Wicked Cowboy Wolf Read online

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  After finishing the ceremony, Rogue headed out to the pasture. He’d directed Murtagh and Sterling to set up the details of the meeting with his informant that evening, so he spent most of the day running the tedder, lost in thought as the sun beat down on his bare back and left a thick sheen of sweat from a hard day’s work in its wake.

  The sunset painted hues of orange and magenta over the blue-ridge mountain skyline as he rode in that night. He was used to working until past sundown, but considering he and Mae had a few hours of driving before they reached their destination, they needed to head out early.

  Rogue quartered Bee in the stables before taking the truck back to the house. Once inside, he searched for Mae. She’d need to be ready to leave in less than an hour, and Rogue had a feeling she would want to rock Tucker to sleep or feed him a bottle or something else equally as endearing as it was odd, at least to a rancher.

  As he passed the open doors of the library, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Will perched in the windowsill. The boy had been absent at his sister’s scheduled horse wedding this morning, and while the eight-year-old was often quick to make his displeasure of such silliness known, he usually attended anyway. Will wasn’t the type to do something simply to appease his little sister, and Rogue suspected the protests were only meant to save face and make him appear tougher. He had a sneaking suspicion that deep down, Will found the ceremonies as amusing as his siblings did—at least the parts where Rogue was forced to make a fool of himself.

  Rogue moved to step inside to ask Will what had kept him preoccupied, but as Rogue stepped to where Will came farther into view, he realized the boy wasn’t alone. Mae sat on the windowsill across from him, her legs tucked up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them as she mirrored Will’s position.

  Rogue stepped back, his wolf senses attuned as he listened in.

  “You weren’t at Martha and Ollie’s wedding ceremony. Where were you?” Mae asked.

  Will shook his head, refusing to look at her. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Rogue recognized that dismissive statement all too well from his own childhood.

  “It matters to me,” Mae said. “I enjoyed it.”

  She smiled and a part of Rogue hoped it was at the thought of him.

  A memory of the two of them together as children shook him. All the other Grey Wolf pups had decided to venture out into the woods to build a campfire, and when their mothers had heard, they’d packed them all a picnic with sandwiches and fruit, complete with bags full of marshmallows with graham crackers and little chocolate bits for dessert.

  “Why didn’t you come along?” Mae had asked him when she and the other kids had returned that evening.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he answered.

  “It matters to me,” she said. “I wanted you to come.”

  In that moment, she’d made him feel as though he mattered—to her at least—and that had been more than enough. She’d seen past the hurt, the anger, to what had really been there: the pain of the fact that he was the only Grey Wolf child who didn’t have a mother to dote on him. His mother had passed several months earlier. Cancer. An extreme rarity among those of their kind who had an imbalance in the human side of their DNA.

  “As peacefully as she could have gone,” the adults of the pack had loved to say.

  As if that somehow made it easier for him, for his father.

  “Don’t be stupid. Why would it matter to you if I were there?” Will snapped. “You barely know me.”

  “True,” Mae admitted. “But part of being friends is getting to know someone. So while I may not know you yet, I’d like to.” She gave a soft smile as Will lifted his head from where it rested atop his knees.

  Rogue turned his gaze from Mae to Will, and the pain he saw there was so familiar, it took everything in him not to collapse with the weight of his own grief. He knew that look. The look of a scared and angry little boy who pushed others away when all he wanted was for someone, anyone to draw him close. He knew that look, because in many ways, after twenty years apart from the girl who’d made him whole again, when he looked at his own reflection, he was still that same angry little boy, fighting for someone to see him.

  She’d seen him. Years ago. She always had. Just as she saw Will now.

  Maeve Grey might be a high-maintenance princess by birth, but in all the ways that counted, she was also an angel. An angel who cast out the darkness wherever she went, and though over the years, he might have thought he’d lost her to that privileged Grey Wolf princess identity, deep down, she was still the same sweet girl. She still had such a capacity for kindness and love, even for him.

  She made him feel as if he deserved it.

  And fuck, he knew with every fiber of his being that he didn’t.

  “You…you want to be my friend?” Will asked in disbelief. “But I was just mean to you. I called you stupid.”

  Mae nodded. “That’s true too. But sometimes I find the wolves with the hardest exteriors have the softest insides.”

  “Not Rogue,” Will countered.

  Rogue stiffened.

  “I’d have to disagree with you,” Mae replied. “I think, like you, he works hard to push people away, but on the inside, he’s really all soft and gushy.”

  Gushy?

  Rogue struggled to reconcile the darkness of his past and present, the blood that had coated his hands hundreds of times over, with the softness of the word gushy, but he couldn’t envision it. Had anyone else called him that, he would have shifted into wolf form and used his canines to tear them to shreds for daring to suggest he was weak.

  But that was what Mae did to a man.

  She could take even the meanest of feral alpha wolves and make them her friend.

  Will stared out the window, gazing over the mountains in the distance so he didn’t have to look at Mae. “I didn’t come to Hope’s ceremony, because…” His lower lip quivered in an unusual display of vulnerability. “Today would have been our mother’s birthday, and I…I’m the only one of us old enough to remember it.”

  Tears poured down his small cheeks, despite how he fought to swipe them away.

  “I didn’t want to upset Hope and Noah. They don’t remember the details like I do, so I…so I’ve been here, thinking about her. By myself. Wishing she were here,” he sobbed.

  He collapsed into Mae, and she caught him in her arms, drawing him against her as he shook with the weight of his grief.

  Even Rogue had to swallow down the massive lump that now resided in his throat.

  “I miss her. I miss her so much,” Will sobbed as Mae gently stroked his hair.

  Mae didn’t bother to tell him it was okay, that it would be all right, or that she was sorry. She didn’t do any number of things a typical person would do. But Rogue wasn’t surprised, because that was one of the things about Maeve Grey—one of the many beautiful, wonderful, odd, exquisite things about her. She knew how to sit with someone else’s pain. She took it on as her own without judgment, pity, or worthless platitudes that only added fresh salt to open wounds. She simply sat there with a man, with the horrible hurt that constricted his chest…

  And understood.

  She always understood, because she saw him. The real him. The one who existed beneath all the bullshit.

  Rogue stood there for a long time, watching as Mae comforted Will until the boy had cried so thoroughly, he fell asleep in her arms as if he were a babe again.

  When Rogue was certain he wasn’t disturbing him and that he wouldn’t rob the boy of what little dignity he had left, Rogue went to her. He lifted Will from where he was curled again Mae’s chest and carried the boy up to his room. When he returned, Mae was still waiting there, her own eyes speckled with tears from absorbing the weight of the little boy’s pain.

  “It’s time to go save your pack,
” Rogue said.

  Mae stood and followed him out of the library, not bothering to reply—a fact for which Rogue was grateful because he knew that had she called him Rogue in that moment, he wouldn’t have had the strength to keep up the lie.

  Chapter 14

  The Midnight Coyote Saloon reeked of smoke and whiskey. The sounds of guitar-laden country music thumped through the surround system, crooning a tune about a long-lost pair of lovers as Rogue and Mae stepped inside. Dim drop-hat lights cloaked the bar in shadow, leaving plenty to the imagination, and peanut shells littered the floor, crunching beneath the heels of their boots. The open space showcased an array of booths and tables all centered around an old wooden bar top. From appearance, this was little more than a hole-in-the-wall western bar, but Rogue knew better.

  The Midnight Coyote Saloon played host to some of the supernatural world’s most dangerous clientele. The previous incarnation of the bar, which had resided in downtown Billings, had been raided nearly a year ago by the Execution Underground, leaving the bar and its owner out of business. Rogue had personally offered the proprietor, a notorious warlock known as Boss, an interest-free loan to reopen in a location of his choosing. In exchange for his generosity, Rogue expected information about the bar’s patrons.

  If there was anyone who kept tabs on the underbelly of the supernatural world, it was Boss, and thus far, the warlock bar owner’s debt to Rogue had paid off in spades.

  Rogue gripped Mae’s arm as he nodded toward a darkened booth in the far corner of the bar where Boss would be waiting for them.

  “Stay close,” he warned. “And let me do the talking.”

  “What’s the point of being partners then?” Mae whispered back.

  He leaned in, careful none of the other clientele could hear them. Even beneath the heavy music, any shifter’s ears could be attuned. “You’re here, aren’t you? Risking your life for some silly need for adventure. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  She glared at him. “I want to save my pack.”

  “And you will,” he nodded. “But in this case, you’ll do so by keeping your mouth shut.”

  She scowled at him as they headed toward the booth.

  But it wasn’t Boss who waited for them. Instead, another cowboy sat in his place.

  Rogue immediately bristled. “Where’s Boss?” he asked the other man.

  The cowboy tipped his Stetson. “Boss left me in charge of the bar for now. I’m his spokesman.”

  Rogue scowled. Which meant that the human hunters were on Boss’s trail again, and he’d gone deep underground to avoid detection.

  The human hunters were relentless in their pursuit of the warlock, since he was privy to even more supernatural secrets than Rogue himself. To get intel on any kind of supernatural—shifter or otherwise—Boss was the man to speak to.

  Which also meant this young cowboy was no more than the bar manager standing in during Boss’s absence. From the scent of him, he was a shifter, but not a wolf. Cougar perhaps? Rogue fought down a displeased grumble. He fucking hated dealing with the large cat shifters. They were always a pain in his ass—prideful and aloof pussies that they were.

  “Boss gave me the intel you need,” the cougar reassured him.

  Reluctantly, Rogue slid into the booth and Mae followed suit.

  “You brought a she-wolf with you.” The cougar’s purr rumbled from across the table.

  Rogue refused to look toward Mae, hoping the cougar shifter would do the same. “She’s none of your concern.”

  “Any little she-wolf who comes into Boss’s bar with a wolf like you is my concern.” The cougar leaned forward. The drop-hat light above the table and the neon-blue Coors sign next to him illuminated his face. He grinned, flashing cat eyes as he assessed them both. The thin catlike slits of his irises made his stare unsettling.

  And Rogue didn’t care for it one bit. His wolf stirred inside him, eager to react.

  “Tell me. What’s your name, little she-wolf?” The cougar searched her face.

  Mae glanced toward Rogue but didn’t answer. Whoever this cougar was, Rogue didn’t care for his lack of deference. Clearly, Boss hadn’t told him exactly who he’d be dealing with. All this shifter likely knew was that Rogue was powerful and wealthy, like all of Boss’s clientele. Rogue didn’t make it a habit to disclose his identity, so Boss had likely kept that information close, confidential and discreet, the behavior he was known for—and if Boss had in fact disclosed who Rogue was to this cougar shifter, well, it made this cat a fool with a death wish.

  It’d been a mistake to bring Mae here, to indulge her need to be involved. This was no place for a princess like her. Rogue had known that from the start. While his and Boss’s relationship was complicated, he trusted the warlock. But he didn’t trust this appointed lackey as far as he could throw him.

  “Let’s get to business,” Rogue said, drawing the cougar’s attention back toward him. “Boss tasked you with relaying to me.”

  The cougar leaned into the booth seat, giving a slow nod. “He did.”

  “And?” Rogue prompted.

  The cowboy cougar shrugged a single shoulder. “Depends on what you’re willing to pay for it.”

  Rogue’s hands clenched into fists, the champion rings he wore flashing. It’d been years since he’d fought his way to the top, earning his reputation with the blood spilled by his bare knuckles, but he wouldn’t allow this imbecile to forget it.

  Beneath the shadows of the old western bar top, buried deep in the basement, the Midnight Coyote Saloon boasted an underground fighting ring that allowed its participants to deal in supernatural favors. The fights were often to the death and the rewards just as steep. There were no rules. Just bloodshed and gambling.

  Years ago, it was in the Midnight Coyote’s ring that Rogue had clawed his way out of hell, transforming himself from a nameless rogue wolf into the monster he was now. Stripped of his pack and with nothing to lose, rage had fueled him, making him more ruthless, more fearless than any other—a legend. It had been the beginning of cementing his reputation as he built his empire. One favor, one debt won at a time. Boss knew the monster Rogue was, because he’d witnessed Rogue’s creation. It’d been Boss who’d first paid him to fight in order to draw a crowd, though he’d been barely a man, and the warlock had never forgotten it.

  Small price to pay, Rogue thought.

  But apparently, the hired help didn’t know he was sealing his own death wish. If Rogue didn’t kill him first, Boss would in due time. The warlock didn’t tolerate shenanigans, particularly when it came to his supernatural clientele.

  Rogue leaned forward into the light of the table. “Need I remind you of my and your employer’s current arrangement?” The threat that laced his tone was clear.

  The cougar sneered. “I’m aware.”

  Rogue’s jaw clenched. He didn’t have time for this shifter’s ill-timed games.

  Rogue tried not to notice Mae in his peripheral vision, but he did. She was glancing between them, the rise and fall of her chest rapid. She sensed the underlying tension. Had she not been beside him, Rogue would have reached across the table and made good on his threats. But he’d keep this civil. For her.

  “Give me the location, and I’ll pay you whatever you want.” Rogue forced his voice to remain level. There was no other choice. If not them, this idiot would find another buyer for Boss’s information. If he didn’t have one already, it would only be a matter of time before the whole of the supernatural world would be knocking down Boss’s door, and with Boss underground, they’d be dealing with this imbecile. Any shifter in their right mind would want this information, and Rogue had more than enough resources, monetary or otherwise. All Boss’s clientele did. He’d pay whatever it took.

  And the cougar damn well knew it.

  What he didn’t know was he would also be buried six feet under by
sunrise for ever daring to extort Rogue. Hearing about it from Rogue, Boss wouldn’t blink twice over the transgression. All he’d need to do would be to put the word out on the street.

  “Name your price,” Rogue growled.

  The cougar grinned. “I owe a debt to Boss. If I don’t pay it, the old warlock will see me dead. I want my debt to Boss erased. Pay however much he asks for.”

  So that was this moron’s motivation for this little extortion suicide venture? Rogue almost felt sorry for the bastard. He’d caught himself between two powerful supernatural entities, and apparently, his gamble was that he was less likely to die at Rogue’s hands.

  He’d bet wrong.

  “Done.” Rogue didn’t so much as hesitate. He’d pay whatever price to see this scumbag gone.

  The cougar shook his head. “I’m not finished.”

  Of course he wasn’t. Rogue leaned back in his seat, waiting. “Go on.”

  “I want an open-ended favor.” The cougar leaned into the light again, his eyes twinkling with greed.

  Mae stiffened. An open-ended favor from a wolf like him was a hefty price tag. She placed a hand on Rogue’s arm, shaking her head. “It’s not worth it,” she whispered. “We’ll find another way.”

  But she didn’t understand. It was worth it. To him, any price was worth it. This was for rogue wolves everywhere if he played his cards right and, most importantly, for her. She might have been a spitfire who reveled in throwing wrenches into his plans, but he would do anything, pay anything, say anything, if only it kept her safe.

  Not to mention, he didn’t intend to allow this fool to live long enough to make good on his promises.

  Rogue turned away from Mae, meeting the cougar’s unsettling gaze. “You’ll have your favor. Now, I want mine.”

  The cowboy’s grin widened. He clapped his hands together, more than a little bit pleased with himself. He ought to be, considering he’d erased what was likely over a million dollars in debt and now had a wolf like Rogue in his pocket in a single sitting—or so he thought.