Wanderer's Rest

By Emily Carrington

When Michael has sex with a lusty hawk shifter, he thinks they’re mated for life. However Garrett isn’t one of Michael’s people, and he doesn’t understand the traditions -- and very real consequences -- that go with having a good time in bed.

Will their forced mating ruin their lustful desires, or feed the flames instead?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: Dec 28, 2018

Book preview

instead?

Prologue

In silver-furred werewolf form, his nose held just above the ground, Michael Brighton crossed the small side street in Hamburg, New York. It was mid-July, the heat baking up through the pavement and into his paws. His sense of smell tingled with the aroma of furious werewolf. His alpha, Rowan Alec, had passed this way within the last twelve hours. That was better than the old trails Michael had been following up until this point.

Reaching the sidewalk, Michael cast about for fresher scent. He came across an older, unfamiliar smell: werewolf, female and male -- one of each, not a transgender wolf. Both carried quite a few years on their heads. After sniffing around in a circle for several moments, Michael found the male’s scent headed away, back across the street. Knowing that Rowan Alec hadn’t gone that way, Michael ignored it for now.

Instead, the female wolf’s aroma intertwined with Rowan Alec’s and headed up the sidewalk.

Fifteen minutes later, he stood before a doggie door in a house that smelled, well, occupied, but not recently by humans. Michael nosed his way inside the house and stood, listening and waiting for a sign.

He heard the creak of a floorboard above him. Michael scented the air and recognized Rowan Alec’s smell. This was mixed up with the different aroma of female wolf, as if the two of them had been traveling together. They’d probably been fighting their way across this floor, to judge by the droplets of blood that smelled of both. He followed his nose across the kitchen, to the hallway, and up the stairs. He winced when one of the tiers squawked under his weight.

On the second-floor landing, he heard labored breathing and a low grunting. Michael moved toward it, crouched and expecting someone to pounce on him at any moment. He reached a partially open door and peeked in.

There were two werewolves in the room, both in human guise. Neither wore clothes, which meant they’d brought nothing with them to change into once they shifted from wolf to two-legged. The female was squarely built and broad all around, an effect of her bone structure rather than fat. She was tied by what looked like electrical cord to a heavy bedstead that stood in the corner. She lifted her head but didn’t seem to recognize him because she murmured, Viktor… and then appeared to pass out.

Michael knew her, and he was startled to recognize Katka Schultz, a semi-recent transplant from the Taube pack in Iowa. He’d never paid a great deal of attention to her scent before, and he’d lacked a memory of her smell. So, even though she and her mate, Viktor, had disappeared two weeks ago from their place in the Rowan pack and he, like many others, had been hunting for the mated pair, he hadn’t known her aroma until now. They had taken everything with them, or burned it in the backyard, leaving the pack with no scent to trace.

Rowan Alec lay in the dead center of the room, curled on his side with one hand under his cheek. He didn’t stir as Michael approached. His eyes were open. Red on top of brown, they looked to be filled with blood. Michael lay himself down next to his alpha and shifted to human form. Rowan Alec? he asked his alpha.

The big eyes, bigger with obvious pain, locked on Michael’s face. I’m glad you found me. His voice was weak.

Michael moved even closer. What are you doing here?

"I had a precog seeing. She was going to destroy us. You. He laid hold of Michael’s hand and gripped with surprising strength. She was almost finished with the Taube pack and she was starting in on ours. On you." That strange emphasis again.

Rowan Alec coughed; blood made a fine mist in the air.

Thank the moon goddess, Katka tied herself to me. My death will be hers.

Michael struggled to understand. He could smell Rowan Alec’s approaching death; there was no question of taking him to a medic or waiting for his own inborn werewolf healing powers to take care of him. She… bound her essence to yours, her soul to your soul? he hazarded.

Rowan Alec nodded. Groaned. "It was an accident. She’s been borrowing psychic talents from the LGBTQ wolves in Taube Georg’s pack as well as her own daughter. She used those powers to attack Taube Georg and his people. She was using them to attack you. The only good thing about the link that she accidentally forged between herself and me is that it goes both ways. I could read some of her thoughts."

Three times that emphasis on you. Katka’s trying to hurt me? Why?

If I knew that, I’d probably be a god. Rowan Alec closed his eyes.

Alec! Michael was too upset to bother with titles. Alec, don’t leave me.

The end’s coming soon, Michael. But Rowan Alec opened his eyes once more. I was just resting. I need to tell you two things more. Do you know where Viktor is?

Michael shook his head.

Damn, Rowan Alec said with little passion. He’s involved somehow. Don’t let him get away. His hand trembled, but he bore down on Michael’s wrist again. The second thing is: I love you. I couldn’t let her kill you.

Michael gaped. He could do little else.

Rowan Alec smiled a little. I know. I have no right to ask for your love in return. I just needed you to know. His hand stopped shaking. His breathing slowed.

In a moment, Michael was the only living thing in the house except the mice. And the mice could bring him no comfort.

Chapter One

Just over six months later, Michael stood in the doorway to the bedroom where the unmated wolves of the eros pack to which he belonged slept. An eros pack was different from a straight one. The latter was, traditionally, composed of straight wolves who were full citizens, and LGBTQ, psychic wolves who were not. Eros packs had originally been invented to establish a place where psychic werewolves could be equals.

Michael scowled down at the body. His mind was taken up with werewolf history -- namely description of packs -- because he didn’t want to think about the task ahead: finding the assassin. Outside, the second or third snow of January was falling, but in here it was hot and the heat boosted the stench of blood, shit, and urine.

The wolf lying on the floor hadn’t been killed here. The drag marks left in the carpet were all too evident. So, the question was: where had he been killed? And who had murdered him?

Michael found himself praying that the murderer was from outside the Rowan pack even though the placement of the body made that unlikely. If the culprit was from within the Rowan pack --

But Michael cut off the thought cleanly there. This wasn’t the Rowan eros pack any longer. Rowan Alec was just over six months dead. This pack had no leader besides Michael, Rowan Alec’s beta, and no name except formerly known as the Rowan pack.

The artist formerly known as Prince. In spite of the situation, Michael smiled. It wasn’t as if he’d liked the wolf who had died. A troublemaker and an upstart, Joseph had been a thorn in Michael’s side even when Rowan Alec still lived. Too submissive to be a serious threat to most of the dominant wolves, Joseph had always been starting fights with the wolves ahead of him and the ones just beneath him in the pecking order.

Well, now someone had ended his troublesome existence and Michael wasn’t sorry to see him gone. But death in the pack meant danger, and he would not see this pack -- Alec’s pack -- fall apart. And besides, he thought as he began to follow the drag trail toward the back of the Rowan pack’s large, single story house, someone deserved to pay for Joseph’s death.

The trail of blood and other bodily fluids led outside. Michael trudged, barefoot and uncaring, into the snow. About three dozen steps from the house, close to the fence at the back of the property, he found the killing ground. It was mashed snow and mud, blood and gore. Michael couldn’t fathom why those who had killed Joseph had bothered to move his body into the house. After all, this was just as good a place for a corpse as any.

Unless, he thought, they wanted me to find it when I came in to do my daily check on Henry. The most submissive of Michael’s wolves, Henry had been slipping away little by little over the past half a year. Spending as much time on four paws as on two feet, Henry had been fired from his job for missing too much work. He’d stopped bathing on a regular basis and there was an unhealthy dullness to his fur. Michael had taken it upon himself to check on Henry every day when getting home shortly after five, and he usually found the submissive in the bedroom shared by the five -- well, now four -- unmated wolves.

Actually, there were still five, Michael being the fifth. But he’d reluctantly taken over Rowan Alec’s bedroom. Not because he thought he deserved it but because it was the expected thing. Rowan Alec had been unmated, but as alpha it was his prerogative to have his own room. And since Michael had stepped into Rowan Alec’s place, it had made sense to take over his space as well.

Maybe --

I love you.

-- unmated by choice. Michael was disturbed by the thought that his alpha had loved him. Maybe it shouldn’t bother him now that Rowan Alec was gone but it did. Not because Michael wasn’t attracted to male wolves; he was aroused by both genders. But because, frankly, Rowan Alec had been too dominant to be Michael’s type.

Forcing himself back to the present, Michael scented around the killing ground until he discovered the identities of the two wolves who had teamed up to kill Joseph. They were wolves in the Rowan -- in Michael’s pack, and he sighed. He would have to deal with them. He needed to find out why they’d killed Joseph. They were just above him in the hierarchy. Surely no matter how offensive Joseph hadn’t deserved the ignoble fate of being set upon by two wolves more powerful than he. Any fight that had reached killing level should have been brought to Michael to settle.

I hope none of our neighbors saw the murder. Especially since Joseph was in human form when he was killed. Michael would have to call in professionals, SearchLight operatives, to clean up any loose ends, meaning