Chasing The Night
Big Easy Shifters: Book Three
Abby Knox
Copyright © 2020 by Abby Knox
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
First edition published 2018
Edited by Aquila Editing
Proofread by Kasi Alexander
Cover Designer: Mayhem Cover Creations
This second edition re-release is dedicated The Hangover in general, and Zach Galifianakis specifically.
Chasing The Night
Part three of the Big Easy Shifters
By Abby Knox
The morning after …
Chastity was on the prowl at her cousin’s bachelorette party, bound and determined to finally lose her virginity. Mission accomplished, probably, but she doesn’t remember much about the main event. Now, on the hunt for coffee and carbs, the de-flowered debutante’s walk of shame has her missing her mystery man at every turn.
Gavin wakes up naked and alone in the woods, with vague clues and fuzzy memories of the one-night stand that unfolded after his best friend’s bachelor party. But this wolf does not do one-night stands. He’s determined to find this perfect woman who rocked his world, and claim her for his own.
Chasing The Night is the third installment in the updated and revised Big Easy Shifters series (formerly titled Her Big Easy Wedding). These titles are fun, quick reads full of heat, obsessed mates, strong-willed debutants, rich daddies, claws, fangs, and happy endings!
Contents
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
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Abby Knox
Chapter One
Chastity, 8:30 a.m.
The bride’s cousin from Baton Rouge was having a rough morning.
Chastity DuChamp opened one sleep-crusty eye. She shouldn’t have done that. The sunlight streaming through the blinds instantly seared right through her eyeballs and into the back of her skull.
Whenever she visited her cousin Rosemary in New Orleans and slept overnight in one of the many guest rooms overlooking the lake, she always woke with a slight bit of confusion over where she was, at first. But that feeling would dissipate in a few seconds as wakefulness took hold. There was always the lovely four-poster bed and a huge window seat with plush pillows and blankets. She would often be awakened with the aroma of coffee and fresh beignets made by Aunt Betsy.
This morning was not anything like that.
This little room was not becoming more familiar to her the more she woke up. She peeked around for clues. The only thing 100 percent certain was that she was definitely not in her aunt and uncle’s mansion in the Garden District. This room had a popcorn ceiling, for starters. And these sheets were not Egyptian cotton.
How she got here was another mystery. The only clear memory was that she had started the evening at Rosemary’s bachelorette party last night, which had begun at the mansion with a five-course dinner. Having been excited to get the party started as early as possible, Chastity had picked at her food and drunk mass quantities of champagne. The hours following that dinner were a haze of tipsy, silly giddiness. And then the bar-hopping started, at which point things got hazier, more silly, and possibly wandered into the territory of downright poor judgment. And what was a bachelorette party without some breathtakingly stupid choices? Chastity was sure there were plenty of other families’ bachelorette parties that were nothing more than tea and cake, but those people were not the kind to celebrate her cousin Rosemary.
Rosemary, like Chastity, was a panther shifter and a constant source of headaches for the DuChamp clan. Unlike Chastity, Rosemary did things her own way and was not a panther who could be contained by her daddy or controlled by his grip on the family purse strings.
Chastity, however, was not used to getting her way. Turns out, one night of sowing her wild oats was all it took to land Chastity in trouble.
But not too much trouble. After all, she hadn’t woken up in jail, nor did she feel any sense of dread about anything that might have taken place. Judging from Chastity’s current state of not knowing where she was and feeling like a live jazz band was hoofing it through her skull at full volume, she’d say the party was a roaring success.
Chastity gingerly rolled to one side, stood up, and realized she had fallen asleep in her party dress. She had a pattern of its sequins embedded into the skin of her arms. Those arms were now searing with the pins-and-needles sensation of having been slept on for a very long time. Shaking them awake, she thanked God her legs were working, if a bit wobbly, because she had the urge to pee more than she had ever had in her life. She looked around. There was a door to a small room in the corner. That had better be the bathroom, she thought, because either way, she was going to pee in it.
It was indeed a bathroom, and after she had relieved herself, she checked her reflection in the shabby little wall mirror.
This was the one day she was thankful for bad lighting. Never mind that she had skipped her nightly makeup-removal-and-moisturizing routine, because the real story here was the giant hickey peeking out of the neckline of her dress.
She watched her eyes grow huge and fearful in the mirror.
Had she been making out with a giant leech? Because that was the only level of suckage that might have produced such a bruise. No way that was going away before the wedding in two days. Shit. Forget about her mother
