Lover Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 2) Read online

  Lover Wolf

  Shifter Falls, Book 2

  Amy Green

  Contents

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  From the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Amy Green

  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.

  For new releases and news, join Amy’s mailing list!

  Get book 1 of the Shifter Falls series: Rebel Wolf

  1

  The eagle spotted the dead man in the first light of dawn.

  The bird had finished hunting and had done a long, slow circuit over the town of Shifter Falls as the sun came up behind the Rocky Mountains. It was early June, and the Colorado air was cold this early in the morning, the town still quiet and sleeping. From his high vantage point, the eagle could see the town’s roofs, its quiet streets with very few cars on them, the lights winking from windows—and then the vast, thick forest that stretched for miles in every direction, ending at the far-off, dusk-blue mountains.

  In his human life, the eagle was a man named Shep Wilson. Shep owned an auto body shop in Shifter Falls, and from time to time he sold pot out of the office in the back. Times had been tough in the Falls, and a man had to do what a man had to do.

  But this morning he was an eagle, as he often was at this time of day. Dawn was his favorite time to shift. In his eagle, he no longer cared about auto parts or bills or employees or even the bags of weed in his office safe. He was the sun and the sky and the mountains. He was free.

  Outside the town limits, somewhere in the trees, he smelled blood. Not good blood—dead blood. Human blood. He circled lower, watching carefully as the smell got stronger. Eventually he saw the man.

  He landed high in a nearby tree, his huge talons gripping the thick branch, and looked down. The man was face-down on the soggy ground, and a pool of blood had spread beneath him, soaking into the earth. He was wearing a nylon jacket, jeans, and hiking boots, the jacket torn. Next to him was a collapsed tent and the remains of a campfire. The man was still, peaceful. It was if the man had simply been walking, and then had lain down—though of course the blood said otherwise. Whatever had happened to him, it had been very violent to produce that much blood.

  As a man, Shep would have been distressed at the sight. He might have cried out, even thrown up. But the man was buried far down inside the eagle right now, and the eagle was accustomed to death. He had hunted a rabbit not half an hour ago, killing it as violently as this man had been killed. So the eagle simply stared for a moment, blinking its dark eyes and thinking.

  The Donovans would need to be informed. Even in his animal state, there was enough of Shep to remember that. Shifter Falls was ruled by the Donovan pack of werewolves, and had been for three centuries. Since the old alpha had died last year, there were four Donovans in Shifter Falls—half brothers, all sons of the old alpha by different women. After their father’s death, the four brothers had come to an uneasy truce, narrowly avoiding a pack war. They had chosen one brother as alpha—Brody Donovan—while the other three aided their leader in keeping the town under pack law. The Donovans would want to know about the dead man in the woods, and as soon as possible.

  The eagle lifted off the branch again, beating his wings to rise into the sky, but he soon saw that there was no need to inform the Donovans at all. There was a wolf a mile away, streaking through the trees in the direction of the body.

  This wasn’t a surprise. One or more of the Donovan brothers often patrolled the town perimeter at night. It wasn’t unusual for the eagle to spot a wolf as he flew his own vigil. Sometimes there was more than one wolf, though they never ranged together. The Donovans were loners, through and through.

  Now, one of them had likely scented the blood. It was hard to tell the brothers apart in wolf form—this wolf was big and black. Devon Donovan, possibly. A few miles to the west, a second wolf was also running through the trees, scenting the blood. This one was slightly smaller, lighter. Ian Donovan, perhaps.

  Since he no longer had a task—the wolves would see the man soon enough—the eagle caught an updraft, turned, and headed back to town. Deep inside his human memory, Shep recalled that Shifter Falls had a new chief of police. His name was Quinn Tucker, and he was a bear shifter. He should be notified, too, of the dead man in the woods.

  The Donovans informed first, the police second. The eagle never questioned that. Shep didn’t, either. Even Quinn Tucker wouldn’t question it.

  That was how it worked in Shifter Falls.

  This was Donovan land.

  The eagle headed back to town to tell Quinn he had his first murder.

  2

  The problem with Heath Donovan, Tessa Keefe thought, was that he was so goddamned beautiful.

  Too bad he was a werewolf.

  The smart girls of Shifter Falls stayed away from werewolves, and Tessa was a smart girl. Only males could be born shifters, which meant that the females in the Falls were all human. The luckiest girls left town. The second luckiest stayed, but they nabbed human men to marry. Last were the unlucky girls, who stayed, and stayed single, and stayed away from shifter men.

  No shifter will ever be any good for you, Tessa’s mother always said. Especially a wolf.

  Tessa was one of the unlucky girls, but she didn’t mind. She could handle it. She had a job at the Black Wolf bar, which was owned by a human man named Kyle and had a clientele that was mostly human. She was blonde, good-looking, and the men liked her—though she didn’t encourage them—and she was good for business. Before long, Kyle had promoted her to manager. Everything had been good, or at least as good as it could be when you worked at a bar in a dangerous town like Shifter Falls.

  Then Heath Donovan had walked in.

  The old alpha, Charlie Donovan, had just died. Heath was Charlie’s bastard son, one of four, half-brothers who had grown up separately with different mothers and hated each other’s guts. Heath had come in on a Wednesday, just after dinner, while the sun was still setting in the mountains and the light from the front windows was glinting off the taps. He wore jeans, motorcycle boots, and a gray v-neck t-shirt, the material so thin she could see every line of muscle on his shoulders and chest. Three different necklaces disappeared into his shirt, and both wrists were adorned with woven leather and cloth bracelets. His dirty blond hair was worn slightly long, his cheekbones were high, and there was a scruff of dark blond beard on his jaw. He’d looked sensual and deadly at the same time, and Tessa had been able to tell from the first second that he was a wolf.

  “I want to buy your bar,” he’d said to Kyle.

  Kyle had hemmed and hawed. He didn’t want to sell the Black Wolf, but in Shifter Falls you thought twice before you said no to a Donovan. Plus, Kyle was over fifty and he’d been talking lately about retiring to Canoe Lake. So eventually Kyle had sold. And t
hat left Tessa working for a werewolf—a Donovan werewolf.

  Heath had never owned a bar before—he’d never owned any kind of business before. Buying the Black Wolf was an impulse, rumor said, so he could pick up women at his own bar instead of going to someone else’s. Tessa had heard the stories: Heath had been his father’s favorite, he was lazy, he spent his time living the high life and chasing tail. Of Charlie’s four bastard sons, Heath was the pretty boy, the unreliable one, the spoiled one with no ambition. With Charlie dead, Shifter Falls became even more dangerous than usual, as fights broke out over who would lead the Donovan pack. No one thought Heath would make a play to be the next alpha, because no one thought that Heath could lead.

  And, as Tessa learned, the stories were partly true. Heath rolled in to work past noon on most days, his dirty blond hair tousled, wearing one of his worn t-shirts, smelling of dirty musk and wolf. He gave out free rounds of drinks. He moved into the apartment above the bar, and sometimes when Tessa was on opening shift a woman would come down from upstairs, wearing her clothes from the night before, her makeup rubbed off, a look of blissed contentment on her face. (“Honey,” said one of those women when she spotted Tessa. “He’s a god.”) The sight of those women always made Tessa angry and uncomfortable and secretly, burningly curious.

  But Heath had also fired every one of the Black Wolf’s no-good employees, while keeping Tessa and the two other best people. He’d shut down the substandard kitchen and brought in better high-end drinks instead. He catered to werewolves, who biologically couldn’t get drunk but liked to drink anyway, so they drank all night without stopping. And he brought the celebrity status of a Donovan brother, so the place was always packed.

  Tessa had planned to quit, since she didn’t want to work for a goddamned werewolf. But when her tips doubled, she changed her mind.

  Two months after Heath had taken over, Tessa got an email from Kyle, who was fishing at Canoe Lake. She’d gone in to work that night and said to her new boss, “I heard from Kyle, by the way.”

  Heath was sitting at one of the tables, going over a ledger of liquor deliveries. “From Canoe Lake?” he asked without looking up.

  Tessa had stared at him in shock.

  Heath looked up, his uncanny dark-lashed gray eyes taking her in. “What?” he said.

  “You knew,” Tessa said. “You knew Kyle was thinking of retiring before you ever walked in here. Before you ever made an offer.”

  His expression was unreadable. “Is that a surprise?” he asked her.

  “But Canoe Lake.” Tessa scrambled for words. Like everyone, she’d assumed that his buying the Black Wolf was a whim, a spoiled impulse. “It’s—he never talked about Canoe Lake to anyone except me and a few others. Not ever. How did you know?”

  Heath had looked at her for a long time, assessing. Then he said, “I know what I need to know, Tessa. It’s something I’m good at.”

  That was the first time Tessa realized there was more to Heath Donovan than anyone gave him credit for.

  So she didn’t quit. Tessa didn’t like werewolves, but she was far from stupid. Heath might be useful, if she managed not to make an enemy of him.

  If only he weren’t so goddamned beautiful.

  The longer she worked for him, the more she saw it. He was lithe, but he was packed with muscle. He moved like mercury pouring into a cup. He had an eclectic wardrobe that usually featured bracelets and silver rings. His lazy drawl rumbled through his throat without hurrying. He was also unmistakably deadly—it was just as easy to picture his hands snapping someone’s neck as it was to picture them taking your clothes off. And yet everything about him screamed sex.

  His attractiveness annoyed Tessa, so she gave him sass. He gave her sass back. She twisted up her blond hair and wore low-cut tops to work along with her best jeans, but he never made a move on her, never even a single flirtatious comment. It frustrated her that she wanted a werewolf, of all people, to notice her, so she gave him extra sass as punishment.

  It was early June, a few months after the Donovans had picked Heath’s half-brother Brody as alpha after putting down a coup attempt, and the town had simmered down. Tessa came to work to find that Heath was already there, standing behind the bar and sorting through the mail before the place opened.

  “You’re late,” he said, glancing up at her.

  Ten minutes. He usually wasn’t awake to notice. “So fire me,” she said, brushing past him and tying back her hair.

  “I might.” He wouldn’t, and they both knew it. If there was one thing Tessa was good at, it was managing the Black Wolf. Heath held up an invoice. “Tell me again why we didn’t pay this supplier last month?”

  “Because he short-changed you, and he wouldn’t admit it, so you told him to go fuck himself,” Tessa replied without looking at the page.

  “Ah, yes. And did I ask him for a discount?”

  “No, I did.” Tessa started pulling glasses from the dishwasher. “But he wouldn’t talk to me about it. He would only talk to you.”

  “Is that so?” Tessa glanced over to see Heath looking at her, one eyebrow raised. “And did you inform him that you have my full authority?”

  “No, I went home and cried into my embroidered pillow,” Tessa said, slamming the dishwasher. “Of course I told him. He said he would only take it up with Heath Donovan.”

  Heath was quiet for a moment, and something quick and unsettling flashed across his eyes. “Well then, I’ll take it up with him,” he said in a tone that made Tessa remember why no one messed with Donovans.

  Heath went back to the mail, and Tessa glanced at the staircase to the upstairs apartment. There was no woman stumbling downstairs this morning, barely able to walk in her post-orgasmic weakness. In fact, it had been a while—months—since she’d last seen one. Before she could stop herself, she glanced at Heath again.

  “What?” he asked without looking up. He always seemed to know when she was looking at him, even when he was looking somewhere else.

  “Nothing,” she said, and she pulled her gaze from him, though not before she reluctantly admired the long lines of his back and shoulders beneath his thin t-shirt, as well as his spectacular ass in his molded jeans. She had to be careful at work, because werewolves could smell arousal. Not that she was aroused.

  He’s a god, that woman had said. What the hell did that mean? Tessa had no idea. She had never had the impulse to say those words about any of her ex-boyfriends. He’s a tool would be more like it.

  None of those women had ever come back, though. One night, that was all. That was Heath’s pattern. And, lately, not even that. It couldn’t possibly be for lack of opportunity. After all, the man owned a bar. So what was going on?

  “I can practically hear you thinking,” Heath drawled, turning and looking at her. “Do you have a question for me, Tessa?”

  She locked eyes with him, and for a crazy moment she almost asked. Almost. Then she remembered that she didn’t give a damn about his sex life, not in this life or any other, because he was a werewolf. So she said, “Did the grocer deliver the limes last night?”

  He opened his mouth to answer—or maybe to say something else—but the door swung open, letting in a draft of cool June air. Brody Donovan walked in. “Heath,” he said.

  Heath turned and looked at his half-brother. Brody was wearing his usual outfit, jeans with a flannel shirt unbuttoned over a t-shirt, and a baseball cap. “Morning, Captain,” Heath said.

  “Fuck off,” Brody replied. Since Brody had taken the job of pack alpha, Heath liked to needle him by calling him Captain, which Brody hated. Brody was a quiet wolf who disliked the attention being alpha brought him. He turned to Tessa and touched the brim of his cap. “Tessa.”

  “Hey, Brody.” Tessa had grown used to Brody, and she actually liked him. There was no doubt he was the nicest and politest of the Donovan brothers. Devon, the biggest brother, was the scariest—he’d been Charlie’s henchman for most of his life, breaking heads and spilling blo
od when Charlie told him to. Devon didn’t talk much. Ian Donovan had been a cage fighter, and had done a year in prison for it—he was pretty scary, too, though he’d always hated his father and didn’t follow rules. Ian had a mate now, a woman named Anna, which had calmed him down some.

  Compared to Devon and Ian—who had once, years ago, tried their best to kill each other—Heath and Brody were the peacemakers. Heath had his charm and his sex appeal, and Brody was soft-spoken and decent. Still, it would be a fool who would underestimate either of them. Tessa had heard that Brody was hard to anger, but when backed into a corner, there was no one more deadly. And her gut told her that anyone who truly made Heath Donovan mad would regret it.

  “Heath,” Brody said now. “Don’t you ever answer that goddamned cell phone I gave you?”

  “Nope,” Heath said. Werewolves hated cell phones, though Brody was trying to change that. “We have a phone here in the bar.”

  “The land line?” Tessa said. “That’s been disconnected for, like, a year.”

  Heath looked at her. “Shit. I guess that explains why no one calls.”

  “For fuck’s sake,” Brody said. “Get out from behind that bar, Heath, and come with me now.”

  There was a note in Brody’s voice that made Heath straighten to attention. “What’s going on?”

  “We have a dead man in the woods,” Brody said. “A hiker, it looks like. Shep Wilson spotted him this morning, right before Ian and Devon smelled the blood on patrol. The whole front of him is ripped open. Looks like wolf’s work.”

  “Jesus,” Heath said, his expression deadly serious now. Tessa felt a trickle of alarm down her spine. Looks like wolf’s work.

  “Quinn is on it,” Brody said, “and the body has been taken to Doc Allister for a post-mortem. But I need you with me at the site.”

  Heath was already circling the bar. “Are Devon and Ian still there?”

  “Yes. I need all hands on deck. I want to find the fucker who did this and track him.”