Head Hunter (City Shifters the Pack #3) - Layla Nash Page 0,1

enormous dude strode out.

Or tried to, since he stopped short before he mowed me down. I stared at him as I stumbled back, too intimidated by his size and the iron line of his jaw to hold my ground, and my feet tangled as the cat lingered and purred and rubbed against my ankles. I felt myself falling, felt the rising horror of making an ass of myself in front of a client, and braced to land hard and ruin the most expensive suit I owned.

Chapter 2

Dodge

Dodge moved into the witch’s house shortly after the incident with the sorcerer and Henry’s mate ended with Silas getting stuck in a monstrous half-wolf, half-man form. He could have stayed in the packhouse downtown in the old factory, but he preferred to be close enough to keep an eye on Silas. The poor bastard still paced and growled in the storm-cellar in the fancy house that the alpha’s mate owned. It had become the central residence for Evershaw, the alpha, and a few other senior wolves in the pack. Only Todd Evershaw, the alpha’s cousin, stayed at the place downtown to keep an eye on the rest of their misfit pack.

He still wasn’t entirely comfortable in the big ass mansion that Deirdre, the alpha’s mate, had inherited from her family. It was an old house, creaky and full of history, and it reminded him way too much of where he came from: where his grandparents lived and how much they fucking judged people. How much they’d judged his mother.

So he couldn’t relax much in the house unless he was chilling in the storm cellar with Silas, his feet propped up, smoking cigars and drinking whiskey. At least the crazy wolfman had settled down somewhat, at least when Dodge was around, and Dodge could doze down there without fear of getting his throat ripped out.

Otherwise he paced through the house and along the porch, or went outside to do the same when Deirdre finally got too irritated with the noise and yelled at him to stop making such a racket. She’d gotten more irritable after the confrontation with the sorcerer and not being able to figure out what kind of fucked up magic lingered on Silas. Dodge had his own theories on why the witch was hard to be around, but it wasn’t his business and he wasn’t about to offer an opinion on the alpha’s mate.

He shook his head and headed for the front door, trying to escape another of Evershaw’s rampages about finding the sorcerer and making him pay for attacking the pack. Dodge missed Henry’s steadying presence; the pack’s third-in-command had retreated to Montana after his familial pack asked for his help, but the son of a bitch left a hole in the SilverLine pack that they apparently expected Dodge to fill. He clenched his jaw and whipped the door open. No way. Not his thing. He’d had enough of being in command, being responsible for other people’s lives. He just wanted a quiet life, no responsibility, no more threats or death or blood.

Dodge nearly steamrolled right through a tall young woman in a stuffy business suit who stood right outside the door. He slammed on the brakes so he didn’t knock her ass down, and gripped the door to keep from growling out of sheer irritation and shock. Her dark eyes widened considerably when she saw him, so he must have scared the shit out of her. She scrambled back, or tried to – Cricket, the witch’s damn mountain lion of a house-cat, had made himself a nuisance like usual and tangled up her feet.

Or maybe it was the fancy high heels she wore that threw off her balance. Either way, her arms windmilled and she threw a leather-bound folio at him as she pitched backward.

Dodge could have let her fall, since she was the one who’d been hanging around on the wrong side of someone else’s door, but he wasn’t usually a dick to women. So he leaned forward and caught the front of her shirt in his fist, hauling her back upright.

She blinked, breathing hard, and stared at him.

He stared right back, unmindful that he still held onto her pretty blouse and no doubt wrinkled the shit out of it with his grip. At least he hadn’t caught her bra by accident. Or torn something off completely. He arched his eyebrows. “Can I help you?”

Her face turned red, as did every visible inch of skin across her chest