Page 1 of Bad Blood Wolf

Chapter 1

Jasmin Wildacre sat crouched on top of a stall door in a broken-down barn, waiting for the bleeding to start.

In front of her was a crowd of half-wild testosterone-hyped shifters, all of them male, almost all of them wolves. Even though they were in human form, the scent of fur and sweat and alcohol-fueled aggression was thick in the air.

Beyond them, in the open part of the barn floor, was a metal fighting cage.

One more fight to wait through. Just one, and then it was her turn.

Women are soft. Worthless.

Soft things get crushed.

Jasmin’s head was buzzing, the words from deep in her past reverberating in her skull.

No!

She was hard, hard as steel, invincible. Her inner jaguar was pacing, desperate for the fight and the triumph of the win. Hot blood in her mouth, claws raking fur and skin, and that potent, intoxicating scent of fear.

Her jaguar fed on fear—the fear of those who thought they were strong, thought they owned the world, thought they had the right to crush the weak, that nothing could touch them.

The moment when their arrogance turned to fear was the sweetness her jaguar craved. The blood was just a bonus.

Jasmin knew it was messed up. Everyone in the Bad Blood Crew was messed up. But Jasmin lived in fear of what would happen if she stopped feeding the craving, if she had to face the darkness without this release.

Just one more fight, she always told herself. I don’t need this anymore. I have a crew now, a decent place to live, maybe even a shot at a semi-normal life.

I have friends that are on the way to becoming a fucked-up dysfunctional semblance of a family.

But the words never helped for long. Eventually, the feeling came over her again. Her skin grew itchy and tight. Her jag clawed at her insides, and half-assed fights with her crew didn’t make the feelings go away.

Going jag and hunting in the forest didn’t make them go away. Only this. Illegal shifter fights, forcing the wolves to submit and tap out, proving over and over again that nothing and no one could make her submit or surrender.

Not ever again.

Just one more,she promised herself.

She was stronger than any wolf, she reminded herself. Stronger than anyone. That was important. But it didn’t matter until they knew it. To end the fight and get out of the cage, they had to submit. They had to admit she was stronger—that she was to be feared.

The two wolves who were fighting next were on opposite sides of the cage, still in human form, stripped naked and waiting to be announced.

“In this corner,” the announcer was saying, “the White Tornado, with seventeen wins, taking on a challenge fight from the newcomer, Gray Thunder, who earned this challenge by winning his first fight tonight in a record three minutes and twenty-two seconds.”

Gray Thunder was by far the bigger of the two, a huge barrel-chested man with crazy in his eyes. He waved at the crowd when he was announced, baring his teeth in a throaty growl to acknowledge the cheers and applause. They’d had to pull him off of his unconscious opponent to keep him from ending his first fight with a kill, but that didn’t bother this audience. As long as nobody actually died, the more violence, the better.

And this crowd was mostly from the Nashville wolf pack, anyway. Violence and cheating was a way of life for them. Jasmin’s crew, the Bad Bloods, knew that better than anyone. The wolf pack had nearly killed her whole crew a couple of months ago, as collateral damage in a bid to get rid of Nashville’s interim alpha, Jesse Travis of the Silverlake pack. Another reason it was insanity for her to be here. Another reason it was so satisfying to crush them under her paws one by one, and make them submit.

Backstabbing assholes.

Despite White Tornado’s winning record, he got almost no applause, but he didn’t seem to give a fuck. He barely acknowledged the crowd.

Jasmin watched him, the way she always did. Not because he was rip-my-panties-off-bend-me-over-and-take-me-from-behind-right-fucking-now sexy—though he was, if you were into wolves. Six-three, shoulder-length blond hair like a Viking, with unusual blue-green eyes and an old scar that ran from his hairline down across one of his sculptured cheekbones. He was completely ripped, but lean like a cat, from his pecs to his eight-pack to the v across his hips, to his tight ass and the impressive dick between long, well-muscled legs.

Okay, maybe it was a little bit because of that. But mostly she watched him because she couldn’t read him, and that made her jag nervous. She didn’t understand what drove him. The rest of them reeked of blood lust or frustrated desires or suppressed rage, of the desperate need to prove themselves, of the need to cause pain, of sheer insanity.

The White Tornado had none of that. He didn’t seem to have any friends, either, despite his scent marking him as part of the Nashville pack, and not one of the few outsiders that were sprinkled through the crowd, like her. This wolf got more boos and taunts than applause, no matter how many times he won.

He was about to fight, and there was no adrenalin hype in his body language, no excitement. He didn’t even look like he wanted to be here.