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CHAPTER SIX

logan

Saturday Evening

M y second-in-command, Olivia Reeves, didn’t even flinch when I lost my temper. The noise from slamming my hand on the desk between us hadn’t deterred her in the slightest. She pressed her lips into a tight line, clearly not understanding.

“Today would have been a perfect day for a stocking run,” she added, “and maybe you wouldn’t be so cranky if you found a way to get laid.”

Without answering, I stood and sauntered to the window in my office, feeling like an arrow on a bowstring pulled taut.

Each creak of the wooden floor sliced through the heavy silence.

Emma had been into me Friday night. At least up until she had disappeared out of my truck, and I’d been irritable since.

That was the closest I’d been to bedding anyone in…

I didn’t know ho w long. There was too much going on in our lives right now.

Acheron had to be behind the random shifter disappearances, and we already knew how much he envied the collective power the shifter clans wielded.

He wanted our powers and our resources for himself.

As one of the most affluent packs, our pack was usually the focus for Acheron’s ire.

Oh, and one my long-dead relatives had killed his mother, so that didn’t help.

Acheron had been bothering our packs for centuries, never quite able to win, honing his techniques, working his way into a full-blown threat.

If we were going to beat him, we had to unite, and there was only one way the shifter tribes united: the multimorph drew them together.

Our pack lived within a stone’s throw of a dozen other shifter packs—bear shifters, big cat shifters, fox shifters, and raven shifters. The borders of our territory constantly jostled against the others, a careful, barely-there balance. Though we existed in a pseudo-peace for now, it changed often.

At least there was the prophecy of the multimorph we all shared, like some great shared historical origin story.

Yet none of it had anything to do with Olivia and her challenge of my authority.

I whirled to face her. “You don’t have to fucking understand. I am the alpha, and I am in charge.”

Instincts were a big part of how I had earned my spot at the top of the pack, and I wouldn’t tolerate her questioning much longer. My mood had nothing to do with it.

Something was coming, and we weren’t ready.

Acheron had been quiet too long. The leaders of the other shifter packs had members who had come up missing, and they all reported traces of magic around their borders, like an echo of a scent we couldn’t yet connect back to Acheron.

None of them knew what was going on, but it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

In my gut, I knew the survival of our pack would depend on facing whatever unseen threat Acheron had conjured.

Without the multimorph to unite us, I wasn’t sure how we were going to win against the growing strength of the dark mage.

I couldn’t put my finger—or my paw—on his specific ultimate plans yet, but we were all waiting, human, wolf, and shifter alike.

The status quo had been going on too long, and the longer our usual kept on, the more I was certain whatever was out there was going to be catastrophic.

Acheron had something major up the sleeves of his wizard robes.

“Don’t be dull-nosed, Logan. We have got to make a trip into Willow Creek,” Olivia snapped at me. She flipped her long blonde hair over her shoulder, and her gray eyes turned to slits.

“I am aware of the need, Beta , but I won’t have you challenging my decisions,” I snarled.

“When I first brought this up, we’d already run out of?—"

“Not yet,” I repeated for the third time. “We have to continue the patrols.”

“We’ve been running patrols three times a day for a week, Logan.” A growl reverberated in her throat, and behind her human face, I could almost see the sandy blonde wolf with gray eyes, so much like her human form. “There’s nothing out there.”

A tingle rippled up my arms, over my head, and down my back. “There is, and it doesn’t matter if we can’t put a name or a face to it yet.”

“Then what ’s out there?” Olivia pushed. “There’s no evidence of anything. You can’t possibly believe Acheron would threaten us again after we beat him back last time.”

“He won’t give up until he’s dead,” I muttered. “And he’s only getting stronger.”

“Then where’s the multimorph?”

I made no sound as I turned back toward her with my upper lip peeled back to expose my canines.

She remained my top advisor because she wasn’t afraid to challenge me.

It was the reason I’d chosen her, though she knew never to counter my decisions in front of any of the additional members of the pack.

We faced off for long moments. Finally, I said, “I will schedule a supply run for next week. In the meantime, we’re prepared, and we’re not going to go hungry. If the pack needs to burn off some steam, organize a hunt for tomorrow night.”

“Logan. ”

“Olivia, don’t make me grab you by the scruff of your neck.”

Her shoulders dipped, and she lowered her gaze, signaling her acceptance. “As you wish, Alpha.”

Her use of my pack title made the corners of my mouth twitch. She only bothered to use it when she was incredibly furious. As my right hand, Olivia didn’t always have to agree with me. That wasn’t how pack life or how pack hierarchy worked.

“I’ll be leaving for my own patrol shortly. Organize the others. You’re dismissed,” I said as regally as I could manage, intending to verbally thump her on the snout a little.

Her back stiffened, and I didn’t miss the sharp intake of breath.

My words had hit their intended mark, and she whirled, stomped out of my office, out of my home, and slammed the front door behind her.

The crash reverberated in the silence. One of these days, she was going to shatter that antique hardwood door or the leaded glass inside it.

I jogged to the parlor window in time to see her barking orders to a few pack members in the large lawn areas around our main compound. Those assigned to patrol would pay for the foul mood I’d put her in. Sucked to be them.

For me, a patrol would be the safest place to sink the excess tension thrumming through me since Emma had left me with lots of questions and a raging hard-on.

Olivia had been formally requesting a town trip for a month, yet I knew supplies weren’t the only reason she wanted me to visit Willow Creek.

She’d noticed my mild interest in the veterinarian there, and if she were to find out about last night, she’d have pushed doubly hard.

I didn't have a mate, and I refused to take one with all the unrest among the shifters—two facts Olivia also disagreed with. I didn’t think Olivia cared if I took a human or a shifter one either, but I kept those instincts tightly bound.

Until Emma…

A low growl escaped as the colorful-haired vet stepped into my mind, and I imagined her as I’d last seen her, her lips bright red from my kissing, her mouth opened slightly, and her eyes swimming with pleasure.

The first time I’d encountered her in Willow Creek, she’d been crouched down, rubbing the ears of a large German Shepherd outside the post office.

Her smile had been made all the brighter by the sunlight dancing through the rainbow of colors in her hair.

She’d been the most attractive woman I’d seen in a long time, and my inner wolf had begged to be let out.

My desire for her was getting stronger, and I would have to get her into my bed eventually. Somehow.

It wasn't like I didn't want a mate, but who had time to grow a relationship? Booty call trips into Willow Creek would make more sense than anything else, though I didn’t know what would a human do if she ever caught sight of the shifter I was. Humans didn’t know the first thing about our kind.

Not that it mattered anyway.

I refused to distract myself with a sexy woman while shifters of all kinds disappeared, Acheron couldn’t be found, and taunting traces of magic swirled beyond our borders. Those drinks Sheila had poured down my throat had nearly put an end to my resolve to keep my dick in my pants.

None of my turbulent thoughts helped settle me, so I stripped myself of my pants and shirt and tossed them in a nearby chair, opting to leave them behind instead of shredding them in the shift.

The setting sun already slanted in through the window blinds, casting striped shadows over the plastered walls, and I pulled the door open and took a deep breath, scenting the evening breeze. The air had gone chilly, and it slid over my skin as I stepped out onto the wraparound porch.

No one batted an eye over seeing me naked. In fact, several of the she-wolfs looked me up and down, their expressions making their intentions clear, even if the spicy scent of their desire hadn’t immediately twinged the air. As the alpha, shying away from the scrutiny wasn’t an option.

In three strides, I reached the edge of the porch of the historic, three-story Antebellum-style home and leaped down onto gravel walkway. Moss hung from the limbs of the giant sycamore trees and live oak shading the front lawn of the place that had been in our pack since the 1800s.

Our pack, the Six-Mile Pack, resided on several hundred acres in the middle of Nowhere, Louisiana, remote as we could make it. A large gravel driveway split the front lawn before ending in a circle which led directly to the front door of the alpha’s manor and headquarters.

Because I held the title, I lived in the main house.

As much as it felt like too much home for me by myself, the pack expected it.

In times of need, the manor could be turned into a makeshift hospital or any other number of things.

Pack members were allowed to inhabit or build homes anywhere in our territory, and all were allowed to come and go as they pleased.