Ride the Wicked Woodsman (A Night Falls Alpha Werebear Shapeshifter Romance) by Christa Wick Read Free Book Online Page A

porch. Shoeless, I stopped before my feet hit the gravel. Braeden got off his bike and approached, a patient smile on his face but his gaze flitting in my direction.
    "This is Onyx," Taron said, his voice curt. "She already knows your name."
    Braeden offered a little head nod that I returned.
    "I noticed you were last to the party," Taron criticized in a low voice.
    "They didn't exactly tell me where they were going or why. I just saw a bunch of them heading out." He glanced in my direction, a faint smirk ghosting his mobile lips as his nostrils flared. "I guess I know why now."
    "Nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning, right?" Taron joked loud enough for every shifter in the clearing to hear.
    Seriously, was he really referring to the scent of whatever in the hell was going on in my body as fucking napalm? He already had me out in front of them in what amounted to clown clothes and now this?
    "Stay with her," he told Braeden as he moved into the center of the horseshoe.
    Slowly, Taron spun a circle, stopping to look each shifter in the eye, his shoulders bunching with an aggressive tension.
    "Some of you," he said, when he had finished eye-fucking every last one of them. "Some of you are here because you're curious. You had a fly buzzing around your ear, telling you things."
    Heads swiveled, most of them facing toward Axel, but a few toward Mallory.
    "The rest of you," Taron boomed, his narrowed gaze quickly jumping from the cougar to Mallory to Axel. "Are here because you're fucking idiots!"
    That earned him a few chuckles and made the three shifters he was talking about squirm for a second or two.
    "Yes," Taron continued, with the unwelcome addition of pointing directly at me. "A she-wolf was alone in the forest last night."
    He laughed once, but there was no humor in the sound. "In estrus in case your noses haven't already alerted you to that fact."
    Words and grunts were exchanged among the shifters, the sound signaling that the relative ease most had fallen into as their pack leader talked to them was fragile and about to disappear again.
    Taron shut them up with another booming admonition. "But that's no excuse for three wolflings trying to terrorize her."
    My lips curled at his choice of words.
    Trying? I was pretty damn sure they had succeeded -- but maybe now wasn't the time to play the wilting damsel-in-distress.
    "The she-wolf claimed sanctuary on my doorstep."
    The buzzing voices and grunts resumed, too many at once for me to be sure who was saying what, but I could sense confusion in some and discontent in others.
    That's when Mallory stepped forward.
    "Sanctuary? Really?" He looked around at the rest of the gathered males to find a few nodding ominously. "We shed those relics of the past decades ago, back when you were still a cub, Taron."
    More nods, my stomach growing tight as I counted just how many of the shifters seemed to agree with Mallory.
    "Maybe we did, but we never shed simple decency," Taron answered with a menacing growl, fingers twitching lightly as his claws threatened to erupt.
    I stared at him as the rough shadow of facial hair multiplied and grew coarser.
    Dismissing Mallory with a curl of his lip, Taron faced Axel. "Apparently some of the pack needs a reminder about decency."
    Unwilling to be ignored, Mallory took a few steps toward me, his back to Taron by the time he stopped talking. "You should have let Axel's sons keep their quarry."
    With Mallory's approach, Braeden moved in front of me, shielding me but also blocking my view.
    A roar full of an alpha's power and unlike anything I'd ever heard come out of a shifter threatened to fold me to the ground. Fisting the back of Braeden's jacket for support, I peeked around his broad shoulder to see Taron receding from his alpha state to his human form.
    Squinting, I tried to piece together the bits I had just seen with what I had heard. The long snout and sharp canines, the short and dense mane of brown and black, the tips of the hair