Beyond Secret Worlds: Ten Stories of Paranormal Fantasy and Romance Read online

  Beyond Secret Worlds

  Contents

  Foreword

  Tough As Nails by Aimee Easterling

  Dark Intent by Lisa Swallow

  Lust at First Sight by Katie Salidas

  Not a Witch by Debbie Herbert

  Black Friday by Kate Corcino

  Blue House Magic by Catherine Stine

  Dream's End by L.G. Castillo

  The Hex by Lucy Leroux

  Her Sweetest Downfall by Rebecca Hamilton

  Take Me by Susan Stec

  About Secret Worlds

  Foreword

  The short stories and novellas in this anthology are prequels, sequels, or spinoffs that relate to the tales in the best-selling box set Secret Worlds. So if you enjoy what you read here, the 21-novel, 5,000-page box set should be your next stop for weeks of reading enjoyment. But act fast—Secret Worlds is only available for a limited time.

  In the meantime, thanks for giving these paranormal stories a try!

  Tough As Nails

  A Wolf Rampant Short Story

  by Aimee Easterling

  Copyright © 2015 by Aimee Easterling

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author.

  The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Read more about my books at www.wetknee.com.

  Author's Note

  Tough as Nails is set a year before Shiftless begins. But the story doesn't contain spoilers, so it can be read at any time in the Wolf Rampant series.

  He looks like Wolfie.

  My lupine half was right. The stranger in front of us did resemble the handsome alpha who had rebuffed our advances eight months prior. Both were broad-shouldered and held themselves with that not-quite-cocky stance that promised their inner wolves could easily protect us from all comers. Both had an awareness of their surroundings that put mine—even while four-legged—to shame. And both had smiles that seemed to change my usually mild-mannered wolf into a starving sex-addict.

  Only one, however, was hanging around the meat-processing plant where I'd taken to hunting for free meals. Yes, I know it sounds gross, but grabbing entrails out of the slop bucket seemed like a better choice than the way other teenage runaways made a living. Much safer too, as long as I kept my face averted so the plant employees never caught a glimpse of my yellow, lupine eyes. So far, both men seemed to have fallen for the notion that I was just a harmless stray.

  Not so with this stranger.

  But when I made my move, I had yet to notice the uninvited company. Instead, I listened until the pair of employees chatted their way toward an old pickup truck, heading out to lunch. Then the crunch of tires on gravel combined with the growling from my stomach pushed me toward stupidity. I didn't even look both ways before stepping out into the open parking lot...only to have my gaze met and held by this enticing alpha.

  "They're gone," he said in a conversational tone, knowing my wolf ears could easily pick up the sound even from thirty feet away. "You can come out now."

  He looks kind, my wolf whispered. And, through her eyes, he certainly did look kind. Too bad my wolf had all the street smarts of an autistic princess.

  Before us, the alpha squatted down, reducing what had seemed like a menacing height even to my intrigued lupine half. She whimpered as the stranger pulled the clincher out of his pocket—a Big Mac all wrapped up in shiny paper, the rich aroma wriggling up through the folds to drift into our nostrils. My weak wolf wasn't a top-notch scent-hound, but she sure as heck could smell that.

  My animal half took a step forward without permission, and I yanked from deep inside her fur to shift back into human form. Better to deal with this naked than at the whim of a wolf who'd never dream of using her claws. Proving my point, the canine in question didn't snap at my snark, having already tucked her tail between her legs and disappeared deep into the recesses of our shared mind.

  I emerged from fur bent over and gasping from the effort, and as I straightened I was startled to find myself nearly eye to eye with the stranger. How did he get so close so fast? The alpha must have leapt toward me during the seconds required to complete my transformation. The seconds when I was completely vulnerable. I shivered. Good thing I'm a fast shifter, despite my useless wolf.

  I'd seen other werewolves bristle when subtly crowded as this stranger was doing to me now, but my own animal half remained silent and peaceful. So I was the only one noticing how the alpha's eyes drifted hungrily across my unclad body, making me clench my teeth in annoyance. Yep, my earlier positive assessment of this stranger had definitely been clouded by the wolf's desires. Now, I didn't like my uninvited companion nearly so much as my inner animal had.

  My immediate urge was to cover my bare breasts and crotch. But I wasn't willing to let the stranger win this round of intimidation, even though his wolf could have beaten mine at arm-wrestling...with both hands tied behind his back. Which wasn't so much an assessment of his strength as it was of my wolf's weakness.

  Worthless wolf aside, my human brain had learned to bluff like nobody's business. It was a necessary trait if I didn't want to get run over by every single other shifter I met. So, rather than shrinking into myself, I instead straightened and glared up at the alpha, forcing him to take a step back and out of my personal space using the weight of my eyes alone.

  "Hey, now, no need to get defensive," the stranger said. Or, rather, growled. His canines had subtly lengthened, and I thought for a moment that his light brown eyes were turning a lupine amber.

  But then the predatory expression faded so quickly that I figured I must have imagined it, and his face broke out into what appeared to be a self-deprecating grin. "I was just bringing you some lunch," he said, jerking his chin toward the hamburger that sat between us on the ground. No longer aggressive, the alpha's current photo could have been featured in a psychology textbook under the heading "nonthreatening behavior."

  So even though I knew it was a stupid move, I crouched and nabbed the offered food, ripping into the paper with trembling fingers. Goat guts will only take you so far, and it had been months since I'd tasted anything as good as this Big Mac looked. Still, I kept my attention trained on the alpha, who stood carefully at ease, his hands hanging loosely at his sides.

  "Thanks," I mumbled, feeling like a clueless kid instead of like the nineteen-year-old near-adult I actually was. I hadn't realized I was this close to animal-mode starvation, so I forced myself to pause before I took my first bite. Trying to regain both humanity and adulthood, I tore the burger in two and held out one portion to my benefactor. "Here, you have half."

  "No." The word was almost a bark, and I looked across the space between us quizzically. What was this dude's problem?

  Then I glanced down at the two burger portions cradled in my hands. The top of the bun had slipped partially off one patty, exposing a white powder liberally sprinkled atop the exposed meat. A white powder that didn't look at all like salt.

  He's trying to drug me.

  Now I was glad my wolf was asleep because she—like most animals—lacked a poker face. My human self, on the other hand was a prime bluffer. So I feigned nonchalance and pretended to take a bite, using the stolen instant to rewind through the preceding moments in my mind.
Had the packaging on my gift been as perfectly creased as the offerings I'd received during fast-food experiences in the past? Nope. It had instead appeared a bit wrinkled and irregular, as if the parcel had been opened and then re-wrapped after its initial dressing.

  He looks like Wolfie. He won't hurt us, my wolf whispered now. But I'd learned the hard way that she was the world's worst judge of character.

  And, after all, hadn't Wolfie hurt us when I admitted my crush and he broke my heart? Sure, my former pack leader had tried to present his words in as kind a manner as possible, and I'd been the one to take the rebuff as an invitation to turn my back on our shared home. But, still, it was a proven fact that my track record at reading the intentions of alpha werewolves was sorely lacking.

  So I mentally shackled my wolf's will in chains so she wouldn't bother me, and I flung the untouched burger into the stranger's face. Then I donned fur and I ran.

  ***

  The stranger was nothing if not tenacious. My paws bled and my tender nose was coated in scratches by the time we tore through half a dozen brier patches and shook him off our trail. And even after I was pretty sure he'd fallen behind and been snookered by the oldest trick in the book—that wading-through-the-creek standby—I still forced myself to run flat out for another hour just to be on the safe side. Because I didn't want to see the handsome, back-stabbing stranger's face ever again.

  Hungry, my wolf murmured from deep inside our shared body, breaking me out of the rhythm of my footsteps.

  She was like a two-year-old sometimes, quick to tell me what she needed but slow to help figure out the steps required to get there. Still, I paused and raised our shared nose to the breeze, knowing there was little chance we'd smell anything edible as deep as we were in the woods. We'd left roads and humanity behind hours ago, so there was zero chance of my usual backup plan for dinner—dumpster diving.

  Of course, being a wolf and all, the forest should have been the perfect spot to find a meal. Unfortunately, my lupine half was the world's worst hunter. And when my human brain took charge of our furred form, the layer of fog between will and body always made us miss our pounces. I was ashamed to admit that, at an age when most shifters had brought down deer all on their lonesome, I'd never so much as captured a mouse. Some werewolf I am.

  But the aroma filling the air now wouldn't require any pouncing. Strawberries, their sweet/tart aroma coating my tongue so strongly I didn't know how I'd missed it before. Must be the layer of fog, combined with a lupine half who was barely strong enough to get out of bed in the morning.

  It was hard to grumble about my subpar wolf, though, when I followed the fruity scent and stepped out of the trees into a vast valley completely coated with strawberry plants. Wow. The view looked so much like paradise that I shook my head, convinced that the adrenaline, the wrong-body fog, and the number of hours since I'd last eaten had combined to produce a hallucination.

  If so, it sure seems like a tasty one.

  And it also seemed like a hallucination more fitted to my human form. Because while a wolf stomach could handle fruit, I'd pick the berries more easily with hominid fingers and would enjoy their flavor more with a human tongue.

  So I leapt upward onto two legs, steadying myself with one hand against the trunk of a nearby tree. I almost expected the fields of fruit to disappear as the lupine fog receded. But, instead, the strawberries remained, and a clothesline at the edge of the field even offered clean clothes to shield my nakedness.

  "Too good to be true." I'd like to say I was talking to my wolf, but I'd actually gotten into the habit of just mumbling thoughts aloud since leaving Wolfie's clan. The sound of my own voice, I'd found, took some of the sting out of being packless and alone in the world.

  And now my words reminded me to sniff at the air again, searching for human scents amid the warm, tantalizing aroma of berries ripening in the sun. Too bad my nose was even more hopeless in human form than when four-legged. I smelled nothing and resolved to simply be careful.

  Skirting the edge of the trees, I looked in all directions before darting toward the clothesline. And even though I knew that whacking one foot off my height would have no effect on shielding me from view, I still found that I was running hunched over, my eyes on the ground.

  If we can't see them, they can't see us, my wolf promised.

  Ah, yes—lupine logic. Just what I needed to get out of this mess with skin intact.

  Still, my wolf and I together had managed to achieve our goal. A long line of women's clothing stretched out before us, and I tested a piece of fabric between thumb and forefinger.

  The underwear was dry and warmly aromatic with the scent of fresh air and laundry soap. My hand settled on a clothespin...and then a voice rang out from the other side of the line.

  Busted.

  ***

  "Not that one," the woman said.

  I didn't see how I could have missed her earlier since she was only ten feet away from me, albeit on the other side of the fabric-covered line. At first glance, she seemed harmless, reclining on a lounge chair outside a little building's back door. But a second glance proved that her relaxed posture was deceptive. Instead, the forty-ish woman looked tough as nails, and not just because her hair was cut short and her skin was roughened from spending many hours under the sun. No, there was something about the set of her shoulders that exuded power and strength.

  But despite the butch persona, her voice didn't seem angry. If anything, the woman appeared amused to find a naked stranger walking out of the woods with clear intents upon her clean underwear.

  "That belongs to my mate," the laundry's owner continued. "And it would confuse me to no end to see you wearing it." She pointed lazily to less frilly panties further down the line that, I had to admit, suited my tastes much better. "Those pairs are mine, and you're welcome to them. The jeans should fit you too, and...hmmm....that navy tank top."

  I was light-headed from hunger and fear, and my brain yelled at me to bolt. But, instead, I found myself following her instructions in a daze.

  Ah, right—she'd met my eyes. And my wolf had been awake enough to force us both to roll over and do a dominant being's bidding at a glance.

  Slapping down the annoying animal, I took another gander at my supposed benefactor. It was obvious that, despite her easygoing manner, this woman was dangerous. After all, even if my subpar nose and the enforced behavior hadn't clued me in, the term "mate" would have made the truth obvious. I was nabbing clothes from another shifter. And one whose wolf, predictably, was miles stronger than my own.

  "Let's see how you look," she said after I'd pulled on the indicated garments. I didn't think I could make it to the tree line before she shifted and pulled me down, so I obediently stepped around the pole to stand before her. I'd meant to be wary, but instead had the surreal notion that I was coming out of a dressing room to get a girlfriend's advice on an intended purchase. The sudden impulse—barely restrained—to twirl in a circle and show off all sides made me cringe.

  Yep, this is definitely a hallucination.

  "Not bad," the woman said. "I'm Quetzalli, by the way. And you're starving."

  It was true. I'd lost at least twenty pounds since hightailing it away from Wolfie's pack, and my stomach now seemed to be perpetually stuck to the inside of my ribcage. But after my experience with the Big Mac, I wasn't about to accept food offerings from a stranger.

  The berries were another matter since even my paranoid human brain couldn't believe that anyone would go to the effort of drugging such a vast reserve of found fruit. "Do you think I could...?" I pointed vaguely in front of us, although now that I was closer I saw that the remaining fruits were rotting atop a plastic mulch. The crop was clearly past its prime, only damaged berries remaining at the tail end of the harvest season. Not that I would mind putting even so-so fruit in my belly at this point.

  "The boss-man won't care," Quetzalli said easily. "Picking season's over and we're moving on tomorrow. But you'll make
yourself sick eating spoiled strawberries on an empty stomach."

  Our gazes locked for a moment as we sized each other up. To a human eye, Quetzalli seemed to be halfway asleep as she lounged beneath a broad straw hat that covered most of her head. But I'd been around shifters all my life and knew that her muscles were tensed and ready for action.

  If her mate was present, she'd have already sent me on my way with a shotgun blast aimed over my head. At least I hoped the blast would have been pointed at the sky.

  Hunching my shoulders, I did my best to reduce my height so I'd look less imposing. But who was I kidding? My body was just skin and bones now, and Quetzalli could have knocked me over with a feather. I was the one who should be taking to my heels and getting as far away from this strange shifter as possible.

  One side of Quetzalli's mouth quirked upwards into a sardonic smile. "I've got canned soup inside," she said in what would have resembled a motherly expression of concern if my companion hadn't sported a buzz cut and nose piercing. "That's probably about all your stomach will handle without upchucking all over my flower beds."

  There were no flower beds. And as I peered around the barren yard, it finally occurred to me that Quetzalli and her partner were migrant laborers, here to pick the strawberries then gone again when the season ended. She had no territory to protect, and my muscles relaxed a trifle.

  Still, when the other woman swung her legs over the side of the recliner, I'd stumbled ten feet in the opposite direction before my brain could tell my feet to stop.

  "Hnnh." The sound emerging from behind my back resembled the snort of a quizzical wolf, and I couldn't resist looking over my shoulder to see if fangs and claws were heading in my direction. Instead, Quetzalli was still two-legged. In fact, she'd turned away to walk in the other direction rather than toward either me or the house.

  "I'm heading over to the creek for a few minutes," she said calmly, as if speaking to a starving stray about to bolt. Who was I kidding—she pretty much was speaking to a starving stray about to bolt. "You can make your soup then come outside to eat it where you can watch all exits."