Uncaging Wolves (Shifter Country Wolves Book 4) Read online

  Uncaging Wolves: Shifter Country Wolves #4

  Copyright © 2016

  Roxie Noir

  All rights reserved.

  Uncaging

  Wolves

  Roxie Noir

  This book is intended for audiences 18 and over only.

  Chapter One

  Scarlet

  On the opposite side of the room, the judge sat behind his plastic folding table, flanked on one side by the court reporter and on the other by a man in a suit. Scarlet didn’t know what the man in the suit was doing there, and she didn’t care.

  The judge adjusted his reading glasses, a chain draped around his neck, and opened a crisp manila folder.

  Scarlet’s hands started to shake. She swallowed, forcing herself to sit up straight in the metal folding chair, lacing her fingers together.

  The judge seemed to be reading forever, slowing flipping over page after page with his fat white fingers.

  This is just another day for him, Scarlet realized. He got to work at nine and this evening, he’ll go home and eat dinner and watch TV.

  It’s not his parole hearing, after all.

  For just a moment, the sun broke through the clouds outside and cast rectangles of light on the linoleum floor of the all-purpose room at the Cascadia State Women’s Penitentiary. Scarlet, her lawyer, and an advocate sat at one long folding table, the judge ten feet away at another table, facing them. Two prison guards flanked the doors.

  Scarlet forced herself to take another deep breath in, a calming technique she’d read about in one of the psychology books in the prison library.

  “Scarlet Reynolds,” the judge finally said, sending a bolt of pure anxiety through her.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” she responded. Her voice didn’t come out right, and she cleared her throat.

  “You’ve made an excellent case for parole,” he went on, looking at her over his glasses. “Model prisoner, cooperating with the court on the matter of your family members.”

  Scarlet felt like she couldn’t breathe, but she forced her chest to keep expanding and falling.

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” she said. Her voice didn’t waver, but she could hear that it was pitched about an octave higher than normal.

  “Do you fully understand the terms of parole?” he asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” she said.

  “If granted, you will be released into the custody of your brother Trevor and his mates Austin and Sloane. Within three days, you must present yourself to the Ponderosa County Probation Office. I understand that you have an offer of employment at the Sweet Dreams Bakery in Rustvale, Cascadia?”

  “That’s correct, Your Honor.”

  Scarlet could feel tears starting behind her eyes as her throat closed up.

  Don’t cry, she thought. Not yet. Cry when you’re actually out.

  He took his glasses off and folded them in front of her file folder, looking at her with serious eyes.

  “And you’re willing to abide by the laws of parole?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” Scarlet said. She felt like a million ants were crawling right under her skin, as a combination of fear, anxiety, and panic shot through her.

  He nodded once.

  “I hereby grant your petition for parole, in recognition of cooperation with the court, and in light of model prisoner behavior.”

  He handed her folder to the man next to him, who stamped something on it.

  “Thank you,” Scarlet said. She barely got it out before she found herself hunched over, her forehead on the cold, hard plastic of the folding table, tears running down her face. She couldn’t stop herself from sobbing, her face in her hands, her whole body shaking like a leaf.

  The judge cleared his throat quietly, and she sat up again, doing her best to control herself.

  “You’ll be released in about seventy-two hours, once all the paperwork is finished,” the judge said. Now his voice was less formal, a little softer.

  Scarlet couldn’t speak, only nod. She wiped her eyes with her fingers, then dried her hands on her bright orange prison uniform.

  “Case dismissed,” the judge said, and Scarlet’s lawyer stood. After a moment, she did as well, and then followed him blindly from the room, past the two guards.

  It’s over, she thought. It’s finally over, thank God.

  For three days, Scarlet was virtually afraid to speak, move, or even think. Suddenly, now that freedom — or relative freedom — was so close, it seemed like the smallest slight could tear it away from her, so she spent as much time as possible in the library, doing her best to be completely invisible.

  The day came. The guards gave her a cardboard box, and she put her few belongings into it: letters from the outside, drawings from her niece and nephew. A good luck charm from Maria, her only friend on the inside, who’d passed on the ugly wooden carving of a dolphin when she’d been released a year ago.

  Then they led her through the halls, two of them, to a small, windowless room where the clothes she’d worn when she got there sat, folded neatly, on a table. Scarlet changed into them, noting how they fit her a little looser now.

  She walked through the visitation room and to the lobby, where she’d stood four years ago and handed over her cell phone, her keys, even her hairpins. Everything that had been in her pockets when she’d been arrested along with her mother, father, brother, and most of the Ponderosa wolf pack.

  Her brother glanced up and stood. Scarlet gave one last look to the impassive guards before taking a step forward, then another step, and then suddenly she was in Trevor’s arms and he squeezed her so hard she thought he might break her, the cardboard box crumpling between them.

  She hugged back.

  “You came,” she said.

  “I said I’d come,” he said. “When have I lied to you?”

  Scarlet closed her eyes and, for the first time in years, let herself think that everything might be okay.

  Trevor drove her across the state in companionable near-silence. The Women’s Penitentiary was clear across Cascadia, closer to the ocean than to Ponderosa Country, and it was a four and a half hour drive. Scarlet couldn’t think of a single thing to say, and spent most of the ride glued to the window of the sedan, just watching the scenery go by.

  It had been a long time since she’d seen trees this big in person, let alone mountains. Let alone truck stops or gas stations or fast food restaurants, and for a while, she let herself feel the pure joy of being on the outside at last.

  Finally, she recognized landmarks. The big neon sign for Pat’s diner, the ski runs high on the mountains, shut down for the summer. The sign that said RUSTVALE: 15 MILES. The Timber Creek ranch was only thirty minutes outside town.

  As he signaled and then exited, Trevor looked over at her, turning down the classic rock radio station.

  “Listen,” he said. “It was supposed to be a surprise, but back at the house they’ve got a little party for you. Just the six of us, some cake, some sparkling apple cider. Lizzy and Tim made a banner and all that.”

  Scarlet nodded, finally tearing her eyes away from the view outside, and tried to formulate the question that she had.

  “Is everyone...” she started, then frowned. “Is everyone pissed?” she finally said, unable to do any better.

  “Not everyone,” said Trevor. “You’re not popular, but they mostly have better things to worry about.”

  He looked over at her for a moment, then back at the road.

  “The die-hards are still inside, and I don’t think they’re getting out any time soon,” he said. “Plotting to overthrow the state government, no matter how inept, is still treated
pretty seriously.”

  “I sure found that out,” Scarlet said.

  “Well, the parole board thinks you’ve turned over a new rock.”

  “You mean a new leaf?”

  “Sure.”

  “They let me out because I flipped on Dad,” she said, guilt clogging her throat. “Because I couldn’t take being in prison any longer and I told them everything.”

  Without warning, Trevor jerked the wheel to the right, pulling onto the road’s gravel shoulder. Scarlet gasped, her hands gripping the sides of her seat, the seatbelt restraining her as she lurched forward at the sudden stop.

  “What the—”

  “Dad’s an idiot,” Trevor growled. He sat bolt upright, turned toward her in his seat. “He’s a bigoted idiot who thinks that blood and violence are the solution to a problem that he invented, who’s so afraid of anything he doesn’t understand that he’s willing to kill thousands of people just to prove that wolves deserve respect.”

  Scarlet stared.

  “He just wanted—”

  “He wanted to kill anyone who didn’t agree with him, and you know it.”

  Trevor’s gray eyes blazed. Scarlet had never seen her brother this angry before.

  “It was never going to work,” she said quietly.

  “You didn’t know that. He didn’t know that.”

  Scarlet closed her eyes and bowed her head for a moment, letting her neck muscles stretch. Trevor was right, of course; at her father’s trial, the prosecution had entered everything into evidence. The storage sheds full of illegal automatic weapons; the emails detailing his instructions to his pack underlings on how to set human, bear, and lion residences on fire to make sure they couldn’t be quenched; his “battle plan” for taking over Rustvale’s Town Hall, then Canyon City’s Courthouse. After that, the plan had been for Redding, the Cascadia state capitol.

  “He was a bigoted idiot who couldn’t organize a hostile takeover of a preschool classroom,” Trevor went on. He released the brake and let the car start rolling forward, checking his mirror.

  “You don’t owe him shit, Scarlet. Neither of us owes him shit.”

  He’s still my father, she thought. It’s still my fault that he’ll never get out of prison now.

  Trevor pulled back onto the highway, his outburst over.

  “Was?” Scarlet asked, softly.

  He can’t be dead, she thought, a germ of fear blossoming in the pit of her stomach. They would have told me if he were dead, right?

  “Is,” Trevor said. “It doesn’t matter, we don’t have a relationship anymore.”

  “Did you ever visit him?” she asked, staring straight ahead at the asphalt.

  “Once,” Trevor said. “I walked into the visitation room, said hello, and he asked me if I was still letting that revolting bear give it to me up the ass, so I walked right back out. I never even sat down. Haven’t visited since.”

  Sounds like Dad, Scarlet thought. Once, she would have been proud of him. Now she was just embarrassed.

  Without speaking, she glanced down at the tattoo on her forearm: three crescent moons, stacked, the points of the bottom two moons touching the curve of the one above it. The thick black lines were uneven and already beginning to fade, even though the tattoo wasn’t even four years old yet.

  It wasn’t like prison tattoos were very high quality.

  Quietly, Scarlet covered it with her right hand and looked ahead. She’d gotten it not long after she’d gone in, back when she’d been young and dumb and still inspired by what she’d called the Lupine Cause. The triple moon marked her out as a purebred wolf, one moon for each lupine parent; wolves with a human parent were allowed to join the cause, but were considered second-class citizens.

  She also had a snarling, slavering wolf just below her left collarbone. It was ugly too. She’d wanted it lower, on her breast over her heart, but the Cause didn’t like to give its women breast or stomach tattoos. Women were supposed to breed, and pregnancy might ruin a breast or belly tattoo.

  The two of them sat in silence for a long time, driving toward a gray sky overhead. Tiny droplets began to fall on the windshield, and Trevor turned on the wipers.

  “How is the revolting bear?” she asked.

  Finally, a hint of a smile played around Trevor’s lips.

  “He’s good,” he said. “Ask him about his garden when you get a chance, he’ll talk your ear off about tomatoes.”

  “Sloane?”

  “Practically running Triangle,” he said. “Had she gotten the promotion when we all visited two months ago?”

  Every couple of months, Trevor packed up the whole household — his husband Austin, their wife Sloane, and his niece and nephew — and visited Scarlet in prison. They all wished they could come more often, but a four-hour-drive each way was no joke.

  “Yeah, she was running the coding development team, I think? To be honest, when she tells me what she does, it’s barely English.”

  Trevor chuckled.

  “You and me both,” he said. “Don’t tell her that.”

  As they drove up the driveway, Scarlet could see the lights flick off in the house.

  “They tried really hard for this party,” Trevor said, navigating the car up the bumpy gravel road.

  “I’ll act very surprised, I promise,” she said.

  “Before I forget, I made you an appointment with a probation officer on Friday,” Trevor said. “Ten in the morning. You start at the bakery first thing Monday.”

  Scarlet felt a familiar flicker of irritation at her older brother — Jeez, Trevor, I can make my own appointments — but quickly squashed it.

  Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. He did a nice thing. Not everything has to get your hackles up.

  That meant she had tomorrow free, and then the weekend to get her life together, somehow, before starting work.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “I got you a phone and a car too,” he said. “Well, I got you a phone. The car is Dad’s old Bronco. Me and Austin managed to get it running okay.”

  He doesn’t have to be this nice to me, Scarlet thought. The first time he’d visited, she’d snarled at him that he was never, ever to bring that bear to see her. That bear being Austin, of course.

  Trevor parked and flipped the headlights off.

  “Why’d you do this?” Scarlet asked, suddenly.

  “Do what?”

  “Take me in. Get me a job. Get me a phone, fix my car.”

  She turned and looked at him, his gray eyes calm and relentlessly familiar.

  “I know you didn’t have to,” she said, quietly. “You could have stopped visiting years ago.”

  “Because you’re my little sister,” he said. “And because I thought you could still change.”

  Did I, though? thought Scarlet, her eyes searching his. I don’t hate bears and lions and humans anymore, but I don’t think I’m a good person. Whatever that means.

  “You did change,” he told her, as if he could read her mind.

  “For the better?”

  “Mostly,” he said. “Though you still jiggle your leg when you’re nervous and it drives me up the fucking wall.”

  Scarlet forced herself to stop jiggling her leg.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “Ready?” Trevor asked.

  “Ready,” Scarlet said, and she got out of the car, crunched across the gravel driveway, and walked up the steps to the wooden porch.

  She took a deep breath, then pushed the door open and walked into the dark hallway.

  A brief flash of memory: standing around the dining room table with her father, then men in helmets and body armor breaking through the door. The last time she’d been in the house.

  Then she walked into the dark living room and paused, letting her eyes adjust, and the lights flipped on.

  “SURPRISE!!” everyone yelled.

  Scarlet’s wolf jumped up and growled at the sudden noise and light. It didn’t matter to her wolf that she
’d been expecting it. The animal had been on high alert for years now, and it went into attack mode at the slightest provocation.

  She held her breath for a moment, forcing it down.

  Then she smiled as wide as she could, nearly feeling like her face would crack from the sheer force of it.

  “You guys!” she said.

  “Lizzy and Tim baked you a cake,” said Sloane, pointing to a clearly homemade baked confection on the coffee table. The two teenagers smiled, both looking a little embarrassed.

  “It’s chocolate-chocolate-chocolate,” said Lizzy, her dark hair falling over her gray eyes.

  “My favorite,” said Scarlet.

  For a moment, she thought, I can’t believe they let that through, but then she quickly corrected herself.

  You’re home. In a house. Where cakes are normal and delicious and not for smuggling contraband.

  Not that anyone used cakes for that anymore, of course.

  Then Sloane came up and hugged her, the other girl standing on tiptoe.

  “Welcome home,” she said.

  Chapter Two

  Scarlet

  Scarlet couldn’t sleep. It was too quiet and too dark. Her bed was too comfortable, the sheets and blankets too soft, her pillow too fluffy.

  You should be comfortable, she told herself. You’ve literally had dreams about this, getting to sleep in your own bed, with a real comforter and a real mattress, in a room with a door that locks.

  It wasn’t making her any more tired, though, no matter how hard she tried.

  At last, Scarlet rolled over and looked at her bedside clock.

  It was 10:05.

  Of course you’re not tired, she thought. Everyone here is on ranch time. They get up at five and go to bed by ten.

  She swung her legs over the side of her bed, her toes finding the braided rug next to it, and she stood up and paced.

  Scarlet had an unnamable, deep-down itch. It wasn’t the urge to shift, though she wished it was — that was something with an easy answer. No, she wanted to go out, do something, go somewhere, have some excitement.