The Rogue Trail
Author
Benji Alexanders
Reads
16.1K
Chapters
33
Morgan Rogers, a brilliant lawyer, finds herself in the midst of a personal and professional crisis after a high-profile case goes horribly wrong. Seeking solace, she escapes to the wilderness of the Coloradan mountains with her loyal golden retriever, Scout. But her retreat takes a dangerous turn when she falls off a trail and into the territory of Aidan Black, the enigmatic leader of the Vine Creek Pack.
Aidan, a powerful Alpha werewolf, recognizes Morgan as his fated mate the moment he finds her. As Morgan recovers from her injuries, she is drawn into Aidan’s world—a world of werewolves, pack politics, and ancient traditions. Despite the undeniable bond between them, Morgan struggles to reconcile her feelings for Aidan with her career ambitions and the life she left behind in Denver.
As tensions rise within the pack and external threats loom, Morgan must decide whether to embrace her destiny as Luna of the Vine Creek Pack or return to the life she once knew. Will love and loyalty prevail, or will the rogue trail lead them to heartbreak?
Chapter 1: The Wrong Kind of Victory
MORGAN
Jenna’s call came shrill and urgent, slicing through the quiet of Morgan’s night. “Have you seen the news?” she nearly yelled, forcing Morgan to pull the phone away from her ear.
“Indoor voice, Jenna. TV news? Which channel?” Morgan replied, her tone weary as she reached for the remote.
“Nine,” Jenna whispered, but her voice was oddly still shaking. Morgan turned to Channel Nine, and at once the stone-cold face of her last legal victory filled the screen. Her blood ran cold.
“He killed three people. They found them in the trunk of his car. He did it, Morgan,” Jenna said, her voice cracking. “He confessed. To all of it.”
“Oh my God,” Morgan whispered. Her hands were shaking as she took in the images on screen: the police cordon, the blood-splattered floor, the insane grin on the man she had represented and gotten off on a technicality just last week. Three people were dead. They were dead because of her.
“Jenna, I—”
“Don’t you dare, Morgan,” she cut in, and Morgan could hear the tears threatening to spill in her voice. “Don’t you fucking dare. You just did your job, and you did it well. This isn’t on you.”
Her entire body was trembling now, and Morgan could feel her phone buzzing at her ear. Messages and calls were starting to flood in. Her head was spinning.
“Jenna, I have to go,” she said as firmly as she could and hung up before her assistant could reply.
Running to the bathroom, Morgan just made it to the toilet before losing her dinner. She lay down, pressing her face to the cold tile in an attempt to calm the nausea.
She lay there for several moments before soft padding on the tiled floor brought her back to reality, and a wet nose pushed its way into her naturally strawberry-blonde hair with a quiet whine.
“Hey, baby girl,” she murmured, running her fingers through Scout’s thick golden fur. “I’ll be okay.”
Scout cocked her head to the side, as if she did not quite believe her.
Picking her phone up from the bathroom floor where she had dropped it in her haste to empty her stomach, Morgan saw that she already had nineteen text messages and twelve missed calls, mostly from the office.
She pressed redial on the most important caller: Guy Stewart, managing partner of Stewart & Associates in Denver. Morgan had worked for Guy since leaving law school four years ago. She was an associate now, with one foot in the door of becoming a junior partner.
Well, she had been. She wondered what was in store for her now, as Guy would never usually make a call this late in the evening.
As expected, Guy did not waste time on formalities.
“Seven a.m. in my office,” he barked before disconnecting.
AIDAN
Aidan snatched up the papers that had been cautiously placed on the boardroom table in front of him by a nervous secretary. “What am I looking at?”
“It’s a compulsory purchase order, Alpha. The state government is gunning for your land. We have fifty-six days to oppose their application, or we lose the land,” said Colt, Aidan’s beta.
“And how did we end up in this position?” Aidan growled. “The land is not available. Never has been, never will be.” He glanced around the table at his deltas, gammas, council elders, lead warriors, and human representative for the answer.
Colt’s gaze lifted to the pack lawyer, and Aidan’s quickly followed. The small human man cleared his throat and got to his feet.
“Well, I have negotiated—”
“You’re fired,” Aidan cut in. “You knew the brief. No negotiations. Remember the terms of your nondisclosure. We are done here.” The small man went to protest but caught sight of Colt’s slight head shake and Aidan’s darkening eyes and thought better of it. He picked up his briefcase and shuffled out of the boardroom. No one spoke.
Aidan turned to stare out of the boardroom window. It was an hour’s drive to his offices in Gunnison and a further four hours to Denver. He hated being away from his lands, but the creeping legal threat that had loomed over him and his father before him could no longer be ignored. Aidan was usually able to maintain a solid distance from his business interests with humans, but when it came to the land to protect his pack, that was personal.
“What’s the plan, Alpha?” asked Colt. Aidan sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair.
“We need a new fucking lawyer.”
MORGAN
“S-sabbatical?”
“We…think it best for now that you take a step back. Please be assured, Ms. Rogers, that we are in no doubt whatsoever about your capabilities or the service you have provided. This is simply a…public relations issue. Let’s call it an extended vacation, two months on full pay. Take some time out, and the dust will surely have settled. We can reassess the position then.”
Morgan felt her heart squeeze. This was not a permanent goodbye, but it certainly felt like it. For the second time in twenty-four hours, she felt tears spring in her eyes, threatening to ruin the perfectly made-up face that she had risen at 5 a.m. to complete after a near-sleepless night.
“Morgan,” Guy continued, more softly this time. “I really am sorry. I know how hard you have worked. I should never have given you this file. You are a great lawyer and are destined for great things. But,” he sighed, “I need to protect you from this.”
Donna from HR nodded sagely beside him.
“We have fielded over one hundred fifty calls from journalists, not just locally but nationwide and internationally. This is big news. We are a big firm but unfortunately are ill-equipped to deal with this sort of negative exposure. I’ve hired a PR firm in Chicago that has recommended a sabbatical for you and a short statement. I’m going to publish that in the next hour. It would be best if you…were gone before then.”
Guy rose and held out his hand. Morgan did the same, barely registering the movement. She felt entirely numb.
“Jenna will reassign your live files to our other associates. No need for a handover. Go. Turn your phone off. Take that puppy of yours into the mountains. Go visit the folks in England. Breathe.”
She smiled. She would, and she’d come back stronger.
AIDAN
Hours had passed since the revelation that the government was threatening his land. Back in his office at the pack house, Aidan read through the paperwork once more. He had been alpha of the Vine Creek Pack since his eighteenth birthday ten years ago. His pack ran exclusive alpha, beta, and lead warrior training courses for young wolves who were likely to hold pack leadership positions.
He had many fingers in many different human businesses, and he owned many tourist businesses in and around Gunnison and Denver that kept his pack wealthy and working. For fun, he had studied a business degree online. He figured he needed something to do with no mate or family to keep him occupied and as an additional show of strength to prove his worth as alpha.
And yet, this application made little sense to him. It was three hundred fifty pages long. The government wanted two thousand acres of his land around Gunnison, supposedly for a new high school—that much he had figured out. But how to oppose their claim?
He was so blinded by fury that he had no idea where to start. Colt had already advertised for an in-house lawyer under the guise of the company business group, and he had put the word out among the other packs that he was hiring. But the turnaround was tight. He wondered whether he had acted rashly in firing Geoffrey.
His wolf had taken over, and he had seen red. Geoff had gone behind his back to try and negotiate, thinking that Aidan would be swayed by the money on offer.
And while two thousand acres was only a small portion of Aidan’s land, he’d be damned if he was the first alpha in Vine Creek history to be lured by the promise of a fat bank account. Especially when it was already healthy enough.
This legal action made him look weak. Even if he successfully opposed it, he had been undermined by his former lawyer. It would bring challenges from jealous alphas and wild rogues to his door. It threatened the strong foundations upon which he had built his reputation and his businesses. He would die before he conceded.
At his third read-through, he picked up his whiskey tumbler and smashed it against the wall.
“Fuck!” he spat. Fifty-five days to go.
