Chapter 1

So this is an Australian pub.

Katy-Lin Yunker stopped just inside the heavy glass door, looking around the dim interior of the bar.

Five men of various ages, sizes, and levels of consciousness regarded her with five various states of interest from where they sat—scattered—in the bar.

Katy bestowed them all a tentative smile.

One ginger-haired man flashed her a toothless grin, happily sliding his index finger in and out of the circle he’d made with the fingers of his other hand.

The unmistakable stench of alcohol and sweat threaded into Katy’s gasp and, before she could stop herself, she wrinkled her nose.

A low grunt of contempt from the very beefy man looking at her with wary curiosity from the bar told her she’d stuffed up.

So much for getting help here. Still, she had to try. Maybe she could put some of the All-American charm her Nan insisted she had in spades to use. Although, that charm had failed her thus far in her endeavor to find her missing uncle.

Maybe Australians were naturally resistant to American charm?

Lifting up her chin, she fixed her stare on the wiry man working behind the bar, shook her head with determination, shut out the nerves gnawing at her stomach, and—in a woefully lame attempt to seduce those still looking at her—crossed the dim room.

The beefy man who’d grunted at her nose curl made the same contemptuous sound again as she came to a stop beside him. His eyes narrowed as he shifted in his seat, not so much inching away from her, but rather giving himself a better view to take her all in.

“Hot piece of arse, ’eh, Ipo?”

Katy dragged her stare from Mr. Beefy, turning to the man who’d spoken on the other side of her.

He smirked up at her from his bar stool, flashing teeth whiter and far more pointed than Katy had ever seen. This close, she couldn’t miss the dandruff flakes in his greasy black hair, or the rank odor wafting from his thin frame.

“Give it a rest, Merv,” the man behind the bar—Ipo?—said.

Katy shuffled her feet—why the hell had she decided to wear heels to the Australian Outback?—cleared her throat and decided to ignore everyone else in the Longyard Pub except the barkeeper.

Pressing her palms to the edge of the bar, she poured her entire soul into the look she gave the man. “I’m looking for my uncle,” she said. “Can you—”

“Hot piece of arse is a Yank!” someone behind her rumbled.

Someone else behind her laughed. “Another one.”

Bells and whistles burst into life in Katy’s head. She spun around, scanning the murky interior. “Another one?” she echoed, jerking her stare from one man to another to another. “There was another American here recently? Can you tell me—”

“’Nother Yank broad,” the same voice rumbled from the shadows. “She lived ’ere for a while years ago b’fore takin’ off. Don’t know where she went.”

Katy tried not to slump.

A woman. Damn it. Her uncle was a lot of things, but he was most definitely male.

Letting out a sigh, she turned back to the bar and the wiry man behind it watching her with bored disinterest.

Once again, she pressed her palms to the edge of the counter and sought out his gaze. “Please,” she said, leaning towards him. “My uncle is missing and this town was the last place anyone heard from him.”

The barkeeper’s eyebrows shot up. Katy didn’t miss the quick eye-flick he shot someone behind her. “The Creek?” he asked, eyebrows settling back to their previous indifferent frown. “Your uncle was here in Kangaroo Creek?”

Katy nodded. A prickling heat crept up her spine. From his clear disbelief, or from the unsettling sensation her ass was being thoroughly checked out, she couldn’t tell. Like her heels, the short skirt she’d pulled on that morning before heading for Kangaroo Creek was also fast becoming a source of regret.

Life as a personal assistant to a television breakfast news anchor in San Diego had not prepared her for a desperate search mission on the other side of the world…although from the few minutes she’d spent in the isolated Outback town of Kangaroo Creek, other side of the galaxy seemed more accurate.

“His name is Martin McCoy.” She studied Ipo’s surreally ageless face. “He’s a professor of…of zoology and animal behavior and is studying ancient canine breeds. He’d heard there was a dingo colony near here that…that…”

She faltered. How the hell did she say that he believed these dingoes could shift between human and dingo form? She didn’t. She loved her uncle to bits, he was crazy and a little unusual—and a card-carrying cryptozoologist who firmly believed in the existence of what he called shape-shifters—but she couldn’t tell anyone why he was really here. She’d be wrapped in a straightjacket and deported for even suggesting it.

God help her uncle if he was over here announcing to all and sundry his theory.

“That?”

Katy squealed at the new voice directly behind her. She spun around, staring up at the tall man with steel gray hair, incredible shoulders, and a hawkish nose standing but a foot away from her.

Her heart slammed up into her throat. Her pulse tripped over itself. Whoa, was this guy hot or what?

Mr. Silver Fox arched a heavy dark-brown eyebrow. His light blue eyes seemed to somehow catch what little light there was in the bar, turning his irises to sapphire chips. “That?” he repeated.

Katy swallowed. Why did she feel like she was suddenly under a microscope?

And in danger?

“That he thought might be worth studying,” she finished.

Damn, could everyone in the bar hear how crazy her pulse was? It had turned into a freaking cannon in her throat.

Mr. Silver Fox’s jaw bunched. His eyes narrowed a fraction. If it wasn’t for the fact Katy was the PA to one of San Diego’s biggest divas and skilled at interpreting the makings of a seismic tantrum, she would have missed it.

He knows something.

The thought whispered through her mind a heartbeat before Mr. Silver Fox laughed. “The only dingoes around here are a scraggly mob living on the other side of Tin Hut Gully, isn’t that right, Merv?”

Was that a slight Russian accent? German? Definitely a European tinge of some kind.

Merv brayed laughter. “Yeah, Grayson. That lot aren’t worth study’n for shit.”

Katy swallowed again. She watched Grayson—first name? Last?—chuckle and slap a firm hand on the shoulder of Mr. Beefy, who was once again staring at her with open contempt.

Jesus, this was a weird place.

She didn’t want to be here anymore. Not at all. But she had to be. She needed to find Uncle Martin. He’d been missing for almost a month now and she wasn’t leaving this freaking town until she had answers. Answers the hot-or-what guy standing in front of her had; at least, she hoped he did.

“Do you know where my uncle is, Mr. Grayson?” she asked. Maybe if she flirted with him she’d get some answers.

Yeah, like you know how to flirt.

“Call me Wedge,” he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. “And you are?”

Wedge? What kind of name was that? It didn’t sound Russian. Or European. Or come to think of it, like a real name at—

A blast of heat and afternoon sunlight speared into the bar as the door swung open, blinding Katy with its unexpected assault.

“A round of beers for everyone on me,” a laughing male voice called seconds before the door swung shut, throwing the bar back into murky shadows again.

Wedge Grayson muttered something in a language she didn’t understand.

Katy staggered back a step, her butt bumping against Merv’s knobby knee as she turned her attention from Wedge to the new arrival.

He strutted into the bar, grinning widely, his lean and yet at the same time muscular frame somehow loose and completely relaxed. Sandy blond hair hung around his head in a shaggy mess, complemented by an equally sandy stubble all over his jaw and chin. He moved with an arrogance that was both wickedly arousing and playful. He owned the space around him, dominated it even, despite Wedge standing taller than him. Hell, Mr. Beefy could sit on him and he’d almost disappear. But his sinewy body—on display thanks to the open shirt and low-slung faded jeans—said very clearly that if Mr. Beefy did sit on him, the bigger man would end up suffering all the pain.

A soft breath escaped Katy. The pit of her stomach fluttered. So did the girly bits between her thighs she hadn’t thought about since her uncle disappeared.

The newcomer continued to make his way to the bar. He hadn’t once looked at her but she couldn’t tear her stare from him. She didn’t need to look around to see the rest of the Longyard Pub customers were nowhere near as impressed with him as she was. Impressed? Insta-lust, more like it. Sheesh. The silence couldn’t be any more oppressive and aggressive.

The tattoo on his chest drew her eye. Symbols of some sort. Dots and lines in various tones of umber and rust-red, black, and white. It looked ancient. Spiritual. Was it tribal? Why did she want to trace the marks with her finger? Her tongue.

Tongue? Holy crap, what the hell was going on with—

“Seriously, Ipo.” The new arrival stopped at the bar on the other side of Merv, leaned on his elbows, and smiled at the barkeeper—who watched him with that same indifference Katy had witnessed earlier. “My shout. Everyone in here right now gets a beer from me.”

“Onya, Singo,” one of the men sitting in the far corner of the bar called out, a hint of approval in his voice. “Ipo, I’ll have a Tooheys Dry.”

Singo—surely that couldn’t be his name?—slapped out a jovial rhythm on the bar’s surface and grinned wider at the barkeeper. “That’s a Tooheys Dry for Rat, Ipo.” He turned, rested his elbows back on the counter, and beamed at the room. “Anyone else?”

No one uttered a sound.

Mr. Beefy shifted on his seat and opened his mouth, but shut it again when Wedge closed his fingers over his shoulder.

Katy caught her bottom lip with her teeth, her pulse crazy.

Crazy. This was crazy. Whatever was going on, it was crazy. She needed to get out of here. And yet…

Eyes the color of amber turned her way. They flicked over her, an unreadable emotion flaring in them for a second before settling on Wedge.

“Long time no see, Grayson.” Singo’s grin stretched into a smirk. “What the hell are you doing in a place like Ipo’s?” He threw a grin at the barkeeper. “No offense, mate.”

Ipo grunted with his patented indifference.

Wedge’s jaw clenched. Katy didn’t miss his fingers digging into Mr. Beefy’s meaty shoulder.

Clearly there’s no love lost here.

Katy couldn’t help but smile. Whoever Singo was, he clearly gave zero fucks about the animosity directed his way by almost all the patrons in the bar.

Wedge stepped closer to her and put his hand on her shoulder.

She shrugged him off with a stunned glare. WTF?

“I’ve got every right to be here, Singleton,” the taller man snarled.

Exaggerated consternation flooded Singo’s—Singleton’s?—face. He smacked his palm to his forehead, eyes comically wide. “That’s right. You’re the Creek’s self-appointed mayor, aren’t you? Silly me. Christ knows how this town ever managed to function before your duplicitous arse turned—”

Wedge sprung at Singo.

Singo stopped him mid-lunge with a blurring fist to the jaw.

Everyone in the bar moved at once. Chairs clattered to the ground. Feet shuffled on dusty floorboards. Merv scrambled off his stool, scurrying backward like a fleeing rodent. Wedge tumbled sideways into Mr. Beefy, Singo’s punch sending both men into an awkward, body-bumping dance.

Animal-like snarls and growls rumbled in the air, but from where, Katy had no clue. She gasped.

Ipo cleared the counter in a single agile leap, landing between the off-balance Wedge and the calmly smiling Singo.

Whoa.

“That’s enough, Dean,” the barkeeper ordered, holding out a hand toward Wedge as he fixed a level—and still damn near emotionless—gaze on Singo.

Dean. Singo. Singleton. What the hell is his name?

Katy swallowed, retreating a step. Jesus, what was going on?

The newcomer flashed Ipo a smile. “Not here to cause trouble, Ipo. Just wanted a drink to celebrate.”

Ipo studied him, hand still held out to Wedge like a traffic cop. “What are you celebrating, Dean?”

Dean. Okay, so his name was Dean. Dean Singleton. Gotcha.

Dean chuckled. “Cam and Lucy are pregnant.”

A smile stretched Katy’s lips. Yay! A baby. She had no idea who Cam and Lucy were, but Dean Singleton’s joy was infectious.

“So you’re celebrating a baby?” Wedge laughed. Katy had never heard such an aggressive sound. “You planning on eating it?”

She gasped. Eat it? What the—

Dean slammed into Wedge, driving the other man backward to the ground. Growls and snarls filled the air. Dean’s fist smashed into Wedge’s jaw. Once. Twice.

Terror turned Katy’s limbs to blocks of ice. What the fuck? Jesus, what the actual—

With barely a grunt, Ipo snagged a fistful of Dean’s hair and hauled him off Wedge. “Enough, Singo. Enough.”

Dean staggered sideways, his stare locked on Wedge shoving himself to his feet. Blood trickled from the corner of the bigger man’s mouth and nose. He sucked in a choppy breath, his shoulders hunched. “I’m going to kill you, Singleton.”

Katy’s stomach dropped.

Dean grinned. “Give it your best shot, wolf.”

Wolf?

Ipo—clearly unfazed by the ruckus—planted his palms on their chests and shoved them farther apart. “Keep your dicks in your pants, you two. And remember the rules. Break ’em and you’re both in a world of pain.”

Curiosity laced through the fear in Katy’s chest. She inched back a step, swinging her focus from Dean to Wedge, to the silent men now standing around them, to the barkeeper, and back to Dean. Whatever was going on, Dean was outnumbered, and yet there wasn’t anything about him that said he cared, or was going to back down.

She had no idea who he was, but the thought of him being hurt by someone like Wedge…or Merv, or Mr. Beefy?

Nope. She couldn’t let that happen. Whoever Dean Singleton was, he’d come into the bar to celebrate something amazing: new life. She wasn’t going to let that celebration be tarnished.

“I’d like a beer,” she blurted out.

All eyes snapped to her. Fixed on her. Drilled into her.

Wedge’s gaze crawled over her in the most obvious visual undressing she’d ever experienced. Ipo narrowed his eyes. Merv and Mr. Beefy sniggered, flicking Wedge and Dean nervous glances.

Dean…Dean studied her, an unreadable light dancing in his amber-gold eyes.

Drawing in a steadying breath, Katy straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin. “Well?” She met Dean’s enigmatic inspection. Oh boy, her mouth suddenly felt drier than the red dirt outside. “You did say everyone, right?”

A slow smile tugged at Dean’s lips. “I did.”

Katy beamed. Whatever it was about this guy, she liked it. A lot. In all sorts of delicious ways.

You’re not here for a delicious time, Katherine Linette Yunker. You’re here to find your uncle. Now stop wasting time and do that. Now.

She gave Wedge a quick look. She didn’t like him. Not at all. But he knew something about her uncle. And he clearly did not like Dean Singleton. If she pissed off Wedge, would she lose any chance of finding out what he knew?

Stomach a knotted ball of tension, she turned back to Dean and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I just remembered I…” I what? “I don’t like beer.”

Jesus, woman. Really?

Dean Singleton regarded her with silent contemplation, his expression revealing nothing. “Still my shout, Ipo,” he said, holding her stare. “Everyone gets a beer on me, except Grayson.” His gaze slid to Wedge, who now—God help her—was right beside her again. “That flea-bitten mutt can pay for his own fucking drinks.”

“Big words for a mongrel, Singleton,” Wedge shot back.

Katy cleared her throat. Both men fell silent. Aggression radiated from them. They stared at each other, and—even though Wedge Grayson was at least a head taller than Dean, Grayson blinked first.

With a sneer on his lips, he directed his gaze to Merv and then Mr. Beefy. “This place suddenly stinks. Let’s go.”

Stomach sinking, Katy watched Wedge—and half the men in the bar—leave.

Biting back a sigh, she gave Dean a curious look. “Do you know anything about a man called Martin McCoy? He’s my uncle and he’s missing and—”

“You really should get out of the Creek, miss,” Dean cut her off, his expression as indecipherable as a closed freaking book. “Now. Climb back into whatever car you drove here in, and leave.”

And without another word, he strode from the bar.

* * * *

Dean walked across the dust-covered road, the summer sun blasting down on him like a furnace. He didn’t turn to look back at the Longyard Pub, despite the itch between his shoulder blades.

Who the hell was that?

In his head, the American woman smiled at him and then pressed herself to his body, sliding her palms up his chest to bury her fingers in his hair as she tugged his lips down to hers and kissed him with a sexual hunger wilder than any he’d experienced before.

Fuck a duck, what the hell?

Dean narrowed his eyes, ignoring the urge to return to the pub and the woman in it. He could practically taste her sexual arousal on the air every time she looked at him. And her unease whenever she looked at Grayson.

He slowed his pace and, before he knew what he was doing, looked over his shoulder at the Longyard’s closed doors.

“What the fuck are you doing, Singo?” he muttered with a shake of his head. He continued walking to his truck, parked down the road out in front of the Creek’s one and only general store.

The American wasn’t his business, even if she was every sexual fantasy he’d ever had wrapped up in one delectable blonde bundle.

For starters, she was human. He didn’t do human, no matter how sexy.

Secondly, she was connected to Martin McCoy—a likeable old bugger with far more knowledge than a human was meant to have. That connection made her strictly off-limits.

He ground his teeth at the thought of the American man. He hadn’t missed the way Grayson stiffened at McCoy’s name. The reaction fed his suspicion the Russian wolf had something to do with McCoy’s sudden departure from the Creek.

But if McCoy’s niece was now here…a month after he’d supposedly left…looking for him…

Her image filled his head again, her long lithe limbs wrapping around his body, her plump lips moaning his name, her eyes promising a world of pleasure as she gazed up at him…

Christ, when had he ever reacted like this to a human? His prick was getting hard. Walking across the Creek’s main street with a fucking boner. Awesome.

The sooner he got into his truck and out of here, the better. He should have known better than to enter the Longyard. Ipo was a decent bloke with no real affiliation to anyone, but at this time of day, Grayson and his pack—fawning gutless wonders who never stood up to Grayson’s brand of intimidation—were always going to be in there. And if there was one person here at Kangaroo Creek that Wedge Grayson hated more than any other, it was Dean.

Dingoes and wolves did not get along.

It didn’t help that Dean went out of his way to antagonize the Russian prick.

But hey, when presented with such an enjoyable target as Grayson, Dean had no hope of curtailing his sarcasm.

At times, he’d actually found himself wishing Grayson was a bear shifter, not an Arctic wolf shifter, just so he could truthfully say “I really shouldn’t poke the bear, but…”

Once again, an image of the American woman filled his head, uninvited and unsettling. He ground his teeth, the itch between his shoulder blades exploding into life again.

What was it about her that tugged at him so much?

And, more to the point, what was she doing in a place like the Creek alone? Out whoop-whoop, miles from anywhere, in a pub that no person in their right mind would willingly enter.

No. Change that. No human in their right mind. When it came to the Creek, none of its regular population were human. So entering the Longyard wasn’t much of a big deal.

Dean yanked open the driver’s door of his truck with a scowl. He needed to stop thinking about her. What he should be doing was working out what happened to her uncle. And what Wedge Grayson knew about it. That would get her out of the Creek, and get her out of his—

“Fuck it.” He slammed the door shut, pivoted on his heel, and strode back to the pub.

Ipo looked up from wiping the counter, expression—as always—impossible to read. Even after all these years of knowing the man, Dean had no real idea what Ipo was.

“She’s gone,” the barkeeper said, returning his attention to the counter.

Bloody hell. Dean scanned the room. “Where?”

Ipo raised an eyebrow. “Not my place to tell you that.”

Dean snarled. Great. Fucking great. “Did she say where she was going?”

Ipo shook his head again, slapping the dishcloth he was using over his shoulder as he looked at Dean. “Why?”

Because the farther I walk away from her, the closer I want to be to her.

“She’s human, Ipo. Here. In the Creek. Isn’t that why enough?”

The barkeeper shrugged. “We’ve had humans here before.”

“And how well has that gone for most of them?”

“Fair enough.”

Dean scanned the pub’s dim interior again, drawing a deep breath through his nose. Maybe he could track her?

A faint hint of jasmine and musk and roses threaded through the stale-grog-and-sweat stink on the air. Beyond faint. Choked. Tenuous.

Dragging in another breath, he closed his eyes and focused on the taste and smell. Christ, Merv needed a fucking shower. How could anyone breathe in this town with the farmer’s stench polluting the very oxygen?

A lick of cold contempt unfurled through him as Wedge Grayson’s undeniable scent flowed into his lungs. As soon as he got home he was scrubbing his tongue. Just the thought of the Russian’s smell permeating his body made him sick.

Fuck. What traces there were of the American had completely faded. Overpowered by Grayson and his unwashed pack.

Opening his eyes, he crossed to the bar. “Do you remember her uncle? He stayed here, didn’t he? In that room you’ve got upstairs. Did he tell you what he was here for? What he wanted?”

Ipo folded his arms over his chest, expression bored. “Have I ever been interested in what humans want, Singleton?”

Despite the tension eating at him, Dean flashed the barkeeper a smirk. “Well, there was that one guy who—”

An invisible palm mashed itself to Dean’s mouth. Ipo studied him with glinting eyes. “You know better than that.”

The unseen gag disappeared. Dean wiped at his lips. He watched Ipo drag the dishcloth from his shoulder and turn towards the other end of the bar.

Okay, so Ipo wasn’t going to be any help. If he wanted to find her he might have to shift.

And you do want to find her. You want to bury your face in her hair. Breathe her in. Feel her body moving beneath yours. Feel her warm moans on your neck as you—

“If I see her again,” Ipo tossed over his shoulder, “I’ll be sure to ask where she’s staying.”

Dean let out a shaky sigh. It was better than nothing. “Thanks, mate.”

Ipo nodded and then got back to work.

With another sigh, this one far more agitated than the first, Dean left the pub. He needed to find Cam. His beta had followed the old American’s scent miles out of town. If there was a reason for the American woman to be here now, Cam might know.

And if he didn’t, Dean would have to do what he’d been putting off for a long time: face the fact the animal he truly was could no longer be controlled. Which was very worrying, given how powerful the desire to find the American woman was right now. Not to help her find her uncle, not to encourage her to leave the Creek ASAP, but to explore every inch of her body and fuck her senseless. Pure, base, animalistic rutting.

Animal. Out of control fucking.

What the fuck was going on? And when the hell had being a dingo shifter in the Australian Outback become so bloody difficult?