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  Wild Heat (Wilding Pack Wolves 3)

  Copyright © 2016 by Alisa Woods

  February 2016 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 Heat (Wilding Pack Wolves 3)—New Adult Paranormal Romance

  He's a hot cop. She's a wild artist.

  Making art has never been so dangerously SEXY.

  Kaden Grant is well aware that the Seattle Police Department is no friend of shifters. But when the mayor’s favorite artist is targeted by the local hate-fanatic, he orders protective custody for her… and Kaden is desperate to land the assignment. Because any other cop would just get the girl killed. If only her wild streak didn’t threaten to bring out his long-buried secret…

  Terra Wilding’s family is being torn apart, and now the Wolf Hunter is targeting her because her of photographs bringing out the light in the dark corners of Seattle. The only way to keep her baby sister Cassie and the other wolves safe is to leave her mountain refuge and hole up in a small house that feels more like a cage. If only the human cop who’s guarding her wasn’t so hot…

  When Terra slips away to meet up with a secretive art collector, Kaden’s protective side goes into overdrive. He’s an alpha’s alpha, and he lights a wild heat in her that threatens to burn them both down. Kaden wants to protect and serve, but can he tame the wildest Wilding before the Wolf Hunter catches up to them both?

  Terra Wilding’s room was drenched in demonic light.

  It was merely the darkroom lamp bathing everything in its blood-red glow, but somehow, it fit the dark and haunted mood that had grabbed hold of her. Terra’s new top-of-the-line enlarger had just shipped in, and she’d been itching to try it out, but all she had to work with were old shoots. Old film. Photographs that were taken months, if not even more stale. Her last gallery exhibition was eight weeks ago, and even that work had been shot months prior to that. It had been so long since she’d been able to scour the city—Seattle’s people and buildings and grimy corners—to find some bit of life for her art. Some tiny shred of goodness that she could bring out to say to her hometown, See, all is not lost, even in your days of hatred.

  With the multiple attacks on shifters recently, she wondered if that was still true.

  She swished the photo paper in the developer until the images came up, rising out of the red darkness to reveal themselves. But there were no surprises. No new angle or viewpoint, no matter how much she cropped or sifted through her old shoots. She used the tongs to pull the print from the developer and slide it into the tray of stop solution. She simply needed new material—and she wasn’t going to get it here at the River pack’s safehouse, tucked up in the mountains, far from the heartbeats of the city.

  Only her city wasn’t safe for her anymore.

  She moved the print to the fixer solution, then rinsed it in the final bath and hung the newly developed sheet on her clothesline. A heavy sigh escaped her as she gazed at the line of prints covering her wall—four rows high, twenty pictures long, covering two of the four walls with completely useless art. The third wall, the one with the window, had been swathed in light-blocking fabric as soon as she had arrived—two shades, a heavy set of curtains, and black tape around the edges. The fourth wall was taken up by the massive four-postered bed and some artwork that Terra couldn’t remove because it would insult her hosts. They weren’t half bad, actually—the art, not the hosts, who were wondrous. The paintings were realistic renderings of the gorgeous mountains that surrounded the safehouse ranch, but they weren’t exactly her style. They itched at her, day after day, like a tag left in her shirt.

  She sighed again, looking back at her own work, and gave up on trying to wrench anything meaningful out of it. Instead, she just switched on the main light for her room, slipped her sketchpad out of her nightstand and curled up on the bed.

  During her endless internment at the safehouse, her need to create something new had returned her to an original love—drawing. But what kept rising out of the charcoal lines on her sketchpad was even darker than the things she captured with her camera lens—bombs, body parts, the blown-apart carnage of shifters and metal, cars and buildings reduced to their elemental parts by the hate group that was stalking the sprawling Wilding pack. The bombers weren’t after her specifically, but she was one of the more visible members of her pack, what with her gallery showings and articles in Artist Today. The Wolf Hunter had outed her entire family as shifters in his doxing video, revealing all of their names and addresses, and the random haters in her city were all too eager to work out their dark mental issues in shifter blood and mayhem.

  She would never understand the hatred and violence, but she understood the dark mental issues all too well. The darkness of the world had always sought her, closed in around her, threatened to drown her… and now, with the haters on the rise, it was getting harder to find the light that marched side-by-side with the dark.

  She sighed again. She had been cooped up too damn long.

  Terra closed her eyes and tried to imagine the soft innocence of her younger sister, Cassie. She’d always been a perpetual source of light in Terra’s life, ever since their mom died. Cassie was a full-time resident at the safehouse too, and even Terra’s twin brother, Trent, was becoming a more frequent visitor, tearing himself away from his frenetic work schedule at his software development company. Their father still puttered around in his estate in Bellevue, oblivious to everything, per usual. He probably hadn’t even seen the bombings on the news. Terra often retreated into her world of art, but her father was the king of withdrawing from the real world—when her mother died, her father moved to Planet Donnie Wilding and never came back.

  Terra rubbed her eyes and worked the tension from her shoulders. There was no point in dwelling on things that would never change. A knock at the door kept her from diving back into her drawing of Cassie.

  “Come in!” Terra shouted.

  Her cousin Noah swung open the door. He was about her age, twenty-one or two, but he’d been through a lot—far more than Terra. Just having him around reminded her of that. But lately, he’d been even more intimately involved in trying to stop the bombings… including the one that happened just this morning.

  But his frown was unexpected, along with the harried, uncertain look on his face. “Terra, someone’s at the door for you.”

  “Yeah?” She looked back to her drawing. “Really not interested right now, Noah.”

  “You need to come down.”

  She looked up.

&nb
sp; His face had way too much deadly urgency. It sent a chill wind through her.

  “Something’s happened,” he said.

  Oh God, not again. Terra felt the darkness closing in like a wet wool blanket threatening to smother her. Sometimes she could feel the evil let loose in the world like it was an actual physical force, pressing on her body.

  “All right.” She opened the drawer in her nightstand and tucked her pad and pencil away.

  Noah waited for her at the door, apparently wanting to escort her to make sure she complied.

  Terra smoothed down her black t-shirt—it was stained with developing fluids. “I hope it’s not the Queen of England.”

  “It’s not.” Noah didn’t even crack a smile.

  She frowned as she passed him in the doorway, and he followed her out into the hall. The Riverwise country estate was massive, and they had at least a little bit of time to wind through the corridors before they would get to wherever they were going—it looked like they were headed toward the front door.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “There’s a new video from the Wolf Hunter.” Noah pressed his lips together and seemed hesitant to go on.

  “And?” The sense of darkness squeezed on her chest. She could feel its presence in the words Noah didn’t want to speak.

  “And he’s targeting you now, Terra.” He seemed to have to force out the words.

  Tara stopped in her tracks and held onto the pristine white wall. “Me?” The Wolf Hunter’s first video had outed them all. Then a random series of videos gave voice to all his hate for shifters—a manifesto on film for his hate group followers. Then they assassinated her uncle—Arthur Wilding, one of the five Wilding brothers that lead the pack families—and targeted his daughter, Nova. Then her cousin Noah had come back from Afghanistan to help and nearly paid for it with his life. One by one, each of the families was being targeted, tested, hunted…

  It must be her turn.

  The floor seemed to sway under her feet.

  “Terra, it’s going to be all right.” Her cousin’s hand landed on the bare skin of her arm and helped hold her up.

  “No, it’s not.” She shook off his hand, and he pulled back. The only armor she had against the overwhelming darkness—the hate and the terror pointed at her family like a weapon—was a deep well of rage. She put on that armor and pushed past Noah to march down the hallway. “Let’s go.”

  The anger was invigorating. How dare this Wolf Hunter threaten her and her family? She hurried toward the front and whatever awaited her. As Noah hustled to catch up, her strides got longer, and her heavy black boots pounded the polished wood floor of the hall and the stairs on the way down to the front door. But what she saw at the bottom was nothing like what she expected.

  The police were here.

  Shifters and police did not mix. End of story. Shifters, according to the haters and even the general populace and definitely local law enforcement, were essentially criminals—or criminals-in-waiting. Their wolf nature was supposedly more prone to violence… all while it was the humans who went around blowing people up. And the police who looked the other way. What none of them would ever understand was that the beast was the best part of any shifter.

  Terra planted her hands on her hips and ran a scrutinizing look over the hulking police officer who was occupying the doorway. He was tall and broad, muscular in a way that, for a human, meant he spent hours at the gym, worshiping his own body. Yet, she had to admit the effect was something worthy of worship. His trim black uniform fit just right over his bulging biceps, trim stomach, and muscular thighs. It was the kind of perfect male form that begged for her camera, and she couldn’t help noticing with her artist’s eye the details that would make him a heart-stopping subject—the deep sapphire blue of his eyes, the rough midnight black of his razor-short hair, the tension in his body that was a sort of relaxed power in the face of the gathering pack at the door. As gorgeous as his form may be, he was still a cop—which was to say, everything she loathed about humankind. This perfect male specimen wasn’t something she was going to draw or photograph—this was the enemy come to her family’s doorstep.

  The coldness of his stare just drilled that fact home.

  “What’s this?” she asked, curling a lip of disgust at him.

  “This is Officer Kaden Grant,” Jaxson River said. He was the alpha of the River pack—he headed the Riverwise security company, and his family owned the safehouse. At one point, Terra thought he might be the one for her—a man strong enough to be her mate. He was an alpha’s alpha, and when he had saved Cassie from the government thugs who had kidnapped her, Terra was certain Jaxson was the man who would finally break through her personal darkness.

  But she’d been wrong.

  Mating with Jaxson would’ve been the end—she would have been killed by the curse that haunted him. She had always known death was stalking her. She expected it to appear suddenly, like the car crash that had taken her mother. Like an unexpected magical curse in the man she thought would be her mate. Like Officer Kaden Grant, standing in her doorway and looking very much like the thing that would get her killed.

  Jaxson was still talking. “Did Noah tell you about the video?” he asked her.

  Noah nodded.

  Terra said, “Sounds like my number is up.”

  “Terra… no.” Jaxson stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder. “We’re not letting anything happen to you. Or anyone else. But in this latest video…”

  Jaxson looked to Officer Grant, who had been coolly checking her out.

  She narrowed her eyes. What the hell was that about?

  Grant cleared his throat and snapped his eyes back up to hers. “The Wolf Hunter released another video just this morning, Ma’am.” His voice was low and gruff. “The address of this house was listed as your current residence. However, in light of the recent WildLove bombings, the mayor has instructed the police department to take you into protective custody. He says you’re ‘An artist of renown, a jewel of our city.’” Officer Grant gave the barest of smiles. “Which I guess means you rate a protective detail.”

  Terra drew back and gave Officer Grant another look of disgust. She turned to Jaxson. “Protective detail?”

  “The safehouse is no longer safe. Especially for you.” Jaxson’s look was dead serious, and a new trickle of icy fear dripped slowly through Terra’s chest and into her stomach, making it clench.

  She turned back to Officer Grant. “Wait… the video said I was here? So you’re saying the safehouse has been outed. Because of me.”

  “Not because of you,” her cousin, Noah, insisted. “This maniac is calling you out, but he’s really after everyone. I don’t know how he found out about the safehouse—but there have been so many people going through this place in the last three months, it’s a wonder it’s been kept quiet this long.”

  Terra hadn’t wanted to come to the safehouse in the first place—it was half prison and half refuge—but at least there were shifters here. Her kind. She and Cassie were safe here. And now the mayor wanted his police to watch over her—half of whom probably were secret hate group members.

  It was a death sentence.

  “We’re all leaving the safehouse, Terra.” Jaxson glowered at Officer Grant. “But there’s nothing that says you have to go anywhere with this asshole. We’ll find places for everyone, somehow, with friends, shifter families… we’ll make it work.”

  Terra frowned. There were close to fifty people who have been living at the safehouse, since this madness started—Wilding pack, River pack, wolves that had been experimented on by the government, not to mention Mama River herself. “Really, Jaxson?” Terra asked. “How are you seriously going to find places for everyone?”

  Jaxson’s jaw worked, and she could tell he knew the size of the problem. Over two dozen shifters had been attracted to the news at the front door already, and there had to be a lightning-speed rumor running through the rest of the safehouse. Eve
n Mama River, the matriarch of the River pack and keeper of the estate, was watching with careful eyes from the kitchen doorway.

  “Ma’am.” Officer Grant’s deep voice pulled her back. “I promise you, we can offer a secure location for you—”

  A commotion at the back of the crowd of shifters cut him off. It was her brother, Trent, pushing his way through the crowd.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Trent shouted above the heads as he elbowed his way to the front. “Terra, what is this I hear about the police coming for you?” He glared at Officer Grant still lurking in the doorway but not coming inside.

  “I’m not here to arrest her—” Officer Grant’s voice ticked up a notch.

  Terra ignored him and spoke directly to her brother. “There’s a new video. The Wolf Hunter’s after me now.” Just saying the words out loud made her feel woozy again. She gripped the end of the stairwell banister. Jaxson’s hand braced her, just as Noah’s had before. She pushed him away, but then Trent shuffled forward to take his place.

  “It’s okay, Terra.” Her brother was trying to calm her, but she was having none of it.

  “It’s not going to be okay!” she growled in his face. Her wolf was bristled out, ready to unsheathe claws on the next person who told her all of this was going to be fine when it was obvious that nothing was fine. And it never would be again.

  Then she saw a small, dark-haired form pushing through the crowd, following in Trent’s wake. Cassie. Her long, black hair danced around her thin shoulders, and her dark, dark eyes, just like their mother’s, opened up into pools of fear and sadness when she arrived at Terra’s side.

  Oh God. She couldn’t lose it in front of Cass. Couldn’t give into the darkness, not now. Terra pushed Trent aside and went to her little sister. She kneeled down and wrapped her arms around her slender form. Her baby sister was only twelve and had barely started to live yet. She was about as big as a minute, and right now, she was shaking in Terra’s arms. The girl had already been captured once, kidnapped right off the street outside her school, and whatever was after Terra—because this felt like the time when death would finally catch her—she needed to keep it the hell away from her little sister.