Southern Shifters: Lone Wolf Wanted (Kindle Worlds Novella) (5 page)

Chapter Nine

Ezrah knocked on the door to Pearl’s little house. He was tired since he drove straight here from Louisiana, but he pushed himself, worried about the old woman. Standing at her front door, an uneasy feeling washed over him, causing the hair on his neck to stand up as the doorknob finally turned.

The door slowly creaked open, and the person on the other side didn’t look like his great-grandma Pearl. Whoever it was looked like a mummy.

Perhaps it wasn’t wearing rolls of toilet paper or gauze wrapped around its body, but the once white skin was colored a funny yellowish-beige and wrinkled to the point of leather stretched over a small skeletal frame. The only features he found familiar were the blue eyes that he had inherited from Pearl’s side of the family and a little bun of blonde hair on top of the mummy’s head. He only knew it was Pearl at all was because the mummy still smelled like his great-grandmother.

Ezrah knew that, more than likely, anyone else in the world would run screaming at the very sight of her … it—whatever she was now. Even the wolves who belonged to his great-grandfather’s pack would howl in horror. Ezrah was Ezrah, though, not some panicked human, confused wolf, or disgusted witch. He was a half-breed who didn’t see, think, or act like others.

Therefore, his reaction should not have been a surprise to Pearl when he said, “I renounce you, Satan. Return back to the hell from which you came.”

The mummy didn’t poof and disappear, but it did throw a hand towel at his head. “You’re not funny, Ezrah Crawford Goldsby. Lord knows I should have beaten you more as a child.”

Pulling the hand towel from his face, he saw the empty space in the doorway where his great-grandmother had been standing as he walked through the entrance into her home.

“You didn’t beat me at all, Pearl, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Ezrah followed her scent into the kitchen where she stood at the counter, pouring water into her coffee maker.

Once she was done putting the pot in the machine to start brewing, Pearl turned around and pointed a gnarled finger at him. “That’s what I mean, boy. I should have beaten you.”

Ezrah pulled out a chair at her kitchen table and sat down. “How about we stop talking about whether or not you should or shouldn’t have beaten me and start talking about why you look like a walking corpse?”

“I am not a zombie!” Pearl snapped back angrily.

He held his hands up in surrender. “Didn’t say you were a crypt keeper.”

Pearl held her pointer finger in the air as small sparks of energy shot out the end like mini fireworks. “Sass me one more time; see what I do.”

“Put your magic away, woman, before you hurt yourself.”

She cocked an impervious eyebrow that told him she’d had enough, so Ezrah conceded.

“Okay, okay, I’ll behave. Now will you please tell me what’s going on?”

The smell of coffee filled the air as it percolated on the counter. Pearl pulled out a chair and sat down across from him. Folding her hands primly in front of her on the table, she looked him dead in the eye and said, “This is all your fault.”

Ezrah’s left eye twitched in irritation. Leave it to Pearl to drag things out.

“So you said on the phone. Want to tell me why it’s my fault?”

Heaving a weary sigh, Pearl said, “I guess I should start from the beginning.”

It took all of Ezrah’s restraint to avoid saying something smart-ass like,
“God created the heavens and the earth. Then he made you.”
However, he must have accidentally given Pearl a look because she pointed that finger at him again with her little sparks flying out in warning.

“When you were little, you always asked me how I managed to outlive your grandmother. Remember how I answered those questions?”

Ezrah nodded. “You said, if the time was ever right, you’d let me know.”

Pearl sniffed. “Seems the time has come. I guess it all started when I met your great-grandfather, Cherokee Bill. That was his outlaw name. His real name was Crawford Goldsby, and he was a rogue wolf. The man didn’t get along with that pack of his, not one bit, so he spent his time running around, robbing banks, and causing trouble. That’s how I met him, I guess you could say. He came into town with that little gang of humans he ran with, and they stayed the night at the saloon my father owned.

“There I was, serving drinks and cleaning up because my mother was sick at home, and in walks in a dark man. Now, I don’t say he was dark because of his skin color, but because of his aura. It was muddy red and this somber murky pink. I knew right away he was no good when he had dishonesty and anger clinging to him like that.”

Pearl slapped her hand down on the table. “Then he looked across the room, and the moment our eyes locked, even over that noisy crowd, I could hear him say the word ‘
mine.
’ I was too young and naive to know what he was or why he would say that, but it didn’t matter a bit in the end. It was like we were two ends of a string, the tension pulled taut between us. No matter how much my mind told me to run away, the rest of my body wanted to be next to him.”

Pearl folded her hands on the table again as she took a deep breath. “I’ll spare you all the details, Ezrah. Just know, in the end, Cherokee Bill got what he wanted: me. He called me his mate and talked me right out of my knickers. Back then, I didn’t know what a mate was, but I thought it meant he was serious about me.” She snorted. “The only thing that boy was serious about was himself and what he wanted. I gave him a week of love before he left. Then the fool ran off, got himself caught, and then hung. In the end, he gave me a child.

“There I was, eighteen and pregnant with no dadgum ridiculous reality show to pay me for my plight. My parents loved me unconditionally, so they let me stay with them and helped me out. It wasn’t until after I gave birth to your grandfather that my mother saw the difference in his aura and told me what my son was: half wolf.”

“How did she know what a wolf shifter was?” Ezrah asked.

Pearl shrugged. “Apparently, she’d had some dealings with them in the past as she travelled west with her witch family. It took us a while, but we tracked Cherokee Bill’s pack down and asked if we could stay on the outskirts of their pack for the baby’s sake. They agreed, hoping the baby would grow up to be a regular member of the pack. They were very disappointed when your grandfather grew up to act just like his father. The boy couldn’t stand being around the pack and was always running around, causing problems. I guess you could say that’s where you come in.”

Confused, Ezrah asked, “How so?”

Pearl ran her thumb over the wrinkled skin of her hand in circles, the scent of nervousness rolling off her. “When my son went and got himself killed because he was dabbling in bad things, I was heartbroken. My parents had already passed, and all I had was my boy. Then he was gone, and your grandmother showed up on my doorstep four months later. Round, little belly, pregnant as can be, she was holding a good-bye letter in my son’s handwriting. The poor woman stood there with a small bag containing everything she owned and claimed your grandfather was the father of her child. She was young, black, and penniless since she lost the job she had where she was making meager wages due to her ‘condition.’  Not exactly a good situation to be in during the early 1900s.

“I was terrified of being hurt again, but also desperate not to be alone. I let her live with me, helped her through the pregnancy, and prayed for the day the baby was born. When he was, I knew the second I laid eyes on him that he was my grandson. It wasn’t just there in his father’s dark features, but also my blue eyes. From that day on, I promised myself I was going to stay around until the lone wolf traits of Cherokee Bill’s line ran out.

“Of course, then your grandfather started to get older, and I saw all of those lone wolf traits in him, as well. It scared me that I might never see the day of Cherokee Bill’s lineage broken, so I made a decision. It took a spell I won’t talk about and almost all of my power, but I cast enough magic over myself that I would live frozen in time at the age I was when I cast it.”

Ezrah wasn’t entirely surprised. He knew Pearl’s witchcraft had been the reason she was still alive and kicking at one hundred and thirty-eight. What he didn’t understand was why she suddenly looked like she was exactly that old and why she was blaming it on him.

“What’s this got to do with me, Pearl?”

His great-grandmother lifted up her little chin and looked him square in the eye. “The spell I cast would keep me alive until the descendant of Cherokee Bill who could break the lone wolf trait met his mate. About a month ago, I went from feelin’ fit as a fiddle to waking up the next day, lookin’ like this. I think you have some explaining to do, boy.”

Ezrah couldn’t have been more flabbergasted if Pearl had whipped out rabbit ears and declared she really was the Easter Bunny.

“What?”

Bringing her hand up in between them, she shook that finger at him as if he were a naughty child. “Explain, mister!” She waved a hand down at herself. “This wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t trip the spell. So here I am, lookin’ like I’m on death’s doorstep because, technically, I am! You must have met your mate and triggered the spell. Only, I didn’t die because you left her. Now why would you go and do a fool thing like that?”

The sound of silence in the room was deafening, along with his racing heartbeat banging away in his head. Of all the things he had expected Pearl to say, telling him he had found his mate hadn’t been one of them. If that weren’t bad enough, his wolf was going frantic on the inside, desperate to get out.

As if the entire situation had been one giant puzzle laid out before him, the last pieces fell into place, giving him the bigger picture: his wolf’s unusual behavior, the emerging emotions he hadn’t understood, plus the desire to wrap himself around a woman and stay. Now at least he knew why his wolf had been so damn surly with him since they had left Deals Gap. The beast had been trying to tell him all along that they had found their mate, and Ezrah’s dumbass had missed it.

The sexy, crazy feline Kinks was his mate!

His entire body started trembling. Need, adrenaline, awareness of his mate alone and vulnerable in another state—all of it was crashing down on him like an avalanche.

Finally, he focused back on Pearl’s face. “You’re absolutely sure about this?” Already knowing the answer, he felt the need to ask, anyway.

His great-grandmother nodded back. “Now, what are you gonna do about it, boy? You going to take after Cherokee Bill, denying yourself the possibility of a life filled with love and companionship, leaving me looking this way to boot? Or are you going to kiss me good-bye and go find your mate?”

A sudden pang of sadness overwhelmed him, pain the likes he hadn’t experienced since his mother had died. He knew what he was going to do, but he also knew what it meant he was losing.

Slowly, he slid his hand across the tabletop and gently grabbed his great-grandmother’s hand. “I’m so sorry.”

Pearl’s eyes teared up, but she didn’t let them spill down her face. Laying her other hand over Ezrah’s, she squeezed back. “Don’t be sorry, sugar.”

His throat clogged with emotion, and his next words came out gruff. “I’m going to miss you, Pearl.”

Her face lit up with a bittersweet smile. “I’m going to miss you, too, boy. Now, give your grandma a kiss good-bye.”

Chapter Ten

Eighteen hours.

That’s how long Ezrah had been on the road as he raced from his great-grandmother Pearl’s place in Oklahoma back to Deals Gap, North Carolina, stopping only long enough to fill his gas tank, empty his personal tank, and occasionally get a quick bite to eat. Besides stopping in a motel to take a short nap after his conversation with Pearl, he hadn’t wasted a second of time trying to get back to Kinks. He had broken every speed limit and driven through the night to get here as fast as he possibly could.

Eighteen hours on the road was a lot of time to think about what his great-grandmother had told him, what she had sacrificed for both him and his family. And that was pretty much everything when one truly thought about it.

Pearl had put her life on perpetual standby, waiting for the day she could see her ancestors happy. It had taken her three generations, but now Ezrah finally had the chance to put the old woman to peace while also finding a different sort of peace for himself. Therefore, as he pulled into the Dark Moon bar’s parking lot, he took a deep breath to steady himself.

This was it: the first step on the way to making things right, not just for himself, but for Kinks and Pearl, too. He only hoped his mate would forgive him for leaving her the way he had.

Climbing off his motorcycle, Ezrah made his way to the front door and … stopped dead in his tracks at what he found posted there.

WANTED:

LONE WOLF

Brown skin, blue eyes, and covered in tattoos.

Drives a motorcycle.

Last seen leaving Dark Moon Bar with a very stupid woman.

If you see a wolf matching this description, kick him in the balls, knock him the hell out, and then contact me!

Kinks

aka, Chrissy Leroy

Below the message was a hand drawn picture that Ezrah guessed was supposed to be him. The reason he wasn’t quite sure was because it was basically a stick figure drawn in brown crayon with bright blue eyes, standing in front of a bicycle. It was safe to say Kinks wasn’t an artist.

Okay, so perhaps making things right with his mate wasn’t going to be as easy as Ezrah had hoped. The wanted poster was pretty good evidence that he had pissed Kinks off. The poster did give him a piece of information he hadn’t known about her before, though: her name.

Chrissy Leroy.

It suited her, but Kinks suited her more.

Pushing the door open, he walked into the bar and right up to the bartender who was already giving him a death glare. The moment Ezrah was two feet from him, the bartender pointed past him toward the door.

“Get the hell out. We don’t serve your kind here.”

My kind? What the fuck?

A red haze of anger washed over Ezrah. Sure, he had experienced prejudice in many different forms in his life. He was of mixed heritage with a Cherokee, African-American, and Caucasian background. There was also the fact that he was a hybrid mutt crossed between a wolf, human and a witch.

That being said, he had never expected to experience any sort of prejudice about either of those things in the neutral territory.

“What exactly about
my kind
do you have a problem with, bub?” The words were growled through clenched teeth as he did his best to keep his wolf from bursting free.

The bartender gave him a look like he was the dumbest man on the planet. “Seriously? You think I got a problem with the color of your skin or whatever you’re made up of? Get real,” he scoffed. “What I got a problem with is the kind of guy who knocks a girl up then leaves her high and dry.”

For the second time in two days, Ezrah was too shocked to speak. A cricket chirped from somewhere in the bar loudly enough to alert the whole neighborhood with as quiet as the rest of the bar had fallen.

When he was finally able to make his voice work again, the only two words he could get out were, “Knocked up?”

The bartender crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head in dismay. “Yeah, man. Knocked up. Prego. Baby on board. Bun in the oven. How many different ways you want me to tell you? I can’t believe you did that to Kinks and then bailed on her.”

“But I didn’t know she was pregnant!” Ezrah roared back.

A huge, calculating grin spread across the other man’s face. “So what are you going to do about it, man?”

Get what’s ours,
the wolf snarled in his head, telling Ezrah unequivocally that there would be no turning back, no running away. Not this time.

Turning on his booted heel, Ezrah stomped out of the bar and raced back to his bike. Revving the engine, he raced down the little dirt road until he hit the clawed up pine tree that had new, vicious claw marks in it. Ezrah was definitely going to have to keep his kitten’s claws away from his hide until he could calm her down.

Screeching the bike to a halt, he parked, turned it off, and then climbed off on shaky legs. Then he raced up to Kink’s cabin’s front door and had his hand up, about to knock on the wood, when the door flew open.

The first thing he saw was Kink’s beautiful, angry face.

The second thing he saw was her swinging something at his face.

After that, all Ezrah saw was the back of his eyelids.

~~~

Of all the nerve!

Chrissy couldn’t believe that mangy wolf had shown up on her doorstep out of the blue. It didn’t matter that she had happened to be looking for him; the least he could have done was look a little remorseful.

As she stood over her mate’s unconscious body, holding the frying pan she had knocked him out with, Chrissy pictured the way he had been smiling at her once she had opened the door.

How dare he look so happy to see her!

Here she had been, sitting around, crying her eyes out for the last two days, and what had he been doing? Joyriding?

Okay, so maybe she had only been crying for a day and a half, but that was because she had spent half a day typing up that wanted poster, complete with a squiggly hand-drawn image of him.

Now that she had him here, Chrissy wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to do with him. Sure, she had gone with her first choice of slapping him silly with her cookware, but now what was she going to do? To be honest, part of her hadn’t expected the wolf to come back at all.

The last day of imagining a lifetime of raising a cub by herself had been utterly depressing. That didn’t mean she was ready for him to come prancing back into her life as if he hadn’t hurt her. So what was a girl to do when she had her unborn baby’s daddy knocked the hell out on her doorstep?

An idea started to form in her head, and Chrissy giggled. If she was going to do it, then she had to hurry up before her wolf woke up from his little frying pan induced nap.