How Nina Got Her Fang Back: Accidental Quickie (Accidentally Paranormal Series Book 13) (20 page)

“A fucking cat familiar?” she finally said, her shock evident.

January nodded with a grin. “Yep. A fucking cat familiar. Unlike Farley, some familiars prefer their animal form. Fucking Irony, she’s a crazy bitch, huh? Anyway, welcome to the coven, Nina Statleon!”

Galen brought over a wine glass filled with synthetic blood and handed it to Nina, still snickering. He clinked his glass to hers and saluted her. “To your new familiar. But mostly,” he said, looking down at January, his eyes tender and warm, “
to us
.”

January planted a kiss on his lips, filled with all the love she’d had to hide for so long.

Yeah.

To them.

Wolf Mates, Book 1

M
ax Adams ran as though the hounds of hell chased him, pounding the pavement with swift, measured strides. The click of his nails echoed in the rain-soaked, empty streets. Flashes of buildings passed in a blur, his nose frantically seeking food. His long tongue slipped out the side of his mouth, draping over the clumps of hair covering his chin—er, muzzle.

Panting, he eyed each alleyway from his peripheral vision, desperately searching.

The smells of the city assaulted his ultra-sensitive senses. Max sniffed the air, picking up the aroma of broiled steak; pork chops with thick brown gravy; veal medallions in a creamy white sauce with sliced onions, and a sprig of parsley for garnish; and scalloped potatoes…no wait, they were
au gratin
. Definitely
au gratin
.

His stomach roared its discontent. Good hell, he was hungry.

But could he afford to indulge in morsels of succulent calf seared to perfection right now? They’d be easy enough to snatch from some unsuspecting diner’s table.

No. There was no time to waste because he was too damn busy playing this ridiculous game of “here, doggy, doggy.” Which he wouldn’t be doing if it weren’t for the alleged
vision
.

A sharp whistle stopped him in his tracks and again his ears twitched to the tune of two men yelling, “Here, boy! C’mon, puppy!”

That’s Mr. Werewolf to you.

Max flared his nostrils and huffed in distaste. Puppy. He was no damn puppy.

As he sought shelter, he had to wonder, did it get any worse than this? Hoofing the streets like some desolate stray, searching for what his Aunt Eva claimed was his prophecy?

In Hoboken, New Jersey?

Yet, here he was, prophecy hunting. Because that’s what everyone in his pack did. When the call came, they all had a destiny to fulfill. No one ignored the call.

Especially not Max. Because he liked living.

He held an intense disdain for all the mumbo-jumbo folklore bullshit beaten into his psyche since he was a child, but there was no proof he wouldn’t die if he
didn’t
mate by the first full moon after meeting his destiny.

So mate he would.

However, unless his memory failed him, no one had ever fulfilled the journey to their soul mate while being hunted like wild boar.

The Prophecy has spoken
, Eva had said. A prophecy she’d found, like usual, in a bowl of chicken noodle soup.

To say chicken noodle night was a nightmare for his family was putting it lightly.

But his family members claimed Eva knew all, so his divination lay in some murky broth and noodles.

The curse cast upon his family declared if he didn’t follow his path to his providence, he was essentially toast. He’d have to face the mojo of all mojos. So, rather than take the risk this destiny of his was flat-out bullshit, and the possibility of a bloody, ugly demise, he ran.

Fast.

Besides, who’d want to miss a two-hundred-mile trek and starvation just to get to their destiny, only to be hunted like game? This was what all those stories told around campfires were made of. It put hair on your chest, made you stronger—a real man.

Racing down a deserted, dimly lit street, he spied a chain-link fence that looked like his ticket out of this.

Except he had four paws and not a pair of legs to climb said fence.

Well, shit.

The thunderous sound of feet on blacktop diminished behind him. Maybe they’d given up? But his ears picked up mumbling as the men who pursued him continued their search.

No such luck.

A bright light cornered him as he swept past a Dumpster, only to find a dead end.

Fuck.

“Holy cow! Look at him. He’s goddamn huge, Al!” one of his potential jailors hollered from behind the glare of the flashlight. Bent at the knee, one of the men squinted at his from the darkness.

Damn right he was huge, and he was going to take a big bite out of poor Al’s ass if he came any closer.

Al followed up with a long whistle, readjusting his baseball cap. “Jesus! I’ve never seen anything that big, Len. German shepherd, ya think?”

Len’s eyes were wide in the darkened alley. He rocked back on his heels and gave his obviously professional opinion. “Mutant German shepherd, maybe.”

Fear not, good citizens of Hoboken. Animal Control’s finest are hard at work. German shepherd. Hah.

“Wait,” Al said, “I’ve got something for him.” He began to dig around in his pocket, pulling out a plastic bag. He probably had a stash of Milk Bones at the ready to entice strays.

Hardly worthy of him, when he was used to dining on filet, but Max figured he’d give Al a nod in the noble effort category.

As he watched Al skeptically from the corner he was backed into, he caught his first whiff of Al’s magic stray-catcher stash.

No.
No
. Not that. Anything but that. His stomach howled in violent response to the contents of the plastic bag.

Jesus, Al. That’s so unfair.

“Look, puppy…look what I have.” Al held meat—red meat—between his fingers, shaking it around to entice him.

Max liberally sniffed the air surrounding the meat. Oh, the hell. How insulting. It was going to take a helluva lot more than some cheap round steak to get him to bite. It was filet or nothing.

But his stomach growled again in another protest—meaning round steak was better than no steak.

Well, okay, he’d bite. He could easily knock this guy out while snatching the meat from him.

Max prowled closer, moving in on Al’s beefy hand, exposing his fangs with a low snarl. Teeth. It was all about showing them the teeth. Freaked everybody out.

His next move was intentionally sudden. He made a howling leap of an arc, one an Olympic pole-vaulter would envy, nabbing the meat with his teeth and gobbling until it was halfway down his throat.

That was when he felt the sting of the dart.

Son of a bitch.

If he could, Max would have rolled his eyes at how predictable the tactic had been.

As he fell to the ground with a bone-rattling thud and the world began to go black, his last thought was, two guys named Al and Len had bested him.

Christ, the shit he was gonna get from the guys back home for this.

“
J
esus Christ in a mini skirt,” JC Jensen uttered, skidding to a halt.

The winded animal shelter director she’d lost somewhere back amongst the maze of cages finally caught up with her. Catching the look on her face, he nodded with a sad sigh and rocked back on his heels. His lined eyes were full of emotions he didn’t bother to hide. “Yeah. That’s usually the reaction he gets.”

She clucked her tongue. “He’d make Cujo hang his head in poser shame.”

“The truth.”

JC paused for a moment, still floored by the sheer size of this dog she wasn’t supposed to see, but had somehow found due to a wrong turn into a cordoned-off area.

The dog sat alone in the tight space, his chin high, his gaze piercing hers.

She’d been drawn to his cage—pulled there by some invisible, magnetic force, and she couldn’t look away.

“You know, you aren’t supposed to be back here,” the shelter director reminded, though his tone didn’t scream reprimand. Rather, JC’s ears picked up defeat mingled with some resignation.

“Wrong turn. My supreme bad,” she muttered, mesmerized by the monster sitting in the steel enclosure in front of her.

“He’s not really available for adoption, Miss…?”

“Jensen.”

“Miss Jensen. There are plenty of other far more suitable dogs available. Maybe you’d like to see them?”

JC ignored his suggestion. Nope. For some inexplicable reason, all the other cute, wiggly furballs vanished from her mind’s eye. Whatever had made her take that wrong turn had pulled her
here
. And she wasn’t leaving until she knew why she couldn’t look away.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she asked, “He has fleas, doesn’t he?”

“This isn’t the doggie day spa. We house and feed for a limited time only.”

“Behavioral issues?”

“Total disclosure?”

A dog that looked as if he’d just walked out of the vision of some horror novelist’s brain surely had issues. “Wait. Let me brace myself,” she only half-joked.

The director, Dan was his name, let his chin drop to his chest. “Out the wazoo.”

“Like?”

“Well, we tried to discount some of it because he was tranquilized when they brought him in last night. We thought maybe he was just disoriented at first. However, if you ignored the snarling and drooling like he’s rabid every time he tried to wake up, which he isn’t by the way—”

“Isn’t what?”

“Rabid,” Dan replied. “Anyway, his issues. I suppose turning his nose up at the food as if we were offering him something totally beneath him—food we had to lob over the cage at him—and the piercing howl he lets out every so often, and the pacing are sure indications of some sort of behavioral issues.”

JC tucked her purse under her arm. Pacing and howling, she could live with. They were probably just signs of isolation and shelter depression. Fixable, no doubt.

Her friend Viv had taught her everything she needed to know about shelter animals. It probably wasn’t something her downstairs neighbors were going to thank her for, but still workable.

“Okay, so he isn’t eating and he paces. Abuse?” Her stomach knotted tight at the word—knotted so hard she thought she might need to sit down.

Dan scoffed. “I’d like to see the guy who could abuse an animal as big as him without losing a limb. But it wouldn’t surprise me either. Our initial physical showed no signs of dog fighting, no significant scarring, and no microchip. After being out on the streets for who knows how long, he’s not much worse for the wear other than being filthy.”

The dog sent out a low hum from deep within his throat—a hum distinctly full of disapproval.

JC shot him a glance that said, “knock it off.” Though she had to wonder why she even considered it might make an impact on an unruly beast like him. But it did. He settled back with a grunt. Maybe he was just mismanaged? “How old do you think he is?”

The director scrunched up his moon-shaped face. “The vet said maybe five or six, unneutered, by the way. And he weighs in at almost a hundred and thirty-five pounds. Which is part of the reason we can’t seem to classify his breed. We got as far as German shepherd and then we were stumped—because even some of the biggest German shepherds we see aren’t anywhere near a hundred and thirty-five pounds. In all the years I’ve worked with dogs, he’s probably one of the biggest I’ve ever come across. He’s a mix of some kind. We just don’t know what.”

“Wolf, I’m tellin’ you, Dan. He’s a German shepherd, maybe some St. Bernard or malamute, and wolf.” Manny—according to his nametag, one of the volunteers at the shelter—pointed out, giving his broom a push as he shuffled up behind them. “In fact, I’d lay
bets
he’s part wolf. He howls like a wolf.”

JC’s ears pricked, goose bumps running along her arms. “Wolf?”
Whoa, whoa, whoa.

The shelter director winced, shooting Manny a “you’re blowing this” look. “That’s just office gossip—no proof, only speculation.”

Mr. Alleged Mixed-Breed lifted his lip in a snarl when Manny positioned himself against the cage, planting his broom between his legs.

But Manny wasn’t deterred. He kept right on smiling down at Cujo. “He’s just cranky, shoved into a box like some kind of alien dog no one understands.” He leaned down toward the cage, as though he were going to share a secret. “You’re sorta like E.T., huh, old boy? You just want to go home. Manny sees.” He lifted a finger to his bespectacled eye. “I understand.”

The beast appeared to listen to Manny’s words for a brief moment, before he snapped again.

JC took a deep breath, knowing she was going to state the obvious—knowing this was why he’d been separated from the rest of the available dogs. She found she had to force the words out. “So, death row?”

The shelter director’s mouth tightened, his eyes sad, eyes that had likely seen a lifetime’s worth of euthanasia. “Unfortunately, end of business today.”

Her heart cracked a little while she stood in front of the large metal cage, skeptically eyeing the unkempt monster staring directly back at her with defiance—never blinking, not even a twitch. She estimated he must stand at least six foot when he was on his hind legs. And he stunk. Sweet baby J and a Creamsicle, he was putrid.