Scent Of A Mate: League Of Gallize Shifters
SCENT OF A MATE
Copyright © 2019, Dianna Love Snell
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication
Pronunciation Guide
Description
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
League of Gallize Shifters
The Belador Series
Author Bio
A Word From Dianna
DEDICATION
Thank you Judy Carney for your enthusiasm, the amazing work you perform each time, and always being willing to help in any way.
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Baatar –BAH tar
Cadell – kah DELL
Gallize – gah LEEZ
Ganbaatar (or Gan) – GAN bah tar
Gemelo – heh MEL o
Isleen – IZ leen
Jazlyn – JAZZ len
Siofra - sheef RAH
Teàrlach - CH-EH-R-lack
SCENT OF A MATE
League of Gallize Shifters series
Gan never wanted to be a shifter and now he’s a Gallize. He’s battling to control a monster Siberian tiger just so he can be allowed to walk among the human population again. The minute that happens, he’ll do whatever it takes to escape all these shifters forever. His chance comes when he convinces his Guardian he’s ready, when in truth his animal is determined to rule their body. Gan only has to keep the tiger under control long enough to execute a mission he’s assigned and pay back a debt he owes. That might have worked perfectly if Gan’s heart hadn’t fallen to a female warrior who is his other half.
As a cougar shifter, Scarlett spends most of her days rescuing female shifters from predators. She has no intention of calling in the marker Gan owes her until she needs a rogue to help her save an innocent from powerful people she’s avoided her whole life. Unlike the other Gallize, an angry Gan has no loyalty to shifters he still considers strangers, but she’s seen the true man inside who will protect a vulnerable innocent. She had a sound plan, one that would only cost her if things went bad, until a crazy tiger shifter grabbed her heart. When Gan and Scarlett face impossible odds, each of them must put the one thing they hold most dear on the line to protect the other.
“There are shifters, then there are Gallize shifters.” IMHO reviews
Note: All the League of Gallize Shifters books are stand-alone paranormal romances.
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Chapter 1
Near Balsam Grove, North Carolina
Titanium handcuffs had a clear advantage over steel cuffs when dealing with a nonhuman. For one, they possessed the highest strength-to-weight ratio between the two metals.
More than that, titanium contained a dangerous shifter better than any other known metal.
Scarlett had used those cuffs more than once to manacle a shifter perpetrator, but she couldn’t dig up any appreciation for the pair locked on her wrists at the moment.
The damned hyena was lucky she hadn’t ripped his face off when he cuffed her, but that would have defeated the purpose of getting caught.
Every time her captor yanked the eight-foot length of thick chain attached to the cuffs, he gouged a new wound into her wrists. How much farther did they have to go?
She lifted her gaze, searching through trees not yet changing to fall colors in early September, and spotted his destination.
A fifty-foot-long commercial trailer used for over-the-road hauling stood thirty yards away in the North Carolina forest. Someone with no artistic talent had painted LAUGHING DOG FREIGHT LINES over the dirty white side with rust eating up the back corner. The Pagan Nomads mixed pack of shifters hadn’t hunted the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in over two years. Why now?
The grungy predator with a dark buzz cut, thick neck, and wide forehead muttered to himself. He slowed, looked over his shoulder, and made a gruff groan, then continued on.
What? Did he think she’d left him?
Not yet. Not until she got what she came for.
He made a disgusting snort that sounded amused, probably looking forward to shoving her in that trailer and bolting the door.
That could not happen.
Someone would bleed.
Of course, that threat would carry more weight if her wrists weren’t bound. She’d put herself in dangerous situations more times than she cared to admit, but she’d face a rabid hyena shifter any day over being locked in a box ... or cage.
She slowed her steps, mentally prepared to pay a price for provoking a hyena shifter with the personality of a wild hog left hungry for a week. His size advantage over her wouldn’t be an issue if not for titanium stifling her ability to shift.
Six-and-a-half feet of malevolent halitosis.
Hal for short.
He had the strange pack tattoo of fangs with a P and N initials in runic letters on the back of his hand. The Pagan Nomads made a living by trafficking shifters, mostly females.
Time to test Hal’s patience. She took another step and stopped.
The chain tightened and slid through his loose grasp.
He snarled and twisted around, letting out a high-pitched cackle. People mistook the giggling hyena sound for laughter, when it normally meant the opposite. That had been a warning.
Baring his blood-stained fangs, he said, “Don’t fuck with me, bitch. You may be used to men drooling over that pretty face and hot tits, but I’m immune to your kind.”
Easy to be immune when the pig had so little c
hance of getting a female willingly.
Channeling Jazlyn, a friend of hers who liked to quote Confucius and sometimes had more guts than sanity, Scarlett gave this guy a blank look and muttered, “The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come.”
Her cougar chuffed a laugh and sent Scarlett a telepathic message. Hyena idiot.
The idiot turned his back again.
He didn’t see her as a threat.
Scarlett flashed a razor smile, then back to her blank face. She remained still, inhaling the scent of pine and clean air she normally associated with a run through these mountains.
Hal tossed a mean look over his shoulder, eyes a sickly yellow glow. Hate bled through his emotions. Balling up the chain in his big fist, he snatched it hard and almost yanked her off her feet. But she leaned back at the last second and stayed upright, almost yanking him off his own feet with that move.
He dropped his ugly head down and did his best to intimidate her with crazy eyes under a thick brow.
Not working.
But that little exercise did tell her she could catch him off guard without too much effort.
Hyenas were thought to be fairly intelligent, but Pagan Nomads didn’t send out Rhodes Scholars to capture female shifters, just the strongest predators in their organization.
Licking his lips and still squinting as if he tried to digest her words, he said, “Keep that smart mouth shut or I’ll make you regret ever learning how to talk.”
No longer amused, her cougar snarled a demand to be freed so she could smack him around.
Scarlett replied silently, No, Chica.
Why? the cranky cat grumbled. Kill hyena. One less moron.
True, but Chica easily lost sight of their goal when her hackles got raised. Much as Scarlett would like to perform a service to humanity by eliminating this tumor on the world’s ass, she had a bigger goal.
Lives depended on her. Getting mauled while in cuffs would destroy any chance of succeeding.
She’d explained to Chica more than once that killing an annoyance was careless when the situation called for patience.
Patience wasn’t Chica’s strong suit.
Or Scarlett’s.
Hal grumbled louder and snatched the chain for no obvious reason. Scarlett leaped forward to keep her balance and growled at the dick move.
Chica argued, Turn hyena into rock.
No! Scarlett snapped at her animal for suggesting she expose an ability she’d kept secret since her teen years. You want to end up in a cage?
That silenced Chica, who knew better than to suggest Scarlett expose herself as not just another cougar shifter. She switched the topic to get her cat back on track.
We have to find out if this guy has all three female shifters first.
Her animal grumbled in discontent.
Even if she intended to shift, Scarlett couldn’t do it while wearing these damn cuffs with zero wiggle room. Her cougar’s paws were even larger than her human wrists. No shifter with any sense tried to change while contained in nonbreakable material.
On top of which, the hyena shifter would call up his animal faster and catch her in a vulnerable position.
Scarlett hurried her steps, catching up to Hal, which created slack for her damaged wrists. Bastard whipped the chain over his shoulder, which tightened it again, and jerked her hands up at an awkward angle. She gritted her teeth as fresh blood oozed around the titanium, which impeded her natural healing.
Slop Breath stopped abruptly.
She almost ran into him.
Eww. She sucked in too much of his rank smell. She held her breath as she backed up where the air smelled better then breathed again.
Turning slowly, his eyes narrowed until she wondered if he thought they shot lasers at her. He bared his teeth. “You insulted me.”
She had to think back on what he referenced. Oh, the Confucius quote. She gave him points for figuring it out before tomorrow.
Just to screw with him, Scarlett feigned surprise, but was careful to not lie. Even an imbecilic shifter should be able to smell a lie.
“What? You don’t know that famous quote?” She frowned hard to appear truly confused. “I said ‘superior men.’ Didn’t you hear that part?”
His eyebrows raised in response before bewilderment dulled the glow in his eyes. Grumbling, he shook his head and trudged on to the trailer.
Chica made a snort of laughter.
At the shipping trailer, Hal reached up and lifted off an open lock hooked on one side of the rear doors. Keeping an eye on Scarlett, he used his free hand to shove each side open.
She gave him a docile expression, at least her best impression of one.
Light from a bright full moon spilled through the canopy of tree limbs above, offering enough light for Scarlett’s sensitive eyes to quickly assess the contents.
That first glance sent her stomach to her feet.
Not because she saw six women when she’d expected three.
She’d always take on more rescues than less. The scraggly group of females smelled mostly of wolf, but she sniffed something unusual, too. The captives sat with their backs against the trailer sides, hands shackled above their heads. Clothes ranged from dirty T-shirts and jeans to a torn dress and one topless female in panties only.
Their titanium neck collars were chained to the floor.
Searching out a specific wolf scent, her gaze locked with a pair of eyes that flashed bright amber for only a second before returning to brown. Golden blond hair, filthy now and scrambled into a rat’s nest, bushed out around her head. She tossed her hair to one side, exposing a badly beaten face, but Scarlett could make out the scar running from her forehead down the right side of her face to her chin.
The wolf shifter never blinked while sharing her identity then quickly hid it again by dropping her chin to let the blond mass fall forward.
These fools had no idea they possessed Jazlyn, the Golden Kodiak wolf? If they did, they’d bypass bounties offered by humans and shifter law enforcement at underground auctions, and put out a silent bid to high rollers.
They would never risk carrying that wolf shifter uncaged.
Upon second glance, Jaz looked sick or badly wounded, which might explain why they still held her captive. Those amber-brown eyes cut her way again, staring holes through Scarlett as if Jaz was trying to tell her something.
Scarlett hadn’t forgotten what Jaz had done for her.
Shit. This complicated everything.
There was no way she could let these bastards take Jaz, not with the debt she owed that woman.
Hal took one look at Scarlett. “Little kitty scared? Good. You finally understand who’s in charge, bitch.” He grinned with predatory thrill then broke out a throaty cackling laugh.
For a crazy moment, Scarlett calculated how fast she could take this guy down before he shifted, then unlock her cuffs and free the women.
Cigarette smoke, one smell Hal hadn’t emitted, drifted from the front of the truck with a rough voice. “We need to get going or we won’t make Longtown by six,” some guy in the cab yelled.
Scarlett knew of only one place in this part of the country called Longtown, but there could be more. She had to consult a map.
Hal called back, “Not my fault we have to go back to Atlanta and pick up one more before we come back. I didn’t screw things up.”
“I don’t care who’s fault it is. I want my money for this haul. If I have to come back there to move this along, I’m takin’ a cut from your share. I caught the last two on my own.”
Hal ripped off a loud hyena cackle in the direction of the cab, eyes dark with fury.
There were at least three captors, six captives. The driver had just given her the location of where they were headed, plus a window of time to intercept this truckload on her terms.
Scarlett considered the obstacles of attempting a rescue now or later.
Longtown would offer her the best chance for fre
eing these women, and maybe more. A far better opportunity than attempting it alone now.
Of course, all that wonderful planning depended on escaping Hal, who had more shifter buddies on hand than she’d anticipated.
“Hey! Move it,” cab guy yelled.
Hal snapped out a high-pitched snarl again, teeth extending into fangs. He stepped up on the bumper to climb into the bed where he would drag her into that box to join the other women.
Chica banged to get out. Four men. Too many.
Four? Scarlett shouted in her mind. Her cougar had her own gift of reading scents for information.
Scarlett sent what she hoped was a reassuring look to the captured women.
The wolf with the scar on her face sent back a cold look. Jazlyn said more with a look than a judge passing a death sentence. She also knew Scarlett’s secrets, one of which had to remain hidden to protect her little sister.
With no time left, Scarlett leaned in as the chain pulled taut and arched hard in reverse. Her dead weight yanked Hal sideways and down, dropping them both to the ground.
Hal’s head slammed into the door. He caromed off and smacked the ground hard, dazed.
She reached for the keys on a ring attached to his belt loop, breaking the small chain.
The smoker grumbled, “Hey, dickhead. Leave the fucking hoes alone and get up here.”
Scarlett’s heart double-timed with every second it took to find the right key.
Rumbling of hope-filled voices built in the trailer.
That sound would haunt her when she left if she failed to rescue them later.
It might also alert their captors right now and get her attacked while cuffed.
The passenger side door on the cab opened and someone cursed as he headed toward where she sat on her knees trying to uncuff her wrists.
One side of the lock unclicked.
Hal rolled over, moaning. He grabbed his head and lifted crazed eyes at her. He shot a hand out to grab her.
She fell back, booted him in the head, and threw an apologetic look at the scared faces.
Footsteps closed in from the side of the trailer.
Jumping up, she streaked out of there as fast as she could run.