Devon's Gamble (Wolves' Heat) Read online

  DEVON’S GAMBLE

  WOLVES’ HEAT

  BOOK 2

  A Novel

  Odessa Lynne

  ODELYN PUBLISHING

  DEVON’S GAMBLE

  Copyright © 2013 by Odessa Lynne

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for quotes used in any review, the reproduction or utilization of the work in whole or in part by electronic, mechanical or other means is forbidden without written permission of the author.

  Cover design by Odessa Lynne

  Cover photo of trees © Odessa Lynne

  Cover photo of moon © Paul Ransome | Dreamstime.com

  Published by Odelyn Publishing

  odessalynne.com

  First Electronic Publication August 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, organizations, events, and incidents portrayed in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales are entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and 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 visit an ebook store and purchase your own copy.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About this Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Author’s Note

  Also by Odessa Lynne

  About the Author

  About DEVON’S GAMBLE

  Don’t run if you get caught unless you want claws in your spine and teeth in your neck and two hundred pounds of lust-crazed wolf on your back.

  First contact between humans and the alien species they’ve nicknamed “wolves” couldn’t have been more tranquil. The wolves shared their superior technology and knowledge in exchange for a new home, and thousands of wolves abandoned their aging spacefaring ships to settle in Earth’s forested mountain regions.

  But the wolves held some secrets too close and humanity has begun paying the price.

  Once every three years, humans become sexual prey to a species that has no control over the urge to mate because of an unexpected and devastating attraction to human scent.

  Heat season has arrived and Devon’s taken a dangerous bet that’s put him dead center in the midst of a pack of wolves.

  When a wolf claims Devon as a heat mate, Devon has to choose: submit, or die…

  Chapter 1

  “That one,” the wolf said, his inhuman eyes a vibrant green of the like Devon had never seen before. He didn’t make a habit of hanging with wolves though, so—

  “Okay, shit, no need to get rough, asshole.” Devon shoved back at the man who had just tried to shove himself behind Devon in the dimly lit basement where they were being held. Lennie, the man had said yesterday when he’d been sent down the stairs to wait with the rest of them, eight humans in all.

  Devon’s eye socket throbbed where Lennie’s elbow had connected and he could taste blood at the corner of his mouth.

  “Not him,” Devon heard from a heavily accented voice at the foot of the stairs.

  Devon was too busy giving Lennie an I’m gonna kick your ass if you don’t get the fuck away from me look to see which of the wolves had spoken, but he thought it might be the one with the green eyes, one of the group who had caught up with him in the woods a few days ago. That particular wolf had a cold-eyed stare that had made Devon think twice about dropping his last knife to the ground, but he’d been surrounded so quickly he hadn’t even had time to run, as if they’d been watching the woods and waiting for some dumb shit like him to come sneaking through.

  He’d obliged.

  He’d always been a lucky son of a bitch though and he’d definitely got lucky. This was the middle of the wolves’ once-every-three-Earth-years heat season and he’d realized quickly they had to be using one of their newer repression drugs to control their mating instincts. The terrible truth was that the scent of humans set off an uncontrollable lust in the wolves’ during their heat cycles. Human males in their early and mid-twenties caused the strongest reaction of all. Devon fit right smack in the middle of that group.

  If not for those drugs, he’d probably be dead, because he hadn’t reacted quickly and he hadn’t done any of the things he was supposed to do to stay alive.

  The wolves had taken his gun before he’d had time to react, but he’d still had to be wrestled to the ground before he’d agreed to give up his knives, belligerent and mouthy the whole time.

  Submit? Yeah. He’d submit over his cold, dead—

  He shook off that thought because he knew that was bullshit. He would submit just like any other sane human if it meant he didn’t get his spine ripped out with too-sharp retractable claws and bright, sharp teeth by a lust-crazed wolf who’d been drawn in by his human scent.

  He might occasionally do dumb shit but he wasn’t stupid.

  Most of the time.

  Or at least when he managed to keep his temper under control.

  He used the back of his hand to wipe away the blood on his lip and continued to glare at Lennie, who turned his head and stared down at his hand, flicking away imaginary lint from his filthy shirt. Lennie had arrived with leaves in his hair and black earth ground into the tan t-shirt he wore.

  Devon had on a camo t-shirt he’d taken from a friend’s stash and dark green pants with a short rip at the thigh where a stick had jabbed him and torn the fabric.

  Devon had gotten away with his attitude while being manhandled back to the wolves’ den and this damned basement without gaining a single serious injury. He’d bitten his lip and busted his knuckles and his thigh had a bruise on it that had turned an ugly green, but he hadn’t been sexually assaulted, which he’d almost expected considering the heat season and his own trespass into what had become wolf territory over the last eight years.

  He’d known their drugs were getting better. There’d been rumors going around lately. Now he had his proof and he’d earned his hundred gold ten-dollars.

  Still…

  Something had obviously changed. He’d been told the wolves’ plan was to keep them all locked up here in the basement until heat season ended and then let them go.

  Not the vibe he was getting now.

  Two wolves—one of them Green-eyes—had come barreling down the stairs a few minutes ago, and neither one looked like they were holding it together that well.

  Shit.

  No one, human or wolf, had suspected that when the wolves’ heat cycles hit that first time six years ago, the human scent would set off an unexplained chemical reaction in the brains of the wolves that brought about unprecedented levels of aggression and sexual desire.

  That one month had changed the world.

  A secret about the wolves’
society had escaped, one that the wolves had not shared freely: wolves chose mates by scent and strength. Alphas fought for dominance. Mates did not choose; they surrendered.

  Devon wasn’t the kind of person who liked the idea of submitting to anyone, for any reason, but he was shit up out of luck on that score if his reading of the current situation was anywhere near the truth.

  The pallets Devon and his fellow captives had been sleeping on since they’d been brought here were getting trampled because no one wanted to be the one standing closest to the wolves with their glassy-eyed stares and their rumbling noises. It was enough to set Devon’s teeth on edge. Every hair on his body had stood up at the sounds and his skin had prickled with wave after wave of goose bumps. This was the first time the wolves had come all the way down into the basement since Devon had arrived.

  Kayla and Lamar claimed to have already been here for a week when Devon had found himself staggering down the stairs into a clean, dry—but mostly empty—basement. If it had been used for storage, the wolves had cleared it out before they’d decided to lock up humans inside the space. The wolf who’d brought him here after his capture had stayed up top at the door and then closed him in as soon as Devon reached the bottom. Besides Kayla and Lamar, there was Lennie and Hayden, Rock and Sebastian, and some other guy who kept quiet and kept to himself.

  That one, he wasn’t scared the way the rest of these guys were, and he was the one Devon had found himself watching the last two nights, wondering what the guy’s deal was. He was deceptively thin, but Devon had noted the wiry muscle in his forearms, his tanned skin rough and with puckers at the side of his neck that looked like scars.

  Devon had always believed in fate. Not the way his great grandmother had described it, but fate as a general consequence for actions thought out in haste.

  Going into the woods on a bet was about as stupid a decision as he’d ever made, and the fate that awaited him was going to be a harsh bitch.

  But, by God, he’d earned those gold ten-dollars if he could make it out of here to collect, harsh bitch or not.

  He wanted that money—needed it, and he hadn’t been willing to ask any of his friends for the funds because he knew Ian didn’t have it, and he didn’t trust Brendan not to expect more in return than he wanted to give. That relationship was long dead and dredging it back up wasn’t to anyone’s benefit.

  He’d been willing to risk an ass fucking by a wolf if that’s what it came to, knowing the wolves were using better drugs this season and that the possibility existed that they would be able to keep themselves under control around humans.

  Looked like that gamble wasn’t paying off.

  But why had these other people been caught in the wolves’ territory? Kayla had said something about traveling between shelters, a transport breaking down, needing a moment of privacy, and then getting lost. As if taking a shit meant you had to walk a mile into the woods so you didn’t embarrass yourself.

  Her story was as much a lie as his: he’d been walking between shelters because he couldn’t afford transport and he’d gotten lost. The others had a similar story. Lies, every one of them, except maybe for Lennie, who said he lived about ten miles from here in a home his grandfather had built and he wasn’t moving into a shelter for the season and be run out of his own home by a pack of goddamn wolves.

  Yeah. That had worked out well for him, Devon had pointed out. He and Lennie hadn’t gotten along since. Probably the way Devon had snorted at him, as if Lennie was stupider than shit.

  The quiet guy had refused to talk to any of them.

  “The minute the drugs wear off completely, that one will get himself killed. There—the one I want is behind him.”

  Devon was still glaring at Lennie when one of the wolves stepped around Lamar, whose hair was considerably lighter than Devon’s sandy blond but who was about half a foot taller, and grabbed the dark-skinned, stocky Sebastian by the arm and hauled him out of the way. Devon realized in a sudden burst of insight that everyone else had moved aside and that he—Devon—was quite clearly the subject in question.

  “Ah, fuck.”

  Chapter 2

  Devon could almost hear Ian’s voice in his head. Like Devon, Ian had survived the previous heat cycle unscathed and spent a lot of time going through training sessions in those early years. He’d been drafted this season to teach others what he’d been taught. Devon had been asked to do the same, but he’d refused. But he knew the advice, knew what he was supposed to do and what not to do.

  Don’t run if you get caught … you fight, you die … submit, and you’ll probably live. When the cycle ends, the wolves are peaceful people, and they won’t want to hurt you. Just do whatever it takes to make it through until then.

  All bullshit meant to keep humans in line during the heat season, that’s what Brendan said. Devon thought Brendan had it closer to the truth than Ian, but he still couldn’t hate the wolves, not after what they’d done for him, that thing he hadn’t told anyone about because it had happened the year the wolves came and it was nobody’s damn business but his own. He hadn’t told Brendan when they’d met later that year and started fucking, and he hadn’t told Ian, because at that point, he and Ian had barely tolerated each other. Then they’d become friends and it was something Devon didn’t see any reason to talk about, especially with Brendan becoming more militant all the time about the need to send the wolves back where they’d come from.

  Devon scowled as the wolf stopped in front of him. This being locked up with a bunch of lying assholes had him in a foul mood and now his damned eye socket and cheek throbbed with every twitch of his bruised eyelid.

  Devon noticed that the two wolves who’d come down the stair so quickly earlier were staying well away from the group of humans, letting one of those who had spent the week watching the humans from the top of the stairs be the one to do all the manhandling.

  The wolf sent to collect him gave him a once-over and waited, staring at him with eyes that glowed inhumanly bright under the dim lights in the completely underground basement. If not for the meal schedule, Devon wouldn’t even know it was sometime after late evening.

  Devon reached up and carefully poked at his throbbing eye.

  Lennie cleared his throat behind Devon. Devon ignored him and the wolf both.

  Finally, the wolf gave a short growl that stood the hair on Devon’s arms on end again, then took Devon’s upper arm in a tight grip, retractable claws still well-hidden beneath the dark material of his fingernails.

  Devon jerked his arm, but the wolf didn’t ease his hold.

  “You kidding me?” Devon said. “What the hell is it about me that makes you think I’m going to do any better not getting myself killed than that asshole there?”

  He jerked his head toward Sebastian.

  The wolf staring at him raised his eyebrows and looked back over his shoulder, as if to echo his own version of “You’re kidding, right?” to the green-eyed wolf staring a metaphorical hole through Devon, eyes glassy and bright and not cold-eyed at all at the moment.

  “Ah, fuck” was right. Devon had a feeling he wasn’t about to be questioned about why he’d been in the wolves’ territory. Green-eyes probably had something else entirely in mind.

  No one answered Devon, but Green-eyes nodded and the wolf holding Devon’s arm started walking him across the room toward Green-eyes.

  Devon’s heartbeat sped up until it felt like it was going to beat its way out of his chest. He looked back at the other humans, saw their relief and their looks of pity.

  He didn’t need their pity, so he gave them all a wide smile, fake as hell, and his middle finger.

  He stumbled over a wad of pillow and quilt and the wolf holding him took his weight just long enough to get him back on his feet.

  Okay, shit. Shit. His heart was pounding and he didn’t like the way he could suddenly feel the sweat under his arms. He didn’t want to think about what might be coming. Devon had heard the stories, seen the video tha
t got passed around showing one of the more terrifying lust-crazed mating frenzies that had occurred in that first heat season after the wolves came to Earth and the devastating truth about what the human scent did to the wolves during their heat cycle came out.

  Devon had turned seventeen the year the wolves came. Now he was twenty-four and living through the wolves’ third heat season on Earth.

  Everyone called them wolves, a human pronounceable name for an alien humanoid species whose own name for themselves was anything but pronounceable. They had retractable claws and sharper-than-human teeth; narrow eyes in brighter, bolder colors; muscle and bone of amazing strength and endurance; remarkable healing abilities; and the ability to track prey by scent and sound.

  They might as well be wolves for all the good it did to run once they caught your scent.

  The wolves had arrived in massive but aging ships eight years ago after abandoning their home for space because of some cataclysmic event. After sharing some of their technology and knowledge freely with humans, they’d settled in the mountains and rural areas of Earth as if they’d been born to them. This area was Devon’s home, and over the last eight years, the wolves had overrun the area. Normally, they didn’t bother anybody and they stayed hidden well enough that no one found them who hadn’t gone looking, but heat season? A different matter altogether.

  He could handle a bit of fucking up the ass if that’s what this meant, wasn’t like he hadn’t done it before, and he’d taken that chance when he’d took the bet, but he didn’t want to end up the center of an orgy of wolf dicks and then die anyway, his spine ripped out and his throat torn open.

  Peaceful people his ass. Ian needed his head worked on by someone with a little common sense. The wolves didn’t like to be challenged, and if they were in heat because their drugs were wearing off…who knew what they were going to do to him. There were too many of them down here and he didn’t like it one bit.

  Also, the wolf beside Green-eyes was paying him way too much attention for his comfort.

  Green-eyes took Devon’s arm from the other wolf, and Devon noted the glint of sharp teeth as the wolf opened his mouth to say something low to the wolf beside him. Devon didn’t catch whatever it was, and then Green-eyes turned back and leaned in close to Devon.