Iron Flats Exile: Shifter Realms: Iron Flats Read online

  Iron Flats Exile

  Shifter Realms

  Elle Thorne

  Contents

  Iron Flats Exile

  Prologue

  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

  Afterword

  Shifter Realms

  The Shifters Forever Worlds

  Thank You So Much!

  About Elle

  Elle’s Newsletter

  Copyright © 2020 by Elle Thorne

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Thank you for reading!

  To receive exclusive updates from Elle Thorne and to be the first to get your hands on the next release,

  please sign up for her mailing list.

  Elle Thorne Newsletter

  Or put this in your browser:

  ellethorne.com/contact

  Iron Flats Exile

  Rachel Kane’s recovering from a broken heart. And she’s broke. She’s flat out broke and homeless since she found her boyfriend in her best friend’s arms in the home that he and Rachel shared. A home he owned, so of course, she’s out on her ear now. She’s got an invitation to take an opportunity that takes her out of state and pays for her living expenses.

  Maybe some clouds do have silver linings. She’ll take that offer to go to Nevada and study mustangs.

  Luke Everhart’s got one thing on his mind. Being left the hell alone. He’s been exiled from his pack—and that’s just fine—and now makes his home near Iron Flats Mesa on the Virginia Range in Nevada. He gets along great with the mustangs that make their home there, and they’re the only company he needs. In fact, he’s their self-appointed guardian, protecting them from some of the ranchers and government bureaucrats who want to manipulate disrupt their freedom. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a certain woman who’s been skulking around, checking out the mustangs, making notes, riding a damned UTV all over the range. He knows she’s from the government, and he has zero trust for the Bureau of Land Management. He’s wreaked havoc on their expeditions before. Little Miss Hot Researcher has another think coming if she believes she’s going to be able to turn in any research on his band of horses.

  How’s Rachel supposed to complete her job when she’s harassed by wolves and a hunky, muscular, blue-eyed, dark-skinned hottie who doesn’t want to do much more than grunt his responses?

  Prologue

  Houston, Texas

  Rachel Kane juggled her keys and her latte and her bag and today’s mail from one hand to the other. It wasn’t bad enough it was damned near 100 degrees in Houston, and the AC in her car was on the fritz. But now her hair was windblown and a mess, she was sure, and her face was probably red as the dickens after the drive in five o’clock traffic down Montrose. Traffic would be a generous description. Because of a fender bender, freaking Montrose Boulevard was a damned parking lot.

  And her iced latte was sweating up a storm in her palm, slick as hell, threatening to spill while she tried to get the door open. Where the hell was her boyfriend? Couldn’t Michael hear her out here fumbling? His truck was in the driveway, so he was definitely home. Well, unless someone stopped by to pick him up to go somewhere. But he hadn’t told her he had plans tonight. They moved in together a year ago. Her first serious boyfriend after college and her education ended three years ago.

  One could say her love life had been nonexistent in school. And for those three lonely years after. One could also say Rachel Kane was more interested in pursuing her education and her career after her grandfather had passed, leaving her alone in the world, but at least with enough money to get through college, get a degree, and then a soul-stealing job as a data analyst for a no-name branch of the local Houston government. But hey, she had her boyfriend. So what more did she need from life? It didn’t matter if her job didn’t exactly light any fires in her. She had Michael.

  Right now, she wished she had Michael. To help her unlock the door and go inside. She jutted her hip out, leaning against the wall as she reached for—

  Shit! Her latte was slipping out of her hand. She instinct-snatched it tighter.

  Latte explosion! All over her favorite shirt and her favorite shoes! Damn it.

  Double shit. The damned plastic cup had given under the pressure and lost the battle. It caved like a paper boat in a whirlpool.

  And if that wasn’t enough, she realized her face was dripping the foamy, milky, coffee concoction.

  She heaved a sigh and let the cup go. She’d clean it up later. The mail had a few brown splatters, but who cared?

  Rachel pouted at the sight of her ruined shoes. She’d never get the coffee out of that fabric. She never even wore them on days which threatened to rain. And now this. With one hand suddenly a lot freer, she snagged her keys from her bag and opened the door, pushing on it with the hip that had already been resting against the wood.

  The sound of a giggle reached her ears. Michael was home? Why the heck didn’t he open the door?

  Next, the sound of moans. The type of moans which only happened during sex. He was watching porn? Was that why he hadn’t heard her?

  She pushed her anger back. Thinking how she’d walk in and catch him doing a one-handed make-out sesh. Just him, his hand, his cock, and whatever he was watching on TV. She wasn’t a fan of her man watching porn. In fact, if pressed, she’d say she didn’t appreciate it at all, but at this moment, she was kind of turned on by the idea of going in there and giving him the real thing. A nice, sweaty—sweet because of the latte—tangle in the sheets. She set everything down on the counter.

  She heard his moan. Oh, if she planned to get some pleasure out of this herself, she’d better hurry and catch him before he came undone. She kicked off the shoes as she reached the carpet and headed for the stairs to their bedroom. She tiptoed, climbing the steps one at a time, unbuttoning her shirt—ruined, anyway, probably—dropped it on the third step. Shimmied out of her skirt, dropped it on the sixth step up. It was black and polyester or some kind of easily washable fabric, so the latte hadn’t ruined it.

  The moans were louder. Was he turning the volume up with one hand and with the other pleasing himself?

  She spun around and dropped, sitting on the stairs, peeled off stockings, jumped up, and figured she was close enough to hustle up the last eight steps and fling the door open.

  Hmm. Maybe flinging the door open might scare the piss out of him—or the boner out of him. She was best off sneaking in.

  She took stealthy steps to the door, wondering why he’d closed it when he was home alone, anyway. Hand on the handle, she turned it slowly, then opened it with measured deliberateness.

  “Thought you’d want some company,” she said with the stealthiest voice she could manage.

  “Fuck, Rachel! What the hell?” Michael’s voice was shrill. It could have shattered glass.

  So could the shriek that came from the blonde who straddled him, reverse cowgirl style.

  Shock happened first. Rachel stared. No. This wasn’t real. She was not
witnessing her boyfriend nailing her best friend. Or her best friend nailing her boyfriend. This wasn’t real. It wasn’t. It couldn’t be. No. No way. But regardless of how many times she denied the reality, that was exactly what she was witnessing. Big-Boobed Betrayer Heather was straddling her boyfriend, mounting his dick. And now she didn’t even look embarrassed, her big tits bouncing still, though she’d just stopped riding.

  And it occurred to Rachel, somewhere in the back of her mind where a certain sentient part existed that Betrayer was still impaled on him. God, that part of her mind wished she were impaled on a stake. Him, too.

  But that part of her mind was not at the forefront. At the forefront was a fog of anger, disappointment, and ultimately heartbreak. And here she stood, in her prettiest matching bra and panties—whatever possessed her to wear them today—and all she could feel was an ever-expanding range of emotions from grief to anguish to anger to sorrow.

  Rachel realized she’d said nothing. Not a damned word, but her mouth was open. She closed it swiftly, looking at them like a Valkyrie, poised to go into a fury of an attack. But that was not what she felt inside. Inside, she was done. She was leveled.

  Michael pushed Heather off. “Go,” he told her., “I got this.”

  Got what? Rachel wondered in that fog of hers. Got fucking what? Got caught, that’s what.

  Later. Moments later, an hour later? Maybe it was a lifetime later, because her lifetime just went to hell in a handbasket. Her life was gone, for good. A roiling in her stomach heralded an act she should have warned Michael about.

  She was sitting in the wing chair of their bedroom, fighting the tears she didn’t want to shed over him. The last time she cried was when Gramps died, and she didn’t want Michael to have the honor of being the last one she cried over. But her stomach. She put a hand on her abdomen and could feel the churning.

  “It’s been over for a long time, Rachel.” Michael leaned close, but his expression was a study of indifference and callousness. “Surely, you know that.”

  What she knew was if she opened her mouth, things would fly out—and they wouldn’t be words.

  “Say something.” He waited, tapping his fingers on the side table next to the chair he sat in. Which was within touching distance of the one she was in. “Fine. Don’t say anything. But this is my house, and you need to find your own place. Heather and I—”

  At the sound of Betrayer’s name, Rachel lost it. Her mouth opened, forced to do so as the contents of her lunch—two crunchy tacos—came flying out. It was a colorful array of a spew. Green, reds, yellows, all melded together and mixed with stomach bile. Rachel closed her eyes while she heaved, projectile vomiting directly onto towel-clad Michael’s bare chest.

  She opened them just as she was finishing to find him accessorized with a half-digested Tex-Mex feast. Now, his face was a study of dismay and disgust. He stomped away to the shower.

  Chapter One

  Virginia Range, Nevada

  Rachel hadn’t needed to find herself a new place the day her heart had broken. One of the latte-splattered pieces of mail was a research position—paid, room and board, too, thank you very much. She’d put her stuff into storage and grabbed a cheap hotel room for the weeks it had taken to make arrangements.

  Now, she was three days into the coolest job she could have wanted. And the bonus? She was 1800 miles away from Houston. From Michael. Not that she didn’t love Houston, because she did, but her heart had seemed to have a hard time mending from the betrayal while she was there. It wasn’t that she wasn’t over Michael. She was. Oh, 150 percent even though that wasn’t really a thing. How could you be more than 100 percent? And yet, that was exactly how she felt.

  She was set up at a dude ranch—an honest to goodness dude ranch where people paid money to come live a lifestyle that was regarded with a sense of romance and nostalgia. The activities they offered at the dude ranch included horseback riding, target shooting, cattle sorting, hayrides, campfire sing-alongs, hiking, and camping. They even could manage some whitewater rafting, zip-lining, archery, and fishing and overnight trips.

  But that was not why Rachel was brought here. And she would not be engaging in those activities with her time. She was here to study horses for the purpose of relocating stallions to another herd to keep the lines from inbreeding. It was just the getaway she needed. Open air, country, none of the citified life she had lived with Michael, so nothing to remind her of him. She was given a choice between a horse or an all-terrain vehicle. They called them side-by-sides out here. Or maybe they called them that on all ranches. Rachel had grown up in the country, but Gramps hadn’t driven a side-by-side. He’d ridden a horse. And he’d been more of a farmer that had some cattle— nothing like some of the operations she’d seen in this area.

  There were days when Rachel wondered about her job. Surely, they could have found someone who knew more, but she wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth. No pun intended. She’d applied, and the position was hers because, Aggies. The guy doing the hiring noticed she was a Texas A&M graduate, and Aggies took care of their own. So, yeah, one phone interview, one video interview, a visit with a personal outfitter who ordered her supplies and had them sent to the Lazy River Ranch, and here she was, enjoying life on a dude ranch where she was tasked with making detailed records of the wild horses roaming the Iron Flats Mesa.

  The ranch manager, Smitty Norton, had given her a few choice words of caution when he’d found out she wasn’t there to do the dude ranch experience. He’d had scientists and “guv’met” types stay at the ranch—his pronunciation, not hers, for the word government. But they’d all been male, the whiskery, grumbly, lean ranchman had told her. He had given her a rifle. “For varmints,” he’d said.

  “What kind?” she’d asked.

  “Those that fly, slither, or…” He’d taken his cowboy hat off and run a hand through the hat-flattened mop. “Hell, little lady, any kind that don’t mean you well.”

  He’d taken a moment to show her how to chamber a round, how to work the bolt, where the safety was. Then he’d given her thirty minutes with some cans on a fence post. After that, he’d pronounced her proficient enough. Rachel didn’t have the heart to tell him she’d shot a rifle before. But of course, that had been long ago with Gramps, so the refresher was not unwelcome. Nor was the sentiment.

  Just because she didn’t want anything to do with a man didn’t mean she didn’t want a grandfatherly type to be in her life. This grizzled old man would have gotten on well with Gramps, of that she was sure. They were of a generation, as her Gramps used to say when he found like-minded, similar-aged individuals. He’d not spent the time with many, outside of Rachel, after Granny died when Rachel was 10. It had been just the two of them, his farm, and the two guys who helped him out seasonally. And then he was gone—

  “You mindin’ me, young un?” Smitty scowled at her.

  “Sir?”

  “I’m busy telling you what you can’t”—he said it more like cain’t—“and can do on this ranch.”

  Shit. She’d missed that. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ll run that by you one more time, mostly because I’d just as soon you heed my words and keep us out of trouble.”

  Trouble? Now her curiosity was piqued. “What kind of trouble?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, see. You need to stay away from the Crooked Arrow Ranch. They don’t take kindly to folk pokin’ around near their property. And that’s due south of here. “Your research might be closer to Iron Flats.” He pointed off in the distance. “That there rise over there, past that.”

  She looked where he was pointing. Past a hill—granted a big ass hill. But her curiosity hadn’t been satisfied. “What’s so bad about Crooked Arrow?”

  Smitty scowled, scoffed. “They keep to themselves. We keep away from them. Good enough?”

  When he put it that way, what was she supposed to say?

  “Good enough, sir.” She grabbed her backpack and the ke
ys to the side-by-side. The vehicle already had a cooler full of ice, waters, and sandwiches. There was an emergency kit, a first aid kit, overnight supplies, and a walkie-talkie to the ranch, just in case. She felt ready for her first day on the range. Maybe once she was familiar with everything and didn’t need to carry so much stuff—because, admittedly, she was a prepper kind of packer—then she’d consider taking the horse instead of a fully-loaded side-by-side UTV—utility vehicle.

  “You good to go, then, young lady?” He spat a gross, gunky, thick stream of chewing tobacco juice into the dirt.

  Her stomach flipped. Even after years of watching her grandad do that the same, she couldn’t get accustomed to it. Just flat out couldn’t. “I’m good to go, sir.”

  “Listen for the dinner bell, if you’re nearby. If not, it looks like Cookie set you up with three days’ worth of food. He’ll do that every day. He overpacks. Don’t take that as a suggestion to stay out after dark. We’d like you back here by sundown. If you listen for the dinner bell, we’ll even sound it over the walkie-talkie, then you’ll be fine.”

  “Well, what’s wrong with being out after dark?”

  Cookie shrugged. “Not saying there’s anything wrong with it.”

  Her bullshit radar was going crazy. He was definitely hiding something. His eyes were shifting back and forth. Yup. Lying.