Redemption: Montana Wolves, Book Three (Montana Wolves series 3)

  REDEMPTION

  MONTANA WOLVES BOOK THREE

  CHLOE COLE

  FROG PRINTS PUBLISHING

  Contents

  Introduction

  Prologue

  1. Chapter One

  2. Chapter Two

  3. Chapter Three

  4. Chapter Four

  5. Chapter Five

  6. Chapter Six

  7. Chapter Seven

  8. Chapter Eight

  9. Chapter Nine

  10. Chapter Ten

  11. Chapter Eleven

  12. Opposition

  Also By Chloe Cole

  Copyrights

  INTRODUCTION

  Amber Jansen is losing her mind. After a near tragic run-in with a psychopath, she’s trying to go back to life as she knew it, but she can’t seem to shake the feeling that something is still terribly wrong. Riddled with guilt and plagued by nightmares, she wonders if she’s buried some important piece of information in the depths of her mind. Information so disturbing that remembering it could destroy her…

  Wolf-shifter Billy MacKenzie has lived by one rule and one rule only: The pack comes first. Always. But when Amber Jansen accidentally sees something she shouldn’t have, he feels an unprecedented desire to protect her from the powers that be, who would rather silence her forever than risk being exposed.

  If he breaks the laws of his kind to shield her, he’ll leave himself vulnerable to the one woman he wants but can never have.

  PROLOGUE

  A mber Jansen stared at her reflection and wondered dully if she was going to lose her job.

  She wouldn’t be surprised. She’d taken a two-week leave of absence already, telling her boss she’d pulled a muscle. But even now, the vitality was missing from her face, and her hair was as lackluster as her skin.

  The black bustier she wore was looser than it should have been since she’d lost ten pounds she couldn’t spare, and she was totally exhausted. If she wanted to keep dancing--and by extension, paying the bills--something was going to have to give. Three weeks had passed since she’d been tied to a chair while a woman was attacked and kidnapped by Tobias Wheeler right in front of her, and she was no closer to moving past it than she had been the day it happened.

  She stripped off her costume hastily, and then stepped into the dressing room shower. Turning the water on full blast, she leaned her back against the cool tiles and pressed her balled fists over her eyes, determined to halt the instant replay that was her now-constant companion.

  She began to hum. Then, desperate to shut out the insistent images, she began to sing the lullaby her grandmother used to sing when Amber was small.

  She could almost hear that clear soprano; could almost feel the soft hand stroking her hair as they rocked in the chair. How she wished she was still alive to sing to her and comfort her. She had never needed it more.

  God dammit, get a hold of yourself, woman. There’s no such thing as werewolves.

  Her voice broke as she began to sob.

  CHAPTER ONE

  One week later

  Pray, Montana…

  “We should never have let her go like that,” Billy said as he leaned forward in the wide, leather chair by the fireplace. Try as he might, weeks after the incident, he still hadn’t been able to get Amber Jansen out of his head.

  The expression on her face when she’d realized that she almost cost Chandra her life.

  Or the one after that, when she’d seen him shift into a werewolf from afar.

  His stomach clenched at the recollection. Fuck, he’d hated that he’d scared her.

  “You all keep saying that, but what was the alternative?” Liam asked, scrubbing his hand over his face. The alpha stood in the center of the great room, eyeing each member of his pack questioningly. “Anyone?”

  Billy shifted in his seat, pissed off and primed to argue, but with nothing that even remotely qualified as a solution to add to the conversation. He’d been losing sleep for the past month trying to solve this particular problem and kept coming up empty.

  “I don’t know what the right thing to do was,” Amalie said, finally breaking the silence. “I just know that sending her back home like nothing happened was wrong. She never believed the whole ‘delusion triggered by stress’ nonsense we tried to feed her. I’ve heard of PTSD, but who the hell goes through a traumatic event and imagines they saw a werewolf? Of course she’s going to be asking questions, and causing problems. Maybe we should tell her the truth. Keep her here for a while until we can gauge how she’s taking it.”

  She shook her head slowly and then shrugged, a bleak expression on her pretty but strained face as she looked at Liam. “And, if she decides to blow the lid off of it, we run.”

  “Telling her the truth isn’t an option.”

  The alpha’s tone was sharper with his mate than Billy had ever heard it before and he winced on her behalf.

  “We barely avoided an all-out clan battle when I told you we were shifters,” Liam continued, “And you’d already been bitten and on your way to becoming a werewolf. Amber is totally human. At minimum, telling her would result in repercussions from the other packs when they found out. Tensions are still high and alliances are fragile. Another straw on that camel’s back and…”

  He trailed off, but there was no need to elaborate.

  He was talking about war.

  Billy clenched his jaw, the feeling of helplessness weighing on him so heavily, it made his gut ache. There was no perfect answer here, and in lieu of that, the pack was almost always going to pick what was least destructive to the pack as a whole. Several of them were already nodding their agreement, murmuring softly amongst themselves, but Liam held up a hand to silence them.

  “And yes, worst case scenario is that she blows the lid off. But if humans know about us, believe me when I tell you, we can’t run far enough. We’ve seen it too many times. People are dangerous when faced with the unknown. Our kind was almost wiped out more than once due to crazed mobs. At the end of the day, no matter how strong we are, we’re still outnumbered more than ten million to one. I’m not willing to risk it for a woman we hardly know. Especially if her life isn’t in imminent danger.” Liam looked questioningly at his second in command. “Jax?”

  “I’m sorry, but I just don’t have a lot of sympathy.” He slid a muscled arm around his mate and held her close. “She’s the one who put Chandra in danger to start. To my mind, her thinking she’s got some screws loose is getting off easy. I would have cheerfully cut her throat at the time.”

  A snarl rose in Billy’s throat but he choked it back. If he’d been in Jax’s position, he might feel the same way. But more than that, the level of attachment he felt to Amber after only knowing her a short time was out of line. Probably just some twisted savior complex because he’d been the one to take care of her the night everything had gone down.

  He stayed silent as his packmate continued.

  “That said, I know Chan feels differently, and I respect that. She’s a more forgiving soul than I am. I’m definitely concerned about Amber prying and the research she’s been doing, though. And it makes me think that some steps need to be taken to help her make peace with what she saw. Or forget it altogether.” Jax shrugged and shook his head slowly. “If there was some way we could alter her memory, that would be the best option.”

  Billy’s hackles rose again, and he couldn’t stay quiet any longer. “Hey, yeah, that’s a great idea. Why don’t you call the Men in Black and ask them if we could use their flashy thing to wipe her memory?” he asked, laying on the sarcasm, th
ick. “I wish I thought of that.”

  He could feel the weight of Jax’s stare and turned to face his friend. Clearly, not happy. He had nothing but love for the guy, but Jax had a chip on his shoulder a mile wide about humans since Tobias Wheeler had kidnapped his mate.

  Wheeler was a flat-out psycho obsessed with proving they were werewolves, and he’d enlisted an unwitting Amber to help him. He’d told her he was a private investigator hired by victims of a recent rash of burglaries, and that he had found the culprits. If she would infiltrate the compound and gather some concrete evidence for the police, he would give her the reward money, not to mention that she would be doing her civic duty.

  It wasn’t until she’d inadvertently lured Chandra into Wheeler’s clutches that she had realized her mistake.

  Billy, like all of his packmates, had been furious with her at first. But when he’d scooped her trembling little body into his arms, his anger had melted away. She’d been terrified, completely vulnerable, and the fierce and sudden need to protect had welled up inside him, unbidden.

  Even more surprising than that? He had wanted to run out of that house with her in his arms; to shield her from the fury of his pack . . . his family.

  What the hell was that about?

  Jax still held his gaze, and for a moment, the atmosphere grew even more strained until Billy blew out a sigh, willing some of the tension from his body. It wasn’t Jax’s fault this had happened. Taking it out on him wasn’t going to help.

  And his friend wasn’t wrong. Amber was in this mess because she’d made a serious error in judgment. She had trusted the wrong person and had eventually led a psychopath into their midst. That naïveté had almost proven deadly.

  Too bad the events of that day had robbed her of that naïveté. It would have been really helpful now. If only she’d believed their story, they could’ve all just moved on like nothing had happened.

  But he’d seen her face after the fact. She was already fragile and devastated by the consequences of her actions, wracked with guilt. Seeing something that couldn’t be explained by anything that made sense to her had been the final straw.

  Her mind was slowly coming unraveled.

  As they took turns randomly checking up on her and watching from afar, it was becoming more and more clear that she was spiraling out of control. At first it seemed like depression, she was near catatonic, unable to make her shifts at work. But lately, she was almost manic. At the library, furiously pawing through books on folklore and scouring ancient microfiche.

  He tried not to think of how fragile she’d looked the last time he saw her. And he tried even harder not to think about why the hell he cared so much. For some reason, though, he couldn’t get her out of his head. Call him crazy, but the thought of that one terrible mistake ruining her whole life sickened him.

  He refused to let that happen.

  “As much as memory wiping would be helpful right now, we don’t have that ability,” he said, keeping his tone even in spite of the riot going on inside him. “We need to focus on something real and actionable. Something that will give us an idea on where her head is at so we can attempt to do some immediate damage control before the other packs get wind of this.”

  He pushed himself to his feet and crossed his arms over his chest, making sure that, even though he was being nice, they all knew he was ready to go toe-to-toe with anyone who wanted to get in his face about it.

  “I can tail her,” Maggie chimed in, raising a hand. “She’s never even seen me before so it seems like an easy solution.”

  Bad idea. Maggie already had a biased against humans. She’d only see the worst in Amber and everything she saw would be tainted by that. “Which is why I should do it,” Billy said, hoping his alpha would see the logic in that. “We’ve done as much as we can with long range recon. Time to get in closer. Make a move to talk to her face to face. And since it was me she saw changing into wolf form, it should be me who fixes it. If she keeps pressing the issue and her research efforts catch the attention of the Kotke or the Big Sky Canyon packs, we could all be in as much physical danger as we would be if we just told her the truth.”

  And that included Amber.

  Liam eyed him for a long moment before tipping his head in a curt nod. “You did spend time with her that night, and she seemed to trust you to some degree. Use that to find out what she’d doing and who she’s been talking to about that night. Maybe tell her you wanted to see if she’s coping okay with everything. Depending on what you find out, we can also use this as an opportunity to place a listening device in her purse. If she’s truly onto us and flapping her gums about it to other people, we need to hear about it sooner than later.”

  The thought of hiding a bug on her grated on him, but he’d cross that bridge later. He’d won the battle. There was no point in fighting the war when he wasn’t even sure if there needed to be one.

  He shook off his discomfort and focused on their alpha as he called the meeting to an end.

  “Okay, so we’re all in agreement with that, then. We’ll reconvene in a week and reassess the situation to see if something more drastic needs to be done. Once you’ve determined her state of mind, try again to convince her that what she saw was just a hallucination. Really work all the angles. Tell her the volatile combination of lack of sleep, shock, and the ranting of a madman had worked on her brain until it had a brief hiccup before getting back on track again,” Liam said, offering a clipped nod to the group as a whole. “See you all at dinnertime.”

  The room began to clear as everyone went about their business, but Billy stayed behind, still deep in thought. This plan wasn’t much better than no plan at all, but he couldn’t bring himself to tell that to his alpha. He hadn’t just been given permission to see Amber again. He’d been given a direct order.

  Whether or not he was able to convince her that what she saw was her imagination, he was going to get to spend time with her and make sure she was all right.

  And, for the moment, that was enough.

  CHAPTER TWO

  A mber sat on the floor of her living room, surrounded by books. She’d spent three hours at the library that morning and she was no better off than she’d been before. So far, after a week of research and visiting three different libraries, she had zip. Nada about the existence of werewolves in Montana.

  A blonde curl flopped in front of one eye and she blew it away on an exasperated sigh, eyeing the stack of books with disgust. Almost at the end of the pile, and it was looking like she was going to have to bite the bullet and face her second biggest fear, right behind werewolves. The internet.

  Raised by her grandmother from the time she was ten, she was useless with computers. Nana had said it would be beneath the dignity of her charming old Victorian home to harbor something so modern within her elegantly papered walls and Amber never had the will to fight her on it. In fact, she’d only just bought a Keurig to replace the old coffee percolator after her grandmother’s death, and even that felt like a tiny betrayal.

  In spite of the lack of modern amenities, Amber had always loved this home. Loved to pretend that the ornate glass doorknobs were diamonds and that the dumbwaiter was a secret passageway. The place had magic in it.

  And speaking of magic…

  She had work to do. A quick stretch and then back to it. She stood and bent low at the waist, pressing her palms flat to the floor, and letting out a groan as her muscles lengthened.

  She’d made the conscious choice to start taking care of herself again after hitting rock-bottom the week before. It had gotten so bad, she’d contemplated checking into a mental institution that night. By the time she’d calmed enough to leave her dressing room and drive home, it was two in the morning. When she’d gotten there, she’d fallen into an exhausted sleep, and dreamt of Billy.

  There he’d stood in her living room, just like in real life the night of the kidnapping, mussed mop of golden curls, concern shining in his amazing, emerald green eyes.


  “Where is Chandra?” he’d asked. She opened her mouth, but her dream-self couldn’t speak. Billy shook his head. Disappointed in her? Then he’d turned and walked out the door.

  She moved to the window to watch his departure, but he didn’t head for the car. Instead, he went to the side of her yard where he met up with his friends. Then, together, fueled by some sudden sense of urgency, they ran to the edge of the woods.

  She’d turned away, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw Billy leap high into the air. And when he landed, he was a man no more.

  In his place was a giant, tawny wolf. It loped the last few steps into the forest, and was gone.

  She’d awoken from the dream in a cold sweat, heart pounding. While it wasn’t entirely accurate, the reality of it had been pretty close to what she remembered.

  In the weeks after the incident, she’d tried to swallow the excuses she’d been fed; shadows in the night, shock, fear, lack of sleep. All pretty convincing. Almost costing a woman her life and being tied up by a lunatic had been a lot for her mind to handle. But she was strong, had lived through some pretty bad stuff in the past, and werewolf hallucination was a first.

  She’d tried to let it go and move on, but as she replayed the dream in her mind, she noted the details that had been stored away by her memory. She wasn’t crazy, something had happened, and she was going to prove it. Action was power, and she had a plan.

  She sat back on the floor with renewed resolve and opened the next book in the pile. Then, she began to read.

  * * *

  BILLY SPENT the thirty-mile drive to Bozeman deep in thought. How he was going to pull this whole thing off without ruining a woman’s life in the process, he didn’t know, but he was damn sure going to try.