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  Wolf’s Mate

  A Crescent Moon Story

  Katie Reus

  She wasn’t supposed to fall for him.

  Erica’s time away from her pack was just supposed to be fun. Then she met Hudson. Instead of the no-strings attached fling, she ended up falling for him. But they’d promised each other that they’d keep things casual. Instead of risking her heart, she ran. Now she’s pregnant—and he’s determined to claim her. But the last thing she wants is to be an obligation to him.

  Now she’s pregnant.

  Erica could never be a duty to Hudson, but for some reason that’s what she thinks she is. He tried to go slow, to give her space—so he wouldn’t scare her off. Now he realizes that was a mistake. It’s time for this wolf to claim his mate. Unfortunately a neighboring pack is stirring up trouble for his pack, and his she-wolf is determined to keep walls between them. Walls he intends to bring down once and for all.

  Wolf’s Mate

  Copyright © 2018 by Katie Reus

  ISBN: 9781635560398

  Cover art and design by Sweet ‘N Spicy Designs

  Edits: JRT Editing

  Digital Formatting by Author E.M.S.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.

  Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book. This purchase allows you one legal copy for your own personal reading enjoyment on your personal computer or device. You do not have the right to resell, distribute, print or transfer this book, in whole or in part, to anyone, in any format, via methods either currently known or yet to be invented, or upload this book to a file sharing program. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Table of Contents

  WOLF’S MATE

  About the Book

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Thank you for Reading!

  Savannah’s Complete Booklist

  Katie’s Complete Booklist

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Erica laid her head against Hudson’s chest as she trailed her fingers up his rock-hard abs—and over his plethora of tattoos. Everything about him was muscular and defined, which was common among shifters, wolf or otherwise. But the tattoos? He was the first shifter she’d met who had so many. Most of them were linked to his original Scottish clan or pack related things. Luckily none of them were for any past lovers. Something she would never be okay with.

  She knew her time with him was coming to an end, and though she wanted to stall even longer, she shouldn’t. Not if she wanted to keep her heart in one piece. Mostly. Because it was cracking already at the thought of leaving him. Of leaving Montana.

  “Keep touching me like that and I’m going to be inside you in another ten seconds,” he murmured, his voice all rough and raspy, sending shivers down her spine.

  The man just had to open that sexy mouth and she was mush. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” The truth was it didn’t matter if she was touching him, he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her. Something she very much appreciated. Because she liked orgasms. A lot.

  “Stay another couple days,” he murmured.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say yes. She desperately wanted to. One month with him wasn’t enough.

  But he hadn’t offered her anything. He’d simply asked her ‘to stay in Montana’. And while he might not be alpha of the Kendrick pack, he was second-in-command and terribly alpha in nature. Shifters like him went for what they wanted. If he wanted to claim her, for her to stay permanently, he would have asked for that. Simple as that. Because the male was over two hundred years old. He was being honest, she could give him that. He’d never promised her anything and she’d taken exactly what he’d been offering—a lot of fun.

  So she might want him—and genuinely want more than just sex—but she wasn’t going to throw herself at him. Hell no. She was going to walk away with her pride intact and head back to her own pack. Even if it carved her up inside to do so. Because sometime during the last month she’d fallen for him. Hard. It would have been impossible not to. He’d opened up about his past, brought her breakfast in bed—woke her up with oral sex almost every other morning—and was simply the sweetest man she’d ever met.

  “We’ve been over this.” She gently nipped at his bare chest. Damn she was going to miss him. For more reasons than the hard body underneath her.

  “You’re not on a schedule.” He was dangerously close to pouting, which under any other circumstance, would have made her giggle.

  But she didn’t feel like laughing now. Not when the ache in her chest had settled in deep and wasn’t letting up anytime soon.

  She pushed up on the bed to look into those startling blue eyes. His dark hair was a little longer than most of his packmates, curling around his ears. “I might not be on a hard schedule, but I still need to get back. It’s been a year. My pack needs me.” After college she’d started working at one of the pack’s salons. Then when the owner had up and mated—and moved—Erica had decided to reevaluate her own life.

  So she’d taken a year to herself and roamed around the globe, mainly sticking to the United States. During the last month of her trip, she’d been traveling across Montana and had met the very sexy Hudson Kendrick. She’d never imagined meeting someone like him on her trip. All sexy, surly and incredibly giving in the bedroom—soooo giving. And everything about him was real and honest. What you saw with Hudson, you got.

  In response, he simply growled at her, but there was no heat behind it. Not that it mattered, her wolf side knew on an intrinsic level that he would never actually hurt her so even his most terrifying growl didn’t scare her. He started to say something when his phone buzzed.

  Cursing, he snatched it off the bedside table and then cursed again when he looked at the screen. “It’s my brother, we’re having another issue on the border. I’ve got to take care of this.”

  Though she hated to do so, she rolled off him and let him get up. It was hard not to admire the view as he picked up his discarded jeans from the floor and tugged them on, covering all of that sexy bronze skin.

  “I’m probably just going to head out while you’re gone,” she said carefully, watching him for his reaction.

  He froze for a moment before turning to glare at her. “At least wait until I can take you to the airport.”

  She wanted to say yes but gave a noncommittal grunt. His brother, the alpha, had offered to fly her back to her home in Alabama on his private jet anytime she wanted. Apparently, there was a pilot currently on standby. Which was really nice, but also bad because she’d kept extending her stay for the last week. Because Hudson kept pushing for ‘one more day’. Erica knew that if she waited for him to take her to the airport, she’d give him another day, and then another.

  And then that whole pride thing? Yeah, she wasn’t so sure she
’d walk away with it intact. She’d do something stupid and then getting over him would be even harder. Try, impossible.

  When Hudson’s phone buzzed again, he did that sexy growling thing as he looked at it. More colorful curses followed before he tugged a long-sleeved T-shirt over his head. She stayed in bed, just watching him move, all lethal efficiency. Once he was dressed, with his boots on, he stalked toward the bed and leaned over her, placing both hands on either side of her head, effectively caging her in. Then he crushed his mouth to hers, a possessive claiming she felt all the way to her core.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to want to claim her in reality. Because sex wasn’t enough to keep her here. She wanted more than that. Something she hadn’t realized until she’d met Hudson. The sex was great—better than great—but she needed more.

  “I’ll see you soon. Be naked when I get back.”

  Oh no, not responding to that. Nope. Because she wouldn’t be here when he got back.

  Once he was gone, she gave it five minutes before packing up her small bag and trying to ignore the spreading ache in her chest. She had to do this now. She hadn’t brought much with her on her trip, because it was a whole lot easier to travel light. Now she was grateful for that. The sharpest sense of melancholy filtered through her as she hefted her bag and backpack up. It was time to go home.

  So why did it feel like she was making the biggest mistake of her life by leaving? And why did it feel like she was leaving home instead?

  Chapter Two

  One month later

  Erica stretched her legs out, digging her toes into the sand. The moon was high overhead, illuminating the ocean and shore in front of her. The sound of her packmates partying nearby was impossible to miss. Laughter, shouts to ‘turn the music up’ and other typical party revelry normally lifted her spirits.

  Not tonight.

  When the wind shifted slightly she scented her alpha—though she didn’t hear Grant. He was so stealthy, she was pretty certain that it was second nature to him, that he wasn’t trying to sneak up on her. It was simply part of who he was.

  “Hey, little wolf,” Grant said, settling next to her on the sand. His shoes were off too and he dug his feet into the sand next to her. “What are you doing out here by yourself?”

  Meaning, why wasn’t she enjoying the party like everyone else? Wolves loved to party more than most shifters. But she wasn’t in a party mood.

  She lifted a shoulder, inhaling the salty air. Normally it calmed her nerves, but lately nothing seemed to do that. “Just not feeling social.”

  He nudged her once with his shoulder. “Come on. What’s really going on?”

  Erica hadn’t felt like herself since she’d returned home. She hadn’t even taken on a permanent position in any of the pack’s various business establishments. She’d been floating around, sometimes working at the casino, or the hotel, the Crescent Moon Bar, and she’d even temped at the new salon—her specialty was nails and waxing, something that she actually enjoyed. But even that hadn’t brought her any sense of fulfilment. The pack that had raised her, this place she’d always considered home, for some reason didn’t feel right anymore. And that depressed the hell out of her. She almost felt as if she was refusing to put down roots since returning home. Because she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay put.

  Clearing her throat, she tried to answer his question. “Everything’s changed since I got back. Or I guess I should say everything changed while I was gone, which I expected.” But she hadn’t expected to almost feel like an outsider in her own pack. Everyone had been welcoming on her return but a couple of her friends had mated and moved on, literally. They’d joined other packs across the country. Her former place of employment was no longer open because the owner had moved to North Carolina and joined another pack. The new salon didn’t feel like ‘home’ to her.

  But the real reason she felt so out of sorts was because she’d left Hudson behind. He hadn’t been too happy with her for splitting while he’d been off on that patrol thing.

  Yeah, it had been pretty weak of her to leave like that but she’d told him she was going to. And her own sanity ranked above his annoyance. It wasn’t as if she’d just cut him out of her life either. They’d been talking, Skyping and texting over the last month. A lot. The man called her every night no matter what. But…he hadn’t said anything about wanting to mate.

  Grant wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her close. “Does this have something to do with your stay at the Kendrick pack in Montana?”

  She stiffened slightly. She hadn’t told anyone about Hudson or her time there. It wasn’t a secret or anything, but she hadn’t felt like talking about the wolf. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you look how I felt when Talia wouldn’t talk to me.”

  Erica had been younger then but she definitely remembered. Her alpha had mated with a wonderful human and Talia had made him work for it. Luckily for the entire pack it hadn’t taken Grant too long to pull his head out of his ass either.

  “Okay, fine, this is over a guy,” she said.

  He let his arms drop and wrapped them around his knees as he faced the ocean. The waves were quiet tonight, gently pushing against the shore in a soft rhythm. “Want to talk about it?”

  “Not particularly.” Not even with her alpha, a male she trusted more than anyone.

  He made a sort of grunting sound. “That’s fine but don’t bottle it up for too long. It’s not healthy. And if you need me to kick someone’s ass, just say the word.”

  A startled laugh bubbled out of her at her alpha’s slightly juvenile threat. “Thanks, but he’s not a bad guy. He…asked me to stay.” She wasn’t going to tell Grant who Hudson was since he was the second in command and their two packs were allied. No need to cause any drama where it was unnecessary.

  “Why didn’t you stay?”

  She lifted her shoulder again. “He didn’t offer me anything but a good time.”

  Her alpha nodded slowly. “Sometimes men are dumbasses.”

  She giggled at that. “Yeah, so are women.”

  “Not responding to that,” he muttered.

  Laughing again, she nudged him with her shoulder once just as the scent of a dead fish wafted up from the shore.

  It hit her so startlingly fast she wasn’t prepared for the nausea that welled up. Without having time to jump up, she twisted to the left and away from Grant and tossed up the contents of her stomach. Which, unfortunately, was a lot.

  As soon as she was done, she actually felt better, even if she was surprisingly weak. She was a shifter and couldn’t remember the last time she’d been sick. What the heck had just happened?

  Belatedly she realized that her alpha was rubbing her back in soft circles.

  “Sorry about that,” she rasped out, getting ready to push to her feet and get away from the mess.

  “You’re pregnant,” he said as he jumped to his feet with the agility of a very old shifter. He held out a hand for her.

  As she took his outstretched hand, she started to deny it but then realized, holy crap, she was…pregnant. Oh, she was so pregnant. And suddenly some things made a whole lot more sense. She’d been so caught up in her own issues that she hadn’t even realized that there was another explanation to her mood swings and her strange nausea over the last week. Because hello, she was a wolf shifter. She did not get sick.

  “Holy shit,” she muttered.

  Grant blinked once. “Are you just realizing it now?”

  She simply nodded because she couldn’t find any more words as they headed up the sand toward the pack-owned beach front condo complex. Oh no. No, no, no. How the heck could she be pregnant?

  Scratch that, she knew exactly how it had happened. But…when she’d gone into heat they’d used condoms. So. Many. Condoms.

  Now…she was pregnant.

  Too many emotions seized her so that it was all she could do to breathe. This was not supposed to happen like this. And not with a man wh
o clearly didn’t want to mate with her.

  And he’d asked her exactly twice to come back to Montana. But he still hadn’t offered her anything, he hadn’t asked her to mate him and she wasn’t going to move away from her pack for anything less.

  Not to mention he hadn’t offered to come live here. She wouldn’t ask it of him anyway, but the offer would be nice and would have assuaged her agitated wolf. Because right now her wolf side was anxious and edgy. Part of that was sexual frustration but more than that, she missed Hudson.

  She’d been the one who’d told Hudson that they needed to see if the intensity of what they shared was real, if it wore off with distance. The intensity hadn’t worn off for her.

  And when they Skyped, it was worse because she could look into those clear blue eyes, and see exactly how much he missed her, and how much he wanted her. That lust wasn’t enough for her, though. Because that shit did fade. It was just a matter of time. And it cut deep that the intense feelings, that bone deep mating hunger, seemed to be only one sided.

  He was well over a century older than her, so she knew exactly what his generation was like. When they wanted something, they went after it. There really wasn’t an in between.

  So without offering her a mating, he’d made it clear that all he wanted was sex and fun from her.

  And now…hell, now she needed to tell him she was pregnant. Only after she’d confirmed it for certain, of course, but her instinct was telling her that she was.