Obsessed With The Alpha Wolf (Firefighter Wolves Shifters Book 1) Read online

  Obsessed with the Alpha Wolf

  Firefighter Wolves Shifters Series (Book 1)

  Brittany White

  © Copyright 2019 by Brittany White

  All rights reserved.

  In no way it is legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher. All rights reserved.

  Respective authors own all copyrights not held by the publisher.

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  Contents

  Blurb

  1. Ben

  2. Lana

  3. Lana

  4. Ben

  5. Lana

  6. Ben

  7. Lana

  8. Ben

  9. Lana

  10. Ben

  11. Lana

  12. Ben

  13. Lana

  14. Ben

  15. Ben

  16. Lana

  17. Ben

  18. Lana

  19. Ben

  Epilogue

  Dragon Shifters of Kahului (Excerpt)

  About the Author

  Blurb

  Only she could soothe the storm raging inside him..

  * * *

  Something dangerous is coming for his pack. Ben Stokes, wolf shifter and Alpha of the Lenox pack can feel it deep in his bones. His problems are only compounded when he meets a human woman, who he is drawn to despite knowing that tangling with a human would spell disaster. And Ben cannot explain why his instincts want to turn him into her protector.

  * * *

  Lana Deary has come to Lenox to start a new business and new life. Only things don’t go according to plan when she arrives to find her business a smoldering mess and her attraction to Ben Stokes, the hot firefighter she meets on the scene is not part of her plan.

  * * *

  As Ben tries to hold his pack together as the feeling of danger ramps up, and Lana tries to rebuild the ruins of her life, the attraction between the two of them is undeniable. But as their passion grows, so does the danger to the love blossoming between them.

  * * *

  And when an old enemy does come to Lenox, Ben will have to choose between love for his pack and love for the woman who may just well be his mate.

  * * *

  ***

  1

  Ben

  Ben Stokes paced back and forth in the confines of his tiny office as if he was an animal in a cage, and raked his fingers through his hair. A restless energy had been pulsing through him all day. He could smell ozone in the air, and there was an electric feeling coursing through his muscles. It was like a storm was coming, but the clear sky outside told him that it wasn’t the weather that was driving him nuts. It was something else.

  “You’re going to wear a hole in the floor if you keep pacing like that.”

  Ben looked sharply toward the door where his brother Josh leaned against the door frame. He stopped pacing and stood in the middle of the office as he tried to compose himself. Something was happening to him, something he’d never experienced and he didn’t want his brother to know it.

  “Was there something you wanted?” Ben hoped whatever it was that it could be dealt with quickly because he didn’t think he could hide his agitation for long from someone who knew him as well Josh.

  “I want to know what is up with you?” Josh sat down in the seat across from Ben’s desk and put his feet up on the edge. “You seem a little broodier than usual.”

  “According to you, I’m always a broody asshole, so I don’t see how this is any different.” He reached out and swept Josh’s feet off his desk, trying to act as normal as possible. This time was different and he knew it, he just didn’t want the pack to know it, too.

  Josh sighed as his feet came to rest back on the floor. He gave Ben a penetrating stare which Ben returned. Their eyes locked for several moments before Josh’s eyes fell away.

  “If you are afraid that whatever is bugging you will get back to the pack, it won’t.” Josh stood and closed the door to Ben’s office. “We’re behind a closed door, so anything you say now will be in private.”

  Josh wasn’t only his brother but his second-in-command. And he wasn’t stupid; Ben had to tell him something. But how to explain the feeling that something was happening, something that would change the dynamic of the pack? Would change him? How could he explain it to Josh when he didn’t even know what it was himself?

  He decided to tell Josh what he did know.

  “I’m feeling the weight of being Alpha. Dad told me it would happen eventually, but I haven’t really felt it until now.”

  “You’ve been Alpha for twelve years; you are bound to feel the weight of responsibility at some point. It’s what makes you a good leader, the fact that you do feel responsible, that you want what’s best for the pack. It doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. It’s not weak to open yourself up.”

  Ben nodded, but his brother’s words didn’t lessen what was on his mind. And while he knew that he could always use Josh as a sounding board, that nothing he said to him would go any further, he couldn’t bring himself to open up about something he didn’t understand.

  “I need to run.” Maybe that was all he needed to make the restless feeling inside him go away.

  Ben turned toward the door as Josh stood up.

  “Are you sure that it all it is?” Concern pulled Josh’s brows together. His brother knew him better than anyone, and Ben knew that he wasn't fooled by his talk about the weight of responsibility. But that was all Ben could tell him for now.

  “Yeah, that’s all it is. I need to get out of my head for a while.” He quickly schooled his features into an impassive mask and walked out of his office with Josh behind him.

  The firefighter members of the pack clustered inside the station looked at him. He made sure he had his game face on. He didn’t want them to see something he wasn't ready for them to see. To do so might cause chaos and disorder within the ranks of the pack, and until Ben knew more about the feeling racing inside him, he wanted the pack to be calm.

  “I’m fine. I just need a run.” The hardness in his tone had Josh’s eyes darting away and Ben knew that there wouldn’t be any more questions from him, at least not tonight. “You’re in charge until I get back. Don’t let the town burn down.”

  “As if that would happen.” Josh rolled his eyes and moved away.

  Ben continued on toward the door and rubbed the back of his neck as he felt eyes on him. He glanced over to see Derek, a member of the pack, watching him. He’d been doing a little too much of that lately, as if he was waiting for any sign of weakness. Ben gave him a hard look and the other wolf quickly looked away.

  Ben knew without a doubt that Derek would be a problem at some point. He may be backing down today, but that was not going to always be the case. Thankfully, it wasn’t a problem he would have to deal with today.

  Ben went out of the fire station with a shake of his head. He was already in a place where the ground felt shaky behind his feet without causing more trouble for himself. He could handle Derek if and when the time came.

  As he moved away from the station, the feeling of restlessness deepened inside him. Fortunately, he would not have to delay his change. The fire station sat on the Shadowbrook estat
e, and it had been home to his pack for as long as there had been a pack. There were no prying human eyes here that might see something they shouldn’t.

  Ben quickly stripped out of his clothes and embraced his change. As his muscles shifted and his bones cracked, he hoped the feelings coursing inside him would lessen once he embraced his animal side.

  As soon as he was a wolf, he took off into the trees surrounding the Shadowbrook estate, trying to outrun the feeling of restlessness that had plagued him all day. But no matter how fast he ran, no matter how hard his paws hit the ground, there was no outrunning the electricity that made his hair stand on end and he was no closer to answers.

  He got back to the station and shifted back into his human form. Once he was dressed, he walked back in. Josh saw him and turned to him with his arms wide open and a smug grin on his face.

  “See, the town didn’t burn down while I was in charge.”

  As if to mock him, an alarm sounded overhead and the grin fell from Josh’s face as he and other members of the pack rushed to answer the alarm’s call.

  “You sure about that?” Ben yelled as he sprinted beside his brother. One good thing about a fire in town was that it would hopefully be enough distraction to drive the feeling that something was about to happen out of him.

  2

  Lana

  Lana Deary’s hands tightened around the steering wheel of her Honda Civic as she took Exit Two from I-90 W to merge onto US-20 W. God, was she ready to do this? To uproot her life and make a complete change?

  As she made her way to Lenox, with dawn causing creeping fingers of light to streak across the sky and set the colors of fall alight on the trees whizzing by, she questioned her decision for the hundredth time since she’d bought the bookstore.

  Her phone chimed and she pressed the button on the steering wheel to open the call.

  “If you’re calling to talk me out of this, you’re too late.” Lana kept her eyes on the road as her best friend Harper’s husky laugh rang out over the phone’s speaker.

  “If I thought I could talk you out of this, I would have done it before you bought the bookstore. If you want to walk away from your career, away from Boston, who am I to stop you?”

  There was a note in Harper’s voice that implied she thought Lana was insane for walking away from her corporate job and her beautiful condo in Boston.

  “I know you think I’m crazy for doing this.”

  “I never said that.”

  “You don’t have to.” Lana sighed as she tried to relax her hands on the steering wheel. “I saw the looks my colleagues gave me on my last day, overheard the whispers about how stupid I am to walk away from my position as head of copywriting.”

  There was a beat of silence in the car and she knew that Harper was carefully choosing what she was going to say next.

  “I know you weren’t happy, even before what happened to your mother. I’m just trying to understand why now? And why Lenox?”

  Why Lenox indeed. Lana supposed that Harper thought that if she wanted to open a bookstore, she could do that in Boston. But what Lana wanted was a complete break from her old life.

  “If you could see it here, you’d understand why I chose Lenox. When the Johnson’s bookstore came up for sale, I had to grab it.” Harper was right: she hadn’t been happy for a while. The professional success she’d striven for and finally achieved hadn’t been the answer she was looking for. And her mother’s accident, which happened so suddenly before she had the opportunity to mend fences with her, had only emphasized the feeling that something was missing from her life.

  “But do you think it’s going to make you happy?”

  That was the million-dollar question. Lana had no guarantee that this move was going to fill the void that had been growing inside her.

  “I have to try. I have to see if this is what I’m missing.” The money she’d inherited from her mother, which had been enough to buy the store and give her a new start, had seemed like a sign that now was the time for her to grasp at her chance for a new life. “All I know is that if I don’t do this now, I’m always going to wonder what could have been.”

  “Okay, I get it. And despite everyone telling you that you’re crazy, I think this is the gutsiest thing you have ever done. It takes a lot of nerve to walk away from everything you know and start this new adventure.”

  Something eased inside Lana at Harper’s words. It was the first time since she’d bought the store and left her job that someone had told her that what she was doing was anything other than the biggest mistake of her life.

  “I don't know how adventurous this is going to be—I’m only opening a bookstore after all. But I’m going to do the right thing for me.”

  “And as soon as you get the bookstore up and running, I’m going to be your first customer.” Now that she knew this was what Lana needed, and she couldn’t stop her regardless, it seemed that Harper was ready to embrace the change she’d made in her life. “And you never know, you might meet someone special.”

  Lana laughed out loud as her car drifted past the sign that welcomed her to Lenox. “Can I get the bookstore up and running before you have me married off?”

  Love was definitely not in the plan just yet. She was only at the beginning of her new life and romance would have to take a backseat to the work she had ahead of her.

  “You never know. I’ll call you later and see how you’re doing.”

  “Okay, and you better come see my store once it’s set up the way I want it. I’m holding you to your promise to be my first customer.”

  Once Harper said goodbye, Lana ended the call and sighed. The tightness in her stomach, which had been with her when she got up this morning, finally eased. She didn’t know about Harper’s notion of her meeting someone. If her past was anything to go by, she had a feeling that she might not be as lucky in love as her friend seemed to believe. If she hadn’t been able to meet the right man in Boston, what were the odds in a small town like Lenox?

  She shoved aside all thoughts of love. That wasn’t why she left Boston. She left to start a new life that was right for her. And she was going to be busy enough getting her new bookstore and her new apartment, which was housed in the upper floor, in order for a while. She had more than enough to contend with without adding the complication of a relationship into the mix.

  As she drove into the town proper, she really looked at it for the first time. The sun was rising, reflecting on the old-fashioned lampposts and shop windows. She could breathe here, could slow her life down and be a part of something.

  As she got closer to where her shop was located, the tightness that had left her came back. There was a crowd of people clustered in the square, looking in the direction of the row of shops where her new home and business were nestled.

  She parked the car and got out. It was too early in the morning for this kind of crowd, even if it was the high point of the tourist season. Something was wrong, and the acrid smell of smoke in the air told her that it wasn’t the joys of fall that people were looking at.

  “Please don’t let it be the store.” Her feet felt like they were dragging through molasses as she made her way over to the cluster of people. She came to the edge of the crowd, but couldn’t clearly see what it was they were looking at. Someone’s business had been on fire, and Lana’s heart went out to whoever’s it was.

  She turned to the person standing next to her, an older woman who must be a tourist if the fanny pack clasped around her waist was any indication.

  “What happened?”

  “The bookstore was on fire. They just put it out.”

  Lana’s heart plummeted down to her toes.

  No.

  Surely she was wrong. The woman was a tourist, how could she know the building was the bookstore?

  Lana fought her way through the crowd, to the front of it and out the other side. Cold washed over her body at the slight heat she could feel lingering in the air. The tourist hadn’t been wrong.
>
  Right there, before her eyes, was the building she’d sunk all her hopes and dreams for the future into, black and smoking against the backdrop of a small Massachusetts town.

  3

  Lana

  “Get these people out of here.”

  As if from a distance, Lana heard a growling male voice say as one of the firefighters walked over to a woman in a police uniform. The woman nodded and moved toward the crowd that stood at Lana’s back.

  “Okay, everyone, show’s over. Please go back to what you were doing so we can get on with our work.” The police officer’s voice carried over the crowd, and with a murmur of voices, the crowd slowly melted away so only Lana was left. She stood there, stunned, as she stared at the two-story building that was supposed to be the start of her new life, in all its ruined glory.

  The policewoman came up to her. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to leave. You have no business here.” The woman was in her mid-forties, and there was steel in her voice that matched the blue in her eyes.

  “It is my business. I bought the bookstore from the Johnsons.” Shock still lent Lana’s voice a weak tone, and she fought a rising tide of despair as her eyes moved over the ruin in front of her.