Hey Pack!
Ready to meet fiery, shoe-obsessed Fergie McAndrewsâand watch her world flip upside down when she stumbles straight into a supernatural battle she was never meant to see?
What can you expect?
Fergie is in trouble, but here comes Hudson Stormwolfe. Wolf Shifter. Guardian of Chaos. Protector of all things good⊠and instantly drawn to the human who just set his Wolf howling.
Now Fergieâs caught between danger she doesnât understand and a man who swears she belongs to him.
Youâve read the Prologue, now hereâs the next installment!
đ„ Donât forget:
New chapters drop every few days
Free subscribers get the first half of the book
Paid subscribers unlock the full story PLUS they get a special link to download book 2, Dragon Shield
đ Ready? Chapter 1 of Wolf Shield
What a day! Fergie McAndrews headed towards the pick-up truck sheâd borrowed from her roommate for work that morning.
Of course, the thirty-thousand dollar certified used luxury car sheâd splurged on earlier in the year was in the shop. Again.
Just another in a long line of bad decisions. After leaving a perfectly good job for a startup company, she was laid off three weeks ago and had to borrow money from her parents to pay rent. Wasnât that humiliating?
âThis is the last time, Ferg,â her step-monster had said after sheâd Venmoâd the money to her.
God forbid the mechanic call and tell her the car was ready. She wouldnât be able to pick it up for another week. That was when she got her first paycheck from her newest gig at L-Corp. Not a startup, but an older company with new offices in Bayonne, which was only a half-hour commute.
But to commute, you needed a car. Fergie had no choice but to borrow the old pick-up from her best friend and roommate, Jessenia Banks. It wasnât like she needed the truck. She worked from home these days. Besides, Fergie promised to fill it up and have it washed.
She huffed out a breath. Itâd been a really long day. A crappy one too. Fergie wanted to love her new job. Really, she did. But so far, it was the pits. If Fergie wanted to be a librarian, she wouldâve been one.
Research was her jam. Well, when it was interesting. She had a knack for sniffing out information and compiling easy-to-read spreadsheets and timelines. It wasnât the hard work that annoyed her. Her complaint was the content. The actual stuff her new boss had her looking up. It was beyond boring.
Why an enormous conglomerate like L-Corp needed old land surveys, cross-referenced with newspaper reports on accidents, crimes, etcetera. She had no idea. Sheâd been at it for weeks now. So far, sheâd researched six locations given via GPS coordinates across Hudson County. Her new boss wanted everything, every little insignificant piece of information she could dig up.
That was the easy part. It was the hassle of the actual job that really made her want to give up. Every day she had to drive to Bayonne to pick up her work laptop sheâd dropped off the night before with all of that dayâs findings. Every single night they wiped her computer clean.
Like she was going to run away with the secrets of what happened on 2nd and Washington sixty-years ago. Can you say paranoid? Ugh.
Fergie had always looked forward to working for a huge global company. It was supposed to be her ticket out of the Garden State. Travelling the globe, seeing new things, but visiting far-off places was always a secret dream of hers. Well, that, and having her own walk-in closet full of gorgeous designer shoes.
Best secret dream evah! In her opinion, anyway. What woman didnât love shoes? Fergie hummed as she daydreamed about rows and rows of Blahnikâs, Jimmy Chooâs, Garavaniâs, Ferragamoâs, and her personal favorites, Louboutinâs on every shelf!
Donât judge. Fergie wasnât shallow, she just liked pretty things. Haters gonna hate. But every time she ran across a thrift or second-chance store, sheâd search high and low to see what they had. That was how sheâd scored the pumps on her feet.
They made her feel good about herself. Being five-foot two-inches short with more curves than a racetrack, Fergie had had more than her fair share of self-esteem issues growing up. Alright, so she was chubby. She could admit that proudly now.
If everyone looked the same, the world would be one boring as hell place. Fergie liked herself perfectly fine these days, in spite of all the times her step-monster tried to make her diet growing up. So she liked food and shoes. Big deal.
She worked hard to feed and clothe herself, so as far as she was concerned, no one had a right to comment. So what if she wanted some excitement in her life? Fergie was aware she was better off than most, but what was wrong with having goals?
Sheâd spent a lot of time thinking about how a woman like her could have an adventure. Travelling was the only thing she could think of. Of course, sheâd been hoping this job would be the answer to that. Even travelling for work was better than being stuck.
Sigh.
So far, her plans had fallen flat, but hey, at least she was earning a paycheck. Her new boss, Mr. Offner, might be a strange man, but he signed her checks, and that was enough for now. Fergie had never seen more than a glimpse of him. All of her instructions usually came via email.
Most of the time she was able to compile her research quickly, then sheâd head back to the office to organize it into neat little spreadsheets, and finally, sheâd hand it all in with her laptop. But not today.
Mr. Offner sent her an email detailing everything she could dig up on one of the oldest places on record in the county. Of course, land surveys that old, along with police reports, newspaper articles, deeds, and sales records were nowhere she could easily access them.
After wasting hours at both the court house and municipal building, Fergie had been directed to the second public library. Apparently anything over a hundred years old was filed away in the godforsaken place. Sheâd been shocked to find an entire room filled with musty old archives. And wouldnât you know it, there was no cell service and no internet access. Plus, their phone lines were down. Sheâd had to photograph each page using her cell. When she got home later, she would send those photos like a fax to her boss along with her spreadsheet. If she could manage that before collapsing into bed.
Boy, was she tired! She shouldâve gone home ages ago, but Fergie was no quitter. Only once did she skip out of the library to grab a venti mocha latte with skim. She so loved curbside delivery!
Then sheâd headed back over to the Second Free Public Library down on Paterson Plank Road. Properly caffeinated, sheâd hunkered down and got to doing more of the work she was being paid to do.
Why the old building was called the second library was a mystery to her. One she didnât really care about, so, whatever.
Her job was to gather all the info she could on some old, currently vacant, piece of land formerly owned by Abel Smith. Mr. Offner, and therefore L-Corp, wanted every scrap of info she could muster up on the land which included a burial plot that had its own creepy folklore surrounding it.
Not her concern, she told herself, though some stories made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. The land was bisected by Secaucus road and was actually not too far from the very library where she now found herself.
Fergie stopped walking and scolded herself for behaving like a schoolgirl. She was a professional adult woman, for Peteâs sake! Her dedication to finding out miniscule details had earned her a GPA of 3.96 in college, and sheâd taken that work ethic and experience with her wherever she went after graduating.
Fairy tales and campfire stories aside, she would give all the information to Mr. Offner tomorrow. She might not have the job of her dreams, but at least she could pay her bills. For now, sheâd settle for that.
âTwo hours to find the musty old ledger,â she mumbled aloud while digging for the keys.
It was dark out and she was alone. That always made her nervous. Talking out loud helped calm her irrational fears. Adult or not, nobody liked being alone in a dark, creepy parking lot in the middle of the night. At least, Fergie didnât.
Sheâd prefer being back inside that horrible little room, reading the small handwritten columns in those old ledgers. And that had been no picnic either. After begging the nerdy little clerk to let her stay late, promising to lock up, sheâd spent a total of six hours in the awful place. It was a wonder her eyes still worked.
She blew out a breath. Where the heck were the truck keys? She grabbed her cell phone. Of course, she still had zero bars, so no service, but oh well, at least she could use it as a flashlight. Just what she wanted from a nine-hundred dollar smart phone. Thank God they had monthly payment plans.
âStupid piece of junk,â Fergie blew out a breath and rummaged through her purse.
It was already after ten. She could probably wait till morning to bring her computer back to the office. She didnât use it anyway. All her info was on her phone. Besides, right then, all she wanted was sleep.
Fergie dropped the phone back in her bag. Sheâd located the keys and hummed to herself as she headed towards her borrowed truck. Her new scanning app was really something. She would use it as soon as she woke up and email her boss.
Mr. Offner was sure to be impressed with it. The software allowed her to convert images, like the ones she took of the ledgers and hand-drawn maps, into readable and printable PDFs. She wanted to make a good impression, and who knows, maybe she could land a promotion that would get her out of all this scut work.
One thing she knew for certain, Fergie could live the whole rest of her life and never step foot in that creepy ass parking lot or the old second library again. Who thought it was a good idea to put this place all the way on the edge of town?
There wasnât a drive thru or gas station anywhere in the vicinity. Just an old patch of marshland, which now that she thought of it, meant tons of creepy crawlies. Fergie loved animals, but not the kind that lived there. Rats, snakes, spiders, and bird-sized mosquitos.
Ew. She shivered and picked up the pace. It had been hot all day, and the local vegetation stunk something awful. She swatted away one huge bloodsucking fiend of an insect and crinkled her nose.
How Fergie could still smell the stink of the swamp with her allergies was beyond her? Speaking of which, it was way past the time she normally took her meds. She stopped walking again and started to dig through her pocketbook for her regularly prescribed allergy meds. If she didnât take them at the same time every night, they didnât work. A noise brought her head up, and she turned around fast.
âHello, anyone there?â she questioned the dimly lit parking lot, feeling a tad foolish for doing so.
Too many scary movies, she scolded herself. She bent her head to check for the pills once more when the sound returned. Except this time it was directly behind her, making her jump.
Fergie whirled around and came face to face with three monstrously tall men. Her would-be assailants were all huge compared to her, even with heels on. She couldnât really make out their faces in the dim streetlights, but what she could see made her shudder.
Was it possible for three men to all have the same scale-like scars on their skin? Wait, was their skin green?
âHello yourself,â one of the men said, âwhatâsssss in the bag?â
âHoly shit,â Fergie gasped in horror.
The speaker opened his mouth, and she swore she saw a row of needlelike teeth and a long, forked tongue poking out.
What the f*cking f*ck? Fergie swallowed. Hard.