Rebel Wolf (Shifter Falls Book 1)

C
opyright
© 2016 by Amy Green

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 written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For new releases and news,
join Amy’s mailing list!

Also in the Shifter Falls series:

Lover Wolf (Shifter Falls, Book 2)

I
t was cold in here
. Icy cold, the kind that seeped under your skin and made you shiver. Even Anna’s bones felt it, as if the layers of concrete in the walls absorbed the winter chill and held it.

It turned out that a skirt, blazer, and a silk blouse were probably the wrong things to wear to a prison.

“You shouldn’t have any trouble.” The guard leading Anna down the corridor looked back at her over his shoulder. “We don’t put up with trouble here. And he’s been quiet the entire time he’s been in.” He glanced back at her again. “Well, quiet for one of
those
things.”

It wasn’t a real prison, Anna reminded herself as cold sweat dampened her back. Well, it was. But it was a minimum security prison, the kind where they sent embezzlers and guys with one too many traffic tickets. And, apparently, men arrested for taking part in illegal fighting.

Not a man, not exactly. A shifter. A wolf.

One of those things.

Anna took a breath and gripped her battered leather briefcase more tightly. She’d been fascinated with shifters for as long as she could remember, and she’d chosen to study them for her degree. And still, she’d never met one of
those things.
Until today.

Today, she was going to meet one of them—one of the monsters—in person.

The guard turned a corner, then opened an unmarked door and motioned her inside. “Take a seat,” he said. “I’ll bring him in. You can talk to him alone, but I’ll be right outside. Just yell if you need help. You only get thirty minutes—that’s the rule.”

Anna nodded. “Okay. I’m sure it will be fine.” She was trying for confidence, but it came out high-pitched and terrified, like a question. She sighed, frustrated with herself, and walked past him into the room.

It was a basic interview room with a table, two chairs facing each other, and a window protected by chicken wire on the outside. It smelled like stale sweat and old cigarette smoke, though there was no smoking anywhere in the prison. Past the wire on the window, Anna could see big flakes of snow beginning to fall. Winter in Colorado. She’d worn her only pair of heels to this meeting today, hoping the snow would hold off. No luck.

She glanced at the door, but the guard was already gone. Somewhere down the hall, doors were clanging, locks buzzing. The mechanisms of letting a man out of a cage. She felt her shoulders tense at the sounds.
Calm down,
Anna reminded herself.
He’s not a violent criminal. He’s never hurt anyone.
Well, except the other shifters he fought in the ring. But the fights had not been to the death, so Ian Donovan was no guiltier than your average boxer or MMA fighter. The only difference was that shifter fighting was illegal, whereas human fighting wasn’t.

There were a lot of things different about shifter life.

Anna lowered herself into one of the uncomfortable chairs and opened the flap on her briefcase. She could go through the files again, but she knew them by heart by now. Ian Donovan, age twenty-seven. One of the Donovan pack, devastated eight months ago by the death of its alpha. Charlie Donovan had been the most hated, most controversial alpha in the shifter world. He’d refused to follow the shifter laws of taking a single mate, and instead had claimed an unknown number of women, some of whom had borne him sons. That meant that now that Charlie was dead, there was more than one grown Donovan male with a claim to be alpha of the pack. A recipe for trouble, if those sons decided to fight. A possible recipe for war.

And Ian, who she was about to meet face to face, was one of those sons.

He’d been arrested a year ago in Denver for illegal fighting in an underground club. If he’d been human, it would have been simple: post bail, show up for a hearing, plead guilty, serve a parole sentence. He’d have a record, but at least he’d be free. Instead, bail had been denied and the judge had thrown the book at him. From what Anna had read in the records, the legal counsel Ian had been given had barely even tried. So Ian had been given eighteen months for something he should never have served time for, and even after a year of good behavior, the system showed no inclination to let him out.

Most people would have the same reaction to this kind of injustice:
What do you expect? He’s a shifter. He’s probably better off locked up anyway.

It wasn’t just that he was a shifter, which was bad enough. Everyone saw shifters as outlaws, untrustworthy, only half human, the kind of person you stayed away from. But Ian Donovan had two more strikes against him: First, he was a wolf. And second, he was a Donovan.

Of all the shifters in existence, which were fewer and fewer every year, wolves were seen as the most violent, the most volatile. They were the most ancient kind, older than the bear shifters, which had first been recorded in the eighteen hundreds, and much older than eagle shifters, which had first been seen in the 1930’s. Wolves were primal hunters—antisocial with humans, bloodthirsty and mean. Killers, people said. The kind with no remorse.

Charlie Donovan, Ian’s father, had been the meanest. His pack headquarters were three hours from here, over back roads in the wilderness, and when Ian was arrested, Charlie was still alive. Charlie had made no move to spring his son from prison, a fact that had surprised no one. Charlie barely recognized his offspring, leaving them to fend for themselves however they could. Donovans were true loners, with no family loyalty and no pack loyalty. Now that Charlie was dead and the pack had splintered on the brink of war, the entire area held its breath.

With Ian behind bars, the Colorado prison system was not about to let him loose to make war on his brothers.

Anna placed a file folder in front of her and smoothed her hair. She wasn’t much of a gambler, and this was the biggest gamble she’d ever taken. The craziest thing she’d ever done. She was afraid that when Ian Donovan heard her proposal, he’d laugh and turn her down.

But she was
terrified
that he wouldn’t, and that he’d say yes.

Oh my God, what am I doing here?

She didn’t have time to answer this before the door opened and the guard came in, followed by a man. A very, very big man in blue jeans and a denim shirt with MALVERN CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE stenciled across the back. Anna had glimpsed inmates in similar clothes through the one-way glass overlooking the common room they’d passed on the way here. Her mental picture of inmates in orange prison jumpsuits had gone out the window. She pushed back her chair and stood.

“Mr. Donovan,” she said.

Ian Donovan looked down at her. He was a head taller than her, his shoulders broad and muscled, his arms powerful inside his denim shirt. His dark hair was worn long enough to start to curl, and he had a short beard on his cheeks and jaw, black as ink. From beneath the slashes of his brows, his green eyes stared at her with unfathomable calm.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Um.” On impulse, Anna stuck out her hand. “My name is Anna Gold. It’s nice to meet you.”

Ian stared down at her hand for a moment. He wasn’t chained or cuffed—they didn’t do that to the prisoners here. He reached out one big hand, which was oddly beautiful, and took hers. “Okay,” he said, shaking her hand and dropping it.

“That’s it for touching, Donovan,” the guard said. “I shouldn’t have even let you do that. I’ll be right outside, so behave.”

Ian didn’t even bother answering. He pulled out his chair and sat down. As the guard turned and left, Anna did the same.

“I guess you’re wondering why I’m here,” she said.

Ian narrowed his eyes. “Let me guess,” he said. His voice was low and rough, strangely pleasant. She’d never been in the presence of a shifter before, and she realized she wouldn’t be able to tell, just by looking at him, what he was.

He ran his gaze slowly over her, taking in every detail. Her blouse—which, thank God, wasn’t low cut—and her jacket. Her hands, sitting on the file folder in front of her. Her long, dark hair, which she wore tied back at the back of her neck. Lastly, her face. Anna felt her cheeks go warm under the scrutiny.

Finally, he spoke. “A psychiatrist,” he guessed.

Anna was surprised. “Do a lot of psychiatrists come to see you?” she asked.

“I’m a wolf,” Ian replied. “No one comes to see me.”

Anna ran her hand along the edge of her file folder. There were almost no psychiatrists qualified to treat shifters, she knew, just like there were almost no social workers trained to treat them either. Shifters were such a small part of the population, and so mistrusted, that no one bothered specializing in them. Everyone knew that shifters had no money.

They were animals, really. They didn’t live by human rules. They didn’t aspire to the usual kind of life: school, then marriage, home, family, a good job, a nice retirement. They didn’t follow the map at all. Instead, they lived on their own land, following the rules of their packs. They built their own houses and raised their own children and mated in their own way. Only males could be shifters, so the girls born into shifter packs often left to try and live as normal humans. But many ended up returning to the only life they knew.

Anna looked at Ian’s big, strong hands, sitting relaxed on the table in front of him, and suddenly remembered one of the rumors she’d heard from a college roommate:
They have strange sexual practices, you know. Like really weird. The whole mating thing…

“I’m not a psychiatrist,” she said to cover her own embarrassment, though she could feel her cheeks heating. “I’m a social worker. Well, technically I’m finishing my degree. Mr. Donovan—”

“My name is Ian.”

“Okay. Ian. I’m Anna. I’m here because in my study of social work, I’ve made shifters my specialty. I study shifters in particular.”

“Do you, now?” Ian said. He reached up and casually scratched the back of his neck, the motion making his large biceps flex beneath his shirt. “How many shifters do you know?”

“Well—none, personally. My research has mostly consisted of reading case studies, that kind of thing.”

His hand still casually rubbed his neck. “So you want to help shifters, but you’ve never met one?”

“That’s the point,” Anna replied. “I’m meeting one today.”

He dropped his hand and looked at her. “You mean you want to study me?”

She nodded. God, why was she so nervous in his presence? She was never this nervous in school, never this nervous anywhere. He was just sitting there, looking at her from his green eyes, and he was completely unsettling. “I want to study you, in particular, yes.” That sounded vaguely dirty, and the corner of his mouth quirked, so she hurried on. “But using you as a main subject, I also want to study the community of Shifter Falls.”

Shifter Falls. The center of Donovan Pack territory. Anna had never been there.
No one
had ever been there. If you didn’t want to get torn apart by a wolf shifter, or get abducted into a weird shifter mating ritual and never seen again, you simply didn’t go to Shifter Falls.

“That’s a noble idea, Anna,” Ian Donovan said. Her name came from his throat in a kind of growl that made a shiver climb up her spine. “However, I don’t live in Shifter Falls. I live in prison.”

This was surer ground—she knew the answer to this one. “That’s where the special program at my school comes in,” she said, pushing the file folder toward him. “They’ve negotiated a deal with the Colorado corrections system for this project. You’ve done a year of good behavior already, and if you agree to become my research subject, you’ll be eligible for early release.”

He looked down at the file in front of him, but didn’t touch it. “What does that mean?”

“It means that if you agree to this, you get out.”

His green eyes jumped to hers, pinning her, daring her to be joking. “When?”

“The paperwork is already mostly done, but today is Friday. So if you sign today, giving everything a day to process, you can get out on Tuesday.”

“That’s it?” he said. His voice was sharp now, and his intense eyes never wavered—she had his full interest. “I just sign this, and I get out in three days?”

“You don’t just sign it,” Anna explained. “You agree that upon your release, you’re going to cooperate with my research project.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that we do interviews and I use you for my subject. It also means that I accompany you back home to Shifter Falls.”

“You go back with me?” There was an incredulous edge to his voice.

“Yes, for a period of three weeks. Or longer, if we both agree.”

He leaned forward a little and lowered his voice. “Listen,” he said. “I get that you’re a nice person and all, but this here”—he gestured to the file folder—“is a terrible idea.”

She’d already heard this from her mother, her sister, her classmates—everyone. “It isn’t,” she argued. “It’s a perfectly good idea.”

Ian’s gaze traveled down her and up again. “No, it isn’t,” he said. “A woman like you shouldn’t go anywhere near Shifter Falls.”

“Mr. Donovan. Ian,” Anna said. “I’ll be fine. I know how to handle myself. I’m tougher than you think I am. Besides, don’t you think it would help your community to have a social worker there?”

“I don’t give a shadow of a fuck about my community,” Ian said, shocking her. “I care that I’m going to have to clean up your bloody corpse and send it back to your family.”

Her heart stuttered. She heard her mother’s voice echo in her head:
This isn’t going to work, Anna. Just choose something normal to study.
Her mother was a respected academic and a university professor—though not at Anna’s school, thank God. Still, that didn’t prevent her mother from giving opinions on Anna’s activities. Her mother was a scholar of medieval studies, a topic in which no one ever had to meet wolves or go to Shifter Falls. The library was the most dangerous place her mother had ever been. After Anna’s father’s death three years ago, her mother had retreated even further into the world of dusty books instead of the world of real life.

Anna’s sister hadn’t become a professor; she’d married one instead. She lived in New Mexico with her husband, a tenured professor of mathematics, and their two children. The most dangerous place
she
ever went was the playground or the squash court at the gym.