Howled Promises (Cider Falls Shifters Book 2) Read online

  Howled Promises

  Cider Falls Shifters Book Two

  By R. E. Butler

  Copyright 2021, R. E. Butler

  Howled Promises (Cider Falls Shifters Book Two)

  By: R. E. Butler

  License Notes

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Cover by CT Cover Designs

  This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locations is coincidental.

  Disclaimer: The material in this book is for mature audiences only and contains graphic sexual content and is intended for those older than the age of 18 only.

  * * *

  Edited by Sara Dawn Johnson

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  Thanks to Joyce, Shelley, and Ann for beta-reading.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Coming Next from R. E. Butler

  Contact the Author

  Other Books by R. E.

  Double Promises (Cider Falls Shifters Book Three)

  Howled Promises (Cider Falls Shifters Book Two)

  By R. E. Butler

  Timber wolf shifter Rehlik has been the alpha of Cider Falls for five years, ever since he was ousted from his position as pack alpha. He created Cider Falls to be a haven for any and all purebred shifters, hybrids, supernatural creatures, and humans to live and work in peace. He’s successfully keeping the small town together with the help of his second-in-command, but he secretly longs for his truemate.

  Red fox-polar bear hybrid Weylyn has spent her entire life on the outside looking in. As a hybrid, she’s not welcome to participate in her red fox group’s activities because while her body is that of a red fox, her fur is snow-white like her polar bear father. She’s immediately exiled when the alpha steps down and hands the reins to his son. When she arrives in Cider Falls, hurt and alone, the last thing she wants to do is fall in love.

  The problem? Rehlik didn’t get the memo.

  Chapter One

  Rehlik, timber wolf shifter and owner of the Cider Falls bar Brewz, rapped his knuckles on the worn counter and waited for everyone to settle down. When it was quiet, he looked at the group he’d called together for the monthly meeting of the town’s business owners and cleared his throat.

  “Let’s get this meeting started so we can all get back to our lives,” he said.

  There was a chorus of “hear, hear” from everyone.

  “Last month we discussed funding from the alliance to hire another security officer,” he said. “The alliance approved the request for funding, so we’ll be able to hire another person to help keep our town safe.”

  “Any word on who the hell is causing problems at the border?” Constantine, the owner of the town’s diner, asked.

  Rehlik looked to Weston, head of the town’s security force, and the big male cleared his throat. “Not officially. Unofficially, we’re catching all kinds of crazy scents along the border, so we believe that whoever is messing around there is using extracts to mask their scent.”

  Rehlik stifled an irritated sigh. As a town for the misfits of the supernatural world, they were sometimes targeted by purebred shifters with the intention of driving them away. Cider Falls was a hidden gem—the mining town had been entirely abandoned and he’d bought it for next to nothing. After setting it up as the headquarters for his pack with the Federal Shifter Alliance, he’d advertised it as a place for any and all, no matter if they were exiled from their own group. He carefully screened the people who came to town to ensure that no criminals brought trouble into their streets. Lately, however, someone—or more likely, a group of someones—had been setting traps around the border of the town in the hunting territories. The patrols, led by Weston, had found them, but it was disturbing that no one seemed to be able to figure out just who the hell was messing with them.

  Diem, owner of the town bookstore, said, “What about cameras? When the first trap was found, we discussed putting up motion cameras.”

  “We can do that,” Weston said, “but they can’t catch everything. Cameras can give people a false sense of security. It’s better for us—at least for the time being—to tell our people to stay away from the edges of our territory and hunt deeper in the woods.”

  Rehlik nodded in agreement, but he was thinking about when a group of purebred lynxes came looking for one of their exiled people and hunted them in the woods. For the five years he’d been in the town, Rehlik and his right-hand Trace hadn’t had too many problems, but it seemed like recently there was an uptick in these instances.

  “We need to get to the bottom of it,” Rehlik said. “Let’s double up on the patrols for now. And when you post the security officer job, maybe you can find someone who’s got experience with this kind of thing.”

  Weston nodded. “I’m sure there will be some good candidates. I can double patrols for a while, but we can’t keep that up for too long because we don’t have the personnel.”

  “Why don’t you just ask the others in the pack to help out?” Archer, part-owner of the gas station, asked. “I’m willing to take a shift patrolling if it means we can keep our people safe.”

  Rehlik looked at Weston. “Let’s have a town hall meeting tomorrow night and get volunteers.”

  “I’ll handle it,” Weston said, making notes in his phone.

  “Now that that’s settled, let’s move on. Anyone got any new business?” Rehlik asked.

  Constantine said, “Next week’s the anniversary celebration. Are we all set for food and supplies?”

  Rehlik nodded. “I’m finalizing the order today.”

  “Good,” Constantine said, nodding. He looked at his phone. “I still need someone to sit in the dunk booth.”

  “I think it’s obvious who should do it,” Weston said, grinning in Rehlik’s direction.

  “Yes, definitely,” Mona, the head of the decorating committee, said. “It’ll be a big hit.”

  “Fine, fine,” Rehlik said. “If it’ll make everyone happy, I’ll take a turn in the booth, but only if Weston agrees also.”

  “I’m game,” Weston said.

  “Then that’s it,” Constantine said. “Let’s just hope the weather cooperates.”

  August in Kentucky could be sweltering, stormy, or mild, depending on Mother Nature’s mood. The forecast called for the celebration day to be hot and dry, but time would tell.

  “If that’s everything?” Rehlik asked.

  When the group nodded, he thanked them for showing up and sent them on their way. Once the bar was empty, he headed to the small office he shared with Trace. Trace was not only his right-hand male at the bar as the manager, but also his second-in-command of the pack. When he’d come to Cider Falls on the heels of being ousted as alpha from his timber wolf pack, he’d started a new pack, deciding that everyone would be welcome, regardless of what they could or couldn’t shift into. Even though he was a purebred timber wolf, he didn’t think like one.

  Purebreds tended to like other purebreds and dislike any that weren’t like them. Rehlik was one of those odd ones who thought it shouldn’t matter whether someone was a different sort of shifter or a mixture of different shifters or other supernatural creatures, so long as they were a decent person. He’d wanted to bring his pack into modern times and allow mixed matings and children to co-exist among them. In the end, that thinking was what had brought his downfall in the pack. They were happy to stay mired in their old-fashioned ideology.

  Sitting in the worn chair, Rehlik swiveled and looked at the desk and the work that beckoned. He had a million things to do—not only as alpha but as a business owner. For a moment, his wolf whined in his head. If only he could find his mate, then he’d have someone to be his alpha counterpart. But it wasn’t just the workload that made him wish for his mate...he was damn lonely.

  Pushing the thoughts of the empty bed that awaited him away, he turned on the computer and set into the tasks to complete before the bar opened at seven. There was a pool tournament on Saturday, and he needed to make sure they had enough drinks and food for the crowd, and to secure the grand prize of an online retailer gift card worth two hundred and fifty dollars. And he needed to finalize the food and drink orders for the celebration.

  His mood darkened as he thought about the traps on the edge of their town. They needed to figure out who the hell was setting traps and stop them. He was fairly certain it was a shifter group, but whether it was purebreds with a chip on their shoulder or a band of exiles looking to run out the current residents and take
over, he didn’t know. There was no way in hell that Rehlik would allow anyone to hurt his people or drive them away, but they had to catch the bastards first.

  Opening the web browser to the food distributor form, he filled it out carefully and tried not to think about what might happen if those traps started coming into town or residents’ backyards. No one would be safe, and that was not the point of Cider Falls. Deciding to make a patrol run himself, he worked fast to finish the orders and then texted Weston that he was going to head out on a run around town.

  “Keep me posted if you find anything,” Weston texted back.

  “Will do. Who’s out now?”

  “Dillon and Cody.”

  “Tell them I’ll be around so they don’t wonder what’s up.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled. Can’t have our alpha with a busted leg from a trap.”

  “You bet.”

  Rehlik walked out the back of the bar and stripped, leaving his clothes and phone on the picnic table. Then he shifted into his timber wolf form and shook himself out. He hadn’t shifted in a few weeks—he’d been too busy. It felt damn good to be in the fur.

  Bounding off into the woods, he kept his eyes and ears alert for anything out of the ordinary and made the rounds around the perimeter of Cider Falls. He made a mental note to start making regular patrols. It would only help things if there were more of their people looking for danger, and he was happy to be part of the solution. He just hoped that whoever was setting the traps would be caught soon. The thought of one of his people getting injured spurred him to decide on a second circuit around town before he even finished the first.

  He was the alpha. It was his job to keep everyone in town safe, from the most vulnerable babies to the older shifters who just wanted to live out their lives in peace. He was good at his job, and he’d do anything necessary to ensure that no one was harmed.

  Chapter Two

  Weylyn brushed the sweat from her brow and sat back on her heels. She had just finished planting a burgundy-colored mum in the flower bed that lined the front of her mom’s house. Her mom’s birthday was in a few days, and the only thing she’d asked for was to have mums planted for fall, and Weylyn was happy to oblige.

  “Oh that looks so nice,” her mom, Penny, said when she stepped off the porch. “I love the burgundy and yellow together.”

  Weylyn pulled off the gloves and smiled. “I do too. I need some more plant food. I’m going to run into town and grab a bottle from the hardware store.” She rose to her feet and kissed her mom’s cheek. “Do you want something from the coffee shop?”

  “Oh, a caramel iced coffee would be lovely, thank you.”

  Weylyn smiled and left, driving down the quiet street she’d grown up on then turning left onto Main Street. She’d lived in the mostly-shifter town of St. Paul in Northern Tennessee her whole life. But despite the long time within the small Tennessee town’s limits, she wasn’t part of the red fox clan like her mother. She was an outcast—always on the outside looking in. Her mother had an affair with a polar bear shifter and Weylyn was the result. Her mother never told anyone about the affair or that Weylyn was the result of it. Until she’d shifted when she was a teenager, Weylyn believed she was fully red fox.

  But she sure wasn’t.

  While her body was the small, compact red fox of her mother, her fur was the snow-white of her polar bear father.

  She was thankful that she had been allowed to stay in town after her first shift. The alpha of their clan let her remain instead of exiling her, but she wasn’t allowed to participate in anything related to them, even the monthly hunts.

  And she was definitely grateful not to be born a hundred years ago, when she would’ve been killed on sight for the strange color of her fur. So the clan had progressed some in the last century, but they still didn’t approve of mixed matings and the resulting children. Her mom had been labeled a harlot and never took a mate because of that. Once they’d found out she’d been with a shifter of another type, no male had wanted anything to do with her. Weylyn thought a lot about the situation was unfair, but her mom didn’t want to move away from town so she’d stayed with her.

  Weylyn had asked about her father when she was younger, but all her mother had told her was that polar bears were dangerous and she should never go looking for him. Unlike the red foxes, who let her keep breathing despite being a hybrid, the polar bears wouldn’t be so kind. She’d been told her whole life that polar bears were crazy, but she was half polar bear and didn’t feel the need to go on a killing spree, which made her wonder if the tales about them were as bad as she’d been told. It didn’t matter in the long run—she had no idea where polar bear shifters even lived and had never crossed paths with one. Her biological father had hidden his shifter nature from her mother. But when she’d sought him out and realized he was a polar bear, she’d cut ties with him and moved home to St. Paul and never looked back.

  Weylyn wondered at her musings, but the coming fall weather always made her think about family. She was single. There wasn’t a red fox male in the clan who wanted to mate with her, not even for a fun, no strings attached tumble in the sheets. The only lovers she’d had over the years had been human. She’d been careful not to see a human male more than once, because the last thing her hybrid butt needed was to fall in love with a human. Probably, she needed to leave town and strike out on her own, make a life for herself somewhere that shifters were welcome but no one would care that she was a hybrid.

  She snorted so hard she had to cough.

  As if there was a place like that.

  She pulled into a parking spot on the street in front of the hardware store. When she reached the door, she realized the sign said they were closed for the next two hours. Frowning, she looked down the street to the coffee shop and saw a similar sign on the glass door.

  The whole street was deserted. And considering that the downtown was usually busy in the late mornings, she could only guess the reason for the deserted status was because of a clan meeting.

  She got in the car and texted her mom. Did you know about a meeting?

  No, dear. Is there one?

  I think so. Everything is closed.

  Ah. Well, we can make our own iced coffees.

  Weylyn decided to peek in on the meeting, something she’d been doing since she was banned from clan activities. She thought it was odd that her mother hadn’t been invited to the meeting even though it appeared that everyone else in town was, and she’d been to every previous meeting. She drove to Alpha Beyonne’s home, parked on the next street, then moved between homes to find a vantage point to watch the proceedings.

  “Damn,” she whispered. Everyone was there. Alpha Beyonne was standing on his back deck, the yard filled with clan members. She’d apparently gotten there just in time, watching as he lifted his hand for quiet and everyone settled.

  “I’ve called you here today to officially announce that I’m stepping down as alpha, effective now.”

  There was a rush of murmurs from the crowd. Weylyn sucked in a breath in surprise.

  His son, Vano, walked out of the house and stood next to his father. Beyonne nodded and said, “My last act as alpha is naming my successor, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that I’m choosing my son, Vano. Show respect to your new alpha, Alpha Vano.”

  The whole clan went to their knees in deference to the new alpha.

  Vano lifted his head and let out a yipping bark which was answered by the clan, who then rose to their feet, clapping and cheering.

  Weylyn turned from the scene, her mind racing. Alpha Beyonne hadn’t had a problem with her staying in clan territory, but Vano didn’t like her at all. He’d been terrible to her in school, the definition of a bully. Her mom had told her he probably liked her and didn’t know how to talk to her, but Weylyn was one hundred percent sure that he hated her.

  Plant food forgotten, she wondered, as she made her way to her car and headed home, if her whole world was about to change.