Avery and Her Wolf [Shifters Revealed 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  Shifters Revealed 1

  Avery and Her Wolf

  Author Avery Montgomery knows things no human should about the paranormal. That earns her the attention of the Midnight Pack and a visit from one of its wolves, Chase Randall. She’s intensely attracted to Chase but believes he’s an overzealous reporter or maybe even a crazed fan. Despite his repeated attempts to engage her, she does her best to stay away from him.

  When Chase is forced to spy on Avery for his alpha, he gets the surprise of his life. She’s his fated mate. He’s driven to claim her, but unfortunately, she wants nothing to do with him. Trying to get the information his pack needs, he inadvertently confirms her suspicions, and she breaks out the big guns to run him off.

  How can Chase claim his fated when she won’t even agree to a date? Can he reveal his true nature to her without endangering his pack? And if he can gain her trust, will he also win her love?

  Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Shape-shifter

  Length: 46,658 words

  AVERY AND HER WOLF

  Shifters Revealed 1

  Suzette Rose Cauler

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  AVERY AND HER WOLF

  Copyright © 2015 by Suzette Rose Cauler

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-63259-400-6

  First E-book Publication: May 2015

  Cover design by Harris Channing

  All art and logo copyright © 2015 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

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  DEDICATION

  To Mom, I miss you every day.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  AVERY AND HER WOLF

  Shifters Revealed 1

  SUZETTE ROSE CAULER

  Copyright © 2015

  Prologue

  The bang didn’t just wake her. It yanked her out of bed and onto her feet. Avery stumbled across the room, sleep trying to draw her back, despite her shaken state. She could hear voices, her mother’s and a man’s. Her father’s? Yes, her dad’s voice, angry, so terribly angry and shouting. Were they fighting?

  Avery hated when her parents fought. She wouldn’t let it go on. She would run to them and tell them to stop fighting. Dad would hug her and ruffle her hair, and Mom would smile sadly and take her back to bed. Maybe she’d even wrangle another story out of Mom before she tucked her back into bed. Her mother always told the best stories, as good as those in her favorite books, completely from memory.

  She opened the door and half-tripped, half-walked down the hall, rubbing her eyes. Her little brother’s toys again. No matter how often her mom picked them up, they found their way back underfoot. Avery stopped outside his door and peeked in. It was dark inside, but her eyes hadn’t been exposed to any light yet, so she could see clearly. He was still asleep, curled up into a tight ball, thumb in his mouth. Dad would pitch a fit about that if he saw it.

  More awake then and wondering how he could sleep through so much noise, Avery started back down the hall. That’s when she heard it. The angry growl and then a voice, so bitter. Not just angry, hateful. Another growl and another. Avery had heard growls before, but this time they frightened her. She had to get there, had to see what was going on. She moved towards the growls slowly at first, then running. Suddenly, the darkness shifted and her mother was running toward her, shouting, “Go! Run to Billie’s! Get your brother and run!”

  Avery reacted slowly, and her mother shoved past her, running at full tilt, reaching back to drag her long. They ran to her brother’s room, finding him sitting up in bed, screaming his head off. Her mother opened the window.

  “No, Mommy, I’m scared!” Avery cried. “It’s too far.”

  Her mother insisted. “Go! Go now! Run and don’t look back!

  “What about you and Daddy? What’s happening, Mommy?”

  “Take your brother and run. Go to Billie’s and hide there. Don’t look back. I have to help Daddy, but I promise we will be right behind you. Now go!”

  Avery shook with fear, not understanding. Hearing the growls and grunts, the cries of rage, she reached for her brother, fingers grazing his pajamas too late, much too late.

  Her mother’s scream split the air as she shoved Avery backward, hard, so hard out the window. It slammed shut before Avery even hit the ground.

  A shock of pain kept her immobile for a minute, unable to even process the unyielding coldness of the ground. She didn’t know what to do, and her brother was still inside. She tried to climb up to see in th
e window, but she wasn’t tall enough. All she could hear were screams. Then she was lifted off her feet from behind by a strong, hairy arm. The voice was familiar, but it was all wrong. The arm was propelling her through the air, leaving her family behind. She kicked at him, screaming, “No! Mommy! I need my mommy!” Why wouldn’t he listen? Didn’t he understand?

  Avery came to with a start, her hands clutching the sheets, a child’s scream on her lips. Her mouth was dry, her hands trembling as she reached for the lamp that stood on her nightstand. She fought the panic, fighting down the pain, the despair that was real enough to make her sick with grief and frustration. She was old enough to hold it together now. It was just a nightmare, one she hadn’t had in years.

  She hated that nightmare more than any of the others. As a child, she’d had it repeatedly, at first waking to an adult’s comforting arms, and later, to the annoyance of those who claimed to care for her. She became an irritation, waking the whole household with her screams, but she couldn’t help it. The nightmare was always so real, and back then, it would take half the night to convince herself it hadn’t actually happened. What made it worse was the fact that she could never remember the little boy’s name. If she’d had a little brother, at least she should know what she’d called him.

  Avery liked to say she’d aged out of the nightmare, her current dreams focusing on other matters, frequently shifters, the friendly type, and other paranormal creatures. She often dreamt of herself as a child, playing around with wolf pups or watching relatively friendly sparring matches. The nightmare of losing her family had finally faded into a distant memory, so she was clueless as to why it had suddenly been resurrected. Fortunately, Avery’s current location was so remote that she’d only managed to wake her dog. There was no one to look at her with a mixture of pity and disgust, no one to apologize to for not being normal.

  As an adolescent, she’d get up and write about her dreams in her journal, trying as hard as she could to remember the names and the faces, to remember what happened next. Despite what all the adults around her said, the dreams had been real to her, and she’d been convinced they meant something, especially that particular nightmare.

  Eventually, though, she’d stopped writing about it, though she still journaled her other dreams. This particular nightmare never changed, and Avery came to agree that it was best forgotten. If only she could forget. Even so many years later, fully grown and more or less grounded in reality, she could feel the nightmare’s icy grip on her body.

  Kicking off the covers she’d knotted around her, Avery got out of bed. She would write tonight, but not about the dream, never again about that nightmare. Writing was a given, though, because there was no chance she’d get back to sleep.

  Chapter 1

  “You’re joking.” Chase couldn’t believe what Liam had ordered him to do. “Send someone else. I have better things to do than go spy on some human.”

  “Nothing more important than what your alpha commands.” Liam was Chase’s oldest brother and the alpha of the Midnight Pack.

  “Commands?” It annoyed him when Liam pulled rank like that. Just a year ago, they were still cutting up together. Now that Liam was the alpha, he took himself way too seriously. “Look, if this is about what happened with James, I said I was sorry.” He wasn’t sorry, not really, but he was sorry he’d disobeyed one of Liam’s orders so publicly.

  “I told you to let me handle it.” Liam glared at him, obviously still pissed off more than a month later. “If my own brother won’t obey me, why should anyone else?”

  “I tried, Liam, even though the idea of you commanding me still makes me laugh. But James? He had it coming.”

  Liam growled, pounding the table and leaning forward aggressively. “That was not your decision to make.” His whole body was tense as if ready to strike.

  At six foot six, Liam only had two inches on Chase, two inches that were easy to forget when they were seated. Liam’s growl didn’t move any mountains with Chase. In a fight, they were almost evenly matched. The problem was, now that Liam was alpha, Chase wasn’t supposed to fight him. Fuck. “He was beating her, Liam. What did you expect me to do?”

  “I expected you to heed my orders.”

  “Maybe I should have just let him beat her to death, then. Is that what you wanted?”

  Unlike in some packs, women of the Midnight Pack were treasured, so the men had been shocked to learn that Addison, one of their own, was being beaten by her mate. Shifters had supernatural healing ability, and their bodies didn’t show signs of injury for long. No one knew how long she’d been hiding it. At some point, Addison had confided in her sister, begging her to keep it a secret, but Ann had gone straight to Liam with it.

  Liam had discussed the situation with his brothers and some of the other men. They’d all been in agreement about wanting to head straight over there and teach James a lesson. Liam had a hell of a time talking them down. He’d ordered them to leave James to him, reminding them that he’d deal with James in his own way. It was the alpha’s job to deal out justice.

  Though the thought of any man harming a woman enraged Chase, he’d meant to comply. It just so happened that Liam’s justice moved too slowly. He’d returned home from a run late one night and pulled on a pair of shorts to sit outside on his porch. That’s when he’d caught sight of something he couldn’t believe. James was dragging, literally dragging, Addison up the stairs. Chase didn’t think about it. He ran over there and slugged James. Addison jumped up, sobbing, and ran inside, scrapes and bruises all down her back.

  Chase had warned James. He’d warned him not to lay hands on Addison again. James had told Chase to fuck off, then spit at him and stormed back inside. Chase couldn’t just go home after that, so he’d walked up to the front door and stood listening. All was quiet for a few minutes, except for the sound of Addison apologizing to James as if she’d done something wrong. Then came the thumps and the sound of Addison’s muffled cries. Chase just saw red. He broke the fucking door down and when he saw Addison’s bloodied face, he totally lost it and laid into James, beating him senseless. In truth, he’d wanted to kill him. Addison’s screams had brought others running, and he’d been pulled off James just in time.

  Liam pounded the table again, hard enough to knock over both the glasses on it. “Of course that’s not what I wanted.” He shook his head then sighed heavily. “Do you think it’s easy leading this pack?”

  “Of course not.” The pack wasn’t overly large at just over ninety wolves, but it wasn’t small and neat, either. Honestly, Chase was glad it wasn’t his job to wrangle them all. “I just didn’t think. I couldn’t let him beat her like that.”

  “I get it,” Liam said, relaxing his posture some. “I would have felt the same, but I still need you and everyone else to understand that my word is law. My mistake was not dealing with James faster. Yours was forgetting that it was my problem to deal with in the first place. You could have yanked her out of there and brought her to me.”

  “Whatever. I’m sorry I disobeyed my alpha, but I’ll never be sorry for kicking his ass. My brother should understand that he had it coming.”

  “Yeah, he did.” Liam shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “But I’m your alpha first and your brother second. You have to remember that.”

  “Got it, okay? No need to punish me by making me babysit humans.” Chase didn’t want this assignment. There were dozens more suited to it than him. He lacked the patience, and the interest. Besides, the alpha’s brother shouldn’t be asked to perform such petty jobs.

  “It’s not a punishment, not exactly. Think of it as a chance to prove that you can obey my orders, even when you don’t like them. Avery Montgomery could be a threat to our pack, to all wolf shifters, really. I need someone I can trust to find out how much she really knows. Who better than my little brother?”

  “You have four other little brothers.” Chase wasn’t fooled. This was Liam’s way of getting back at him, plain and simple.


  Liam smirked. “It’s such an awful punishment to get close to a beautiful woman. What a cruel alpha I’ve turned out to be.”

  Chase had seen photos of Avery Montgomery, and Liam had that part right. She was easy on the eyes. “She’s an author, Liam—of fiction! This whole thing couldn’t be any more ridiculous.” It was all his only sister Gypsy’s fault for reading those stupid paranormal romance books.

  “Fiction books that list the Ceremony of Shadows, the Evocation of Warriors and the Rite of Flesh.”

  “Don’t tell me you read them, Liam.”

  “I had to, just to be sure Gypsy wasn’t exaggerating. A lot of it this author gets wrong, but she gets too much right for my comfort. Someone has to be feeding her information, and I need to know who. If there are others who know, we could be hunted eventually, experimented on, even killed.”

  Chase snickered at that. Hunted, yes. Killed, no.

  “It’s difficult for humans to kill us, but not impossible,” Liam said. “So you’ll go and watch her. You’ll get close enough to find out what she really knows and how she knows it. See who visits her, who she talks to. Follow her when she leaves home, and if you lose her, get inside and look through her things.”

  “Should I start with her underwear drawer? Maybe I’ll find clues hiding under her bras and panties.”

  Liam ignored that. “Neil is working on hacking into her computer. Maybe a phone tap, too.”

  “Then you don’t need me. Send someone with the patience to sit around watching some human do all the boring shit they do. Send Aiden. He was dating that one chick. What was her name? He let her drag him to the mall and shit.” Their brother Aiden had a thing for human females to the point that he hardly dated shifters anymore.

  “You’re going.” Liam stood up and tossed a campground brochure on the table. “She owns the place and lives there in the spring and summer. Make a reservation for a couple of weeks, and I want you there before this week is out. No excuses.”