowned and took another delicate sniff. He was werewolf, that much was clear, so where was his beast?

She looked more closely at his tattoos. Most shifters had their pack, clan, or tribe markings, but that was all. She’d never seen any werewolf with so many tattoos. She couldn’t see his sigils through the chaotic splash of ink. As if he wanted to hide the marks of the wolf. And piercings? Both ears were studded all the way along the rims, and he had two hoops through his lower lip that glinted like titanium fangs.

Only altered moonstone carried through a transformation. What a pain in the ass to have to keep track of so many small objects every time he shifted…

She angled back on her seat just a fraction as the explanation hit her.

He’d never shifted.

Ghost wolf.

He must have seen the moment she realized what he was. His lip curled, halfway between a snarl and a mocking grin. Ghost wolves were even more rare than true mates. Which was just as well, because instead of being a joy to their pack, ghost wolves were a nightmare. The dread of being neither human nor beast nor a shifting medley of the two—to be nothing.

Do I scare you more than being alone? he whispered.

Even with her animal-sharp