Seer: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves Book 8)

  SUMMARY

  The Norseton Wolfpack’s newest guard recruit, Arnold, never ignores premonitions from his goddess, but her latest missive could have him turning werewolf culture on its ear.

  His rescue of runaway new mother Leonora quickly escalates to untamed infatuation after Arnold accidentally gives Leo a mating bite. Unfortunately, being married already—sort of—Leo doesn’t want another mate. Her old one was the reason she’d grabbed her baby and left Wyoming with little more than the clothes on her back.

  Although Arnold promises Leo that she can have the independence she wants in Norseton, she’s not convinced real freedom is possible. Try as she might to ignore the allure of her goddess-sent rescuer, he holds her in thrall as only a true mate could. Her ex’s reckless stunt to force Leo back to Wyoming leaves Leo with little choice but to trust not only her unwavering mate, but to put her faith in her stalwart new pack, too.

  Disrupting the status quo is a dangerous prospect for wolves, but the Norseton pack can’t back down—not if they ever want to put their broken families back together.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Fucking visions.”

  Rolling his head from one side to the other, Arnold let out a quiet growl at the aches in his body, and shook out his tingling fingers.

  Arnold’s premonition had led him to an isolated thicket in the middle of Roosevelt National Forest in Colorado. He was far from home—a strange feeling for sure, seeing as how he hadn’t had a home in more than ten years. He’d been kicked out of his wolfpack at fourteen and had been out, navigating a cruel world with only his twin sister, Petra, for companionship until a couple of weeks prior.

  Petra had driven their truck into a tree and had been in a coma. She was alive, but shouldn’t have been. What the staff at the small Oklahoma hospital where she’d been taken saw as a medical miracle had really been werewolf genetics at play. They’d been so astounded by her durability that when a stranger called the hospital switchboard looking for John and Jane Does, the nurses had slipped up. They gave away just enough information that the members of a New Mexican wolfpack could guess that Petra wasn’t quite human.

  That was what they’d been looking for—not-quite-humans in need of saving.

  They’d sent a couple of their wolves to scoop up Petra and Arnold before anyone at the hospital looked too deeply into Petra’s physiology, and then offered them a home in their community.

  Norseton.

  He’d said yes. Wolves needed homes.

  But the last time Arnold had seen Petra, she’d been—finally—awake from her healing sleep and was upright and shouting at folks. The shouting hadn’t concerned him. Petra only had two volumes most of the time, and they were loud and louder. Normally he would have stuck around to make sure she was fine, but Arnold had had to go.

  He’d had a vision.

  The full moon was calling for him to shift into his wolf’s form, but he had to resist the call. Holding off on a shift was never good for a moon shifter’s health, but he needed to be on two legs and thinking with his human brain. As a wolf, he’d rely more on instinct than logic, and Arnold needed to be able to tap into both. He was strong enough to resist for a night.

  That lady—she wasn’t.

  The lady was why he was in Colorado.

  Rolling his shoulders back and flexing his fingers, he knelt silently beside a large tree and stared at the familiar spot he’d seen in his vision. There was a small clearing with a large boulder marking one edge.

  If the scene played out the exact same as in his premonition, she’d lay her baby down there, and she’d answer the moon’s call. When she shifted back, he’d be ready for her.

  He turned his wrist over and risked hitting the small button to illuminate the screen of his watch.

  Nine.

  She wouldn’t be able to resist much longer. She likely hadn’t had his practice with avoiding moon shifting. There was no way she could have been on the run for as long as he’d been.

  He didn’t know what she was running from or who, only that she was running, and that their paths were supposed to cross.

  Arnold had never considered himself to be the knight-in-shining-armor type, but the idea of a troubled lady being out in the wild with a baby gnawed at his gut. Reminded him too much of his mother’s struggles, maybe.

  The sound of a tiny protest across the clearing tugged Arnold out of his reverie and made him take his mind off the aches and pains in his body. He pinned his focus on the stumbling blonde with the bundled infant.

  She looked bad off to Arnold—clawing at her clothes with one hand while clutching the child for dear life against her chest. Eyes sunken, with dark hollows beneath.

  She needed to shift. She couldn’t resist.

  The fact she had to shift at all meant she belonged to some man and was probably running from him. Wolf women couldn’t shift until they’d had their mate’s bite, and once they’d been bitten, they were stuck.

  They were property, not people.

  She set her precious bundle down next to the rock and kicked off her dirty white canvas sneakers.

  The baby shrieked, and the lady bent, whispering a useless, “Shh. Shh,” and powdering the child’s faces with kisses.

  “Ugh.” She rolled back her shoulders, gave her head a hard shake, and stood. She undressed quickly.

  Faded blue jeans gone.

  T-shirt gone.

  By the time she stripped out of her panties, she was moving with real purpose, evidently unavailable to avoid the moon’s pull any longer. Her socks flew off next. Her bra last.

  Arnold dug his fingers into the bark of the tree behind him and tried to keep his thoughts chaste and pure. He knew he shouldn’t have been ogling her like that. Nudity didn’t provoke most wolves because they saw each other naked too often. Most were immune to seeing all that flesh, but Arnold hadn’t had much practice in avoidance. The only wolf Arnold had been close to in more than ten years had been his sister. He and Petra had an agreement: “You shift here, and I’ll go way the hell over there.”

  He couldn’t stop staring at the woman with the baby. She had to think no one was looking, so she didn’t bother covering the slight droop of her full breasts or the way her belly—still softly round from a birth that mustn’t have been all that long ago—protruded.

  She sat on her heels, eyes closed and mouth hanging open in pain. She kept one hand on her baby even as her skin began to ripple and her limbs morphed.

  Her shout was muted as the noise transformed into a pitiful howl, but through the whole ordeal, she kept touching the child as if the touch would make a difference.

  Maybe it will, he mulled.

  So much depended on whether she got her bite before or after she’d had the baby. If after, she was probably afraid that in her wolf form, she’d forget that the little human-looking child was hers.

  Arnold wouldn’t forget, though. While she ran, he’d take care of the child. He’d be sitting, waiting for her with the child in his arms whenever she returned from her run, and then he’d take both mother and child back to Norseton with him.

  His visions rarely made a hell of a lot of sense before they were fulfilled, but he knew—for once—that he had a humanitarian purpose and not a self-serving one.

  What she was doing was reckless and dangerous. If she were running, he’d give them a place to go. He’d had practice with running. She, apparently, didn’t. Not if all she had with her was that one overstuffed backpack and a diaper bag.

  That was no way to live with a baby.

  The gray wolf she’d become shot into the woods, opposite of where he was crouching.

&nb
sp; He moved quickly across the clearing, cracking his knuckles and his neck and ignoring his inner wolf’s compulsion to run after her.

  The baby was swaddled tight, but fighting the blankets, squabbling red-faced and protesting with all the might he or she had in his or her tiny lungs.

  Her, probably.

  The blanket had pink stars and purple unicorns. He wasn’t curious enough yet to pull back the corner to see if the filling matched the wrapper. The swaddling job looked pretty complicated, and he doubted he’d be able to recreate the folds and tucks if they became undone.

  “Hey. Everything’s okay, see?” he cooed at the hollering baby, and then scooped the bundle up off the cold ground.

  He plopped his tired ass beside the boulder and rocked, as much to soothe himself as the baby. The wolf wanted out. The wolf wanted to run and to sing to the moon, but someone with two arms and two legs needed to stay with the baby.

  “Your ma should have listened to the stories,” he said to the baby.

  Fairytales should have taught the blonde long ago that the woods weren’t safe for women and children. He didn’t know if there was a pack anywhere nearby, but he knew that most weren’t as decent as the one in Norseton. If the wrong sorts found her, they’d take her and the baby in without question. They’d make her someone’s broodmare or put her to work, earning dues for the alpha.

  Arnold wanted her to know she had options. She didn’t have to go back to that kind of life unless she wanted to, and no woman in her right mind would have wanted to. She’d run, so there was a chance she hadn’t been completely brainwashed. That was what he was hoping for.

  The baby had stopped squalling, though his or her little lips were quivering. A pitiful sight that tugged at Arnold’s heartstrings.

  Apparently, the full moon had made him soft.

  “Your ma will be back.” He rocked from side to side, eyes closed, humming some rhythmless tune he made up on the fly. “She didn’t abandon you. She just had to go. My ma used to do the same.” He cringed. “Well. Kinda. She didn’t have a bite, but she still liked to run on two legs with the pack. She wasn’t all alone like your ma, though.”

  His mother had never left him and Petra up to their own devices. Their father had been around, for a little while. And then there were friends and aunties who also didn’t shapeshift that she got to watch them. Or young girls from the reservation looking to earn some extra cash. Obviously, the blonde had no such support system.

  The baby stared up at him through swollen eyelids, lips stuck out in a pitiful pout, and cheeks bright red from exertion.

  “You think you’re tired? I’m gonna be the one feeling the pain in the morning and all through the day. I probably won’t get to sleep until we get down to Norseton. Ten-hour drive from here. Did you know that?” He gave the baby’s nose a little tweak.

  The baby made a sucking sound at him. He couldn’t tell if that was baby language for “yes” or “bug off, fool,” but as long as the child wasn’t screaming his or her little head off, he figured they’d get along just fine.

  “I took a nap before sundown,” he said, rocking a little more. “Before the moon started to pull. I probably won’t get to sleep for twenty-four hours. We’ll hit the road as soon as your ma shifts back.”

  He noted the pile of clothes she’d left near the rock. Clean and soft, but a bit abused. Her faded jeans were coming apart around the back pockets and at one of the side seams, and her T-shirt—a simple, stretchy cotton that had been printed with rosettes and bows—had a couple of visible bleach stains.

  He pulled the top closer and ran his thumb along the hem, wondering if that frilly motif was her style, or a hand-me-down she’d had no choice but to take. Petra had been wearing Arnold’s hand-me-downs for ten years. She didn’t seem to mind, but Petra freely admitted that she didn’t have any taste.

  He set the shirt, rife with the blonde’s scent and that pungent one of her mate that most any male would have recognized, atop the blanket to comfort the baby.

  The baby worked out a little fist and gathered enough of the fabric to push into his or her mouth.

  “Gnawing on the sleeve? Really?” Arnold shook his head. “Hope you’re not hungry. How often do babies eat, anyway?”

  He pulled the diaper bag closer, unzipped the top, and then rooted through the contents. Diapers. Wipes. A few changes of clothes—sized three months. A bunch of little socks and some toiletries. No formula. No bottles. There was a clear plastic bag with some papers inside, though.

  He took the bag out and massaged the contents with his thumb, scanning for anything important.

  There was a crisp new social security card, printed with the name KINZY PHILLIPA BANKS. A girl.

  “Hey.” He tweaked her nose again. “You’re a girl.”

  A birth certificate indicated that Kinzy was about nine weeks old, and listed Leonora as her mother and Samuel as her father. The document had been issued in Wyoming.

  “Wyoming.” Arnold closed his eyes again and clucked his tongue. He couldn’t remember anything at all about the wolves in Wyoming. He and Petra had certainly driven through there on occasion looking for seasonal work, but they’d never stuck around for long. Lone wolves did everything they could to avoid packs. Encountering organized packs was risky business. An insulted alpha could have killed Arnold, or Petra could have been snatched up.

  Leonora—whom Arnold assumed was the blonde—probably hadn’t run from very far. Just across state lines, if she’d been in southern Wyoming.

  He tucked everything back into the diaper bag, pulled the zipper closed, and then shifted Kinzy to his other arm. “Where’s your ma going, huh? Do you know?”

  Obviously, Kinzy didn’t give a flying fig. She nodded off, sucking on her mother’s shirt, and Arnold battled with his brain to not follow her lead.

  Shift or sleep.

  His body screamed for him to do one or the other, but he had to remain alert and vigilant. He needed to be awake for whenever Leonora finished her wolf run.

  Chances were very good that she’d return growling and ready to claw him up, but she couldn’t really fight him. If he shifted, he’d be bigger, stronger, and more acclimated to his wolf’s body than she was to hers. She would barely be able to get a swipe in, but she’d try anyway to get him away from her baby once she remembered the baby was hers.

  If he were lucky, she’d return on two feet—not four—and he’d be able to rationalize with her. He’d tell her, “I’m here to help,” and maybe she’d go along nicely.

  He scoffed, and occupied himself by counting the stars he could see over the forest.

  No way in hell was she going to go along nicely. That would make his life easy for a change, and gods forbid that ever happen.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Leonora hated the shift back to her lady shape from her wolf form. The transformation hurt pretty badly when she shifted in the other direction, but—somehow—getting back into her human skin seemed even harder on her parts. One ordeal was like being stretched out on a torture rack. The other was like being crushed by a building.

  She felt very flat, very broken, and, when she noticed there was some dude holding her wolfy princess, she felt very pissed.

  Unfortunately, by the time Leo had noticed the guy, she’d been mid-shift in the clearing, and the warning howl she’d sent out to him ended up sounding like a gurgling water hose being choked.

  He stood slowly, gripping her quiet baby to his chest, as Leo scrambled to her feet and attempted to cover herself.

  “Give her to me. She’s mine!” she shouted, even while contemplating taking cover behind a nearby tree.

  He pinned a bottomless dark gaze on her. He didn’t say anything. Just quirked an eyebrow. Didn’t smirk. Just stared. She knew that stare. It was the, “Are you freakin’ stupid?” stare.

  She was a frequent recipient.

  She cleared her throat and tried to put on the meanest face she could affect, which probably looked pretty silly.
“If you did something to my kid—if she’s not breathing—”

  Why isn’t she crying?

  She thunked her forehead with the heel of her palm.

  And why the heck am I just standing here?

  She charged across the clearing with her arms extended to grab her baby and her teeth bared, and yet still, he wore that face.

  Naturally, he sidestepped her when she approached, but he was close enough that she could feel the shifter energy rolling off him. Strong, too. Stronger than her “husband.”

  Maybe even stronger than Alpha’s.

  She sighed. “Dang it. Can’t shake a stick without hitting a werewolf, can I?”

  “I’ve never known that to be the case,” came a deep voice from luscious lips that barely moved, “but you pegged me right.”

  Oh boy.

  Kinzy let out one of those plaintive, “Doesn’t anyone love me?” whimpers that she always did when she was hungry.

  Of course she’s hungry.

  Leo hadn’t fed her since before she’d had to shapeshift, and the poor little milk leech still liked being fed around the clock. Leo’s ex, or current husband—depending on whose opinion she asked for—said she’d spoiled Kinzy, but Leo hadn’t understood that accusation. Where she’d grown up, folks practiced attachment parenting as a matter of necessity. Being poor was fun like that. Ladies kept their kids in their beds because there wasn’t anywhere else to put them but the floor, and no one in her right mind was going to put her baby to sleep on the floor.

  Leo cleared her throat and cocked her chin. She didn’t feel very confident, but she could pretend for long enough for the jerk to give her baby back. “Give her to me.”

  Another long stare from Mr. Dangerous.

  He smoothed one of his big hands down Kinzy’s back, and the baby quieted again.

  Leo realized then why Kinzy had gone silent so quickly when she noticed her shirt tucked into Kinzy’s blanket. It was covered with drool.

  Apparently, if Kinzy can’t have milk, cotton will do. Huh.

  Leo shook her head at the child. “Just as batty as your mother, aren’t ya?” she muttered.