Elder: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #6) (12 page)

Esther poked some lettuce back into her sandwich and raised her gaze to the wolf beside her at the deli table. “Be honest about the leg. You forget who you’re talking to.”

Nixon grumbled in his typically cheerful way.

She had never pictured herself in the role of nagging wife, but sometimes, he needed her to be a nag. She’d learned that over the course of three months living with him, and loving him.

She was getting better at being assertive about his health and the needs of the children, but still, the fear of punishment remained that one day she’d say too much and in the wrong tone, and she’d be put in her place.

She had to keep reminding herself that she was in Norseton, and around people who loved her—people who didn’t want to hurt each other. Ashley kept telling her that she’d need time to really believe that was her new reality, and Esther was content in being well along the learning curve for the new pack’s style.

Nixon folded his arms over his chest and ground his teeth. He looked from Esther to Adam, and let his lips sputter. “Okay. The leg hurts a little, but there’s nothin’ to be done about the pain for the time being. There’s no therapeutic solution right now except to wait until the bone stops extending.”

Nixon’s leg wasn’t exactly growing back, but he’d gained some shin length during the last few full moon shifts. The best the doctor could speculate was that Nixon taking a mate who had some innate power of her own—even if she couldn’t tap into it the way Anton might have been able to—had prompted a healing spurt. Nixon’s leg would never be whole again, but what was left would be stronger.

In theory
. He was a medical mystery, but most wolves were.

“I put the new prosthesis order on hold for a little while. Doesn’t make sense to get them to build the thing if the component specs are off. I’ll get on for the time being with what I’ve got.”

“You don’t
have
to wear the old prosthesis if it’s bothering you.”

He scoffed. “Honey, when I’m at the mansion sitting behind a computer, I don’t wear it. Office has a door and its own bathroom. I can hobble in peace.”

“You never let me see you hobble.”

He shrugged and wriggled his eyebrows suggestively. “I’ll get out my crutches and hobble for you later, if you’d like.”

Adam finished the end of his sandwich and wiped his hands on a napkin. “I won’t bring up your leg again for six weeks, then, but don’t think I’m gonna let the subject drop.”

Nixon snorted. “Oh, I’d
never
think that. My own momma probably doesn’t care as much.”

“Mine certainly cares,” Esther said.

“Your mother only cares because I knocked you up,” he said. “And it’s not
me
she cares about, per se, but the father of the fetus.”

Esther wrapped up the remnants of her sub and tucked the packet into her purse for later. Her appetite came in fits and starts. She tended to carry food around to eat when she could. At first, she’d refuse most invitations from the ladies in the pack when they invited her out for lunch on school days, but Nixon had urged her to go—to
connect
. She’d needed to get knitted into Norseton in the same way she was knitting her little household of four together. The ladies were good friends to her, and so smart. Devious, even.

Anyone else might have thought Esther’s drive to get the rest of her family out of the Jersey pack to be a waste of energy, but the Norseton ladies were about solutions, not judgment.

They couldn’t change the system entirely—not yet—but that didn’t mean they couldn’t swing some elbows around to make things happen.

Adam snorted and stood with his tray. “I’m sure my sister-in-law cares about you as a person very much. You’ll find out as soon as she gets here.”

Esther put her head down on the deli table and sighed. “And my father.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Adam said. “They’re gonna give you just as hard a time as they do Nixon, because that’s what parents do when they’re allowed to. Just ask Vic. He never had the luxury of being away from us. We’ve been around to witness every part of his life, and I’m sure sometimes he wishes that weren’t the case.”

“Ashley doesn’t seem to mind.” Esther sat up in time to see Adam shrug. “I think she’s just happy to be happy. If that makes any sense.” It made plenty of sense to Esther. She certainly understood what happiness felt like.

Finally.

She squeezed Nixon’s knee under the table, and then pushed back her chair. “I guess I’ll head back to the bookstore and try to get some work done. I’ve got to fill a bunch of eBay orders before the mailman comes for the day. That should distract me from looking at my phone every ten minutes to see how close to Jersey Anton and Vic are.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me.” Adam shuffled over to the soda dispenser and topped off his Coke. “Challenge yourself not to check again until it’s time to pick the kids up from school. Your anxiety level will be lower.”

“Just get your boss started on one of her talking marathons,” Nixon said under his breath. “That’ll distract you for sure.”

She gave his shoulder a poke and hitched her bag onto her shoulder. “Be nice.”

Nice. A nice wolf.
If she hadn’t been in Norseton, she wouldn’t have thought such a thing existed. Nixon proved they existed every day, though.

He was a little better than just “nice.” He was
wonderful
, and everything she could have wanted in a mate, if she’d known she had options at all. He was the best sort of option.

She pulled in a deep breath, let it out, and tried to smile. “Not gonna worry.”

Nixon kissed her cheek on his way past and held the deli door open for her. “You shouldn’t.”

“But how long do you think it’ll be before my old alpha notices they’re missing?”

Out on the sidewalk, Adam checked his phone, and then slid it into his jeans pocket. “You said yourself that today is the start of a new dues cycle. He probably won’t notice they’re gone until a week after they haven’t paid, right?”

“That’ll probably be how long it takes for his accountant to notice.”

“Once they’re on the way here, you don’t need to worry.”

“I just hope Anton and Vic don’t do anything reckless. I know they said they were going to try to get as many wolves to leave as they could convince, but I worry about them being watched and about the pack’s enforcers getting suspicious.”

Nixon kissed the top of her head and gave her a squeeze. “Don’t worry about those two. They’ve been doing gigs like this for going on twenty years now. They know the geography. They know who all the major players are. Trust they’re not gonna do anything stupid. They’re not gonna do anything to compromise the safety of this pack, or the folks they’re nudging out of the Jersey pack. They’re good at their jobs.”

“I believe you. I just worry if something goes wrong, it’ll be my fault. Everyone was so eager to help me, and they volunteered to. I shouldn’t be worried about people’s motives anymore, but—”

“Hey.” Adam gave her chin a gentle chuck. “Sooner or later, someone would have brought the idea up. We’ve got a new pack here, and we’re settled. The time has come for us to start putting our families back together. You just reminded us it’s a priority item we can’t ignore.”

“Sorry to be a troublemaker.”

Nixon got her moving toward the bookstore, chucking in chorus with Adam. “Seems to run in your family, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t proud I married into it.”

“Aw.” She wanted to cover her flushed face, but accepting compliments was something else she was trying to get used to. Coming from Nixon, the encouragement was so much sweeter.

Dear Reader,

If you joined me for the first five Norseton Wolves novellas, you may already know that these stories were spun off from my
Afótama Legacy
series. The wolves show up in
The Chieftain’s Daughter
having tracked a threat to Queen Tess, who later offers them jobs. The wolves show up throughout the series, as do the modern Vikings in the Norseton Wolf stories.

I’ll include the full list of stories below.

You might be asking now, “What’s ‘Reckless Desires’?”

In a nutshell, it’s a multi-author collection of stories about wounded alpha shifters and the beauties who soothe them. My Norseton Wolves stories
Elder, Scout,
and
Seer
are all a part of that collection, as are eighteen stories from authors Anna Lowe, Jacqueline Sweet, J.K. Harper, Liv Brywood, Elianne Adams, and Olivia Arran. They’ll be rolling out through the end of June 2016.

Learn more about the Reckless Desires collection
at the series website
.

OTHER NORSETON WOLVES STORIES

Beast

Loner

Idler

Scion

Maker

Scout
(coming June 2016)

Seer
(coming June 2016)

Turn the page for a sneak peek of
Scout
.
 

-FROM CHAPTER ONE-

Paul Berger suspected his bedside demeanor could use some brightening, but not once in the ten years since he’d graduated from medical school had he been accused of
intentionally
aggravating a patient. There was a first time for everything.

“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered.

As the wild woman in his care snarled and charged at him, he dodged and weaved around her. He wasn’t running from the nude werewolf. In the past, he’d tackled far more fearsome patients who were plain-old human. He was trying to find a safe angle to grab her from. The wolf lady, though, was agile and wasn’t afraid to throw a punch.

“She wouldn’t have swung at you like that unless you’d done something to her.” The man called Arnold, who was the wild woman’s twin, blocked the door of the bedroom—the only real favor he’d done for Paul in the week since Paul had started making house calls for his sister.

His sister. The wild woman.
Petra
.

Petra had been comatose until a few hours prior, and Paul had been tending to her in spite of the fact that he wasn’t a veterinarian. He worked in the small, sleepy emergency care department of the Norseton community hospital, and he’d never in his life tended an animal. Or even a person who was just an animal
sometimes
.

Before Norseton’s wolfpack had moved into the community to head up security for his clan leaders, Paul had never encountered a shapeshifter face to face. He thought he would have known if he had. If all of them put off the same kind of energy as the wolves in Norseton, there was no way he wouldn’t have pegged them. He was a witch, though. Or at least, something close enough to one. He was probably a little more attended to weird shit than the average E.R. doc.

“You know damn well I didn’t do anything to her,” he snarled at Arnold in response to the snarl the other man had targeted at him
first
.

Paul’s bedside manner perhaps wasn’t the sunniest of all the medical care providers in the community, but he was a good doctor and everyone knew that. They didn’t call on him because they wanted someone who’d be tender. They called him because he didn’t back down from challenges.

He didn’t appreciate Arnold’s accusing tone. Paul was doing
him
a favor.

Petra charged at Paul again, white teeth bared and dark almond eyes narrowed. She made some wordless, screeching sound, and reflexively, he bent.

He rammed his shoulder into her belly and hauled her—flailing limbs and all—to the bed.

That’s enough from you, she-beast.

“Arnold, grab my bag,” Paul said.

The bed she’d hadn’t moved more than an inch in on in the entire week since she’d arrived had become a chaotic swirl of torn covers and dented wood. She’d waked and gone wild, and Arnold had claimed Paul had been the trigger.

Paul hadn’t done shit but to step into the room, warming the end of his stethoscope just like he had fifteen other times.

He narrowly missed the swipe of her hand near his cheek, but not the nasty words coming off her sharp tongue.

“Degenerate bastard. Fucking loser. Sadistic asshole.”

“Yeah? I’ve been called worse.” He turned her over onto her belly, pinned her arms behind her back, and pressed his knee to the top of her shoulder.

Still, she writhed and fought—very nearly throwing him off. She might have been tiny at barely over five feet, the best he could tell, but Paul wasn’t a small man. He probably had eighty pounds and at least ten inches on her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Arnold stood at the end of the dresser lamely holding Paul’s bag. Halfway across the room instead of next to Paul where the bag could have done him some good.

“What do I look like I’m doing? I’m trying to keep the wild woman from hurting herself. Perhaps you could let her know that I’m not here voluntarily so she can direct her vitriol to someone more appropriate, hmm?”

“…the fuck off me!” she shouted.

“The angel has such a spirited voice.” He scoffed.

For a week, he’d imagined that the voice would have been bell-like and sweet, but there was a huskiness to it—an unexpected strength coming out of that small body that extended no welcome to strangers. She probably considered Paul strange enough.

The feeling was mutual.

Look for SCOUT on June 6.

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