Page 1 of The Enforcers: NOAH

Chapter 1

Noah Reilly was very, very drunk.

He was also trying not to fall in love.

The getting drunk part was more of an accomplishment than it sounded like—his wolf shifter metabolism burned through alcohol a hell of a lot faster than a human’s. It had taken some serious, concentrated drinking to get this hammered.

The good news: being hammered made it harder to hear the voices in his head.

The bad news: it didn’t stop him from wanting to fall in love.

He should be used to it by this time. It happened at least once a week, but it still blindsided him every time.

Tonight it was Audrey, a sweet, sexy red wolf. Noah leaned crookedly against the scarred wooden bar in the crowded roadhouse and watched her, the smell of spilled beer and fruity drinks and too many sweaty shifters dancing too close and wanting to fuck making him dizzy. She was leaning over the pool table, her auburn hair swinging forward as she set her pool cue just so, her delicious rounded ass filling out her jeans in a way that made his mouth water.

It was even worse because he knew exactly what was underneath those jeans. He’d shared her bed a couple of times when he first got to Nashville and told himself it was all good. No strings, just some fun times, exactly the way she wanted it.

The problem was, it wasn’t the way he wanted it.

He wasn’t really in love with Audrey. Even so drunk he could barely stand up straight, some dim not-fucked-up corner of his mind knew it.

He wasn’t in love with any of the women he latched onto.

He was just a mentally damaged loser, whose bonding mechanism had gone haywire.

Assuming it had ever worked to begin with.

The healers and the prissy-ass werewolf shrink had told him this would happen. He’d been mind-fucked by a genetically altered shifter supervillain who’d made him her zombie-bitch, and forced him to commit felonies he didn’t even remember.

Felonies that had lost him his job as a Shifter Council Enforcer.

And then there was the cutting and the blood and the sex. That he did remember, and it usually made him want to vomit.

Which was not cool when he was already three or four or seventy-two sheets to the wind, so he decided to stop thinking about it and think about Audrey’s ass some more.

But that just made him feel empty inside.

The healers and shrinks and magical whatever-the-fucks who’d reclaimed his mind had torn Selina Douglass’s mind tentacles out of his brain.

The problem was, they hadn’t given him anything to put in their place.

There was an empty, gaping, raw-edged abyss at the center of his soul with her voice echoing in it, and it just kept bleeding.

So he kept drinking. And kept pretending the loneliness and desperation was love, even if no one believed it—not even him.

“Hey! Pussywolf!”

Noah looked up to see Tyrone Jenkins, one of the Nashville pack’s lieutenants, standing in front of him with his arms crossed, his freakishly large biceps bulging. He was flanked by his hulking buddies, as usual—meaty minions whose names Noah didn’t bother to remember.

“Fuck you,” Noah slurred. Not the most original comeback in the world, but clever wordplay was wasted on Tyrone.

Tyrone hated Noah because he’d been sent here by Jesse Travis of the Silverlake pack, the unconfirmed and universally resented sort-of alpha of the Nashville pack. Jesse had defeated the previous Nashville alpha, “Nash” Jenkins, in a dominance battle a few months back, putting him into a coma.

The resulting vacuum of power had sent everybody scrambling. Jesse and the Silverlake alpha, Jace Monroe, were trying to figure out an exit strategy for Jesse that didn’t involve being defeated in a bloody fight to the death. They also wanted a slice of the pack’s corporate empire as a door prize for going away and leaving Nashville the hell alone.

And to complete the cluster fuck, the Wolf Council, which had been looking for a way to diminish Jenkins’ wealth and influence for years, was lobbying to break up the pack and divide the territory. Half the pack wanted to stay together; the rest were flocking behind a dozen would-be alphas, salivating and taking scissors to the territory map.

Tyrone was one of the wolves who wanted the whole pack, and wanted to prove to Jesse he could take it away from him.