Free Southern Shifters: Lone Wolf Wanted (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Jessie Lane

Chapter One
     
    Lone wolf: commonly known as a wolf without a pack.
    However, for Ezrah Goldsby, the term had come to mean something altogether different. In human terms, he was the guy who liked to stay detached, ride his motorcycle from one town to another, and be left the hell alone. This was exactly what he was doing now as he revved his machine’s engine and sped down US 129 after coming off the twisting, turning curves of the Dragon’s Tail in the mountain pass of Deals Gap, North Carolina. Even expert riders would be hesitant to drive the winding road at night, but Ezrah relished the peace of the night air whipping around him as he navigated his way through the darkness.
    A rolling stone, wanderer, stray, rambling man—those were a few of the terms people had used to refer to him over the years because he refused to stay in one place for more than a few nights after he had left his great-grandmother’s home in Oklahoma. With the exception of the frequent trips back to visit the ancient biddy who lived in a little ramshackle house on the outskirts of his deceased father’s pack lands, no place had ever been called home. Even Oklahoma didn’t feel like home.
    The old woman who had birthed his father’s father, Pearl Goldsby, had helped raise him alongside his single mother and was the only reason he went back to that state at all.
    On the outside, she looked like your average fifty-year-old woman. The truth was that she was pushing one hundred and thirty-eight, so he felt the need to check up on her from time to time. Not that she needed his damn help with anything, which was exactly what she had told him two weeks ago when he had left her place in Oklahoma to zig-zag east across the states.
    The woman was a powerful witch that Ezrah was pretty sure had made a deal with the Devil himself to live as long as she had. Mouthy and stubborn, Pearl felt the need to give her advice even when she knew it wasn’t wanted. She would also lay waste to the entire world to protect her one and only living relative: him. So as long as his great-grandmother was breathing, he would make sure the old woman was all right.
    As a wolf shifter, he was a man who held both beast and humanity contained in one vessel, just like every other shifter. However, he had no urge to go on pack runs, hunts, or mating parties. In fact, Ezrah didn’t feel many emotions at all. He didn’t laugh at jokes, cry at sad times, or even get anxious about difficult situations. He didn’t crave the affection or attention from other wolves that all the other members of his father’s pack did. In truth, there was only one person who had ever brought out any emotion from him at all, and that was his human mother.
    Those fleeting sentiments had disappeared after his mother had passed away when he was seven. Pearl had stepped up to raise him as her own, but the damage was done, so to speak. The trauma of losing his mother, coupled with the fact that he lived on the outskirts of a wolf pack that barely tolerated him, had taken its toll until he had shut all of his vulnerable sentiments down.
    Now Ezrah’s emotions were boiled down to a few basic instincts: hunger, lust, and loyalty. For instance, he might not love Pearl per se, but she was his family. He would protect her from any danger, even if it cost him his own life.
    As he looked up at the full moon hanging in the sky, another primitive urge welled up inside of him: lust.
    Months had passed since Ezrah had been inside a woman. Over the past three years, his sex drive had decreased, no longer necessitating the need to have carnal relations as often as possible, morphing into something else. Now, when the need hit him, Ezrah didn’t just want to get his dick wet; he wanted to find someone he could practically fuck through the mattress: rough, raw, fangs, claws, and as hard as he could.
    Last time he had visited Pearl, she had sensed the unusual agitation that had settled inside of him and told him it was