Wolf Out of Water: Mythic Series, Book 4 Read online

  Wolf Out of Water

  Mythic, Volume 4

  Abbie Zanders

  Published by Abbie Zanders, 2016.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  WOLF OUT OF WATER

  First edition. December 1, 2016.

  Copyright © 2016 Abbie Zanders.

  Written by Abbie Zanders.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Wolf Out of Water (Mythic, #4)

  Acknowledgements

  Before You Begin

  Chapter 1 – Nobody Likes a Cranky Alpha

  Chapter 2 - Beach Blanket Bitches

  Chapter 3 – Across a Crowded Patio

  Chapter 4 – Burning Moonlight

  Chapter 5 – Too Good To Be True

  Chapter 6 – Carpe Diem

  Chapter 7 – The Best Laid Plans

  Chapter 8 – Not Exactly a Glass Slipper, But...

  Chapter 9 – Life’s a Bitch, Then You’re Forced to Mate One

  Chapter 10 – Biting the Silver Bullet

  Chapter 11 – Ready or Not, Here I Come

  Chapter 12 - Taking Care of Business

  Chapter 13 - Hair on the Soap

  Chapter 14 – And They Lived... (Well, you know)

  Thanks for reading Matt and Jessie’s story

  If you liked this book...

  About the Author

  Also by Abbie Zanders

  Wolf Out of Water

  (Mythic Series #4)

  Acknowledgements

  Amazing cover and series design by Marisa @ www.covermedarling.com

  Stock photos from www.depositphotos.com and www.pixabay.com

  Professional editing by M. E. Weglarz of megedits.com, a woman with a true gift for spotting plot holes, character anomalies, black holes, and other potential WTFs. Thank you, Meg, from the bottom of my heart.

  Special thanks to some very special ladies for agreeing to beta read this book and providing such wonderful feedback. This is a better story because of them!

  And a shout out to my awesome street team of reading croies and ARC Angels, the Zanders Clan. I am so lucky to have you!

  ... and THANK YOU to all of you for selecting this book. You didn’t have to, but you did.

  Before You Begin

  Wolf Out of Water is the fourth book in my Mythic series. Each story is a full book in and of itself, a standalone story of paranormal romance with plenty of humor and emotion.

  Within the pages, you will encounter vampires, shifters, angels, demons, fae, witches, mages, goddesses... just to name a few. It is only recently that these Extraordinaries, as they call themselves, coexist peacefully in the idyllic community of Mythic. Very few know of their existence; understandably, they prefer to keep to themselves. However, you’ve been granted a special look into the world of these amazing beings. But be warned -—once you visit Mythic, you might not want to leave.

  WARNING: This book contains adult language and situations, and is intended for mature (18+) readers only.

  Chapter 1 – Nobody Likes a Cranky Alpha

  “Goddamnit!” Matt stomped into the house he shared with his younger sister Dani, muttering a string of curses about the stupidity of wolf pups and their complete and total lack of respect for authority. He didn’t mean any of it, of course. He remembered what it was like to be young and mischievous. God, it seemed like such a long time ago, though he was only thirty human years old. He had been the Mythic pack alpha now for almost ten years, but some days, it felt like at least a hundred.

  Dripping wet and naked as the day he was born, Matt grabbed a towel and tried to catch most of the water before he made a puddle on the floor. His sister Dani would not be happy about cleaning that up. He grunted, imagining how much more upset she would be if he hadn’t hosed off outside first. She might be younger and smaller, but she was as fierce as any of the males when she got riled up.

  “Oh my God, what is that smell!” Dani appeared in the doorway, wrinkling up her nose in disgust.

  Matt had hoped that he would get a chance to hit the shower before Dani got home from school, forgetting that classes had already let out for the summer. With her preternatural sense of smell, she probably scented him coming a mile away.

  Because he did stink.

  She took one look at him, at the scowl on his face, and the anger morphed into straight out amusement. “Rory’s boys tried to get into Mrs. Peterson’s hen house again, didn’t they?”

  Matt gave her a warning glace, which didn’t seem to have an effect on reducing her mirth at all. “Yes,” he growled. And in the course of hastily extracting said wolf pups and fleeing the premises before Mr. Peterson filled their naughty little backsides with buckshot, he had slipped in a mountain-sized pile of cow shit. And then another. With one boy under each arm, they’d all been covered in the odious muck. It was with some sense of twisted satisfaction that he’d handed the two physically unscathed cubs back to their mother, smelling even worse than he did. As an adult, he’d had the good sense to keep his mouth closed as they fell.

  “God, Matt, cover up, will you? I don’t need to see that.”

  Matt sighed heavily. Shifters, by nature, were not shy about their bodies, and as Alpha, Matt’s was better than most, but Dani was his younger sister. He wrapped the towel around his lean hips and pushed past her. “I’ll be in the shower,” he growled.

  “Good. I doubt even Carly would want to get close to you smelling like that.”

  Matt froze, then turned back to look at Dani over one exceptionally broad shoulder. There were very few things that could have postponed his beeline for hot water and strong soap, but the mention of that particular name was one of them. “Carly?”

  For a moment, he thought he saw a flash of sympathy in his sister’s eyes. “Yeah. I think...” she looked away, gazing out the screen door beyond him, “... she’s planning on a picnic or something.”

  “A picnic?” The horror was apparent in his voice.

  “Yeah. Unless you can think of another reason why she’d be carrying a huge wicker basket and heading this way.”

  Matt followed her gaze out through the mud room screen door, seeing the she-wolf heading over the hill, and damn if she didn’t have a supersized picnic basket in her hand. Damn it, she must have been watching for him. He’d been doing his best to avoid her, but it wasn’t easy. The female wasn’t one of their pack’s best trackers for nothing.

  “Get rid of her.” He turned, wishing he didn’t smell like a well-used pasture. Otherwise, he might be able to slip out the back.

  “Matthew.” Dani said, suddenly sounding as if she were the elder sibling. “You can’t keep running from her.”

  “Watch me.”

  That brought a twitch to Dani’s lips, but her eyes remained sympathetic. “Carly would make a great Alpha mate,” she said quietly.

  Matt grunted. It was true. Carly was bigger and stronger than most of the females in his pack. She came from a long line of purebred shifters who had played an integral role in their tight-knit community for as long as any of them could remember. Hell, her father was a respected member of the pack council, appointed by Matt’s father when he was alpha.

  She was attractive. Smart. Kind. Respected by the pack.

  And she did absolutely nothing for him.

  Matt wished he could have felt something for her, something that went beyond the same love and affection he had for all members of his pack. It would have been so much easier, and the pack wouldn’t be riding his ass about settling down every time he turned around.

  But he didn�
��t. Carly was nice, she was pleasant, and she would kneel at his feet if he gave her the word. But there was no spark there. No sense of passion or longing and he wanted that. Matt wanted there to be more. He wanted a woman who would look at him with desire and love in her eyes, not obedience. A woman who would challenge him at every turn. One who wanted to be with him, not because he was Alpha, but because he was him.

  Not everyone in the pack understood that, and anxiety over the issue was on the rise. They wanted Matt to take a mate, someone to ground him, someone to balance out his innate aggression and start pushing out pups. He wanted that, too, but the thought of sharing a lifetime (and shifters had a very long lifespan) with someone purely out of a sense of duty made him shiver.

  Dani’s eyes softened in understanding. “Go. Scrub that stink off, then slip out the back. I’ll tell her you got called out.”

  “Thanks, Dani.”

  “You know you are going to have to deal with this eventually, right?”

  Yeah, he knew. Didn’t mean he was looking forward to it, though.

  “Reports?” Matt asked later that night at the weekly meeting of the pack council. Not all Alphas had them, preferring more of a dictatorship to a democracy, but Matt believed that a truly strong pack utilized the skills and experience of its members. He still had the final say, but few decisions were made without consulting those who comprised the Council.

  “Financially, we’re golden,” Ally said, pushing up against the nosepiece of her wire-rimmed glasses. She was one of the few shifters who actually needed them. The runt among triplets, she was tiny for a wolf, and not particularly strong or athletic, but she had the mind of a computer. The female could crunch numbers faster than an Apple. “Even with the latest expansion, the Sanctuary’s profits have nearly doubled since Doc Ana joined the staff.”

  Matt nodded. The news was not surprising. Ana Masterson, veterinarian and bride of local vamp coven master Vlane Masterson, had a way about her that drew both people and animals. Nearly all of the animal-natured Extraordinaries in their widespread preternatural community now came exclusively to their pack’s facility, known as The Sanctuary, for medical care. At one time, it had been primarily for wolves, but now it was not unusual to find bears, large cats, and even the anti-social hawks and eagles coming in to see Ana.

  He suspected Ana was not quite as human as she pretended to be, but no one except her husband probably knew for sure. Since she did not appear to be a threat and had done nothing but good for his pack, he was willing to let his curiosity go unsatisfied, for now.

  “And with those stock tips Tedi’s been surreptitiously passing along through Dani,” Ally continued, her eyes glistening with excitement, “our investment returns have gone through the roof. If we’re careful, we are, quite literally, set for life. Several lifetimes, actually.”

  Matt raised a brow at this. He knew that the newest arrival in Mythic – Theodora Papadopoulus Avânescu – was both an Oracle and a blood descendent of the ancient Greek god Apollo. She, too, was now a vampire bride, having married Kristoff, another member of Vlane’s coven. Dani considered Tedi one of her best friends, but he hadn’t realized she’d been sharing that kind of info.

  He wondered briefly if the vamps knew; history and experience had proven repeatedly that they were a secretive, hoarding lot. But they must know. Not only were vamps skilled in reading minds, the bond between fated mates made it all but impossible to hide anything from each other.

  A sharp ache momentarily throbbed in his chest. True fated mates were rare, and there had been three such events over the past eighteen months: Ana and Vlane Masterson, the fallen angel Ryssa and former-human-billionaire-turned-vamp David Corrigan, and now Tedi and Kristoff Avânescu. Dare he hope that there might be such a mate out there for him? Or was fate only gifting the vamps such sought after prizes?

  Malcolm nudged his foot beneath the table, drawing him back from his thoughts to find everyone at the table looking at him expectantly. “I’m sorry. What was that?”

  A few glances were exchanged, but Matt ignored them, looking from one to the other.

  It was Sascha, their pack healer who spoke up. At nearly ninety human years, she looked more like a youthful forty. “Our pack continues to grow,” she said, beaming. “Three more families have come forward to say that they are expecting, and I expect there will be several more making such announcements in the near future. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many healthy births in such a relatively short time. This is truly a blessed time for us.”

  Murmurs of agreement sounded around the table. Under normal circumstances, pack numbers remained relatively static, a natural balance of live births and natural deaths. But with many years of war between the vamps, demons, and shifters who’d all decided to lay claim on this idyllic valley hundreds of years ago, their numbers had decreased dramatically, and with few live, healthy births, it was taking a long time to recover. News of their thriving numbers was welcome indeed.

  Matt’s mind automatically went back, pinning the upswing to a few months after Ana Masterson’s arrival. No one had been able to explain it, but no one was willing to look a gift wolf in the mouth, either.

  “That is good news,” Matt agreed. “How are we in terms of food and housing? Able to meet the increasing demand?”

  “And then some,” Jace added. “With that chemical company upriver going belly-up, we were able to buy up an additional two thousand acres of forested land. If we use it wisely, and continue with our reforestation program, we’ll have more than enough lumber and game for this generation and the next.”

  “Crops have been bountiful, too,” Caleb piped up, scratching his head. “Can’t remember the last time we had to build a new silo for the overabundance of grains we’re getting. More grain means more feed, which means we’ve been able to increase our domestic food herds.”

  “Let’s not overreach,” Matt warned. “Just because we’ve had a good year or two doesn’t mean we’ll be able to sustain the increased need.”

  Caleb nodded in agreement. “Right there with you, Matt. Don’t worry. We’re staying smart.”

  Matt turned to Malcolm, his spymaster, last. Malcolm kept a watchful eye on all of the other supernatural factions. He was tasked with knowing all the major players and what they were up to.

  Malcolm shrugged. “It’s all good.”

  Matt waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. “It’s all good?” Matt repeated doubtfully. There was always one group or another, itching to make trouble.

  “Yeah. The witches and mages are content. Seems whatever is affecting our crops is affecting everything else, too, and when nature is happy, so are they. Other shifters, like us, have been experiencing the same kinds of things we have, so that’s keeping them busy. Karthik’s demon club is pulling in human wannabes in record numbers, so he’s not complaining. And the vamps are so enthralled with their new brides, even they have been quiet and unusually friendly and accommodating.”

  “Speaking of, when are you going to take a mate, Matt?” Caleb asked boldly.

  All the good vibes he’d been feeling at the stellar reports dimmed. The atmosphere around the table grew instantly tense as Matt turned his gaze toward Caleb. “When it is the right time to do so.”

  “You are thirty,” Caleb pressed.

  “I am quite well aware of my age.”

  “You are several years into your prime.”

  “A male’s prime can last a hundred years or more.”

  “Yes, but why tempt fate? Why not take advantage of whatever good fortune has come our way? Take a mate. With the way things are going, you could probably have a litter on the way by the next full moon and—- ”

  Matt stood suddenly, his large frame growing even larger. His golden eyes glowed with warning, causing Caleb to reconsider continuing down that particular road.

  “Enough. This meeting is adjourned until next week.” He felt the stunned eyes of his Council follow him out of the room.

 
; “Hey. You okay?” Malcolm asked later, as he joined Matt atop the ledge that looked out over the pack’s lands. Matt sat in his wolf form, a mass of golden fur, gleaming white fangs, and sharp black claws. From this vantage point, he had a bird’s eye view of the forest, the farms, and the homes of those who looked to him as their leader. Sometimes the mantle of responsibility felt awfully heavy on his shoulders.

  Matt dipped his snout in acknowledgement, but didn’t even glance his way. Malcolm had been careful to broadcast his approach. Though he had the skills to do so, sneaking up on the Alpha was never a good idea.

  Malcolm pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels and sat down, lifting the bottle to his lips. They sat there like that, in silence, until Matt exhaled heavily and gave in, returning to his human form when it became clear Malcolm was not going to just let him be.

  Malcolm handed the bottle to Matt, but said nothing.

  “Do you agree with them?” Matt asked, after taking a healthy swig and relishing the smooth, slow burn.

  “Doesn’t matter what I think,” Malcolm said. “And it shouldn’t matter what they think, either. What matters is what you think.”

  Matt smiled a little at that. “So you do agree with them.”

  “I think you deserve happiness,” Malcolm said carefully. “You were thrown into the Alpha position at a young age, and have made the pack your number one priority since day one.”

  It was true. While Alphas were born, not made, those who were responsible for a pack the size of Mythic’s were generally much older and more experienced than Matt had been. As the firstborn and only son of the previous pack master, Matt’s ascension had been practically guaranteed -—eventually. Unfortunately, a challenge from a drifting rogue alpha resulted in the mortal injuries of both Matt’s father and the rogue, leaving a gaping hole in leadership that couldn’t wait for proper, traditional grooming to be filled. As a result, Matt had done his damnedest to keep his pack together and strong.