1. Earth Pack Rules: Her Alpha Lovers Part One by Michele Bardsley

PART ONE.
    JACK HARRISON INHALED the salty scent of ocean air as he readjusted his position. His rear end throbbed from sitting too long on the sand. Grit had crept inside his wet swim trunks and abraded his skin.
    Fake.
    The whole damned thing was fake.
    The earliness of the house was too much for most guests staying at the Drift Resort, so the Waves of Love attraction was pretty much deserted.
    It blew his mind that the Drift Resort had gone to so much trouble to recreate a beach, complete with “ocean” AKA “the wave pool” and an artificial sunrise. Actually, the sunrise was pretty good. He watched the light move across the far wall, which had been painted to look like endless ocean waves. The golden shimmer mimicked the sun rising, spreading orange and yellow filaments across the tapestry of topaz water.
    He loved being outdoors just before the day started—ah, the smell of crisp air, freshly turned earth, and dewy grass. The sun rose, and the blue sky kissed the dark earth. Yes. Beauty everywhere, and in that beauty, soul-deep peace. Jack eyed the fakeness around him, and sighed. He supposed this man-made contraption was as close as it got to nature’s beauty in June in Las Vegas. The skin-melting heat made wise people stay inside—tromping from hotel to hotel through connected walkways, zippy trams, and if one wanted to brave the blistering outside, zippier cabs.
    He should be in Oregon at the Earth Pack’s farm, doing his morning run, checking on the animals, helping with the harvesting, and taking care of the endless tasks that besieged the Earth Pack alphas on a daily basis. His co-alpha, Grantham Wells, enjoyed nature, too, but preferred the rigorous training of an outdoorsman preparing for a zombie apocalypse. In fact, the man who was supposed to be helping Jack track down their mate was too busy right now conquering Drift Resort’s spectacular gymnasium.
    Jack was fit, but didn’t have Grant’s ardent devotion to muscle building and punching things. Most people thought of Jack as the brains and Grant as the brawn of their pack, but the truth was that Grant had brains—and Jack had brawn.
    It was strange how people needed to label—to put things and people into neat boxes so they could comprehend purpose. He knew some things, some ideas, didn’t fit perfectly into anywhere. Take this hunt for their mate as an example: He and Grant had journeyed to Las Vegas because the pack’s psychic Elsa had been adamant.
    Well, according to her, dearly departed Matchmaking Matilda was the one who’d insisted. And this is what they got for listening to a woman twenty years dead.
    You’ll find your mate, drifting in the desert, her fiery heart the sign she belongs to you both.
    Somehow, Elsa had figured out—this time with the help of her crystals—that the Drift Resort in Las Vegas was the “drifting in the desert.” The rest she’d been unable to interpret, but all the same, he and Grant had booked the trip and spent a lot of time looking around for women who might display fiery hearts.
    The Earth Pack werewolves were peace-makers. Some liked think they were lovers, not fighters, but those people were wrong. The Earth Pack members worked hard in every aspect of their lives, including training in self-defense and martial arts. The policy was mediate first, and if that didn’t work, then kick ass. Grant was mostly in charge of kicking ass because he liked the physical aspects of the alpha job. The data computation, chart-marking, and number-crunching were Jack’s specialties.
    They needed a mate who could balance reason and logic with empathy and action.
    Matchmaking Matilda might’ve gotten this one wrong. Maybe being dead had messed with her mojo. Three days had passed and they hadn’t made any progress. He hadn’t connected with any female, shifter or human, who stirred his loins or infiltrated his thoughts. Grant had dismissed every female they met because “Insert Stupid Grant Reason Here.” Too