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  WOLF'S CHOICE

  Laura Taylor

  Copyright 2016 Laura Taylor

  All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition

  Print edition also available via online retailers.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover design by Linda Gee

  https://www.facebook.com/artbymeisarn/

  Cover images used under licence from Shutterstock.com

  ALSO BY LAURA TAYLOR

  THE HOUSE OF SIRIUS

  Book 1: Wolf’s Blood

  Book 2: Wolf’s Cage

  Book 4 coming soon

  DEDICATION

  To Linda.

  You (and Cassie) are a true inspiration. And you continue to exceed all my expectations with the gorgeous cover art. May your days be bright and your nights shine with the light of a million stars.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you Narinder, for making sure that I never stop learning. The English language is strange, beautiful, frustrating and unexpected, and will continue to baffle me for years to come.

  Thank you Ellen, for all your help with the psychology and for taking the time to talk even when you were thousands of miles away.

  Thank you Fabien, for your insights into the characters and for always making me laugh.

  WARNING:

  This novel contains strong references to situations involving childhood sexual abuse which may be disturbing for some readers. Reader discretion is advised.

  SHIFTERS OF THE LAKES DISTRICT DEN

  EIGHT YEARS AGO

  PART ONE

  EIGHT YEARS AGO

  CHAPTER ONE

  October 1st

  Tansy Woodburn arrived at her front door and took a deep breath. She felt sick, as she always did when she came home, but she straightened her shoulders, plastered a carefully neutral expression on her face, and opened the door.

  Her father was in the living room, and he glanced up from the newspaper he was reading. “Good afternoon, sweetheart. How was school?”

  “It was very good,” she replied politely. “How was your day?” Her father was on the local county council, an important man in the community, and Tansy had been drilled since she was a young girl on the need for impeccable manners, so as not to embarrass him in even the most insignificant of social settings.

  “The usual. Meetings, calls from the media, filing a lot of reports.” He took her hand and tugged her down to kiss her cheek as she passed. “There’s a leg of lamb in the fridge. Go and put dinner in the oven, and then change out of your uniform. You’ll have time to do your homework before they arrive.”

  Tansy’s mother had died of breast cancer when Tansy was just five years old, and her father wasn’t well – an ongoing complaint about his heart that left him breathless, along with regular attacks of arthritis – so it had become Tansy’s job to do the cooking. And the laundry, and the vacuuming, along with trying to keep up with her school work. She’d become good at juggling the demands of being a full time student as well as a full time housekeeper. But for all her skills in the kitchen, it was a rare day that she got to enjoy much of her cooking. A proper young lady should be thin, her father frequently reminded her, and it wasn’t unusual for him to wait until she had served herself and then swiftly remove half the food from her plate. Tansy had long ago stopped protesting, seeing that her objections were an exercise in futility. If her father wanted her thin, then thin she would be. Her father always got his way in the end.

  She put the lamb in a roasting tray, prepared potatoes, carrots and pumpkin to go with it, and set the gravy in a saucepan, ready to be heated up closer to the meal. Then she went to her room to get ready for their dinner guests.

  Her homework was a trifling thing, a few simple maths equations, a short report to write on an article for history, and she was finished in under half an hour. Knowing she had a little time spare, she glanced longingly at her computer, the one she had bought herself by saving up her weekly allowance for as long as she could remember… but then she shook her head. If she started up with her programming now, she’d lose track of time and end up being late for dinner.

  Instead, she went to the wardrobe and picked out an elegant dress in light blue. It had long sleeves, as autumn was well underway and the weather was cooling down, but a skirt that ended just below her knees. She chose black shoes, but didn’t put on any tights. Made sure she was wearing clean underwear. And stood in front of the mirror, staring at herself critically. She looked beautiful, the image of the perfect, poised daughter of a respected businessman.

  She wanted to throw up.

  Instead, she blanked her mind, deliberately calming the shaking in her hands, and turned her attention to her hair. It was light brown, long and straight, and she’d received plenty of compliments about how pretty it was.

  Once, several years ago, she’d hacked it all off with nail scissors. Her father’s anger had been terrible, and his punishment severe.

  And after the bruises had faded, he’d taken away all her fantasy books, so she had nothing to read, and forbidden her from using his computer – she hadn’t had one of her own then – and had deleted all of her files. At that time, she’d just discovered programming, fascinated by the intricacies of the various languages and using her spare time to write a few rudimentary programs of her own, and the loss had been heartbreaking.

  For all that she hated her hair, she hadn’t been willing to risk her father’s anger again, and so it had been left to grow. Nonetheless, she pulled it back from her face now and twisted it around, securing it with a clip. Elegant, but hidden. It would have to do. Hoping for the best, she headed for the living room.

  Her father was watching the early news, his friends due to arrive in around fifteen minutes, and he looked up as she came in.

  “You look very pretty,” he said warmly. But then he stood up and came over to her, reached out and undid the clip from her hair, letting the long strands fall about her shoulders. “You know I like it better this way,” he said, running a few silken strands through his fingers. “You wouldn’t want to disappoint me, now would you?”

  “No, sir,” Tansy replied robotically.

  “Good girl. Now go and set the table. I want everything to be perfect when they arrive.”

  Two hours later, Tansy was clearing the table, the meal over, her father’s friends accepting his offer of a liqueur as they migrated into the living room. The meal had been uneventful, several compliments directed her way for the food, and more for how pretty she looked. The men were all in their fifties, longtime business associates of her father, as well as friends on a more personal level. Tansy had been careful as to how much she’d put on her plate. Her father wouldn’t say anything tonight, not in front of their guests, but if he felt she’d eaten too much, then tomorrow he might well prevent her from eating dinner at all, not willing that she should put on any weight to mar her flawless figure. She stacked the dishwasher carefully, then obeyed her father’s call to join them in the living room.

  There was a spare seat on the sofa next to Robert, a man with grey hair and wrinkles, a double chin sagging beneath his jaw, and Tansy sat down next to him, a hollow smile attached to her face. Her mind was already winging its way far from here, lost in fantasies of unicorns and dragons, great shining beasts that let her ride on thei
r broad backs, and of sharp-toothed wolves and lions who slew vicious trolls and goblins.

  Robert smiled at her. “You look extremely pretty tonight,” he said, a hint of huskiness in his voice, and if Tansy had been paying attention, she would have shuddered at the tone. He rested his hand on her knee, and Tansy glanced around, dimly aware of the other men looking on, eager expressions on their faces, her father watching silently from the second sofa. Robert slid his hand higher, taking the edge of her skirt with it, exposing her knee, then her thigh to his view. “The prettiest girl I know…”

  Tansy felt weak, knew there was no point in resisting, knew there was no escape for her from this cold, dark reality. Then Robert’s hand slid higher still, and she knew the horrors of the night were only just beginning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  In the shape shifters’ Den in the Lakes District in northern England, the stomping of heavy, booted feet could be heard as Caroline, one of the few females on the estate, strode across the foyer.

  Hurried footsteps came after her, along with muttered curses as Baron, the Den’s alpha, tried to keep up. He finally caught up with her as she stalked into the library, ignoring his demands that she turn around and face him.

  “What the hell is your problem?” Baron demanded, marching into the library and slamming the door behind him.

  “This house is run by a misogynist, that’s my problem,” Caroline spat, glaring at him from across the room.

  “Misogynist? What the fuck have I done now?”

  “Brought yet another stray in here. More new recruits, more time and energy spent training people you’ve scraped out of the gutter-”

  “Eric has plenty of skills that could benefit this Den,” Baron interrupted, more than willing to defend the estate’s newest member. “He’s a plumber, he knows a few things about electrical circuits, he can repair anything from a washing machine, to a lawnmower, to a car, and he’s-”

  “He’s a MAN!”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been alpha for three years. And you’ve brought in seven new recruits, and every single one of them has been male. We only have three women in this Den-”

  “Four.”

  “Oh, like Anna really counts. She’s in Italy more often than she’s here-”

  “She is your alpha female!”

  “And she doesn’t do anything to actually help this Den. But that’s beside the point. We’re desperately short of women, and you’re doing nothing to fix that problem.”

  “New recruits are difficult to find at the best of times. We have very strict rules about who we can bring in-”

  “But that hasn’t stopped you finding male after male who fits the bill. You haven’t come up with a single fucking female who you’ve considered to be even halfway suitable.”

  Baron opened his mouth to bite out a sharp retort… but then he paused. Okay, so maybe Caroline had a point. Between finding new recruits, training them to adhere to the Den’s rules and accept their new lives as wolf shape shifters, and fending off the Council, who still held serious reservations about the validity of this Den, Baron had been completely snowed under. And she was right about the gender imbalance. Four women to twelve men was leaning more than a little heavily to one side.

  But maybe the solution to the problem was simpler than he had imagined, Baron realised as he regarded the woman glaring at him with her arms folded. Caroline was not a particularly high ranking wolf, sitting smack in the middle of the pecking order of the Den, and she was currently the lowest ranking female… but she was also intelligent, resourceful, and persistent to an almost ridiculous degree.

  “Okay,” he said slowly, weighing up the risks versus the benefits of the idea that had just occurred to him. “You want women in this Den? Then how about I give you permission to go find some?”

  “What?” Caroline was looking at him like he was speaking in Russian.

  “Team up with Simon. He’s got access to a hundred or more databases and you can search for potential candidates in schools, hospitals, prisons, homeless shelters… anywhere you think suitable people might be lurking. Put a list together and bring it to me. And if any of the women are suitable, we’ll see about recruiting them.”

  Caroline looked rather startled at the idea. “You want me to find our next recruit?”

  “Just a list of potential candidates,” Baron emphasised. “Don’t contact anyone directly until I’ve checked them out.”

  He half expected her to swear at him and storm out of the room, with a flurry of accusations that he was making her do his job for him. But then again…

  “Okay,” Caroline said, expression resolute. “Challenge accepted. Hold onto your hat, Baron. Because this Den’s about to get a whole lot more interesting.”

  October 4th

  Caroline marched into the Den’s IT office where Baron was seated at a computer and slammed a sheet of paper down in front of him. “You asked for a list. Here’s a list.”

  Baron glanced up at her with an exasperated look. “Ever heard of knocking?”

  Caroline shrugged. “No.”

  He rolled his eyes, but picked up the paper nonetheless. “Where did you find these?”

  “It’s a list of inmates soon to be released from jail. Minor crimes, no serial killers or genuine crazies. And none of them have siblings or parents who might come looking for them. Simon hacked the database for me. He’s created a file with the background on each of the women.” Simon was the Den’s IT expert, a capable hacker, though there was still the odd system he struggled to get into, but most of the ones they needed to access were simple enough to crack.

  Baron waited while Caroline reached over his shoulder and pulled up the file, and then took a seat beside him. “This one has kids,” he said, dismissing the first woman on the list as he scrolled through the file. “This one is married. This one has kids.”

  “One kid, whom she hasn’t seen since he was born. His father has sole custody.”

  “But there’s still the risk she’ll decide she wants to see him one day, and that creates ties and complications that we don’t need to be dealing with. This one’s a drug addict,” he went on, turning back to the list. “Drug addict. Another drug addict.”

  “What’s wrong with drug addicts?” Caroline asked, as he rejected half her list on a whim.

  Baron gave her a disparaging look. “Can you imagine what would happen if a shape shifter got high? Public exposure, shifting in front of civilians, chaos, mayhem… we don’t recruit drug addicts,” he repeated firmly, then turned back to the list. “This one stabbed her husband to death – too violent.”

  “Silas killed a hundred people when he was fighting in Afghanistan.”

  “He was in the military. Killing people was his job,” Baron corrected her. “Which is what he’s doing for us now. There was nothing personal about it. People who kill for personal revenge are generally too unstable to unleash our kind of power on. Alcoholic,” he went on, dismissing more women from the list. “Drug addict. This one dropped out of high school and became a prostitute. No.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Raniesha used to be a prostitute.”

  “She was a prostitute with a business diploma. We need people with some measure of intelligence and education, not just bums on seats.”

  “Cohen was homeless when we recruited him. Not exactly a shining example of humanity’s best and brightest.”

  “Just because he was homeless doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. He completed high school and did the first year of an engineering degree before we found him.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Caroline yelled at him, thrusting her chair back with such force that it fell over. She stalked across the room and punched the wall. “You’re being deliberately difficult. You’re willing to recruit all manner of pond scum so long as they’re male, but one little defect in a woman, and you blacklist her. This is bullshit!”

  “So keep looking,” Baron said calmly. “Make me a new list.”
>
  Caroline snarled at him. But then she picked up the sheet of paper and a pen. “Okay, then could I have a little more detail on what I’m looking for? So maybe next time you won’t just throw my whole list out the window.”

  “Someone with the ability to accept a life of fantasy and mythology,” Baron stated patiently. “Someone who doesn’t have – or want – children. No drugs, no crazy violence, reasonable intelligence, non-suicidal, minimal family or social connections. Don’t limit yourself to ex-cons,” he added, trying to be helpful. “Try terminally ill patients looking for a miracle. Homeless people. No battered wives,” he added as an afterthought. “We need people who will fight back, not just stand there and take it. And yes, if you want to call me a bastard for that one, go right ahead. Antisocial teenagers are another good bet.”

  “Fine,” Caroline said as she finished writing. “I’m going to find someone,” she said, almost defiantly. But to her surprise, Baron’s expression softened ever so slightly.

  “I hope you do,” he said seriously. “If nothing else, we’re going to need more women to maintain the bloodlines.”

  The comment blackened Caroline’s mood even more. “Oh, well at least we’re good for something,” she scoffed. “Because it would be too generous for you to just want some women around for the sake of it. Us being half the human population, and all. You may as well just reduce us to good breeding stock, a pretty possession to be bought and sold. You fucking sexist pig.”