Lone Wolf Dawn (Alpha Underground Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

the first place, you can’t make her drink.
    Not that I’m saying I’m a horse. But I did ignore my absent mate’s hints and instead turned the car in the opposite direction from where he wanted me to go. Head and heart pounding, I started to drive.
     
    ***
     
    The house looked like a typical human dwelling on the edge of suburbia. The dwelling had been recently upgraded with a new coat of paint, a richly fertilized lawn, and a welcoming porch.
    On the other hand, the strong cat-piss aroma wafting in through the window of my idling car didn’t seem quite right. Add in the pack of baying dogs beating against the walls plus the heavy blinds twitching open just long enough to allow the inhabitant to catch sight of my vehicle and I had a sinking suspicion I wouldn’t be well received if I clattered up the cobblestone walkway and knocked on the front door.
    “So that’s why you wanted to buy a wolf,” I muttered, putting the car back into gear and rolling away down the street toward the secluded pull-off spot I’d scoped out moments earlier.
    Safely out of sight, I took a moment to reopen the file I’d unintentionally swiped from Hunter’s collection the day before. It seemed like an eternity since I’d first poked through the puppy-mill owner’s records while waiting for the youngsters to be patched up at the vet’s office. Then as now, the oldest bloodling pup’s information caught my eye and wouldn’t let me go.
    Thirteen years earlier, Mr. Puppy Pusher had sold his first foundling wolf to John Davis as a guard animal for a thousand bucks cash on the barrel. The timeline meant the pup should now be reaching maturity and getting close to the age of her first shift. Because while most werewolves didn’t begin transforming until they were around fourteen years of age, bloodlings had a distressing tendency to mature faster. In other words, cleanup of the puppy-mill owner’s messes needed to start here and now.
    Hunter and I should be doing this together, I thought irritably, rubbing at my still aching head. Good news—the throb behind my right eye was easing up a bit. Bad news—the pain was now migrating down my neck instead, where the tendons stood out in stiff ribs of tension.
    A strange combination of growl and whimper emerged from my lips without human volition. Shh, wolf , I said knowing that my inner beast’s suffering was even worse than my own. I was angry at Hunter and hurt by his absence, but my wolf’s reaction was pure instinct. Deep within our shared gut, I could feel her pacing, waiting impatiently for the uber-alpha’s return.
    He’s not here, so we’re just going to have to deal , I told us both. To my relief, the wolf sighed and settled.
    I wished I could have done the same. But Hunter’s absence just felt too wrong to overlook.
    For the last month, my mate and I had worked together on various Tribunal jobs, and it certainly hadn’t been my intention to track this pup down on my own. But between the trio of bloodlings, our shared anger, and our frantic coupling the day before, my mate and I had never gotten a chance to talk rationally. So now I was the one left with the teenage bloodling’s sparse file clenched in two tight fists.
    Good thing I was more than capable of dealing with one confused shifter plus an irate meth-lab owner all on my lonesome. Quirking my lips upward into a grimace that I was trying to pretend was a smile, I quickly shed my clothes and sprinted for the tree line buck naked. Once safely encircled by shielding shrubbery, I dropped to hands and knees and opened my mind to the wolf.
    During the previous month’s drama, my inner beast and I had become, if not friends, at least efficient partners. Now, we shifted forms between one breath and the next, my human mind seamlessly joining the wolf’s to share command of our four-legged body.
    Together, we shook out our fur and inhaled a deep breath of forest air. A pecan-like aroma of hidden fungi, the human scent of