Claiming Mia, page 1
Claiming Mia
Dot Com Wolves 1
Alisa Woods
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Zane’s magick is monstrous, and Ever’s power brings out his beast. But she insists on finding her father, and keeping her safe has suddenly become his job—on top of stopping an epidemic of overdoses that just might be cover for a serial killer. Together, they work to stop the dark magick that’s stalking the streets of Chicago… and try to keep their own secrets from consuming them both.
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* * *
READING ORDER
Dot Com Wolves
* * *
Claiming Mia (Book 1)
* * *
Saving Arianna (Book 2)
* * *
A Christmas Wish (Book 3)
Riverwise Private Security
* * *
Jaxson (Book 1)
* * *
Jace (Book 2)
* * *
Jared (Book 3)
Wilding Pack Wolves
* * *
Wild Game (Book 1)
* * *
Wild Love (Book 2)
* * *
Wild Heat (Book 3)
* * *
Wild One (Book 4)
* * *
Wild Fire (Book 5)
* * *
Wild Magic (Book 6)
Fallen Immortals
* * *
Kiss of a Dragon (Book 1)
* * *
Heart of a Dragon (Book 2)
* * *
Fire of a Dragon (Book 3)
* * *
Chosen by a Dragon (Book 4)
* * *
Seduced by a Dragon (Book 5)
* * *
Touched by a Dragon (Book 6)
* * *
Loved by a Dragon (Book 7)
* * *
Marked by a Dragon (Book 8)
* * *
Claimed by a Dragon (Book 9)
* * *
Of Bards and Witches: Leonidas’s Story (Book 10)
Fallen Angels
* * *
Tajael (Book 1)
* * *
Oriel (Book 2)
* * *
Asa (Book 3)
* * *
Razael (Book 4)
* * *
Micah (Book 5)
* * *
Tempted: Tajael’s Story (Book 6)
* * *
Kiss of an Angel: A Christmas Story (Book 7)
Legal Magick
* * *
Ever Strange (Book 1)
* * *
Mercy Strange (Book 2)
* * *
Verity Strange (Book 3)
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Claiming Mia (Dot Com Wolves 1)
Copyright © 2014 by Alisa Woods
December 2018 Edition
All rights reserved.
Sworn Secrets Publishing
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author. For information visit: Alisa Woods
Cover by Steven Novak
Claiming Mia (Dot Com Wolves 1)
LUCAS
I’m a mess. Broken. Lost my mate and almost myself. In no shape to help anyone.
Then the sexy girl serving me drinks stumbles into trouble with a bunch of wolves who are bad business—I should know. They’re the competition. And they’re as dirty at dot-com investing as they are predatory on young things like her. So I save her. Because I may be broken, but I’m not an ass.
Only she shows up the next day at my office. As my intern.
And now the Red pack is after her, putting us square in a pack war—one she doesn’t even understand. I’m in no shape to claim a mate—not happening—but if I don’t, the Red’s jackass of an alpha will.
MIA
I’m just trying to earn my degree and dig my way out of poverty.
I was born a shifter—more of my bad luck—but I’ve kept that a secret, so it doesn’t ruin my life. Shifters are monsters. Criminals. And I’m trying to make something of myself. This internship at the hottest internet business development firm in Seattle is my ticket out… only the boss is a wolf. And insanely hot. And he saved my life.
I’d break all the rules for this guy—except he wants nothing to do with me.
The wolves who do are the Big Bad Wolf kind. The kind I’ve always heard about.
I’ve got nowhere to turn… but to the one guy who doesn’t want me at all.
Claiming Mia (Dot Com Wolves 1) is a super-hot complete story with HEA.
(Formerly published as True Alpha).
Chapter One
Lucas leaned his elbows back on the bar and pulled in a full draught of the human pheromones and perfumes swirling in the air. Musky fragrances mixed with sweet sweat, underscored by a tangy taste of arousal. And that was just the women. The males were overly scented as well, at least the human ones, as if they didn’t understand the power of their own natural scent. The blue-neon sign outside the nightclub called it The Deviation. Inside, lithe human bodies pulsed to a techno rock beat coming from the live band on the stage. It was a ripe hunting ground for shifters and humans alike. Prey, his inner dark wolf panted, but Lucas backhanded that thought into the recesses of his mind. He may be hunting for a pleasurable companion for the evening, a temporary relief from the ghosts that haunted him, but he wasn’t that kind of predator.
Not that there weren’t plenty of those in the room.
This was neutral territory. He was rogue now, but even if he had a pack, he wouldn’t make trouble in a closed environment filled with humans like The Deviation. The throng pushed right up to the bar where he stood, leaving little distinction between those dancing and those watching. Cutout panels behind the band let in beams of purplish light that stabbed through the tight crowd and washed everyone in a deep, otherworldly glow. The shifters were indistinguishable from the humans, everyone dressed in the same tailored silk shirts and curve-hugging black dresses that comprised the nighttime uniform of web entrepreneurs and their groupies.
Indistinguishable for most. But Lucas recognized a few.
Three shifters from the SocialHacks pack were in the thick of the dancing, hands running free over their female companions. His father’s pack allied with the SocialHacks early on, their social media startup pairing well with his father’s internet business development firm. Nearby was a trio from Red Wolf, another company that cultivated the dot-com businesses of Seattle and helped match them with investors. They were his father’s bitter rivals—not only did they skate close to that invisible line shifters didn’t cross, the one that kept the normal human citizenry of Seattle unaware of the wolves in their midst, but they were as ruthless in pack matters as they were in business. Lucas had seen more than one omega from the Red pack end up in a dingy alley missing a few vital organs. Tonight, the Red pack was hanging at the fringes of the crowd, watching. Like Lucas.
But that was all they had in common.
“How are you doing here, sir?” The soft voice behind him belonged to the female bartender. He could tell by her scent before he turned around: slightly musky with the dampness of the nightclub, but with a light woodsy taste. It wasn’t perfume, which Lucas had an instant appreciation for.
He turned and gave her a smile. “I’d like another, please. Vodka, neat.” She wasn’t one of the celebrity bartenders who drew patrons to The Deviation, but he wasn’t the type to drink the latest fad cocktail, either. In fact, he rarely was in a club long enough to finish a drink before a companion for the night found him. And having full command of his faculties, especially with a human, was key to leaving her satisfied, not sliced to ribbons.
The bartender gave him a fleeting smile, then dropped her brilliant blue-eyed gaze, brushed her long black hair out of her way, and reached under the bar for a bottle. He hadn’t been to The Deviation in a while, but he guessed she was new—to the club, maybe to bartending as well. Her all-black uniform—slim dress pants and a collared shirt—had turned purple with the hazy light from the stage, but it fit her feminine curves in an understated way. He appreciated that, too, but bartenders weren’t good prospects, not least because they might remember him the next time he came hunting.
She poured his drink, and he noticed her hand quiver. The liquid sloshed but not enough to escape the shot glass. He frowned and looked up, but she was already moving on, down the bar, to another customer. She gave that guy the same fleeting smile, but Lucas could see something wrong in it now. Something off. Her lips were slightly parted, her breaths shallow. She was panting, and not in a good way. The girl rushed through a bourbon-and-seven for her customer, then shuffled to the end of the bar, where her fellow bartender, a male, stood flirting with one of the female patrons. The girl had a quick, whispered exchange that Lucas couldn’t hear over the pounding music, and then she slipped around the end of the counter and into the crowd.
Lucas straightened, looking for her over the sea of bobbing heads and waving hands. She was a tiny black-haired rabbit weaving through the weeds, tall enough to poke above them when she wasn ’t ducking under drinks held high or flailing arms. He wasn’t sure why, but he couldn’t stop tracking her.
He left his drink, untouched, and slid along the bar, keeping her in his sights. She broke free of the crowd near the back wall, where blue neon signs bulged with the letters of the club and the outlines of spilled electric drinks.
It was the same wall where the three Red pack members lounged.
The girl threw open a door which had been invisible a moment before, probably because it fit seamlessly into the black matte of the wall. Then she was gone, the door slowly easing closed behind her.
The Reds had watched her all the way out.
Lucas froze at the edge of the crowd, his unblinking stare trained on their bent heads and moving lips. Not my territory, he told his snarling inner wolf. Not my pack.
But he didn’t look away.
Mia sucked in the cool night air of the alleyway outside The Deviation and nearly moaned with the relief. Jesus, the smells in that place. She’d been on since ten o’clock, and usually, she could make it through to the end of her shift at two: she just had to breathe through her mouth and take frequent bathroom breaks for fresh air. But tonight… it was as if all the college girls had decided to flash mob the club with a synchronized perfume attack. And the dot-com wannabe-billionaire guys either came straight from the gym and overcompensated with Axe spray or somehow that was their normal smell. Add in the usual background Eau de Deviation, and the alcoholic whiffs from the drinks she was serving just weren’t enough to ward it off. She had to get fresh air, or she was going to lose her dorm dinner of meatloaf and mashed potatoes—and it wasn’t that good the first time around. Her sensitive sense of smell loathed closed spaces and aromatic people, and The Deviation had more than its share of both tonight.
Sometimes being a shifter well and truly sucked.
Who was she kidding? It sucked all the time. Mia had yet to find the hidden benefits of being able to transform into a wolf on a whim. Sure, she could smell the anxiety of her roommate while she studied for an econ test. Or the lecherous arousal of her English prof when he tried to “help” her during office hours. But she didn’t count those as benefits. And an acrid stench of fear would constantly surround her if anyone found out her secret—not to mention no real company would ever hire a shifter.
She could tolerate a few more smelly shifts at The Deviation if that’s what it took. Other than the stench, it was decent. Not too many slobbering drunks. Plus, she was twenty-one now, so she could serve, which meant better tips. She needed to keep this stinky job so eventually she could get a real one. One that paid well enough to get her mom out of that rat-hole apartment on Jackson Street and into something better. Somewhere Mia wouldn’t have to worry about the crackheads shooting up the place and where the gangs hadn’t ousted the police as the major power players in the neighborhood.
There were shifters in the crack gangs of Seattle, she knew that. Everyone did, though no one talked about it. And if anyone knew she was a shifter… well, that was all that would be left for her, too. Which was why she worked her tail off in community college and transferred to the University of Washington as a junior, as soon as she could wrangle a scholarship. But even the crappy dorm food cost money, so she had to keep her job at The Deviation if she wanted to graduate and get her mom out of the hellhole that was 12th and Jackson.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
Her stomach settled a little. Mia leaned back against the cool brick of the alley. The moon was nearly full, which didn’t mean jack for her as a shifter. Werewolves that went all wolfy with a full moon were just fairy tales. She could shift whenever she wanted to—which was primarily never—and occasionally even when she didn’t. But that hadn’t happened for years, not since Bobby Johnson scared the shit out of her with one of his stupid Halloween pranks. It was a good thing she had been dressed as a ghost that year—she had only been ten, and the yellowed sheet had reached all the way to the ground. Covered her up pretty good, and Bobby never figured it out.
Didn’t stop her from using some very wolfy-sharp claws to trash his mailbox the next night, though. Just on principle.
She closed her eyes and focused on calming the last heaves of her stomach. The music beat through the brick wall behind her, buzzing the back of her head. Just as she thought it might be safe to go back inside, the door next to her creaked open, letting out a throb of music that covered the footsteps of whoever was coming out. She popped open her eyes, blinking a couple of times to clear them, just in case it was patrons wanting to sneak a quick make-out session in the alley.
By the time she pushed away from the wall, she realized it wasn’t a couple looking for privacy. It was three guys… and they were big.
The moonlight glinted off their black silk shirts. Mischief danced in their eyes. They stepped toward her, casually, as if they were about to ask her the time. One in the lead, two behind, probably mid-twenties. The lead one was pretty, the way boys sometimes are, without being the least bit feminine. In fact, there was entirely too much muscle beneath his tailored shirt. The other two were more conventionally handsome, but just as hulking, with beefy frames that spoke of hours in the gym or possibly some kind of professional sports. Their scent reminded her of cut steel, like they were fashioned from coldness and evil.
She could turn and run, but as soon as that thought blossomed in her head, two of the thugs fanned out, filling the alley with their smooth-moving presence. She wasn’t quite surrounded, but she wouldn’t escape either. Not without shifting, which she really, really didn’t want to do. These guys were dot-commers. She could tell by the glint of their custom-made shoes and the close tailoring of their collared shirts. She was strong—being a shifter was good for that, at least—but even so, there were three of them. She would have to shift to have a chance. And if she did, they would talk. The police would listen. She’d be outed for sure.
The door slowly swung closed, muting the music to a dull thud.
Shit.
“It’s pretty crowded in there.” Mia hooked a thumb toward the door, pretty freaking impressed with herself at the steadiness of her voice. “I’m sure someone will be along any minute, looking for fresh air, just like you boys.”
The lead one smirked then tipped his head to his evil partner in crime. He slunk back toward the door. Could he lock it from the outside?
Dammit.
“Come on, now,” Mia said, her voice way steadier than her ramping up heart would believe. “There are a ton of girls in there, much hotter than I am, who would love to go home with you three.”
“Who said anything about taking you home?” The lead one leered like this was a game, and only he knew the rules. “Maybe you should run.”
