Southern Shifters: Lone Wolf Wanted (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Jessie Lane Page A

his wolf’s way of telling him he needed a mate. That had made him snort in distaste.
    A beautiful woman. Yeah, every man wanted one of those, someone to get lost in when you wanted to ignore the world around you. The thing was, he wasn’t territorial like the other wolves. A woman he had been intimate with minutes before could screw another guy right in front of him, and Ezrah couldn’t care less. There wasn’t an ounce of jealousy in his body. So why in the world would his wolf decide they needed someone, a mate, now?
    That was exactly why he didn’t understand Pearl’s declaration that his wolf wanted a mate.
    It was his wolf, goddammit! Didn’t the ol’ biddy realize he knew what the animal inside of him needed?
    Right now, his wolf was itchy and restless. The beast wanted a woman to sink into. Ezrah the man wanted that as well. Subsequently, as the wind whipped past him, he vigilantly watched the road ahead of him with his enhanced shifter vision, waiting for somewhere he could park his machine, get a beer, and grab a woman. If he was lucky, that place wouldn’t have any alpha wannabe assholes to screw that up for him.
    The pack he had been born into and raised on the outskirts of didn’t understand why he couldn’t act like a normal wolf. Instead of trying, they just blamed the mixed sources of blood running through his veins.
    His great-grandmother Pearl was a witch who fell for one of the pack’s wayward wolves, an infamous western outlaw back in the late 1800s named Cherokee Bill. The pack had barely tolerated Pearl and Bill’s son out of pack loyalty.
    As if being half witch with no powers and half wolf with a reluctant pack behind him wasn’t enough, Pearl’s son had also had to deal with the prejudice over his skin color. Back then, it was still taboo for a white woman to tie herself to an African-American man or a Native American man. Cherokee Bill had been both. As a result, his son ended up being much like his father, a wayward wolf who caused a lot of trouble.
    His difficulties were only passed on to his own son, Ezrah’s father, who fathered Ezrah with a human woman. Determined that her grandson would not grow up to be like both his father and grandfather before him, Pearl had cast whatever spell it was that kept her alive to this day.
    The woman had backbone and attitude. Ezrah didn’t mind the feistiness; he just wished she would turn it on somebody else.
    After rounding a curve, he spotted neon lights in the distance through the pine trees. The closer he came to it, the clearer those lights became. Keen eyes made out the pattern that spelled out a name: Dark Moon. Slowing his speed, Ezrah prayed the joint had cold beer and a woman strong enough to handle him for the night. It was past time to let off some steam.
    ~~~
    Chrissy Leroy sat at the Dark Moon’s bar in a seriously foul, totally rotten mood.
    As a longtime resident of the neutral zone in Deals Gap, the locals knew to give her a wide berth when she was so damn cranky. “Why was she so ornery?” one might ask. Because it seemed like all the prime males in the area were being mated off one by one, leaving nobody behind for her.
    Not that she wanted a mate.
    Oh, hell no!
    No, Chrissy wanted a mate about as much as she wanted to be de-clawed like a domestic house cat. What she did want, though, was sex, and lots of it. Women had needs, too, dammit. Especially a shifter female such as herself. Her cat had a high sex drive. The problem was, there was no one around she wanted to scratch that particular itch with.
    The owner of this roadhouse and the leader of this territory, Bhric, was a tall, delicious drink of water. The problem was, he avoided her like the plague every time she came around, and she had no idea why. And that seriously sucked since he was one of the last males left who wasn’t mated that she wouldn’t mind getting frisky with. You would think the man would be open to the idea of willing pussy—pun intended.
    His