Page 1 of Cowboy Wolf's Kiss

Prologue-Emmet

The dusty road that lay ahead of me was just another in a long line of endless paths I’d taken to nowhere permanent.

Each step stirred up the grit beneath my boots, clouds of dust swirling like memories I couldn’t shake.

Moonlit nights.Pack runs.All the howling.The snarling.The screaming.And the bloodshed.

I lifted the rucksack onto my shoulder and started walking down the darkened street.There were no cars or trucks.No people.No moon to light the way.

Hell, I couldn’t even pick up the sound of a field mouse anywhere in the vicinity.

It was like every living thing in a hundred mile radius had simply stopped.Like they were all waiting for me to go just so they could start living again.

It felt oddly fitting.After all, I was no stranger to being alone.I was a constant traveler.My route was a map of roads that led to nowhere.

My Wolf snarled and snapped, scratching the shit out of my insides, a visceral reminder of the chaos I carried within.

I had been banished yet again from another Pack.Their judgment was swift, as it was brutal.

What could I say?

My beast had a mind of its own, and it didn’t relish having to listen to idiots and their outdated traditions.

I was restless.So was my Wolf.

That dissatisfaction was as relentless as hunger.Like I was a wild thing always yearning for peace and freedom in a world of structured chaos.

I had to keep my inner animal constantly caged just to get along.But sometimes, the Wolf slipped free.

Packs had hierarchies and pecking orders, and not all of them adhered to the old standard of bowing to the mightiest of the bunch.

Modern Packs acted more like mini kingdoms where titles were inherited rather than earned.Not all of them.But the ones I’d been involved with in Arizona, Nevada, and now, Texas, sure seemed to think that was the way to do things.

My Wolf did not agree.

Neither did I.

Grrr.

I could still hear the Alpha’s voice, thick with arrogance, cutting through the air like a knife.

Banishment.

Again.

My Wolf had growled when that white-haired fool announced my fate earlier this evening.It was an instinctual warning, but they hadn’t listened.And that was their mistake.

“You don’t belong here, loser.How could you even think you did?Look at you, a worthless, untamed beast.You’re an animal,” the Alpha’s son, Flint, had said, raising his arms wide as he beckoned others to join with his taunting.

After that, there was no holding my Wolf back, and now the Alpha’s heir would bear the mark of my disdain forever.It took me ten minutes of scrubbing to get his skin out from under my nails once my claws had retracted.

The Winter Falls Pack had gotten off easy tonight.But I doubted they saw it that way.Halfway through my change, I’d been able to pull back.

The Wolfman shape was not easy to hold, but I wrestled with myself and in the end, I succeeded.Of course, the monster in me was something worse, something darker than others I’d come across.

Other Shifters seemed to live in harmony with their animal counterparts.Others still seemed to experience no disconnect between the animal and the human.

But me?Or should I say, we?

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