Read Online Elder: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves #6) by Holley Trent - Free Book Online

didn’t feel she had the necessary education, and back in Jersey, she hadn’t had the luxury of pulling him out of the local wolf school, anyway. Their alpha had monitored school attendance and counted every little chick so he’d know if one left the roost without his authorization.
    “I’ll get his bath started,” Ashley said. “And make sure he brushes his teeth.”
    “What’s wrong with my teeth?”
    “You’re such a boy. Go on. Shoo.”
    Kevin grumbled his way down the hall, but he went. Ashley’s tone may have been pleasant enough, but she hadn’t left any room for argument. She was Type A, through and through. Always had been.
    She watched Darla slowly sip the dregs of her juice, and then snapped her up, too. “Two bathrooms. Two baths. I bet I know who’ll smell nicer.”
    “Me!” Darla shouted.
    Anton had barely waited until the children were out of earshot before asking, “The kids said your mate was Michael March.”
    Esther pushed her hair back from her face and shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe.
    Michael March. Dead man had a name.
    “I take it you know of him,” she said quietly.
    “How’d you end up with him?”
    “You know how things go in the old packs, Anton. He was next in line to get a mate, and Daddy didn’t have anything else to barter.” She laughed, but the sound was a dry crackle—more like the precursor to a sob than a display of actual mirth. Mirth was for children. She hadn’t felt anything resembling joy in years. “He could have bought me some more time, but you know how Alpha was. He did his best to make sure no one had any money. If he thought you had a penny to spare, he made the accountant assess higher dues.”
    “ Michael , of all people, though. He wasn’t for you.”
    Vic scoffed. “I doubt any man there would have been for her. The gene pool is only so large, and Madeira was doing everything he could to ensure that the wolves descended from the Eurasian pack didn’t pair off anymore.”
    “Are there any males like them left?” Nixon asked.
    When no one else answered, Esther pulled her gaze up and found his liquid brown one locked on her. He’d been talking to her —asking her a question like what she said mattered.
    Apparently, that’s a normal thing in some circles.
    She sucked in a bracing breath to answer. “More like who?”
    He crooked his thumb toward Anton and Vic.
    “Just my father and a couple of older, dues-paying wolves who aren’t a threat to anyone anymore. A few other women, though.”
    Miserable, depressed, and stuck.
    Guilt pulled a knot into Esther’s gut, followed immediately by shame and fear. She’d felt guilty about leaving those women behind and then had remembered the circumstances of having been able to. She’d killed her husband, and she was still afraid. She couldn’t be anyone’s rescuer.
    “I guess yours wasn’t a good match.” A comment from Nixon, not a question.
    His gaze tracked down from her burning cheeks to her neck and the scars on her chest. The claw marks and the bites.
    Michael never did anything in moderation. He never drank a shot of vodka when a whole bottle would have gone down just as smoothly. He never talked if he could yell instead.
    Of course he’d been the sort of man who wouldn’t just bite her to claim her. A bite hadn’t been disfiguring enough.
    The screen door slammed shut, and Christina padded in on the heels of another dark-haired woman. Young and pretty. Smiling.
    Happy? Shame I can’t recognize that anymore.
    “I was about to head to the greenhouses,” the stranger said. “Almost missed me.”
    “We won’t hold you up,” Aunt Lil said. She turned to Esther and chuckled. “That’s Graciella. The Modesto sisters were kind of a three-for-one for us. We got Lisa, and she finagled getting her sisters here before they got parceled out to mates they didn’t want.”
    Obviously, the very young Graciella had gotten a mate anyway, if the wedding ring she wore was any