Running With Wolves Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Dakota West

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

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  About the Author

  Running With Wolves

  Shifter Country Wolves, Book One

  Dakota West

  Chapter One

  Greta

  The door to the bar opened, and a gaggle of too-perky blond girls walked in, wearing tank tops, tight jeans, and heels that were a little too high for them to walk in, so they tottered like newborn giraffes.

  Behind the bar, Greta rolled her eyes.

  Huh, she thought, filling a pint glass with Coors Lite. Is college back in session already?

  The girls stood near the doorway, looking around the dark bar and blinking like they’d never seen the inside of a dive before.

  Summer sure does fly by, Greta thought grumpily. Summer meant less tips, true, but also less of these girls, the humans who pouted and showed too much skin and thought that all the men there would just fall at their feet. She put the Coors down in front of the man who’d ordered it and he thanked her, nodding.

  Greta moved down the bar, keeping an eye on the girls as she filled beer glasses and poured shots of whiskey and tequila. They seemed unsure of what they were doing, and they hung back a little, wearing their too-tight, too-skimpy outfits, their three heads huddled together as they plotted and planned together.

  Greta sighed inwardly.

  Sorority girls, she thought. They’re either here on a dare, or because they want some wolf tail.

  She sized up their outfits again as she wiped her hands on a bar towel.

  They’re here for the wolves, she decided.

  The more adventurous college girls were the ones that ended up at the Tooth & Claw Saloon. Most of their lives, their parents had warned them about shifters — that shifters were total perverts or sex maniacs, just because they mated in triads instead of pairs. For shifters, two men and a woman was normal. Greta herself had two dads and a mom. All the wolves did.

  The head blond must have caught her staring, because she finally came forward, leaning against the bar in a coquettish way, like she thought she was being cute, batting her eyelashes at Greta without looking her in the face.

  “Hi?” she said, her voice swinging upward at the end. Unconsciously, she toyed with a strand of blond hair as she talked. “Could I get three Long Island Iced Teas?”

  Greta wanted to just kick the girls out of the bar. Nothing pissed her off quite like the pretty, skinny, blond humans who strutted in there, swished their hips and tossed their hair, and then left with a wolf on either arm.

  The same people who came into her bar looking for a good night were the same ones who treated wolf shifters like second-class citizens the rest of the time. These girls would probably be happy to let a mated pair double-team them all night, but later, when the sex was over? They’d keep crossing the street to avoid shifters on the sidewalk.

  It made Greta’s blood boil.

  “Can I see your ID please?” she said to the girl, as sweetly as she could. The bar couldn’t afford to just throw people out, but she could sure make them work a little harder for a drink.

  The girl blinked, then started going through her tiny, cute bag.

  “I’m going to need to see all three IDs, actually,” Greta said.

  The girl frowned, a pout forming on her overly made up face.

  Greta tried not to smile.

  Sometimes, it’s the tiny victories, she thought.

  The girl went back to her friends, and a few moments later, all three of them presented their IDs. Greta made a show of holding their driver’s licenses up — one from Cascadia, two from California — and comparing the pictures to the girls, but she’d never have been able to tell if the pictures were three other blond sorority types. They all looked exactly the same to her.

  Just as the girls were starting to look alarmed, Greta slid the IDs back across the bar and nodded, once. Then she got out three pint glasses and started pouring the liquor: vodka, gin, tequila, rum, and triple sec, followed with a splash of coke.

  “Twelve each,” she told the girls.

  The lead one raised her eyebrows.

  “Twelve?” she said.

  “There’s lots of liquor in there,” Greta said.

  Also, I don’t like you, she thought.

  Reluctantly, the girls paid, and Greta got their change. None of them tipped, but that was fine with Greta. They’d gotten the Sorority Surcharge, and $2 went into Greta’s pocket.

  “Saw that,” drawled a familiar voice.

  Greta turned her head and looked at Zeke, who sat at the bar, nursing a coke and whiskey.

  “Keep it on the down low, will you?” Greta said, half-smiling.

  Zeke winked, and Greta tried not to make a face.

  “You got it,” he said.

  Thankfully, more customers came in before Zeke could say anything else to her. It was ten at night, the college students were back in town, and things were finally starting to perk up.

  As she poured more drinks, collected money, and chatted with all her regulars, Greta kept an eye on Zeke. He didn’t do much, just sat quietly at his end of the bar, sipping his drink and pretending not to watch her. It was the same thing he’d been doing once every few nights for a month now, and she was suspicious.

  After all, he was single and she was single. Greta suspected that he’d figured this out and decided that, since she didn’t have any other takers, she was ripe for the plucking, and apparently he thought that sitting, drinking, and staring at her was the best seduction method around.

  Greta wasn’t impressed. She and Zeke had grown up together in Rustvale, and just because she was thirty and unmated didn’t mean she was going to pair up with the next available guy who came along.

  She had standards, dammit. Zeke was nice enough, but Greta wanted someone who’d make her heart pound and her head swim. She wasn’t about to settle.

  Now the sorority girls were pretending to play pool, holding cues in their hands and bending over the table, acting confused about the rules. In the corner of the bar, two shifters exchanged glances, picked up their beers, and then went over to the pool table.

  “Y’all know how to play?” one of them asked.

  Greta turned her back and rolled her eyes, thankful that it was getting busy.

  Soon, Greta could barely turn around without someone shouting for her. The regulars all knew her name, and the people who weren’t regulars learned it fast. People leaned across the bar, dollars already in hand, and she moved from patron to patron, pouring beer and whiskey and even the occasional mixed drink.

  Mixed drinks weren’t exactly a specialty of the Tooth & Claw Saloon. Greta’s specials were more along the lines of “a pint full of beer” or “a shot of whiskey.” If someone wanted a drink in a glass with a stem, they could go into Canyon City and drink at the fancy cock
tail bars there.

  Right in the middle of everything, there were two men, leaning sideways against the bar, talking to each other and ignoring the hubbub all around them. Neither had a drink yet, but when Greta planted herself in front of them, wanting the two to order a drink and make room for other patrons, they didn’t seem to see her.

  She pushed cardboard coasters across the bar toward them, “accidentally” nudging their elbows.

  “Hi there,” she said, too brightly. “What can I get you two?”

  They turned to face her, and she swallowed hard.

  Greta got a lot of good-looking customers — it was a shifter bar, after all, and the sort of place where college girls came for a good time — but there was something extra good-looking about these two. She couldn’t put her finger on it, not immediately, but for a second her heart stopped before it started again, and she felt like some emotion hooked her under the ribcage and jerked.

  Definitely new in town, she managed to think.

  The taller wolf, who had dark hair and a short beard, looked at her for a long minute, his eyes narrowing slightly. The other one, who had floppy light brown hair and a wicked scar curving around his left eye, looked at her, looked away, then looked at her again.

  “Could I get a beer?” he asked.

  Normally, Greta would have rolled her eyes and pointed to all the taps, asking what kind he wanted, since it wasn’t like she just had one spigot in the back labeled BEER.

  But right now, she licked her lips, smiled at him, and asked, “What kind?”

  “You got Pabst?”

  She shook her head, her curly dark hair bouncing. Down at the end of the bar, someone leaned in and tried to get her attention, but she ignored them.

  “Bud, Coors, Miller, and a fancy IPA that I got from a brewery on the coast,” she said.

  “I’ll take the IPA,” said the guy with the beard. “Please.”

  They locked eyes for a moment, and Greta felt like there was a warm, fuzzy glow around her head.

  “Coors is good,” said Scar. “Thanks.”

  Greta just nodded and turned to the taps. Facing away from them, her head cleared just a little, and she grabbed two pint glasses, put them under the taps, and started filling them.

  What just happened? She thought. Did someone drug the air? Am I high? Is this what being on drugs feels like?

  She glanced quickly around the bar, but everyone else seemed to be acting normal.

  I guess it’s just me, she thought.

  As she shut the taps off again, over the din of the bar, she heard a loud, horrible slurping sound, the noise of a straw sucking up the dregs of a drink. Greta turned her head toward the noise, almost sure of what she was going to find.

  It was Zeke, his lips around the short straw that was in his drink, slurping up the very last of his whiskey and coke.

  He was staring at her, and Greta made a face despite herself. Then she put the beers in front of the newcomers and smiled her biggest, best smile.

  “Anything else?” she asked.

  “I don’t believe so,” said the one with the beard.

  “Not for me,” said the one with the scar.

  “Six dollars, even,” she said, her hands on her hips. The bearded one handed her a ten dollar bill and narrowed his eyes.

  “Greta, right?” he asked.

  Greta stopped and blinked at him. She looked from the bearded one to the light-haired one, then back.

  She had absolutely no clue who they were, but he’d said her name like they were old friends, or at least old acquaintances.

  “That’s right,” she said, hesitantly.

  “I thought that was you,” he said. “It’s been about thirteen years.”

  Greta tried frantically to place him, but there was no way she’d ever met this man before, in high school or not. She flipped through her mental address book, but came up totally blank.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think I know you,” she said.

  “Elliott Whiting,” he said, grinning.

  Greta’s mouth dropped open.

  “No way,” she said.

  “I swear,” he said.

  “You got—” she started, and then swallowed the rest of her sentence. She’d been about to say hot. “Older!”

  “I could say the same for you,” he said.

  Greta blushed, then laughed.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. “But I really didn’t recognize you.”

  It was true. The last time she’d seen Elliott Whiting had probably been their high school graduation, when he’d been a tall, skinny, glasses-wearing, bad-haircut-having certified dork.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “I don’t think I was anything to write home about when I was eighteen.”

  If I wrote home about you now, it would just be erotica, Greta thought.

  “Anyway, this is Shane, my mate.”

  Shane held out one hand, and Greta shook it. He had hard callouses over the whole surface of his palm, his grip was firm-yet-gentle, and he looked straight into her eyes.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said. “I can’t wait to hear about what a nerd Elliott used to be.”

  Greta glanced away, taking in about six different people who wanted drinks.

  “If you stick around for a while, it ought to clear out again,” she said. “Then I can fill you in.”

  Elliott pretended to make a face, but Shane smiled for the first time.

  “I’d love that,” he said.

  He had dimples.

  Tongue-tied for once in her life, Greta turned away to get drinks for all the people demanding her attention, barely noticing that Zeke wasn’t there anymore. Elliott and Shane disappeared into the crowd of people, pulling away from the mobbed bar, and for a few minutes, Greta let her body go on autopilot, taking orders and pouring drinks.

  She was the last one to notice the fight.

  “The fuck did you just say to me?” shouted a voice.

  Zeke’s voice.

  “Come on, it was a misunderstanding,” said Elliott’s voice.

  By now, everyone in the bar turned toward the center, where Zeke and Shane stood, facing each other, Elliott to one side.

  “You gonna let your mate handle this for you, Whiting?” asked Zeke, his tone utterly nasty. “Maybe nothing’s changed since high school. Still won’t fight for yourself.”

  Zeke shoved Shane right in the chest, pushing the other man back a foot or so.

  Shane looked down at the spot where Zeke had shoved him, then looked up at his face.

  “Oh fuck no,” he said, and lunged at Zeke.

  “Hey!” shouted Greta. She ran to the end of the bar and ducked through the gap in the counter. “Take it outside!”

  No one was listening to her.

  Now Zeke and Shane were on the ground, rolling around, Shane trying his best to land some blows and Zeke trying to get the slightly larger man in a headlock. Elliott tried to separate the two of them, but Zeke landed an elbow in his face, and Elliott’s nose spurted blood

  “Quit it!” she hollered at the top of her voice, running toward them.

  Then they shifted.

  The crowd had been standing around them, mildly interested, but now it was pandemonium. The humans all rushed to the door as the two wolves rolled around the floor of the bar, biting and growling and snapping. The other wolves, still in human form, took a couple steps back, but they weren’t nearly as concerned as the humans.

  In the back, by the pool tables, Greta could see the three sorority girls, half-interested and half-terrified, huddled behind the shifters they’d been flirting with.

  Then she reached Shane and Zeke, pushing her way through the wall of people surrounding them. Without a second thought, she grabbed each wolf by the scruff of its neck and squeezed as hard as she could.

  One of the wolves yelped, and the other was so surprised that it let her pull it away.

  “Not in my bar!” she shouted, right into thei
r faces. “Get out. NOW.”

  The two wolves growled and snapped at each other, even though Greta had them both half-lying on the floor.

  “You’re both about two seconds from being blacklisted from the only wolf bar in Rustvale,” she said, tightening her grip. “If you don’t fucking cut it out, I swear to God you’re both banned.”

  A low growl emanated from deep in Shane’s chest, and Zeke bared his teeth, but neither of them moved again.

  Greta shoved them away from her and stood, surrounded by the tattered piles of their clothing. Both wolves bared their teeth again and stayed a good four feet apart, but they made for the door slowly, growling the whole way.

  Sure, thought Greta. Now they don’t want to be seen naked. Where was that forethought earlier?

  Zeke was the first one through the door, his tail finally disappearing into the night. Shane looked back at the bar, his yellow eyes seeking out Greta.

  She folded her arms in front of herself, glowering at him.

  He disappeared too, and right away, the bar was humming again.

  Everyone was talking about the fight — who’d won, who’d gotten the upper hand, and who the hell that new wolf was. Greta ignored it and bent down to pick up their shredded clothing. The sorority girls looked at Greta, either afraid of her or in awe, and Greta felt herself puffing up with pride.

  As she reached for Shane’s shredded shirt, her hands brushed Elliott’s, and she realized that he was also trying to clean up after the fight.

  “Sorry,” she said, looking up at his face. He held the tattered t-shirt that Shane had been wearing to his face, soaking up the blood.

  Elliott just shook his head. “I’m sorry about Shane. He can be... hotheaded.”

  Greta blew a strand of curly hair out of her face.