Dancer's Heart
Authors: R. E. Butler
Tags: #wolf shifter romance, #shifter romance, #wilde creek, #reindeer shifter
Dancer’s Heart
Wilde Creek Book Six
By: R. E. Butler
Copyright 2016 R. E. Butler
Dancer’s Heart (Wilde Creek Six)
By R. E. Butler
License Notes
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Cover by Ramona Lockwood
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.
* * *
Editing by Alexis Arendt
* * *
To Joyce who always tells me when my books
make her cry, which makes me cry. Love you!
To Shelley for her time and support, thank
you for beta-reading!
For my Aunt B.L. and my husband B. B. I love
you both!
Table of Contents
Dancer’s Heart (Wilde Creek Six)
By R. E. Butler
Adam Cruz has spent the last twelve years of
his life wondering if he’d ever find his truemate. As a low-ranked
omega wolf, with a body full of scars from a firebomb, he’s had
more than his fair share of trauma and shame. All he wants is to
find his truemate and settle down, even though he wonders if his
mate will care about his scars, or that he can’t hunt as well as
other wolves because of them.
As the only reindeer shifter in a bear den,
Dancer Grayson knows what it’s like not to fit in. When she runs
into her truemate in the woods of Wilde Creek, she discovers that
she fits right in with him. Adam’s not ashamed to have prey as a
mate, and she’s not ashamed of his scars. Together, she’s certain
they can survive anything.
When Adam’s gambling-addict dad hits him up
for money and Adam refuses, his dad does the unthinkable, and Dani
ends up kidnapped. What the kidnappers don’t count on is that there
isn’t just a wolf pack looking for Dani, but her own kind. Can Adam
get to her before she’s harmed, or will she be lost to him
forever?
Chapter 1
Adam Cruz watched his friend Jeremiah and his
new mate, Honey, as they were introduced to the Wilde Creek wolf
pack during the February full moon. The pack clapped and cheered as
the two kissed. Adam was happy that Jeremiah had found his truemate
– it gave him hope that he’d find his own mate someday.
Alphas Acksel and Brynn wished the pack a
good hunt, and Adam went to congratulate Jeremiah and Honey.
“I’ve been worried about you,” Jeremiah said.
“I’m sorry that things got crazy, and I wasn’t able to be there for
you.”
“I’m cool,” Adam said. He tried to smile, but
he knew he’d failed by the way that Jeremiah looked at him with
suspicion.
“We can talk later if you want.”
Adam glanced at Honey. “Maybe I’ll take you
up on that. Have a good first hunt, man. If anyone deserves to be
happy, it’s you.”
Jeremiah grabbed Adam’s arm and stopped him
as he turned away. “You deserve to be happy, too.”
He chuckled darkly, casting his gaze up to
the dark sky. “Maybe my mate will fall out of the sky tonight, and
she won’t give two fucks about my scars or my place in the
pack.”
Adam moved away quickly, before Jeremiah’s
concern became his undoing. Seeing Jeremiah so happy made something
ache deep inside him. He wanted to shake it off as full-moon
jitters, but he knew that his wolf was truly aching for a mate.
Someone to love. Someone to protect. A female who wouldn’t care
that he came from crappy stock, with a gambling-addict dad and a
body covered with scars. Ducking into the woods, he wove his way
into the darkness and looked for a place to shift.
When he was a teenager and new to shifting,
he’d pretended as if his scars hadn’t completely ruined his life,
but they had. His skin ached in his human form and his wolf form.
There was hardly a time when he wasn’t thinking about how shitty
his life was, although he tried to project a confident attitude
about his appearance. He didn’t want people to think all he did was
complain, even though inside he cursed his dad frequently.
Stopping in a secluded area, he stripped and
stretched fully, allowing his skin to warm naturally before he
shifted. He’d been burned at age fourteen, when a man his dad owed
money to tossed a Molotov cocktail through Adam’s bedroom window.
Apparently the man had mistakenly thought it was his dad’s room.
Because he wasn’t old enough to shift, he’d had to go through
painful skin graft treatments. By the time he was old enough to
shift it was too late. His body hadn’t been able to heal the
remaining damage.
He still had scars, and some of the muscles
and tendons in his leg hadn’t healed right, so he was unable to run
well in his shifted form. He had a limp in his human form as well.
He’d never looked at his dad the same way again, and from the
moment he’d been able to move out of the house, he hadn’t looked
back.
Fortunately, his dad wasn’t part of the Wilde
Creek pack any longer. Richard had moved back to his parents’ home
pack, four hours south, to escape his debtors and start over. In
the thirteen years since Adam had turned eighteen and moved out, he
hadn’t seen his father once. He could stay the hell down there
forever as far as Adam was concerned.
He closed his eyes at the burn as his skin
stretched and made the change into his wolf. Waiting for the ache
to ease, he lifted his muzzle and inhaled, sorting through the
scents to see what lay in the darkness. In the distance he could
hear members of his pack hunting, but he knew he was all alone in
this large stretch of woods.
His wolf growled, happy to be let free. Adam
gave in to the urge to hunt and took off in the direction of the
nearest game. The February night air was cold and crisp, snow
fluffing up around him as he moved. He thought about catching a few
rabbits to take home and butcher to make stew and decided that was
a good plan. He could take a batch over to Jeremiah and Honey to
make up for his grumpy attitude earlier. Jeremiah had always been a
good friend to him, and someday maybe Adam’s mate and Honey would
become friends, too. If he ever found someone to call his own.
He hoped to fuck he would.
Shaking off his depressing thoughts again, he
chided himself for letting his physical situation control his
attitude. He normally wasn’t so moody, but he couldn’t seem to
shake the melancholy tonight.
As he rounded a tree on the trail of a
rabbit, he caught another scent on the night air and paused, his
claws digging into the cold ground as he raised his muzzle.
Something smelled like peppermint, and it made every protective and
possessive instinct inside him roar.
With a warning snarl, he wheeled and moved as
quickly as he could in that direction, the only thought on his mind
a single, growled word:
mine
.
Chapter 2
Dancer Grayson loved her adopted brother,
Row, but he was a total downer sometimes. Always worried for her
safety, never impulsive. Of course, it wouldn’t be good to have
two
impulsive people right now – someone had to be the
adult. Well, Dani was an adult, but Row was the more
adultier
adult.
They’d been traveling for two days from their
home in the bear sleuth to the last known whereabouts of a reindeer
shifter herd. When she was found wandering alone in the woods at
age three, Dani, a reindeer, had been adopted by Row’s mom Alice.
She had very little memory of her parents and their herd, who had
all been killed by natural coyotes. There were times when she ached
for the camaraderie of her own kind, but despite being entirely
different from her adopted mom and brother, she’d grown up in a
very loving home. Alice was an amazing surrogate mother who had
always treated Dani as her own, and Row was the best big brother
around.
As Row filled the SUV with gas, she got out
and stretched, complaining about the trip. To her dismay, her
outdoors-loving brother had insisted they camp out at night. “Can
we get a hotel at least once?”
“No.” Row shook his head. “After we find your
people, then we’ll see, okay? We used to camp out all the time,
when did you become such a priss about sleeping outside?”
She huffed indignantly. “I’m not a priss!
It’s cold out. There’s snow! No one should camp when there’s snow.
Plus, you snore.”
He grunted. “It’s plenty warm in the tent
with the heater. And I don’t snore.”
The attendant gave Row change and Dani asked
him, “Where are we?”
The human said, “Wilde Creek.”
Row asked, “Is there any place in town to get
a meal?”
“Not this late,” the attendant said. “Unless
you want junk food, which there’s plenty of in the mini-mart.”
“Ugh,” Dani said, pressing a hand to her
stomach. The idea of eating another bag of salty, fried food made
her want to throw up. “No more chips and snack cakes.”
“Thanks,” Row said to the attendant. He and
Dani got into the SUV, and he suggested, “It’s a wooded town. We
could go hunting.”
“You mean you could go hunting and I could
graze? What if there are hunters? I don’t want to get shot.” Deer
were very likely to be shot by hunters. Not that Row wasn’t also a
candidate for being shot, because he was a big bear, but she was
definitely in danger if humans with guns were around.
“I’ll keep you safe.”
Using the map program on his phone, he found
a heavily wooded area nearby. It took twenty minutes to find a road
that skirted along the woods. Row parked and opened up the back to
get their camping supplies ready for after they shifted, and Dani
got out. Excitement coursed through her at the thought of shifting
and running.
The sound of wolves could be heard in the
distance, and Dani’s heart sank. Row would never let her shift if
there was a wolf pack nearby.
“Ah, damn it,” he muttered. “We must be in
pack territory. Get back in the car, Dani.”
Dani opened her mouth to respond when
something caught her attention. She closed her eyes and inhaled
slowly. Sorting through the scents of winter and woods, she found a
deep, spicy smell that made her heart pound and her skin
tighten.
She was aware that Row was calling her name,
but she didn’t answer. He stepped around the side of the vehicle as
she stared into the dark woods. “Dani?”
She turned her head slowly and looked at him.
“I smell him.”
“Him? Him who?”
“Mine. My…mine.” Her whole body shook, and
she exploded into her shift, far faster than she’d ever done
before. One moment she was standing on two legs, and the next she
was in her shifted form, pawing the ground with a snort. She
glanced at Row for a heartbeat and then leaped toward the
woods.
Row yelled after her, “Dani! Wait, it’s too
dangerous, they’ll kill you!”
Dani didn’t stop. She couldn’t. The source of
the spicy scent was calling to her, and she couldn’t ignore it.
Every feminine instinct within her demanded she find it, told her
that the male who belonged to the scent was her truemate. She’d
never been more certain of anything in her life than she was that
the spicy-scented male was hers.
She could hear Row bellowing after her in his
bear shift, but she was unable to stop racing through the woods.
She darted this way and that, around trees and shrubs, as she
zeroed in on the scent, leaving Row behind. Her heart pounded in
anticipation.
Shifting into her human form, she stumbled to
a stop and fell to her knees, catching herself on her hands. The
ice and snow bit into her skin, but she was too distracted by the
wild thoughts banging around in her mind to care. A large wolf with
gray and black fur stalked through the shadows toward her. She
could see him clearly in the bright light of the full moon. A
million years of instinct as prey told her to flee from him, but as
she stared into the amber eyes of the male whose scent had
captivated her, she was unable to run away.