SCAR (LOST CREEK SHIFTERS NOVELLAS Book 2) Read online

  SCAR

  LOST CREEK SHIFTERS

  Novelette 2

  Samantha Leal

  Copyright © 2016 by Samantha Leal All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  Introduction

  Thank you so much for purchasing my Novellete. All of my stories also contain bonus stories, so please take a look at the other stories I offer here. They are grouped by type in the Table of Contents for easy navigation. We have some Billionaire, Highlander, Shifter and Biker tales. Take a look! Don’t forget to sign up to my newsletter for updates and free books!

  The Lost Creek Shifters series is a collection of novelette length standalone Bad boy romances that fit together to tell the longer tale of the ancient tale of the bear and wolf shifters in a small mountain town. Enjoy!

  The Lost Creek Shifters are:

  ARLO (Book 1)

  SCAR (Book 2)

  BLU (Book 3)

  BODHI (Book 4)

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  Table of Contents

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

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  A Dragon to Watch Over Me

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  A Dream of Dragons

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  Mated to the Highland Wolf

  Rescued by the Highland Wolf

  Babies For the Bear

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  1.

  Lost Creek, 2009

  The town was quiet for a weekend and even though it was summer, there was nowhere near as many tourists as would usually descend to spend their vacation time hanging out down by the lakes and rambling through the forests of Lost Creek.

  Blu and Scar were lying on their backs down by the cool waters and birds twittered lightly overhead. The sun shone down on them and they covered their eyes with their forearms as they warmed themselves on the rocks.

  “I wish every day could be like today,” Blu laughed as he stretched and yawned. Scar looked over to him and nodded in agreement.

  The two had been best friends since they were kids and had grown up in Lost Creek together. They liked to think of themselves as some of the original settlers of the town, and their ancestors had most certainly played a big part in establishing many businesses across the county.

  “We can’t lie here forever,” Scar said as he scratched the side of his neck. “They’ll know we’ve bunked off and come looking for us.”

  They were both supposed to be working at the mechanics. Since they had left high school, a few years before, both Blu and Scar had taken to the same trade as their father’s. Something to keep them busy and their hands dirty, just so that they didn’t get themselves into any more trouble than necessary. But it didn’t really drive either of them, and the more time that passed, the more they both began to resent it.

  “The last thing I want to do is go back there,” Blu said. “We can’t waste our lives working for the man,” he joked.

  Scar laughed and nodded.

  The sounds of the water and forest flowed around them, and before Scar knew it, he was feeling far too relaxed and he knew that there was no chance he was heading back to the garage. He would just have to come up with an excuse. Maybe they could say they traveled to another town to look for some specific parts for one of the trucks or motorcycles and had gotten delayed. Or maybe he could just turn back up there the next day and accept whatever he was going to have thrown at him. He wasn’t the type of guy to enjoy being punished. But if it came down to it, he would just have to cope.

  “They may fire us,” he said with a smirk. And Blu rolled onto his side and snorted.

  “And so what if they did?” he said. “Maybe then we could get the fuck out of this town and stop pretending like we aren’t completely different than most of the other’s in it.”

  “Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration,” Scar said with a scowl. “It’s just the normal folk who don’t know what’s really going on around here…”

  Blu shrugged and looked off into the distance. For someone so high up in the pack, Blu really did have a chip on his shoulder when it came to his place in the world, and also Lost Creek. He still seemed desperate to leave, even after they had come of age and no longer had to try and control their powers and instincts. Even now, he could do as he pleased and release the beast within him.

  “I guess,” Blu said finally as he got to his feet. His mood had instantly changed and Scar could tell there was no pulling him back from his sulk.

  “So, what now?” Scar asked as he stood and looked out across the lake.

  “I dunno,” Blu said moodily. “Maybe we should just go back… Spend the rest of our day in misery.”

  Scar laughed and shook his head in disbelief. His friend was such a fickle character, but it was also one of his most likable qualities under regular circumstances. He was always surprising people, moving from one thing to the next.

  Blu sniffed the air and snarled and Scar could recognize the playful animal that was rising up within him, desperate to break free. It was almost like a beacon, and Scar felt his own skin tingle with fire as the wolf inside of him rose to the surface. He growled and howled as his skin ripped open and fur sprang up in its place. His limbs lengthened and his nose extended. Claws replaced his fingers and his jaws were wide and full of deadly sharp teeth. He growled as he turned and saw Blu in front of him. The majestic grey wolf. The pair ran down into the water and frolicked together, snarling and splashing, cooling themselves in the midday sun. By the time they had returned back to the rocks, both of them were worn out, and as they shifted back to their human forms, Scar picked up his jeans and slid them back on.

  “Nothing better on a hot day like this,” he said full of laughter. Letting himself go was one of the things that rarely happened in broad daylight, but he loved it all the same.

  “You’re telling me,” Blu grinned as he ran his hands through his wet hair. It dripped down onto his shoulders and made him glisten even more in the sunlight.

 
; Behind them, they heard a rustling in the trees and Scar instinctively pricked back his ears. Blu turned too and they waited, the tension in the air between them was rising as they waited to see who was coming forward out of the shadows of the branches to meet them.

  The footsteps stopped and Scar took a step forward. He was sure he could see the long, pale limb of a child in there and they appeared to be hiding.

  “It’s okay kid,” he said. “We were just leaving… You can come on out and play by the lake if you want?”

  The child still hid away; only its eyes were visible through the shadows and branches. He couldn’t even tell if it was a young boy or a girl.

  “You know what really fucks me off?” Blu said suddenly, not the slightest bit bothered that they were in the company of a child. “That after spending two years in that goddam place, they still haven’t made any attempt to give us a raise.”

  Scar felt like rolling his eyes… Not this again, he thought.

  “You know it’ll happen,” Scar said. “For God’s sake, one day we are going to be running everything around here… Why can’t you just be patient.”

  “But we’re over eighteen now… It’s about time some of the elders were stepping down and letting us handle things… We’re the ones with the ideas.”

  “Yes, and we’re also the ones without their years of experience.” Scar was getting even more irritated, especially because Blu was talking about things he shouldn’t be when there was a child not far away.

  “There’s a kid back there,” he hissed in a whisper. “If they hear anything they shouldn’t… We don’t want any rumors flying around town.”

  “Oh who gives a fuck,” Blu snorted.

  Scar was always surprised at how Blu still clung to his immaturity. For a nineteen-year-old man, he still acted as if he were in his early teens and angry at the world.

  Scar looked back into the woods. The child had moved forward and he could see now it was a young boy, maybe around six years old. His eyes were wide and expectant, and it was with a small sense of relief that he realized it was one of the Unbroken Bears’ sons that was watching them.

  “A bear cub,” he said to Blu as he motioned with his head over his shoulder.

  Blu turned and bared his teeth.

  “Fucking bears too… All over this goddam town…”

  “Okay, now you’re going to get us in trouble,” Scar said as he took hold of his friend and started to push him down the rocks in a bid to get him to leave. “We should head back to work anyway…”

  The boy moved forward and watched them as Scar and Blu moved away. His eyes were so wide and innocent, and although he wanted to listen more to the two wolf pack members out of curiosity, he also knew that he really shouldn’t try to get involved. Wolves and bears coexisted peacefully in Lost Creek… but that was partly down to avoidance.

  The boy looked down onto the rocks as Blu and Scar disappeared into the other side of the forest and he saw that one of them had left something down there. It looked to be a t-shirt. At the same time, Blu turned back over his shoulder and bared his teeth. He really was sick of all of the bears… But what could he ever do about it?

  The boy looked up at him and then back down to the t-shirt. He could have called to them and let them know, but he didn’t. Instead, he kicked off his shoes and slowly made his way down to the rocks to paddle. It was a warm day and he wanted to cool off in the fresh water before heading home to spend time with his family.

  As he reached the water’s edge, he was so preoccupied with the current of the rushing stream and the smooth stones underneath his bare feet that he didn’t notice the pair of eyes glinting at him from the shadows of the woodland. And he didn’t notice as they began to come closer… And then closer still… In fact, he didn’t notice anything until it was too late, which in the end, was probably for the best…

  He was found by those rocks as dusk rolled in, his hair was still wet and fell around his wide open eyes, his skin already grey with cold.

  “A wolf must have done this,” the fisherman who found him said as he picked up the boy’s body and held it tightly in his arms. He tried not to sob as he laid him back down in the clay-like mud on the shore. The boy was so small and seemed so broken. His injuries were severe and it was obviously an animal attack… A brutal animal attack.

  “Ain’t that Thorben’s kid?” the fisherman’s companion said as he wiped the side of his mouth. He’d already vomited into the water and had to sit down, completely shocked and shaken from what he was seeing.

  “I think so…” the fisherman said. “It’s hard to tell.”

  He pulled his cell phone from his back pocket and dialed 911. He was sure the sheriff would be there within five minutes and he didn’t want to be waiting around, especially when Thorben did show up… If it was his son.

  God, he couldn’t think of anything worse than losing a child. He bit back his words as the operator answered.

  “I need police and an ambulance,” he said before he launched into the details. When he hung up the call, he had already noticed that his companion was stepping over the rocks and was reaching down for something… A t-shirt and what looked like a wallet.

  “What you got there?” he asked and his friend shrugged. He opened up the thin folds of leather and looked inside.

  The wallet belonged to Blu Tarrenwolf.

  As they waited for the cops to show up, the fisherman looked down at the boy laying there, his eyes still turned up to the sky and his heart long stopped beating. He felt a shiver roll over him. There was something in those woods that day, he couldn’t say what… But there was something that was dark and evil, and waiting to curse them all.

  2.

  Lost Creek, Present Day

  Willow had spent her entire morning in the library and she rubbed the back of her neck as she hunched over one of her books. For a girl who had spent the past four years of her life avoiding any kind of education, she certainly knew how to geek out when she had some spare time. The library was her favorite place in the whole world and she loved to get lost in its long, dusty hallways.

  Even though Lost Creek was a small town, the library had stood there proudly for over a hundred years and it was still as charming and old school as it had been when it first opened its doors to the residents of the town. She stretched her arms over her head and yawned. Even though it was still early in the day, she had woken long before dawn, eager to make the most of her time off. It wasn’t often she had a full day to herself when she hadn’t been to work the night before, and so she had woken with the birds, fresh and ready to learn something new.

  She looked over her shoulder and around the room. She was the only person in there apart from the nerdy looking librarian who was busy stacking books onto a cart and hitching up her stockings. Willow’s eyes were starting to feel heavy and she knew that she needed coffee. She got to her feet, moved past the woman and her cart full of books, and made her way down the hall to the vending machine, which could easily have been older than the building itself.

  She scrunched up her nose as she squinted to read the instructions and slid in some coins. The machine whirred to life and as a small paper cup dropped down, the steam and dark brown liquid started to spurt out of the tap.

  “Eww,” she said to herself as she watched on. This was the first and last time she would use the libraries machine. She could think of many places in town that served a much better cup; Arlo’s, as much as she wanted to avoid it that morning, being one of them.

  Willow had worked at Arlo’s for several years and she had grown to love everything about it, but after day in and day out of hard work, she was beginning to feel tired and in need of a break. Her mind often wandered to faraway shores and exotic locations, and as she wandered back through into the main hall of the library, her eyes caught lustfully on the travel section.

  She clutched the steaming coffee in her palm and made her way over. She didn’t want to torture herself, but she also couldn�
��t help it. It was like she had a certain pull inside of her that was teasing and tormenting her both at once. She knelt down amongst the dusty shelves and reached for a thick hardback atlas. It had been a long time since she had played this game, but with her feeling so full of wanderlust, she guessed that it couldn’t hurt to dream a little.

  She carried it back to her desk underneath her arm and set it down next to her coffee. As she opened it up, her heart instantly began to flutter away. When she was a child, she had always loved to play like this, it was one of her favorite pastimes. If she wasn’t pouring over a map of the world, she was flipping through interior design magazines and taking clippings for her scrapbook to plan how her house would look when she was finally old enough and out on her own. But Willow was still waiting for her lovely detached house with its picket fence, and she had still never left America. From the small front room of her apartment, she still found herself playing the games of her childhood, and although it should have depressed the hell out of her, it didn’t. She was an eternal optimist, and she wasn’t going to let the fact that just because it hadn’t happened yet mean that she was going to give up on the ideas altogether.

  One day, she regularly told herself. One day, you’ll have that house, your dream job, your dream man and a whole load of traveling underneath your belt. You’ll have seen the world and be full of experiences.

  And she truly believed it. Willow was the type of girl that knew that if she wanted something enough, she would get it. She would just have to work hard for it.

  She took a deep breath and let the pages of the book flit through her fingers. She fanned them out and felt the breeze flutter across her face. When she decided to stop them, whatever the page landed open on was where she would add to her travel list. She would spend the next part of her morning researching everything about it and collecting as much information as she could before writing it all down and adding some photographs to her scrapbook when she returned home. She reached the end and started to flip again… The moment had to be right.