Awaken a Wolf
Awaken a Wolf
Bad Boy Alphas
A Wiccan Were-Bear Novella
By R. E. Butler
Copyright 2015 R. E. Butler
Awaken a Wolf (A Wiccan-Were-Bear Novella)
By R. E. Butler
License Notes
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Cover by
Croco Designs
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.
* * * * *
I’d like to thank
Jennifer Moorman
for editing the book, her time, and expertise.
* * * * *
Where would I be without my amazing support team? Much love and thanks to my amazing beta-readers – Joyce & Shelley – the Wild Shifter Babes Street Team, and the readers and fans who have been an encouragement to me from day one. XOXO
* * * * *
To B. B. and B. L. with all my love.
Awaken A Wolf
Wiccan-Were-Bear #9
Natural Wiccan Cinder Knight has a pretty good life. She’s part of the largest coven in North America and has a great job at the Whalen Family Clinic. She has zero complaints, until she finds herself the recipient of unwanted attention from a certain alpha wolf.
Adam Beaumont hasn’t been the alpha of the Cleveland pack for long before he feels the pressure to take a mate. When he sees a beautiful Wiccan talking to one of his wolves, he knows exactly what to do to make her his. The only problem is that Cinder isn’t receptive to him at all. Everything he tries to do to make her his seems only to push her away, and neither he nor his wolf can accept the denial much longer.
Cinder discovers that she’s not truly a Wiccan, but something much more, and Adam is the only one who can help her. The infuriating alpha male manages to put the brakes on his desire to rush her into mating him because she needs him as she navigates the waters of her new destiny. When someone from her past threatens all they’ve built, will Cinder survive the full moon or will Adam find himself alone once more?
This book contains an alpha male used to getting what he wants, a Wiccan who doesn’t like her choices being taken from her, and enough magic to set the world on fire. Contains m/f interaction, new powers, old magic, shifting, a little wolfy voyeurism, and gratuitous uses of the word
mine
.
Table of Contents
Cinder Knight leaned over the small mortar and pestle and gave the mixture another few turns, making sure the tiny seeds were finely ground. After tapping the pestle lightly on the edge of the stone bowl, she set it on the counter next to her and carefully tipped the contents onto a square of wax paper and then folded the paper into a small packet, sealing it with tape.
She straightened and arched her back, stretching with a grimace. She’d been bent over the bowl for forty-five minutes grinding four different seeds into a fine powder for use in a curative spell. She carried the packet out of the room and down the hall, entering an office where Lorene, the owner of the Cleveland Mother Earth Store and powerful North Corner of the coven, sat.
“Are you done already?” Lorene asked from behind her desk, looking up as Cinder strode in.
“Those seeds didn’t stand a chance,” Cinder said, smiling.
She handed the packet to Lorene, who brought it under her nose and inhaled with a smile. “You are so talented. I dare say I could make a fortune for the coven just on your potions alone.”
Cinder beamed with pride. She’d been with the Northern Ohio Wiccan coven for four months, joining after her mom’s coven suggested that she find herself another coven to hook up with after the truth of her half-nature had surfaced. Cinder wasn’t a full Wiccan — her mom was a natural, full Wiccan, but her father was a werewolf, and that meant that although she was as powerful as any natural Wiccan, Cinder was an outsider. Not enough Wiccan to be a corner and not enough werewolf to shift. She had feet in two vastly different worlds.
Lorene glanced at the old-fashioned grandfather clock in the corner of her office. “I suppose you have plans with your handsome roommate?” she asked with a glimmer of amusement in her eyes.
“Cyrus has to work. The construction company is doing inventory this weekend, so he’s staying in Whisper Creek. I’m going out with Leo, though. He’s taking me to Lykos.”
“Ah, I remember when that club opened. It was the first of its kind in the area — a place for supernatural creatures to hang out together in neutral territory.”
Lykos was owed by Leo’s wolf pack, but every shifter group in the area was welcome there as long as they didn’t cause trouble. Cleveland, Ohio was a virtual melting pot of supernatural creatures. Aside from the Wiccan coven and wolf pack, there were dragons, vampires, bears, falcons, white lions, and tigers in the area. Somehow they all managed to get along.
During the solstice and full moon ceremonies, when the Wiccans would gather on the bluffs near Lake Erie and cast spells, each supernatural group sent guards to watch over them. During her first full moon with the coven, she met Cyrus, a tiger shifter, and they hit it off right away. Later on, she met Leo when he guarded her. She lived with Cyrus and dated Leo, but they were both casual relationships. She wasn’t the mate to either male, but she cared for them both a great deal.
“Well, I won’t keep you from your date.”
“It’s not a date.”
Lorene rolled her eyes. “You sound like my granddaughter.”
“Elizabeth?”
She nodded with a smile. “She used to play the field with a number of suitors, keeping them all at arm’s length, happy to be casual with them. Eventually, fate took her life in a different direction.”
“Two bears, right? Twins?”
“Yes. She’s never been happier, but for a while, I thought she’d never settle down.”
“I guess you can’t play the field forever, but I’m having fun.”
“You’re young.”
Cinder was nineteen plus one, which according to her supernaturally gifted
long-life
meant that once she reached eighteen, her body began to age one year for every twelve that passed. She was technically thirty-one.
Lorene put the packet down on her desk and said, “Have a nice weekend, honey.”
“Thanks, you too.”
Cinder gathered her belongings from her locker in the lunchroom and ducked out the back entrance to where her car was parked. She sat behind the wheel of her Eclipse and started the engine, poking around on the GPS screen until she found a satellite radio station she liked, and then she headed home.
She shared a two-bedroom apartment with Cyrus. With him gone for the weekend, she had the place to herself and decided that after she and Leo had partied the night away, she’d invite him to spend the weekend.
Once home, she kicked off her shoes and checked her phone, answering a text from Leo that said he’d arrive at seven. She had just enough time to grab a quick bite and clean up, since she could still smell the crushed seeds on her skin.
Cyrus had a flair for cooking, although he liked to pretend he was too alpha male to spend time in the kitchen. She wasn’t surprised to see a note on the counter directing her to a covered plate in the microwave, half of whatever he’d made for himself for dinner before heading to Whisper Creek. Opening the microwave, she hummed in surprise to see a breaded pork chop and sweet potato fries. After pressing the reheat button, she walked to her bedroom, stripping off her clothes along the way. There was only one bathroom in the apartment, but their schedules were different and they rarely had to fight for the room.
An hour later, there were two sharp knocks on the front door before it swung open and Leo’s voice rang out. “Hey, Cin.”
“I’m back here,” she called, pulling the black corset up over her hips and adjusting it over her breasts.
“Nice,” Leo said with a sexy drawl. “How about you push that back down and we stay in?”
She grinned as she turned. “Tie me up?”
“Oh, baby, I love your double entendres,” he said, chuckling as he strode to her and tightened the strings that pulled the corset tight to her body.
“We can stay in
after
we go out.” She turned to face him after he finished tightening her top.
“Yeah?”
“I’m off until Monday night.”
His brow arched. “What about cranky cat?”
She swatted his shoulder. “He’s in WC for the weekend.”
He growled playfully, his brown eyes dancing. “Ready to go to Lykos?”
Leo was a total sweetheart, handsome, and leanly muscled. “You bet,” she said, grabbing her clutch.
She locked the front door and took Leo’s hand as they walked down the flight of stairs to the parking lot. He opened the passenger door for her and shut her in safely before jogging around the front and opening his own door. As he sat down and turned on the engine, they played the cursory Twenty Questions about their respective jobs. Leo worked for his alpha, Adam, at the pack-owned garage in Delta Park, outside of Cleveland, where the pack lived. Aside from working for the coven on Thursdays and Fridays, she was also a receptionist at the Whalen Family Clinic, which catered to supernatural creatures, Monday through Wednesday.
She stroked her fingers through the hair on the back of Leo’s head, and he made a low growling sound. “If you start kicking your leg, I’m going to bust a gut laughing.”
He grinned. “I can’t help if it you always find my happy place.”
He pulled into a parking spot in front of Lykos. The name of the club was written in crimson lights, glowing brightly against the darkness. There was a line of people leading out the door, which she had expected because it was Friday night and there weren’t a whole lot of shifter-friendly clubs in Cleveland. Leo held her hand as they walked past the crowd waiting to get in. The bouncers were two males she recognized as being coven guards at one time or another. They smiled at her, and she smiled back before Leo tugged her through the open front door.
He pulled open a second set of doors, and music blasted her, making her wince as she adjusted to the deafening sound.
“How do you guys stand the loud music?”
Full wolves like Leo had very sensitive hearing. Her hearing was slightly better than a human because she was part wolf but she knew her hearing wasn’t as good as Leo’s.
“You get used to it,” he said loudly.
They wove through the crowd that stood around the dance floor. Strobe lights and brightly colored lasers decorated the walls, floors, and writhing bodies. Leo stopped at the edge of the dance floor and said, “Drink or dance?”
“Dance!” She whooped as she tugged him into the crowd and they began to dance. She lost herself in the music, in the sights and sounds and smells of the club, and let her mind drift away to that place where everything was amazing. In this place, she was just a girl dancing with her friend. She wasn’t a half-Wiccan, half-wolf trying to find out where she fit in. She wasn’t the girl whose father wanted nothing to do with her, or whose mom hadn’t been willing to leave the coven with Cinder or fight for her right to stay. No – here, in this club, she was just a girl, and that was more than okay with her.