The Rogue Hunter's Mate [Paranormal Protection Unit 10] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read online

  Paranormal Protection Unit 10

  The Rogue Hunter's Mate

  Love can be found in the strangest of places. Little does Rogue Hunter and general bad ass Zaidu Metzger know he'll find it at the top of a tree. But that's where the little bird he's come to save ends up roosting, and she really doesn't feel like coming down either.

  Bethany Parker's life wasn't glamorous but it was going good, could be better admittedly, but it was good. Then she gets herself kidnapped by a pack of wolves who then make her run through the woods at night and get pissy at her for climbing a tree! Seriously?

  As a Hunter, Zaidu can't have a bond-mate. It's the unwritten law of their people. But the Goddess Gaia has other plans and links Bethany, sweet, innocent, and very human Bethany, to him. Then, just to make things real interesting, Bethany’s psychotic brother comes looking to play. Can they survive her brother and everything else the world is throwing their way?

  Genre: Contemporary, Paranormal, Vampires/Werewolves

  Length: 83,466 words

  THE ROGUE HUNTER’S MATE

  Paranormal Protection Unit 10

  Honor James

  EROTIC ROMANCE

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  ABOUT THE E-BOOK YOU HAVE PURCHASED: Your non-refundable purchase of this e-book allows you to only ONE LEGAL copy for your own personal reading on your own personal computer or device. You do not have resell or distribution rights without the prior written permission of both the publisher and the copyright owner of this book. This book cannot be copied in any format, sold, or otherwise transferred from your computer to another through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program, for free or for a fee, or as a prize in any contest. Such action is illegal and in violation of the U.S. Copyright Law. Distribution of this e-book, in whole or in part, online, offline, in print or in any way or any other method currently known or yet to be invented, is forbidden. If you do not want this book anymore, you must delete it from your computer.

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  A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK

  IMPRINT: Erotic Romance

  THE ROGUE HUNTER’S MATE

  Copyright © 2013 by Honor James

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-62242-551-8

  First E-book Publication: May 2013

  Cover design by Viola Estrella

  All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without express written permission.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  PUBLISHER

  Siren Publishing, Inc.

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  Letter to Readers

  Dear Readers,

  If you have purchased this copy of The Rogue Hunter’s Mate by Honor James from BookStrand.com or its official distributors, thank you. Also, thank you for not sharing your copy of this book.

  Regarding E-book Piracy

  This book is copyrighted intellectual property. No other individual or group has resale rights, auction rights, membership rights, sharing rights, or any kind of rights to sell or to give away a copy of this book.

  The author and the publisher work very hard to bring our paying readers high-quality reading entertainment.

  This is Honor James’s livelihood. It’s fair and simple. Please respect Ms. James’s right to earn a living from her work.

  Amanda Hilton, Publisher

  www.SirenPublishing.com

  www.BookStrand.com

  DEDICATION

  This book is for my sisters of choice, not blood, the women who listen to me when I begin to mutter and ramble plots and ideas. Thank you, Rachael and Wendy, for being there for me through it all and pulling me back when my mind starts to jump too far ahead. I love you, my sisters.

  THE ROGUE HUNTER’S MATE

  Paranormal Protection Unit 10

  HONOR JAMES

  Copyright © 2013

  Chapter One

  Life is the strangest thing possible. You are created by a random chance of a sperm swimming and making its way into an egg. From there it is another random sort of electronic responses that creates a division of the fertilized egg until it becomes a zygote, and from there, well from there a human being is created. So with all of this randomness that occurs from copulation to birth, what makes a person what and who they are? Is it nature? A bit of each parent blending seamlessly into one child to create the baby that grows into a child and eventually into an adult? Or is it nurture? Is it how that baby is raised that determines the type of child that it becomes, or is it the genetics that are transferred from parents to child? If it is one or the other, how would one explain the differences between twins? One being so evil, so bad that it is jailed for life where the other is innocent, giving, and pure goodness?

  Perhaps instead of it being one or the other it was both. Perhaps one is just better at hiding the monster that they truly are? Maybe that someone is you.

  Beth Parker wadded the paper up in her fist and tossed it into the wastebasket. Tears rolled down her face and she shook her head. She couldn’t be held responsible for her twin brother Brian’s monstrosity. He had been so smooth, he had been so suave that no one had ever realized just what a monster he was. Not even her. She had never once dreamed that Brian Parker was the monster he was. Even to her he had been nothing but kind. He had been a loving and caring brother, but then the truth came out and it had shattered her life.

  Taking in a deep breath, Beth closed her eyes, leaned so that her head was between her knees, and breathed out. It was hard to keep the panic attack from taking her but she would. She had five years’ worth of practice in it, after all.

  * * * *

  Five years earlier

  Beth had come home early. She normally never left school early but she had felt terrible in her psych class and instead of going on to her trig class she left school early. She could afford it. Beth was carrying a 3.986 GPA in her junior year of college, so she could afford to take a class off. Besides, she wanted to find out where in the world Brian was. Normally they met in the quad for lunch. However, he didn’t show up today and she was worried for him.

  Walking into the house, Beth dropped her messenger bag on the foyer table and flipped the lights, lights that didn’t turn on, and frowned. “Brian?” she called out and walked into the dark home, a home that had been their family home all their lives. “Bri? Where are you? Mom, are you home?” she called in the eerily quiet house.

  “Brian? Mom?” She was no longer shouting but now her voice was quiet, deadly quiet.

  “In the kitchen, sis,” Brian called.

  Beth had felt immediately better. Smiling, she placed her hand on the wall and pulled it back with a frown. “What in the world?” she asked and looked at her hand. It just happened that a ray of sunshine made it through the thick drapes when the air conditioner kicked on and Beth saw it then. Her hand was covered in blood. She looked up
, admittedly stupidly, and around and screamed. The living room was all but painted in blood. The walls, the carpet was so drenched that it made squishing sounds when she went to backpedal.

  Falling onto her ass, she started to crabwalk backward, back toward the front door, and shouted his name. “Brian! Brian! God, please answer me!” She was sobbing by now, unable to stop herself. Grabbing the foyer table, she tried to pull herself up and knocked the table over, her bag falling open, and she fumbled for her phone that fell out on the blood-soaked marble tile. She had pressed 9-1-1 and then send on her phone when she saw him.

  “Now, little sister, you weren’t supposed to come home yet.” He had a madness to his voice, a tinge of insanity.

  Beth screamed when she saw the butcher knife. It was covered in blood and he was holding…“Oh Jesus.” She started to gag. “Brian, Jesus, is that Mom’s?” Oh God, it was her mother’s arm. She screamed again. The operator on the line was trying to reassure her that units were on the way, but all Beth could see was her brother, her twin, standing there over her with a butcher knife and her mother’s arm in his hands.

  “You shouldn’t have come home, sister dear.” He used his mother’s hand and pointed toward Beth. “You were a very bad girl,” he said with a smile. “But you are my sister. You are my twin and I will protect you, always, sister dear. The others.” He gestured around the room and snorted in psychopathic laughter. “The others were complete bitches. Every single one of the whores deserved to die,” he said and looked down at her. “But not you, Bethany darling. You are pure. I’ve made sure of that. I’ve killed all of the bastards that have tried to fuck you over the years. They just simply disappeared.” He shrugged.

  She continued to scoot back. When he was distracted she reached for the door and twisted the knob, rolling backward out of the house and screaming as she did so. She continued to roll, even when Brian came out of the house and began to race for her.

  She barely heard the sirens, heard the shouts of the officers, but she couldn’t stop screaming, and then when the blade of the butcher knife caught her upper thigh she blacked out. Before she did she heard the sound of bullets, felt Brian falling beside her, but it had been too much. She welcomed the darkness.

  When she woke three days later Bethany had learned some terrible truths. First, Brian wasn’t dead but was being diagnosed as clinically insane. He had murdered and dismembered thirty-six people total, including their parents, and had begun to grind them into what he had called “humanburger,” something that instantly turned Beth into a vegetarian.

  But she had survived. The cut to her leg with the butcher knife had caused some damage but she was assured that with physical therapy she would fully recover, and she had. She had sat back and watched, testified, and listened as her brother was put into an institute for the criminally insane. It wasn’t justice. It would never be justice because he wasn’t insane. He knew everything that he did. He had planned it all so perfectly, and had only been caught because Beth had come home early from classes. No, he wasn’t insane. He was bloody brilliant and had tricked the system, tricked everyone.

  * * * *

  Today

  Beth had to shake off the vestiges of the ghosts of the past. She lived in today. She worked in the present. She couldn’t and wouldn’t allow the yesterday, the past, to cloud what she was doing now. Rising, she turned off her PC and walked into the gallery. Ensuring that all of the alarms were set on the paintings as well as the master alarm, she took her keys into her hand and headed out the back door of her gallery.

  Humming lightly under her breath she turned and faced the parking lot. Clicking the remote start on her Lexus she started to walk toward it. When she stepped on broken glass, she frowned, looked down and then up. It was only then that she realized that the streetlights had been shot out. “What the…” were the last words that she uttered before a very, very large man stepped before her. Not a word was said. Instead the last thing she saw was a fist flying toward her face.

  * * * *

  When she woke she felt the dirt under her body and twisted, shifted, and then heard them. She heard the growls. “What the?” Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness and she was shocked to be surrounded by Wolves. Wolves of every shape, size, and color. A man stepped from between two Wolves and bent down into her face. The feral look on his face made her cry out and try to back away from him, flashing back to trying to escape Brian once again.

  “You have thirty minutes. In thirty minutes the hunt begins. All you have are the clothes on your body. Sorry about the shoes, but my girl loved them, and since you two are the same size…” He shrugged. “She gets them, not you,” he added with a crooked smile. “Run, rabbit, run,” he said and made a hand gesture to the Wolves.

  She didn’t need another word. She got up on her feet and began to run. She had no idea where she was. All she knew was that it was dark and she was in the woods and she had to run or die. No choice. She was running!

  Bethany’s feet were bloody. Each step onto a rock dug deeper into her feet, but she didn’t stop running. The adrenaline had her numb to everything, everything except running. She heard them then, the howls, and jumped. “Oh God,” she cried out and twisted, turned, and looked around. She was so, so screwed!

  She then looked up. “Wolves can’t climb, right?” she asked herself and jumped for the lowest branch. Missing, she jumped again and sobbed when she heard the Wolf’s growl coming even closer. She jumped again. This time her nails snagged the branch and bits of wood embedded under her nails but she didn’t latch on. Once more. She had to do this!

  Beth jumped again, giving it everything she had because she had seen the eyes of the Wolves and heard their pants as they came closer, so either she got the branch and climbed, or she was dead. She grabbed it! Grabbing, she began to climb using her feet and toes to do so.

  Bethany climbed up as far as she possibly could, climbed until the tree thinned so much she was worried the top would snap and she would fall to her death in the middle of the Wolves. She stopped where she was and shivered in the freezing night air, the adrenaline running out, and her fear taking over. “Please, please, don’t,” she begged as she watched the Wolves snapping at the base of the tree.

  What happened next had Beth questioning her sanity. She watched as one of the smaller Wolves, a solid white one with filthy and matted fur, shuddered. Shifted. Twisted. Tilted. And turned into a human male, a young one at that. “Come the fuck down, bitch!” he yelled up at her. “You weren’t supposed to fucking climb a goddamn tree, you fucking idiot!”

  “Yeah well, I did and I’m totally staying,” Beth called down and clenched tighter to the tree. Yep, she had lost her mind. No questions about it, she had lost her ever-fucking-loving mind!

  “You will have to come down soon, you crazy fucking bitch!” He growled to her.

  “Not bloody likely!” she called down to the man, Wolf, whatever it was! And then she held on to the tree and prayed. She prayed like she had never prayed before.

  Chapter Two

  “We have trouble,” Zaidu’s boss said to him in his quiet way.

  “What sort of trouble?” he asked in return as he paid for the gas and headed outside for his bike. Digging out the keys he slotted them in and sat down astride his beast of a bike.

  “There’s been a report of a kidnapping in your area. Word coming down the wire is that it’s a pack of Rogue Wolves. It sounds like it’s Gordon’s group of thugs again,” Talon told him with a sigh.

  “Crap,” he muttered. “Hold on a sec, switching to comms.” Grabbing out his earpiece he switched the call to the comms system and stuck the piece into his ear. “Back,” he said, tugging on his helmet. “Whereabouts am I heading?” he asked, starting the engine up.

  “Six miles east of where you are, near the old logging road and Johnson’s farm,” Talon told him as he read the datapad Quincy had just handed over. “Witnesses say that it’s a Bethany Parker that was grabbed, owns the Parker G
allery over on Tenth. Trey and Tryg both were at the scene of the abduction and say it was Wolf. Lights were shot out around her car in the parking lot. Best guess is she was grabbed on her way to the vehicle. Tryg said there were a couple drops of blood, gravitational, likely a bloody nose or lip from the small amount.”

  “Sounds like Gordon to punch a woman.” The man was psychopathic on the best of days. Pulling out of the gas station he headed up the highway toward the old Johnson farm. “Anything else at the scene to tell us anything?”

  “Her purse was still there, kicked under the car likely when they decked her. No one bothered grabbing it after the fact. She must have dropped the keys as well because they were found under the car along with her purse. From the sounds of it, between three and five were there to grab her.” Passing the pad back to Q, Talon shifted in his chair. “She’s been missing for two hours now. You know Gordon’s Rogues better than us. Any idea what he’s got planned?”

  “Nothing good,” Zaidu told the man flatly. “Gordon loves getting his pack of misfits revved up. He’ll likely make her rabbit for them and let them run her to ground. Depending on her smarts and wilderness knowledge I’ll either find her alive and giving them hell or dead.” If he could find a body, that was. Wolves were pretty good at stripping down a carcass, especially a pack of Wolves with human brains in their heads.