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Chapter1
JAX
There are more than five reasons why throwing Dr. Riyah Nash onto the nearest flat surface and fucking her crazy. First off, the fiery temptress is a vampire.This far north in January, all we have is night. Come spring when the sun touches the horizon? Not good. She is a physician to both humans and paranormals. For this small-town community to grow, Sleepy Briar needs her. If she has a personal relationship with anyone, the medical review board can stake her.
That’s a big one.
What else? Oh, yeah. She rents my spare bedroom. Smelling her coffee, caramel whatever it is scented body wash every single night drives me freaking wild.
And the big one…my badge says:Jax Havoc, Sheriff / Mayor of Sleepy Briar, Maine.
Yep, I’m her boss.
I only finish writing number five on my list before my pen freezes. That’s what I get for sitting here in my truck during a blizzard.
Ever since Riyah showed up in Sleepy Briar two months ago, fresh out of training and looking for a place to set up her medical practice, I’ve been fighting the urge to claim her as my mate. Now, with the winter’s biggest blizzard wolfing down on us, I’m going to be trapped in my cabin with her during the full moon. This time of the month, my shifter spirit is strongest. And horniest.
All shifters need to claim a mate. Sometimes that process is easy: two shifters fall in love, fuck each other into exhaustion, then repeat the process, creating little shifters.
Then there’s the hard way. Or, as my family would say: Jax’s way. Honestly, I don’t set out trying to make my life difficult. But one look at Riyah’s heart-shaped face, curvy plump fuckable ass, and sassy mouth is all it took for my inner wolf to know she should be my mate. And that’s a dangerous proposition for her.
Meanwhile, tryingnotto claim her these past few months has been driving me to distraction.
Especially because she enjoys taunting me by leaving her bedroom door cracked just enough that I get an erotic peepshow every time she changes. Or I find her skimpy panties and lacy DD bra hanging on our shared bathroom door hook. That sexy little vamp has a twisted streak that I’m dying to taste. There is no taking a shower without thoughts of her joining me. And she knows it.
However, if Sleepy Briar is going to progress beyond some small time winter town in the middle of a lot of fucking snow, we need people like her here. And on the flip side, we need people like me not fucking with the hired help.
I wrap my fingers around the wheel of my truck and just sit there for a minute. We need a lot of services or this town will turn into a ghost town. A physician vampire is a boon to a place like Sleepy Briar. It was bad timing that there was no place for her to stay except with me when she arrived. The inn I’m renovating won’t be finished until spring. Renting out my spare bedroom to her made good business sense for me and the town at the time.
And now my dick has been hard for two months straight and my wolf has grown impatient with waiting.
Tired of thinking, I cut my truck engine and killed the headlights. Even with whiteout conditions and subzero temperatures, there is no missing the rotten-egg odor of dark magic curling through the frigid air.
Its purple and yellow-tinged tendrils are visible between gusts of wind. The outline of my log cabin ahead is a beacon after a day of renovations and, even worse, struggling with building codes. My cabin is five miles away from the Sleepy Briar Inn. Besides the aforementioned inn, right now the entire town is bare of a lot of people after the Silver Circle came through and drove the residents out. There was a lot to do with witches, magic, and cut-throat dragons. Lots of forbidden rules getting broken. Long story that eventually brought me here as the new sheriff.
After the Silver Circle retreated, they left a bare town– no witches, magic, or dragons that I’ve encountered. But there are lots of empty buildings. Even the Cauldron Bubble Bar is closed which is a fucking crying shame. They had the best Moon brew I’ve ever tasted. Sadie, the witch who whipped the special concoction for shifters left with her sisters and took her brew with her almost a year ago now.
I crack my truck door open and get hit with the hard stench of black magic. I might have to revisit the idea of there being no witches in Sleepy Briar. Last I checked though, Sadie and her sisters didn’t play with anything that crossed lines into dark magic.
My gut says I am dealing with something completely different here.
Climbing out of the truck, I kick the fresh snow aside with my work boots. Sugar-like granules puff into glittery showers. Shit. The snow will freeze soon and the dense mass will be impossible to maneuver through so I have to work fast.
Sleepy Briar used to be special. Being back here reminds me of the times I had as a pup growing up. There was never a time I didn’t feel safe. Right now, that isn’t the case. If I want to breathe life back into my old town and make it a place where wolf shifters and other paranormals want to live again, I can’t have it smelling of dark magic.
Something is up, and it’s up to me to find out what before this place is erased from the map. Or the Silver Circle comes back and slaps their laws onto everyone again.
My plan—along with my silent partner and twin brother, Evan—is to build an inn with a restaurant and bar. Following the “if we build it, they will come” logic, I’m hoping that guides, photographers, nature-buffs, and outdoorsy types will re-discover Sleepy Briar. Visitors need shelter, food, and clothing along with souvenirs and entertainment. The tourists’ visits during the warm months of summer will bankroll the paranormals’ other nine months of hard-earned solitude.
Maybe in the future, we can build a ski lodge and turn our harshest months into profitable ones too. And if my plans work out, I might convince old citizens of Sleepy Briar to come back. I would love to have some of Sadie’s Moon brew again.
But getting that dream to a reality is taking a hell of a lot of effort. I devoted most of my thirty-odd years to hockey. When my wolf spirit refused to be suppressed any longer, I had to figure out a way to live as a man and a wolf shifter. Coming back to Sleepy Briar after years away was the only thing that made sense. Unfortunately, it meant rebuilding the town I once knew. That is not something life as a star hockey player prepared me for.
In times like this, when rotten-egg-smelling dark magic shows up, I miss my ordinary pre-shifter life. Inside me, a growl begins. My wolf resents my reminiscing when there’s work to be done.
Harsh snow blows into my face and pulls me back to the task. The air smells damp, even with the freezing temperatures. More heavy snow is headed this way.
A few paces from my truck I kick out feeling for solid ground when my boot hits clunky metal. I squat, carefully brushing the loose snow aside. An arctic hare’s fine long ears and white fur are almost cut in half by the wolf trap’s metal teeth. Only a slight dark stain mars the snow; the hare’s blood froze quickly. Some twisted bastard’s trap has sawed off one of the animal’s legs.
