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  Wolf’s Song

  Copyright © 2015 by Taryn Kincaid

  ISBN: 978-1-61333-676-2

  Cover Art by Fiona Jayde

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work, in whole or in part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Decadent Publishing Company, LLC

  Look for us online at:

  www.decadentpublishing.com

  Black Hills Wolves Stories

  Wolf’s Return

  What a Wolf Wants

  Black Hills Desperado

  Coming Soon

  Claiming His Mate

  When Hell Freezes

  Portrait of a Lone Wolf

  Taming His Mate

  Seducing the Schoolmarm

  Alpha in Disguise

  A Wolf’s Promise

  Reluctant Mate

  Diamond Moon

  Tempting the Wolf

  Also by Taryn Kincaid

  Sleepy Hollow

  Lightning

  Thunder

  Frost

  Blizzard

  Heat Wave

  In From the Cold

  Wolf’s Song

  Black Hills Wolves

  By

  Taryn Kincaid

  Prologue

  “Magnum?” Brick Northridge snorted and muttered into his beer. He stared bleary eyed at the hated alpha holding court in the center of the saloon. “More like a .22, if you ask me. Maybe a pea shooter.” He sat off by himself, as always, in a far corner of The Den, making deep inroads into his second foamy pitcher, his chair tilted back against the stone wall, its two front legs off the peanut shell-strewn floor. The brew gave him a heady buzz, but failed to still the roar in his head. Too many wolfy voices. Too many pictures of lupine death.

  Like right now. A white flash went off, revealing a series of mental Kodachromes of Magnum Tao, the pack’s alpha, laid out all Rest in Fuckin’ Peace on a satin lining, a lily sticking up from his cold, crossed hands. The pack shedding a few crocodile tears. Then rejoicing.

  Brick didn’t want the visions arriving unbidden in his head, all chopped up movie-trailer style, decibel level cranked, useless coming attractions when he never knew the where or when…only the how. He’d learned as a cub to keep his mouth shut and wait for the feature to begin. No one ever appreciated hearing how they’d die. Not when they couldn’t do much about it.

  But the current video of Funeral Home Magnum deposited more funds into Brick’s mortgaged courage account than the liquid variety drained from a beer mug. His back went as rigid as if someone had shoved a titanium rod up his ass. He bolted out of his chair, upended wood splintering.

  One of these days, he and Gee, the saloon-owning werebear, would have to settle his running bar tab and retire that long-distance marathoner. Gee risked his liquor license even letting his underage ass into the joint. But the gruff old walking throw rug took pity on him, apparently, and seemed to understand his need to still the unwanted cacophony of others’ thoughts, letting him self-medicate the clamor into a low hum the only way he knew how.

  “Yeah? Well, no one asked you, punk.” Magnum whirled around and trained his belligerent gaze in Brick’s direction. He dropped his sinewy arms from the shoulders of the two stacked humans who Wonder Breaded him like a slab of bologna. A scent at once gamey and oily, the twin odors of decay and greed, wafted from the alpha’s hide. Brick twitched his nose as the stink, laced with evil, struck him full on and chiseled up his nose like a burrowing parasite. His stomach clenched but he tamped down the gag reflex.

  “Who the hell let you in here, anyway?” Magnum demanded. “Gee?” He looked around for the proprietor but the massive werebear merely crossed his arms over his huge chest and said nothing. “You let this underage motherfucker drink in your establishment?”

  “Between you and me, asswipe,” Brick said. “Got nothing to do with Gee. Leave him out of it.”

  “You and me?” The older wolf snorted. “And what fuckin’ cavalry?” Magnum’s eyes glowed yellow as he waited for an answer. The greasy, unkempt hair on his nape rose. All conversation stopped, raucous laughter misting away. Even the band dropped their instruments to watch the confrontation, their eyes wary, gazes skittering across the room in an effort to meet no one else’s. The silence lengthened, pea souped into a dense fog, and swallowed the electric buzz rippling with the promise of a brawl. The scent of fear and horror, flavored with excitement, thickened the air.

  Magnum’s shoulders bunched as he prepared to spring, but he did not shift.

  Brick stood his ground, without looking down or tilting his head to offer his neck in a more submissive stance, as a good and respectful pack member should. He neither feared nor respected Magnum and felt no compulsion to bow before him. Maybe that made him crazy—along with the wolf voices and death visions alcohol couldn’t chase—but the alpha had grown crazier, maddened by his power, no longer the moral compass of the pack, no longer the protective leader of those less dominant, no longer interested in anything except his own greed—and violence for the sake of violence. Magnum had never bothered to pass on any wolfdom lore; he’d never had any interest in teaching the pack’s young what it meant to be a wolf. He’d entirely shirked his duties to the cubs. Instead, Magnum had become one sick twist. Too cozy by half with the encroaching clan of cat shifters on the other side of the mountain who lately seemed bent on nothing less than territory domination. Way past time for someone to take Magnum on…and take him out.

  Should have been his son’s responsibility. Right? Protect the pack, issue the challenge, usurp and depose the father, take on the mantle of leadership. But Drew Tao had left the Black Hills…maybe for good. And no one else seemed ready or willing to step up. Except the stupid loner who had snatches of other wolves’ convos drumming commentary inside his head. Nearly drowning out his own audio loop. Not that he wanted to take over the pack or lead anyone anywhere. He just wanted Greasy Locks the hell gone.

  Do it. It’s time. Either Magnum goes…or you do.

  A growl rumbled up from Brick’s gut like the Union Pacific barreling over the tracks. Freight-training from his belly. His lungs expanded, inflated and squeezed oxygen like a blacksmith’s bellows. The roar burst from his mouth into the dead silence swamping The Den. His anguished howl swept through the town of Los Lobos, a dark wind vibrating out through the quiet South Dakota night, rattling across the empty prairie to the Black Hills, bouncing off the thick stands of ponderosa pine and aspen blanketing the granite mountains. Loud enough to be heard in the cat stronghold of Shady Heart. A war cry echoing from peak to peak.

  Brick bared his teeth and launched himself at his alpha. Prepared to die.

  Suicide by werewolf.

  Mother Luna, give me strength to wipe the oily smirk from that asshole’s muzzle before I go.

  Barely eighteen, without the deadly muscles and massive bulk he’d acquire if he lived to prime adulthood, he faced a mature and powerful
creature with decades of experience and more than one hundred pounds on him. He gauged his chances somewhere between nil and none. Even slim and fat seemed too great a percentage with the odds stacked more heavily against him than the siliconed boobs of Magnum’s groupies. But irrational fury compelled him, lent him a false sense of bravado.

  He grasped the older male’s long, stringy locks and tugged, wringing a surprised yelp from the other wolf. A scent, acid and toxic, rose from the Magnum’s hide like a noxious cloud.

  “You fight like a girl,” the alpha spat, shoving him away. “Apologies, ladies.” He winked at his coterie of human wolfies before turning back to Brick. “Are we done here, whelp?”

  “You’re done, wolf. I haven’t begun.”

  A head taller than the alpha, Brick relied on his youthful speed. And recklessness. Definitely not his best idea, calling attention to himself and maybe putting paid to his ability to visit Gee, if not his ability to draw breath. Underage, he shouldn’t have been in the saloon at all, let alone issuing his death-wish challenge. The stunned and silent crowd surrounding the combatants jostled for position to best view the coming massacre. No one dared step up to second him.

  “Submit to me, pup.” Rage lit eyes the color of urine, the male’s stench equally foul. “And I might yet let you live.”

  Brick ignored the command. He head-butted the pack leader in the throat until the squat honcho gasped for breath, grabbing at his neck, then rippled off a quick succession of punches and uppercuts. Magnum’s head snapped back, his nose exploding like a liquid rose, blood squirting from nostrils and cut lip.

  “Hold him.” The wolf chief barked the order, the words all but strangled due to the blows to his vocal chords and hemoglobin he gargled.

  Two of his lieutenants—henchmen, really—stepped forward and wrenched Brick’s arms behind his back to allow Magnum to knee him in the family jewels. Pain and nausea crippled him, doubling him over, sending him to the floor.

  Nice. Their oh-so-powerful fearless leader needs help to mash me into the ground.

  “That’s where you belong, punk. On your knees before me.” With the side of his hand, the alpha chopped him on the back of his neck. When he sprawled forward onto the peanut shells, the lieutenants released his arms so they could kick and pummel him into a limp mound of ground round.

  Magnum beat him into oblivion.

  The pack closed in, along with darkness.

  Chapter One

  Summer McCoy perched in the uppermost branches of her special Ponderosa pine, in raven guise, engaging in her favorite pastime, spying on the lone wolf chopping wood below. Two days’ worth of whiskers shadowed his rigid jaw. She loved when he forgot—or didn’t bother—to shave. Scruffy stubble suited him.

  The sun beat down on the back of his bronzed neck and shone on his hair, the color of roasted coffee, a shade lighter than the dark shadow that charcoaled his face.

  She fluffed her feathers in anticipation. Take your shirt off, Brick.

  She’d heard the giant werebear, Gee, call him that name a decade ago. He’d made some joke about a wall and the hardness of the male’s head. But Brick hadn’t laughed back then. Not ever.

  He’d fascinated her from the moment he’d arrived in the glade, bruised and battered. Once she’d learned his name, she’d treasured it, taking pleasure from repeating it often. Secretly, of course. Unwrapping the syllable frequently to admire its radiance in the privacy of her tree house, the way a woman wearing pearls against her warm skin enhanced their luminosity and iridescence.

  Now, as if he’d heard her silent urging, he complied with her plea, shrugging out of the plaid flannel and flinging it onto a tree stump. Her beak opened as she sucked in breath. Sweat glistened on his torso, glazing rippling pecs and abs, shoulders broad enough to span the Badlands. A huge, incredible specimen of masculinity. Thick biceps flexed as he wielded the ax. Her heart beat faster than a hummingbird’s wings. Heat licked her.

  Calling upon every ounce of inner strength she could muster, she willed herself not to shift into human form and topple out of the pine to land like a graceless lump of naked flesh at his feet. She recalled the first time she’d shifted and fallen, as a young cougar kit just learning to climb trees. Half skinwalker, half cat born into a shifter clan of mountain lions, she’d never taken her feline form again, to the chagrin of her dwindling clan. They’d grown fewer in number but far stronger under her Uncle Cal’s leadership, grabbing acres of land in and around the shifter mecca known as Shady Heart. More and more, Cal pressed her to pick a mate from his coterie of lieutenants and other cats vying for her hand, as he pushed to consolidate his power and prepared to seize control of the county—including the area currently occupied by the lupine town of Los Lobos. But Summer remained detached from shifter politics.

  And she only had eyes for her lone wolf.

  Brick had first come to the mountain glade—in the no-man’s land between wolf and cat territory—ten years earlier; a skinny adolescent, pulpy and wounded, splinted, bandaged, unable to walk, barely able to lift that hard head of his, the crown swathed in gauze, his shell cracked like Humpty Dumpty’s. His face resembled raw meat that had been forced through a sausage grinder. His inner scarring, from what she could glean from a distance—and from Gee’s one-sided conversation—infinitely worse.

  The old werebear had half-carried, half-dragged him in human form to the deserted cabin and left him there.

  “You’ll heal faster if you shift.”

  The sack of gauze greeted Gee’s advice with silence. And remained coiled on the floor in human form. As if he hated being a wolf. Hated being alive.

  She’d flapped from tree to tree to investigate, drawing as near as she dared. During those first few weeks, he never came out of the cabin, not even on the occasions when the huge ursine creature visited to bring supplies. She’d hopped into a birch whose branches brushed the ground floor windows of the rustic cottage for a better view, fascinated by the wounded creature. A set of carved log stairs led to a loft she couldn’t see. But Gee bustled about below in the galley kitchen that opened into a small living room, stocking shelves, examining the young male’s dressings, cajoling and arguing with him.

  After a few weeks, the giant pushed his charge, still in human form, out to the porch and dumped him there.

  “Learn from this, boy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Get strong. I’m not going to mollycoddle you anymore. You need to snap out of it.”

  But the youth had only lain where Gee had tossed him, not even bothering to drag himself to the rocker or porch swing. Had he been damaged so badly he couldn’t shift? Or…maybe he didn’t want to. As a skinwalker, able to assume different animal forms, she usually sensed the presence of another shifter in her environment. But if she hadn’t overheard Gee’s comments, she didn’t know if she’d have identified Brick as a were.

  His listlessness and melancholy tore her heartstrings back then. Physical pain blossomed in her breast, raw and ragged, as if she’d been cut by the jagged edge of a tin can. She wanted to see a smile brighten the dark face, still swollen and discolored. But she dared not show herself.

  Instead, she’d searched far and wide for the flotsam and jetsam dropped from pockets, from the wearer’s fingers or neck or tossed from moving vehicles. So much abandoned or discarded bounty. She pecked at half-buried gems and unearthed small pieces of shiny debris: rings, toy soldiers, colored glass, parts of plastic toys and gadgets, broken components off cars and electronics, sparkling gum wrappers. Taking them in her beak, wrapping talons around them, she winged back to the cabin. And then showered her tiny gifts of lost-and-found treasure onto the porch from great heights as she soared by.

  Trinkets for her…well, she didn’t know in what esteem she’d held him then. Perhaps he was just a curiosity at first. A hurt and wounded creature in need of healing, in need of cheer. But now….

  Now, he’d become something much more to her. Something vital. Something she dared not name. Dared
not admit, even to herself.

  Back then, he’d finally noticed the collection of silvery bits and other oddities accumulating on the deck of the porch after weeks of inertia—and only when she’d accidentally dropped a chipped and tarnished hood ornament on his chest.

  Plunk.

  A ram’s head insignia. Shiny. Unlike the cracked blue-and-white BMW medallion already littering his doorstep. But she considered the ram a greater reward. He seemed much more of a truck kind of guy.

  He’d sat up and snatched the chunk of metal off his rib cage, stared at it, blinked and then looked around, as if for the first time. Taking in his surroundings, the half-inch of detritus carpeting the planks on which he’d lain. She’d thought he’d sweep the mess away, relegate the whole mass of junk to a garbage can.

  But he’d gathered everything together, painstakingly sorted through the lot and made groupings out of the motley hodgepodge, then arranged her offerings in precise lines and rows. Counted them. Began again. If a breeze happened to ripple through the assortment, juggling an item from its place, he’d quickly reformed his collection, aligning the trinkets once more, as if he couldn’t bear the slightest deviation from the rigid order he imposed on the jumble. He appeared obsessed. And his obsession had fascinated her. A male seeking to impose meaning out of meaningless chaos.

  She’d started looking for more and more flashy bits of miscellany to add to his cache: crackly red cellophane, the dented pipe from an old wind chime. She could barely carry some things in her beak or talons. But she had to try. For him. Her heart swelled at the thought that he treasured the cast-off items she brought him.

  After a few more deliveries, he’d gazed at the large carpenter’s box bristling with tools and stuck in a corner of the porch near the woodpile, eyes thoughtful. Selecting a large ax and a saw, he ventured down the short steps into his yard slowly, his limbs stiff as an old man’s. Cutting down his first tree, he sawed it into rough boards. Sanded the planks smooth. Then, to her amazement, he returned to the porch and started building shelves.