The Wolf's Mate Book 6: Logan & Jenna
Read The Wolf's Mate Book 6: Logan & Jenna Online
Authors: R.E. Butler
The Wolf’s Mate
Book 6
Logan & Jenna
by R. E. Butler
Copyright 2012 R.E.
Butler
The
Wolf’s Mate Book Six: Logan & Jenna
by
R.E. Butler
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Notes
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Cover by Ramona
Lockwood
This ebook is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s
imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this
book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is
intended for those over the age of 18 only.
* * * * *
I would like to extend sincere
thanks to Alexis Arendt at Word Vagabond for editing this story.
Thank you
.
To my Aunt B.L., for her
encouragement and to my husband, B.B., I love you both. To Jacq H - I’m so
glad we’re friends. Thanks to Jackie G. for her kick-butt beta-reading and her
friendship. And to my new friends and fans…thank you for your support!
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
“No,” Logan Anderson said, glancing down at the flyer that
Ben Snow pushed at him across the table at Lonestar’s.
Were-Animal looking for a mate? Human looking for love?
Find your truemate at the Were-Alliance’s mixer, the third Saturday of every
month. Music! Free Drinks! 8 pm to Midnight!
Whoever had designed the flyer liked exclamation points far
too much.
Ben pushed the flyer towards him again and Logan frowned at
the young wolf. At twenty-two he was too young to be worrying about mating. But
then again, Logan had been idealistic once. Young. Foolish. That seemed like
ages ago. He’d just turned thirty-one last week. Suddenly middle age felt
like it was looming over him, and he had nothing to his name but a tiny
farmhouse in Allen, a garden that refused to grow no matter what he did to it,
his job as a bouncer at Jake’s bar, and his pickup.
No family. No mate. No kids. When he first got a job at
age twenty-one as a bouncer, he thought it would be cool to do until he ‘found
his niche’. But ten years, and many different bars later, he still hadn’t figured
out anything else he’d rather do.
Moving to Allen last summer, he’d had high hopes of finding
a mate and settling down. Leaving his pack in Indianapolis had been brutal,
his old alpha wanting his pound of flesh much the same way that gang youths
beat the hell out of the ones that wanted to go straight. He’d come out alive
and taken his place as fifth in rank in the Tressel Pack, in this tiny town in
Kentucky. He’d bought his house and took the bouncer job, working with another
wolf, Toby, to keep the peace between the wolves and humans who frequented the
town’s only bar. Now, as winter wound down and spring started to creep into
the air, he still hadn’t found a mate. Hell, it had been so long since he’d
taken a woman to bed that his balls probably had cobwebs hanging from them.
“A few of us want to go, and Jason said that we needed a
responsible older wolf to go along with us, make sure we stay out of trouble,”
Ben said, grinning in a way that suggested he didn’t think needing a babysitter
was a bad thing, but rather a hilarious thing to saddle said older wolf with.
“So you picked me?” He raised a brow at him, stopping long
enough to tell the waitress that both of them were having the Friday
all-you-can-eat meat buffet with the pack discount, and then standing up to
head to the two long buffet tables laden with meat.
Ben was a chef at the restaurant and had joined the pack in
the winter when his sister, Reika, had mated to Bo, pack third. Bo and Logan
had been close friends before Bo mated Reika and they were still friends now,
but he was busy with his wife.
Babysitting a bunch of barely-legal wolves on a Saturday
night? That was not how he’d pictured his life turning out.
Across the buffet from him, as he speared a thick wedge of
pot roast, Ben said, “Look, there’ll be lots of human and wolf females there
looking for a good time, but there will also be other males as well. It just
makes sense to have someone who’ll be the voice of reason. Plus, you’re big as
hell, man. With your tattoos and everything, no one will mess with us, except
maybe some tasty ladies.” Ben grinned broadly and Logan was struck by just how
young Ben was and how old that made him feel.
“When is it again?” he grumbled, taking his meat-laden plate
back to the table.
Ben plopped down across from him with an equally piled-high
plate, and lifted his fork and knife. “Tomorrow. It’s in Somerset, so we need
to be on the road by seven. There are four of us going, so we can’t fit in
your pickup. Want to take my Jeep?”
Logan snorted but conceded there wasn’t really a choice,
since his truck only held two comfortably; three if they squeezed onto the
bench seat. “Fine. But I make the rules for the trip. No leaving anyone
behind, no bringing anyone new home, and if any of your buddies annoy me I
reserve the right to toss them out of the Jeep without stopping.”
Ben shook his head with a chuckle. “No problem. I’ll let
Jason know. You won’t regret it, Logan.” His grin softened slightly, and he
looked older than he was. “There’s a female out there for you somewhere. I
know you’ll find her.”
Suddenly uncomfortable, Logan cleared his throat and turned
his attention back to his plate. “Eat your food, kid. Dancing takes lots of
energy.”
The following day, Logan endured ribbing from his fellow
pack members. Michael, pack second, sent over a delivery of four boxes of
condoms. Bo emailed him several articles with dating tips. And Jason, pack
alpha, called to let him know that his mate, Cadence, had volunteered to let
his future bride wear her wedding dress.
When the loud engine belonging to Ben’s Cherokee pulled in
front of Logan’s house, he tucked in his black T-shirt and wondered if he
should have shaved. Deciding that there was absolutely no chance of him
finding his one-in-a-million truemate at a single shifters’ dance, he opened
the door and stepped out into the warm April night.
Ben opened the driver’s door and stepped out, dressed nicer
than Logan had ever seen him, in slacks and a button-down shirt. The other
males in the second row were dressed similarly, which made Logan stick out like
an underdressed sore thumb.
Too late. Not that it matters.
The four young males didn’t shut up once during the
forty-five minute drive to the Were-Alliance’s rented hall in Somerset. Logan
had never been so glad to turn off a vehicle and step outside. His ears were
actually ringing from all their chatter. Whoever said that teenage girls
talked a lot had never been in a truck full of eager young male wolves.
“Remember the rules,” Logan said gruffly as the boys piled
from the Cherokee.
“Don’t worry, Logan,” Ben promised, patting him on the
shoulder. “Just relax and have a good time.”
Easier said than done, but he would give it a try. Being
designated driver meant he wouldn’t be drinking, but he could hope that the
music mentioned in the ad would be decent and he could at least listen to some
tunes.
The pop rock that blasted through the doors when they opened
grated immediately on his nerves. It
had
to be pop music. Heaven
forbid it was country, which he enjoyed. He wasn’t sure he could handle four
hours of non-stop bubble gum. Paying the cover for the five of them, Logan
watched the boys slink along the edge of the empty dance floor and look over
the crowd. The hall easily held two hundred, which made the people standing
around near the folding table that served as a bar look…pathetic. With a quick
glance around he counted twenty-one people standing in small groups around the
perimeter of the cleared dance floor, a bartender, and a DJ with a black-and-white
striped mohawk that gave him a distinctly skunk-like appearance.
Logan took a breath, scenting discreetly to see what he
could pick up, and caught only a few wolves amongst the humans. There were four
wolf males, young like the ones he had brought along, and the remainder were
human females, giggling and checking out the young men. Hell. Logan felt even
older suddenly.
Resigning himself to an evening of surfing the net on his
cell, he walked over to the bar and asked for a bottle of water. The human
male said, “No beer? It’s free.”
“I’m driving.” He motioned with his head to the four males,
who were eyeing a small group of females like they were does.
The bartender nodded and handed him a bottle of water and a
clear plastic cup. “Sorry it’s not cold, but there’s ice in the kitchen.”
Logan went to sit down at one of the round tables against
the wall, decorated with plastic tablecloths, glitter, and a few flowers in a
vase in the center. Keeping an ear out for trouble, he turned his attention to
his inbox and checked his email, deleting the ones from his pack continuing to
torture him about his babysitting duties, and then opened up the local news
site and began reading.
A slow song came on, and Logan noticed that none of the
males made any move to dance with any of the females. He looked at the females
critically, wondering if his wolf was even aware that potentially willing women
stood just feet away from him, but his wolf seemed to yawn in his head and
ignore them.
He couldn’t remember the last time a female had meant
something more than a night between the sheets to him. His last relationship
had ended three years ago. Amber was a highly ranked she-wolf in his old pack,
and she had pursued him, which was something she hadn’t been used to. Before
him, wolves had fallen to the floor at her feet, drooling and senseless, but
Logan hadn’t been one of them. They dated and fucked. She was his steady
after-work fuck. The heat that had simmered between them had cooled quickly,
until going to see her had become more of a habit than a desire. After a
heated argument during which she complained that he wasn’t paying enough
attention to her, things had gone back to the way they’d been. They lived in
separate places, had separate friends, and only came together for occasional
dinners and a few tumbles in the sheets a week. One night he went to her
apartment like he did every Friday, and walked inside. He called her name but
heard only muffled sounds coming from the bedroom. Following them, he opened
the door and found her in bed with a human.
Even now he could remember just how little he’d cared. He
stared at her as the male moved on top of her, and when their eyes met and he
saw her defiance, saw that she’d wanted to be caught, he couldn’t have cared
less. Yes, it had sucked to be cheated on, and so blatantly, but he was more
annoyed with himself for letting the relationship go on well past when it had
rolled over and died. She showed up at his place later and wanted to argue,
but he didn’t want to. She was looking for a man to fight for her, but he
wasn’t that man. His friends in the pack hadn’t understood what his problem
was, but the truth was that Amber wasn’t his truemate, and he wasn’t ready to
settle for less than the one woman meant to be his. Of course, he hadn’t had
any clue how to find her; now, three years later, he still didn’t know, but he
hadn’t given up yet.
He found the kitchen after a while and hunted down some ice
for his water. By the time ten o’clock rolled around, he’d read every article
he found interesting, several he hadn’t, and was drumming his fingers on the
tabletop, ready to leave. His wolf had suddenly grown restless.
