Dreams of Wolf [Half-breed Shifter Series Book 2]

Half-breed Shifter Series

Book 2

Dreams of Wolf

By

Miranda Stowe

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

Dreams of Wolf

Copyright© 2011 Miranda Stowe

ISBN:  978-1-60088-686-7

Cover Artist:  Sable Grey

Editor:  Stephanie Parent

All rights reserved. No part of
this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written
permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

Cobblestone Press, LLC

www.cobblestone-press.com

Dedication

To
the wonderful, helpful ladies of the Midwest Romance Writers group.

Prologue

“Hey, Mom!
Check this out.”

Eight-year-old
Knox waited until his mother had stopped gathering mushrooms and lifted her
face. Once he knew he’d captured her full attention, he grinned and charged
naked through the woods as fast as his short legs could carry him.

Ten paces into
his dash, he leapt off the ground. While he was still airborne, he shifted into
his wolf form and did a somersault. By the time he landed, he’d shifted again,
this time into his stag.

Raising his
long snout high with pride, he pranced back to his mother, clopping his hooves
against the ground, before he shifted back into a naked human boy.

“Did you see
that?” he asked, vibrating with excitement. He’d been practicing all morning to
impress her. It’d been nearly impossible to turn wolf while flipping, and his
wolf was his natural shape. But to end up in his stag was something he bet even
a grown wolf-stag shapeshifter couldn’t accomplish.

Not that he
knew any other wolf-stag shifters beside his mother. Still. He just knew she’d
applaud his aptitude.

But instead of
lighting up, her face grew dark. “Knox, what did I tell you about turning
stag?”

Her harsh tone
made him hunker his shoulders. Bowing his head, he mumbled, “You say it’s
dangerous. But, Mom, no one saw.”

Grasping his
chin hard, she jerked his face up. “How can you be certain no one saw?”

Since she
continued to hold his chin immobile and he couldn’t glance around him, he slid
his gaze toward the trees cocooning them in the mushroom patch. They were
definitely the only two shifters around.

“I can’t smell
anyone else for half a mile,” he argued. Given that both wolves and deer had an
amazing sense of smell, he knew he’d immediately catch a whiff of someone else
approaching.

His mother’s
fingers dug deeper into his jaw. “I don’t care what you think you can smell, Knox.
Shifters can mask their scent if they’re so inclined. We can’t trust anything.
It’s safer to keep your stag hidden. Okay?”

He wanted to
jerk his chin away and argue. He didn’t see anything so wrong with the stag
part of him; he personally thought it was totally cool to be duo-animagus. But
for as long as he could remember, his mother had warned him to keep his
deer-side hidden.

Stag shifters
were extremely rare, a dying breed. And a half-stag, half-wolf was completely
unheard of since wolves tended to hunt and eat more deer than they fucked and
procreated with. But that’s exactly what his mother was, half-wolf and
half-stag.

When his grandma
had been a young doe and fell into her first mating heat, his grandpa had
sniffed her out and mated with her. Grandpa, a full-blooded wolf shifter, had
abandoned his pack, and Grandma had left her herd so the two of them could be
together. They traveled off deep into the forest to live happily ever after,
where they raised their one baby, Clarissa—Knox’s mom. But his grandparents had
died early, so Clarissa had been forced to wander the forest alone until she’d
stumbled across a wolf pack. His dad, a high-ranking beta in the pack, had
taken one look at her and claimed her as his. She’d been able to mask her doe
scent, and since Knox was three-fourths wolf, it was easy to hide his stag as
well.

But his mother
continued to worry. Too much, in his opinion.

Personally, he
liked to shift into his stag. Since it was a minor form and harder to maintain,
he found shifting into it more often helped control his abilities. He learned
something new he could do every time he changed.

It hurt that
his mother wasn’t as pleased as he was.

“I understand,”
he mumbled, only really understanding he’d have to hide his stag practice from
her now too.

She smiled and
kissed his brow before letting go of his jaw to smooth his unruly hair out of
his face. “Thank you, Knox. I need you to know how important this is.”

Nodding
gravely, he said, “I do.” Though really, he had no idea.

Her eyes
glittered with pride. Smacking his cheek with another kiss, she said, “Good.
Now, put your clothes back on, dear, I’m almost done. It’s about time to head
back to the pack.”

Whenever she
said that, Knox knew he had a good five minutes left to play. Nodding for her
benefit, he dashed off. After rounding a tree where she couldn’t see him, he
shifted back into his stag.

Immediately,
his head tingled and prickled where two nubs sprouted.

“Mom, how long
will it be before my antlers grow big?”

Her voice was
muffled as she no doubt bent to snatch the remaining mushrooms. “Darling,
you’re still only a button buck. You won’t even see tines on your rack until
you’re at least twelve.”

“Twelve!” he
echoed in dismay. But that was
years
away.

“Not that
you’ll see them anyway,” his mom intoned. “Because you won’t be shifting into
that dreaded form again. Right?”

“Right,” he
said, tilting his head down to rub the itchy spot against the side of a tree.

When a burst of
energy seized him, he dove backward, once again leaping into the air. In the
middle of his back flip, he changed into his wolf and landed as a human.
Glowing with self-accomplishment, he pounded his arms into the air, only to
spot two glowing eyes watching him from some underbrush not ten yards away.

Gasping, he
jerked his arms down and rushed back a step, running into the trunk of a tree.
Petrified, he hovered against the bark as one of his father’s pack mates
stepped into the clearing.

“Well, well,
well,” the male said, shifting from wolf into a naked human so he could stroll
ominously closer to Knox. “What do we have here?”

Suddenly, his
mother appeared at his side, grasping his hand and tugging him comfortingly
close. Knox clutched her arm and hung onto her skirt for dear life.

“Mathis,” she
rasped the wolf’s name, sounding winded as if she’d sprinted a mile instead of
a couple feet. “Wha-what’re you doing out here?”

His eyes
flickered knowingly to her. “Uncovering a surprising little mystery, it seems.”
Tisking, he shook his head. “I always knew there were secrets in your eyes,
Clarissa. But I had no idea you’d been out fucking a stag, only to pass the
brat off as Greydon’s.”

“She did not!”
Knox snarled, ready to defend his mother’s honor. “Greydon is so my father.
Look.” Since he hadn’t put his clothes on yet, it was easy to lift his bare arm
and show off the birthmark just under his armpit. “I carry the family brand.”

Mathis arched a
brow as he studied the spot. “So I see.” Voice trailing off, he turned to eye
Clarissa with a gloating smirk. “Then I guess that means…you’re half-stag too,
aren’t you, precious.”

Knox suddenly
wished he’d kept his mouth shut, because the temperature in the forest dropped about
twenty degrees. A strong odor rose from Mathis. He didn’t like it; it was
similar to the same scent his dad exuded right before he ordered Knox to go
play outside as he kept Mother in.

“Don’t tell
Greydon,” Clarissa pleaded. Her hand clasping Knox began to tremble. “Please,
Mathis. He’d kick us out of the pack.”

“Yes, he most
definitely would,” Mathis agreed. “If not outright have you and your little
brat slaughtered.”

Ice froze
Knox’s veins. Slaughtered? Just for being part stag? That made no sense to him.
He knew his wolf kindred hated stag shifters. But murder? By wolves he’d always
considered family? Suddenly, he understood why it’d been so important to hide
his stag side. He hated himself for disobeying his mother’s orders.

“So, you won’t
tell him?” his mother begged.

Mathis merely
grinned.

Clarissa’s grip
on Knox grew painful. “Please.” Her voice went hoarse with terror. “I’ll do—”

“Anything?”
Mathis finished with an evil glitter in his eyes.

A moment of
silence followed. The smell of his mother’s fear clogged Knox’s nostrils. He
wanted to ram himself headfirst into ugly Mathis’s big gut with his tiny antler
nubs. But the adult male could crush him down with one swipe. Pathetic and
afraid, he simply cowered next to his mother.

“Knox,” his
mother said with a quiver in her voice. “Go deeper into the woods, sweetheart,
far enough away that you can’t see us, and stay there until I come for you.”

“But—”

“Now!” she
growled, digging her fingers into his wrist before letting go.

Knox glared at
the adult male, but Mathis merely smirked. He reached down to his swollen penis
and fisted his hand around the length, slowly beginning to pump his dick in and
out of his grip. “Listen to your mama, kid. Get lost.”

With one last
glare, Knox turned and slunk away.

*
* * * *

Clarissa held
her shoulders stiff as her body tensed. “You don’t have to do this. Greydon
will know. He’ll smell you on me.”

Speaking of
smell, the scent of Mathis’s arousal clouded her nostrils. It was male, thick
and heady, with the potent cologne of cum pooling in his testicles.

“Well, now
that’s your decision to make, Clarissa. Do you want him to think you’re a
cheating whore or know you’re a worthless doe?”

Her hands
fisted at her side, but she didn’t answer. “Have it your way, then,” she
hissed. “Go ahead and fuck me if that’s all you want.”

“Oh, I will,”
Mathis assured in a silken voice. “I’m going to fuck you every way imaginable.
I’ve wanted inside you from the first moment I saw you. If Greydon hadn’t
claimed you first, you’d be mine right now.”

Lifting her
chin an inch, Clarissa stared straight ahead. “I highly doubt that. I wouldn’t
have accepted you if you were the last wolf on earth.”

He chuckled.
“You can act all high and mighty, but I know what you are,
doe
. And
unless you want me to tell everyone else in the pack, you’ll strip. Right now.”

To her own
shock, she did. Still refusing to look at Mathis, she moved mechanically,
shrugging off the light summer dress that had been draping her body.
Underneath, she stood naked.

No one but
Greydon had seen her naked before. It felt wrong. Forbidden. Exciting. Her
nipples tightened; she blamed it on the chilly breeze shifting across her bare
chest.

“That’s it,
sweetheart,” Mathis cooed, stroking himself a little faster. God, she loved watching
a man’s hand on his cock. Shit, wait. No, she didn’t.