Coyote Calling Read online

  COYOTE CALLING

  By

  Heather McCorkle

  Copyright © 2022 Heather McCorkle

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  Edited by Yelena Casale

  Cover Design by MiblArt.

  All stock photos licensed appropriately.

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  Published in the United States by City Owl Press.

  www.cityowlpress.com

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  For information on subsidiary rights, please contact the publisher at [email protected]

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior consent and permission of the publisher.

  To those finding their way.

  PRAISE FOR HEATHER McCORKLE

  “Kickass women, Icelandic warriors, and plenty of action!” – Kait Ballinger, Bestselling Author of The Execution Underground Series

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  “Shifter romance readers have a new heroine to root for, and a delicious assortment of werewolves that trace their blood back to Fenrir, the great wolf offspring of Loki. The first installment of this series, Clawed & Cornered, promises sexy shifters, an exciting trip through Norse mythology, and a strong, beautiful, half Cherokee-half Scandinavian heroine. There’s smoke on the horizon, and this series promises lots of fire!” – InD’tale

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  “What a great story this is! One of the best things about it is that I can't think of a book to compare it too. The reason why I love that, is because the story is just so unique. Which is why I kept turning the page! Loved it!” – Ali Cross, USA Today Bestselling Author of Young Adult Fantasy

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  “There's trouble in the Dragon Empire, the kind that could start a war between dragons and the races of people…For those who love fantasy, dragons and a sweet love story, this book is definitely a must read for you!” – Geeky Book Gal

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  “Bared and Betrayed will take readers on a wild, rollercoaster of emotions. The language and culture that Heather McCorkle created for the werewolves was beautifully done. As creatures bound to nature and their intuition, it was only fitting for the love of their culture and beliefs to be rooted in Norse religion. The romance sprinkled throughout the novel added a light-hearted and at times, quite steamy subplot into the mix. McCorkle did a wonderful job melding together two worlds to bring to life the mystery surrounding this supernatural town.” – InD’tale

  CONTENTS

  Recommended Reading Order

  Author’s Note

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Find Your Next Read

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek of Bitten & Beholden

  Find Your Next Read

  Want More City Owl Press Books?

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Additional Titles

  RECOMMENDED READING ORDER

  The Children of Fenrir Series:

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  Clawed & Cornered (novella)

  Bitten & Beholden

  Tempered & Turned

  Bared & Betrayed

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  The Shifter Seeker Series:

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  Raven Rousting (novella)

  Coyote Calling

  Holiday Hunting (novella, coming Winter of 2022)

  Tiger Tracking (Coming 2023)

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Readers who would like guidance on the content of the book, including any potential content warnings, please visit my website at: www.heathermccorkle.com

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  Sign up now and become a City Owl Reader today! And join our City Owl Reader-Author group here for even more deals and a whole lot of community and fun!

  Want even more from Heather McCorkle? Try the Children of Fenrir series starting with BITTEN & BEHOLDEN, available now.

  As the chaos of Loki covers the earth again, will the Seeker awaken to save us all?

  When Sonya Michaelson’s hot date turns into something from a horror movie, she wakes up with a chunk taken out of her neck, and her body going through strange changes. Her attacker has disappeared, leaving her a mysterious note to meet him in Montana.

  With her senses tipping over into the freaky, she is left with no choice but to go after him.

  Instead of her attacker, she finds Tyler Viðarrson, an alluring man who claims he’s been sent to teach her how to survive the transition into her new life. Ty informs her that she’s been bitten into a line of werewolves that trace their lineage back to an ancient pack of Icelandic Vikings.

  Now, several packs are fighting for her to join them.

  If she doesn’t learn to control her wolf by the full moon, she could lose what’s left of her sanity. But with such a tempting teacher, she fears her sanity may be the least of her worries.

  Sonya soon discovers there is a larger and more sinister plan at work. She is not the only one who has been changed against her will, and whoever is changing the others, wants her for what she can awaken–an ancient power that may endanger the entire world.

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  Disclaimer: Previously published as Once Bitten, now with new material.

  BUY NOW!

  CHAPTER ONE

  A brand new werewolf was close to losing their shit. I felt it deep in my bones. The swollen, nearly full moon peeked out of a cloud-strewn night sky as if to warn me of the deadline. Tomorrow I would be out of time. My not-so-trusty guide-raven Gripp cronked directions at me from the sky, but there was no way he could be right. He kept leading me back home. Chances were he was just hungry and tired of flying. I didn’t blame him.

  Exhausted and ravenous, I trudged to the edge of the forest that backed up to the cheap motel I called home. I stopped next to the bush I’d hidden my clothes in. Walling off the part of me most affected by the moon, I thought about how I wanted to be human. For a split second, my furred body heated and vibrated. My atoms flowed from wolf form into that of a human, smooth and fast as hot syrup onto pancakes. Damn I was hungry. I stretched, getting comfortable in my woman’s skin once again. Chilly April air took the edge off heat from walking all night down to a tolerable level. As a werewolf—or varúlfur, as I’d learned we were called—I didn’t get cold very easily, but I did overheat.

  Shrouded in darkness, I soaked the cold in for several moments before reaching for my clothes. Fleece pajama shorts and a black tank top with a built-in she
lf bra for the girls made for quick dressing. It might be inappropriate for traipsing around the woods at night, but I was a big believer in a girl being able to wear whatever the hell she wanted, since guys got to do it.

  Slipping on my bargain store flip-flops, I started across the ten acres of knee-high golden grass lying between me and the apartment complex. Overhead, Gripp cronked excitedly as he flew ahead. Halfway through the grass, I smelled something strange on the breeze. Not typical motel stank, or anything bad exactly. It smelled like an animal, canine, but I couldn’t place it any better than that. Someone’s dog, probably. I shook it off. Dreaming of a big steak and my thrift store recliner, not necessarily in that order, I trudged the rest of the way like a sleepwalker.

  A small rest and snack, and I’d get back to searching. Giving up wasn’t an option. If I didn’t find this person by moonrise tomorrow, their first shift would trigger, and they could go insane. I felt their despair, desperation, and impending madness like an ache deep in my soul. Something else felt off about them, about their power, but I couldn’t put a claw on what. This whole leitar—seeker—thing hadn’t come with a manual—a few ancient diaries, but no manual. The most recent of those damn things was three hundred years old and in Icelandic. My Icelandic was coming along, but I was nowhere near ready to read it. Even if I had been, my history professor boyfriend, whose first language was Icelandic, could barely understand it. He described it as trying to read Shakespeare.

  Gripp and I would eventually find the newly bitten werewolf. I had no doubts. We were closing in on them. The thrum deep in my bones told me so. But the ache in my stomach reminded me I had needs as well.

  The closer I got to the two-story apartments, the more my stomach churned. I couldn’t tell if it was hunger or something else. My exhaustion was too extreme. Gripp perched on the metal railing of the walkway to my second-story unit. What I could only describe as excited clucking issued from his vibrating throat. My bird made some seriously strange noises, particularly when he was hungry. And he knew I had leftover ground beef inside for him.

  It took three tries to fumble my keys out of my pocket when I reached the parking lot. The stench of garbage overwhelmed me as I grew closer to my building. The dumpster lay not thirty feet from my door—part of the reason it was the cheapest apartment in the building—and garbage day was tomorrow. I held my nose and fought a gag reflex as I rushed past it to get to my door. I froze in place when I realized the door was unlocked.

  Management knew better than to go anywhere near my room. The day I’d signed the month-to-month lease on this dump, I made it clear to them their services would not be needed. A glimpse of fang had been all the convincing they needed. It didn’t risk exposing us. The majority of people convinced themselves later they hadn’t seen what they thought they had, and the rest would dismiss me as a freak of nature. My boyfriend, Ty, didn’t have a key. We were working on personal space and him respecting my need for independence. He wouldn’t violate my privacy like this.

  It had to be my roommate. Barely a minute over eighteen, Candice wasn’t exactly the picture of responsibility. But she was supposed to be waiting tables at her new job tonight.

  The sound of breathing and a heartbeat came from inside. Once again, I felt that strange power. This time it emanated from inside my apartment. Definitely not Candice. Chills of trepidation shot through me, banishing the exhaustion. My fingernails lengthened and hardened into claws, and a double set of fangs extended from my top and bottom canine teeth. Before I lost my temper and stormed into danger, I took a deep breath and stepped back. A moment after, I gathered enough control to retract my claws and fangs and take my phone from my pocket.

  I shot off a quick text to Ty: Someone is in my hotel room.

  My stomach roiled again, but I realized this time it wasn’t hunger. It never had been. A troubled newly bitten near madness stood on the other side of that door. I knew it deep in my Cherokee Swedish bones. The canine scent came from my motel room, but it wasn’t my own or Candice’s. Hell, it wasn’t even wolf. Without thinking, I opened the door.

  A beige and gray canine with a slender frame and ears too big for its head sat in the small space between the desk and bed. It stood, back arched, hair up along it. Lips curled back from its teeth and it growled at me. Gripp cronked at it as if to tell me, “I told you it was here.”

  On instinct, I bared my fangs and stepped toward it. Angry yips punctuated its growls. Pissed at the intrusion and aggression, I let loose a growl of my own that made its sound pathetic.

  “Shift!” I commanded with the full force of my power behind the words. That power shot into the coyote like an arrow, lodged itself deep within, and pulled at the human buried inside. It was painful and invasive, but I had learned it was often the only way. Most newbies who had inadvertently shifted couldn’t shift back of their own will. What I didn’t want to think about at the moment was how that meant they were sometimes beyond saving—sometimes being the key word.

  The coyote shook violently before it blurred and flowed like water splashing out of a container. A moment later a naked woman crouched in the canine’s place, body hidden mostly behind a blanket of long, tangled, black locks. The beautiful hue of her skin, angles of her face, shape of her nose, and set of her eyes marked her as Navajo. Chills raced through my body as I kicked the door closed behind me. Tears filled her mahogany eyes when she looked up at me and beseeched, “Help me.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  As the strange woman used my shower, I called my college professor werewolf boyfriend. Words flowed out of me the second he picked up. “There is a coyote shifter woman in my shower.”

  Silence stretched out for a moment, but I heard him breathing, so I knew he was still there. “I…um…I am sorry, what?” he finally asked.

  “A freaking coyote shifter! I mean, I knew they existed, but she came to me, and I don’t get why.”

  “Have you asked her?” Ty’s beautifully accented voice was careful, measured. In the background, I heard keys jingle and a car door shut.

  “Not yet. I didn’t want to overwhelm her, so she’s showering first. But I’m the varúlfur leitar, so I don’t get it. Unless it’s because she’s Navajo…”

  “Well, you are not exactly just the varúlfur leitar.”

  I didn’t like the note of heavy, unsaid things in his tone. “Spill.”

  The rev of a motor told me he was likely on his way here.

  “There is only one leitar and one uppskera for all shifter kind. They are wolves because we are the largest and most dominant, and because it is most common for varúlfur to go insane.”

  That might explain why the woman had shifted from human to coyote involuntarily and wasn’t batshit crazy yet.

  My brain couldn’t wrap around the idea I might one day have to seek out a werebear close to losing his ever-loving mind and talk him down from going on a murderous spree. Nope. No way. Only ten months ago I’d been bitten, forcing my latent werewolf genes to wake up and kick in. Prior to that, I’d been oblivious to the world beneath the world—despite my odd mixed upbringing in Odinism and ancient Cherokee beliefs. I had so much left to learn about my new world that it felt like I’d always be at least a little in the dark, and I hated it.

  “So what do I do with a coyote shifter?” I asked.

  “Help them like you would a varúlfur, then I have some contacts. I will have someone there by morning, but I am on my way over now.”

  As much as I wanted to see him, I couldn’t risk spooking my guest. “No, you can’t. She seems pretty skittish, and she’s harmless. I made her shift back, so there isn’t a risk of a fight.”

  “All right. But if you need me—”

  “I won’t hesitate to call. Give me until the waning moon,” I assured him. Three days were all I usually got to try to help a newly bitten control their wolf—the night before the full moon, the night of, and the night after. Beyond that, if they didn’t get their shit together, they went mad and the reaper h
ad to be called in. I had a feeling coyote shifters weren’t much different.

  A knock on the door interrupted us. Careful not to disturb the curtain too much and give myself away, I peeked out the window. I could barely see the outline of a guy standing at the door holding a pizza box. Not a believer in saying goodbyes, I clicked off the call and tossed my phone on the bed. When I opened the door, the pizza delivery guy sized me up with an approving grin from beneath the rim of a baseball cap marking him as a New York fan. All it took was a return smile and flip of my hair for him not to notice the tiny tip I gave him. Part of me felt horrible. I had nothing but the utmost respect for people who handled my food, and I liked to pay them accordingly. But what my student loans didn’t suck up, rent and living expenses devoured. Having a roommate didn’t exactly help yet since Candice had only recently gotten a job.