Luke’s Legacy (Shifter Ranch Mates #5)

Chapter 1

ONE

Luke

The ringing of my phone woke me. I fumbled for my cell, cursing the unknown number. The ringing stopped, only to immediately start again. Knowing he would keep calling, I answered.

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “What now?”

“That’s no way to talk to your old man.” The voice on the other end was gravelly from a lifetime of heavy smoking. “Show some respect.”

“Respect is earned. And you haven’t.” I swung my legs over the side of the bed, knowing I’d get no more sleep. I put my cell on speaker and tossed it onto the nightstand before rummaging through my drawers for clothes.

His tone sharpened. “Just for that, I want more than last time. Five hundred ought to do me for a while.”

I yanked on my worn jeans and grabbed a T-shirt. “I don’t have it.”

“Well, find it.” A TV in the background told me nothing about where he was. Not that knowing where my birth father was would help. It wasn’t like I could make him leave.

“I can’t find what doesn’t exist. You’ve taken everything I have these last few months.”

“You’ve got yourself a nice setup there.” His voice lowered, threatening. “It would be a shame for you to lose it. Anything might happen. How long do you think those men you call brothers would stand by you if they knew what you’ve done?”

My chest tightened. I was one of six boys, all but one adopted by the couple I called Mom and Dad. Our parents were gone now, but the six of us had turned our family ranch into a dude ranch. My brothers and their mates were all I had left that mattered to me.

“I haven’t done anything,” I said, but even I didn’t believe my words.

A dark chuckle filled the room. “Keep telling yourself that. But you’ve been paying me to stay quiet for months now, which means you don’t want them to know about me.”

Flashes from my childhood filled my head. All the cons he’d pulled, often using me to do it. Pick-pocketing in cities when I was still young enough to pass for human. Until my wolf first appeared. Then he dumped me with a wolf shifter pack and disappeared.

Until six months ago.

“I told you, I don’t have any money to give you.” I scrubbed my hand over my face, racking my brain for a solution. “I have a few woodworking pieces in the gallery right now. If they sell, I can get you money then.”

“Better happen fast. I’m not a patient man.” He paused. “And Luke? Don’t go thinking you’re better than me. You’re still the same.” A dial tone followed his words.

I cursed, slamming my fist against the wall.

Pain radiated up my arm, but I welcomed it.

I deserved it. I paced the width of my bedroom before bending over the dresser, gripping the edge until the wood dug into my palms. Determination to stop my father from messing with the ranch and my family filled me.

The ranch was my first actual home. The wolf pack he’d dumped me on didn’t want me.

Not that I blamed them. They’d been forced to deal with a troubled teen who’d grown up running cons and stealing, and who had no control over his wolf.

The alpha of the pack had eventually called my adoptive parents, having heard they adopted outside their shifter species.

I didn’t know why they agreed to take me in. But Dad came and picked me up within days of the call. I still remembered the drive to the ranch. I was seething in the passenger seat while Dad sat calmly behind the wheel. He didn’t speak until we were almost at the ranch.

“Words don’t always mean much, so I won’t tell you that you’re wanted here. But we’ll show you every day that you have a family now.”

It had taken me a while to believe him. And it had been Mom more than anyone who had proven it to me.

No one had ever played a motherly role for me before, and it had been her warmth and love that had broken through my tangle of emotions first. Only then had I been able to let Dad and my brothers in.

Without my adoptive family, my life would have taken a far darker path. I owed them everything. Even if I had to pay off my father forever, I would keep his ugliness away from them. But I didn’t trust him to wait until I had more to give.

I grabbed my hat and strode out of the cottage I’d just moved into a month ago. My oldest brother Declan and his mate lived in the farmhouse, along with our housekeeper Mae. The rest of my brothers were in cottages sprinkled around the ranch, all but Mason and me with their mates.

My wolf perked up thinking about the women who had joined our family. He wanted to find our mate. The one fate had made just for us. The woman who would be our everything. He wanted what my brothers had found.

I didn’t.

I had nothing to offer a mate. Just a troubled past that refused to disappear. I didn’t doubt that my father would use a mate against me. He always said mates were a weakness. They made it easy to get under a shifter’s skin. It wouldn’t be fair to my mate to deal with my demons.

The light in Mason’s workshop was already on. He’d been working hard to upgrade our security systems since we’d discovered his former best friend, Vince, was behind the ongoing sabotage attempts affecting the ranch.

I knocked on the door, not waiting for him to answer before entering. Mason was studying the camera feeds on a collection of monitors. “You can’t watch those all the time.”

Mason didn’t spare me a glance. “I’m not happy with the angles. We need better coverage.”

I crossed over to stand beside him. A map of the ranch covered with notes lay on his desk. “I thought you adjusted the cameras last week.”

“I did, but it’s still not right. There are too many blind spots.”

“There’s been nothing from Vince since he disappeared three months ago.

He would be foolish to come back with the sheriff looking for him.

” I leaned against the worktable behind him and kept my voice casual when I asked, “And the existing security system is enough to keep anyone else out, isn’t it? ”

“Yeah. The system is overkill for normal needs.” His fingers tapped out a rhythm on the desk. “But I don’t trust that he’s gone for good. He isn’t a quitter.”

“One of these days you’re going to need to tell us what went down between you two.” None of us had pushed him for answers, but we still wondered what had happened while they were in the army together. “We should know why he’s targeting the ranch.”

Mason’s lips tightened, and he rubbed his thigh where he’d sustained an injury while away that even his shifter healing couldn’t fix. “The why doesn’t matter. All that matters is he’s likely to return to finish the job.”

I blew out a breath. Between my father and the threat of Vince hanging over everything, I was on high alert. It didn’t help that we had a constant stream of strangers visiting the dude ranch and art gallery. Any of them could have been hired to sabotage us.

I was the least trusting of all my brothers. I knew how the world outside the ranch worked. Even the most innocent face sometimes hid dark intentions.

Katie

I flipped through the thick file in front of me while the sullen teen boy slouched in the chair opposite me.

Eli was fourteen and had spent his life bouncing between foster homes after being abandoned when he was around six months old.

Normally, babies were adopted, but his file was full of reports that he’d been difficult to manage even then.

He never lasted longer than a month with a family.

“I understand your current placement isn’t working out.”

He snorted but didn’t speak. His toe was tapping almost frantically, and he shifted in the chair, as if struggling to keep still.

“We’re running out of options, Eli.” I closed the file and set it aside, leaning forward. “You’ve been through most of the foster families in the area. Your last worker recommended you go to a group home. I don’t want that for you.”

His gaze slid to me.

Cases didn’t cross my desk until everyone else had given up. And far too often, nothing I did helped. But I refused to give up hope that the next time would be different. Reading Eli’s file had struck a chord in me; my intuition had me convinced there was something we all were missing.

I rested my elbows on my knees and clasped my hands together. “What I want doesn’t matter, though. What do you want?”

Eli’s brow furrowed, and the foot tapping slowed. His gaze on me held suspicion, but I thought I saw a flash of vulnerability before he steeled himself. Kids in Eli’s position had so little control over their lives. I doubted he’d ever been seriously asked what he wanted.

“If you want a group home, I’ll do my best to find one that’s a good fit. If you want a family, we can work towards that together. But the first step has to be yours.”

The silence between us stretched out. He crossed his arms and stared at the floor at my feet. The tapping increased, and he rolled his head, neck cracking. I stayed still, waiting for him to break the silence and give me some sign of what he was thinking.

“Whatever.” The word had hard edges and came out bullet-fast. “It won’t matter where I am.”

“Why do you think that?”

His lips thinned. “I won’t fit in. I never fit in.”

Inside, I was pumping my fist in victory that he’d opened up enough to tell me that. It was the start of a dialogue between us. Outside, I stayed calm, trying to project a soothing energy. “How so? If you can tell me more, I might find somewhere you’ll fit in better.”

His fidgeting now encompassed his entire body.

He was like a caged animal, waiting to explode from the prison that was his skin.

Maybe he needed an outlet. I could find a sport to exhaust the energy he seemed unable to contain.

So many of the reports on him talked about his high energy, describing it as uncontrollable.

“What if—”

He sprang out of his chair and paced my small office, shaking out all his limbs.

“Eli, are you okay?” My concern grew, sensing this wasn’t normal teen behavior. “Would you like to go outside for a bit and run around? There’s a park nearby.”