Wendy's Wild Wolves [Shy River Pack 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (3 page)

“Thank you, Brian,” she said, striving to keep her voice polite, “but I don’t think getting married would be a good choice for either of us. I’m sorry you came all this way.”

“Open. The fucking. Door.”

She took a step back, wishing now that the door had a deadlock or something a little stronger than the twist button lock that was part of the door handle. With her nearest neighbors over twelve miles of winding, treacherous roads away, she’d never considered the need for better locks. Her grandmother had never even used them. Thank goodness Wendy had lived in the city long enough for locking the door to be an ingrained habit.

She glanced over her shoulder, wondering where the hell she would go. The woodland surrounding her small home wasn’t exactly a death trap, but she usually avoided it when the wolves were hanging around.

The first loud crash against the door made her jump back, fear and adrenaline flooding her senses. She yelped in shock as the second thump splintered the doorframe. Terrified, she turned and ran. She got about five steps before Brian tackled her, landing hard on top of her as she fell.

“Look what you made me do!” he screamed at the back of her head as he pinned her to the ground. Wendy couldn’t help it. She cowered, memories of that day eight months ago flooding her mind. She was alone. Even if she could phone for help, it would literally be an hour or more before anyone got here. Fighting Brian would make things worse. Agreeing to marry him now wouldn’t even stop him. She was in serious trouble.

Polly was screeching at the top of his voice, dancing on the spot, the feathers on top of his head flaring with his agitation. “Leave her alone. Leave her alone. Leave her alone.”

Brian didn’t even seem to hear the bird, let alone do as it demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Wendy finally said to the bird as despair overtook all reason. Brian could literally do whatever he liked and she had no way to stop him. Who would look after Polly once she was gone?

“You will be sorry,” Brian said, gripping her jaw in a merciless grip, twisting her neck painfully as he forced her to look at him. “I came here to give you a second chance, and this is how you thank me? You’re going to learn to obey me, baby doll, even if it takes the rest of your life to teach you.”

“Leave her alone. Leave her alone. Leave her alone,” Polly kept saying over and over, but it was the low growl of a wolf that sent a strange feeling of hope through her. She didn’t even want to think about the fact that she found the idea of getting torn to shreds by wild wolves far preferable to spending another moment being frightened of this man.

“What the fuck?” Brian exclaimed as something pulled him backward. He held onto her, taking her with him as two very large wolves dragged him away. Wendy almost smiled at the huge silver wolf that grabbed his arm, forcibly releasing Brian’s grip on her. And then she watched in stunned fascination as the wolves dragged him to his car, dumped him near the driver’s side, and growled menacingly until he climbed into the seat and slammed the door.

It looked like Brian might try to run them over on his way out of her driveway, but again the wolves proved they were far more intelligent than even she’d given them credit for by splitting up. The silver wolf moved into the shelter of the trees and the blond wolf turned back to the house, taking up a protective stance in front of her.

If she had a lick of sense, she probably would have closed the door and gone looking for something to barricade it shut, but instead she stood in her hallway, fascinated by the protective behavior of wolves she’d long considered hers.

Finally, as the dust from Brian’s car faded in the distance, the blond wolf turned to her, gazing at her face as if somehow it could read her emotions. Wendy smiled and nodded her thanks, even though she realized she was treating a wolf like it was a human.

Her knees wobbled when the wolf nodded in return, yipped once at its packmate, and then both disappeared back into the tree line.

Three months later…

“Polly want a cracker?” Wendy asked with a wide smile at the bird that, at the very least, filled her day with noise. She’d often prayed for a settled life, but lately it had felt rather boring. A little excitement wouldn’t go astray right now. Of course, that meant leaving her mountain hideaway, and quite frankly that wasn’t really something she wanted to do. It looked like boring was going to be a rather solid theme in her life. Thank heavens for her imagination and her writing career—neither of which required prolonged exposure to other people.

“No,” Polly said, flaring the feathers on his head in annoyance. “No cracker Polly.”

Wendy knew she shouldn’t be teasing the poor bird, but it still tickled her funny bone that the cockatoo could be offended by being treated like a cockatoo. This Polly definitely didn’t want crackers.

“I wonder where our furry friends are today,” she said to the bird as she stepped onto the back veranda with her morning coffee. Nearly every day since that horrible day three months ago, she’d been able to find at least one of the wolves close to her house. Often they even ventured onto her patio to sit near her. It probably should have been unnerving, but after the way they’d sent Brian away without hurting anyone, she’d felt like an honorary member of the pack.

“Stupid wolves. Stupid wolves. Can’t talk. Can’t talk.”

“Lucky for you, they don’t seem inclined to eat nasty-mouthed cockatoos either.”

The silver wolf was sitting at the base of the steps, its tongue lolling out as its warm breath steamed into the early morning air.

“Silvey, Silvey, Silvey,” the cockatoo said, dancing and whistling in a tone that sure as hell sounded insulting. The wolf bared its teeth but fortunately didn’t try to eat the bird whole. Wendy admired the wolf’s restraint. There had been a few times she’d wondered herself why she put up with the demanding, insulting, feathered fiend.

When the wolves had first started to visit her, she’d tried to name them. Nothing too imaginative unfortunately—perhaps that had been the problem—but the wolves had seemed annoyed when she’d named them Silver and Blondie in deference to their different colorings. She’d stopped using the names quickly, but unfortunately not quickly enough for Polly. The damn bird had learned them almost instantly and apparently took great pleasure in teasing the wolves each time they came to visit.

“Hello,” she said to the wolf. “Beautiful morning, isn’t it?”

The wolf took that as an invitation to climb onto the veranda and flop down at her feet with an annoyed-sounding huff. She’d been up late last night writing the end to her newest story, so her morning coffee was a lot later than her usual crack-of-dawn routine. The later timing of her morning ritual seemed to have annoyed the wolf. Apparently sleeping in was not a way to make her wolves happy.

“Sorry,” she said reaching down to rub the fur behind the wolf’s ear. “I finally managed to get that story ending right last night, but it took a lot longer than I’d been planning.”

The wolf pricked its ears her way, gave her what she assumed was the wolfy equivalent of a happy smile, and then settled at her feet once more.

“I hope my readers will like this one,” she said as she absently petted the wolf’s furry belly with her bare foot. “It’s a little bit different to the others, but I needed the change.” The wolf made a moaning sound that seemed suspiciously like agreement. Thank heavens she’d never told anyone about her closest friends and their seemingly human-type reactions. She’d surely be locked in a rubber room if she claimed a smart-ass cockatoo and two wild wolves understood every word she said.

No, that observation was best kept to herself.

* * * *

Donovan Taylor watched the surveillance footage and smiled at his lover getting a belly rub from a woman they’d both grown to like. They’d been on this assignment for forty-four years now, but it was only in the past year that things had at least become more interesting. Wendy Roberts was a beautiful soul—creative, caring, friendly—and made the monotony of protecting an ungrateful charge more interesting.

Even without audio feed Donovan could hear that rotten feather-covered fraud teasing Sogarn. More than once Donovan had considered going with his wolfy instincts and eating the noisemaker, but that would end their assignment and in all likelihood put them back in the middle of pack life.

Of course, eating the being they’d been assigned to protect wouldn’t go down well with their alpha and might even be the excuse he used to finally banish them from the pack. Considering the alpha’s attitude toward them, Donovan could quite happily live without the wolf’s bigotry, but the pack was important to Sogarn, so Donovan controlled his instincts and stayed close to his packmate. At least with this assignment they were alone together and not under the constant scrutiny of every busybody wolf trying to ingratiate themselves with the alpha.

But there were times when the punishment almost seemed worth the satisfaction of using the bird as a chew toy. Polly was an annoying pain in the ass who’d never known anything but a pampered life—even before he’d taken up residence as a spoiled family pet. From Donovan’s perspective, the only downside to eating the bird was that they would no longer have an excuse to be close to Wendy.

And staying close to Wendy seemed like such a good idea. The asshole who’d attacked her three months ago hadn’t come back, but Donovan knew both he and Sogarn would be there if he ever did. Their only regret was that the violent monster had managed to make it into the house in the first place.

A tiny warning siren started to bleep, so Donovan leaned over the console and brought up the road map for the area. They’d managed to extend their surveillance perimeter all the way to the edge of the highway, so it wasn’t uncommon for cars to wander into the zone. Fortunately, most seemed to be lost and quickly headed back the way they’d come. Wendy seemed less inclined to having visitors than her grandmother had been, so for the most part things were very quiet. From a security perspective it was perfect, but after forty-four years of the same assignment, it was getting harder and harder to stay focused.

Truly the only excitement they’d had since taking on this duty was the incident three months ago. And now that they were managing to get much closer to the house without frightening Wendy, they were in a better position to protect her, should the need arise.

But instead of turning back as expected, the unidentified car continued climbing the mountain, clearly heading for Wendy’s home.

Donovan watched the surveillance footage closely. It was quite possible that Wendy was expecting someone. They had her under fairly close watch, but they’d tried not to infringe on her privacy. It was distinctly possible that she was about to get a friendly visitor.

But it was their job to be sure.

Sogarn enjoyed wearing his wolf-shaped form, not because of the freedom it gave him to move around the forest without attracting attention—though that was certainly a part of it—but because it let him get close to Wendy. She’d quickly become a woman he wanted to know better, and as frustrating as it was to not be able to have a real conversation with her, it was enough just to listen, for now.

He really didn’t have a plan in his head, but there was a part of him that imagined that when the time was right he and Donovan would reveal themselves to her in their human forms. It was strictly forbidden by their alpha, and in reality Wendy would probably be terrified to realize the wolves protecting her were actually men, but in his imagination things went much more smoothly.

Sogarn raised a wolfy eyebrow in question as Donovan moved slowly to Wendy’s side. He barked one sound at Polly—“car”—before maneuvering into a position where his head was close to Wendy’s free hand. She smiled, immediately dropped her hand to his head, and scratched behind his ear. Sogarn made an annoyed groaning sound but quickly rolled to his feet and moved toward the cockatoo.

“Well, aren’t you the bossy one?” Wendy asked affectionately. “You bark. He jumps.” She rubbed Donovan’s head as she glanced around the wooded area that was her backyard. “Is there a problem at home? Maybe with the wife and kids?”

Donovan shook his head, perhaps not really considering that he was answering a direct question.

“That’s a shame,” Wendy said, staring off into the distance. “I’ve seen other wolves around, but I suppose you two prefer to stay bachelors.” She sighed softly. “I can’t say that I blame you. My one and only foray into love was a disaster.”

She fell silent, her hand stilling in Donovan’s fur, her thoughts apparently wandering back in time.

“You saved my life that day,” she said quietly. “Even if Brian hadn’t killed me, I would have been too frightened not to do what he said.”

Donovan pushed his muzzle back into her hand, rubbing his face against her in a wolfy version of affection. Sogarn knew his lover well enough to know that what he really wanted to do was change back to his humanoid shape, take her in his arms, and comfort her that way. She might, however, not react very well to the wolf she’d been talking to for the past three months suddenly turning into a man.

Donovan nuzzled her again, sighing softly when she started to scratch behind his ear once more. They stayed that way together for several minutes as she drank the rest of her coffee. It wasn’t until she looked over at Polly that Sogarn realized how quiet the bird had become. He’d long since given up trying to remind himself it wasn’t actually a cockatoo, that it was an Alcarn in disguise, but the obnoxious miniature being’s silence was a little unnerving.