The Wolf's Mate Book 1: Jason & Cadence
Read The Wolf's Mate Book 1: Jason & Cadence Online
Authors: R.E. Butler
Tags: #werewolf romance alpha male alpha female kidnapping mf paranormal romance
The Wolf’s Mate
Book 1: Jason & Cadence
By: R. E. Butler
Copyright 2012 R.E. Butler
Smashwords Edition
The Wolf’s Mate Book 1: Jason &Cadence
by R.E. Butler
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal
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and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work
of this author.
**Cover Design by Kameko Gay. Photography for
cover art provided by R.E. Butler and StockTrek.
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s
imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is
coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for
mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is
intended for those over the age of 18 only.
**********
Dedicated to B., my long suffering husband;
Kameko Gay in Chicago who was more encouraging than I deserved; and
to anyone who spent their teenage years filling up notebooks with
romance stories but never had the courage to put something out
there for others until they were well into their adult years.
Ahem
.
Table of Contents
From the Author and Other Works
Chapter
1
Cadence headed to Jake's for her night shift,
her heart in her throat and her stomach in her feet. Jake was an
old family friend. She had known him and his wife Renee her entire
life. Renee and her mother went to school together and were best
friends. When she was a child, she called them Uncle Jake and Aunt
Renee. Because her mother died while pregnant with her, Renee was
the closest thing she had to a mother figure in her life and Jake
was more a father to her than her own. They were always what she
needed: a shoulder to cry on, emergency money to fix a broken down
car, and a job to keep her afloat in between semesters.
Jake owned a bar that he named after himself,
in the center of a podunk town in Kentucky called Allen. At 22,
Cadence was done with college and ready for whatever turn her life
was going to take. She'd gone to NKU for a business degree to help
out her father's restaurant, but he had died at the beginning of
her freshman year. She had kept plugging away at it, going back
home in the summer and staying at the old farmhouse that belonged
to her grandparents on her mother's side. It was nestled in the
woods away from the center of town, private and quiet so she could
be alone with her thoughts. And pretty much just alone.
Now she had a bachelor's degree in business
management but had no job to do something with it, although she had
not really looked. Her father's life insurance had more than paid
for college and she bought herself a tricked out Charger when she
graduated. Jake offered a bartending job to tide her over, which
she took even though she hadn't really needed the money. It gave
her something to do, though, and unfortunately it was going to give
her a front row seat to the object of her affection, denied as it
was: Jason Gerrick. Jason was masculinity personified: gorgeous,
year-round tanned skin, light blonde, shoulder length hair that was
always tousled like he'd just rolled out of bed, and light blue
eyes like a summer sky. He rode a motorcycle with his friends,
owned the local garage called Pete's named after his father, and he
happened to also be an alpha werewolf. As a matter of fact, over
half the people in town were werewolves; it was just one of those
things.
Jake was a wolf, too, alpha of the pack that
shared the town with Jason's pack. A number of Jake’s pack also
rode bikes, and she thought there was probably something in that
but never asked. Maybe all bikers were werewolves.
Her mother was a wolf, but married her father
who was not. She became pregnant with her and in most normal
situations, a mix of human and werewolf resulted in a completely
human baby. Just days before she was due to come into the world,
her mother was attacked by a rival wolf pack female. Minutes after
she was born by emergency cesarean, her mother died.
That violence while she was still in her
mother’s womb changed her on a cellular level in a way that was
wholly unique. She became a hybrid wolf. Part human, part she-wolf.
All attitude, strength, and speed but not fur. Kind of like Blade
for dogs. Her mother was part of her uncle's pack, so naturally
they tried to include her and raise her in the ways of their pack.
Her father – who had not liked wolves that much to start with –
hated wolves with a blistering passion because one had killed his
wife, so Cadence had to deal with the hatred from him for her own
people and a part of herself. He prevented her from learning
anything but the barest bit about being a werewolf.
And then there was Jason. Sweet Jason. She
had grown up with him. Even though his pack was separate from
Jake's, wolves ran with wolves, and they all looked out for each
other unless one crossed another, and then it was a problem. As a
hybrid, the only one that anyone had ever known, she was not
technically part of Jake’s pack because she had not ever chosen to
join. It would have been a simple ceremony on the full moon and
then her wolf, at least the part of her brain that felt like a wolf
sometimes, would come under Jake’s true rule as alpha. She was sure
that often when she did things that pissed him off that he wished
she was part of his pack so he could get her to fall in line. That
may be why she didn’t. Or, it could be, because of Jason and her
ridiculously long lasting unrequited love for the bastard.
Jake and Renee always treated her as family
and the pack looked out for her. But Jason’s parents lived next
door to her, in a farmhouse that was about a 10-minute walk from
hers. And so Jason, five years older than her, had been a near
constant presence in her life until about high school, and then he
started changing. The boy that she had loved like a part of
herself, more than a brother, more than a friend, but less than
anything serious, became withdrawn and angry. He had a temper,
volatile and hot, and lashed out at everyone. Jake told her it was
because of the wolf. The boys came into their wolves about 16, and
it took them a long time to get a handle on their beast, especially
around the full moon. She'd been around wolves her whole life so
she had an idea of what he was going through. She had tried to
comfort him, even though she was only 11, and he'd snapped at her,
such rage and hate in his eyes that she didn't know what had
happened. And it never got better.
Her love for him grew and grew, and his anger
widened the distance between them until he was all but a stranger
to her. Except of course for the knot in her heart where he was
firmly rooted. She ignored him as best she could when she was in
town, but it was difficult. The wolves all hung out at the bar and
the only gas station in town was at his garage, and the damn
restaurant that had been her father's was now run by Jake's pack
and the wolves from both packs ate there constantly.
She couldn't escape the wolves, and all of
them knew her and her past and knew about her friendship with Jason
and how he'd treated her. Wolves couldn't keep their mouths shut
about anything juicy, and the poor wolf hybrid girl fawning over
the alpha of the Tressel Pack was big news. So she did her best to
be a bitch to him. Her sarcastic sense of humor was her best
weapon.
As she dressed for her first night at Jake’s
in three months, she knew that Jason would be there. She chose her
outfit carefully. She would make him sorry for being a dick to her
all the time. She'd been alone long enough, and if he wanted
nothing to do with her, then some other man would. There was that
big old bed to toss around in, and she needed a hunk of man to grab
onto, and soon.
She pulled up the sides of her long dark
brown hair and clipped them back, put on her dark party make-up, a
spiked collar on her neck, two inches of bangles on her wrists and
rings on her fingers. She dressed in a black leather mini skirt
with slits up the thighs and chains around the waist, thigh high
stockings, knee high leather kitten boots, and a black suede lace
up bustier. She hoped Jason's head burst at the sight. As she
passed by the hall mirror by the front door, she caught her
reflection and the two words that slipped through her mind made her
smile:
Nice. Dangerous.
She cranked up Jimi Hendrix on her Charger's
stereo, drove with the windows down, and sped towards the bar. She
loved driving at night, and she loved fall, when the wind was crisp
with the scent of leaves and the earth was ready to take a nap for
winter. Striding purposely up the front walk where a line of men
and women, mostly human, waited to get inside, she pushed her
nerves away. Wolves used a private entrance, and she could have
gotten in that way, but she wanted to see who was bouncing, and it
was Toby, an enormous man and an even bigger wolf. Amid the
catcalls and whistles as she made her way down the sidewalk, Toby
gave her a huge grin and held his arms out for her. She jumped up
into his arms and kept her legs together so she didn't flash the
entire neighborhood. "Baby girl you get more gorgeous every time I
see you. You’re gonna stick around this time, right?"
"If I can find a job." She thought he was
going to put her down but he grinned and said, "Pay the toll," and
she kissed his cheek and he sighed happily and put her down. "Don't
tell Jason," he winked at her.
"Why would I tell Jason anything?" She went
on the defense immediately.
"Oh, we're playing that, huh? Get your fine
ass in the bar, girlie, and send out a drink for me when you get a
chance." He made motions to swat her butt, but she managed to skirt
it. The doors opened for her, and she kissed the cheeks of two more
wolves that belonged to Jake's pack.
The bar was packed, as per usual on Friday
nights starting about 10. The line outside said that it was going
to be a long night and she was glad she'd managed to snag a nap in
the late afternoon. She'd been painting the bedroom all morning and
her yawns had gotten annoying so she flopped down on her bed and
fell asleep. A smarter woman than her would have hired someone to
paint the house and not undertaken it alone in an attempt to find
something tactile to do with her hands so she didn’t do something
stupid like call the local alpha and beg him for the time of day.
And now, she went straight to the bar, avoiding the majority of the
crowd but getting pulled into hug after hug from Jake's pack, and
tentative smiles from Jason's pack. Finally, she ducked under the
counter of the bar and straightened up, brushing her hands down her
skirt to stop them from shaking.
"What the hell are you wearing?"
She spun at the sound of Jake's voice.
"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" She folded her arms and
cocked her hip at him.
"Are you trying to start a riot?" He moved
closer to her, annoyance and concern in his eyes.
She rolled her eyes and before she could say
something snarky he grabbed her wrist and said, "I've got a bar
full of wolves and humans just looking for a reason to get into
trouble. Are you trying to start something violent? I just
redecorated." It sounded like he was joking, but she had a feeling
he wasn't.
She stared at him. Her outfit wasn't any
worse than any other girl in there. Maybe he was just being
overprotective as usual. Pulling her arm from his grip, she huffed,
"Listen, Jake. This is how I dress. If you don't like it, fire me,
otherwise, shut the hell up and let me get to tending this dump."
She accentuated her words with a tidy growl at the end and he
growled right back at her. "If it weren't for your mother’s
friendship with Renee, I'd have shipped you off ages ago."