Reed: Nano Wolves 4 Read online

  Reed: Nano Wolves 4

  Donna McDonald

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  Copyright © 2020 by Donna McDonald

  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.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is coincidental.

  This book contains content that may not be suitable for young readers 17 and under.

  Cover by Blackraven’s Designs

  Edited by MYST Partners and Madison Kamer

  Dedication

  This book is for the devil wolf in all of us.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Note From the Author

  Excerpt: Bad Panther

  Excerpt: It’s A Wonderful Midlife Crisis

  Also by Donna McDonald

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to my niece, MK, for being my cheerleader when I really, really needed one.

  Book Description

  Reed’s time as Alpha of his pack should be over.

  Didn’t a six-hundred-year-old wolf deserve to retire? But life doesn’t always work out the way a wolf wants. Some mad scientist used him and his potent werewolf blood to turn three human females. Now he has two packs instead of one, and none of them are stepping up to take his place.

  Too many secrets among his children destroyed his original family. Now with the deaths of both his Alpha descendants haunting the pack, there's no one left in his gene pool to lead. Duty and a healthy fear of the agencies his grandson Travis told about the pack requires that Reed lead them until a new alpha can be found, no matter how much he wishes otherwise.

  While Ariel's nanotechnology blood transfusion returned some of his physical youth, science did not change his mental age or negate the weariness he feels in his very bones. The only bright spot is the Russian werewolf. Katarina Volkov is so full of fire—so full of herself. The touchy female wolf makes him feel things he hasn’t felt in years. Too bad he isn’t free to enjoy her.

  1

  “Does no one fix your roads?”

  Reed grunted as he glanced at the female beside him. He couldn’t remember the last time a female had captured so much of his attention. Women were nice—at times even necessary—but the burning need for one hadn’t plagued him in a couple of centuries. He was reacting to the diminutive Russian alpha like a young wolf who’d never met an attractive female before.

  He cleared his throat and tried to stop thinking of Katarina like that. “Alaska does its best to keep the roads passable, but our winters defy most repairs. When the rain and the mud come during the warmer months, the roads always end up like this.”

  Katarina snorted. “Land here is like Russia. I see why Nicolai Vashchenko stopped when he found your pack.”

  Reed had no knowledge of Russia other than the stories he remembered Nicolai telling him when he was a small child, which was centuries ago. Having no reply to make, Reed instead shifted his nearly seven-foot form in the driver’s seat and tried to find a more comfortable spot.

  Though he’d driven his pack’s community truck many times, and for longer trips than the one between Matt Gray Wolf’s pack and his, he hadn’t had Katarina Volkov’s thigh pressed against his before. Her body heat penetrated the denim he was wearing, and no matter how hard he tried to put some space between them, it kept disappearing.

  The trip was turning out to be torture for him. They were fortunately over two hours into the three-hour journey, and Reed couldn’t wait to get out of the confined space. If he’d run the trip in his wolf form, he would have been back to the village already. There even would have been time to get in some hunting along the way. Since he needed to carry his two Russian visitors and their gear back, he’d decided driving would be better.

  Frankly, he had given no consideration to what three hours sitting next to the restless Katarina Volkov would be like. He definitely wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  Better still, next time he’d send someone else to get them. His crazy interest in a female that annoyed him more than she charmed him was still no reason. Age and the wisdom of a few centuries ought to offer more emotional insulation.

  Even the Russian she-wolf’s stoic staring out of the truck window was distracting to him. Her younger sister—a near twin—sat squished against the truck’s passenger door. There was room enough for Yana to scoot closer to Katarina, but the younger she-wolf seemed determined to maintain their physical distance. He actually felt sorry for Yana. A person should never fear physical contact with a close family member.

  Reed shook his head at his rambling thoughts and wished he could go back to a time before the sexy Russian alpha had attacked him because she thought he was Travis. It would flatter any male to be mistaken for his son, much less his grandson. But simple flattery couldn’t explain his growing obsession.

  And why wasn’t Yana as equally distracting to him? Physically, she and Katarina were practically duplicates. Plus, Yana was the more pleasant female of the two. The answer to his fascination eluded him at the moment, but Reed knew he’d figure it out eventually, especially since the two females were intending to remain with his pack for a while.

  Yes, he’d figure it all out, and hopefully before he ended up following up on the primitive urges Katarina kept inspiring in him.

  When a wolf had been alive for as long as Reed had been, he learned to be patient with himself and pretty much everyone else he encountered. Very few things were worth the aggravation of caring or the work of analyzing something that might pass in a short while. Chemistry between people did that. It rose like a bonfire only to die down to embers at the first sign of someone’s true personality putting in an appearance.

  Winter damaged roads presented multiple problems for what was basically a work truck. Every few minutes one sent it jarring off the side of the road, and Reed’s efforts to keep it on the blacktop sent it bouncing back across the uneven road surface. Normally, Katarina’s discomfort about being jostled would be funny, but today he fought hard not to sigh at the Russian swearing that accompanied each pothole encounter.

  He mostly wanted to get home and get this trip over with. He wanted to meditate on what Heidi had told him about her Devil Wolf form. And he had to inform his children—Travis’s parents—that their errant son was at last dead.

  Seeing to the comfort of the Russian she-wolf was not high on his list of tasks.

  “Keep eyes on road, Temptation,” Katarina ordered, as she pointed out the windshield. “You drive on mud and grass more than pavement.”

  “I told you why the roads are such a mess this time of year. Do you want to drive?” Reed demanded, bristling at her criticism.

  Katarina shook her head and refused to look up at him. It was one of her many actions that irritated him f
or no good reason.

  “Me drive? Nyet, comrade. I do not have ability, but even non-driving wolf knows to stay on pavement.”

  Yana leaned forward and turned to smile at Reed. “How much longer until we get to your village?”

  Not wanting to dwell on Katarina’s lack of politeness, Reed turned his attention to the truck’s windshield and shrugged. “We should be there in another thirty or forty minutes if the truck survives. Sorry not to be more precise. I tend to ignore the passage of time.”

  Yana smiled and leaned back. “This trip has taught me that Katarina does not travel well. I will keep my fierce alpha sister from attacking as best I can.”

  Beside him, Katarina snorted at Yana’s comment, which had Reed looking down at the top of her head. Attacking? Like attacking him? He felt no fierce vibe from her. The petite Russian alpha appeared to be calm. “Is something the matter, Katarina?”

  Katarina chuckled at the question. “No, nothing is wrong, Temptation. Yana is full of words that tend to float away when she speaks.”

  Reed wanted to laugh at Katarina’s sarcasm, but that would only make things worse. He didn’t know whether Katarina suffered from the same physical awareness he did, so Reed decided talking would pass the time more quickly for the last jaunt of their trip. “My village built a lodge for visiting packs many years ago—back when entire packs migrated out of the more frozen areas every winter for survival reasons. The lodge sleeps over thirty wolves in human form. I admit it’s fairly spartan in terms of amenities, but I thought the two of you could stay there until I can come up with better arrangements.”

  Reed jerked the wheel too hard when Katarina put her hand on his knee and squeezed.

  “You worry too much, Temptation. Yana and I are grateful to visit Alaskan home of the great Nicolai Vashchenko. We would sleep on ground in our wolf forms to do so.”

  “If you want to get there safely, get your hand off my leg,” Reed ordered.

  Katarina grinned as she squeezed his knee again. “Am I temptation for the mighty Black Wolf alpha?”

  Reed grunted at the question. “Da,” he answered snarkily in Russian.

  When a grinning Katarina showed no sign of moving her hand away, Reed used one of his hands to pry her gripping fingers off his knee. He wasn’t sure what to think when she and Yana both laughed at his defensive action. They teased each other non-stop but had mostly left him out of the loop of their joking around—at least, they had until now.

  Both of them had a lot to learn about him. Honesty was in his sexual programming. Teasing was not. “Hear my words, Katarina Volkov. You may think the chemistry between us is a joke, but I don’t.”

  Katarina waved the hand Reed had shoved off his leg. “Bah… chemistry always big joke. That is life.”

  As they crested a hill in the road, their attention left the truck and each other as they peered at a pillar of black smoke rising above the trees and curling high into the sky some distance ahead.

  Yana rolled down the window and sniffed. “I smell burning, but more than to heat a home. This is smoke from a serious fire. Maybe forests?”

  “Not likely. The forests are still winter wet and we’re in our rainy season,” Reed answered as his gaze took in the rolling black plumes. “That’s a dry smoke.”

  “You think your village on fire?” Katarina asked, leaning forward to stare at the smoke.

  “Maybe,” Reed answered quietly as he stomped his foot to the pedal. “Hang on. This could get real bumpy.”

  The last fifteen minutes of their drive was rough on all of them. What greeted them in the village was chaos.

  Strangers dressed in dark military clothes were running from angry werewolves. Many were carrying auto-weapons, but only those with tranquilizer guns shot at Reed’s people.

  Without a word, Reed slid out of the vehicle as soon as it stopped. He shifted to a wolf half the size of the truck. Seeing him slowed the men with weapons. Several pointed and exchanged surprised looks.

  Finally, one lifted his weapon and took aim at the gigantic wolf stalking toward them.

  Katarina’s feet hit the ground and never stopped. If they got Reed… no, she could not let that happen. He was powerful, but power was only good if he could get past the attackers' weapons.

  “Mind our things, sister,” Katarina commanded, shifting and running toward the man without glancing back.

  “Sure. I am helpless wolf. I am nothing important,” Yana answered with an eye roll at being so easily dismissed.

  “You are important to me,” Katarina declared just before she shifted.

  Yana watched as her sister’s large white wolf sprang into the air to land in front of Reed. A tranquilizer dart meant for Reed hit Katarina’s shoulder and dropped her to the ground.

  Reed’s giant wolf leaped over Katarina’s fallen body and landed in front of her to growl in warning at the men. The ones with tranquilizer guns argued for a moment with those carrying more serious weapons. One of them threw a small canister on the ground that rolled and released a heavy blue smoke that soon filled the air and made it hard to breathe.

  Using the distraction for her own purposes, Yana ducked and ran through the smoke to get to her sister’s side. She yanked the tranquilizer dart out of Katarina's shoulder and threw it away, but the damage was already done. Her fierce alpha sister was out cold.

  Reed turned around when he sensed Yana’s presence. Even through the thick smoke Yana winced at the sight of Reed’s enormous pointed teeth flashing white as he showed his displeasure. He was the biggest werewolf Yana had ever seen in her life—bigger than even her father.

  “Katarina was saving you from being knocked out so you could continue to fight,” Yana informed him. Was she telling a lie? Maybe.

  Katarina had never lived in a pack, so her sister did not understand that her sacrifice might not be appreciated by the alpha of this one. Trying to better understand her elder sibling, Yana had discussed Katarina’s character with Heidi the Healer who seemed to know Katarina best. Understanding did not, however, make her volatile sister easier to deal with, especially when she risked herself.

  As the smoke cleared away, Reed shifted back to human with his clothes on, Yana noticed with regret. She wouldn’t have minded getting a look at him, and it would have been great fun to tease Katarina that she had seen his assets first. Unfortunately, the fully dressed alpha now glared down at both of them.

  Yana draped herself protectively over Katarina’s wolf. She had often done the same for her mother when her father was in a wrathful mood.

  “Is she alive?” he asked.

  Yana shrugged as she straightened. “It is hard to kill a Russian wolf. Katarina breathes and her heartbeat is strong.”

  Reed grunted. “Watch your meddling sister until our healer can look at her. I have other things to do.”

  With a final warning to be careful, Yana heard Reed ordering a couple men to stop everything and follow the attackers to see where they had disappeared to so quickly. She could only sigh at yet another alpha ordering her around. In the absence of attackers to fight, Reed headed to talk to those who were putting out fires from two nearby buildings that were still burning.

  She muttered to herself as she stood and looked around. “First chance I get, I make a giant batch of werewolf vodka. Strong drink takes the edge off stress for everyone in village. Yana will be everyone’s friend then.”

  The smoke was almost completely cleared out. She could see people and children peeking out of their hiding places in several of the nearby buildings. Her eyes scanned for a place she could move her sister’s form until she came around.

  As if reading her thoughts, Katarina suddenly rolled and groaned before shifting into a naked, large-breasted woman wearing only the shoes she’d taken from Matt Gray Wolf’s donation bin.

  “Trakhni moyu zhizn',” Yana said in Russian as she scanned for gawkers who might be amused by her unconscious sibling’s nakedness.

  It was embarrassing that
her strong, alpha sister couldn’t keep her clothes on when she shifted. Yana had mastered shifting with clothes as a young wolf. Shifting from wolf form to a fully dressed human was far less complicated than remaining naked when your mind was in the right place.

  Ariel, the alpha nano wolf, was the only exception, and she’d secretly decided that was a mistake coming from the nano wolf’s unholy creation. Until she’d met Katarina. Her alpha sister shifted on orders from her gut and without regard for the dangers to her body—whatever its form. Somehow that also translated into flashing your womanly assets to all with eyes to see them.

  Yana sighed as she stared down and wondered what to do to help her sister. Muttering again to herself in Russian—because English had no adequate words to express her level of frustration—she hurried back to the truck to retrieve the rest Katarina’s clothes.

  Yana told her that none of the wolves who had been tranquilized woke as quickly as she did. For her rapid return to consciousness, Katarina was deeply grateful. Yana had also warned her about Reed’s anger as she dressed in her clothes that had magically ended up in the truck during her shift. She wasn’t surprised that Reed was angry over what she’d done, but the stoic Black Wolf alpha had yet to express that anger to her. In fact, Katarina noticed Reed said little to anyone.