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  Jaxson (River Pack Wolves 1)

  Copyright © 2015 by Alisa Woods

  September 2015 Edition

  All rights reserved.

  Sworn Secrets Publishing

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. For information visit:

  Alisa Woods

  Cover by Steven Novak

  Jaxson (River Pack Wolves 1)—New Adult Paranormal Romance (BBW)

  Three brothers. Three Secrets. One hope to save the shifters in Seattle.

  Former SEAL Jaxson River would give his life for his brothers and his pack, but if he doesn’t claim a mate soon, he’ll be forced to step down as their alpha. There’s only one problem: Jaxson’s dark secret would kill any mate he claimed. With someone kidnapping shifters off the street—and only Jaxson and his brothers, Jace and Jared, to stop them—now is not the time for his secret to come out.

  Curvy Olivia Lilyfield is a half-witch orphan with a dark secret of her own. She wants to atone for it by doing good in the world, so when she finds a wolf being tortured in an alley, she doesn’t hesitate to help… even though wolves and witches mix like matches and TNT.

  Olivia’s dangerous magic means she can’t let anyone get too close—but Jaxson can’t keep his hands off her, and his kisses are more than she can resist. As they race to save the disappearing shifters of Seattle, the true danger lies in loving each other. They’re playing with magical fire… and their secrets could end up destroying them both.

  Olivia stared out the window of her boss’s office. The gleaming towers of downtown Seattle looked bright and innocent, but she knew darkness lurked in the corners of the city. Not least in the dingy offices of the local celebrity rag, the Tales. Olivia crossed her arms over her chest. There had to be some way out of this assignment.

  “Can you do it?” her boss demanded. William Cratchton, editor of the Tales, took a long draw on his vape-cigar and puffed out a single noxious plume. He needed to shave off the scraggly salt-and-pepper half-beard before he started looking like a crazy old mountain man.

  Olivia unlocked her arms and shook the manila folder of glossy photos clutched in her hand. “Yes, I can do it. I’ve got a hacker on speed dial who’d love the job. I just was hoping for something a little less… sleazy.”

  A trail of vapor leaked from his smirk. “I pay you for sleaze, Liv.”

  You hardly pay me at all. But she couldn’t afford to voice that thought. In her twenty-five years on the planet, she’d worked every job from barista to pet sitter to a human-sized hot dog advertising some new fast-food place. But she’d never been able to get ahead. Now that she’d finally landed a position in her dream job as a reporter, her finances had just gotten worse. The rent was due. Her phone had been hacked with all kinds of charges she was still paying off. Thank God it was June, and she didn’t actually need heat—she was two months past due on that. She really couldn’t afford to turn down this assignment.

  She held in all her thoughts and went for begging. “What about that story on the homeless shelter I floated last week? There’s something rotten there, I’m sure of it. Too much funding and not enough people getting meals—”

  “The public’s not looking for righteousness, Liv.” Cratchton gave her a look like she had morphed into a nun before his eyes. “Nobody gives a shit about the homeless. We need naked celebrities to sell copies. Come on, you’re a smart girl. You know the score.”

  This was not what she imagined doing with her life.

  Last week, Cratchton had her bribing her way into high-end restaurants with a photographer, just to get a shot of the latest teen hottie out on a date. This week, he wanted her to hack into private cloud accounts for celebrity pictures, hoping to score a sex tape. What next? Actual breaking-and-entering the bedrooms of the rich and glamorous? Where would she draw the line?

  Maybe he’d understand if she told him the truth. She softened her voice. “It makes my stomach turn, Bill.”

  “Yeah, well, give it a few years.” He took another draw on his vape. “You’ll get used to it.”

  A sour taste rose up in the back of her throat—he was right. She could feel it getting easier already, like a black ooze that crept in, filling up your lungs more and more until you forgot what clean air felt like. It was easier that way…until, suddenly, it was drowning you.

  “I want you on this, Liv. But if you don’t want the work…” He put the vape down and leaned forward in his chair. His leering gaze focused on her chest. “We can work out something so you can keep your check this week.” He literally licked his lips.

  God. Ew.

  Her face heated. She crossed her arms over her chest again, and Cratchton’s face scrunched in disappointment. She wished she’d worn a turtleneck instead of a button-up blouse that liked to pucker at all the wrong times. She’d always been on the plump side, both ample up top and generous in the hip department, but that only seemed to make her a magnet for lecherous old guys. She ignored Cratchton’s surly expression and turned to look out the grimy window of the 14th floor again.

  There was darkness in this city, but there was also goodness—or at least the potential for it. Good people doing good things, making a difference in the world. I want to do something that matters with my life.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not paying you to win the Pulitzer.”

  She blinked and looked back at her boss. She hadn’t meant to say that out loud. And she didn’t need to win awards—this wasn’t about being famous or winning accolades. She just wanted her work to mean something.

  She’d always been on her own. Ever since her parents died, and she’d spent half her childhood in Seattle’s foster care system, bouncing from one lecherous foster-parent to another. All she had wanted was to survive. Grow up. Make a difference in the world. She’d couldn’t afford the university, but she’d managed to take a few journalism classes at the local community college. She figured she could work her way up… but she didn’t count on wading through slime along the way.

  Trolling for celebrity sex tapes was even more pathetic, given she was always alone in her own bed. She was too busy working to stay afloat and get the rent paid, all while spending her nights at the public library, trying to teach herself how to be a journalist. There was no time for boyfriends.

  Besides, her first boyfriend had cheated on her. And the second one. He had wanted a sex tape, too. Bastard. She’d kicked him out when she found the other tapes he’d made with a dozen other girls. But she already knew the only person she could really rely on was herself. And with what had happened to her parents… well, it was better if she never fell in love. She wasn’t fit to be in a relationship. Not now. Not ever. All she would ever have was her work—and now, even that had been reduced to hacking into the personal lives of celebrities.

  “You know what?” She flung the folder at her boss, and the glossies spilled out on the floor. “I’m not doing your dirty work any more, Cratchton.”

  He scrambled after them, clearly not expecting that r esponse. “Come on, Liv, be smart—”

  But she was already halfway to the door, her low heels pounding on the cheap linoleum. She paused in the doorway. “You’re a sleazy little mole, Cratchton, chasing sleazy little dollars. I am not going to end up like you, sucking down vape and that scotch I know you keep in your drawer. I’m going to do something with my life that means something.” His face was turning red. She yanked open the door to stop from saying something worse.

  “When you come crawling back, don’t expect—”

  She slammed the door on her way out so she wouldn’t have to hear the rest. The drama caught the notice of everyone in the office—which was really just two Cratchtons-in-the-making, only younger and less lecherous, and the girl who hid in her cubicle until someone needed a computer fixed. Olivia had worked there for six months, but she didn’t really know any of them. Which was par for the course for her. She didn’t bother telling them she wasn’t coming back… she just held her head high and marched to the elevator with a glorious I quit! expression on her face. She was alone in her triumph on the ride down, and when she reached the street level, she strode out into a burst of rare Seattle sunshine.

  It only took a block of striding down the sidewalk before the doubts began to creep in.

  What had she done? No assignment meant no check at the end of the week… which meant no rent money. She already had been late a couple times—once more, and her landlord would just toss her out. The churning in her stomach returned with a vengeance. Which only reminded her that she wasn’t going to have much in the way of food at the end of the week, either.

  She slowed her furious pace. She’d get by somehow—she always had—but she had to admit she’d never pushed it quite this far. Never quit when she had no idea where the next job was coming from. It was a long haul to her apartment on foot, and through a pretty seedy neighborhood as well, but she couldn’t afford bus fare now.

  She squared her shoulders and kept marching. The walk would give her time to think. Make a plan. Figure out where to start looking for a job, any job, that would hire her right away. Then she could figure out how to do something worthwhile in the world. Something that wouldn’t slime her soul.

  She glanced at the shops as she passed, looking for Help Wanted signs, but most were abandoned in this part of town. Then she realized she was near the homeless shelter—her stomach gave another lurch. She was convinced, from passing it every day on the bus, that something wasn’t quite right about the place. Now she had a decent chance of landing there herself. Maybe she could use that—go undercover, find out why there were always people being turned away, like they didn’t have enough food or beds or something, even though the place was enormous, a converted warehouse taking up an entire block. And what little research she’d done showed they had tons of money from the government.

  It was a great plan—except doing an exposé on the homeless shelter wasn’t going to pay the rent. And then she wouldn’t have to pretend to be homeless. She sighed and came to a stop at the end of the long storefront of the shelter. The street was empty, and now that her heels weren’t clacking on the concrete, she heard a strange electric twitching sound, like something was shorting out. Then a low groan.

  Her heart thudded. The groan turned into a grunt, then the sound of something hitting the pavement… and then a soul-breaking whimper. Her legs were locked in place—the sound was coming from the alley just ahead, a darkened space between the shelter and the next concrete building.

  Something very bad was happening there.

  Her legs shook, but she managed to make them move. She edged forward until she was just at the corner of the alley. The crackling continued, and her stomach jumped with it like it was filled with a hundred electrified butterflies. But she forced herself into the open so she could see down the long, shadowed alley.

  What she saw made ice run through her veins.

  There were two men at the end, dressed in black fatigues and boots, holding long metal sticks with blue electric arcs at the tip—and they were torturing an animal. It whimpered and writhed on the grimy pavement, just beyond an overflowing dumpster and before a boarded-up chain-link fence. They kept jabbing and jabbing it, darting in close then backing up as the animal snapped at them.

  It was a wolf.

  She froze. This was no ordinary wolf—if such a thing could even manage to wander into downtown Seattle. It was massive, easily the size of a man, with shiny black fur bristled out and fangs larger than her hand. It had to be a shifter—and the men were torturing it with their cattle prods.

  Olivia swallowed down her fear, edged farther into the alley, and fumbled to get her phone out of the pocket of her skirt. Shifters were dangerous—they were just one of the magical creatures that lived in the shadows of Seattle, and she knew exactly how deadly the supernatural could be. But no matter how dangerous shifters might be, she knew there was a human being inside. And anyone torturing a shifter in an alley was probably worse than the shifter itself.

  Besides, she couldn’t stand by and let them kill someone in front of her.

  Her hand was shaking, but she managed to swipe her phone on and start recording. Somehow the small ding of the video caught the men’s attention, even over the sparking of their torture sticks and the growling of the beast. They whipped their heads to look at her, then at each other.

  Her heart nearly leaped out of her chest, but she mustered up a strong voice anyway. “I’ve called the police!” she lied. “And I’ve got you on camera. Just put the sticks down, and they’ll go easy on you.” God, what was she doing?

  The attackers seemed to think the same thing. But in their distraction, the shifter leaped up and snapped at one of them. The beefier man jabbed the shifter in the face with the prod, while the more slender one turned toward her and started sprinting down the alley, stick in hand.

  Oh shit.

  Olivia stood her ground. “I’m recording this!” Her voice squeaked—that didn’t do anything to slow the man down. She should run… she wanted to run… but her legs were turning to jelly underneath her. Just as the man reached out a hand to grab her still-extended phone, a blur of fur and snapping jaws flashed between them. The man and wolf both slammed against the brick wall and bounced back off again. The man screamed as the wolf clamped its jaws onto him. Olivia skittered out of the path of the rolling, fighting, clawing ball of man and beast. She plastered herself against the cool brick wall, out of the way.

  It was quickly over—the shifter had the man pinned with his throat in its jaws. Blood was smeared on his arm, but not at his neck. The second man, the bigger one, had raced down the alley to help his partner, but the shifter let loose a growl that raised all the hairs on the back of Olivia’s neck… and that sound stopped the second man in his tracks. With one bite, the shifter could snap the downed man's neck. But instead, it growled a second warning. The man who was standing finally got it—he dropped his torture stick and held up his hands. The shifter slowly released its grip on the first man’s throat. Then it let loose one of those bone-chilling growls right in the man’s face, spittle and foam dropping onto his terrified, pale cheeks. He didn’t move a muscle until the shifter slowly backed away. Then both men scrambled to run from the alleyway. When they were gone, the wolf loped back toward the dumpster and disappeared behind it.

  Olivia’s heart was pounding in her chest, her phone was still gripped in her hand. She tapped it to stop recording and tried to catch her breath, which was raging out of control. She should leave—hustle her stupid-stupid self right out of the alley while she could—but she didn’t trust her legs. She was quivering head-to-toe, and only managed to stay upright because the brick wall was holding her up. Just as her heaving breaths started to calm, the sound of rapid footsteps scraping the pavement drew her attention back down the alley.

  The most gorgeous man she’d ever seen was hurrying toward her.

  It had to be the shifter—and he was even more massive as a man than he had been as a wolf. Tall and built like a mountain. Broad shoulders with muscles that flexed as he pulled a t-shirt over his head. Words were tattooed across his chest, but she couldn’t read them before they disappeared under his ragged t-shirt. She could still see his ripped abs through the holes and all the way down to his still-unbuttoned jeans. She yanked her gaze back up. His hair was black-as-midnight, just like his fur coat, and it gleamed in the sunshine finally pushing back the shadows of the alley.

  He was undeniably hot, but he was rushing at her, and he was still a shifter. Olivia unlocked her quivering body and scrambled to grab one of the cattle-prod sticks the men had left behind. She held it in front of her to ward off the shifter and shrunk back against the wall.

  He jogged to a stop just out of her reach. “Whoa! Hey…” He raised both hands into the air. “I’m not going to hurt you. Promise.” He gave her a lopsided smile that sent flutters through her lady parts, but she kept the stick trained on him.

  “You’re a shifter,” she said, stating the obvious because her brain was blurry from everything that had happened.

  “And you’re a human,” he said with a laugh in his voice. “I figured that out on account of an electric prod being your weapon of choice.”

  Damn. Even his voice was drenched in hotness. And he was only partly right about her being human, but she certainly wasn’t going to point that out. Her hand was shaking, but she managed to keep him at a distance with the stick.

  He relaxed his hands-up position. “Come on, now. You’re not going to hurt me with that thing.” He extended one hand toward her, palm up. “How about you just give it to me, we put it down, and we can call this whole thing done?” He edged a little closer, slowly reaching for the cattle prod like she was a skittish but heavily-armed deer, all while holding her gaze with gorgeous clear blue eyes as bright as the Seattle sky.