Wild Shift: Wild Mountain Mates, #1

By Sadie Drake

Fated. Mated. Naked? 

Lia is the kind of danger I never trained for—curvy, brilliant, and resilient. I'm not used to softness, and "family" is  only a theory. My role in the pack is need-to-know, but the sexy scientist sees more than she should. For my wolf, it was simple. He was pure animal instinct, no messy human emotions for him. Mate. But that meant she was mine to protect, not mine to keep. 

Aarick is strong, heals suspiciously fast, and I swear, he actually growled at me. I found him barely alive in the woods, with no clothes, no shoes, and no concept of personal space. He says my life is in danger, but refuses to tell me why. Maybe I've been alone on the mountain too long, but I'm not scared of him–only the way he makes me feel. 

Shifter secrets are about to be revealed and there's only one way to protect her—claim her as my mate. This instalove, wolf shifter romance features two fated mates, just one cabin, lots of growling, groveling, and enough heat to melt snow. No cheating, and HEA guaranteed!

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sadie Drake
• Release date: May 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888810019

Book preview

1

LIA

I tapped my fingers on the rough edge of the makeshift desk wedged under the cabin’s eaves.

Please, please be there. The divided computer screen showed various views of trees, trails, and more trees.

But no wolves.

Each trail cam was set to automatically record with movement, and I’d added an alert to wake me.

Waiting for a ping that never came made for many sleepless nights.

I’d been tracking a pack of Canis lupus occidentalis for two months and knew them better than my own family. Not a high bar to hurdle.

Below my loft, the kettle in the little kitchen whistled, and I shuffled to the ladder.

The rich aroma of the strong coffee helped open my bleary eyes. I had to be conservative with my supplies, but today called for a full pot instead of my typical single cup.

I sank down in my seat at the desk in the loft and pushed the heavy weight of my hair out of my face.

One of the tiny pictures next to my computer made me pause before I pulled up the empty screens again.

Hey, Dad. My dad’s kind eyes smiled at me the way they always did. Taken on my high-school graduation trip, it was one of the last pictures of him I had.

The same frame held a picture of Bex and Gemma, who’d become more than college besties and then partners in this research project. Without my girls, I’d truly be alone in the world.

My stomach twisted.

We needed funding to keep our project going. No wolves meant no research data, and no data meant no funding. Data was king when it came to official sources, but for our private donors, a picture was priceless. Private donations helped pay for equipment the research grant didn’t cover.

Two weeks ago, the wolf pack simply disappeared from the grid we’d been monitoring. It wasn’t unusual for a pack to leave an area, but it meant we had no new pictures or videos to analyze or share with donors.

I leaned in to the screen, clicking-clicking-clicking through the trail cam feeds, searching for evidence of my pack.

Where the hell did you go?

Aarick

I increased the pace just inside the Wild Mountain boundaries, maintaining my shifted wolf form.

The trek back down from my undercover assignment had taken days, deliberately keeping my route winding and slow, as if I really was the wandering loner I’d claimed to be.

Only half of that identity was true.

My training meant I would never truly let my guard down, but being back in familiar territory should feel more… welcome.

Something was off. The woods appeared the same as when I’d gone up the mountain to the north last year. More snow was coming, but the atmospheric pressure didn’t explain the change in the air.

Unfamiliar smells and scent-markings were present—and they weren’t just the wild-animal variety.

I’d done the recon and made my reports, and now it was time to rejoin the pack in Wild Mountain—at least until my next assignment.

It wasn’t what most would call home, but it was the closest thing I had to one. I wanted to go harder now that we were in safer territory, but my wolf pushed back.

He and I were usually in total agreement. Some shifters had difficulty balancing both sides of man and beast. No matter how dangerous the situation, how harsh the training, my wolf had always been a steady presence.

But he’d become restless during the mission; his calm focus changed from our task at hand to an idea I didn’t expect. It wasn’t the tension from being undercover for so long.

He thought we needed a mate.

We were two souls in one body, so he'd been there for every minute of my life.

Every reminder of what we'd been bred for. 

Every minute of training.

Every whisper of fear. 

He knew we were not meant to take a mate. 

Dark shadows lightened as the early sun broke through the cloud cover. My wolf sight was better than as a man, and the dawning light didn’t change our sense this area was not as expected.

A heavy musk hung in the breeze, and I padded around the area to catch its trail, to catalogue the bear it came from.

But the musky smell was gone, replaced by a soft, sweetly human scent—like ripe, sun-warmed blackberries.

I followed with increased interest.

My protective instincts rose at the way the bear’s musk intersected the sweet, delicate scent I was stalking. A base urge to make a claim was stronger than my caution, and I let out a loud howl.

Fuck.

I needed to move on, to report back to my pack. But each step forward was on the same path as the human, making me hungrier for more.

I stopped short. A harsh, burnt odor that meant plastic overpowered the sweet smell.

Lifting my head, I scanned the area. There. Mounted halfway up a tree was a box. It was camouflaged well, at least by human standards.

But not to me.

I stared right at the box and growled.

2

LIA

Holy shi—! I scrabbled backward from my computer screen. The image from the trail cam couldn’t chase me, but my fight-or-flight response didn’t know that. 

A wolf filled the screen. Bigger than any wolf I’d ever seen in captivity, in any book, class, seminar, or conference. Biologists liked to brag, and if they thought their specimen was the biggest and the best, you better believe they’d be posting and publishing the hell out of their find. 

I’d pulled up Camera A, hoping to see evidence of the West Ridge pack. Instead of a family group of timber wolves, I saw a monster.

The wolf moved off screen, and I cursed again.

Did I really see that? I swallowed a huge gulp of coffee and rubbed my bleary eyes.

It was unlike any wolf in the pack we were researching, and I immediately thought of the recent attacks reported by ranchers.

Bex had sent pictures from her station at our base in the town of Wild Mountain. It was of a mauled cow carcass left uneaten. There was no getting around the telltale signs of apex predator claws. We’d all agreed the placement of the gouges seemed off, and it was unusual for any predator to abandon a kill.  

Now, my wolf pack was missing, and I had a bad feeling there were things happening outside of my normal fieldwork experience.

A movement on the screen caught my attention.

Oh, my god. I inhaled sharply. The wolf was back. I wasn’t crazy.

Wild wolves were larger than most dog breeds, but still surprisingly small in real life. All those stories about the big, bad wolf gave people the idea wolves were taller than humans. 

This beast was every scary story brought to life. 

I watched as it looked up and down the trail and sniffed the base of a tree. I waited for the scent marking to begin.

But it never started. 

He stepped carefully around the clearing, like he was looking for something. Hunting. 

I knew that path. Everywhere he walked, every spot he sniffed… it was a spot I’d stood in. 

He looked right at the camouflaged trail camera.

He looked. Right. At. The camera.

I caught a flash of silver around the pupils of his eyes...or was it blue? He shook his head from side to side, as though disgusted, but that was silly. 

No anthropomorphizing the wild animals, Lia. Whatever I thought I saw in his eyes was just more snow. Dammit.

I double checked the feed, and made sure the camera was recording. Not only was a live stream unreliable this far up the mountain, but depending on how heavy the snow fell, I might get nothing.