Placeless by Vivien Dean

(Part of the Bay Wolves series)

Keaton McGrath had been a werewolf for only a few weeks when he was kidnapped and put into service for anyone willing to pay for his company. Now, a year later and rescued from that life, he’s trying to figure out how to be both human and wolf in a world that doesn’t want him. His only escapes are nightly runs, a chance to let loose the energy of the animal within, but when one of those runs ends with him finding a hurt girl in the park, he can’t control his wolf’s fury when he smells her attacker nearby.

Barely keeping himself from killing the man, Keaton calls 911, then leaves before he can get linked to the crime scene. His hopes to remain anonymous are dashed when Scotty Trumbauer, a local blogger and independent wolf activist, finds him out. Though Keaton’s warned that Scotty is bad news, the chemistry between them is too powerful to ignore, especially when Scotty leaps to defend him.

Keaton just wants to do the right thing without putting the people he cares about in danger. He has to learn, however, that a wolf is stronger when he’s not alone...

Genres: Gay/Dark Fantasy/Werewolf/Shapeshifter/Suspense/Thriller/Series

Heat Level: 3
Length: Extended Novella (39k words) 

Read a short excerpt...

...The woman’s scream came as I was lacing up my right shoe.

I froze. My blood ran colder than my skin.

It iced even more when the scream cut off.

She was in pain. I could tell that from the timbre. I wish I could say I knew the difference because of all the acting classes I took down in LA, but the truth was, my knowledge was firsthand experience. I became an expert listening to and witnessing every kind of scream imaginable as the men and women who’d shared my fate were punished or subjugated or, rarely, pleasured.

Run.

I wanted to. Christ, how I wanted to. My instincts shouted at me to get as far from the source of the screams as possible. My skin crawled with the urge. My hands balled into fists, and I tensed to take flight in the opposite direction.

My feet remained in place.

Someone was hurt. Someone I could help.

Wouldn’t I have wanted someone to help if they’d heard my screams?

The first step was the hardest. My leg felt too heavy, like I moved it through a waist-high snowdrift. The second was the same, but the third came down faster, the fourth even faster after that.

Within six feet, I was running, and most importantly, it wasn’t in the opposite direction.

My night vision remains sharp outside of my wolf form. I picked out the shape on the ground from forty feet away, but almost immediately the smell of blood assaulted me.

Fresh. Hot.

My wolf howled to be let free again.

My pace faltered, but I pushed through the urges to reach the woman’s side. I trembled as I crouched next to her. She was alive. I could hear the soft throb of her pulse in the blood as it flowed from wherever she was hurt. She lay in a crumpled heap, half on her side. Long blonde hair tangled in a sticky mess to hide her face. Though she wore a skirt, it was pushed up around her hips, exposing the pale skin of her toned butt.

I swallowed against the bile that rose in my throat. She’d been raped. Now that I could push past the scent of blood, I detected semen. There was tequila, too, but drunk or not, nobody who screamed like that wanted what was happening to them.

Whoever had done this couldn’t be far away. Looking up, I scanned the trees around us. Their trunks rose like skeletons from their graves, no longer the comfort I’d found in them during my run, but they couldn’t hide the assailant. He was weaving between them, heading toward Kezar Drive, leaving behind a trail of bloody fumes that infuriated my wolf even more than he already was.

I made the choice in the space of a single blink. Leaping over the woman’s inert body, I pulled my T-shirt over my head as I ran, shimmied out of my sweats, and shifted back.

My wolf took over. My seven months of captivity, helpless to retaliate or risk the silver spray or electric collar, required vengeance.

I caught him long before he hit the street. At the last minute, he heard me and broke into a run, but it was too little too late. I leapt and landed on his back, my jaws clamping around his neck. He yelped in pain, and we fell to the wet grass, rolling until we slammed into a tree.

His elbow smashed into my belly. For a moment, my lungs revolted, threatening to weaken my hold, but when he began to thrash hard to get free, I fought, too. Against my fears, against his determination. This was one battle I would win. My wolf demanded it...