Anderson High Wolves: The Complete Novella Collection

By Kelly Apple

Anderson High Wolves... Three complete novellas plus never-before-published bonus scenes

BOOK 1: BURIED BODIES

Jenny Reynolds may be a mere human, but her life is anything but ordinary.

She’s juggling her senior year of high school, a sick mom, a brother who depends on her, and, oh yeah, there’s the matter of a body in the trunk of her car. As if that isn’t enough, the werewolf quarterback of her high school’s all-shifter football team has started sniffing around.

What’s a girl to do when the most beautiful boy in school wants to help her out of her jam? If she’s smart, she takes him up on the offer…

BOOK 2: THE GIRL MOST LIKELY

Lane Tennyson’s greatest wish is to finish out her senior year and disappear into the big city where no one will know her name. Because this town won’t let the girl voted Most Likely to Commit Arson (again) escape her past even though she’s grown up since then and moved on.

Matthias Bridges is content with his place in life. As the second in command to a future alpha, he can see his path laid out for him and it’s a bright one. The only dark spot is the way the girl who intrigues his wolf avoids him like the plague.

So what if she once set a local trailer park on fire? Accidents happen and Lane has grown from a gangly, angry girl into a beautiful, sweet young woman.

Finding out she has every intention of leaving and never coming back after graduation is unacceptable.

Because when a wolf finds his mate, there are no limits to what he’ll do to keep her.

BOOK 3: ALL THE REASONS WHY

Natalie Lombard didn’t set out to be the queen bitch of Anderson High, but that’s what she is. She also never planned on letting everybody know how badly she wants a werewolf football player in her life, but it’s the worst kept secret at school.

What they don’t know is Natalie needs protection and the only ones she thinks stand a chance against her worst nightmare are the wolves.

Mason Armstrong held his tongue as Natalie dated her way through the team. He wants her to want him, not settle for the biggest, quietest wolf in the pack because he’s the only one who will have her.

Finding out what drives her serial dating makes his wolf see red.

But figuring out how to fix her problem is only the beginning. Once her issues get taken care of, will she even want a wolf?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kelly Apple
• Release date: Sep 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386850724

Book preview

Buried Bodies

Jenny Reynolds may be a mere human, but her life is anything but ordinary.

She’s juggling her senior year of high school, a sick mom, a brother who depends on her, and, oh yeah, there’s the matter of a body in the trunk of her car. As if that isn’t enough, the werewolf quarterback of her high school’s all-shifter football team has started sniffing around.

Evan Carmichael never noticed Jenny as more than the cute girl in his class until the day he smelled blood and death on her. Now she’s all he can think about. And when a werewolf becomes intrigued, he’ll do anything to keep the object of his fascination safe.

Even hide a body.

What’s a girl to do when the most beautiful boy in school wants to help her out of her jam? If she’s smart, she takes him up on the offer...

Chapter One

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Jenny thought she should be more freaked out by the body in the trunk. But no. She was curiously calm.

She also thought maybe she should worry about things like trace evidence and blood spatter. Again, no. What was done was done, and she had to have her little brother at school within ten minutes, so there wasn't a whole lot of time to worry about incidental things like that.

Jenny, Taylor whined from the back seat, you promised we could have pancakes this morning.

She had, she realized. But she'd run out of time what with moving the body and all and had to hustle to get Taylor dressed and fed as it was.

Sorry, Tay, she murmured. I didn't get much sleep last night— Yeah, right. Try none at all. —and forgot.

Her little brother tucked his chin to his chest and went silent.

Under other circumstances, Jenny would have tried to tease him out of his funk. She'd promise him that they'd stop and grab a hamburger after she picked him up from the babysitter's or go out for ice cream after dinner. Instead, she kept her eyes on the road and her hands on the wheel as she navigated the urban deathtrap that was the drop off circle at the middle school.

Will mom be home tonight?

Jenny flinched. She didn't know. Her mind had gone numb after the incident and she couldn't remember if her mom was scheduled for a day in the hospital or not. Or was tonight the night Nana Gray came over to cook for them?

She just couldn't remember.

I'm not sure.

Oh.

God, she hated the sad note in her brother's voice. Her mom's illness had hit them all hard and as much as she wanted to reach out and tell him everything would be okay, she didn't want to lie.

Their mom was dying.

It's why she snapped last night after she heard her stepfather laughing about her condition.

It's why she'd slipped into the shed and picked up the screwdriver and stabbed it into the side of his neck.

She'd moved to a spot in the line of cars where Taylor could hop out. I'll see you after school.

Taylor gave her a half-wave, his sadness over the lack of pancakes and their mom's sickness forgotten as he caught sight of his friends. Love you, Jen.

He was still young enough to say things like that. Jenny hadn't understood how precious that was until she had to step in and be his surrogate mom for things like dropping off and picking up. Now she got it. She'd never be his mom in truth, but she had to protect him.

That's what she'd been doing when she used the screwdriver on Martin last night.

See you, squirt.

She waited long enough for him to send a second wave in her direction when he got to the sidewalk before pulling away.

Taylor was safe now. He was where he was supposed to be. Now she needed to get where she was supposed to be.

The numbness she felt whenever she thought of Martin's body lingered as she pulled into the student parking lot of Anderson High. She liked to park near the back of the lot so she could wait out the crazy rush when school got out in relative solitude. Her mom's sedan looked out of place amidst the newer cars, but she ignored the niggling feeling of being slightly out of step with everyone around her and parked.

Her arms ached, she realized. All that dragging and pulling was making itself felt now.

Gathering her books, she thought about her predicament. Martin could stay in the trunk for now. She'd wrapped him in plastic garbage bags and duct taped him up good. Unless someone opened the trunk, he'd go unnoticed for the day.

But she'd have to figure out something to do after.

A group of shifters to the right caught her attention and she stared at them blankly. Evan Carmichael stood at the center of the gathering, dark hair looking artfully windblown and white teeth flashing as he laughed at something one of his friends said.

She wished she could dislike him. He was so bloody perfect at everything it would have been easy to label him a snob or elitist. But he wasn't.

The guy was physically perfect. He was the quarterback of the all-shifters football team. He was in line to be salutatorian of their graduating class. He was beautiful and kind and so out of her league it hurt sometimes to think about.

She imagined what it would be like to be held by him and her heart rate picked up.

He'd be safe to love, too. Shifters didn't get cancer. He wouldn't lose his appetite and start sleeping more as the illness inside sapped his strength. He wouldn't have to spend days in the hospital and lose his hair with chemo treatments.

He wouldn't be on the verge of leaving her forever.

Whatever. Out of her league. He was the equivalent of shifter royalty and she was just the dumb human who'd shanked her stepfather and shoved him in the trunk of her dying mother's car.

Head bent, Jenny trudged off to class, refusing to dwell on the body, mortality, or anything else.

Chapter Two

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Jenny expected the numbness to wear off at some point. As the day moved on and she remained comfortably empty of inner turmoil, she started to worry.

She'd killed someone. She should feel regret. Or horror. Or something.

Instead, she just wondered whether her mom would be aware enough to question Martin's absence.

Truthfully, she didn't even worry about it all that much. Martin was known for taking off without a word to places unknown with his buddies. He'd be gone for a few days or a week. One glorious time, it had been almost three weeks. Jenny had hoped they'd seen the end of him, but like a bad penny he'd shown up again, haggard and drawn, stinking of alcohol and cigarettes.

Huh. She hadn't realized how much she'd disliked the man until last night.

It was the lack of emotion in herself that was starting to scare her.

There was a name for people like that, wasn't there? People who had no empathy and could kill a man as easily as they could help an old lady cross the road. She'd have to look it up.

Or maybe not. Maybe she didn't want to know that she definitely had psychopathic tendencies. Or sociopathic. Or homeopathic. Or whatever.

She'd killed someone. She probably deserved to be in jail.

It hadn't been self-defense. Not really. She'd snapped and picked up a screwdriver and—BLAM—into his neck it went. He'd made a funny gurgling sound as he’d pulled the screwdriver free.

She'd already moved to the side at that point so she missed the spurt of blood, but she'd watched with detached fascination as he'd bled out.

Wrapping his body in the garbage bags hadn't even fazed her. They'd been there. The body had been there. It had seemed like the thing to do. And the duct tape? Well, that stuff was kind of magical and it solved all sorts of problems that had nothing to do with wrapping up a body. So she'd used it.

The hardest part had been the physical stuff. Dragging the body to the car, wrangling it up and over the lip of the trunk, bending and squeezing him until he fit.

Any one of those things should bother her. Instead, she'd just been tired once she got him tucked away.

Head swimming with exhaustion, Jenny turned a corner and collided with something big and warm.

Well, that answered one question she’d always had. Evan Carmichael, star quarterback and hunk and a half, was as hard bodied as he looked.

Goddamn, running into him hurt.

Hey, Jenny, the shifter god said, all good-natured smiles and gentle hands as he steadied her. Sorry. I didn't see you there.

Jenny froze. The comfortable numbness she’d been encased in all day cracked the tiniest bit and panic clawed its way up her spine.

Evan Carmichael was touching her. He was talking to her. He was beautiful and he was so close she could smell him.

It’s okay, she said, her mouth stepping in when her brain checked out. I wasn’t watching where I was going.

She tried to smile, but it felt more like a grimace than a grin, and she let it drop. Taking a step back, she skirted around him and his posse and walked away. She couldn’t. Not with him. He was too much to take in on top of everything else.

Before she turned the corner to her next class, she chanced a glance back and saw Evan looking at her, a frown creasing his ridiculously good looking face. Damn. Even that expression didn’t mar the perfection of his looks.

Holding in the sigh that wanted to escape, Jenny pushed past the streams of students jostling to get to class before the bell rang and put Evan Carmichael and his strong body out of her head.

She already had one body to deal with.

She couldn’t handle his on top of it.

Chapter Three

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Apparently Evan Carmichael hadn’t received the memo about how Jenny didn’t want to deal with his beautiful self today.

He was leaning against the trunk of her car after the last bell. Him and a half dozen of his closest friends. All shifters.

Great.

His proximity to the body made her heart speed up. Or maybe it was the way his shirt stretched across his chest, straining the seams and making all the other guys around him pale in comparison.

Jennifer Reynolds, the golden boy drawled.

Jenny cocked an eyebrow at him and wondered if there was another way to refer to a dark-haired man who could do no wrong. Evan certainly wasn’t golden. He looked more like a fallen angel, all beautiful skin and predatory eyes.

Dammit. Something had changed since she’d run into him earlier. The easygoing quarterback was gone and a sharp-eyed wolf stood in his place.

Jenny Reynolds, he said again. Behind him, his pack shifted.

Fuck, fuck, double fuck.

I have to pick up my brother from the babysitter’s, she said, stopping dead in her tracks. A good fifteen feet separated them and yet it felt far too close.

Do you? Evan smiled and his teeth were just the tiniest bit sharper than they’d been before. Maybe that was just her imagination.

Yeah. So I’ll need you to move.

Funny thing, Jenny Reynolds, but you smelled like blood and death when you ran into me earlier.

Jenny froze.

The numbness didn’t crack. She still felt oddly inured against what she’d done, but the faint stirrings of panic in her gut when she took in the very serious expression of the shifter quarterback made the world around her sharpen into painful focus.

Funny, she said slowly.

I thought I was mistaken, but when I came out here to check and make sure you were all right, I smelled it again. Stronger. Evan leaned forward and Jenny almost took a step back in reflex. What are you hiding, Jennifer Reynolds?

It freaked her out the way he kept using her full name.

Nothing.

Matty, Evan said to one of the wolves at his back without breaking eye contact with her, can you pop the trunk for me?

Time slowed.

I’d rather you didn’t do that. The words came out easily, as if she was asking someone to pass the salt instead of about to be discovered with a body in her trunk.

What’s in the trunk, Jenny?

Please don’t look. If they did, she’d have to find a way to get rid of them, too. Taylor needed someone to look after him and her mom wasn’t going to last much longer. Taylor needed her. She needed to take care of things.

Matty must have heard something in her voice because he hesitated, his glance lingering on her before bouncing over to Evan. Ev?

Evan’s eyes had lightened since he’d been standing there. The usual velvety brown was caramel colored as his wolf rose to the surface.

Jenny didn’t have much practical experience with shifters. She had classes with them, sure, but seeing as how she didn’t have many friends—human or otherwise—she’d never spent any one-on-one time with them.

She did know that when a shifter was riled, his animal was more likely to come to the forefront.

Evan looked riled up now. Whether it was the situation or the scent of Martin’s blood, his wolf looked out at her from across the short distance.

Matty, take the boys out to the field and start running drills.

It said a lot about Evan’s place in the pack hierarchy that not a single one of the wolves raised their voice in protest. They turned as a unit and followed Matty across the lot, disappearing around a corner before too long.

Now it was just her and Evan.

Evan, who looked dangerous and beautiful, and her.

Plain Jenny Reynolds who killed a man last night.

It’s my stepfather. He’d dead. She hadn’t meant to say that.

The wolf receded from Evan’s eyes a bit and he frowned. That’s unfortunate.

Not really. Yep, her acceptance of what she’d done was really starting to freak her out.

Jenny hadn’t realized Evan was still leaning against the trunk of her mom’s car until he pushed up and stalked toward her. Huh. He’d seemed so big and intimidating, she would have sworn he was looming over her, ready to grab her and do terrible, terrible things.

Did he hurt you?

Did who hurt her?

Jenny blinked and shook her head to clear it. Martin?

Was that his name?

Was that whose name?

Jenny’s head felt fuzzy and the only thing in the parking lot that seemed to be standing still was Evan. Which was weird because he wasn’t standing still. He was only steps away from her now.

Close enough to touch, really.

The hard planes of his chest against her palm felt good. He was warm and she thought he might have melted the ice that encased her just the tiniest bit because she started to shiver.

I don’t feel so good. She knew it was her voice, but it sounded funny to her own ears. I need to get my brother, she managed. My mom’s too sick to pick him up.

Warm arms caught her as she staggered and went down.

Chapter Four

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Jenny’s car was at least fifteen years old and needed an oil change. Evan could feel it as they idled at the light.

Curled on the passenger seat, Jenny didn’t seem bothered by the knocking of the engine. She lay with her head canted at an awkward angle, her hands folded primly in her lap like she’d dropped off for a short nap after stopping over for tea.

Reality was nothing like that.

Jenny had gone down hard and if he hadn’t had werewolf reflexes, she would have hit the ground and likely scraped her too pale skin to hell and back. He’d tried to be gentle as he settled her into the passenger seat, but he felt like a giant, clumsy oaf as he maneuvered her into the car.

Who’d have thought that quiet Jenny Reynolds would make him feel all tied up in knots like this?

Evan wasn’t sure if it was the way she’d stood her ground when he threatened to check the trunk, or the way she’d looked at him before she passed out, but his wolf had sat up and taken notice. She should have been nothing more than a spitting kitten trying to face him down. Instead, she’d been icy and regal.

For a human, that was goddamn impressive.

Hell, it was impressive for a wolf. He was descended from a long line of alphas and there weren’t many who would go up against him when his wolf was riled.

For a human, it was almost unheard of.

Tapping his fingers on the wheel, he cut a glance to Jenny for the third time since they’d stopped at the light. He could smell stale blood on her, even over the stench of the body in the trunk, and he wondered how all this had come to happen.

Glancing at the GPS on her phone, he followed the directions when the light changed. It was fortunate Jenny was so organized. The contact list in her phone had listed Adele Hernandez as Taylor’s babysitter and helpfully provided an address for him to plug in. He’d debated calling the woman first, but decided to wait until they were closer in case Jenny woke up before then.

No need to scare the humans unless it was necessary. And for some reason, his voice came across as terrifying over cell phones.

That ended up being one annoying quirk of technology he’d learned about when he’d been dating Natalie Lombard, the head cheerleader. The other being that what’s said on social media is never private.

He probably shouldn’t have broken up with her right before the big game, but she’d started to annoy him with her catty attitude and possessive posturing. He was a wolf. He knew all about marking his territory. As it turned out, he wasn’t interested in being part of her territory.

His wolf hadn’t been interested in being considered her property.

Now if Jenny wanted to get possessive and start growling words like mine at him, he might take a different stance.

Which was something he didn’t want to think too deeply on, because that way led to mate claims and happily ever afters. He was too young for that.

He looked at her again and felt his wolf shift inside.

Damn. His wolf disagreed. Who’d have thought Jenny Reynolds would be the one?

The little vixen was full of surprises today. Bodies in the trunk and tempting his wolf.

The GPS cheerfully informed him he’d reached his destination. Pulling over to the curb, Evan studied the house in front of him. Small. No room to run. His wolf wasn’t impressed.

No matter. He had more pressing issues to deal with than whether or not Jenny’s brother’s babysitter’s house was up to his wolf’s standards.

Jostling her shoulder, he called Jenny’s name and waited. It took several tries, but she eventually stirred and sat up.

Evan? she asked, the confusion in her voice evident. She looked at the babysitter’s house and back at him, and her scent sharpened with caution. Why are you driving my car?

Before you passed out, you told me you had to pick up your brother. So I went into your phone—sorry—and found the babysitter’s address and now we’re here.

Jenny swallowed. Okay. I have to... She trailed off and looked back to the house. I can drive you back to the school for your car, I guess.

Nope.

What?

Nope, Evan repeated. I’m sticking around until I hear the whole story about why there’s a dead guy in your trunk.

That’s—

It’s happening, Jenny. Get your brother. We can drop him off and go somewhere you can explain everything.

Exhaustion lined