Undeniable Craving by Marisa Chenery

Chapter One
     
    Spring had
finally come to Canyon Creek. It’d been a long winter, and Gage was more than
happy to see the back of it. As a trapper, the cold months were his busiest.
That was when he made his money for the rest of the year. As did the rest of his
family.
    Now that the
snow had melted, Gage was on the road headed to Great Falls, a city in Montana
that was about two hours away from his log cabin. This year he’d volunteered to
make the long trip with all his family’s pelts to sell them to the fur buyer.
They were piled in the back of his SUV.
    There was
another reason he’d decided he’d make the trip to Great Falls alone. He was a
wolf shifter, a wolf who had the ability to take on human form. He was also
thirty years old, the age when the males of his kind became mate branded. It
was the stage in their lives when they had to become mated or lose their
humanity. They had three weeks, and the countdown started as soon as the brand
appeared on their skin.
    Gage’s two older
brothers, Kiel and Cyrus, had already been marked and had found their mates. Since
Gage was part of a litter of six of all boys, and the third in birth order,
he’d been the next in line to be branded. His had appeared two weeks before.
His time was running out, and he was nowhere close to finding the one woman who
was meant to be his.
    It wasn’t as if
he hadn’t tried to find her, because he had. Gage had searched in all the
places close to home, and even in Helena, a city thirty minutes away from
Canyon Creek. He’d even gone to the two wolf shifter packs in the area, even
though he’d wished the one meant for him was human just like his two older brothers’
mates. At the rate he was going, he didn’t care if it was a female of his kind
who set off the reaction that would declare her as his.
    He glanced down
at his crotch and scowled. With the mate brand appearing on his neck where it
met his shoulder, it kept him in a state where the need to find his mate and
join his body with hers was almost too hard to ignore. His libido was at an
all-time high, but there was nothing he could do about it until he met his
female. His cock no longer worked, and would remain in that condition until he
caught the scent of his mate. Right now his dick was only good for taking a
piss.
    Gage reached up
and touched the mate brand, something he tended to do a lot. It was all in
black with intricate Celtic-styled knot work in a circular design that
surrounded a pair of wolves that stood and faced each other with their heads
thrown back on a howl.
    Once he claimed
his mate, the black knot work would change color, taking on the jewel tones of
reds, blues and greens. The same marking would appear on his woman in the exact
same place on her body.
    He pushed the thoughts
of finding his mate away as he finally entered the outskirts of Great Falls.
Gage had a job to do, and he couldn’t let himself get distracted. There were
quite a lot of pelts he had to sell. He knew the buyer wouldn’t rip him off,
but he liked to make sure nothing was overlooked.
    Gage pulled into
the parking lot at the fur buyer and parked close to the entrance to the
building. After he shut off the engine, he headed inside. He stopped in the
doorway and looked across the open space toward the counter at the opposite
end. The woman who stood behind it looked in his direction.
    “Hey, Lynne. I
have a load of pelts in the back of my SUV. Do want me to bring them in now?”
    She nodded.
“Sure.”
    Gage went back
out to his vehicle and took out a couple large plastic bags that held some of his
family’s pelts. He made a number of trips to bring them all inside. Once he
carried in the last one, he headed over to where Lynne had already started the
job of inspecting the furs.
    “This is it,” he
said and placed the bag on the floor next to the others.
    “Okay.”
    He focused his
gaze on Lynne. He and his family had been dealing with this same fur buyer for
several years, and