Thrown to the Wolves (Gemini Series) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 1

  Thrown to the Wolves and Other Stories

  Hailey Edwards

  Contents

  Thrown to the Wolves

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Out for Blood

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Dog Days of Summer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  A Stone’s Throw Christmas

  Chapter 1

  Join the Newsletter

  About the Author

  Also by Hailey Edwards

  Thrown to the Wolves

  Chapter 1

  Zed Ames had better ways to spend his Christmas Eve than lurking in the thicket behind Panda Crossing like a damn stalker. Too bad his broken wolf disagreed. His feral other half was fixated, and that never ended well for the human, or for him.

  Huffing out a resigned sigh, the wolf rose on all fours and shook powdery snow from his mangy coat to shut up the man filling his head with their past mistakes. Zed urged him three steps back into the forest before the growl in his throat blossomed to a full-on snarl, and the wolf wrested away control, trotting right back where they’d started and flopping on his stomach.

  Pleased with himself for exerting his dominance, the wolf rested his chin on his outstretched front legs and settled in to wait.

  Bored out of his mind, Zed started a mental inventory of parts he had to order to get Tallulah, a 1950 Chevy 3100, fully restored. While he debated the age-old question of how much chrome was too much, the wolf watched the employee exit with intensity usually reserved for the hunt. Though, if he were honest, he supposed this was just another kind of hunt.

  Two hours later, a slender figure bumped open the door with her hip and emerged into the winter wonderland that was the employee parking lot. Takeout containers hung down her arms, and the smell rolled his eyes back in his head.

  Once Panda was locked up tight, Joann Zhuang, the object of his wolf’s obsession, deposited her bags on the backseat of her car. Zed prodded his other half to get moving. She had finished her shift and made it to her car safe and sound. His job here was done. But, as usual, at least where she was concerned, the wolf did what he wanted and didn’t budge.

  Rewarding the wolf’s instincts to hang around, Joann pulled out a container that smelled like a slice of heaven on Earth and ripped off the lid. Halfway across the lot, gaze scanning the bushes with every step, the tremble in her fingers gave away her nerves. Not that he needed the visible cue when the acrid burn of her fear punched him in the gut.

  “I know you’re out there, Dell.” She placed the offering of grilled chicken on the ground and backed away slowly. “I’m going to call your owner now, okay? I’m sure he’s worried sick about you.”

  Dell?

  Zed raised his head so fast, he smashed it against the underside of an overhanging limb.

  Owner?

  A few weeks back, he had walked a packmate in wolf form on a leash through this parking lot while they were on the trail of a rogue fae who had been kidnapping townsfolk. That was the day he met Joann and his obsession took root.

  If she hadn’t smiled at him like he was a man instead of the empty husk of one, he might have been able to walk away. But she had, and he hadn’t.

  The sudden appearance of a phone in her hand shot his brain down a twisting logic path with one destination. Joann thought he was Dell. That meant…

  Damn it.

  Zed bolted for the woods, skidding through the last turn near the dry gulley packed with snow and scrabbling over icy gravel to reach Tallulah. Already the trill of his phone’s ringtone, muffled by the interior, demanded he answer. His wolf pawed at the side of the truck, but it’s not like he could talk to her in this form even if he miraculously sprouted a hand to open the door.

  Changing required a solid fifteen minutes of pure hell on the best days. Hungry and half-frozen, today was far from that ideal. Agony zinged down his spine as he contorted into a writhing mass in the slush. Bones snapped like frozen tree limbs caving under their winter burdens, and dull human teeth sliced his gums.

  Long after the ringing ceased, he rose on two quivering legs, dressed in the clothes he’d folded on the driver’s seat, then climbed in his truck. After cranking up the heat to blistering, he palmed his cell and hit redial. The space between rings stretched for an eternity, and he was lightheaded by the fourth one.

  Breathe, idiot.

  “Hello? Mr. Ames?”

  “Ms. Zhuang.” Gravel churned in his voice, but there was no smoothing his rough edges after a change. The best he could do was redirect her attention. “Do you need parts for the Escort you’re driving?”

  “How did you know I drive—?”

  Considering the number of hours he spent on any given day staring at her rear bumper, there wasn’t much Zed didn’t know about the chalk-white Ford Escort she drove. A ’93 if his guess was right, and it usually was.

  Among other things, he could remind her the tag was due for renewal next month or caution that her tires had less than a hundred miles left on the tread. He also suspected the left rear taillight was about to burn out, but any of those revelations would startle her, and his wolf would hamstring him for spooking her.

  “I own the junkyard out on Lemon Lane.” He took a swig from a bottled water rescued from the floorboard to lubricate his voice. “I tend to notice cars.” Not usually the women who drove them, though. “Thought you might need me to pull a part is all.”

  “Oh.” The hum from her vents filled her pause. “No. The car is fine. Thanks for asking?”

  The question hanging in her voice charmed both halves of him. Joann was polite to a fault. He didn’t have that problem. “So if the car isn’t the problem, why did you call?”

  Inside him, the wolf flopped on his stomach and covered his head with his paws. Perhaps he wished for the first time that he could play human instead of their switch working the other way around.

  “Dell has been hanging around outside Panda the last few nights. I’m worried about her.”

  Her? His wolf harrumphed and fell silent. Despite Joann mistaking him for Dell, his other half hadn’t worked out that meant she considered him a fellow female and not potential mate material. Not that humans saw wolves and thought what a sexy beast anyway. Well, not the normal ones.

  “She’s a digger,” he lied. “I keep patching the fence, but Dell’s got a mind of her own.”

  Truer words had never been spoken about his best friend, even if she was innocent of the imaginary crime. This time.

  “I’ve been leaving her scraps,” she rushed on to fill the silence. “Just boneless chicken.”

  His wolf had savored every bite too. His woman knew how to cook.

  A growl worked up the back of his very human throat.

  Jo
ann was not his. Feeding a stray didn’t mean she’d want to keep one.

  “You really ought to pick her up before animal control does.” A brittle quality crackled through her words. “I’m not sure our local humane officers know how to handle an exotic pet like Dell, and I wouldn’t want her to get hurt.”

  A grimace pinched his features at how well that capture would go down for any warg found on the wrong end of a dog catcher’s pole. “Are you still at work?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated before adding, “I can wait for you in the parking lot.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Zed ended the call and considered waiting a few minutes before zipping over to Panda so she didn’t get the idea that all she had to do was yank his leash for him to come running, but screw that. He was cold and hungry, and even this much distance from Joann had the wolf’s pelt brushing the underside of his skin.

  He gunned the engine, and Tallulah spun her tires as she leapt up the embankment he’d used to shield his truck from curious passersby, not that there were many souls out and about the night before Christmas. With a grin, he patted the newly restored dash. “Good girl.”

  Ten minutes later, he pulled into the parking lot at Panda and claimed the spot next to the boxy car spouting white plumes from a rusted exhaust pipe. Leaving the warmth of his cab sucked, but he hopped out and circled Joann’s car before rapping his knuckles on her window.

  The mechanism in the door whirred a frigid complaint as the glass lowered. “Hi.”

  Zed grunted in response, unable to form a complete thought while the vents blasted her orange blossom and vanilla scent toward him.

  Joann offered him a timid smile with enough welcoming heat his gut clenched. “Do you want help?”

  What he wanted was to stand there and breathe her in, but he couldn’t very well say that to a human. Plus, a human wouldn’t appreciate knowing he could dissect the layers of emotion coating her with a single lungful of heated air. Most likely, she would slap the taste out of his mouth if he so much as hinted at the fragile thread of interest wafting from her skin or how it caused his gut to tighten. Humans were funny like that.

  “I wouldn’t turn you down.” That way at least there would be two of them standing out there calling for a wolf that would never come. “I don’t want to put you out, though.”

  A better man would have told her to stay put, but Zed was broken, had been for a long time now, and his instincts didn’t always work right. The wolf thought luring her out was a great idea, and the man figured she wouldn’t have offered if she hadn’t meant it, so Zed stepped back so she could join him in the snow.

  “She was in the bushes earlier.” A tremor shook Joann’s thin frame. “I haven’t seen her since I called you.”

  Joann had been scared of Dell at their first meeting, and that hadn’t changed. Even talking about the wolf made her jittery, but she crossed the lot as bold as you please and led him straight to the bald patch where he’d lounged until the ice melted under him.

  How she scrounged up the bravery to aid in the search baffled him. Why not ball tires before he got here? Why not stay in the car while he hunted for his imaginary pet? Why brave the freezing cold in her thin, fragile skin when he doubted she would mind if she never saw another wolf again?

  Unless…

  Zed whipped his head toward her in time to catch her staring at him. Heat thawed her pale cheeks, and color blossomed above her jacket’s collar. Her scent tipped toward embarrassment, but that faint thread of desire remained.

  Joann liked him. Maybe more than liked him. Maybe even wanted him.

  No wonder the wolf was bashing his head against the bars of his cage to get closer to her.

  “I hope Dell remembers I’m the one who’s been feeding her and doesn’t bite me.” She kicked a lump of ice skittering across the lot. “I wouldn’t want to be turned into a werewolf.”

  The air solidified in his lungs until he choked on the fresh influx of oxygen through his nostrils. “What?”

  “Do you ever watch horror flicks? There’s this one movie that used to give me nightmares as a kid where this boy wanders into the woods and gets savaged by a wolf. That’s what turns him into a werewolf.” She snapped her teeth at him. “Dell is a wolf. Get it?”

  His gaze lingered on her mouth, unable to understand a single word falling past her lips. If she snapped her teeth at him again, he wouldn’t be responsible for what happened next. Tempting a broken wolf with the promise of a bite wasn’t wise, but it’s not like he could explain warg foreplay without coming out to her first.

  And that was never going to happen. He’d tried that whole honesty thing with a human once, and it got her killed. Joann wasn’t his, couldn’t be his, but he wasn’t going to risk losing her all the same. Rules were rules for a reason.

  “Zed?”

  “That’s not how it works,” he mumbled. “Wargs are born that way.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” She cupped her palms and huffed to thaw her fingers. “Guess it depends on the movie you’re watching or the book you’re reading, huh?”

  Zed wished he had gloves to share with her, but he tended to leave those in his office with his other tools. They were heavy duty, meant for handling twisted metal and busted glass, but not to insulate against the cold that made little difference to the wolf most days.

  “Guess so.” Hoping like hell none of his packmates were running last minute errands in town, he called, “Come here, girl.”

  “Dell,” Joann urged. “Dell.”

  Huffing out a wolfish laugh, his feral side rolled in his gut, dying of laughter.

  A half hour passed before Zed was too embarrassed to continue, and Joann was shaking so hard her teeth chattered nonstop. As much as he enjoyed spending time with her, she would get sick without a hat or gloves. Her coat and shoes were adequate for dashing between the car and the restaurant, but she hadn’t dressed to linger outdoors, and the wolf snarled louder the longer she suffered on his account.

  Huh. Maybe his instincts weren’t totally busted after all.

  “You need to get back in your car.” He crossed to her, gathered her hands in his, and rubbed them between his palms. “You’re freezing.”

  “Yowch.” She wrinkled her red nose as the friction built. “It stings like needles.”

  “Come on.” He kept hold of one hand and used it to drag her to her car. “We’re done here.”

  “You didn’t leave your truck running,” she noticed. “Want to sit with me and thaw out before you go?”

  Zed rolled a shoulder like it didn’t matter she was inviting him into her space, that she trusted him. “Sure.”

  Joann waited until they had both settled to say, “I haven’t seen you at your usual table this week.”

  “I got busy at work.”

  “You didn’t miss a lunch for twenty-nine days straight and then you missed four in a row.”

  His eyebrows shot high. “You counted?”

  “I have OCD,” she confided to her lap. “I like numbers. Finding patterns soothes me.”

  Obsession was an old friend of his, so he got it. Stalking her soothed him, not that he could admit that without facing charges.

  “The break in your usual pattern is why I worried when Dell kept showing up but you didn’t.” She cut her eyes toward him. “I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  The hours he’d spent hunting her had cut into his workload. He’d had to scale back somewhere, so he started packing his own lunch. It never occurred to him that she would notice his absence or miss him if he didn’t park at a table in her section during the week.

  “I have leftovers if you’re interested.” She indicated the bags nestled in the rear floorboard. “A takeout order didn’t show up to claim their food, so I’ve got more than enough for two.”

  “Your place or mine?” Stone’s Throw RV Park, where he lived with his pack, was a last alternative. The other wargs might balk at having a human in their
midst, and he didn’t want to spook Joann until he was sure the only place she would run was right back to him. “I live about twenty minutes out.”

  “I’m two blocks over.”

  He cracked open his door. “I’ll follow you.”

  The drive was short but gave Zed time to settle his wolf. The invitation to share a meal with Joann in her home had him bounding around Zed’s gut like a fucking lamb through a clover meadow. Much more, and he wasn’t sure he could stomach food. Words fit to shame any warg.

  Rushing to meet Joann at the stairs, he gathered the bags from her hands and carried them up to her apartment. A pause on the landing while she worked the locks allowed him a moment to breathe in the mingled scents of cut grass and bruised roses, damp loam and petrichor.

  Fae.

  “I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me.” Chin tucked to her chest, she lingered on the threshold. “I’ve never invited a customer home before.”

  Shoving down the wolf’s urge to secure the perimeter took all his focus. While he was zoned out, he must have missed a critical social cue of some kind, because she hurried inside to the kitchen and left him to find the dining room on his own. Not that it took much searching in an apartment this size.

  “Everyone says they don’t do this or don’t do that, but I’m serious.” She reappeared with glasses, two chilled bottles of water and a serious expression. “I’ve never done this. I don’t hit on my customers.”

  “I don’t go home with every beautiful woman who asks me either.” And never with humans.

  Joann deflated on the spot, and he tasted bittersweet sadness on his tongue. He knew he’d stuck his foot in his mouth, but he couldn’t figure out why. She had been honest with him, and he was being truthful with her. Wargs enjoyed sex. Sharing their souls with wild animals meant all their base urges ran deeper. It wasn’t a big deal to get an itch and ask a friend to scratch it for you. He was the last guy to judge a strong woman for taking what—or who—she wanted when the same urges had never stopped a man from doing the same.