Bad Moon Rising Read online

  Bad Moon Rising

  Dog River Wolfpack, Book One

  Kimbra Swain

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Kimbra Swain

  Bad Moon Rising: Dog River Wolfpack, Book One

  ASIN: B0828N448K

  Kimbra Swain / Crimson Sun Press, LLC

  [email protected]

  [email protected]

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

  Ebook Cover by: Fantasia Cover Design: Sharon Lipman

  Formatting by: Crimson Sun Graphics

  Editing by Carol Tietsworth: https://www.facebook.com/Editing-by-Carol-Tietsworth-328303247526664/

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  One

  When she stepped into my office, my heart lurched at seeing her again after the way our first two meetings had gone. However, she clearly wasn't here for that this time.

  "Lyra, is everything okay?" I asked as my senses forewarned me of her mood. I could smell her instability.

  She shifted her weight, sighing deeply. Opening her mouth to speak, regret flowed from her dark blue eyes. She hated me. Hated what had happened between us. That would explain a lot, actually. She had helped me search for Rory and Soraya, but we’d barely spoken.

  Lyra Rochon was the Alpha female of the Dog River Wolfpack just south of Steelshore. She ran the pack with her two aunts, who were the matriarchs.

  "I need your help," she mumbled.

  Life had taught me to be guarded. Her disappearance and lack of responses to messages and calls had reinforced that principle. I’d enjoyed our time together more than I should have.

  Grace and Levi sent me here to help the supernaturals in this city. Even though Lyra wasn't technically from Steelshore, she and her sister lived close enough. But I didn't dare lower my guard.

  "What can I do for you?" I asked, remaining seated behind my desk.

  "Wow. I didn't expect such coldness. Not from you," she fired at me.

  "Why not? I tried contacting you. You made it very clear that you weren't interested in talking to me again," I fired back.

  "Perhaps I had more important things going on than responding to a mistake!" she exclaimed. "I should never have come back here."

  Turning on her heel, she marched toward the door. Cursing me under her breath where I could hear it, I waited for her to change her mind. I wasn’t going to chase her after she’d ghosted me.

  Looking back over her shoulder, the fire subsided in her eyes. Her shoulders slumped. Raising her hands to her hips, she stared at the floor.

  Whatever had brought her here was important. More important than her pride, which we both had in abundance. For that reason and a twinge of curiosity, I apologized.

  "Forgive me. This is not about us, is it? What can I do to help you?" I relented.

  Her voice was just above a whisper. "No, it's not about us. It's about my family."

  Lyra took care of her younger sister, Tinley, after their parents were killed in an invasion into their territory. Lyra's pack had retained control over the Dog River region, but she had lost both parents in the process. Her father was the Alpha with no male heir. However, their pack had always been guided by her great aunts, the matriarchs of the pack. They put Lyra in charge. She struggled to retain control which she hadn’t told me. However, after one night in bed, I knew. She fought me for control. I let her have it. It was what she needed.

  Two nights. Then silence.

  In the end, I knew it didn't matter that I had allowed her take the lead. She had given me more than she had ever intended. She left me with the wanting desire to have someone of my own. To share a life. It didn’t have to be her, but it would have been nice to have another wolf who understood the struggles of an Alpha. I couldn’t call myself an Alpha, but it still flowed through my veins.

  "Nick, another pack is moving into the region. There is discord in my pack. They are losing faith in my leadership abilities. I need an Alpha," she whimpered.

  "I'm not an Alpha. Besides you are an Alpha," I responded quickly.

  "Just because you renounced it, doesn't mean it isn't still in you!" she growled.

  "I can't lead your pack," I said.

  "You won't. It's mine, but I need back-up," she said.

  "I'll call Mark. He can send down some fighters to help protect the pack," I responded.

  "No outsiders!" she exclaimed.

  Her emotions teetered from high to low like a squeaky see-saw.

  "It wouldn't be permanent. The Shady Grove pack is trained for this kind of thing. We help shifters all over the country. Not just wolves. They would be under your control," I said.

  She stomped back across the room in her killer heel boots and leaned over my desk. Her eyes flashed bright yellow with the animal inside of her. I’d seen that flash in bed.

  "I didn't ask for the Shady Grove pack. I asked for you, but you are a coward. You think because you lost a hand that you can't lead. That no one but your little task force here will listen to you. Get over yourself, Dominick. Are you going to help me or not?" Her voice dripped with fire. The fire I'd come to associate with strong, stubborn southern women.

  Grace.

  Wynonna.

  Lyra.

  Fuck me.

  “Let me grab my jacket.”

  Two

  While in Shady Grove, I joined Grace and Levi Rearden as they took the rule of the Winter Realm from her Uncle. Our first confrontation with him didn’t go well, and I lost a hand in the process. I’d saved her life, and I’d do it again, but losing my hand scared the shit out of me. As a wolf shifter, I couldn’t function without a paw. I couldn’t run. I’d be the weakest of the pack. Even with my past and all the crap I’d faced as a young man, nothing devastated me more than looking at a stump.

  Levi helped me learn to pull on the fairy side of me to glamour myself a hand. Grace claimed the success as her stubbornness, but it was Levi who showed me the way. He was like a brother to me. We were both half-fairy. My mother slept with my father, an Alpha wolf, to produce an heir. Faeborn. I should have been called Outcast. I didn’t turn out to be the Alpha my father wanted, nor did the pack accept me. Had I stayed the pack would have killed me. I ran, but in running, I had always felt like a coward. My father and his wife, Regina, died in the aftermath, and the entire Whiskey Chitto Pack was killed or incorporated into the Oberlin pack.

  Along the way, I met Sullivan and Suzanna. Sully and Suzi. My siblings. We found out that we had the same fairy-meddling mother who also killed their father and destroyed the hierarchy of the
Houma pack. We weren’t sure, but the best we could tell, she controlled more than half the packs in Louisiana. Reuben, Suzi’s mate, took her and his closest family to Shady Grove. We pushed them through the processing center, because Araxia, my mother, was coming after them. Either you followed her, or you died.

  Sully and I had told Levi all about it once everything calmed down after the war. He and Grace were doing everything they could in the Otherworld to track the woman who was trafficking captured fairies and selling them on the black market. We’d come up with nothing concrete except for a base of operations in Steelshore. We didn’t even know why or what she was getting in return. I knew that it wasn’t good, whatever it was.

  So, while Sully roamed through the southern states trying to gather information, I went to Steelshore with a task force, hoping to find my mother. Wynonna Riggs, Levi and Grace’s daughter, went with me. It had been our intention from the beginning to turn the operations there over to her, then move me back to Birmingham to head up the Fairy Bureau of Investigations there. I would have access to all fairies going to and from the Otherworld. Grace and Levi had even powered a new portal there to keep the influx of fairies from going through Shady Grove which had become overpopulated.

  Winnie proved to us that she could handle the operations in Steelshore. I’d agreed to stay a little longer and oversee her progress, but Lyra showed up at my door asking for help. I’d met Lyra Rochon in a rinky-dink bar just outside of Steelshore. One thing led to another, and we slept together. That’s when we both realized we were wolves.

  At first, it scared the hell out of me, considering the wolves of the south were partially populated by my mother. Or so it seemed, but Lyra proved to be a purebred wolf. Her family had ruled the Dog River area south of Steelshore since the French settled in Steelshore. We talked briefly about wolves, packs, and life before she left me in the hotel room without a way to contact her.

  The next time it happened, she found me. She’d somehow tracked me to the apartment where I lived, with Wynonna next door. I was sure our activities disturbed the neighbors. I persuaded Lyra to give me her number, but she made me promise to never use it. That night, I followed her back to Dog River and found out more about her than she had ever told me.

  Lyra was a rare alpha female. Her pack had always respected the female line of alphas whereas most packs bred the females out of existence. The early packs in America had barbaric ways that evolved over the years, but the Dog River pack cherished their Alpha women. Her aunts, Agatha and Eulalie Rochon ran the pack. Even when Lyra’s father, the previous Alpha, lived, the Aunts ran the pack. Both looked like they had lived over a century, and to my knowledge, they might have. Sometimes wolves can have extremely prolonged lives.

  To avoid getting caught, I left Dog River, but Lyra stayed a part of me. I loathed the fact that she owned a part of me. I loved that I’d given it to her without even noticing. But I’d seen her return home to the arms of another man. Just before I left her town, I asked one too many questions. It was the last one that got me in trouble, because then she found out that I was there.

  The man I’d seen her embrace was Cortland DuChien, the man everyone expected her to marry. I hated him immediately although I had no reason for it. No reason except for the wolf inside of me had tethered itself to Lyra. She was the only wolf I’d ever slept with. No wonder I craved her.

  My phone rang the next day, and Lyra cussed me in English then she cussed me in a mix of French and something else I’d later learn was Creole. She accused me of stalking among other unsavory things, and I decided to let her go. I couldn’t tarnish the name of the King and Queen, because I had an obsessive streak over an overbearing, she-wolf.

  When I talked to Sully about it, he had some good advice once he finished making fun of me.

  “Have you ever slept with another wolf?” he asked.

  He had a point. I’d only slept with humans. I feared the connection of my wolf with another, and when it happened with Lyra, I hadn’t been going for that.

  “No.”

  “You are just inexperienced.”

  “I am not inexperienced. Don’t make me prove it.”

  “Incestuous bastard.”

  “No, you moron, I’d make you watch.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Sully!” My brother had hit on me multiple times before we realized we were siblings. He’d even kissed me to prove a point. It didn’t appall me then, but it did now. It was something we never talked about with anyone else.

  “You are inexperienced with wolves, and you’ve denied that connection to your own inner animal that is latched onto her. The best thing you can do is go find a different wolf and sleep with her,” he advised.

  However, there was no time for that with the Sanhedrin standing in our way every time we tried to help the fairies who were being sold on the black market. Then came the war between the Siren and the Mermaid that delayed our efforts. I hadn’t had time to think about another wolf, much less find one.

  “What are you thinking about?” she asked as she drove her Jeep south out of town.

  “My brother,” I said, trying not to elaborate.

  “Is he Faeborn too?” she asked with disdain.

  “Yes,” I said. “He could help us. I can call him. He’s over in Louisiana doing some leg work for the crown.”

  “I’m taking you into wolf territory. Don’t bring your fairy shit to us. If that is going to be a problem, you’ve got to go back. I’ll lose everything, and that will be the end of it,” she said.

  “What exactly is going on?” I asked. I supposed I should have made her be more specific when I agreed to help her.

  “A Mississippi pack has taken over three packs in the lower Alabama area. They are pushing toward us. A couple of men showed up this afternoon. They flat out refused to speak to me about pack business. It was two scouting members from that pack,” she said.

  She’d set a fire alarm off in my head. “Were they Faeborn?” I asked, hoping she would say no.

  “How am I supposed to know that?” she sassed back.

  “Look, Lyra. You could drop the fucking attitude for five minutes. I’m in the car. I left my entire team to come and help you. Help me, help you.”

  Her jaw flexed under the flawless skin of her cheek. Then a tear rolled over it. I should have held my tongue. She waited until she could speak before she replied. “Thank you, Nick for coming. This might be a terrible idea, but if they won’t talk to me, I’m betting they will talk to you. I don’t trust anyone in my own pack.” That alarmed me. Why wouldn’t she trust her own pack?

  “What about Cortland DuChein?” I tried to ask it without sounding too jealous.

  “Cort doesn’t have an Alpha bone in his body. They would smell his weakness. I need someone who smells of strength. If I stepped out there with him, they would kill him. And while I’m not in love with Cort, he is my best friend.”

  “I smell like strength?”

  “You smell like Alpha, despite your idea that you aren’t one anymore. That smell doesn’t go away. That blood flows through your veins like it does mine.”

  “Is that how you found me the second time?” I asked.

  “Partially. I have friends in Steelshore. They knew where to find you.”

  “One of those friends wouldn’t happen to be a Vampirate would he?”

  “Who, Seamus?”

  “Are there others?”

  “Not recently. In the past there were, but he’s a survivor. He adapts to the changing times. And yes, Seamus told me where to find you.”

  I didn’t know whether to thank the vampirate or curse him. However, I trusted Seamus. He’d proven his loyalty to our cause more than once. I’d called him right before I left Winnie, and he promised to keep an eye on her for me. I wondered what Grace would think of it, but I didn’t care. I mean, I did, because she would rip me a new one if something happened to her daughter, but Seamus adored Winnie. I knew he wouldn’t let anything happen to
her while I sorted things out for Lyra. But the way she talked; it wasn’t going to get sorted out quickly.

  “These men, did they demand anything?”

  “Just to prepare for our new Alpha who would arrive in a couple of days,” she said. “No one is taking my pack.”

  “I agree. No one is taking it. I’ll stand with you. Just tell me what you need from me. Are we pretending to be together? I could stand behind you and support you, but if these guys are as deadly as you think, I don’t think that’s going to work.”

  Her jaw flexed again. She needed to work out her aggression and anxiety. Too bad she’s sworn off of that with me. I was sure I could fix her up.

  “Stop leering at me.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Nick, it’s not going to happen again. We need to pretend to be together. You smell like an Alpha. So, that means I smell like you since we’ve been together. Even Cort says I don’t smell the same.”

  “Wait? What?”

  “Cort says I smell differently.”

  “Like me?”

  “I don’t know if it is you or not. I can’t smell it, but he’s not the only one that noticed.”

  “Who else noticed?”

  She sighed. “Everyone.”

  Three

  Lyra lived along the dog river in a small river house that had survived several hurricanes. She shared the house with her sister, Tinley. I hadn’t met her, but Lyra had talked about her a little. When we pulled up in the drive, Lyra gave me instructions. I figured that I’d be getting ordered around for however long I was here. Might as well start now.