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  Wild Game (Wilding Pack Wolves 1)

  Copyright © 2015 by Alisa Woods

  December 2015 Edition

  All rights reserved.

  Sworn Secrets Publishing

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. For information visit:

  Alisa Woods

  Cover by Steven Novak

  Wild Game (Wilding Pack Wolves 1)—New Adult Paranormal Romance

  Her pack is being hunted. He’s a bodyguard with a secret. The Wolf Hunter is targeting them both. GAME ON.

  Owen Harding hasn’t shifted since he was in Agent Smith’s experimental cages—the only thing this ex-Army Texas boy is afraid of is what kind of beast he’s become. But with a hate group issuing more threats against the Wilding pack than you can shake a stick at, Owen’s doing what he can as a personal bodyguard. If only the Wilding girl he’s tasked with keeping alive wasn’t so damn sexy… and completely off limits.

  Nova Wilding’s father was assassinated, leaving her a gaming company to run, a new game to release, and a pack full of wolves who want her for a mate… including a beta who’s determined to have Nova and her company. Choosing someone outside the pack will tear it apart, but Nova can’t stop watching the hot shifter who’s keeping watch over her.

  When Nova barely escapes an attempt on her life, she finds herself in Owen’s arms… but her sexy new bodyguard is absolutely the wrong man at the wrong time. While Nova fights to keep her father’s business afloat, and Owen fights to keep her alive, the Wolf Hunter is playing a dangerous new game that might destroy them both.

  Owen Harding was surrounded by wounded warriors.

  He wasn’t one of them‌—‌at least, not that anyone could tell from the outside. They were lying in their VA Hospital beds, the war having snatched away their arms and legs and flash-burned faces like it was collecting parts for a grisly soldier bingo. Owen had done three tours with the Army in Afghanistan, but the sight of his fellow warriors in various states of damage still made him want to kick the war’s ass. He didn’t know these soldiers, but he knew the type‌—‌back when he was Private First Class Owen Harding, he had been just like them, wanting to give everything he had to protect the country he loved.

  Then his country betrayed him.

  No, that wasn’t fair. He knew the country was filled with good people… but it had its share of bad. And it wasn’t the entire country, anyhow, or even the whole military. It was one, single jackass Colonel with his grand ideas and lack of morals. He was the one who planted the IED that blew up Owen’s life and sent him into a hellhole of a medical prison. That Colonel also authorized the experiments that Agent Smith performed on Owen and countless other shifters. It didn’t mollify Owen much that Smith and the Colonel were both either dead or up on charges. There was nothing more to be done about it, but that didn’t mean Owen wouldn’t be paying for it like a bad night in Vegas… in other words, for the rest of his life. Some soldiers carried their injuries on the outside; for others, the war stole a part of their minds. For him, the military took something even worse‌—‌the thing that made a man what he was.

  Owen simply didn’t know anymore.

  He had started out the war as a man and a wolf‌—‌a shifter putting his skills in the service of his country‌—‌and then Agent Smith’s experiments turned him into some kind of monster. The kicker was, he didn’t even know what kind. Nor did he feel like rushing in and finding out. He didn’t want to say he was afraid to know… but that was exactly how it was.

  “How’s it going in there?” The voice came through the earbud stuck in his ear. That was Murphy, part of Riverwise Private Security, Owen’s new employer. Owen was semi-permanently assigned to bodyguard Nova Wilding, current CEO and lead game developer of Wylderide Gaming, but Murphy and Simpson were just on loan for today’s excursion. “Anytime you’re ready to swap places, Owen, just let me know. I want a shot at that new beta version of Domination.”

  “Domination?” Owen replied through the mic clipped to his shirt collar. “Is that a computer game or something ya’ll do with Simpson on the weekends?” Domination: AfterPulse was Wylderide’s latest futuristic combat game. It was still in beta, but the wounded warriors were playing an exclusive demo on borrowed laptops, courtesy of Nova. This was a charity event, some kind of joint league play set up just for the soldiers at the VA. Owen didn’t play, but he knew a lot of gamers, both in the service and back home in Texas.

  “You’re such an asshole,” Murphy’s voice squeaked in his ear. “You know I’m dying to get my hands on that thing. Not to mention the lead developer herself.”

  Owen scowled, even though Murphy couldn’t see him from where he was stationed outside the hospital. “I didn’t realize Riverwise’s professional standards now include groping clients.” He put some warning into his voice. They were here to protect Nova from the hate group that had murdered her father and were targeting the entire Wilding pack… not to disrespect and ogle her, even on chatter. “Do I need to rotate you out and bring in a new volunteer?”

  “No, sir.” Murphy’s voice was chastened. “Just noting the obvious, sir.”

  “And that would be?”

  “That Nova Wilding is brightening the day of many soldiers today, sir.”

  “Copy that.” Owen swept the room with his gaze until he found Nova again. She’d been his personal responsibility for nearly a month, ever since her father was murdered, and she pretty much never left his sight. Fortunately, the vast majority of Nova’s waking hours were spent at Wylderide, where her father had been CEO before her‌—‌and the office was relatively secure on the twenty-fourth floor of a high-rise in downtown Seattle. This charity event was a lot more vulnerable.

  But Murphy was right‌—‌Nova Wilding was easy on the eyes.

  He watched her flit from one warrior to the next, her long, jet-black hair bound up to keep it off the keyboards. She had a brilliant blue streak running the length of it, and a strand had worked loose. It kept falling across her face, and she kept tucking it behind her ear‌—‌looked like a losing battle to him. Her bio put her at twenty-two, not much younger than Owen’s twenty-six, but the gulf was more than just years. His time on the planet couldn’t be any more different than hers. Plus she was about as big as a minute‌—‌petite body, delicate little fingers, yet with the wiry strength of a gymnast when she was running wires through the ceiling of the office or toting equipment into the event. For the tournament, she was decked out in combat gear‌—‌not the standard black body armor you might see in the service, but some kind of custom job, almost a costume tailored to her tiny form and crafted to resemble the gear from the game.

  There was no question she was smokin’ hot. The eyes of every veteran followed her as she went from bed to bed, checking their equipment and showing off the
new gameplay features. Owen recognized the longing in their eyes‌—‌he had that same, gut-twisting ache that came from too much combat and too few women in his life.

  In fact, Nova was about the only one‌—‌and he’d seen a lot of her in action over the last month. She was all about the company’s flagship game most of the time, but given it was basically military ops, she had a lot of respect for service personnel and the sacrifices they made. This event was her idea, in spite of being in mourning for her father… or perhaps because of it. She’d pulled all the pieces together‌—‌high-quality gaming gear donated by the company, permission to operate at the VA, even created a special server for them‌—‌and she’d been here since early this morning, setting up the network and testing it out.

  Right now she was going back and forth between two vets who were whooping and hollering like idiots, flailing around with their good arms and nearly dumping their laptops. One of them was missing an arm, the other had one in a sling. Owen couldn’t tell if their mile-wide grins were from an excess of painkillers or the fact that Nova was bending over their laptops, syncing their games or whatever she was doing.

  The two grunts exchanged smirk-filled looks, then burst out in laughter.

  Nova glanced between them with an uncertain look.

  Owen was manning his position by the door, but even from a dozen yards away, he could see the crinkled expression on her pretty face and the tight set of her lips. She backed away from them and scanned the room, looking for something. When her gaze fell on him, she hesitated, then dropped her gaze.

  Something was up.

  He knew all her body signals at this point, even if their conversations had never gone much past Good Morning and God, I need coffee.

  He started toward her. “Checking in with NovaCaine,” he said into his mic. “Going mic silent for a moment.”

  She was still staring at a spot on the floor when he arrived. “Everything all right, ma’am?”

  She looked up and seemed a little surprised to see him there. She probably didn’t notice him anywhere near as much as he noticed her. But then that was his job. Hers was to keep her father’s gaming business afloat.

  She shook her head‌—‌they weren’t far from the two gamer vets‌—‌and turned to walk back toward the door he had just come from. An orderly glided through just as they arrived, and Owen took a moment to check out his ID. It was one of the younger male nurses, and Owen recognized him from before, so he turned his attention back to Nova.

  “Is there something I can help you with, ma’am?” he asked again.

  She grabbed hold of the loose string of blue hair, twisted it, then cast a look back at the soldiers. She had a habit of doing that‌—‌playing with her hair when she was thinking about something.

  He waited.

  She turned back to him. “Do you think they’d be more comfortable if I weren’t around?” Her eyes were dark as midnight and twice as serious.

  He frowned. “No, ma’am, I don’t. Not quite sure I take your meaning, though.”

  She released her hair. “I was hoping the game might bring back some of that sense of camaraderie for them. But they seem to, I don’t know, act a little strange when I’m around? I’m thinking maybe, if I wasn’t distracting them, they might enjoy the game more.”

  She must not have felt the heat of a million stares on her illegally cute bottom.

  He held back his smirk as much as possible. “No, ma’am. These grunts have each other’s ugly mugs to look at all day long, every day. You’re doing a good thing here, breaking up the monotony. They just don’t know quite what to do with, well, the improved scenery you’ve brought to their day.”

  She gave him a puzzled look. “Improved scenery? The game is set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic combat zone, as realistic as we could‌—‌”

  Owen couldn’t help it‌—‌his laugh burst out of him. It cut her off quickly, and her pale cheeks pinked up, like little roses under those charcoal-lined eyes.

  “You are the scenery, Ms. Wilding. No disrespect, ma’am, but they haven’t seen anything as good-looking as you in a long time. Certainly not something at their bedsides.” He struggled mightily to keep the grin off his face, but it would have been easier to catch a firefly with his teeth.

  Her face opened with surprise then a frown took over. She shook her disapproval at the floor. Owen wasn’t sure what that was about.

  She peered back up at him. “Nova,” she said with a tight-lipped expression.

  “How’s that?” He must have missed something.

  She scowled. “You’ve been watching over me for a month, Owen Harding. I think it’s time you called me by my first name.”

  So she had noticed. He let that smile come out to play a little. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She rolled her eyes, then turned on her black-booted heel to stride back to the soldiers in their beds. This time, she had a wide, flirtatious smile for them, and he’d be damned if they didn’t perk up twice as much as before. He suspected their playing skills were about to degrade substantially.

  Nova Wilding wasn’t just hot, and obviously kind, she was also smart enough to run the gaming company her father had dropped in her lap when he died. Apparently, charming soldiers who had been wounded in the course of their duty was also in her skillset.

  A tightness crept into his chest. She was just the kind of woman he could really go for… if he wasn’t such a fucking mess.

  Damaged goods. That was about all he was now. During the year he’d been imprisoned, the suppressor kept him from shifting most of the time… except for those few times when Agent Smith tried to force it by injecting him with some serum or another. Owen always believed the shift was simple magic, but maybe it was biochemistry after all.

  He hadn’t gone to college, but he was a straight-A student before he got the hell out of that small, dirt-scrambling Texas town he grew up in. He knew a few things, and he learned a whole lot more the Army. Agent Smith had been doing genetic experiments‌—‌on him, on hapless civilians, on a whole bunch of people‌—‌trying to create some kind of super shifter soldier. And Owen had seen some grisly, horrible things come out of it. People who weren’t people‌—‌or wolves‌—‌but some kind of half mutant thing in between. Whatever that alternate form was supposed to be, a lot of them couldn’t shift back because the result was such a freakish thing it kicked the bucket right away. It was a fucking Island of Dr. Moreau in that prison. Smith was dead now, but his legacy lived on… inside Owen’s body.

  Even after he was free, Owen had been afraid to shift. He couldn’t summon his wolf anymore, and he was afraid to call it, anyway‌—‌who knew what kind of beast would show up? Figuring out that mystery might just be the last two seconds of his life.

  But no shifting meant finding a mate got shoved right off the table of possibilities. Of course, he could mess around with human women, but Owen didn’t like the idea of exposing anyone to the thing he had inside him. Not when he didn’t know what it was himself.

  Which meant work had absorbed all his attention.

  Work… and watching Nova Wilding’s very attractive, little rear end. It wasn’t just her screaming hot body‌—‌it was getting to see all the sides of her with near 24/7 exposure. The days she straggled in after coding all night. The smiles she dragged out even when her eyes were hollowed after the funeral. And now the full-press flirtation show she was putting on for the soldiers playing her game.

  Those boys were sure to be dreaming about her tonight.

  But this desire of hers to give them a little relief… she was driving straight into his heart with that. Which started to be dangerous territory for him. These soldiers might recover, or even get fitted up with some fancy cybernetic limbs, but there was no physical therapy that could erase Owen’s genetic damage, whatever it was.

  That was a ticking time bomb waiting inside him.

  One of Wylderide’s employees, Brad Hoffman, came up to Nova and whispered something in her
ear. Owen didn’t like the way his hand settled at the small of her back, a little possessive gesture from the resident company alpha asshole. It had taken Owen approximately five seconds to peg Brad as the Wilding pack member most eager to claim Nova as his mate. Although Brad and Nova seemed to fight as often as they had a civil thing to say to one another.

  It wasn’t long before they started wrapping up. Nova visited each and every soldier with a hug before collecting up their laptop. A lot of grateful faces were left in her wake.

  While Brad and two others started breaking down the gear, Nova strode up to him. “These guys will load up the van. I’m ready to go.” She looked tired.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, automatically. She gave him a scowl that yanked a smirk right out of him. “I mean, yes, Mistress NovaCaine.”

  She mouthed the words Oh my God, then strode past him, but he thought he caught a glimpse of a smile on her.

  Owen spoke into his mic. “NovaCaine on the move. Clear the car.” He kept pace with her pretty easily‌—‌she barely came up to his shoulder, and those pretty little legs didn’t get up much in the way of speed.

  “NovaCaine?” she asked, giving him the side-eye. “Have you been playing without me realizing it?”

  NovaCaine was her gamer handle‌—‌he’d just taken to using it as her codename for their internal communications. He’d slipped up, using it in front of her.

  “No, ma’am, er… Nova.” It didn’t sit right, calling her by her first name when he was supposed to be security. “Not a gamer, sad to say.”

  She gave him a skeptical look. “You should give it a try. I could teach you, but you might need a little weapons practice first.” She smirked.

  He might’ve spent a year languishing in a cage, but it wasn’t like he’d forgotten how to shoot a gun. “I expect I won’t get the same recoil from firing a keyboard.” He returned her smirk. “But I won’t pass up personal lessons if that’s what you’re offering.” Did he really just say that? What was he thinking?