Pack Ebon Red (The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf Book 1) Read online

  I am wolf; I am human; I am neither; I am both.

  I am werewolf.

  And I have seven Alpha Males as my mates.

  All mine to kiss and hold and touch, seven handsome men for my bed.

  My boys represent the biggest packs in North America.

  But I am the Alpha Female and I rule them all.

  One day, the packs might force me to choose.

  But my heart, it won't allow it. Things could get … bloody if I have to fight for my boys.

  For now, three glittering dark courts threaten our existence with their glamorous cruelty:

  the vampires, the witches, and the fae.

  Werewolves are missing from all the packs, and my boys and I, we have to find them.

  Or find out who's killing them.

  Because I'm the mistress of my men, my packs, a girl known simply as White Wolf.

  I've promised to protect the men I love, the family and friends I cherish.

  And the White Wolf … always keeps her promises.

  Pack Ebon Red

  Pack Ebon Red © C.M. Stunich 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 89365 Old Mohawk Rd, Springfield, OR 97478.

  www.sarianroyal.com

  Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal

  "Caviar Dreams" Font © Lauren Thompson

  "Fancy Card Text" Font © Deiter Steffmann

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.

  this book is dedicated to young love, carefully kept promises, and magic.

  which are all basically the same thing anyway.

  Sign up for an exclusive first look at the hottest new releases, contests, and exclusives from bestselling author C.M. Stunich and get *three free* eBooks as a thank you!

  Author's Note

  Welcome to Pack Ebon Red, the first in a new series titled The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf. This is a reverse harem werewolf series (one girl, seven hot guys) in which the main character … doesn't have to choose just one alpha male as her mate. These books are best described as mature young adult/urban fantasy novels, and while the focus is on werewolves, throughout the seven book series you'll find vampires, witches, fae, demons, and more.

  Contains: cursing, detailed sex scenes, and graphic violence.

  Read—and enjoy—at your own risk.

  Just don't think you won't be howling with need for the next one …

  Book Two, Pack Violet Shadow, releases August 20th, 2017.

  Love, C.M. Stunich (aka Violet Blaze)

  Character list

  The Seven Mates of Zara Castille, Heir of Pack Ebon

  First Name, Last Name, and Pack Affiliation

  (in order of appearance)

  Nic Hallett of Pack Ebon Red

  ~

  Jaxson Kidd of Pack Azure Frost

  ~

  Silas Vetter of Pack Obsidian Gold

  ~

  Anubis Rothburg of Pack Crimson Dusk

  ~

  Montgomery Graves of Pack Ivory Emerald

  ~

  Che Nocturne of Pack Violet Shadow

  ~

  Tidus Hahn of Pack Amber Ash

  They were coming for me.

  I knew it; I could smell it. The metallic copper tang of blood came to me on the wind, like pennies and citrus, mixing with the ever present sweetness of pine. I paused, the fingers of one bare hand brushing gently down the rough bark of a tree, the other still warmly encased in a mitten and tucked in my pocket. Except for the slow, deliberate movement of my hand, I was completely still, listening, waiting.

  The soft whisper of boots warned me that Nic was coming. If he hadn't wanted me to know he was behind me, I probably wouldn't.

  “How many?” he asked, coming to stand beside me, close but not too close. It didn't pay to get too close to the next alpha unless you'd been chosen.

  My heart sunk as I glanced over at Nic, at the proud, straight ridge of his nose and those high, sculpted cheeks. Everything about him said Ebon Red, said too close to home to be chosen. I dropped my hand from the tree and curled my fingers into a fist at my side.

  “Sixteen, at least,” I said and then sighed, reaching into my left pocket for my phone. It was doubtful I'd get any reception out here, but it was worth a try. “And they've killed something,” I said, paused, pursed my lips. “Recently.”

  Nic let out a low growl that curled my fingers tight around my cell, made my throat go dry. I shouldn't let myself be so affected by him; it would only end in heartbreak and pain. I knew firsthand how dangerous it was. I was daughter to a woman who'd literally killed the man she'd loved most.

  I wouldn't find any sympathy back home.

  “Are they trying to cause trouble?” Nic asked, reaching up to grab the zipper on his jacket. “Or are they just too inbred to realize that Friday means Friday. Your mother,” he continued because nobody who'd ever met the woman would call her 'Mom'—least of all me, “will probably cut them out of the ceremony altogether when she hears about this.”

  I shook my head, my heart fluttering with hope and dropping just as fast.

  “No,” I said, thinking aloud, watching with a practiced detachment as Nic shrugged his coat to the forest floor and sat down on it to start taking off his boots. If I listened carefully, I could hear my professor and my fellow Intro to Wildflowers classmates chatting about a mile off. The pack—whoever they were, I didn't recognize their scent—was farther off, maybe three or four miles out. If Nic and I stood here and waited, they'd be on us in minutes. “She needs this alliance. We need this alliance,” I said, a thousand reprimands rolling through my head all at once. It's always us and we, Zara, not me and I. “It would take a serious breach of etiquette for her to even consider cutting anyone out.”

  I took a deep breath and tried dialing my mother's phone—no reception. Ridiculous. I kept trying to explain how important satellite phones would be for communication. Spending as much time as we did in remote wilderness, I felt like they were essential. But … old habits die hard. The pack—and especially my mother—they didn't trust technology.

  I glanced down at Nic—shoeless, sock-less, shirtless. I had to swallow hard and glance away as he stood up and dropped his jeans to the moist dirt beneath our feet. Nakedness was as easy as breathing for me, for all of us, but when it came to Nic … I felt the undertones there, the unspoken things we'd both like to do to each other in the dark. It made it hard, really hard. And then to stand here and talk about the ceremony? The implications of what, exactly, that ceremony meant were hard to ignore. Five suitors, five possible mates, five guys that I'd be doing things in the dark with that weren't Nic.

  “Yeah, well,” he said, pushing a hand through his dark red hair as I looked back at him, carefully avoiding looking at anything below his waist. “If forcing me to get naked in the middle of class doesn't count as a breach of etiquette, I don't know what does. Wait here, I'll be back.”

  Nic flashed a tight smile at me before taking a breath and shaking out his hands, fingers curling as the wolf reared to the surface, desperate to get out, to run, to chase, to fight. I stepped back, the nearness between us too much for me to handle. It was hard to watch anyone shift, to let them morph and meld and melt while I was stuck standing still, encased in a single form, skin itching for releas
e. But with Nic? It was like there was this pull between us, this irresistible urge to touch and feel, to lay my hands on his bare chest and feel the change happen beneath my fingers.

  I turned away fully and leaned my right shoulder against the tree, waiting for the quiet whisper of paw pads before I looked back. I only caught the tail end—quite literally—of Nic before he disappeared into the trees, his auburn fur whipping past the brown and green and blending into the shadows.

  He'd find this pack, whoever they were, and he'd turn them back. Or at the very least, he'd lead them somewhere safe, somewhere with reception where they could shift and he could get a hold of my mother. For now, I'd wait. If he wasn't back in ten, I'd leave his clothes here and I'd go.

  I leaned my back against the trunk of the ponderosa pine and stared back up the gentle slope of the mountain we were on, at the shadows of the trees and the damp earth that was still partially crystallized from last night's freeze. It was pretty here, sure, but it was hard to relax knowing a group of thirty people was just around the corner, guidebooks open and phones snapping photos of half-dead flowers. Winter had come early this year and stayed late, messing with the spring term and the offered classes. It was hard to study wildflowers when most of them were either frozen or had yet to spring up at all.

  I checked the time on my phone. Two minutes. Nic should be with the pack now, drawing their bloodied scent away from me and the classmates moving steadily in my direction. It wasn't like wolves were extinct in Oregon or anything, but a large group of really big wolves stinking of copper, mouths tinged pink with a recent kill? I did not want to see the confrontation between the two groups.

  I closed my eyes, listened carefully, past the gentle rustle of branches overhead and the whistle of the wind in the valley. If I really concentrated, I could hear my professor's ongoing lecture, the excited perk in his voice that said he really truly loved his job.

  I wished I was as big a fan of mine.

  Then again, my professor chose his job; I was assigned mine. It wasn't that I didn't want to be alpha, that I didn't care about my people, it was the lack of choice involved in all of it. My mother didn't sit me down one day and ask how I felt about being her heir. No, I was born into it. Instead of coming into the world with a sibling or two, a litter that could be picked and chosen from, I came alone. Okay, well that's not exactly true—I had sisters in the womb with me, three of them actually, but they were all born dead.

  So. First litter, one pup. One alpha.

  “Daydreaming again?” a voice asked from behind me, startling me so bad that when I spun around, I was ready to fight. I fell into a crouch and rose just as quickly, hoping that Julian wouldn't comment on the move. How the hell did he manage to sneak up on me? I wondered with no small amount of awe. It shouldn't have been possible, but there he was, six feet away and smiling like he had no idea the start he'd just given me. I took note of the moment, filed it away, but decided that I was too caught up in my own head, wasn't paying attention. At this point, it was the only explanation I had.

  “Sorry?” I asked, running my fingers through the burning brightness of my hair, hair that was hardly unique in my pack. Ebon Red was famous for our flaming red hair and pale skin, the purple-raven color of our eyes, eyes that had gotten more than one of us into an awkward situation or two, barely explained away with the mention of colored contact lenses. At least most people were just too polite to ask.

  “You seem to daydream a lot,” Julian said with a shrug, tucking his hands into his pockets and then glancing down at Nic's discarded pile of clothes. His black and white checkered boxers were sitting right on top. Of course they were.

  “Nic'll do anything for a bet,” I said with a wild smile, knowing how ridiculous and unbelievable it sounded. But when you grew up in an entire community of werewolves, you learned that stupid and believable lies were better than impossible truths. “Especially if it involves money,” I added with a sly smile, putting my cell back in my pocket and withdrawing my loose mitten. My younger sister, Aria, knitted the pair for me as a Christmas present, passing the package to me with a nervous smile that said while she loved me, she feared me just like everyone else.

  “Um,” Julian began as I tugged the wool over my fingers and pretended to be cold, shivering and forcing my smile into a grin. I could only pray that Nic didn't come back until I'd gotten rid of Julian. He'd hear him, sure, even from several miles away, but I had this feeling that if he got a whiff of this guy and me together, he'd come charging over here, hackles raised.

  “Fifty bucks,” I added with a shake of my head. If I'd learned anything over the years, it was that money can get people to believe the unbelievable. One of my aunts getting caught naked in the garden center at the hardware store? A friend bet her a thousand bucks to do it. Seriously, works every time. It's better than trying to claim the person you're covering for—or worse, you—is a nudist. Or that they're deranged. Or both. “Honestly, I'd thought he negotiate for at least a hundred.” I glanced over my shoulder and then shrugged, looking back at Julian's wide brown eyes and raised blonde brows.

  “Where did he go?” he asked with a nervous laugh, keeping his hands tucked into his pockets and attempting a nervous smile. Crap. I had a feeling he wasn't going to leave without some prompting.

  “Who the hell knows?” I said with an exaggerated eye roll. “He can be weird sometimes.” I kept smiling and focused my attention on Julian. I knew he had a crush on me, from day one, and he was cute and all, but my life was about more than that. As an alpha, I had responsibilities. And a damn good sense of smell. Julian always had this air of mint and apples about him, this bright note weighted down with the heaviness of copper.

  Blood.

  Julian always smelt like blood.

  And vampires.

  I blinked at him and kept smiling, taking a few steps forward so I could look him right in the face, brush my breasts against his upper arm as I leaned in and wrapped the wool-covered fingers of one hand around his wrist.

  Obviously, Julian wasn't a vampire or he wouldn't be walking around in bright gold midday sunshine, but he reeked of them, and I wasn't taking any chances.

  “Let's forget about Nic, and catch up with the rest of the class. We get to partner up for our final project, right?” I bit my lower lip and turned Julian around, just in time to avoid the aubergine glare emanating from the shadows of a nearby pine. Sorry, Nic.

  “Do you have a partner yet?” Julian asked as I steered him away from Nic's clothes and back toward the sounds of the class.

  “Nope,” I said, forcing myself to keep smiling, keep walking. I could still smell the other pack, but the scent was receding. Good. Nic had done what he'd set out to do; he always did. “I don't have a partner yet.”

  And I hated that that statement was true in more ways than one.

  My mother was waiting for me when I walked in, my book bag slung over one shoulder, slapping against my hip as I stepped up to her and paused, tilting my chin down in a show of deference. Some alphas were lax about old school protocol and manners—gestures as arbitrary and meaningless as the human equivalent of putting elbows on the table—but my mother wasn't one of them. Nikolina Castille was a stickler for tradition.

  “Azure Frost,” she said by way of explanation, naming the pack that Nic and I'd encountered in the forest. I glanced back at him, standing behind and to the left of Nikolina (yes, he was named after her), his purple-black eyes shimmering with anger and frustration. And that was exactly why I'd had to bail on him. Nic was good at what he did, great even, but he had a tendency to escalate situations unnecessarily.

  “I see,” I replied carefully, my gaze focused on my mother's silver necklace and not on her eyes. Meeting an alpha's stare was akin to insulting them and begging to get your ass kicked. But me? I didn't need to fight my mom to take control; I'd been handed the future of the position. “You don't want me to tell Grandma about this?” I guessed, knowing how Nikolina usually worked. The Pairi
ng meant everything to her, everything. If she had to drag the event into being kicking and screaming, she'd do it.

  “No.” Her voice was melodious, beautiful, like sunrays on sunflowers, but there was a hardness there, the firm undertones of someone who knows they're in charge and has no trouble convincing others to follow along. I focused on the rough edges of skin around the necklace, the way her graceful fingers lifted to touch it and then paused, thinking better of the action.

  True to popular belief, silver really does screw with werewolves.

  I nodded, my eyes tracing the rope-like scars on my mother's chest, the fresh droplets of blood peeking out from beneath the metal.

  Alphas are strong, the pillars of the pack, and they have no weaknesses. There might not be anything she could do about the silver allergy, but goddamn it, my mother was immune to pain. At least, she wanted everyone to think she was, and I'd never seen anything to the contrary—not even on the day my dad died. Then again, I'm not sure that she ever really loved him. The man she had loved, she'd killed before I was born.

  “Don't mention today's incident to anyone,” she said, her instructions clear. “Majka is waiting upstairs. Go see her and then head right home.” Nikolina turned in a flutter of bloodred hair as I raised my gaze to watch her retreating back, Nic stepping out of the way and ducking into a small crouch until she'd completely left the room. I waited until I could hear her heels moving up the stairs in the back before I relaxed my stance and let out a sigh of relief.

  “I don't trust that guy,” Nic said, coming up to stand next to me as I handed over my book bag and shook out my fingers, glancing around at the meeting hall with raised brows. Wow. For an abandoned hotel, this place looks swanky. Despite Nikolina's insistence that we let the building go, surrender it back to nature, she'd allowed somebody—probably my younger siblings—to pull the weeds, polish the tile, repair the single broken glass panel in the ceiling. Vines still wrapped the crumbling columns, and birds still perched in the bare windowsills, but it looked almost civilized in here now.