To celebrate the release of Odd Mate, I'm giving you all the first
chapter for FREE!
Odd Mate
Virginia Nelson
When a gamer wolf searches for love, only an
odd mate will do.
Charly
spends his days working in a used video game shop and most of his nights as the
second to one of the rarest of their kind—a female Alpha. Most of the pack
figured he and Dara had a thing, but her recent mating wakens a wave of
unwelcome pity. He can't exactly admit the one wolf he ever loved left him
years ago. At least, he can’t until she reappears close enough for him to try
again.
Gretchen
fell in love with a sweet, nerdy bear of a man, but ran from his side when she
realized he'd hate her for something she couldn't change. Now she's back in
town and drawn to his side. A twist of fate leaves her with no choice—she can
be near the man she’s always loved again, but she must betray him and
everything he holds dear.
Can a
wolf sworn to destroy all coyotes claim a coywolf mate or will he be forced to
obliterate the only girl he ever loved?
Chapter One
Everyone knows a good story doesn’t begin with a dream sequence. Due to
that simple rule of storytelling, Charly knew he wasn’t dreaming when he
spotted her sitting cross-legged on the small dividing wall between the college
campus and the parking lot. It was her, it had to be.
Lifting an arm to wave, he called out, “Hey, Gretchen!”
She didn’t turn, didn’t even seem to hear him, her golden head bent to
look at something in her lap. Even from a distance, he recognized her profile
and couldn’t resist calling again, “Gretchen!”
His heart accelerated, a direct and immediate reaction to finally
putting his eyes on the one woman who ever managed to make him want to be the
kind of guy he read about—some comic book hero hell bent on saving the world
who could say the right thing and sweep the perfect girl off her scantily clad
feet.
Not that Gretchen was nearly naked, but a guy could wish.
Closer up, he could see the cord that likely impeded her ability to
hear him. She wore some kind of earbuds and a hoodie covered in cartoon
characters. Her jeans were ratty and her hair as brilliant as he remembered. A
trace of her scent—wild and a little heady—made it to him and he sucked in the
familiar bouquet with a twist of bittersweet joy. He didn’t know why she’d just
vanished one day, no trace left behind for him to track and no word on where
she’d gone, but she had. He wasn’t letting her slip away so easily a second
time.
Losing her once in a lifetime was enough to let him know he didn’t want
it to happen a second time. Reaching out one hand, he planned to nudge her
shoulder, get her attention, and maybe ask her out.
But a ball of fur in his periphery distracted him moments before wet
and fangs closed on his arm.
Who would dare attack him in broad daylight?
The wild musky scent of the attacker alerted him before his human brain
caught up with the program. Coywolf.
The dangerous breed of shifter was a combination of coyote and wolf,
but not actually either anymore. Coywolves were bigger than wolves, more suited
to urban terrain and altogether meaner than shit.
Not to mention Charly was in human form, it was daytime, and they were
on a college campus, and if he did a thing to defend himself, his professors
might see. Nothing ensured an A faster than a prof finding out their student
could shift into a four-legged death machine, but he preferred his grades be
based on his actual performance rather than sheer terror on the part of the
humans.
Besides, it would really piss off Dara if he shifted in public. She’d
never proved terribly understanding about that sort of thing.
Fending off the attack to the best of his ability, considering, he
tried to also scan the area to see if any other coywolves were around. Last
thing he needed was for one to attack Gretchen while he was distracted, meaning
he’d shift to protect her and worry about apologizing to his Alpha later if he
had to.
But he saw neither other wolves nor Gretchen. She’d vanished. Again.
“Dammit!”
Not sure if he was more pissed that he’d been attacked or that he’d
lost sight of the girl of his dreams, Charly closed both hands over the
snapping muzzle mere inches from his face. “You picked the wrong wolf to tangle
with, Hybrid.”
The other animal didn’t answer, more focused on trying to tear out his
throat than conversation.
Pinching down hard on the pressure points at the joint of the jaw,
Charly managed to pry the creature off him in stages. Humans gathered, all
gasping in horror and one pulling out their cellphone—yeah, a Vine of their
interaction wasn’t on his list of things to do, either. He needed to end this
and fast. One snap and he’d managed to boink the coywolf’s head off the
pavement, stunning the creature. Once it was distracted, Charly shoved up and
away and ran fast and hard toward the parking lot. Tugging up his hoodie to
hide his face a bit, he ducked between cars, sneaking a look back towards the
main hall of the school.
The coywolf shook off his stupor then turned to lope, looking
unconcerned, away from the humans, most of which had cell phones out to snap
pictures. Stupid animal—attention from the humans weren’t in its best interest
any more than it was in Charly’s. As it vanished, Charly again scented the air,
searching for a trace of her, but all he could smell was the reek of the
coywolf, now rubbed into his clothes. He’d need a shower.
His phone chirped and he pulled it out to unlock the screen with a
swipe of his finger.
Something
going on at the campus of the community college. Twitter blowing up. You near
there?
Scowling at the phone, he loped to his car, got in, and revved the
engine before bothering to reply. I was the ruckus, got attacked by coywolf.
What? You
okay? Dara’s text was short and to the point, a sign his Alpha worried.
Fine or I
wouldn’t be texting, he replied.
Get to the
warehouse. Emergency meeting.
KO, he typed back
and shifted the car into gear. Looked like he’d be skipping another class.
Not that it was unusual. As beta to the local Alpha, Charly missed
about as many classes as he managed to attend due to pack duties. Most of his
profs found him to be a little lazy, thinking he slept through classes or spent
his spare time gaming or something.
Wouldn’t they shit if he told them the truth? Doc, I’m a werewolf
and I had pack business to attend to.
Yeah, that’d fly like Iron Man minus the rockets. But those worries
were for another day. Today? His pack needed him and pack came first. Always.
It had to. He didn’t have anything else.
***
Gretchen accepted the fast and rough punch to the side of her head as
her due. After all, she’d nearly let Charly walk right up to her. She’d been an
idiot and she deserved to be punished. Garret didn’t have to look so damned
happy about hitting her, though. Then again, she’d long ago accepted the leader
of the coywolf’s dominance and bipolar behavior as part and parcel with the
protection the pack of misfits offered her.
“I can’t believe you let him spot you. The timing is all wrong. The
wolves can’t know we’re hedging in on their territory and can’t know we plan to
expand into town. The fact I had to come save your ass is just another in a
long line of failures on your part, Gretchen. How do you defend yourself?”
Garret spit the words into her face, the reek of his unwashed body pungent and
disturbing to both her beast and her human side.
“Look, I’ve told you, I can pass for wolf. I did it for a long time
before I joined your pack and could do it again if I had to. You’re the one
that shifted and attacked a wolf in broad daylight, not me. I was just sitting
there minding my own business and—”
She didn’t duck away from his second punch, either, knowing before she
did it that sassing him would likely result in another blow. He could punch her
all day if it floated his boat. She would heal from punches.
Plus, she deserved them. She’d wanted to defend Charly, to attack her
alpha. No wolf or coyote with a sane mind would dare something like that, yet
she’d actually had to forcefully restrain her beast to keep from attacking the
man who protected her.
Which meant she wasn’t sane, really. When she’d realized what it meant
to be coywolf, she accepted that it meant she likely wasn’t sane. Better to
stay away from Charly and keep her taint—and insanity—to herself so he could go
on with his life and maybe settle down with some nice she-bitch who wasn’t bad
blood.
Gritting her teeth, the pain of Garret’s punch still ringing through
her head like a klaxon, she blinked back tears. The alpha would likely think
they were tears of pain, and they were.
Pain at leaving the man she thought might be her mate behind for his
own good. Maybe if Garret hit her enough times, she’d quit being stupid enough
to risk Charly. He deserved better, would have better. Even if the idea of him
with someone else cut her soul like shards of swallowed glass.
“Wait, I have an idea,” Garrett spun away from her and she took the
respite as a moment to breathe. To try to clear her mind of the chaos seeing
him—of seeing him being attacked on top of it—caused inside her.
“Yeah? I hope it doesn’t involve me.” She mumbled the response, half
hoping that Garett forgot she was even there. He did that sometimes, forgot
they were around. For an alpha, he sure got distracted a lot. She reminded
herself to find that charming—that he followed the beat and voices of another
drummer, one playing just for him in his head. It was the mark of a creative
mind, after all.
Or someone totally batshit crazy.
Shaking her head, she tried to shove the disloyal thought down. The
pack was her family, they stood by her when wolves would’ve likely torn her
throat out because she was an abomination. Regardless of her ability to pass,
to blend into wolf society, she wasn’t wolf.
She was coywolf, other, hybrid, bad blood and any number of other
unsavory titles.
“It does involve you, actually.” When he turned his animal yellow eyes
on her, Garret had a smile that was a little too cheerful stretching his lips.
Madness, she thought again, but that wasn’t unusual. That was what the wolves
called them, after all. Mad.
“How so?” she asked.
“You can pass, you have passed before, like you said, for pure wolf,
right?” Garret came close to her again, too close. Her animal clawed at her
guts, wanting to scrabble away from him and the power he radiated. She
shouldn’t want that—she should want to be close to her alpha and the fact she
didn’t was simply more proof stacking up in the column which said she was wrong,
not right in the head.
“Yeah, so what?” Closing her eyes, she hoped the bubble of nausea
turning her stomach radiated from the pain of his punches, not the stink of
rotted meat on his breath.
“You infiltrate their pack, you apply for membership and you watch
them. You learn their weaknesses, earn their trust…then, when they’re least
expecting it, we hit them where it hurts. We shove them out of this territory
and we take it for our pack.” Garret’s voice was hardly more than a whisper of
sound, but it rang in her head as loud as if he’d spoken on a megaphone.
“No, I can’t do that. It isn’t right and—”
“Do you want our people to have a home? To have someplace safe to be
where we aren’t constantly shoved around by wolf packs? Or do you want to be
the one responsible for the fact we have no homeland, have no place to call our
own? There are children, weak ones, people who need protected, people who need
the security of their own space. Are you going to stand in the way of me
protecting our people, Gretchen?” His hand stroked down her chin, a movement
intended to soothe her, no doubt, and sway her to his way of thinking. Her
beast cringed away from the contact, not wanting a thing to do with Garret or
his half-baked plans.
“No, but—”
“No buts, girly-girl. You go in there and you help me save this pack.
That is an order.”
Swallowing hard, she couldn’t help the tiny part of her that surged in
joy. She’d get to see him again, be near him again.
But to betray him?
The command in the alpha’s tone sizzled home, grinding its way into her
bones and settling like a mantle of unwanted responsibility. “Yes, Alpha.”
Garret’s smile didn’t make her feel better about
the plan, but what choice did she have?
