The broken wolfs redempt.., p.1
The Broken Wolf's Redemption: A Paranormal Shifter Romance, page 1
The Broken Wolf's Redemption
Wolf's Midlife Bond, Book 4
Aline Ash
© 2024 Aline Ash
The Broken Wolf's Redemption , book 4
All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
Kindle Edition
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Table of Contents
About the book:
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
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Also by Aline Ash
About the book:
Caught in his debt, will she become his salvation or his next shattered prize?
Rome Nightfall is the worst kind of jerk. The only dark wolf in his family, he’s the literal black sheep—ironic, considering he was once first in line to be Alpha of his former pack. Mean, cruel, cold, and so freaking beautiful he's both heart-stopping and breathtaking. He’s been a client for years, and through the brief interactions we’ve had, I know he's loaded.
When the unthinkable happens, threatening to destroy my business and leave my friends and co-workers out on the street, I have no choice but to swallow my pride and turn to the one man I know will lord any debt over me.
Rome demands more than just repayment. He’ll save my business, but at what cost? He doesn’t just want money. He wants me.
Damned and destroyed, Rome lives without a pack, his adopted daughter the only thing keeping him together. Despite his determination to keep his distance, he wants to break all his rules for me. But will becoming his break me?
The Alpha's Rejected Fate
The Warrior's Captive
The Alpha’s Arranged Bride
The Broken Wolf's Redemption
Chapter 1
Seren
Seren should have been out celebrating her birthday, but instead she was pulling up to an impressive auto repair shop in Casper’s industrial area.
Three years ago, when she’d told her parents over a not-so-great family dinner that she was quitting her job, getting a divorce, and starting her own tattoo shop, her mother flat out stated that she’d be sorry one day.
Sorry for the lack of a husband, sorry that she hadn’t tried harder to pop out enough children to populate the earth, sorry that she was throwing away a great career as the head of marketing for a prosperous business. One day, and one day soon, she’d bemoan the lack of stability in her life. She’d realize how greatly she’d fucked up everything on a whim. She’d open her eyes and find out that it was indeed a mid-life crisis, but it would be too late.
“Well, Mom, looks like that prediction is finally coming true,” Seren muttered as she pulled her bright pink micro sedan into one of the parking spaces outside the large metal building. Brand new yellow lines had been sprayed onto freshly laid black asphalt. The place wasn’t a new construction, but it had undergone one hell of a facelift.
Ironically, that was something else her mother promised her was in her near future unless she started taking better care of her skin, going for facials, buying expensive serums, blah-fucking-blah. Her parents liked her pink hair, pierced nose, ear gauges, and all her ink about as much as they liked the rest of her life decisions. Not. At. All.
Seren had more than enough guilt and shame going around at the moment. One stupid mistake. That’s all it took. One freaking ridiculous stupid mistake and the whole thing could come crashing down.
The shittiest part was that the mistake wasn’t even theirs. All someone had to do to ruin everything was to make an accusation and run with it.
She stared up at the clean white and red metal siding with no small amount of foreboding. It was after hours. The only other car in the parking lot belonged to a sleek black sedan. It had the distinctly expensive look of belonging to someone who cared about vehicles. The whole thing was de-badged, blacked out, and was rocking twenty-inch chrome rims. Very gangster, but the car didn’t belong to some drug lord. At least, as far as she knew, Rome Nightfall didn’t engage in that.
He was one of her first real clients. She’d gone about tattooing in a sort of unconventional way. The usual channels in life just weren’t for her, it seemed.
She’d drained her savings to buy a hole in the wall little building near Casper’s quaint downtown area. She’d renovated it and then she’d hired staff. Four were full-time chair rentals, but Becka got a good discount. It wasn’t just because they’d been friends since college, but because she’d agreed to apprentice her. They’d met taking art electives. Becks was insanely talented. She’d ended up dropping out of college after her first year and becoming a tattoo artist. By the time Seren got a divorce, Becka had been tattooing for over a decade and a half. She was the one who made Seren believe they could start their own place and make it work. When Seren was lost, Becka opened that avenue, offering to teach her how to explore the artistic, creative side of herself that she’d never fully got a chance to use chained to a desk.
Seren spent over a year carefully crafting her art, but most clients weren’t willing to get in the chair and dedicate much more than a few inches of their skin to someone just starting out. Rome wasn’t officially her first client, but he’d turned into her first steady, long term one. He hadn’t been afraid to walk in, check out her portfolio—which was admittedly mostly sketches and paintings—and ask for her because she had zero wait list while everyone else was at least six months to a year, and demand a sleeve.
That sleeve was his first tattoo.
Rome Nightfall was many things, and most of them she would never understand. Most of them she didn’t want to understand. She did know a few things about him. This auto repair shop was one of them. The fact that he was a bit of a cunt was another.
Still. She had no one else to ask.
It was hard to suck up her pride, but she got out of her car, hoisted her bag over her shoulder, and clicked the fob to lock it.
How was one supposed to dress for a meeting that might determine one’s whole future? However it was, she’d refused to fit into the predetermined box. She’d gone with the same ripped-up jeans and black velvet tank she’d worn to the shop all day. Same ripped-up, worn out canvas high tops.
The door was unlocked even though the sign in the door was flipped to closed. The token shop bell jingled when she stepped in. The sound grated on her nerves, and she pressed her fingers into her arm, letting her short nails bite into her skin.
“Seren Prescott.”
Her soul nearly left her body when Rome Nightfall stood up from behind the desk at the front. It had a high counter, and she hadn’t seen him sitting back there when she walked in. That was crazy because he was a hard man to miss.
Jet black hair and even blacker eyes. Impossible size. Rugged features chiseled to the point of breathtaking. He was beautiful, but cold. Unapproachable. Fearsome. She’d never seen him in a suit before and doubted he even owned one, but he carried himself with an unmistakable sense of power. He was well put together, packaged with a gorgeous exterior, but most people with good sense probably gave him a wide berth. It was likely obvious even to regular humans that he was bleeding out from wounds on the inside.
Over the year and a bit that she’d know him, Seren had gathered that Rome had a soul to match his hair and eyes. Black. He was ice, through and through. His impeccable veneer never once crumbled. He’d always looked perpetually bored, but she was a wolf like he was, and from one animal to another, she’d sensed the cruelty lurking beneath that carefully polished surface.
Her willpower crumbled when Rome’s lips curled into a chilling smile. On him, it looked exactly like what it was. The gesture of a predator scenting prey. Rome wasn’t chunky muscle, thick and bearlike. He was far more elegant. He was still well over six feet and built the way a Roman statue would have been, so his name was apt.
In more ways than one.
This man before her liked to conquer. He liked to fill up a room, a city, a state, the whole world with his presence. It was no surprise that the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were hard and cold, blank, dead onyxes. Rome was the kind of man who, from the beginning of his existence, marched towards the end with frightening forcefulness. He wasn’t afraid of pain or death, and that made him a very dangerous kind of person.
Seren scooted quickly out of the way when he stalked towards her. She told herself she wasn’t afraid , but she knew that was bullshit. He could probably scent her fear as he twisted the big metal deadbolt on the door and flicked off the light.
“We’ll have the meeting in my office.” His voice might be sin wrapped up in rich velvet decadence, but there was always something about his tone that wasn’t quite right.
He turned and she followed. Rome was the devil she knew. Short of going to a fucking loan shark or worse, he was pretty much her only option.
She followed his black-clad form, work clothes in hardy fabrics.
She inhaled too sharply. A mistake. The whole place smelled like oil, grease, chemicals, metal and tires, but on Rome, the scent wasn’t unpleasant.
He took her down a short hallway, past a few closed doors, and made a sharp right into his own office. When he turned on the light, she noticed that his hands weren’t clean. His nails had grease caked into the fine lines around his nailbeds. He’d probably scrubbed them clean, but the stains were always there. Working man’s hands. She’d noticed at the last several appointments that his hands were calloused and stained. They hadn’t always been that way. She’d made the mistake of asking him about it once, and got a non-committal grunt and something about a garage he’d just opened.
There were no chairs in the office. He didn’t close the door.
She was already sweaty, which could be excused by the hot August day and the fact that her car had no AC, but now she could feel the beads trickle down from the back of her neck. She shivered anyway.
Rome tilted one dark brow at her as he faced her from a foot away. His desk was as clinical as he was. There was nothing on it except a monitor, keyboard, a mouse, one expensive-looking pen, the kind that twisted open, and a pad of plain lined paper. No chair. Had he removed it? Did he stand there when he needed to work? The desk wasn’t anything fancy, it looked like every other standard office desk, and it wasn’t the right height for it.
“Ms. Prescott. You called me to ask for this meeting. Why don’t you enlighten us both as to what it is you might want.” He managed to sound bored and imperious at the same time.
A violent hammering started in Seren’s head. Her heartbeat tore at her pulse points and wrenched behind her ribs. She’d thought about how she could ask this man for a loan. While other men might enjoy having their egos stroked with flattery and perhaps even flirting, Rome was the kind who would appreciate a direct approach.
Her mouth was disgustingly dry, and she wished she’d tucked a bottle of water into her bag. There wasn’t any on offer here. Rome was probably above basic human conditions like hunger and thirst.
“I need a loan.”
“Ahh.” He grasped his hands together, locking his fingers and cracking his knuckles. Loudly. Or was that sound the peals of her heart doing a number on her ribs? “A loan. From me. What gives you the impression that I’m the person you should come to for something like this? The bank seems far more suitable.”
“The bank isn’t going to lend me this kind of money. Even if I had some collateral to put up or assets I could move, it would take too long.”
He didn’t ask why. His face didn’t so much as twitch. He stood there and then his eyes slowly swept over her. When they returned to her face, they were even blacker than ever. It was impossible to distinguish his pupil from the iris. Without so much as trying, he managed to drip danger, but also elegance. There was something unfortunately magnetic about Rome Nightfall.
Unfortunate for every female out there. Rome also gave off incredibly disinterested vibes. She’d never seen him look at anything or anyone with an ounce of warmth. He was indeed a carved stone statue.
“How much?”
“Um, a little over a million.”
“Oh.” He turned on his heel and gave her his back without going anywhere. It was more unnerving than if he’d gone right up in her face and laughed at her. That one word was sharp enough. Dangerous.
Her whole body broke out in a clammy sweat.
“Aren’t you going to ask me why?”
“If that’s what you want me to ask.”
She wanted to ask him to turn around and damn well face her. Her stomach twisted sickly. This wasn’t about pride. She hadn’t anticipated this would be easy. She knew Rome wasn’t like anyone else. He was too magnificent to be normal. Still. It seemed like he was enjoying himself. Enjoying torturing her. Since his back was to her, she couldn’t tell, and it was maddening.
“Because the insurance company I have my policy with for the shop is shit. Because over the last six months we were sued for malpractice and the prick was awarded over a million dollars. He said he contracted hepatitis from our shop, but it’s not possible. We’re so careful. All of us have liability insurance, but they’re refusing to cover it. It’s either declare bankruptcy and lose the shop or find a way to pay.”
She should have known better than to expect a simple no or a yes. Rome either wanted to make her suffer or he was thinking. The prolonged silence that fell over them was as sharp as a knife.
“You think I have this kind of money because…”
Why the fuck did she think that? It wasn’t the clothes and the shoes. Maybe it was the fact that he’d tipped her more than his entire back piece cost on the last session when she’d completed it. She’d tried to look into him at that point, but short of hiring someone, she knew she’d find very little. He was a shifter, and other than the few legal things he had to put his name to, the rest would be carefully hidden. As curious as she was, she wasn’t going to throw money away on a PI. She had no idea where to even find one who specialized in shifter and paranormal digging.
He turned back slowly, sucking all the oxygen out of the small office. The walls were so white, the floor a speckled white and gray industrial tile. The place looked like any other garage. She wasn’t walking into a multi-billion-dollar construction.
Rome’s unreadable expression sucked the life out of her, but it also wrenched the truth from her closed-up throat. “I have no one else to ask. If you don’t have the money, do you know someone who would lend it to me?”
“Do I know someone?”
It was irritating in the extreme that he asked her with another tilt to his brow, amused by her discomfort. She knew she was visibly distressed. She was shit at hiding it, and she was still sweating. He could probably hear her thunderous heartbeat.
“I know you’re a wolf. I’ve wounded you. I’ve drawn your blood. The truth is, I never needed to. I knew what you were from the second you walked in. Just as you knew I was also a wolf. You drive a nice car. You wear nice clothes. You probably have a big house somewhere and you have this shop. You spend an insane amount of money on tattoos, so that tells me you have a large portion of disposable income. Maybe that’s all just assumptions. Maybe it was idiotic to come here. You were my last shot. I’ve already tried everything and everyone else. I’m not going to close up my shop without a fight. I’m not going down like this. It’s not my pride. It’s the fact that I’m responsible for everyone else working there. It’s my business. It’s my building. I put this together. This is on me.”
“It’s not a little bit about your pride?” An errant twitch of his left eye broke something wide open on his face. For a fleeting instant, she thought she saw enjoyment. Not for the current moment, but an immense satisfaction at what was to come. That if it was about her pride, he’d enjoy breaking her.
She was right. He was dangerous. She’d just vastly underestimated how much. He wasn’t just a wolf. He was decidedly lacking in humanity. If she hadn’t made him bleed multiple times over the years, she would have been in doubt that he even could.
He didn’t leave her writhing there. He had something far more vicious planned for her.
“I have the money. I’ll lend it to you, but I want something in return.”
Obviously. Who wouldn’t? His chilling words made her stomach start to churn so violently she thought she’d throw up all over the floor. At least the tiles looked like they’d easily wipe clean and there wasn’t really anything in the impersonal office that was in the splash zone.
The way his black eyes fixed on hers made it all too apparent that what he wanted wasn’t an insane repayment schedule with absurd interest rates. It wasn’t anything that any legal, upstanding, normal, decent, humane institution would ask for.
