
Shiftless

Wolf Rampant, Volume 1

Aimee Easterling

Published by Wetknee Books, 2016.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

SHIFTLESS

**First edition. February 19, 2016.**

Copyright (C) 2016 Aimee Easterling.

ISBN: 978-1507016442

Written by Aimee Easterling.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

# Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

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

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Epilogue

Pack Princess

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# Chapter 1

"No, that's just rude and inappropriate." The soft male voice insinuated its way into my reading. A pause, then he continued his one-sided conversation. "Stop for one minute and imagine you're a woman alone in the city and two guys walk up to you. You probably wouldn't feel very safe, would you?" Pause. "Okay, one guy and his dog."

At first, I didn't realize they were talking about me. I was happily curled up in a comfy armchair with a copy of Patricia Briggs' newest book open on my lap, already enveloped by the satisfying welcome of a werewolf pack, albeit a fictional one. Yes, this is what my life had come to--it had been ten years since I'd last seen a werewolf anywhere other than in a mirror, so I relied on books to get my pack fix. Depressing, but true.

Momentary pleasure aside, the whole day had been one long mistake. I usually tried to stay away from the big city, but when I woke this morning, my inner wolf had felt like it was gnawing at my bones and my stomach ached with the absence of pack. Filling the gaping cavity in my soul with an imaginary wolf pack seemed worth lying to my boss, putting my good sense on hold, and playing hooky for the day.

Only after I'd settled in a chair by the bookstore's front window, paranormal fantasy in hand, did I see the error of my ways. Or rather, hear it. At first, I'd merely blocked out the man's words as they drifted over to insinuate their way into my reading, but now I noticed the frustrated, yet loving, twist to the man's tone. Despite my better sense, curiosity made me peer up from my page and crane my head around to seek out the source of the conversation.

The speaker was about my age, and he did have a canine with him, but the slight smile on my lips leftover from overhearing his words was quickly stifled as I realized that the monstrosity was no dog. It was a wolf, and not just any wolf--the man's companion was a werewolf like me.

While you might think that would be a good thing given the yearning in my stomach, I had kept my distance from other werewolves for a very good reason. Now was not the time to go back. I could feel my cheeks heating up, and the man's voice became distant as terror stole blood away from my ears, sending the nutrition to my tensed muscles instead. I had to get out of there fast.

This danger was the precise reason I rarely came to the city. Even though the area was out-territory, not owned by any wolf pack, who was to say I wouldn't bump into another werewolf drifting through? As much as I hated my history, my father was an alpha and I was aware that I smelled like the best kind of mate material to male werewolves. The alphas, especially, were used to taking what they wanted, and one glance into this wolf's eyes was all it took to prove he was as alpha as they came.

The reality was that I had fled my home pack a decade ago to prevent a forced mating. And even though the packless ache in my stomach was a constant reminder of what I'd lost, in the light of day, that pain still seemed like a good trade for my independence. No way was I going to let a momentary slip rope me back into being an alpha werewolf's pawn--I needed to get out of this wolf's sight immediately.

Even though I hadn't paid for my book yet, I figured it was a worthy casualty to save me from being drawn back into the werewolf world. So I dropped the text onto the couch cushions, sprang to my feet, and speed walked out the door, back into the seeming safety of the street. My car--and freedom--were only two blocks away, and I could almost taste how good it would feel to slam the door, pop the locks, and hit the accelerator. I could be back in my empty cabin in half an hour, this close call forgotten.

But my car was still out of sight when I heard the bookstore's door open and close behind me. No longer concerned with appearances, I broke into a run, Stupid, stupid, stupid echoing through my mind in time to the beat of my shoes on the pavement. I couldn't let myself believe that this is how I would be sucked back into a pack, due to a chance meeting in a bookstore while reading about fictional shifters. If I'd picked up Twilight instead, would I have been treated to a sparkly vampire?

Even as that thought drifted through my adrenaline-charged mind, I realized that no one's footsteps pounded after me. I would be able to see my car as soon as I rounded the corner, and for a moment, I thought I might be safe. Maybe I'd misread the acquisitive gleam in the alpha's eyes; maybe a random customer had left the store soon after I did, not a hunting werewolf.

But I knew better. With one short bark, the wolf stilled my flight, then the man's voice came a beat behind, asking me to wait. But it was the alpha's command, not his partner's words, that had stopped me in my tracks. Just like my father's orders had been impossible to disobey, now another alpha had taken away my free will with one bark.

I was so angry and terrified, I almost expected to feel my wolf rising up through my skin the way it used to in the Chief's presence. And for the first time in a decade, I would have welcomed her strong protection rather than being afraid of the wolf's wild nature and sharp teeth. Instead, I heard only my human mind, which reminded me that there was no sense in running now that I'd been snared in the alpha's net. Taking a deep breath, I let my shoulders slump as I succumbed to the inevitable.

***

AS MUCH AS I WANTED to stay in place and ignore the approaching alpha, I couldn't let danger creep up behind me unseen, so I turned and waited for the duo to catch up. As they advanced, I focused on the man instead of the wolf for the first time and noticed that he was clearly a werewolf just like his partner. He was also apologizing profusely even before he reached me. "I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry!" he exclaimed, switching the leash he held into his left hand so he could reach out to shake mine. "I'm Chase, and my very rude friend is Wolfie."

Although I was both terrified and angry, I liked Chase on sight. He was the kind of male werewolf who didn't have an alpha bone in his body--the golden retriever of the lupine world. He was also handsome, but not full of himself, and I could tell that this one werewolf was friend material. In fact, if there had been more Chases and fewer Wolfies in the world, I might have tried to join another pack after fleeing mine, but werewolf packs were inevitably run by alphas, and every alpha was like Wolfie...or like my father.

Okay, maybe not just like Wolfie. As ebbing adrenaline let rational thought once again fill my mind, I realized that it was decidedly odd for the alpha in question to be walked around in wolf form on a leash. But for all I knew, the two were tracking something that required the wolf's superior senses. In human form, we could sometimes use our wolf brain to boost our sniffing power, but the effect was nothing compared to how in tune we were with the world when entirely wolf.

Fur aside, Wolfie had the arrogance of every other alpha I'd ever met. After forcing me to stop running against my will, he was now sitting at Chase's feet and looking up at me with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth in a doggie laugh. Once he was sure he had my attention, Wolfie reached up one paw as if to shake...then winked.

"I don't think she thinks you're as cute as you think you are," Chase warned his friend when I looked pointedly away from the raised paw. Despite myself, I smiled at the beta's words, amused that a lower-ranking wolf could yank the alpha's chain, even metaphorically. "Like I said, I'm really sorry," Chase continued his earlier apology to me. "But Wolfie is pig-headed and I'm afraid he's not going to give either of us any peace unless you agree to talk to us, just for a few minutes. Maybe you'd let me buy you a coffee?"

As I said, I liked Chase, and his words were perfectly polite, but I was 100% sure that spending another minute in the alpha's presence was the last thing I wanted to do. I closed my eyes in an effort to collect myself, hoping this was just a hallucination brought on by my pack craving. But when I looked back down the street, Chase and Wolfie were still waiting expectantly in front of me...along with a kindergarten-aged kid who was pulling away from his mother's hand in hopes of petting the huge, terrifying beast sitting beside me.

"Don't worry, he doesn't bite," Chase said to the mother, who had taken in the situation just as the boy's hand landed squarely in Wolfie's eye. She had more sense than her son and seemed poised to yank her offspring to safety, but to my surprise, the alpha wolf put up with the mauling good-naturedly before offering the child the same paw trick he'd pulled on me. With the complete lack of self-preservation instinct typical of a human child, the kid took Wolfie's paw and shook it adamantly, before being pulled away by his mother.

Greetings complete, Wolfie looked back up at me and tilted his head to one side, the meaning clear--he wasn't a monster who ate small children. But I didn't allow myself to be impressed. So what if an alpha wolf had let a human child manhandle him? That didn't counteract the same alpha's freeze-in-your-tracks command just minutes earlier. On the other hand, I hadn't come up with any way of wiggling out of a meeting during the unusual interlude, so I shrugged my acceptance and allowed Chase to lead us across the street to a sidewalk cafe.

"Coffee?" the beta asked, handing the wolf's leash over to me as I stood beside an empty table outside the door. I nearly dropped the tether in surprise, the rough fabric feeling like a poisonous snake in my hands as I considered the repercussions of my situation. No way did I want to be in charge of an alpha's leash if the wolf suddenly decided that the restraint was beneath his dignity, but I realized we had to keep up appearances for the sake of the humans around us, so I kept my eyes averted from the alpha on the other end of the line and nodded stiffly. In light of the leash issue (and being dragged to the cafe against my will), it seemed like a small matter that I didn't drink coffee, having found that stimulants were one of the danger points for a female werewolf struggling to control her shifts. But no one said I had to consume the beverage Chase would put in front of me. I probably would have choked on any drink given my current state of mind, so the flavor was irrelevant.

But the wolf disagreed with my unwillingness to state my preferences. Before his beta could leave to collect our drinks, Wolfie nudged Chase's hand to attract his attention, then firmly shook his head. "You're hungry?" Chase asked the wolf, surprised, but Wolfie only huffed in disgust. Then, just as I realized what the alpha was communicating, understanding came into Chase's eyes as well. "You'd prefer hot chocolate?" the man tried again, returning his gaze to me, and I nodded despite myself.

And that's how I ended up in such a ludicrous situation. After spending half my energy over the last ten years hiding from the merest hint of werewolf presence, I was sitting at a cast-iron table of a sidewalk cafe, clinging to the leash of an alpha werewolf while his beta headed inside to buy me a hot chocolate. I wasn't even surprised when the wolf rested his chin on my thigh in search of an ear scratch, but I was surprised that I allowed my hand to drift over his soft ears. The fur was every bit as silky as it looked.

***

"YOU KNOW, IF YOU'D just put these on, you could ask her yourself," Chase told Wolfie, exasperated as he shook a backpack full of men's clothing under the wolf's nose. Despite myself, the two were growing on me as I sipped my hot chocolate and watched them carry out a seemingly coherent conversation...despite the fact that one was a wolf. After the bark that froze me on the street, Wolfie hadn't said another word, but he was quite adept at making his meaning clear, to Chase at least. While taking in the show, I had even started drifting into wolf brain, where Wolfie's nonverbal language was more understandable, but I had quickly pulled myself back to the safety of the human world. The middle of a city was no place to turn my wolf loose, even if we had been on speaking terms.

"What does he want to know?" I asked, when a stalemate appeared to have been reached by the opposing forces across the table from me. Wolfie, for some unknown reason, preferred to stay wolf, Chase was unwilling to continue being his mouthpiece, and I was starting to get curious about the alpha's question.

Only when Chase turned to me with a huge smile on his face did I realize that these were the first words I'd spoken in the pair's presence. So much for the cold shoulder. But I shrugged internally and decided there was no point in freezing out Chase anyway, since he seemed to be a nice guy. I was reserving judgment on the wolf.

"Wolfie just wants to know your name," Chase answered. "But I can tell you aren't comfortable sitting here with us, and I didn't want to pepper you with questions until you had time to see we were harmless." In contrast to his alpha's demand for information, Chase's strategy for putting me at ease seemed to involve talking until the cows came home. So, with an effort, I pretended he wasn't a male werewolf and interrupted the monologue.

"I'm Terra," I answered, looking straight into the alpha's eyes rather than at his beta. It was strange to be chatting with an alpha werewolf as if he were the guy down the street, but the wolf merely nodded his appreciation of the information then peered at Chase as if to say, I told you she wouldn't mind.

I felt okay parting with my given name since I figured neither Chase nor Wolfie would know the first name of the second daughter of an alpha from out of state, but I was careful not to offer a surname, which would have instantly linked me to a pack. Wanting to stay as anonymous as possible, I decided some misdirection was in order to turn the conversation away from a potentially tricky topic, so I shifted my eyes back to Chase. "And his name really is Wolfie?" I parried, hoping Chase would be willing to play along with my obvious attempt to talk about something other than myself.

"Well, Wolf actually," Chase answered. "But I always figured 'Wolfie' made him seem a little more human...." The alpha in question snorted, which sent a tremor of fear running through me until I realized the wolf was laughing, at which point I started breathing again with a jolt.

"That's very...literal...of his mother," I said after a minute. Once my heart rate had slowed back down from the effects of Wolfie's laugh, I could feel my brow wrinkling as I tried to imagine naming a werewolf "Wolf." We did tend to gravitate toward nature-oriented names, but this seemed more like the kind of appellation a two-year-old would give his pet.

"Well, it was my mother, actually," Chase said, turning his attention back to me. "We're milk brothers." The old-fashioned term suggested Wolfie had been nursed by Chase's mother, and probably raised like his brother. It also explained why the less-dominant wolf was able to hold his alpha on a leash, and why the two could communicate without words. Despite myself, I was becoming intrigued by the two werewolves in front of me, but Chase's next words pushed away my false sense of security.

"So, which pack are you from?" the beta asked, and my jitters returned full force. Without meaning to, I stood, my chair screeching against the pavement as it was abruptly pushed backwards by my motion.

Chase's words were enough to remind me that I was packless by choice and could easily be drawn back into this or another wolf's pack, which made my slowed breathing begin to race once again. What would prevent Wolfie from asking around about a twenty-something werewolf named Terra, and what would happen when his words inevitably reached my father's ears? I would end up right back where I started, and all because I'd been stupid enough to imagine I was simply chatting with two strange werewolves whom I'd met in a bookstore.

All of those thoughts zipped through my mind in the span of time it took to rise from the table, and by then the adrenaline had really kicked in. Fight or flight seemed to be my only options, so I fled.

But I wasn't far enough away to miss Wolfie admonishing his friend. The wolf's easy-going demeanor disappeared in an instant as the alpha bared his teeth at Chase, who quickly averted his eyes in submission. If I'd needed any proof that Wolfie was just as overbearing as every other alpha werewolf I'd ever run into, this was it. Not that I'd thought otherwise...well, not for long.

I almost expected there to be other werewolves in the wings, just waiting to rope me back into the pack life from which I'd escaped. Instead, there was just Wolfie's commanding bark, ordering me to stop. But I wasn't a member of his pack, and I didn't have to obey. I ran down the street, and this time I didn't look back.

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# Chapter 2

That evening, I reached for my wolf for the first time in years. But she was gone, squashed beneath layers of iron control built during a decade of painstaking effort. So it was up to my human eyes and nose to hunt down signs of the lost toddler.

Well, it was up to my eyes...and to the eyes of a dozen other park rangers spread out across the rapidly chilling woodland. I'd returned from the city in time to put in a few hours of work at the park, and the monotony of desk-sitting abruptly ended when Mr. Carr barreled in to tell us his daughter had wandered away from the family campsite. I'd yet to meet Melony's mother--she refused to come out of the woods until the little girl was found, but Mrs. Carr did yell her position through the trees when we arrived. In response, we spread out, each taking a vector that started at the campsite and arrowed out into the unknown. And we started to search.

Since then, it had begun to rain. A gentle autumn shower at first, but now the pounding storm was pulling leaves from the trees and was muffling even the sound of my own footsteps. Water was trickling down my spine despite my hooded slicker, and I could just imagine how a two-year-old would feel, cold and scared, lost in the woods. Her father had told us Melony was wearing shorts and a thin t-shirt--she might already be experiencing symptoms of hypothermia.

The light was beginning to fade, and urgency tempted me to push myself into a trot. Instead, I slowed down, took a deep breath...and sat. I would have received a phone call if Melony had been found, which meant everyone else was probably getting these same jitters of a hunt about to be lost. They would be rushing around like crazy people, and the night would likely end with at least a sprained ankle to remind some careless ranger of the hunt. Worse, my gut said that if Melony didn't turn up soon, she wouldn't turn up alive.

But my unconventional childhood left me equipped to handle the tail end of a difficult hunt...if I could just draw upon the memories I'd been hiding from for the last ten years. The problem was that, although I desperately needed to shift forms so I could sniff out Melony's trail, the last time I'd been hunting through rain-darkened woods with my wolf rampant, the day hadn't ended well.

I was seventeen then, newly fled from my home pack and trying to eke out a living in a forest much like this one. The woods had always been my safe, secret place as a child, but after I left Haven, reality set in. Without a home to return to, life was a constant battle against the elements...and against my wolf nature.

That year, it seemed that I was always cold and hungry, and the call of my wolf was endlessly enticing. While I was shivering under my lean-to shelter made of branches and a scavenged garbage bag, the wolf begged me to shift forms so her fur could keep us dry. When I was itching for a warm meal, she whispered that we could stalk a rabbit four-footed and slake our thirst with hot blood. No one will see us here, she breathed in my ear. It's safe to be a wolf.

I knew she was wrong, but I was so miserable that one day I let the wolf have her head. As the days grew shorter, less and less wild food was available for the picking, and it had been over forty-eight hours since I'd found anything other than twigs to gnaw on. In the preceding weeks, I'd caught fish, had set snares, and had even ground acorns between rocks and pinned them in my t-shirt in the running water of a creek to leach out the bitter tannins. And, for a while, there had been enough to carry me through. But this week, no food was to be found.

The hunger gnawed at my belly, but if I was honest, it was the loneliness that really did me in. Werewolves weren't meant to spend so long away from a pack, and the simplicity of my wolf's brain made it easier for the canine to handle lack of pack mates--she missed the company but didn't dwell upon what was absent. So, at last, I gave in to the wolf's seductive promises. I shed my dripping t-shirt and jeans, then let my arms turn into legs and my wolf take control.

As soon as I shifted, my darker side went wild with the freedom, racing down a deer path that my human form had barely been able to make out amid the lush growth. She yipped and cavorted, dancing with shadows, and my human brain went along for the ride, riding the wolf's exhilaration like a roller coaster. It had been so long since I'd felt any pleasure that the wolf's simple enjoyment acted like a drug, impairing my ability to hang onto human thoughts.

After minutes or hours of headlong flight, we smelled a deer. The wolf slowed her pace and began to stalk the prey, even though we both knew that a single wolf was unlikely to take down an ungulate. We circled around behind the doe, our feet padding silently across wet leaves, and my human brain woke enough to remind the wolf of sharp deer hooves, of the necessity to chase a deer until she was heaving from lack of air and had slowed enough for us to puncture sharp teeth through her throat. This was a job for a pack, each wolf running in relay to spell her siblings until the deer collapsed from exhaustion.

So we run, the wolf responded, ignoring the reference to pack mates--to a wolf brain, there was no point in bemoaning an absence beyond our control. But before we could set out after the deer, the wolf stopped in her tracks and scented the air, her tail rising into an excited banner. Not far away was easier prey, tasty, small, and young. Together, my wolf and I salivated at the impending feast.

Human! It took me far too long to realize that in her headlong flight, the wolf had drawn us beyond our usual territory, to the edge of the forest where houses butted up against the trees. Until that moment, I'd steered clear of humanity because a teen runaway had no place in mainstream society, but now I knew we should have given the subdivision a wide berth for another reason. Even to my human brain, the child playing at the edge of the trees smelled like prey, and I was sickened by my own hunger.

As my human brain struggled to regain control of our body, it became the wolf's turn to push me down into her cage. Again, the wolf began to stalk, and now I had to reach up through the bars to fight the canine every step of the way. We sidled and slipped in the leaves as I clawed against my darker half, but with the single-minded focus of her lupine heritage, the wolf ignored all my entreaties. I could only watch, aghast, as a young child came into view, playing in a sand box just beyond the forest edge.

There was no art to the hunt, but my wolf was hungry and didn't care. She lunged out of the trees, her teeth settling around the child's plump arm, tasting sweet flesh even as the girl shrieked at the top of her lungs. Scenes flickered in front of me, blood and terrified eyes, sand turning red. I banged on the door of the cage with all my might, to no avail.

Then an adult human tore out of the house, a gun in his hands. He fired, the bullet grazing our shoulder, and the shock was enough to make the wolf pause, to relax her iron control over my human brain. I leaped upwards out of the cage, pushed the wolf out of the way, and was shifting even as we fled back into the forest. I could hear the girl crying behind us, so I knew our prey wasn't dead, and since werewolves are born not made, she would never start howling at the moon. But that knowledge did little to ease my guilt and horror. With the last of my strength, I pushed the wolf so deeply into her cage that she couldn't even speak to me, let alone run wild, then I clanged the door shut and threw away the key. And although I felt her every day afterwards, gnawing at my bones, I hadn't seen the wolf since.

***

IT SEEMED LIKE POETIC justice that I would be forced to call upon my wolf at last in order to save another little girl alone in the cold autumn woods. I was terrified to even touch my wolf brain, let alone to bring an impulse-control-challenged wolf out to hunt a tasty toddler. I could imagine getting in touch with my wolf brain, tracking down the child, and then doing something unspeakable. But if I didn't find the toddler, would a slow descent into hypothermia be any worse for Melony?

So I closed my eyes, ignored the way the wet ground was soaking through the seat of my pants, and began to count my breaths. In and out, slowing down, until I could hear past the rain dripping off the trees. The metallic chip of a cardinal settling onto its perch punctuated the evening. The musky scent of a fox coming out of its daytime den drifted toward my nose. I heard the snort and stamp of a deer as she pounded her forefoot against the ground to determine whether a strange object was danger, or just a fallen tree.

It had been so long since I'd changed that I almost didn't recognize the first symptom: the sensation of hairs pushing out of my skin at a thousand times their normal speed. As a teenage werewolf, I remember shifting nightly to tempt the hair on my head to grow longer after a bad trim, never mind that I'd always have to shave my legs afterwards, even if the skin had felt smooth as a baby's bottom before the change. Now the tickling itch was so unfamiliar, it almost pulled me out of my meditative trance.

In and out, counting breaths, I forced my focus back onto the shift. For some werewolves, the next sign of the change was the reason they stayed in human form whenever possible. Itching gave way to shooting pains as my bones became malleable, ready to morph into wolf shape. But I had a high pain threshold, and the invisible daggers were a welcome hint that I might actually shift this time, might actually find my wolf (and Melony) before it was too late.

But hope faded as I felt the wolf brain taking over my thoughts. No, erasing my thoughts and replacing them with wordless visions and drifts of feelings. I wanted to shift so badly...but I was terrified of the loss of control. Maybe when I'd lived back in Haven, isolated in our werewolf-only community, I could have let my inner wolf loose. There, if my wolf had gone feral, a dozen stronger wolves would have taken me down. Here, I was surrounded only by weak humans, their scent already making me salivate. I could sense the two-footers all around me, the closest one no more than a hundred feet away. His nose was running and he was out of breath, but I could tell he'd eaten pizza for lunch, the tomato sauce providing a piquant addition to his already enticing odor.

I jerked myself out of the wolf brain as abruptly as I often woke from a night's sleep, but this time the reason was terror of my wolf's appetites. With the wolf brain's retreat came an absence of the extra senses my darker side had made possible, and the woods around me once again seemed muffled by the quiet fall of rain. Dropping my head into my hands, I knew I'd failed. I had hoped to find that happy middle ground between wolf and human, where I could take advantage of the wolf's intuitive understanding of the woods without risking letting a predator loose on the unsuspecting human world. Instead, I'd gone too far and lost it all. Now I was back to 100% human, no intuition, and Venus already visible in the darkening sky.

One of the few good things about being an obsessively controlled werewolf, though, is that if I told myself despair wasn't an option, I actually believed my own lie. Might as well keep stumbling around out here like everyone else, I thought. After all, my co-workers hadn't given up, and they never even had the possible backup of a sharp canine nose to aid them. In human form, I could trick myself into believing that I wasn't any further behind than I'd started, even if I had lost the one skill that might have saved Melony's life.

"The poor dear," my older co-worker Maddie had said when Melony's father showed up at the ticket-purchasing counter. Why her words came into my head now was a mystery, but if Maddie--pushing seventy if she was a day--could head out into the sodden woods with hope in her eyes, so could I.

Wait a minute. The poor dear? Or...the poor deer? The stamping hoof, the startled deer, something where it didn't belong. I could almost believe my nonlinear wolf brain was communicating with me in the best way it could from within its iron-barred prison cell deep in my subconscious. A deer would have run away from a walking adult searcher, but might stamp at a small child huddled on the ground, trying to stay warm and dry. I turned toward my memory of the sound, and could almost imagine the scent of baby shampoo wafting toward me from a bit right of my current trajectory. Leaving my designated sector to follow the imagined smell, I drifted into the near-sleeping state I sometimes enter after hiking for hours, where the world is both distant and present in a way it can't be when my human brain is entirely awake.

A tiny cry of alarm made me turn ever so slightly further to the right. I knew I should switch on my flashlight, but instead I walked gingerly, using the rods in the corners of my eyes to soak up the last dregs of daylight. And to see the dark shape of the child curled into a ball at the base of a beech tree.

That was when I realized that the wolf brain was guiding me, was winning over my human brain. I gasped, alarm freezing me in place even as Melony looked up at the sound and cooed a welcome. I was terrified the wolf would parse the toddler as easy prey and tear into her, killing the child I had come so far to save, and that fear held me in place as effectively as the iron bars I so often hid my wolf behind.

You think we could tear into her with these puny human teeth?

The words seemed to drift through my head with a silent chuckle. Whether or not my wolf brain had a sense of humor, though, the human brain had woken enough that I was able to close and lock the wolf's prison door, drop to my knees, and collect the little girl into my arms. Tucking her chilled body beneath my raincoat, I fiddled with my cell phone one-handed and pushed the device against my wet ear.

"I've found her," I said, and dropped my chin onto Melony's baby-shampoo-scented hair. Relief never smelled so sweet.

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# Chapter 3

The Carrs were so exuberantly grateful for the safe return of their daughter that I was forced to pretend I had a pressing engagement elsewhere in order to escape their praise. Drifting toward the parking lot and my fictional date, though, I stopped in my tracks when I saw my fellow park rangers gathered beneath a picnic shelter at the edge of the lot. They were toasting each other with hot chocolate, high with the relief of having found Melony just as dark truly set in. I knew that my co-workers would have been glad to include me in their circle, and the wolf inside me begged to join the camaraderie of even such an ephemeral pack, but I couldn't stand the thought of talking, so I slipped back into the rainy woods, retracing my footsteps instead. Reaching a spot just outside the illuminated circle cast by the battery-powered lantern in the center of the Carr campsite, I stood in the dark and watched.

For someone who craved a pack, the family tableau unfolding inside the tent was riveting but bittersweet. Looking in through the screen door of the dome tent, I could tell that Mr. and Mrs. Carr were unwilling to take their hands off their little girl, who had already warmed enough within their family huddle that her trauma was receding into the distance. The three curled together on top of an air mattress, intertwined in each other's limbs, and the contact had made the mother's drawn face relax and the father's smile lines spring back to life. The same curiosity that had pulled Melony into the woods that afternoon was in evidence as well. As the toddler reached up toward the swaying lantern, her mother tangled the girl's hands in her own, bypassing the child's urge to leap out of bed and explore.

I could hear the murmur of loving voices, but I was just far enough away that the words themselves were a muddle of syllables, much like the patter that had flowed out of Melony's mouth as I carried her back to the campsite. The babble of sound was familiar, though, since on many days, I felt like everyone around me was speaking another language, like it was all baby talk on the verge of being understandable. Even in daylight, when I showed up at my job, smiled at Maddie, deflected Fred's flirting, I knew I was an outsider looking in. Later, I would go home to a dark cabin and thaw out the soup I'd obsessively stewed on my day off and then frozen in meal-size portions. Two cups of soup for one person, the same day after day. I'd imagine adopting a cat or drinking myself into oblivion, but would reject both avenues of escape as too dangerous. At last I'd crawl into bed with a book and would read myself to sleep.

My life hadn't always been so lonely. When I was Melony's age, I'd felt the same cocoon of love that the Carr's little girl was now enjoying, but mine had been magnified by ten due to the tribalism of a werewolf pack. Haven was a small village by human standards, but was just right for an extended werewolf family made up of a few dozen offspring and relatives of my great-grandfather, the pack founder. If I had crawled out of my parents' home at Melony's age, not only would my cousins' keen noses have found me in short order, someone would likely have picked me up and taken me home with them before I could walk more than a few steps away from my parents' front door. I'd be returned, full of milk and cookies, a few hours later, once my mother had finished whatever task took her watchful eyes away from her baby. No searchers would ever have been forced to frantically stumble through the trees looking for my freezing form because the entire pack was always keeping an eye on its younger members.

With that memory so vivid, and the family in front of me so pack-like, it was hard to remind myself why I'd voluntarily left such a paradise. But as I watched the Carrs, I knew that my corner of Haven had lacked the supportive love that made this family's bond so strong. Instead, the same village that had felt like a protective cocoon when I was two years old quickly morphed into a restrictive wet blanket by the time I reached my teen years. Before I reached my majority, it had become clear that Haven was no haven for me.

There were many factors that made my later childhood problematic, but in the end, I fled our pack's village to escape my father. My mother's death, the absence of my older sister's buffering presence, and the pregnant stepmother who soon moved into our home shook up my world, but my father could have pieced the remnants back together into a family if he'd tried. Instead, the Chief retreated into his role as pack leader and only took notice of me to make the occasional paternal decree, which always seemed to fall on the morning of my birthday.

The first pronouncement came on the day I turned twelve, when I clattered down the stairs from my attic room and found my father waiting at the bottom. "You can't run around like a wild wolf pup anymore," Father told me coldly, taking in my unbrushed hair and bare feet. I had planned to sneak out into the woods to see if the hummingbird I'd been watching the day before had finished building her nest, and although I hadn't really expected a cake and streamers upon my return, a simple "Happy birthday" would have been nice. Instead, I got the world's most painful lecture about how I would soon be changing into wolf form for the first time and needed to start learning my place within the pack. According to my father, learning my place seemed to equate to spending every spare minute helping my stepmother Cricket in the kitchen, making up for the absence of my older sister Brooke, who had fled the family home just months before.

Although I'd immediately missed Brooke's gentle presence after she left Haven, after my twelfth birthday, I realized that I'd taken her role in our family for granted. Without Brooke to fill the good-daughter shoes, my father was forced to turn his attention to me--and we all soon realized I was sorely lacking in that department. The daughter of an alpha was supposed to be a role model for the younger wolves, but I found it a struggle to keep my hands out of the dirt and my clothes clean, let alone to smile and help out around the village. And every time I failed, my father noticed and reprimanded me. For the first few weeks after my twelfth birthday, I hoped my father would eventually give up the struggle and focus on his new son, but instead, his rules simply became stricter and stricter, and Haven began to feel like a prison.

Meanwhile, I'd grown old enough to change into wolf form, and the more upset I got at my father's restrictions, the more my shifts flew out of control. I hated the fact that I'd been born a girl, without the male ability to change form at will. In contrast, those of us unlucky enough to be born with two X chromosomes had to deal with what I liked to call "werewolf PMS from hell." At that time of the month, human women cope with bloating, aches, and grumpiness, but the same hormones in werewolves cause us to change into wolf form at the drop of a hat, no matter how inconvenient fur and claws might be. This fact, more than anything else, was the reason werewolf packs were so repressively patriarchal, because the female werewolf really was the weaker vessel in need of shielding from the outside world. And I was even worse at controlling my shifts than most female wolves, which made my father's disdain of my weakness yet more evident.

By the time I turned thirteen, I was flipping back and forth between wolf and human form dozens of times a month. My father was irate at my inability to control my wolf, and his frequent tirades made me shift even more often. Again, I had a hint of hope when I realized that the Chief was starting to give up on my potential to be a pack princess, meaning that I wasn't likely to be married off to an alpha outside the pack to cement an alliance. But then I discovered that the only other alternative my father saw for me was to become the spinster daughter, hidden away in my attic bedroom for the rest of my life.

That realization prompted me to dive into my education, and for a while, school and books became a relief from my depressing home life. In Haven, all young werewolves studied at the village school, and most of us were expected to voluntarily end our schooling a few years after our first shifts began, when we were old enough to help out at home. But if a young werewolf showed aptitude for learning, he or she often continued studying under the schoolteachers, training to become a replacement teacher in the years to come. Since I wasn't going to be a pack princess and was terrified of turning into a replica of my meek stepmother, I figured teaching would at least let me build a place for myself within the pack. However, on my fourteenth birthday, my father killed that dream just like all of my others. Waiting for me once again at the bottom of the stairs, the Chief informed me that I was no longer a student at the village school.

The ensuing shouting match woke Cricket and my one-year-old brother, the latter of whom soon drowned out my arguments with wordless complaints of his own. In my anger, I shifted into wolf form and fled to the woods, but I eventually came home hungry, my tail between my legs. My father was waiting at the door in his own fur form, and his reproving bite on the top of my muzzle wasn't the ceremonial chastisement most alphas would use against an erring underling. Instead, the Chief's teeth broke through my skin, and I picked at the scabs in human form for days thereafter.

The scabs were what finally pushed me over the edge and made me decide to leave the pack. "A werewolf can't survive alone," Cricket had told me months earlier when I sobbed on her shoulder about my hatred of Haven, and I'd believed her then. But I was starting to realize that my wolf couldn't survive within my father's pack either. It was quite normal for young males to leave the village and hunt down another pack in order to court unrelated females, and teenage girls sometimes spent time in the outside world as well, so the possibility was there. But only if I could learn to control my shifts.

So I began to hunt down the root of my uncontrollable changes to wolf form. Whenever I could slip away, I would retreat into the woods and practice shifting for hours, until my legs were so wobbly with the effort that they could barely carry me home. Out of spite, I maintained the illusion of being out of control around my father, but by the time I was sixteen, my wolf and I were acting more like a team and less like two duelists. As I practiced, I came to the conclusion that any unpleasant emotion could trigger the shift; even seeing a ball flying toward me out of the corner of my eye was sometimes enough to make the wolf pull out her fur to protect us both. So I worked on proving to my wolf that I could take care of myself, and I also learned to smooth over my emotions, even during that time of the month when they were especially hard to control.

I'm sure that Cricket knew what was happening, but she didn't tell my father, and he was oblivious to anything that didn't impact his iron control over Haven's pack. Just learning to work with, rather than against, my wolf gave me a bit of peace, and I drifted through my restrictive life for most of my sixteenth year, not sure I really needed to leave the pack after all. Then my father's eye came back around to his wayward daughter.

When I walked down the stairs on the morning of my seventeenth birthday and found my father waiting on the landing, I couldn't resist thinking that perhaps the Chief had thespian aspirations. Why else would he always pin me down on the morning of my birthday? Unless--depressing thought--that was the only day my father could be bothered to spend a minute thinking about his disappointing middle child.

"What now?" I demanded, deciding to go on the defensive even as I sought to still the wolf inside me. My period had begun the day before, and the wolf was more awake than usual inside my body, making the dim house seem brighter and the sound of my father's harsh breathing louder. I reminded my canine half that I had everything under control, that shifting to fur would do neither of us any good, and she quieted, although my senses didn't diminish.

My father ignored my argumentative opening and merely said, "You're old enough to give me grandchildren." Then he turned on his heel, content in his knowledge that he'd laid down the law and I would obey his orders. But there was no way I was going to give the Chief the illusion of implicit consent by letting a statement like that stand, so I called out to him before he could leave.

"What, you're saying I need to get married?" I asked, my voice turning shrill despite my best efforts. "When? Today? And with whom? I assume you already have my future husband picked out?" I was livid from this latest assault on my independence, and I could feel the fur starting to poke out through my skin despite my silent requests for my wolf to settle. Even though my father hadn't allowed me to continue studying to be a schoolteacher, I'd assumed the Chief would leave me alone as long as I did enough around the house to prevent Cricket from complaining about my laziness. Apparently I was wrong.

My father didn't even turn back to look at me, nor did he grace me with a reply, but I could feel my mind beginning to twist as it worked to obey the alpha wolf's orders. The more specific an alpha's demands were, the less leeway a pack wolf had to work around their leader's command--our biology just wouldn't let us disobey the alpha. It was then, while I struggled with my own body to squash my sudden urge to choose a mate, that I finally understood that while I was living under my father's roof, I would never be able to follow my own path. So I did the unthinkable and broke the alpha's hold over me.

"I'm not getting married," I said slowly and coldly, and wasn't surprised at all when the Chief stopped in his tracks, although the pack leader still didn't turn to face me. "I'm leaving today, and I'm never coming back."

The words seemed to float in the dim air for minutes while my father and I stood, frozen by my insolence. Then the Chief began to laugh, and I felt the first ache of packlessness in my stomach. "Go," he said, when his chuckles finally receded. "I'll be glad to see the back of you. But don't let your wolf be seen by a human or I'll come kill you myself."

And, still without looking me in my face, my father strode out of the room and out of my life. That morning, I hitched a ride to another state, found a forest large enough to hide my wolf, and set into action the chain of events that led to mauling that poor little girl ten years ago...and to saving Melony today. I was packless by choice.

***

THE MEMORY HAD PULLED me so deep into the past that I felt like I was wakening from a dream when I opened my eyes back onto the camping scene in front of me. I wasn't sure how much time had passed, but the bond that held the human family together was even clearer than before. Mr. Carr stroked his wife's damp hair, Melony nestled down into the cavity between the two parental bodies, and Mrs. Carr sat up enough to open her air passages and sing a quiet lullaby, her hand circling over her daughter to embrace both husband and child. As I stood in the chilly drizzle, I could imagine the emotional and physical warmth of the family's hug, but after remembering both the seductive embrace and the strict rules of my own pack, the vision only made me feel colder.

Behind me, I could hear car doors banging shut as my co-workers finally headed home. A screech owl called mournfully in the woods, and I thought the rain had begun to fall harder, then I realized the water dripping down my face was tears.

With twenty-twenty hindsight, I now wished I'd put up with the status quo and stayed in Haven. I wished I'd agreed to marry young and turn into a baby machine, to bow my head when my husband entered the room and to forget my big dreams of finding my own way in the world. I hadn't known then that the outside world was so cold and lonely. I hadn't known anyone without a wolf clawing at their insides would inevitably stay a stranger.

But my vision at seventeen had been clouded by youth, and I'd chosen to leave the only pack I could ever belong to. As my stepmother would say, I'd made my bed, and now I had to lie in it. With one final sigh, I turned away from the lantern-lit scene to head home to my empty cabin and my cold quilt.

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# Chapter 4

I dreamed about Wolfie. He was chasing me through the woods, and I should have been terrified of the huge alpha wolf on my trail. Instead, my dream self was playful and laughing as she eluded the canine, pausing once to rub up against his side and lick his face. Perhaps because of the confusing dream, I woke to an even worse ache in my stomach and to one word on my mind. Packless.

I couldn't miss work since I'd already taken the previous morning off, but a little luck was waiting for me at the nature center. At our morning staff meeting, I learned that one of the back-country cabins an eight hour hike into the wilderness area needed repairs, and I quickly volunteered to do the honors. Carrying fifty pounds of camping gear and tools down the trail wasn't necessarily my idea of fun, but the task meant I could spend three days away from civilization: three days when I wouldn't have to look over my shoulder fearing that Wolfie had tracked me down, three days when I wouldn't have to make inane conversation with my co-workers and pretend to be human, three days to think.

And, at first, the choice seemed to have been a good one. The straps of my pack creaked like the lines on a sailboat as the bulky parcel swayed with my steps, lulling me into a meditative state. Meanwhile, the sun was out and the scent of fallen leaves underfoot reminded me of simpler years. By the time I'd turned twelve, life in our werewolf pack was difficult, but childhood as a wolfling was bliss. I wasn't able to shift forms at that age, but my mind was more than half wolf as I stalked prey in the woods above our settlement. My sister Brooke and I played for hours, only coming home when our mother yelled up the hillside toward us that dinner was ready.

But then Mom had died giving birth to our little brother, a bloodling who had emerged in wolf form and had torn our mother apart from the inside out. My father drowned the tiny wolf in the duck pond, and before long, I had a stepmother, a little brother, and a father who treated me to birthday-morning orders that sucked every ounce of freedom out of my life.

I shook the unwanted memories away and tried to pay attention to my surroundings. I'd already crested the ridge that marked the halfway point between the nature center and the cabin, and now I was following a boulder-lined stream that filled the air with the sound of running water. As I looked down the trail, appreciating the fall colors, I paused at the sight of a man's form resting on a log by the side of the path. Although the human seemed to be napping with his broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his face, the unmistakable scent of wolf drifted into my nose from all sides, and I could feel my adrenaline kick back in. I was as distant from my wolf brain as was possible at that moment, so such strong odors meant there were several wolves around and that they were close by. Trouble.

"Don't you want to say hello to your old man?" the figure called without looking up. I should have been relieved that this was a family reunion, not the ambush by Wolfie's pack that I'd been expecting ever since my trip to the city the day before. But, if anything, the sight of my father was even less welcome than an invasion by Wolfie's pack would have been. I unclasped the waist buckle of my backpack and let the mass fall to the trail so I'd be ready to run, but the Chief had anticipated my retreat. A dozen wolves stepped out of the trees behind me and advanced, herding me toward the father I'd escaped ten years before.

Father had straightened to a sit by the time I reached him, and he patted the log in invitation, but merely shrugged when I chose to remain standing. He looked exactly the same as he had ten years ago, and his commanding presence wasn't dimmed in the slightest by the fact that his face was a foot lower than mine as I stood over him. I trembled as the breath of a wolf blew hot against the back of my legs, then almost laughed when I realized that I was terrified, for once, of someone else's wolf rather than of my own. Another stray thought reminded me that Wolfie, despite his strangeness, had been a perfect gentleman the day before. In contrast, the alpha who was my father preferred fear tactics over subtlety.

"Father," I acknowledged once I had gathered myself enough to speak. Even though I had safely yelled at the pack leader as a teenager, I had a feeling that any lack of respect now would be met with harsh repercussions, so I bowed my head even though I felt anything but submissive. I could tell my father liked the gesture even more because of my resentment, and his eyes took on the mischievous sparkle that I understood most women in our pack found irresistible. I detested it.

"Little Terra, all grown up," the Chief said pleasantly, once my single word had been allowed to sit in the autumn air long enough to be swallowed up by the rushing water of the creek. "I've missed you," he continued flatly.

I couldn't prevent myself from sending my father a shocked look in response to that profession of affection. Was I misremembering the Chief's farewell warning a decade ago? I'd thoroughly believed then that the alpha was willing to kill his own daughter if she made his life difficult, and I saw no reason to change my mind now. So why would my father want to pretend to have missed me?

Even though the memory only took seconds to rush through my mind, my father was apparently bored with my reverie, so he continued without waiting for a reply. "You've had enough running around time," he intoned, making me wonder if perhaps today was my birthday and I'd somehow missed the date. This forced meeting and command felt like those other birthday ambushes, and the similarity was only accentuated when the Chief continued to speak. "It's time to come home," he proclaimed, and I could instantly feel my limbs moving to obey his thinly veiled command. The alpha smirked at the agonized expression on my face, then he added, "Unless...."

I took a deep breath to calm my stuttering heart, then drew my father out the way he clearly intended for me to do. "What do you need from me?" I asked.

"Well, since you're offering," my father began, "An old man like me needs an heir."

***

SO WE'RE BACK ON THE grandchildren train, I couldn't help thinking, before blurting out, "What about Ethan?" By the time I'd left home, my spoiled-rotten half-brother had been good for only one thing, in my opinion--to keep Father's attention safely away from me and Brooke. Ethan had been four years old at the time, and the little despot already seemed to be growing into his future role as alpha. Now he'd be...I added up the years in my mind...fourteen. Just old enough to shift into wolf form and make everyone else's lives miserable with those teen-wolf temper tantrums. Unless.... "Cricket isn't a halfie!" I exclaimed.

If I hadn't been so focused on surviving, I would have been proud of the way my words broke through my father's cold exterior. His reaction was just an angry twitch in one cheek, but it was there. "Your stepmother, unfortunately, does not appear to have come from the quality bloodlines we'd once thought," the Chief confirmed. "Ethan is no use to me as meat."

The words were like a slap. Yes, the kid was annoying, but using the slur "meat" for the son of a werewolf, even if he would never shift, was extreme. Somewhere beneath his alpha exterior, I'd always assumed my father harbored an ounce of compassion for his favorite child, if not for the rest of us. It seemed I'd been wrong about a lot of things.

I would have to worry about Ethan later, though. If my stepmother was a half-breed descendant of a werewolf and a human, that meant any other sons she'd borne would have a 50% chance of being "meat," while 50% of her daughters would be halfies like herself with the same tendency to produce human sons. I had no clue if I had other little half-siblings running around, but from my father's expression, it was clear none of them would make the cut as his precious heir.

My mother, on the other hand, could have traced her werewolf bloodlines back to the Mayflower. Any hypothetical sons I had would be just what my father was looking for, and I cringed at the thought. This had been my worst nightmare ever since I wrapped my mind around werewolf succession and my father's plans for the pack. I was pretty sure I didn't want children at all, if only because 10% of werewolves were born as bloodlings, which produced tough odds for werewolf mothers. But if I ever did reproduce, I definitely didn't want my sons to be raised in their grandfather's image. Who wants to be the mother of Genghis Khan?

While I worked my way through that train of thought, my father had risen, a smirk on his face. I wasn't a small woman, but he towered over me, his human form more daunting than the wolves at my back. Despite my fear, though, I could tell the alpha was playing cat and mouse, which gave me a perverse sense of hope. If my father just wanted to drag me back to Haven and marry me off to someone with good bloodlines, there would have been no reason for this manipulative chat. So he still needed something. But what?

"You know, your sister had a son," Father continued conversationally. I did know, because Brooke had sent my father a few letters after she left Haven and before I followed suit. She'd fled at an even younger age than I had, then ended up marrying a guy in medical school who was thrilled when he found out his girlfriend was pregnant. But Brooke didn't invite me to the wedding, never offered to have me come meet Dale or their son Keith. I hadn't heard from her after I left home.

Wait, had my father just referred to Brooke in the past tense?

"The silly girl died a few years ago," my father confirmed, and shock made me miss his next few sentences. I'd felt abandoned by Brooke, but had never imagined she'd be permanently gone before I could forgive her. I sank down onto the log my father had risen from, my throat closing up as tears tried to force their way out of my eyes, but pretty soon my sense of self-preservation kicked back in. I could mourn Brooke later. Right now, I had to figure out what my father wanted, and how to get it for him so I could escape from this mess.

Then the pieces clicked together. "You want Keith to be your heir," I mused out loud, not bothering to look into my father's eyes since I was suddenly sure I'd figured out the alpha's plan.

"You always were a clever girl," my father confirmed. "A grandson is as good as a son, as long as he's a wolf and in Haven. That's your choice--teach the boy to shift and bring him to me willingly, or we'll have to go back to plan B."

I took a deep breath. This was my way out, as unsavory as it seemed. I didn't even know the kid, but chances are that if he had my father's blood running through his veins, he was an arrogant alpha and would be thrilled to follow in his grandfather's footsteps. "Just so we're clear," I said, raising my voice to make sure the wolves behind me heard the deal being struck, "what you're saying is that if I can talk Keith into being your heir, I'm off the hook. You'll leave me alone. No more surprise visits."

"I'll be glad to see the back of you," my father agreed, the words echoing his dismissal a decade before. Then he pushed his hat back down over his hair, whistled to his wolves as if they were hunting dogs, and brushed past me up the trail.

"One month," he called back without turning. Within seconds, my father was out of sight, but the scent of wolves lingered in my memory for the rest of the day.

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# Chapter 5

My boss tried to talk me into simply taking a leave of absence, but I knew I wouldn't be coming back. During the five years I'd worked for the park, I'd merely been marking time, and I realized now that I'd never so much as gone out for drinks after work, let alone made any deeper connections. There was no one here who I would miss. I might send Maddie a postcard once this whole mess had been sorted out, but that was about it.

As I drove my ancient Toyota back to my cabin to pack my sparse possessions, though, I realized I had no idea where I was going. How long ago had my sister died? Did Dale know his wife and son were werewolves? As much as I would have loved to use the absence of information as an excuse to malinger, my father was efficient in getting what he wanted, so I wasn't surprised to find a dossier waiting on my kitchen table, even though the cabin door was just as firmly locked as when I'd left. I suspected there was an equally thick file on me floating around the Chief's office--just how a daughter hopes for her father to remember her, with a sea of facts in case she can someday be of use.

The contents of Brooke's file hit me hard. I had to sit down to keep from falling when I saw her young face in the top photograph, tilted up to smile at the lanky man beside her. That had to be Dale, and I could tell even from the photo that he was the furthest you could get from an alpha werewolf. My brother-in-law was skinny and unimposing despite his height, the kind of man you might call cute instead of handsome. Just the type of husband my loving and lovable sister would have gravitated toward.

More photos slipped out of the folder, but Brooke didn't get much older. By the time her curly-haired son was three years old, the family was short a mother. My sister had died before I even left Haven.

Although the reality of my sister's early death was shocking, the true surprise came when I flipped to the end of Brooke's folder. The last item was an unopened envelope, addressed to me in my sister's looping hand. Peering at the postmark, I saw that Brooke had mailed it months before I fled Haven, but our father had clearly deemed the letter not worthy of my young eyes. Yet he'd kept it and added the envelope to Brooke's file. Probably after steaming open and resealing the flap in order to decide whether the contents would be an appropriate bait to add to my trap, I thought sarcastically.

Even though I was itching to know what Brooke had wanted to say to me, I stilled my fingers before they could open the envelope. The letter inside was from my sister, but I knew the real message came from my father, and I'd been manipulated enough for one day. So I tucked the unopened missive back into Brooke's file and got to work packing up the few possessions I wanted to keep. Once again, my father's actions were forcing me away from my home.

***

AS I CRUNCHED UP THE winding gravel driveway from the country highway to Dale's house the next day, I realized my brother-in-law was wealthy. Yes, the rundown nature of the yard gave the residence a homey and lived-in look, but the sheer size of the house at the top of the hill made it clear I was outclassed. I pulled to a stop beside a brand-new minivan, and even the soccer balls and scratched bike in the yard weren't enough to keep me from cringing at the comparison between my rusty vehicle and my brother-in-law's van. I knew without turning around that the garbage bags of clothes and cardboard boxes of books in my backseat went even further toward giving me the illusion of being a vagrant. Heck, who was I kidding--I was homeless at the moment.

During the two-hour drive to Dale's house, I'd mostly worried over the issue of how to tackle Dale and Keith's ignorance. My father made it clear in his file that my sister hadn't spilled the beans about our genealogy to her family, so Dale was to be kept in the dark. Keith, obviously, would have to be told since I needed to help him learn to shift, but how would a hormone-addled teenage werewolf take the news? Looking at their house, though, I now realized those problems were secondary to my first big hurdle--insinuating my way into my sister's family. What would prevent Dale from assuming I was some kind of gold-digger, then sending me packing before I even got in the door?

The front porch was bigger than my entire cabin back at the park, and the structure was imposing in its sheer size. I was intimidated enough to try to walk lightly, but my hiking boots were still loud on the boards as I made my way to the glass-paneled door. Cupping my hands around my face, I peered inside, where a beautifully modern kitchen sparkled with cleanliness. My imagination could easily place Brooke in the scene, pulling homemade cookies out of the oven. The role of a fifties-era housewife would have been the perfect fit for her cuddly personality, and it broke my heart to think she'd escaped Haven only to die of cancer four years into her perfect life.

"Can I help you?" I turned so quickly at the words that I nearly twisted my ankle, slipping and having to catch myself on the side of the house to keep from falling. Yep, this is the exact kind of first impression I'd hoped to make, I thought, taking in the form of my brother-in-law in front of me. Dale was older than he'd been in the last photo, but he still exuded the air of kindliness that I'm sure had attracted my sister in the first place. Even when startling an intruder, the doctor couldn't quite make his face look stern.

"This is so embarrassing," I said, trying to figure out where to start with my explanation. Despite Dale's gentle nature, a tall male figure catching me in his territory was enough to set my senses on high alert, and I had to struggle against an urge to jump back into my car and spin out of the driveway. Only the knowledge that my father would track me down and drag me back to Haven if I failed kept my feet rooted to the spot as I tried out a shaky smile.

But then Dale surprised me with my own name. "I can't believe it! Terra?" he asked...then pulled me into a bear hug.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been hugged, and my body stiffened in response, then slowly relaxed as Dale's brotherly affection washed over me. What kind of man would recognize on sight the sister-in-law he'd never met? Would catch her snooping, but assume her intentions were pure? My sister had clearly found a winner--too bad I was here to turn this kind-hearted man's son into a psychopath.

"And you're Dale," I responded once he released me from the hug. I could just make out the hint of a tear welling up in one of my brother-in-law's eyes, probably because my sister and I had a strong family resemblance. Just thinking about Brooke made my own eyes tear up, so I swiped at them as I turned a more honest smile on Dale. "I only just heard about Brooke," I continued, "and I couldn't stop myself from coming right away to meet you and Keith."

Clearly I'd said the wrong thing. For the first time, Dale's face became shadowed, and he paused for a minute before giving me the brushoff I'd been expecting, but for a different reason. "I'm not sure now's a good time," Dale said, and I realized the unhappiness on my brother-in-law's face was for his son, not for the wife he'd lost a decade ago. Unlike me, Dale would have had plenty of time to put Brooke's death behind him, but the inevitable changes in Keith as he approached his first shift would be worrisome to a human father. Unfortunately, those changes were only going to get worse.

"You're worried about Keith," I said, hoping to get Dale talking while I figured out how to approach the issue. Since my brother-in-law was a medical doctor, I'd be hard-pressed to pretend Keith had any kind of physical disease, but what about a hereditary mental illness? Something very vague and rare...and easily overcome with the proper therapy.

As I worked through the intricacies of a lie about my private therapy practice, Dale was spilling his worries that his son had fallen into a bad crowd in school, had started experimenting with drugs. "There's a major problem in our area with young people abusing prescription drugs," my brother-in-law told me earnestly, and I almost rolled my eyes at him. I had a feeling Keith was as straight as an arrow just like his father, and I was 99% sure any behavioral changes Dale noticed were due to his son's approaching change. "I don't want my son to make a bad first impression on his only aunt," Dale finished. "Maybe you could come back in a few weeks?"

"Actually, I'm really glad I came when I did," I told my brother-in-law, putting on my best pseudo-professional manner. "Did Brooke ever tell you about the...um...mental instability in our family?" Dale paled a bit, and I spun my tale as best I could. Good thing my brother-in-law was an easy mark since my abilities as a con artist left something to be desired. Between Dale's gullibility, though, and facts pulled from his dossier, I was soon being shown through the house and into Keith's bedroom. Where it became obvious from scent alone that the boy had already reached the bone-melting phase of a shift.

"Could you leave us alone for a moment?" I asked Dale calmly, then I quickly shut and locked the door behind him.

***

"WHO ARE YOU?" THE KID grunted from the bed. The curtains were drawn and the lights were off, so the room was dim, but I could feel the imminent shift pushing into my bones. Keith's pheromones were drawing out my own wolf, but I had a plan to use that effect to my advantage. My nephew would have to help me, though, and there was no time to explain what we were doing. I needed to get him to shift back to human, and fast. Now was neither the time nor the place for his first change.

"I'm your aunt Terra," I told Keith soothingly, coming to sit on the edge of the bed. "Brooke was my sister."

"I heard you telling Dad you're a shrink," Brooke's son said, turning to face me with piercing brown eyes just like my own. "He thinks I'm on drugs, but I swear I just tried pot that one time...." He stopped speaking abruptly, twitching involuntarily as the pain hit, and I reached down to take his hand.

"I believe you, Keith, but I need you to trust me for a minute," I said gently. "Can you match your breathing to mine? And keep looking into my eyes." Keith's attention had turned inward when the ache hit, but he clearly had some of his grandfather's iron will because the boy was able to obey my request. I slowed my own breathing to lead Keith into a calmer place, then reached for my wolf brain.

What I was planning to do would be tricky, partly because I had such iron control over my wolf nowadays that I couldn't seem to let her out when I wanted to. But also because I needed to be able to pull my wolf brain out far enough to yank Keith back to full humanity when I stopped my own shift...without letting my wolf escape all the way. Since a younger werewolf like my nephew would mirror any shift of an adult in close physical proximity, I figured my wolf and I could easily shut his wolf down, but only if my own darker half cooperated. It had been so long since I'd let her out that I was afraid my wolf wouldn't go back to sleep willingly.

It was worth the risk, though, because it looked like Keith was going to change all the way if he didn't get a little help. I couldn't imagine how terrifying it would be to perform your first shift without understanding what you were, and the kid's father might get torn apart in the process. I wasn't sure if I owed Brooke anything after the way she had abandoned me to our father's tender mercies, but Dale and Keith didn't deserve to pay for her desertion.

My nephew's breathing had slowed, but I could feel his wolf just out of sight, waiting to return to the surface. Meanwhile, I calmed my own mind enough to let my wolf up out of her cell, and she rose gently, not in the snarling rush I'd expected. I felt the tickling of hairs pushing out of my body, but there was little pain as my senses became more acute. I could smell Dale in the kitchen, pouring a cup of afternoon coffee, could almost catch a confusing hint of wolf scent outside the house. But I'd have to think about that later. Right now, I needed to turn off this shift.

Down! I ordered my wolf, and as I'd expected, she growled at me, pain running up my arms as my fingers curled into claws. But, surprisingly, my wolf didn't put up a fight. Instead, in rare human words, my wolf gave me an ultimatum--I'll go to sleep now, but in five minutes, we're all wolf.

Shit. This wasn't good at all, but I had no choice except to agree. I could feel my wolf and Keith's both descending deep into our subconscious, and my nephew looked up at me with suddenly clear eyes. "Wow, I feel a lot better!" he exclaimed. "That really helped. Thanks, Aunt Terra!"

I didn't have time to answer, though. My wolf was inching her way back up that dark staircase in my mind, and I needed to be far away from father and son's sight before my change hit. I tore through the living room and kitchen like my pants were on fire, and was out the door before Dale could even ask what was wrong. I was shifting by the time I hit the tree line, my clothes ripping off my back as my wolf form howled in triumph. Then she ran.

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# Chapter 6

It had been so long since I'd turned wolf that I'd forgotten how it felt to subsume myself into her moods and desires. The wolf was still me, but the animal side of our nature was in charge of our actions, and everything we saw was filtered through her world view. Both of us were exuberant at the chance to run through the woods--it felt like taking off my bra at the end of a long work day, like reaching the high point of a perfect novel. Unchained hunt, my wolf added. No matter how we parsed the feelings, they were relief and excitement rolled into one.

My wolf was more restrained than I remembered, though. She still took in every squirrel and bird moving through the forest, but age allowed her to choose whether to give chase. We stalked a rabbit for half an hour, then let it go at the last minute. Cheeseburger, she told me, and I was almost sure the wolf was bartering with our human side. She seemed to recognize that spilling blood during her first run in six years would make another shift highly unlikely in the near future, but the wolf wanted to make it plain that she craved red meat. It felt strange to be making a deal with my animal side since I was used to her just taking what she wanted, but maybe the last decade had matured us both to the point where we could act as a team again.

We paused beside a small stream to lap up the cool water, but stopped when our nose picked up the scent of another wolf where one didn't belong. Keith had never shifted all the way, so we shouldn't be smelling my nephew's wolf, but this was obviously a werewolf, and a male. Alpha male, my wolf corrected. We snarled in unison, our mothering instincts aroused by an unrelated male werewolf near Keith during his first shift.

The trouble was that alpha male werewolves had a nearly insurmountable urge to kill unrelated males as the youngsters reached the age of their first change. The behavior was a relic of our more primal days, when a young male in an alpha's territory might be angling for his position, spurring the pack leader to squelch the challenge before it could be issued. The problem didn't often come up, though, because everyone was related either by blood or by marriage in most packs, and some modern males had also learned to ignore the urge even around strangers. But not everyone could overpower his wolf...or wanted to. Keith wouldn't be safe with an unknown alpha male lurking around.

The wolf and I turned to follow the male's scent, and I wasn't sure which of us was in charge as we put our nose to the ground and traced his path upstream through the trees. It smelled like the alpha had been there only hours previously, and the sinuous path suggested he'd lollygagged about, wandering through the woods as if they were his own. Another rumble came deep in our throats as we smelled where the male had marked his territory on the side of a lightning-scarred oak tree at the crest of the ridge.

Another few feet, and the wolf himself came into view. He was lounging on the leaf litter, where a gap in the canopy caused a ray of sun to warm his hide. The huge wolf was clearly well aware of our approach, but he simply yawned and laid his chin back down on his paws as we came closer, closing his eyes as if he was planning on finishing out his nap. And I wasn't surprised by his behavior, either, because I recognized the canine's coloration. The alpha male was Wolfie.

***

MY WOLF URGED US FORWARD to sniff under the alpha's tail, but I pushed her down and fought to initiate the shift back into human form. As a canine, Wolfie was nearly double my size, and I suspected his human form was equally imposing, but I trusted my tongue more than I did my feet to get me out of this mess. I'd simply explain to the mutt that he was trespassing on private property, would threaten him with a restraining order if necessary, and would then head back down the hill to check on Keith. I had no idea why Wolfie was nosing around my nephew, but I wouldn't feel safe until the kid was once again under my watchful eye.

Unfortunately, my wolf didn't want to be locked away. It wasn't just the lost joy of the hunt that made her irritable, it was Wolfie's presence--my annoying wolf wanted to protect me. She also wanted to play with the alpha male for some crazy reason. Bending her forelegs down onto the ground, she lowered her head, raised her tail, and yipped.

Wolfie opened his eyes and tilted his head at us quizzically, then rose to his feet. He didn't seem to know what to make of my wolf any more than I did, but I couldn't spend much time paying attention to the alpha. I was focusing all of my energy on trying to still my human mind enough to initiate the shift back to two feet.

My reverse shifts always felt entirely different than the change from human to wolf. Instead of pain, as fur melted away and paws became hands, I usually experienced supreme relief, a bit like stepping into a warm shower after a long day on the trail. Today, though, I didn't feel any relief...because there was no shift. My wolf was thoroughly in charge. In fact, I could feel her gently guiding my human brain down toward that cage I'd built deep in the dark recesses of our mind to house her. Seeing the trap closing around me, wolf-like, I clawed to escape.

Despite our internal battle, our external form was still dancing around Wolfie, and it soon became clear that the larger wolf was less than pleased by our presence. He turned as if to go, then sighed and walked back toward us. Gently but firmly, the male wolf took our nose in his jaws, just like my father had done years ago, but without the part where his teeth pierced my skin. Even though the younger alpha was gentle, his act of dominance chastened my wolf long enough for me to escape her clutches, and at the same instant when my human brain became dominant, Wolfie shifted, pulling me with him back into human form.

The relief of the change elicited a breathless gasp from me, more euphoric than usual because I'd thought my wolf had won our battle and terror had begun to kick in. My legs were wobbly from the shift and I would have fallen to the ground in surprise if Wolfie's huge arms weren't wrapped around me, his mouth still on top of my nose. "Whoa," he breathed as he steadied me, and I became aware of the fact that we were both naked, the alpha's bare skin pressing against my own.

Kiss him, demanded my wolf just as I clanged the iron-barred doors behind her and locked the canine away in her prison. Ignoring the unsolicited advice, I took a step back and struggled to pull my eyes away from Wolfie's very masculine form.

***

"IT SEEMED LIKE YOU were having a little trouble with your wolf," the man said gruffly, as if prepared for me to lash out at him for his act of dominance. It took me a minute to focus on his words, though, because my brain was still processing the scenery.

It shouldn't have bothered me that the man in front of me was naked since frequent shifts made werewolf packs a bit of a clothing-optional society. But it had been years since I'd spent much time around werewolves, and the human mores around me had sunken in. I averted my gaze in embarrassment, only afterwards realizing that my body language would be read by a werewolf as a display of submission. That thought prompted me to ignore his conversation starter and to go off on a tangent of my own. I turned flashing eyes back onto Wolfie and verbally ripped into him.

"I don't know what you think you're doing here," I growled, "But this is out-territory, and there's a young male down there who's nearing his first shift. I want you gone, and don't come back." Righteous anger carried me through the demand, but one glance at Wolfie's reaction made me want to flee.

"The kid is ours," Wolfie growled back, the apology now absent from his stance as his alpha nature rose to the surface. The man's glare matched mine, and I could feel his wolf rising back up through his skin, struggling to take control. Luckily, my darker half was too firmly locked away to follow.

Just like during our last meeting, my body told me it was either fight or flight, and this time I chose to fight. "Stop that!" I demanded and was proud of myself for not letting a waver enter my voice. Wolfie was terrifying in his anger, but I didn't want him to know that. "I don't want to talk to your wolf right now," I said, stabbing a finger toward the alpha's bare chest. "And that kid is my nephew. I've already told you once, and I'll tell you one more time--stay...away...from...him." I drew out the last words, speaking as I would to a belligerent hiker who needed a show of force to prevent him from pitching his tent in a restricted area. Of course, belligerent hikers usually wore clothes...and they didn't have the tendency to tear you apart with tooth and claw when annoyed.

"Keith is part of my pack," Wolfie said slowly and clearly, his wolf still very much in evidence behind his eyes. "If he's your nephew, where have you been for the last decade since his mother died?"

"If he's part of your pack," I retorted, "why doesn't my nephew know that he's a werewolf?"

For the first time, I seemed to be gaining ground. Wolfie looked away, for all the world as if he were ashamed of his actions. "I'm working on it," he muttered, and when he gazed back down at me, the alpha seemed a little more human. "We really should wait until Chase is here to have this discussion," he continued quietly.

"Why?" I hurled back. "So you can act like a stuck-up alpha and have your friend translate for you? Are you too good to talk to a woman?"

This type of behavior was par for the course in most werewolf packs, where alphas required a husband or father to bring a complaint on behalf of a woman. Just thinking about that made me raging mad, so it took a moment for me to understand Wolfie's response. Instead of answering immediately, the alpha had sunken down onto the ground to sit cross-legged, ignoring the sticks that I was sure were poking into his bare bum. And he added to the non-confrontational attitude by directing his words down into the ground. "No, I want Chase to talk to you because I'm a bloodling," he said. "I always muck these things up."

A bit of a growl had come back into Wolfie's voice with the last word, but I finally realized that he was frustrated with himself, not with me. So I stayed silent as I mentally rearranged the past into different boxes in my head. If Wolfie were a bloodling, that would explain why he'd stayed in wolf form in the city. Most bloodlings were put down at birth, just like my little brother had been, and even the ones lucky enough to survive had trouble with their human forms. Bloodlings didn't shift to become human for the first time until they were Keith's age, and some of them took years after that to learn to speak. Wolfie probably did feel more comfortable with his milk brother acting as his spokesman.

On the one hand, Wolfie's past made me more sympathetic to his prior actions. But on the other hand, the fact that the alpha was a bloodling made me want to keep Wolfie even further away from Keith. Bloodlings were very much in touch with their wolf nature, and knowing Wolfie was a bloodling made me yet more worried that he'd tear into a pre-shift male. The knowledge didn't make me feel any more comfortable being alone in the woods with the alpha either.

While I was silently trying to figure out how to deal with this disaster, Wolfie had kept talking. "What I would have asked Chase to explain to you is that our pack lives on the far side of this mountain." Just speaking about his blood brother seemed to bring out the humanity in Wolfie's face and voice, so I let him continue unimpeded. "This whole county has been officially our territory for the last five years. I could tell you that you're the one trespassing. Not that anyone minds when a beautiful wolf like you comes across the mountain." As he finished, I realized that Wolfie was looking straight up between my bare breasts to get a glimpse of my face, which was turning beet red.

"I'm not a wolf," I stuttered, picking the least useful part of Wolfie's speech to fixate on, and I could see his more primal nature gleaming back through his eyes.

"Sure you are," Wolfie answered. "Even when we're in human form, we're all still wolves." Then he looked back down at the ground and moved on to a safer topic. "I would have asked Chase to tell you that we've been keeping an eye on your nephew, and that we'd be more than willing to help with his first shift."

Just imagining what kind of "help" Wolfie would give Keith made me gasp involuntarily. Then I immediately regretted my lapse because I could have sworn the huge alpha in front of me knew exactly what was going through my head. His shoulders slumped as if I'd slapped him, and the alpha lowered his voice another notch so I had to strain to make out his words. "Chase would have said that better," he muttered. Then, looking at my bare feet, he raised his voice a tiny bit and added, "Chase would be glad to come help with Keith's change. He's friends with Dr. Baker."

I sighed, thinking of the mess I'd left behind me at the mansion on the hill. I'd have to find a way to explain my weird behavior and wiggle my way back into Dale's good graces...plus sneak into my car to find some clothes before someone caught me running around the yard naked. Since Wolfie was currently acting oddly submissive, it seemed like a good time to take my leave and deal with this more pressing issue rather than to keep puzzling over the pack across the mountain. "I appreciate your offer," I told the top of the alpha's head as I turned to go. "I'll keep it in mind."

I was picking my way across the ground on bare feet, trying to dodge rough spots, when Wolfie's parting shot hit me like a rock to the back of the head. "One more thing," he added, the wolf winning out in his voice. "I would have had Chase ask you to go out on a date with me."

Ignoring the damage to my feet, I took to my heels and fled.

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# Chapter 7

When I returned to the house, it became clear how Dale had slept in the same bed as a werewolf for five years without figuring out his wife's secret. My brother-in-law was clueless.

"Just in time for dinner!" he greeted me as I walked in the door wearing a different set of clothes than the ones I'd left in. The house smelled of browned beef and grated cheese, and I could tell my wolf was a little more awake than usual from the intensity of the odors and from the unwelcome ache in my bones, stronger than I'd felt in years. Ignoring the pain, I smiled warily at Dale, expecting the third degree, but all he wanted to know was how long I'd be staying.

"Well, I'm kinda between jobs at the moment," I began, trying to figure out how to invite myself for an extended visit. I needn't have worried.

"Brooke always assumed we'd have people living from the basement to the attic," Dale confided as he pulled warm tortillas out of the oven. "That's why we built such a big house. You'd be doing me a favor if you stayed for a few weeks and helped me get Keith sorted out. He looked a bit better after you left, but I know one session isn't enough to fix everything."

The man was almost pleading with me to come into his home and convert his son, and I felt a twinge of guilt that my purpose here wasn't more charitable. It was either Keith or me, though, and the kid made me feel better about my traitorous plan as soon as he showed up for dinner. Dale had to beard his son in his lair and argue the teenager into sitting down with us, and even then, the youngster refused to eat the soft tacos his father had assembled. Instead, my nephew brought a box of cheerios and a jug of milk to the table and downed bowl after bowl of the floating cereal, ignoring his father's attempts to draw him into conversation. Even as a bystander, the one-sided exchange was painful, and I was relieved when Dale gave up and turned to me instead.

"I understand we have a mutual friend," my brother-in-law said to open the adult conversation. I struggled to figure out who he might be referring to, but Dale was quick to illuminate the mystery. "Chase called about an hour ago, hoping to catch up with you," he continued. "I told him you'd gone out for a run, and invited him to the clinic-cleanup day tomorrow."

I was saved from answering because Dale's words drew a reaction from his son at last, although not the one Dale had been looking for. "Dad," Keith whined. "I don't have to go, do I?" I raised my eyebrows, thinking Dale must be roping people into hard labor, but instead it turned out the doctor was helping get a drug-rehab clinic up and running and was looking for volunteers for the last day of mopping and window cleaning before patients moved in. Like the good guy he obviously was, Chase had volunteered to help out.

And while I had a feeling our get-together was more Wolfie's idea than Chase's, the gathering did seem like safe, neutral ground to hash out our differences, so I acted enthusiastic about the opportunity to meet up with my "old friend." Keith didn't even try to feign excitement, but unlike his dining choices, the volunteer work wasn't optional. "You're going," Dale said simply, and Keith rolled his eyes before returning to his study of the last cheerios melting in the bottom of his bowl.

"I hate to miss the cleanup," Dale continued, returning his attention to me, "but I have to do my rounds at the hospital tomorrow morning...."

"I can take Keith," I offered quickly, my guilt making me want to simplify my brother-in-law's life, at least a little bit. I was eating the guy's food and planning on stealing his son--the least I could do was a bit of ferry duty. But Dale had other plans.

"No, that's all taken care of," he replied. "I didn't want to try to give you directions since it's a bit tricky finding the place, so Chase will pick you both up tomorrow at ten." The gangly doctor smiled at me as if he was doing me a big favor, and he probably thought he was--giving me an opportunity to spend more time with my old friend Chase.

Unfortunately, the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in a car with Wolfie, depending on the alpha's good will to get me home. But there didn't seem to be any way to wiggle my way out of the appointment, so I pasted a smile onto my face, thanked Dale for dinner, and did up the dishes like a good house guest. I might have been trying to turn his son into the heir of a bloodthirsty werewolf alpha, but I didn't want Dale to think I was a layabout.

***

MY BASEMENT ROOM FELT like a retreat after running the gauntlet of Keith's indifference and Dale's kindness during dinner, all while my wolf gnawed soundlessly but very noticeably at my bones. I sank onto the pull-out sofa with a sigh, ignoring the way the bar in the center dug into my back. As a ranger, I'd learned to sleep on anything, and since I was 100% sure the roof didn't leak, this room met with my instant approval.

It was nearly dark outside and I could easily have fallen asleep, wiping the trials of the day away, but I had one more problem to overcome before I'd earned my rest. My father had given me a month to do his bidding, but he wasn't a patient man, and I wanted to deliver Keith well under deadline. That meant teaching the kid to shift ASAP, and I was unlikely to do a good job as a mentor unless my wolf and I were on speaking terms. Our run today had given me hope that I might be able to push myself into a shift at will, and there was no time like the present to test that hypothesis.

After making sure the door was locked and the shades were drawn, I lay back on the couch and slowed my breathing. My most recent change had been the wolf's idea, and my failure while searching for Melony could easily be dismissed as caused by stress during a difficult day. The truth was that I hadn't tried to pull up my wolf in years except for those recent endeavors, preferring instead to act as human as possible while forced to live in a non-werewolf world. So I had no clue how hard or easy the shift would be.

Two hours later, I was forced to admit that the shift was neither hard nor easy--it was simply absent. My wolf refused to nibble at the bait, and I felt entirely as human when I finally gave up and flipped on the lamp as when I'd first laid down to meditate. The only change was that now I was 100% frustrated.

A soft tap on the door drew me away from my brown study. The room was small enough that I could turn the knob without leaving the bed, and I pulled the door open to reveal my nephew's tall form. Keith was built like his father, but was even more awkward-looking since his muscle development was lagging behind his bone growth. There was another difference too--Keith was obviously more clueful than his father, as was evidenced by the first words out of his mouth.

"There's a lot more going on than you're telling Dad, isn't there?" he asked.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. No way did I have the mental energy to have the Talk with an uninitiated werewolf right now. I was exhausted from my run and from the mental gyrations of the last few days, but I also didn't want to blow Keith off when he was giving me an opening into his teenage psyche. Dale's disjointed dinner conversation had proven one thing, at least--teenagers talked so rarely that you should listen when they did.

"Have you been sitting out in the hall all evening hoping my light would turn on?" I asked, stalling for time as I tried to decide on a plan of action.

Brooke's son jerked one shoulder up into a shrug, then his mouth quirked upwards as well. "I had a feeling you weren't sleeping," he answered, and I couldn't help smiling back at him. In that minute, his eyes looked just like my sister's had when she'd stolen the last piece of pie that was supposed to be our father's, then had shared it with me instead. The hint of innocent mischief was enough to raise a lump in my throat. Was I really going to turn this kid over to my father to be turned into a monster?

And, if not, was there any other way to get out of this situation with my skin intact?

Just like figuring out how to help Keith tune into his werewolf identity, that question was far too difficult to answer at the end of the world's longest day. "Look," I said, making up my mind, "I promise I'll tell you far more than you ever want to know very soon, but tonight I'm so exhausted I can't think straight. What do you do for fun around here?"

And that's how I ended up playing Dance, Dance, Revolution with a fourteen-year-old boy at midnight in a mansion on top of a hill. It was the most fun I'd had in years.

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# Chapter 8

The ceramic crack of pool balls drew me into a part of the basement I hadn't yet explored. I'd thought Keith was still sound asleep, recovering from his near-shift the day before, but instead my nephew was carrying on the family tradition--practicing to be a world-class pool hustler. He had his feet apart, one hand resting on the table as he lined up a shot with the cue stick.

"I've been thinking," the kid said without looking up, knowing with a wolf's sensitivity to the surrounding world that I was standing in the open doorway behind him.

"Your grandfather likes to think at a pool table too," I answered, my mind inexorably drawn backwards to childhood memories of my father honing his skills. Business meetings always happened in the pool house, which for us had nothing to do with swimming and had everything to do with pocket billiards. I'd never bothered to learn the game, but Brooke had been nearly as good as our father. No wonder her house had a pool table in the basement.

"That's just what I was wondering," my nephew continued, oblivious to my trip down memory lane. He hit the two ball into the far pocket and walked around the room so he could face me across the table while planning out his next move. "Dad obviously knew you existed, but I had no clue there was anyone alive on Mom's side of the family. Then you show up without calling. Are you in trouble?"

I was glad that Keith didn't look up to gauge my response to his question, and instead just sank another ball into the near pocket. The youngster's lack of attention was helpful because my mind was racing. This wasn't good. Why couldn't Keith have inherited any of his father's cluelessness?

Insightful questions like Keith's weren't going to make my mission any easier, but the ensuing interruption was even less welcome. "Yes, Ms. Wilder, are you in trouble?" Wolfie asked from the open glass doors leading to the outside. I'd scouted the area briefly when I carried in my belongings the previous afternoon, and I'd noted the security issues resulting from the way the house was built on a hill and opened into the woods on the basement side. But I had figured my wolf would keep an eye out for danger. Too bad she'd been caught napping at just the wrong moment.

Now, my wolf woke with a vengeance, causing Wolfie's musky scent to swallow me in a sudden cloud even as pain ran down my arms and legs. Despite the danger, the smell was enticing, and I had to shove my wolf out of the way to focus on the alpha. I could sense Keith behind me feeling the first symptoms of a shift, brought on by my wolf's alertness, so I walked away from my nephew and toward the alpha wolf who had invaded our home.

Not just invaded our home; he'd invaded my past. Wolfie's words made it clear that he'd done enough research to track me back to my father, and his next question elucidated what he thought of said alpha. "How is Crazy Wilder doing?"

"What are you doing in my house?" I growled back, my words low enough that Keith might not even hear if his wolf had drifted back to sleep after I moved away. I knew I wouldn't be lucky enough to get out of this situation without doing some major explaining for the kid, but right now I was more concerned about keeping a bloodling alpha away from my young nephew.

Before either Wolfie or I could throw down the gauntlet, though, a new voice drifted in from outside. "Hey, guys!" Chase was out of breath in his rush to perform crowd control, but I was still able to recognize the more stable wolf without taking my eyes away from the threat in front of me. Although Chase was clearly Wolfie's second in command and probably would obey the alpha's orders regardless of their sadism, I instantly relaxed when I realized the beta was present. Chase seemed to have a similar effect on Wolfie since I could see the wolf retreating out of the alpha's eyes at the same time Keith stepped up beside me, a smile on his young face.

"Hey, Chase," the kid said. "We're ready to go."

***

IF I HADN'T BEEN SO tense, the battle of wills as we piled into Chase's car would have been hilarious.

"Aunt Terra calls shotgun!" my useless nephew noted as Chase got into the driver's side of the car. The teenager shot me a knowing glance, and it dawned on me that Keith probably thought the tension earlier was purely sexual. He'd apparently parsed Dale's description of Chase as my "old friend" to mean that we'd dated, and was bound and determined to throw us back together. But despite the kid's cuteness, there was no way I was letting my pre-change nephew ride in the backseat with a bloodling. Yes, it seemed unlikely that the alpha would attack Keith in plain view, but bloodlings cared a lot less about human social standards than the rest of us did. I wasn't going to risk it.

"No, really, I'd rather ride in the backseat," I demurred, stepping toward the back of the car. Unfortunately, Keith wasn't easy to override.

"You get carsick in the back. Remember, Aunt Terra?" he said pointedly, jerking his head toward Chase. If I actually had harbored a crush on the beta, my nephew's gestures would have been mortifying. As it was, they were just annoying, especially since Wolfie seemed to have picked up on my real purpose in dragging my feet. The alpha smirked at me and began to open the back passenger-side door, and I knew I had to squash this farce right here. Even if Keith was safely ensconced in the front seat, I still wanted Wolfie as far away from my nephew as possible, which meant the alpha needed to get into the other side of the car.

"Thank you," I said to Wolfie, pretending he'd been holding the door open for me, and I quickly slid past him into the car. "I'll really be fine in the back," I tossed out to Keith. "Your long legs would be cramped back here."

Keith shrugged, and I could have sworn Wolfie's smirk grew even wider as the alpha strutted around the back of the car to get in beside me. I should have felt victorious, but somehow ended up thinking I'd been played.

***

"HOW ARE YOU FEELING?" Chase asked Keith a few minutes later as we turned onto another winding country road. It was clear that Chase and my nephew knew each other well and were on good terms, presumably because of the volunteer work the beta performed with my brother-in-law. I gathered that this clinic project had been in the works for years and was just now coming to fruition, so I shouldn't have been surprised to discover that Chase treated my nephew as an honorary little brother.

As Keith chattered away about how his father was pretending he had mono and keeping him home all week, I turned my attention to Wolfie. Despite the fact that the alpha was in human form, I could tell the wolf predominated since he'd rolled down the window so air could rush over his face, a very dog-like thing to do. My wolf nudged me, asking for the opportunity to partake of the same heady array of odors from the surrounding farmland, but I denied her the simple pleasure. We don't have time for games, I warned, returning my wolf's focus to Keith. Remember the young wolf? She muttered sullenly, but shifted her attention back to my nephew and away from the scent-laden air.

"Still having trouble with your darker half?" Wolfie breathed, his voice so low that I was sure Keith couldn't hear. The guy was three for three today--he'd only asked three questions, but each one hit on an issue I truly didn't want to address. I was silent, and Wolfie turned to look at me, leaning in a bit so he could speak even more quietly. "Chase reminded me how strange it is for a female werewolf to be packless." He tilted his head to the side, inviting me to fill in the blanks, but I just shook my head and looked away.

My wolf was now toeing the line, staying below the level of my conscious thoughts, but I could feel her attraction to the striking alpha beside me. As much as I hated to admit it, I agreed--the man was every bit as eye-catching with clothes on as with clothes off, but he was also dangerous, both to me and to Keith. I couldn't figure out how my father's scouts could have neglected to report on such an obvious threat to my nephew, which made me concerned that there was even more going on than met the eye. Was Wolfie part of some plan to manipulate me, and if so, toward what end?

"We're here!" my nephew exclaimed, bouncing out of the front seat before Chase had even turned off the engine. I had never been so glad to see a drug-rehab clinic. I unfastened my seat belt, which had started to feel like a torture restraint, and rushed after the teen werewolf.

***

CLEANING WINDOWS BROUGHT out my anal-retentive side, so I couldn't really blame Keith for wandering off to work with the guys. Unfortunately, it didn't make my task any easier to have to keep my nephew in sight while scrubbing down grimy glass.

"Oops, was that your face?" the kid said. "I thought it was the window." Wolfie wiped a dribble of window-cleaning fluid off his forehead and I tensed, waiting for the explosion that was bound to follow. But Wolfie merely reached calmly behind them for the mop bucket and upended it over my nephew's head, foamy water spilling down over the teenager's ears. Before long, the two were wrestling on the industrial-tile floor, which, given their soapy exteriors, could loosely be considered mopping.

"They're like wolf cubs," Chase said, coming up behind me and handing over a paper mug of hot chocolate. I turned to smile at the beta, enjoying his presence despite myself. The packless ache in my stomach returned in a rush, and the warm liquid I was sipping didn't do much to dull what was obviously a psychosomatic pain. "Wolfie told you he's a bloodling," his friend continued, watching the rough-housing in front of us with fond eyes.

"My little brother was a bloodling," I answered, the non sequitur drawing Chase's gentle attention back to me. "Father drowned him," I added. "I always figured there was no way for bloodlings to fit in around humans, or even around other werewolves, but Wolfie seems to manage." I hated to admit it, but the evidence in front of me also suggested I had been overreacting about the alpha's potential for harming Keith, and I wondered how else I'd misconstrued Wolfie's actions.

"He takes some getting used to," Chase said thoughtfully, parsing my mood correctly. He scuffed his boot against the floor before continuing tentatively. "Maybe you'd like to come and meet the pack sometime. I think you'd understand Wolfie better if you saw the outcasts he's pulled together into a solid family."

"Outcasts?" I was intrigued in spite of myself. Not that I didn't have plenty of issues of my own without getting sucked into Wolfie's drama, but it felt good to spend a minute not worrying over my wolf, Keith, and my father.

"Halfies and full humans, and a few crazy purebloods like me," Chase said with a self-deprecating laugh. "Although Wolfie says you're a werewolf princess, too good for the likes of us."

I turned away from Keith, giving Chase my full attention at last. "I hope you know that's crazy," I chided him. "That's not what's going through my head at all." There was a little zing of heat between me and Chase suddenly, although nothing like what Wolfie had yanked out of my baser nature in the car. Chase was a good-looking guy, and I wished I wasn't irresistibly drawn to the bad boys--troubled alphas like my father. Not that attraction made any difference since I was celibate by choice given the options: human men, who I might accidentally change in front of, or asshole werewolves. Focus, reminded my wolf, for once proving herself the smarter half of our alliance.

"I know," Chase said, checking in with his alpha with a quick flick of his eyes before looking back at me. "I just meant that if you're in trouble, Wolfie will want to help. Heck, we'll all want to help."

He paused, giving me the opportunity to spill my guts. And I wanted to. I really, really wanted to. But no matter how nice Chase seemed to be, he was a male werewolf, and I knew I couldn't trust him.

I wasn't quite sure what I was going to say next, but footsteps echoing off the tile floor put an abrupt end to our conversation. We turned to see who was walking through the front entrance, and I squinted against the strong light beaming in from the outdoors. Werewolf, my wolf reported before my eyes had adjusted to take in the stranger's features.

Only he wasn't a stranger. "Milo?" I asked, recognizing a cousin who had been Keith's age when I left home.

"Terra the Terror," Milo answered, the smile on his lips not reaching his eyes. "The Chief sent me to check on you."

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# Chapter 9

I had forgotten how quickly werewolves could move. Before I had opened my mouth to reply, Chase was hustling Keith down the corridor out of danger and Wolfie had taken the beta's place by my side. And despite my mixed feelings about Wolfie, I was glad to have the backup because Milo, not I, had been the terror when we were kids. My cousin had been one of those boys who enjoyed tearing wings off butterflies, and now he looked like the adult version of that aggressive child--dark suit, glistening leather shoes, and the bulge of a gun under his dress jacket all adding to the image of a mob enforcer. Or, more likely, the Chief's enforcer.

I could feel the hackles of both male wolves rise as they eyed each other, even though they were still clothed in their human skin. "Wolf Young, pack alpha," Wolfie growled, forcing my cousin into a bone-crushing handshake, and Milo's eyes narrowed in response. This was only the third time I'd seen Wolfie use his alpha dominance, and the effort turned him into a completely different person. Gone was the jovial wolf who would let a kindergartner maul him, replaced by a ruthless alpha like my father. Only, instead of being terrified of Wolfie, this time I was glad to have him at my back. "You're on pack land," Wolfie continued ominously.

"I'm here to speak to my alpha's daughter and grandson," Milo replied, his tone nearly as gruff as Wolfie's. But my cousin couldn't quite pull off the alpha persona, and after a moment his eyes shifted to the side, which made Wolfie huff out a canine laugh. Milo ignored the taunt, and although his jaw tensed, he held his physical ground.

"Proper protocol would have been to seek out the alpha of their new pack first," Wolfie said, and I could have sworn the wolf behind his eyes was having fun. I'd heard my father pull rank so many times, the move should have been familiar, but it felt different coming from Wolfie, as if the younger alpha was playing the system rather than being swept up by werewolf machismo. Father had always been on a power trip, requiring interlopers to go through him first to prove the alpha's dominance, but I had a feeling Wolfie didn't usually greet intruders in this manner. He was only being surly because of the potential for danger to me and Keith.

"A pack leader doesn't have to ask permission to speak to his heir," Milo shot back, his eyes locking onto Wolfie's. As much as I hated to admit it, Milo had a good point. Werewolf society was dressed up with all kinds of complicated social rules, the point of which was to keep bloodshed to a minimum. The relevant guideline in this situation was clear: no matter where a pack leader's heir wandered, the heir remained under the alpha's protection and control.

I shivered, imagining my nephew being dragged back to Haven by my blood-thirsty cousin, and I could feel Milo's wolf rising in the extended silence. My own wolf responded by pushing against her bars, but Wolfie didn't seem affected--his wolf had already been rampant, so there wasn't much further for it to go without fur sprouting out of the alpha's ears.

Instead, the young alpha seemed perfectly calm as he responded for both of us. "Keith isn't Wilder's heir," Wolfie replied. "He's mine."

***

MILO AND I BOTH STARED at Wolfie as if he were crazy, and the alpha's lips curled up into a grin. Yes, the bloodling really was enjoying this.

"Brooke and I had an understanding when she brought the boy onto pack land," Wolfie explained, and I realized with a jolt that the man beside me was lying through his teeth. Wolfie's pack hadn't lived on the mountain when Brooke first moved here--Wolfie had been the one moving into another wolf's territory, in part, I was now guessing, to protect my nephew.

But my analysis of the situation simply didn't make sense. Although our animal side was cunning, werewolves couldn't tell outright untruths when our wolf was in charge, and I couldn't quite figure out how Wolfie could be both the most wolf-like person I'd ever met, and still hold onto the human trait of deception. No matter how Wolfie pulled it off, I hoped Milo wouldn't have enough facts to realize the alpha was lying. If my cousin twigged to any inconsistencies, hopefully he'd get caught up in the same mental tangle I was currently pushing my way through.

Wolfie ignored both of our shock as he kept spinning his enticing lie. "The grandson of an alpha would present a threat to my status if the boy wasn't clearly kin, so Brooke and I took a blood oath and I accepted Keith as my heir." He raised a challenging eyebrow at my father's enforcer. "As you probably know, that supersedes any claim your pack leader may have on the boy. So you can go home."

Milo moved as if to obey the outright command, his face turning red at the involuntary reaction to another pack leader's order. Then, with an effort, my cousin turned his attention away from Wolfie to speak directly to me. "I don't know what the deal is with Keith, Terra, but Chief Wilder said to tell you these precise words: 'You or him.'"

"It's only been two days!" I exclaimed, the sentence popping out of my mouth before I could think it through. I could already feel my father yanking me back to Haven, and the tug of his command terrified me. In fact, my father scared me far more than the alpha beside me did, I realized as Wolfie laid a possessive arm loosely around my waist. I would have thought the contact would feel confining, but instead I relaxed slightly, my wolf retreating out of my eyes at the alpha's touch.

I knew that my accidental words would have repercussions, but, wolf-like, the man beside me seemed willing to deal with the present danger first. Wolfie kept his gaze trained on my cousin as he coldly bared his teeth in what would look like a smile to humans...but wasn't. "You've delivered your message," the alpha said coldly. "Now go." Milo jerked his head in a farewell, as if he'd meant to leave anyway, but it was clear that the alpha's command spurred his quick exit.

The two of us stood in silence until my cousin was out of sight, then Wolfie turned toward me and raised that eyebrow that was getting such a workout today. "We need to talk," he began.

"We do," I agreed. "After I check on Keith."

***

I DIDN'T SLOW DOWN until I'd rushed around to the back of the building and could see the beta and my nephew through the dirt-encrusted windows. There was more work getting done now that Chase was Keith's partner, but the kid still seemed to be having fun, if the huge smile on his face was any indication. I could feel the tension in my back easing at the sight.

"They're fine," Wolfie said, grabbing my shoulder to spin me around to face him. Despite my previous conclusions about his good intentions, I instantly shrank back from the alpha's firm grasp, and he let me go as if I were on fire. A wolf-like growl burst up from his chest, and I took another step backwards even though I was at least partially sure the bloodling's reaction was pure frustration.

Unlike every other alpha-leaning male I'd ever met, though, Wolfie seemed to instinctively know how to defuse his dominance. He dropped into a sitting position so I was towering over him rather than vice versa, and I slowly joined him on the ground. The lawn was chilly, but the sun felt good on my face, so I sat silently for a minute, collecting myself, and Wolfie let me take the time I needed.

"That was a lie about Keith being your heir," I started tentatively, once the sun had driven away most of my earlier chill.

"I do consider him part of my pack," Wolfie answered, his correction sufficing as confirmation of my earlier statement. Now it was the alpha's turn to pause as he worked his mind around an undemanding way to ask me what my intentions were toward my nephew. Because my accidental word choice with Milo made it clear that I hadn't showed up simply to help Keith through his first shift.

When I didn't offer any explanation, Wolfie suggested, "Chief Wilder sent you to bring Keith back into the fold." Ashamed of my own willingness to consider the plan, but figuring lying was no longer an option, I nodded agreement. "But you aren't going to bring Keith to Haven," Wolfie continued as if this second statement was as obvious as the first.

"What am I supposed to do instead?" I burst out. "Father said it was Keith or me...." I let my voice trail off, though, as I realized that Wolfie was right. I'd only known my nephew for twenty-four hours, but already I realized that my father would chew the boy up and spit him out. I couldn't set up such a good-natured kid for that kind of soul-crushing. Better that I suck it up and go back to Haven myself--after all, I'd already enjoyed a decade of freedom. I probably had been tougher than Keith even when I was his age, and unlike my nephew, I would survive my father's attention. I sighed, accepting the inevitable.

Wolfie had no such fatalism. "We'll think of a way to fix it." He reached out and took my hand in his massive paw, which woke my wolf up with a jolt. Instead of the pain I'd felt recently whenever my wolf was present, though, a tremor of pleasure rushed through my body. The innocent skin-on-skin contact suddenly felt thoroughly erotic, and my breath caught in my throat. Breathe, demanded my wolf. I want to smell him.

Wolfie's mouth turned up into a smile, almost as if he'd heard my wolf's reaction, and I blushed furiously. "There's just one more thing we need to talk about right now," the alpha rumbled gently.

"What?" I asked, trying to figure out which other disaster had attracted Wolfie's attention.

"Whether you'll go out on a date with me tomorrow," the alpha replied.

***

IT WAS A DAY OF INTERRUPTIONS, but this was one I was grateful for. "There you are," Dale called toward us as he strolled around the corner of the building. "The clinic's looking great, isn't it?"

My brother-in-law was so homely and human that he made the werewolf beside me seem even more dangerously beautiful. Emphasis on dangerous. Despite my wolf's complaints, I yanked my hand free of Wolfie's and got to my feet, dusting off the back of my jeans and turning away from the alpha without a backward glance.

"Rounds go okay?" I asked, and Dale was quick to gratify my curiosity. When I turned to wave goodbye to Wolfie a minute later, the alpha merely looked amused by my escape, rather than angry, so I let my brother-in-law draw me toward his minivan, where a sodden Keith was already waiting in the back seat. My nephew had sunken into avid contemplation of a hand-held gaming device, and in that instant he looked as entirely normal as his father did. I could almost imagine that Keith wasn't a young werewolf, and that I wouldn't have to figure out how to help him change into wolf form and then how to protect him from my father. But as I got into the car, the kid's eyes turned up to meet mine in the rear-view mirror, and I could see the hint of worry in his face. "We'll talk soon," I mouthed, and my nephew smirked briefly before turning back to his game.

I'd never been part of a normal family before, and despite Brooke's absence, I could almost touch the solidity of the unit she'd left behind. I offered to help Dale cook dinner, and it felt comfortable to be chatting about our day as I chopped carrots and he sauteed up a stir fry. Keith was his usual, uncommunicative self over dinner, but when Dale was called back to the hospital in the middle of the meal, my nephew volunteered to help me wash up the skillet and rinse the dishes before they went into the dishwasher. Despite Milo's visit, I was surprised to realize that the packless ache in my stomach had nearly entirely fled.

"So, which one of those guys are you dating?" Keith asked out of the blue as he ferried a load of plates from table to sink.

That pulled me out of my happy, pack-filled glow and my eyebrows shot up. "I'm not dating either one!" I exclaimed. While literally true, the words felt a bit off as they bounced around the kitchen.

"Hmm," my nephew hummed noncommittally. "You definitely like one of them."

"We're not all in high school, Keith," I retorted, but couldn't help smiling at the kid who suddenly reminded me of his mother. Brooke had always known exactly what everyone was feeling in our household, and Keith had evidently inherited the knack. Even though I'd lost my sister far too soon, it felt more sweet than bitter to notice those traits in her son. "Wouldn't you rather talk about your problem?" I deflected, figuring we might as well get the Talk over with while Keith was feeling happy and I wasn't drooping with exhaustion.

"Naw," Keith answered. "We've got all day tomorrow while Dad's at work and I'm home sick. Right now, I'm more interested in your loooove life." He drew out the word in the way only a teenager could, and I laughed despite myself. But I still shook my head, refusing to dish up any more information.

"Girls always like the bad boys," Keith concluded. "That's a shame. Chase is a pretty cool guy."

A day ago, I would have agreed with Keith that it was too bad. But I was starting to realize that Wolfie possessed a depth that the bad-guy image didn't begin to cover. Not that I was interested in either one of them, of course.

Right, my wolf responded, pulling me out of my thoughts. I would have liked to think she was agreeing about my lack of interest in the young alpha, but I knew sarcasm when I heard it.

Focus, I reminded my wolf. And myself.

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# Chapter 10

I had thought it was a good idea to hike up the mountain with Keith before explaining werewolf culture and helping him through his first shift. The uphill climb would smooth out the boy's jitters, and if my nephew freaked out about his wolf form, he'd have a long way to run before he could do any damage.

The flaw in my plan only became apparent as we crested the ridge. There lay Wolfie in canine form, lounging in the same ray of sunlight he'd been enjoying two days before. The wolf barked a welcome as we came closer, and I rolled my eyes, trying to decide whether to turn around and go home.

"That's Chase's dog," Keith explained, sitting down beside the alpha werewolf to give him a belly rub. "He's harmless," my nephew continued, as if my reaction was due to fear of being bitten by a strange dog. I wished a dog bite was the only thing I had to worry about.

The day was already off to a bad start, but I figured I'd better ignore the alpha and barrel on through. "So..." I stretched out the word, trying to figure out how to begin. "If your mother was still alive, she'd be the one telling you this," I started. "Well, it really should be your father, but..."

"...He's clueless," Keith finished for me. "I really hope this isn't all a lead up to telling me about the birds and the bees, Aunt Terra, because I promise, I've heard that before."

The kid's charisma was already shining through despite his teenage gawkiness, and I figured Keith would be putting his sex-ed knowledge to use much earlier than the average teenager. I barely resisted the urge to pat his tousled hair, and I smiled despite myself, imagining Keith's reserved father trying to give his son the other kind of talk. Dale would get so embarrassed about the subject that he wouldn't even be able to start the conversation. "I'll bet you didn't learn about the birds and the bees from Dale," I retorted, laughing at the image.

"He bought me a book," Keith confirmed. My nephew moved his attention up to Wolfie's ears, which apparently were in dire need of scratching from the expression on the wolf's face. Or maybe the alpha was just amused at my fumbling attempt to educate my nephew.

"So, right, not about the birds and the bees," I continued. "I guess I should start out by telling you that your grandfather isn't a very nice guy, which is why your mother ran away from home so young. I did too." That had finally gotten Keith's attention and he watched me as I paced nervously in front of him. After another bout of extended silence (and pacing), I figured I might as well just spit it all out. "I guess I said that wrong," I corrected myself. "Your grandfather isn't a very nice werewolf."

It was only after Keith started laughing that I realized the kid didn't believe a word I was saying. Okay, sure, he probably believed his grandfather was an asshole, but tossing out the term "werewolf" with no lead-in had made my nephew think I was making a joke. And as much as I tried to bring him back down to reality, Keith had determined we were kidding around.

"That's a good one, Aunt Terra," he gasped finally, when his belly laughs were all played out. "But what did you really drag me up here to say?"

"I..."I began, but Wolfie had decided to take matters into his own hands. Or, paws, rather. The werewolf stood and walked a couple of feet away from Keith, then shifted into human form.

***

"WHOA!" KEITH EXCLAIMED. "You weren't kidding!"

"And you're not helping!" I shot at Wolfie. Sure, the alpha had made my point abundantly clear, but I didn't think my nephew was ready to see shifters in action when he probably thought they existed only in comic books. Figuring that I'd better get ready to deal with symptoms of shock, I squelched my anger at the alpha and reached out a hand toward my nephew.

Keith didn't seem as traumatized as I'd expected him to be, though. "You need some clothes, dude," was his first statement to the wolf who had suddenly turned into a man. Clearly, Keith's teenage world view expected to see ten impossible things before breakfast, and Wolfie smirked at me as if to say, I told you so. Okay, maybe the alpha had a better feel for the situation than I did after all.

"You'll get used to the nudity," I told Keith, even though I clearly wasn't. My wolf was fully alert now and begging to come out to play, but I didn't want to make Keith shift immediately after taking in the notion of werewolves being real. It was tough tearing my eyes away from Wolfie, though, especially since he seemed to be giving off an even more enticing aroma than previously. Okay, yes, the alpha's nakedness was a factor in my intense gaze too.

"My clothes are down there," Wolfie answered Keith, pointing over the other side of the mountain, where we could just make out a colony of mobile homes through the trees. "I thought we might go down and meet the pack." The alpha looked at me challengingly, and I shrugged, turning the question over to my nephew with a tilt of my head.

"Are there girls in your pack?" Keith asked, and I rolled my eyes again. Just what I needed--a teenage werewolf more interested in the concept of seeing naked female bodies than in his own shift.

***

"HUMANS IN THE HOUSE!" came the call from the kitchen as we entered the first trailer. "Put on some clothes."

The werewolf compound consisted of six mobile homes lined up in a rectangle with a huge greenhouse atrium filling the center. As we'd walked up from the outside, I saw doors scattered along each wall's length, giving the inhabitants easy access to the outdoors. Inside, walls had been ripped out to join the trailers into one structure, and large windows had been inserted into the atrium-side walls, turning the compound into an intriguing example of modern redneck architecture.

The contents of the first trailer were even more interesting than the architecture, though. Four young werewolves were scattered around what seemed to be a communal living room, and I was surprised that no one stopped what they were doing when Wolfie entered the room. I was used to an alpha's presence having an instant dampening effect on his male underlings, who would have immediately stood to attention in my old pack. Women in Haven were expected to avert their eyes and to make themselves scarce. But no one here seemed particularly interested in Wolfie. Until, that is, the alpha called out an answer to the still-unseen speaker, "There are no humans here, Tia."

That silenced the crowd and trained every eye on me and Keith. Before anyone else could speak, a middle-aged woman walked out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel and looking us over. "You're right," she said, and a wide smile of welcome sprang out onto her face. "You must be Keith and Terra. Chase has told me a lot about you."

The woman appeared to be the pack mother of the clan, and I guessed from her words that she was Chase's parent. I liked Tia right away, but hated the way my heart sank at her words. Despite myself, I wished that Wolfie had been the one telling this mother figure a lot about me, clear proof that I'd spent too much time lately talking to my wolf.

So I was glad when Keith drew my attention back to the task at hand. "Everyone here is a werewolf?" the teenager asked. In his shoes, I would have been daunted by the prospect, but my nephew just appeared intrigued.

"Well, we're all werewolf kin," a young woman a few years older than Keith answered him. "Some of us are halfies like me, or are technically humans. But, yeah, most of us can shift."

As the girl continued talking, their alpha slipped away down the hall, and I gave my wolf a little slap to remind her to pay less attention to the naked man and more attention to the nephew we were supposed to be protecting. Not that Keith seemed to need any help. I was overwhelmed to be in the middle of a pack again after so long, but the kid was eagerly lapping up the attention as each werewolf introduced himself. Keith was clearly in his element, glad-handing the lot of them like he was a politician on the campaign trail--my nephew's alpha blood coming out at last. But even though I was glad he was happy, I was feeling more overwhelmed by the minute. Loud voices and strong wolf odors were making the walls appear to close in around me, and as I strained to make out Keith's words to ensure he was okay, I realized that even sound seemed to be receding into the distance.

My panic attack was so engrossing that I didn't notice at first when Wolfie ended up back by my side, this time clad in jeans and a button-down flannel shirt. I could feel his wolf, though, and my own darker side rose up to meet it, which had the fortunate side effect of squashing my panic. My inner wolf saw no reason to be concerned about these obviously friendly pack mates, and she saw every reason to be interested in the scents wafting off the alpha beside us. So I let her have her head...or rather our head...for a few seconds as I caught my breath.

"Do you want us to help him shift?" that alpha asked by way of greeting, cutting right to the chase. His brown eyes were piercing as he trained them on my face and ignored everyone else in the room. I, on the other hand, couldn't resist casting one more glance around the common area, noticing that no one had batted an eyelash when Wolfie walked back in. This really did appear to be a very different kind of pack than the one I'd grown up in.

Wolfie's words were also unusual for an alpha, since most pack leaders would have just taken over and decided when a young male was ready to shift. It was traditional for a group of older males to help a younger male through his initial change, and given how hard it had been to pin down my own wolf lately, I figured Wolfie's suggestion was probably a safer move than having me walk Keith through his first change of form alone. On the other hand, I was the one who would have to deal with the aftermath over the next few days and weeks, so I was leery of initiating Keith's shift until I had my own wolf under better control. I muddled my way through the explanation, expecting Wolfie to laugh at my inability to shift, but instead, he just seemed puzzled.

"I saw you as a wolf," the alpha said, confused. Of course he wouldn't understand how much I struggled with keeping my wolf down and letting her rise at will since he'd met me once in human form in the city and once in wolf form in the woods--perfectly appropriate werewolf behavior.

"And she was beautiful. I remember," I answered wryly, recalling Wolfie's words to me on the mountaintop.

"You are beautiful," Wolfie corrected me again, just as he had when we first spoke in human form. "There is no you and she," he elaborated. "There's just us, the wolf."

"Maybe for a bloodling," I countered. "But it's not that easy. Female werewolves change uncontrollably, you know that. When I left Haven, I had to take control of my shifts to protect all of the humans around me. Unfortunately, I seem to have done too good of a job of taking control."

He tilted his head to the side, considering, and then understanding slowly dawned in the alpha's eyes. "You're the opposite of a bloodling," Wolfie suggested. "You've let the human take over. You don't even realize the wolf is no more animal than the rest of you is." He paused, then added playfully, "It's not like you're going to eat small children."

I flushed, thinking of Wolfie walking through the city on a tiny leash that wouldn't have held him back if he'd taken a notion to bite the hand off that kindergartner...and of my own wolf's reaction to an earlier child. "But your wolf is different," I countered. Never mind that bloodling wolves were supposed to be less able to handle life around humans, not more able.

"How so?" the alpha asked, cocking his head to the side again in honest question.

Which is precisely when I realized that I'd been having this entire conversation with the wolf, not the man. To my chagrin, I couldn't quite figure out whether that underlined my point, or belied it.

***

BEFORE I COULD ANSWER, my attention was drawn back to Keith, and to the trio of males who were stripping in the middle of the living room. There was only one reason Keith's newfound friends would be getting naked in tandem, and despite my confusion about other issues, I was 100% sure I didn't want my nephew to change for the first time right now.

"They're not going to shift?" I asked frantically. "I don't think Keith's ready to experience his wolf yet...." Whether or not Keith was ready, I sure wasn't, but it appeared that my nephew's first shift was only seconds away.

Taking deep calming breaths, I struggled to pull up my own wolf in preparation. Ever since Wolfie had met us on the mountaintop, my wolf had been hovering in the background, but now she appeared to be sound asleep and refused to answer my call. This was precisely why we needed to wait on Keith's first shift, but I obviously didn't have any say in the matter. I could see the gleam in my nephew's eye as he reached up to unbutton his shirt, putting a hand on one werewolf's shoulder as he kicked off a shoe. We were fast approaching liftoff, no matter how not ready I was.

"Stop," Wolfie said, barely raising his voice. But despite its quietness, the single word cut through the crowd and froze everyone in their tracks. I realized I'd been holding my breath, and let it out in a sudden gust of air. "Ten steps away," the alpha continued in a more normal tone of voice, and the young werewolf males rolled their eyes, but backed up.

"He's ready, Wolfie," one complained, but Wolfie just watched silently before turning back to me.

"They'll give him an example today," the alpha told me, his words loud enough to carry across the room. "Then we'll work on you and let Keith shift another day."

I felt like an over-protective mother when the guys shifted in tandem and my nephew's only response was a crowing "Wicked cool!" But I didn't have much time to obsess over the issue, because Wolfie was already changing gears.

"So, about that date..." he began. Then, before I could argue, Wolfie continued. "Keith will be just fine here for a few hours." And despite my mother-hen instincts, I knew the alpha was right.

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# Chapter 11

I had assumed a date would mean dinner and perhaps a movie, but I should have realized that nothing was conventional around Wolfie. Instead, he herded me out into the atrium, where bushy fig trees and ceiling-high tomato vines were thriving despite the autumnal chill.

"Hey, boss," called a tanned beauty about my age from the other side of a garden bed, and I was embarrassed to feel my wolf wake up and growl nearly audibly. I thought I had smothered the sound, but Wolfie's cheek quirked up into a lop-sided smile.

"Galena," he called back. "This is Terra from across the mountain." The woman waved a welcome, and then another female werewolf popped up in front of us, surprising a gasp out of me. Just as beautiful as Galena, but with a buzz haircut that showed off her slender neck, this second werewolf swooped in to give Wolfie a deep kiss on the mouth, and this time I wasn't able to stifle my wolf's complaint.

"I'd be jealous if I had the slightest notion you swung that way, Quetzalli," Galena called across the garden beds, and it took me a minute to realize she was talking to the swooping kisser.

"I'm Galena's partner," the second woman explained to me with a smirk, breaking the kiss but continuing to tease me by trailing a finger over Wolfie's chest. The alpha leaned into the woman's touch, and to my chagrin my wolf growled more loudly, prompting Wolfie and Quetzalli both to laugh at my reaction.

Again, it was Galena who pointed out that I was being played. Walking around the garden bed to join us at last, she slapped the alpha lightly on the chest, right where her partner's fingers had been just moments before. "Play nice, Wolfie," she admonished, her voice light and with no hint of the jealousy my wolf was feeling. She didn't bother to chastise her partner, merely taking the other woman's hand and dimpling as she offered up her own mouth to be kissed.

"Just seeing if Terra likes me," the alpha rumbled in reply, but he lowered his head in submission to the tiny werewolf. Despite my wolf's reaction to Quetzalli's game, I couldn't help smiling to see such a massive alpha letting the minuscule woman boss him around, and my mood mellowed further at the real show of affection between Quetzalli and Galena.

"You can walk her through our suite if she wants to see what it's like," Galena continued, letting her partner go with a smile and heading back around the raised bed so she could heft a bundle of weeds into a wheelbarrow. Just glancing around, I could tell the greenhouse was a serious effort of space-saving food production, and this duo seemed to be the wolves in charge. So far, I liked what I saw...especially once it became clear that these bronzed beauties weren't really interested in the alpha.

"Do you?" Wolfie asked, raising that sexy eyebrow at me, and it took a second for me to realize he was asking if I wanted to see their suite.

"If you're sure they won't mind?" I answered, and Wolfie led the way across cobblestones and through sliding glass doors into the couple's quarters.

It was hard to tell that the suite was half of a single-wide trailer since the space had been completely gutted and rebuilt, one room turned into a bedroom and the other into a private studio, sitting room, and seed-starting zone. Wolfie waved a hand at a row of sticks poking out of pots by the windows. "If the green thumbs were here, they would tell you those are grape cuttings." He went on to explain that the seedlings were kale, tatsoi, and tokyo bekana, ready to go into outside beds, and I was surprised that an alpha cared enough to learn the specifics of his wolves' trades. We walked back through the atrium and into the suite opposite, which was full of another surprise--banks of computer equipment.

"What's all this?" I asked, startled. Werewolves tended to stick to the past--I knew a lot of adult werewolves who never learned to drive, preferring horses and buggies. Similarly, cell phones, computers, and other modern gadgets were generally ignored, but Wolfie's pack seemed to be high-tech, even by non-werewolf standards.

"This," Wolfie said, gesturing at the rows of monitors, "is how we pay the bills. We provide computer security for big companies. Chase and I do a lot of the heavy lifting, but even the yahoos you saw changing in front of Keith put in a few hours a week on the simple stuff."

I was starting to relax, since this date looked like more of a pack tour than a social outing, but Wolfie liked to keep me on my toes. "And this," he added, "is where I give you the kiss your wolf keeps asking for." He tilted my head up to meet his lips, and if I'd been a werecat instead of a werewolf, I would have purred.

***

"ARE YOU READY FOR YOUR next lesson?" the alpha whispered in my ear as he pulled back out of our kiss. I had no clue what kind of lesson Wolfie was talking about, but I was wobbly enough from the lip lock that I just nodded and allowed him to pull me out the door on the opposite side of the computer lab and into the outdoors.

"It's your choice whether you'd feel more comfortable working on your shift outside or inside," the alpha said, bursting my blissful bubble. "My room is over here," he added, pointing away from the common area to a door on the far corner of the compound. "Or we can head back up onto the mountain if you want even more privacy."

I tensed up immediately. This wasn't the kind of lesson I was interested in at the moment, and my wolf agreed. The two of us had finally come to the conclusion that Wolfie was a good guy, and we were interested in seeing more of his bare skin, not in working on changing forms. I hadn't allowed myself to have sex with anything that didn't plug into the wall since leaving Haven, and now that Wolfie had woken up my sexual side with a kiss, I was having trouble putting it back to sleep.

To my annoyance, Wolfie laughed at me. "You should see the look on your face," he explained. "At least you're talking to your wolf now. What does she want?" My face turned bright red and Wolfie laughed even harder.

"Isn't this supposed to be a date?" I countered to cover my embarrassment. "Yes, I agree, I need to figure out how to get my shift back under control so I can help Keith, but that's work, and dates are supposed to be fun."

Wolfie shook his head at me sadly. "That's where you're wrong, Terra. Shifting is fun. It's a roller coaster and sexy as hell. How could you forget that?"

"Maybe shifts are like that for a bloodling," I said, then regretted the words immediately when Wolfie's head bowed down, his boyish enthusiasm gone.

"Is that how you think of me?" he asked. "Am I just a wolf to you?"

This was a tough question, and one I didn't particularly care to answer. Having met Wolfie in wolf form, it felt natural to think of his wolf first and the man second. And the wolf did seem to be looking out of the man's eyes a lot of the time, even when Wolfie was in human form. In fact, it was Wolfie's strong canine presence that made me feel a little better about reclaiming my own wolf. On the other hand, I definitely didn't have a fur fetish, and I thought Wolfie was unbelievably hot, so, no, I didn't just see his wolf.

Oops, had I said that last bit out loud? This seemed to be the day for me to practice my blushing and for the sexy alpha to laugh at me, but it was better than seeing his head bowed down in pain.

"We'll get to that," Wolfie promised, tweaking my nose, which just annoyed me even more. "But it sounds like I now owe you a real, human date."

***

"FIRST DATES ARE SUPPOSED to be awkward, right?" Wolfie asked after we were seated in a booth at the only restaurant in town--a Mexican joint with flashy sombreros lining the walls.

"Why? Do you feel awkward?" I asked. Wolfie never looked like he felt awkward, although he certainly seemed to prompt that emotion in the people around him. Just a few minutes earlier, the alpha had stared into the eyes of the man who held the door open for me until the guy let go of the handle and nearly crushed me with the closing door. I gathered the glare was due to Wolfie feeling possessive, because after the guy fled, my date had just smiled contentedly. The werewolf across from me hadn't felt awkward about that faux pas though, and he certainly didn't seem to be feeling awkward now either, so I was stumped by his question.

"Nope," Wolfie replied, carefully easing the wrapper back onto his straw so he could shoot it across the room...again. "I just wanted to make sure you were getting the human-date experience."

I had to laugh...and to put my hand over the straw to prevent him from firing round two. "I think this part of the date is where we're supposed to get to know one another," I explained, feeling like I was twenty years older than the guy across from me.

"Oh, right," Wolfie said agreeably, pulling a printout from his pocket. He read over the page, mumbling to himself. "Who's my best friend? You know that already. Do you have a nickname? Terra the Terror--pretty good. How about this--what was your family like growing up?" The alpha turned his gaze back on me and it was all I could do to restrain myself from reaching across the table and kissing him again. He was boyfully mischievous...and irresistible.

"Okay, you're right, this is stupid," I agreed. "What do you want to do on our date?"

***

WE PARKED AT AN OVERLOOK, the valley spreading out below us and the first stars starting to blink to life in the indigo sky. Wolfie had selected a battered pickup truck from the three vehicles parked in front of the pack's compound when we first left, and I'd initially thought that was a bit of a strange date ride. But now I realized that Wolfie had planned from the beginning to take me here, and hadn't wanted a center console to stand in his way.

The alpha unbuckled his own seatbelt, then reached around to unsnap mine as well. As he pulled the straps away from my body, they grazed my belly, and I shivered in anticipation. "Are you still scared of me?" Wolfie asked, pausing as he misdiagnosed my tremor.

I shook my head. "No, that was a different kind of shiver," I answered, my voice husky with emotion.

The wolf in my date's eyes seemed even brighter as Wolfie smiled down at me. "Okay, so this is the lesson I had planned earlier," he rumbled, his voice deepening as he scooted closer along the seat. "Your wolf and you share the same body," he breathed in my ear, running one finger very gently down the side of my neck. "I want you to feel what she feels when I touch you here...and here...."

For a second, I tensed up again, but then I remembered how easily Wolfie had subdued my darker half up on the mountaintop. Even if I accidentally let her all the way out, the alpha would have no trouble taking control of the situation. And there was no one present at the moment but us, so even in the very unlikely scenario where I shifted to wolf form and escaped the alpha, I wouldn't do any damage.

When I was first learning to control my wolf, it helped to visualize locking her away in her cage when things got difficult, so now I used the same visualization in reverse. My human self walked down the imaginary stairs in my mind, turned a key in her iron-barred door, and stood back to let her walk out.

As the canine stepped out of her dark cell, I mused that I hadn't remembered my wolf being so beautiful. Could Wolfie somehow be making me see her through his eyes? Her fur gleamed and her eyes were bright with anticipation. She didn't try to push past me the way I thought she would, either, but instead nudged her head up under my hand, and we walked together back up toward the surface.

"I can see her in your eyes," Wolfie hummed happily, running one finger over my lips. If I'd thought his caresses felt good before, they were sublime now with my wolf's emotions strengthening my own. It felt like the difference between hot chocolate from a cut-rate powder and the homemade version concocted from whole milk, cocoa, and dark honey. When Wolfie kissed me the second time, my wolf and I seemed to merge into one breathless, happy whole.

After what seemed like an eternity, but was also far too soon, Wolfie leaned back. "And that was lesson two," he concluded, once again tweaking my nose.

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# Chapter 12

"I still don't get why I can't just hurry up and shift," Keith complained a week later when we were once again hanging out at the werewolf compound. Despite his words, my nephew was ecstatic, surrounded by the pack's nurturing acceptance. He and the yahoos (as Wolfie liked to call them) were playing poker in the living area while the alpha and I cooked lunch in the kitchen annex off to one side. From the amount of hooting and hollering going on out there, I had a feeling the card game used clothing removal for scoring.

Fen--the young woman who had first spoken to Keith a week ago and who was a bit of an honorary yahoo--was right in the middle of the action, and I know a human parental figure would have been shocked. Even as a werewolf, and despite knowing that Fen could take care of herself, I couldn't resist drifting into the open archway between our two rooms as I heard her voice chime in to respond to Keith's complaint.

"Because, kid, you're still learning control," the young woman said snottily, poking my nephew in his bare chest.

I had a feeling Keith had lost more games than he really needed to in order to display his physique in front of Fen...even though the gawky youngster didn't have much to show off. The only clothing the teenager had left was his pants, presumably his underwear, and a lone sock, but Fen seemed entirely uninterested in the view. When you live among werewolves, strip poker just doesn't have the same explosive impact.

"Once you can pull up your wolf partway and send him back down every time," she continued, "Then you can go full-on wolf."

"And once your Aunt Terra is ready, then you can shift," Wolfie called over my head. The alpha didn't even need to put any command into his voice to make the statement stick--despite their rowdiness, the yahoos were some of the most obedient young werewolves I'd ever met. I smiled up at the man who had made the last seven days a whirlwind of excitement. In human parlance, we still hadn't made it past second base--Wolfie refused to go further until I felt 100% comfortable about the partnership with my wolf. But boy did second base feel good....

"I think I need the kind of personal lessons Aunt Terra is getting," Keith said, leering at Fen, who rolled her eyes and responded: "In your dreams, kid."

***

"WHY THE BIG SMILE?" Wolfie asked as we left the younger set to their cards and retreated back to the stove to finish prepping a pot of chili.

I couldn't resist smiling even wider as the alpha lightly traced one finger down my bare arm. I hadn't noticed until this morning that the slowly fading packless ache was completely gone, along with the bone-deep gnawing of my wolf, and the realization had left me feeling even lighter on my feet. And why should any pain linger when I was surrounded by two nurturing packs every day? Each evening, Keith and I headed home to eat dinner with Dale, who was his usual caring self, if completely oblivious to the werewolfery going on around him. Then we'd get up the next morning and spend the day with Wolfie's pack, helping around the kitchen and garden, or just hanging out with wolves who were starting to feel like old friends. With the easy familiarity of youth, Keith had already become bosom buddies with Blaze, the youngest of the yahoos, and Galena and I were taking the slightly slower, adult path to the same place. Even Quetzalli and I had reached a sort of truce--I ignored her and she didn't yank my chain...too often.

No reason to tell Wolfie all that, though, because his wolf could sense exactly how I felt. "You alphas always think it's all about you," I teased him, but couldn't help adding, "I'm just happy because of your pack. It feels so good to be around werewolves again without having to put up with my father's old-fashioned bullshit."

"It can be your pack too," Wolfie offered, his rampant wolf making the alpha up-front about his intentions, as usual. "There's an empty suite next door to my room...."

Despite my good mood, Wolfie's overt suggestion took a bit of the bounce out of my steps. I wasn't ready to go there yet. Yes, Wolfie's pack seemed perfect on the outside, but I'd seen too much pack awfulness to jump right back onto that horse. Plus: "We have to figure out what we're going to do about Keith and my father first," I responded, the smile suddenly absent from my face. I'd been putting off thinking about that thorny issue, content to live in the moment for the last week, but I wouldn't be surprised if my father had scouts with telephoto lenses keeping an eye on me from the surrounding hills. If I didn't make progress soon, I might be in for another visit from cousin Milo.

"That seems simple," Wolfie said comfortably. And to a wolf-dominated alpha, the issue of another wolf trying to take what he considered his property probably did appear simple. I could even guess at Wolfie's solution before the words came out of his mouth. "I'll confront the old man and he'll leave you alone."

"Wolfie, you don't understand how a pack like Haven works," I countered. "You can't just walk in the door and challenge my father to some kind of wolf fight to the death. The Chief would send out a half dozen goons like Milo and you'd never make it off the main road." Plus, as much as I wasn't willing to say it out loud, the Chief was my father, and I no more wanted him to get hurt than I ever wanted to see him again. This was one of the reasons I had refrained from thinking about the metaphorical sword hanging over my head--Wolfie and I didn't see eye to eye on the issue at all.

"Okay," Wolfie agreed easily. "How about I mate with you and offer to merge packs? Keith can be the heir for both of us."

That idea startled a humorless laugh out of me. My father wouldn't dream of allying his century-old pack with Wolfie's upstart band of misfits, never mind the fact that mating with Wolfie was twice as big of a commitment as moving in with his pack would have been. "Seriously, Wolfie? Do you know anything about my father?" I asked him, just as Keith draped himself across the archway and interrupted our conversation.

"The guys and I were thinking of heading home to check out my gaming system," my nephew said, a wheedle in his voice. "Is that okay?"

I was glad to have the troublesome topic tabled, and I couldn't resist wondering whether an afternoon alone with Wolfie might tempt the alpha to relax his standards and allow hands below the waist. And, personal feelings aside, Keith's charm made the request hard to turn down, especially since I knew the yahoos would keep an eye on the kid. "Sure," I agreed, tossing the youngster my car keys without further thought. "Just call if you need anything. And Wade drives."

"And you practice partial shifts every time a game ends," Wolfie added, a slight growl entering his voice to ensure that his orders, at least, would be obeyed.

"Sure thing, Uncle Wolfie," Keith said jokingly and shot out the door before the alpha could belt him with a dish towel.

***

CHASE HAD JOINED US in the kitchen to hunt down a midmorning snack when intruders came pounding on the compound door. Wolfie smelled trouble a moment before the racket began and I noticed his shoulders tensing, so I was prepared for the way his wolf took command behind the alpha's eyes.

"Go out the back way and over the mountain to Keith," he ordered Chase, then the alpha hit a red button on the wall that set off barely audible alarms ringing throughout the compound. In response, adult werewolves converged on the common area nearly as quickly as Wolfie and I made it out of the kitchen.

Quetzalli and Galena were the first to arrive, dirt still on their fingers from the garden but all softness gone from their eyes. The human Acacia had her daughter Lantana latched onto one breast, her werewolf husband Berndt hovering protectively over them. Tia was bleary-eyed, as if she'd just woken up from a nap, leaving only Wolfie's uncle Oscar unaccounted for. Except for the yahoos, Keith, and Chase, of course, who I hoped would all be together soon, safely on the other side of the mountain.

"Berndt, take Acacia and Lantana to the safe room," Wolfie ordered, jerking his head toward the left side of the compound, and the father seemed glad to obey. I expected Wolfie to send the rest of the women packing too, even though that would have left him with only the missing Oscar for backup, but Wolfie continued to overturn my preconceived notions of alpha behavior. He motioned for Tia, Quetzalli, and Galena to form a protective arc behind us as he and I walked together toward the door.

It's only been ten days, I told myself. Father wouldn't show up before the month is over. But I didn't believe my own lie. I'd been expecting Chief Wilder to arrive on our doorstep ever since Wolfie sent my cousin packing a week before, and it almost felt like a relief to be able to stop looking over my shoulder. Almost.

The pounding stopped abruptly when Wolfie wrenched open the door, leaving one of my cousins to catch his balance as he lowered his fist mid-pound. The cousin sidled away down the steps, giving us a clear view of Chief Wilder leaning against a huge black SUV and flanked by four more male cousins. A fifth cousin restrained Oscar, the older werewolf's hands tied together behind his back with a zip tie while a bruise rose on one cheek. For the first time ever, I heard a low growl rise out of usually gentle Tia's throat as she took in the view.

After spending time around Wolfie's bulk, my father appeared smaller and older, but no less dangerous. In fact, if we'd been in wolf form, I would have expected the Chief to circle around behind our pack and jump on Wolfie from the rear, taking down the stronger alpha through pure cunning. Not that my father needed to use trickery since he currently made up for anything he lacked in personal strength due to the presence of hefty enforcers strewn across our front yard. We were clearly outclassed.

But Wolfie would never let another alpha show him up. "Crazy Wilder," Wolfie greeted the Chief with the nickname I'd never heard anyone say to the old man's face. "Welcome to my humble abode."

I waited for the scene to descend into bedlam, but after a moment, my father merely began to laugh. "Bloodling Wolf," he responded in kind. "Aren't alphas supposed to protect their women and children instead of vice versa?" The older alpha nodded at one of my cousins, who sent Oscar stumbling toward the front door. "Here, have your mother's bleeding-heart brother back. It looks like your pack is a little short on testosterone." As if to highlight his words, my father leered at the women behind me, and I could feel Quetzalli clenching her hands into fists in response.

We parted to let Oscar inside and Tia drew him out of my father's line of sight to worry at the zip ties around his wrists. But my attention remained riveted on the two alphas. Although I found it hard to believe, Wolfie seemed bored by the exchange, smothering a yawn as he stared down my father, whose face darkened at the affront. Turning his eyes to easier prey, Chief Wilder addressed me.

"Little Terra," he continued. "I had expected to see more progress after all this time. Why hasn't my grandson been introduced to his wolf?" When the words of a reply stuck in my throat, a wide smile strained my father's cheeks, although his eyes remained cold. "So the reports are true--my daughter is a shiftless wolf. As useless as her brother."

I stumbled backwards as if I'd been struck. Like the term "meat," "shiftless" was an awful slur to apply to a werewolf. But my father was right. Despite all of Wolfie's hard work to bring my wolf and me together, the last time I'd locked myself into my basement room and attempted to shift, I hadn't felt a single hint of the change. I'd have to learn to embrace the term. Shiftless. My head bowed, and I was no longer able to look into my father's eyes.

Wolfie had been quiet, giving me the chance to respond on my own, but when I seemed struck dumb, the younger alpha angled his body to hide me from view. "What do you want, old man?" Wolfie demanded, his tone as cold as my father's had been.

"Well, I certainly don't want her anymore," my father replied cheerfully, as if he and Wolfie were two farmers leaning over a fence to talk horse flesh. "I looked into your claim, by the way," he added, "and Keith is no more your heir than Brooke was your mate. I've taken what I wanted."

With those parting words, my father and cousins slid back into their gleaming SUV. Doors banged, and the huge vehicle rolled down the driveway and out of our sight.

***

WOLFIE UNDERSTOOD WHAT had happened before I did. I'd never heard such a stream of invective flow out of the alpha's mouth as I did when he grabbed his keys and leaped into his truck, the rest of us still gaping in the doorway. But before Wolfie could start the engine, Chase bounded up in wolf form. Alone.

Understanding dawned on all of us at once, and I sank down to sit on the steps as Wolfie's head dropped onto the steering wheel. His beta shifted back to two-footed humanity quickly and moved closer to the truck before he reported.

"The yahoos are okay," Chase told his pack leader quietly. "But Keith is gone."

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# Chapter 13

"A bribe," Chase suggested.

Wolfie's pack was sitting around the compound's dining table, and had been for the last three hours. After stopping the hot-headed yahoos from immediately running after my father and nephew, we'd been tossing around ideas for how to bring Keith home, but we didn't seem to be making any progress. In fact, the pack appeared to be falling apart rather than coming together. The young males were a mass of testosterone despite Tia's best efforts at maintaining order, and even Quetzalli and Galena were bickering.

Part of the issue was the absence of our alpha. The firm hold Wolfie had maintained on his temper during my father's little visit slipped its bounds at last when the alpha realized Keith had been snatched out from under our noses--I'd never seen such a fast involuntary shift. Chase had been forced to open the truck door to let his alpha run up the mountainside and vent his temper somewhere safe, and Oscar had quickly shifted to follow after him.

In Wolfie's absence, Chase should have been in charge, but I could tell the beta was as worried about Wolfie as he was about my nephew. Still, his most recent suggestion was the best we'd heard so far.

"Bribe him with what?" I asked. My father's favorite possession was power, closely followed by money to prop up that power. Unfortunately, a young pack like Wolfie's hadn't had time to earn either of my father's preferred playthings. Not that I didn't think Wolfie's compound was whimsically appealing, but living in mobile homes made it unlikely that the pack would be able to rustle up anything that would capture my father's attention.

"The usual," responded an unlikely voice from the front door. "Money."

We all turned in unison to watch Keith's father enter, followed closely by Wolfie and Oscar. The two werewolves were dressed in jogging pants that I recognized from Dale's running collection, and my eyebrows weren't the only ones to rise at seeing an uninitiated human brought into our pow-wow. Tia was merely the first to voice her concern.

"Wolfie?" she asked. "You didn't...?" She tilted her head toward Dale in inquiry and the easy-going doctor thinned his lips.

"He did," Dale confirmed. "It was pretty easy to convince me after two wolves shifted into neighbors on the front porch."

One of the yahoos started swearing, and I couldn't help but agree. Wolfie had broken a cardinal werewolf rule--outsiders weren't to know what we were unless they moved in with the pack. In a pinch, I figured we could argue that Dale had joined the pack when he married Brooke, even though my sister hadn't seen fit to inform her husband of her wolf nature. Still....

"My call," Wolfie said simply, and I could feel the pack fitting itself back together at his calm words. As pack leader, the choice had indeed been Wolfie's call. Now, Wolfie turned his eyes toward Keith's father, and the attention of everyone in the room shifted with him.

"I understand that bringing in the police is out of the question," Dale said calmly, and for the first time I could imagine my brother-in-law in the emergency room sewing up a patient as quickly and efficiently as possible so the injured person wouldn't bleed out. This was a side of Brooke's husband that I hadn't been aware of. "Wolfie says Keith isn't currently in any danger because his grandfather wants him as a sort of leader in training," Dale continued, "but I'd like to get my son back as quickly as possible. Between my retirement account and mortgaging the house, I should be able to come up with a quarter of a million dollars by tomorrow."

My eyes bulged. Yes, that kind of money would speak even to Crazy Wilder. Especially if we added in the bargaining chip I'd been afraid to bring up but knew would sweeten the pot.

Unfortunately, now that Wolfie was back, I'd have to wait even longer to mention my contribution. This was one bargaining chip I knew the alpha would disapprove of.

***

AS THE PACK CHANGED gears and began ironing out the logistics of meeting with my father, I drew Dale aside to take care of one of the loose threads in my plan. I expected my brother-in-law to refuse to talk to me--after all, I'd lied by omission and was ultimately responsible for his son's kidnapping. But instead, he simply enfolded me into another one of his world-class hugs. I could feel tears prickling behind my eyes, and was surprised to notice my wolf adding her sensations to my own. I might be shiftless, but it felt good for a wolf to join me under my human skin.

"I'm so sorry, Dale," I told him as soon as my brother-in-law released me, seeing tears in his eyes to match my own. "I should have told you, but I didn't think I could...." My voice trailed off, the words seeming lame even to my ears.

But Dale was kind even in his grief. "It's not your fault," he answered, giving me another pat on the back. "I guessed something was going on with Brooke, but I'd forgotten all about it until you went out for such a sudden run your first day here. If I'd been more present, I would have figured out that Keith's issues were more than a puberty-onset mental illness." Dale's lips drew down as he counted up all of the hours he'd been on call and not present in his son's life. I'm sure Keith's age made his father's guilt much worse since the kid had reached that teenage stage when parents are decidedly uncool, so the boy had kept his head in his video games when Dale was home. Nothing like a teenager to make a parent feel guilty.

"You'll have him back soon," I promised, even though I knew that no plan, no matter how sound, was guaranteed while my father was the opposing force. But we had to think positively or we'd all turn wolf and end up chewing apart trees on the mountainside the way Wolfie had.

"I know," Dale agreed, propping us both up with his certainty. "And I want to thank you for all the help you've given Keith already. He's been so much happier since you moved in, and I know it's more than just understanding the changes he's going through. It's good for him to have his aunt around."

I glanced over Dale's shoulder at the yahoos and older werewolves who were deep in conversation around the table, and felt the first wrench of the packless ache I'd thought had been quenched in my stomach. Of course, if my plan worked, I'd feel that ache 24/7 in the near future, so it might as well get warmed up. "You shouldn't be thanking me," I answered my brother-in-law. "That happiness is all due to hanging out with Wolfie's pack. Werewolves aren't meant to be alone."

***

"NO," CHASE SAID ADAMANTLY, and I looked over my shoulder to make sure the door to his room was firmly closed behind us. At any other time, I would have been checking out the beta's apartment, wondering if Wolfie's next-door accommodations looked similar. But now my attention was riveted on the werewolf in front of me. If I couldn't get Chase to play along, this whole plan was doomed to failure.

"Yes," I hissed back, keeping my voice low in case another member of the pack left the dining room and walked past Chase's door. "You don't know my father like I do," I continued. "The Chief will want something more than money, something to make us all bleed. And this is the only thing I can think of."

Chase started pacing furiously between his bed and desk, and I took a step back to give him room to think. While I was flattered that the beta didn't like my idea, I needed Chase to think beyond the personal and to realize that what I was suggesting was for the good of the entire pack. In the end, I had confidence that this more level-headed member of the pack's management team would see my point of view...eventually.

"I know my father made it sound like he wasn't interested in me," I started, but Chase cut me off.

"He was bluffing, obviously," the beta finished my thought. "Or rather, he was trying to break you. Chief Wilder would be quite content to have a daughter at his beck and call, as long as she was cowed and led by an easily managed husband." He smiled grimly. "In fact, you'd probably be a lot less trouble than Keith. If I don't miss my guess, the kid is kicking and screaming."

"So we're agreed?" I queried, surprised that Chase had come around so easily. I'd considered a whole slew of arguments, but didn't want to spend any more time than necessary closeted with Wolfie's second-in-command for fear someone would come pounding on the door and catch us in the act of betrayal. I breathed a sigh of relief at the thought that the deal was struck, although the packless ache in my stomach grew even stronger.

But apparently I wasn't out of the woods yet. "Wolfie will never go for it," Chase rebutted, and I could feel frustration pushing my wolf up to the surface. I'd thought Chase understood the whole point of this clandestine conversation, but apparently I'd have to spell it out for him.

"That's why I'm talking to you," I said slowly, then watched as understanding dawned in the beta's eyes. He opened his mouth angrily, then closed it and resumed his pacing. A full minute passed before Chase spoke to me, and then his words were cold as ice.

"You'll break him," Chase told me, pausing in his path to stare directly into my eyes. I'd thought that Chase and I were becoming friends, but his expression made it clear I was now burning any bridge I'd thought had been built between us. Chase's loyalty to his alpha was far greater than any friendship he and I could have forged in the last week. As much as the realization hurt, though, it was a moot point--I wouldn't be part of this pack much longer.

"He's a bloodling wolf," I countered, as if that explained everything. And to me, it did. Yes, Wolfie would feel betrayed, but he'd get over it. No loss of attachment could break a wolf's spirit.

"You still don't know him at all," Chase muttered, almost to himself, and resumed pacing. But he hadn't refused outright, so I pulled out my next verbal sally.

"Think for a minute about what Wolfie will do when my father refuses to take the money," I said to the beta, and I could tell I had his attention by the way his steps slowed. "You're thinking that the worst-case scenario is that Keith will have to stay with my father, and I agree that's not the end of the world. It would be a real shame for a sweet kid like my nephew to be turned into an alpha asshole by my father, but Keith is old enough that he'd find a way to hold his own, at least somewhat." I paused and then painted the picture I could see so vividly in my own mind. "But you and I both know that Wolfie wouldn't let that happen," I continued, my voice even lower. "If my father refuses to strike the deal, Wolfie will challenge him. And my father plays dirty. Wolfie wouldn't leave Haven alive."

"And this pack would fall apart," Chase fleshed out the end of the scenario softly. At least I wasn't the only one that understood how this pack of outcasts depended on Wolfie for survival. Chase was a nice guy and an efficient administrator, but the pack would disintegrate without Wolfie's strong leadership, and that would leave a lot of werewolves out in the cold. The yahoos might be able to wiggle their way into another pack, but a wolf like Berndt with a human wife and a halfie daughter would have nowhere to go. No hide-bound pack would take in a pair of lesbian wolves, and Fen wouldn't fare much better as a young-adult halfie. Of course, that didn't even begin to address the way Tia and Chase would implode without their son and brother.

"Now do you understand why this is so important?" I pleaded with Chase. When he didn't respond immediately, I played my trump card. "It's only a last resort," I lied. True, I'd gladly let go of my plan if Dale's monetary bribe proved sufficient, but I knew it wouldn't be. My father would want to watch us squirm, and if someone had to fall on her sword, it should be me.

"Okay," Chase said at last, his shoulders hunching and his voice beaten. "It's a plan."

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# Chapter 14

We cooled our heels for four whole days, which felt like an eternity. Dale needed a chance to liquefy his assets and Chase didn't want us to appear too eager, figuring that every day Chief Wilder had to work around my nephew's teenage orneriness, the more likely the alpha would be to agree to our trade-off. Despite the fact that the delay made perfect sense, though, time seemed to flow like molasses in January.

We all coped in our own individualized ways. Oscar decided the pack needed a span of new fences, so he dragged the yahoos and Fen out into the pasture with dozens of posts and a wire stretcher. By the end of each day, all five were so exhausted, they gobbled down huge amounts of food, then fell into their beds in silence.

Tia took advantage of the pasture crew's hunger, filling her time with bread-baking and stew-cooking. After walking in on the pack mother kneading bread that first morning, dough slamming violently into the wooden countertop and tears streaming down her face, I decided she'd be better off without my help.

Meanwhile, Berndt's little family retreated into their suite to sooth their fears in private, and Quetzalli, Galena, and Wolfie turned wolf. Only Chase seemed calm and in control, but his usually warm eyes were so cold when they looked at me, I felt like I'd already betrayed Wolfie's trust. After the first day of waiting, I decided to take a cue from Berndt and spend the rest of my time hidden away in Dale's basement.

***

WE'D ARRANGED TO MEET at the pack compound the next morning, so I wasn't expecting anyone to interrupt my pity party that final night. After giving up on reading, I ended up simply lying on top of the covers in my room, watching darkness settle over the trees outside as I tried not to think about tomorrow. This is how I'd spent far too much of my time as a teenager, mostly because my father had strict standards for what a young woman could and could not do--few fun things made the cut. I'd thought it was painful then just waiting for time to pass, but the inactivity felt even worse now that I had so much more to lose.

A tap on the windowpane drew me back into the present, and I was surprised to see Wolfie's human face peering in from the outdoors. Although I missed our time together, I had considered it a blessing over the last few days that Wolfie stuck to his canine form. His wolf helped me firm up my resolve, and I'd slowly worked myself around to believing that Wolfie really was more wolf than man, and that I wouldn't hurt him unduly with my betrayal. Now, his change back to human form came as a shock, even though my heart jolted with welcome.

The alpha pointed toward the door, and after wrestling with my inner guilt, I padded across the cold floor on bare feet to let him in. Wolfie immediately moved to take me into his arms, but I stepped back skittishly, only sinking into a chair once the alpha had chosen a spot on the couch five feet away.

"The pack thought you might want to run with us tonight," Wolfie said after a minute, his voice scratchy from disuse, and I shivered, imagining what it would be like to run in wolf form with other werewolves around me. I could almost see the rough-housing yahoos, the sleek beauty of Wolfie and Chase trying to out-pace each other, and my own exuberance as the pack activity swirled around me. I hadn't run with a pack in a decade and now the ache in my stomach hit me so hard I almost doubled over. This was what I'd be losing by going back to Haven.

I had to shut down the vision before I begged Wolfie to keep me from going to Haven tomorrow. "I'm shiftless, remember," I bit out, the words harsher than I'd meant for them to be. But I could breathe again, at least, so the astringency was worth it.

Rather than taking offense, Wolfie tilted his head to one side and considered me for a moment. "You'd change in a group shift," he said confidently. The alpha was suggesting that I be treated like an uninitiated teenager, pulling out my wolf form using proximity to other werewolves changing their skins, and the idea was just as enticing as it was embarrassing. I would have swallowed my pride and gone for the group shift in a heartbeat if I'd planned to stick around, but Wolfie's pack wasn't mine, and it would be better for me to get used to that fact now rather than later. The last thing I needed to do was to bond more with Wolfie's pack and then not to have the guts to go through with my plan tomorrow.

I simply shook my head, and Wolfie scooted closer toward me along the couch, ending up with his knees almost touching mine. "Or we could practice your shift right now," he suggested. The wolfishness in his voice had disappeared and the words were suddenly silky smooth. I shivered again, but this time because I could almost feel the alpha's hands running over my body, my wolf reveling in the caress. I noticed her waking up inside me, and even felt the first hint of hairs pushing their way through the skin of my arms. Tonight we can run, the wolf panted, and maybe more.... My breathing came faster and I was a hair's breadth away from welcoming my furred sister to join me right then and there.

No, I barked back, and before my weaker half could betray us, I jumped to my feet. "No," I repeated, this time aloud. Despite my abruptness, Wolfie rose to stand toe to toe with my human body. He didn't reach out to touch me, but I could feel the heat of his body warming the air between us and his breath seemed to whisper across my skin.

"I know I've made you wait," the alpha started, feeling his way around the human words a bit awkwardly. "I hope you know it's not because I don't find you entrancing." He pulled in a long draft of air through his nose and I trembled, knowing he was smelling both me and my wolf. "I didn't want to rush you," he rumbled softly. "My wolf and I are patient and we want our first time to feel as good for you as it will for us. We will soar," he promised. Then, counterintuitively, the man took a solid step backwards, leaving only cold air between us. My body swayed to follow Wolfie's, but the alpha just kept his gaze fixed on mine and his hands in his pockets. "Your wolf is ready, and so are we, but we can wait if you need time," he finished.

The words felt like a challenge, and I ached to give in to Wolfie, to drag him down the hall, lock the door, and see what a joining of four souls would feel like. Yes, now, my wolf agreed. But that was the worst idea I'd heard all night, assuming I planned to betray the alpha tomorrow.

"I'm not ready," I coughed out, the words hanging up in my throat so I could barely force them through my lips. I turned away, and my wolf-enhanced senses told me that Wolfie had walked forward, that he had his hand an inch from my shoulder. If he touched me, I knew I'd give in, forget Keith tomorrow and save my own happiness instead.

We stood, suspended, forever. Then Wolfie breathed out through his nose and retreated to the door.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he promised. By the time I turned around, there was only a pile of clothes in the doorway, and Wolfie was gone.

***

I KNEW THAT RUNNING with the pack was a bad idea, but I was itching to change forms. The days I'd spent in Wolfie's presence had reminded me that being a wolf didn't have to mean any danger to those around me. In fact, being a canine could offer a freedom and simplicity that was difficult to achieve in my current two-footed form, with the potential to silence the racing thoughts that flowed frantically through my mind. I felt constipated by humanity.

I wouldn't run up the mountain, I told myself, just around the yard. Simply rolling on my back in the grass would feel good in fur form, the itch that seemed to perpetually coat my human skin disappearing for a few minutes at least. My wolf had been so ready to take over when Wolfie was present, I knew I'd be able to make the shift, and afterwards I could go into the challenge of tomorrow confident in myself, no longer a shiftless wolf.

So after the alpha left, I padded outside onto the concrete patio beyond the back door and watched the full moon bathe the lawn in its glow. Looking up at the house, I noticed that Dale's light was off--my brother-in-law had gone to bed, if not to sleep, on the night before his son's fate would be decided. I was safely alone, the nearest neighbor half a mile distant down a long winding driveway and across the highway.

I climbed to the top of the picnic table, the rough wood feeling good beneath my hands and feet, then I slipped off my pajamas and stood naked under the moon. Despite stories to the contrary, the full moon has nothing to do with a werewolf's shift, but the light did seem to caress my bare skin. I could imagine how much better it would feel to leap four-footed off the picnic table, the height giving my jump added momentum. We will soar, Wolfie had said, and I could imagine a more simple, but equally fulfilling, soaring as my wolf took flight from this aerie.

Over the last week, Wolfie and I had been playing as much as learning during my "lessons," but the alpha had still managed to transform the way I perceived the werewolf's shift. Unlike the shifts I was familiar with from my youth, neither the man nor the wolf dominated when Wolfie changed form. Instead, both aspects of his personality were present together, the alpha merging the two to take on the shape that best suited the situation. In fact, much of the time I wasn't entirely sure Wolfie could have told you which form he was wearing that day, just like I might have failed the test if asked to report on my sock color without looking down. To the bloodling, his physical form had as little significance as my clothing choice.

Although I understood the notion intellectually, I knew I needed to feel it in my bones if I hoped to replicate Wolfie's simple shifts. So I crouched on my hands and knees on the picnic table, moving my body through simple yoga poses to fully anchor myself in place. Cat then cow, my back arched up and then my belly sank down. I breathed in deeply, smelling the night air, and then I opened my eyes wide to simulate the wolf's keener vision.

The time had come to move on to the mental side of my shift, and I closed my eyes to turn my focus inwards. The stairs that led down to my wolf's cell had changed over the past week as my wolf and I together re-envisioned our internal landscape. Now, I was walking downhill through an ancient forest, deep moss indenting beneath my bare feet and regal fir trees soaring up on either side. Traveling toward my wolf's lair had turned into a refreshing stroll instead of a terrifying journey through the dark.

At the bottom of the hill, the iron bars had disappeared from the wolf's door and the cage had morphed into an open cave, warmed by a roaring fire. I'd given my wolf a deep-pile carpet to rest upon in front of the fireplace, and this is where she had usually been waiting for me in the past. If the wolf wasn't napping by the fire, ready for me to nudge her awake, she would be pacing at the bottom of the slope, her tail wagging eagerly as I approached.

But not tonight. Instead, I entered the clearing to find that my wolf's den was empty, the fire burned out. With increasing worry, I rushed into the trees, calling her name--my name--but no one answered. Soon, I was running frantically, branches slapping into my face and tearing against my skin. The forest seemed to extend in front of me infinitely without a sign of my other half. By the time I circled back around, even the wolf's cave had disappeared, although the path up to the light of the outside world remained.

A month ago, I would have been thrilled to lose my lupine half, but now I was heart-broken. With a jolt, I returned to the real world, and the splintery wood of the picnic table cut into my knees, painful rather than enticing. Up on the mountaintop, I could hear the howls of Wolfie's pack, but I was just a shiftless human, my own wolf gone. I dropped my head into my hands and cried.

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# Chapter 15

Wolves love to pile together, but I could barely stand being crammed between two youngsters in the backseat of the pack's car. Now I regretted the pure cowardice that had made me choose to ride with the yahoos instead of with the adults. Not that I would have been any better off struggling to avoid Chase's eyes and trying to keep my distance from our alpha, but at least the young werewolves' high spirits wouldn't be clawing down my spine and assaulting my eyes and nose.

"I call shotgun on the way back," Blaze hooted as we approached the end of our trip. The yahoos were so confident of our success that they were bickering over who would have to ride on someone's lap once Keith joined their ranks. I didn't bother telling the young werewolves that there would be one fewer person in the car on the return trip--if we were lucky, Keith could have my seat. Instead, I just tuned the young wolves out, a relatively easy task since they'd given up on dragging me into their conversation hours ago.

I hadn't been back to Haven in ten years, but the turnoff from the highway looked just the same. No sign, just "Private Drive" discretely labeled on a county road marker. I could remember walking out to the highway with Brooke, cranking our arms at passing truck drivers and laughing uproariously as their air horns belted out a deep bellow that became lower-pitched as it receded into the distance. The memory gave me a bit more sympathy for the innocent banter of the yahoos, although it didn't make their antics any easier to bear.

As we turned down the private drive and slowed to a crawl, more memories rushed in, almost overwhelming me. I'd forgotten how much I loved following the creek below the main village, splashing through the water with bare feet and baiting crawdads with bits of their siblings' flesh. It was too cold now for creek-walking, but I expected to see more people out and about, until I realized that my old neighbors would all be under lockdown, anticipating our arrival. Sure enough, we didn't see a single person as we passed rustic farmhouses. Until we reached the village green, that is, where every male over the age of fifteen waited to greet us.

The car in front of us ground to a halt and Chase, Wolfie, Oscar, Quetzalli, and Galena emerged, their doors banging loudly behind them. We'd left Berndt and his family, plus Tia, back at the compound to hold down the fort, and I was glad that they, at least, would be spared the sordid show about to be put on for my father's benefit. Even though I knew I'd never be able to return to Wolfie's pack after today, I cringed at the idea of the nine pack mates now present watching my betrayal.

Wade was the oldest and quietest of the yahoos, and he waited beside my door after the others bounded up to encircle their alpha. "Are you okay?" he asked me, offering a hand to help me out of the car. I wanted to tell him that I wasn't ancient enough to need assistance just yet, but I felt as old as the hills, and I ended up stumbling over my own feet, grabbing the young man's arm after all.

Wolfie should have had all of his attention riveted on my father's pack, but he glanced back the instant my skin touched Wade's, then he cocked his head to one side. The packless ache in my stomach nearly tore me in half as I realized that Wolfie wouldn't be enfolding me in his alpha protection after today. I shot him a shaky smile, meant to reassure him, but probably just making the alpha think I was carsick.

My father never made anything easy, so I wasn't surprised to look out over the Haven males lounging around the green and to notice that both the Chief and my nephew were absent. Rather than becoming impatient, as I'm sure my father had planned, Wolfie simply pulled a trio of juggling balls out of his pocket and began showing off a skill I hadn't even realized he possessed. The colored orbs whirred through the air, bouncing off Wolfie's knee and dipping behind his back, and I soon noticed a couple of werewolf children peering out the windows of a nearby house, attracted by the spectacle.

The yahoos followed their alpha's lead and started turning cartwheels on the lawn...very badly. Blaze and Fen knew what they were doing, but Glen and Wade seemed to simply be tossing themselves from their hands onto their backsides, then laughing uproariously. Despite Haven's iron discipline, it didn't take long for a few of my father's younger enforcers to try to show our yahoos up, and I had a feeling we would have all been sitting down to a cordial dinner within the hour if my father hadn't interrupted.

"Has the circus come to town?" Chief Wilder asked coldly from the steps of his house at the edge of the green, and every Haven youth immediately drooped his head in embarrassed submission. Our yahoos took a little longer to turn off their playfulness--in fact, I was sure I noticed Wolfie hold his hand to one side to encourage them to keep turning cartwheels for several seconds after my father appeared. It occurred to me that Wolfie had planned this whole charade, and the packless ache inside me grew stronger when I realized I'd been left out of the strategizing. Not that I had been around the compound much in recent days to give the pack a chance to include me.

"I could say something about the clown now being here," Wolfie drawled, "but that would just be rude." The younger alpha smiled slightly, my father's brow lowered, and we all knew who had won round one.

With the ease of a well-oiled team, Chase stepped in to smooth over Wolfie's insult. "We've brought the cash, as requested, and would like to see Keith to make sure he's okay," the beta interjected quietly, his eyes not quite meeting Chief Wilder's. I couldn't tell whether Chase really was cowed by my father's dominance, or whether he and Wolfie were simply playing good cop, bad cop, with Chase's submission part of his role. Either way, the beta's lack of eye contact brought a bit of humor back into my father's face, although his words were no more welcoming.

"Well now," Chief Wilder began, matching Wolfie's drawl--a speech pattern neither partook of in their normal lives, but which they seemed to think added a bit of dramatic tension to this exchange. "I've been thinking about that and I'm not so sure I want to part with young Keith. After all, blood can't be bought. But if you just want to see him...."

My father waved a hand back at the house and we watched in silence as Keith was frog-marched out the door and down the steps toward us. My nephew tried to smile when he saw our pack arrayed behind Wolfie and Chase, but I could tell he'd been crying, and his feigned bravery just made the boy seem younger. The tension on our side of the standoff ratcheted up a couple of notches, and Fen laid a calming hand on Blaze's shoulder as the yahoo took an involuntary step toward his friend.

"Thank you," Chase said carefully, turning away from Keith to keep his attention trained on Chief Wilder. "We're glad to see he's in good health...."

"But not very well trained," Chief Wilder spoke over our beta. "Spare the rod and spoil the child, I always say," he continued. "But we'll take care of that for you. Don't worry yourselves over the matter."

Before I realized what was happening, Milo struck Keith with an open-handed slap across the boy's cheek and, in nearly the same instant, Wolfie exploded into canine form, pieces of fabric fluttering off in all directions. It took the combined efforts of Chase and Oscar to restrain their alpha from leaping for the other pack leader's throat.

That was my cue.

***

"IS THAT REALLY WHAT you want, to start over and train a cowardly adolescent?" I asked, walking from the back of Wolfie's pack up past our restrained alpha and across the invisible line that separated us from the Haven werewolves. I stopped mere inches away from my father, and looked him directly in the eye. "I don't doubt you can break Keith, but what use is an heir with no balls?" I continued, ignoring the wounded look that flashed across my nephew's face.

My father gazed down at me and smiled, the mirth flowing from his face to energize his entire body. I knew I was walking directly into his hands--this is what the wily old alpha had been angling for from the very first day he startled me on the trail--but the way I saw it, there was no solution other than to give Chief Wilder what he wanted. My father craved an heir that he could train up from the cradle the way he'd raised Ethan, and unless he was willing to look beyond his own progeny, my potential sons were the only choice he had. My nephew was far too old to be turned into the cut-throat alpha my father wanted--Keith had been a red herring all along.

"What are you suggesting?" the Chief drew me out, his words as sweet as honey, tantalizing me with that parental acceptance I'd always yearned for. I shivered, glad I'd already made this decision for the right reasons, not for the sake of a blessing that would never come.

"I'm suggesting that you turn Keith back over to this pack of misfits where he belongs and let me come home to live in your house and give you a real grandson," I answered. Behind me, I could hear Wolfie shifting back to human form so he could speak to me, and I took a deep breath before firing the final arrow home. "I'm sick of living among halfies and humans," I said, my words pointed toward my father, but aimed at Wolfie. "I want a real werewolf mate, not a bloodling."

I didn't look back, just trusted Chase to do as we'd agreed and to keep Wolfie from challenging the older alpha. I could hear a strangled moan, muffled by werewolf hands, as Wolfie fought to speak, but I stood firm, filling my head with images of the yahoos and Keith joking around in the compound's living area. This is the only way, I thought toward Wolfie, and my focus was so firmly behind me that it took me a moment to realize that my father was laughing.

"Bravo!" he proclaimed loudly, clapping one huge hand onto my shoulder so heavily that I staggered back a step. "Very commendable, very nice. But," he added, lowering his voice and letting the alpha dominance creep into his tone, "what's to keep me from hanging onto young Keith just in case you don't make a good mother?"

Silence hung across the green as werewolves on both sides held their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. "I guess that's just a gamble you'll have to take," I said quietly, "if you want my willing cooperation." There it was, my counter-bluff. I was sure...well, almost sure...that my father had set up this whole painful charade to win me back over to the Haven way of life. I had realized one dark night while waiting for this endless week to be over that my father had to know that I was the only one of his children who had inherited his cold-blooded control. I was the one who had left home, severing all ties, not even writing back to the family the way Brooke had. I was the one who had found a way to squash my wolf, consequences be damned. Of all of his children, I was the one most like my father, and Chief Wilder would want that wolfishness passed on to his heir.

Or so I hoped. Because if my father didn't care about my willing cooperation and chose to keep Keith as a backup, I had no plan C. This was it--my entire hand played in one fell swoop.

There was a scuffle behind me as Wolfie broke free of his pack mates and called toward my back. "Terra, you don't have to do this!" he promised, true warmth in his voice despite the disdain with which I'd spoken of his pack. My father raised his brows, and I knew this was my final test, the Chief's way of determining whether I truly was as cold-hearted as I was pretending to be. So, even though I couldn't bear to see his face, I turned to face the wolf I loved as I threw the bitterest words I could muster back at him.

"You're just a bloodling, Wolfie. I deserve a man as well as a wolf."

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# Chapter 16

It all happened so fast, I could barely take in the scene. With an anguished howl, Wolfie retreated back into his preferred canine form, the yahoos piled on top of their alpha to hold him in place, and Chase yanked a slip-knot-looped rope around his friend's neck. Unlike the piddly collar Wolfie had been wearing when I first met him, this was a real restraint, but the alpha still lunged against the rope repeatedly, snarling as he tried to break free. My heart felt like it was bound to break in half when Wolfie finally collapsed into a panting heap on the ground, his eyes still trained on me and my father. It was unclear whether the young alpha had been trying to tear out my father's throat...or my own.

In the ensuing silence, Chief Wilder's booming laughter rolled out across the green, and I struggled not to let tears come into my eyes. Wolfie's reaction had been even worse than I'd imagined, and I ached to think of the sores he must have rubbed around his neck. Even worse would be the intra-pack strife when Chase finally let his friend free back in their compound, and I regretted that there hadn't been some way to achieve the same goal without enlisting the beta's aid.

True to form, my father proceeded to make matters worse. "Such a bloodling," he mused, taking in Wolfie's battered pack as the yahoos hefted their leader back to his feet and began tugging him toward one of their cars. The only thing that lightened my heart was realizing that Keith had been set loose during the scuffle and had joined Wolfie's entourage, hovering behind Galena's shoulder. No matter what my friend thought of me now, I knew she'd look after my young nephew.

"I was a bloodling too, you know," Chief Wilder continued, and Wolfie's pack paused in their retreat, their attention drawn back to the older pack leader. For the first time since collapsing at the end of a leash, the younger alpha seemed to take note of his surroundings as well, and his ears and nose swiveled toward my father. I could see the human wheels beginning to turn in his head as Wolfie and I both wondered whether my father's words had any purpose other than spite.

"If you live long enough," my father continued, looking straight at Wolfie, "you'll get over it."

Whether the Chief meant Wolfie's attachment to me or his bloodling nature was unclear, but my father had clearly tired of the show. At a signal from their pack leader, my cousins closed in behind me as Chief Wilder turned away from Wolfie and led us all back to his home.

I was being nudged away from the only pack I had ever truly felt a part of, and I wanted to sink into the same silent grief that had so clearly enveloped Wolfie. But instead, I glanced back over my shoulder at the last moment, catching Chase's eye as the beta finished herding the pack back into their two cars. The beta's face was no less cold now than it had been over the preceding days, but Wolfie's friend did nod once in acknowledgement. Yes, Chase was saying, he would keep his pack leader confined until he was able to talk sense into the wolf. My betrayal wouldn't be in vain.

***

"I HOPE YOU'RE COMFORTABLE up here," my stepmother Cricket said as she bustled around the attic room that Brooke and I had slept in as children. The slanting roof that had felt playfully intriguing when I was younger now seemed to confine me in a cage very much like the imaginary one I'd pushed my wolf into weeks ago, back when my darker half and I were still on speaking terms. That thought, along with the bleakness of my future made me bark out a laugh in response to Cricket's words--comfort was the furthest thing from my mind right now.

Rather than taking offense, Cricket paused in her puttering and sank down onto the edge of the bed beside me. "You know we're all so glad you're home," she said softly, gazing into my eyes as if begging me to understand, although she didn't reach out to touch me. My stepmother was stick-thin and had always seemed to lack the maternal nature of my own mother, but Cricket wasn't cold-hearted like the Chief, so I tried to at least be polite to her. Unfortunately, I couldn't seem to muster any social graces now.

"Don't take this personally, Cricket," I replied, "but moving back to Haven has always been my worst nightmare." Taking a deep breath and moving beyond my own woes, I looked at my stepmother consideringly. "I'm actually surprised you're still here given the...um...problems with Ethan."

Now Cricket did pat my hand, but it was an uncomfortable movement, similar to the way a dog owner would try to stroke a cat and muddle it all up. It occurred to me to wonder how such a fragile woman had kept her half-human background a secret all these years, and whether she could possibly handle my father's anger now. If I didn't miss my guess, Chief Wilder would have been beside himself when he realized his prized son couldn't shift, and I wouldn't have been surprised to find Cricket still recovering from broken bones. But, no, my stepmother seemed as whole and healthy as she'd ever been.

"He knew about me all along, dear," Cricket told me quietly, and it took a minute for me to parse her words and to realize she was talking about my father, not about Ethan. "We considered it a fair gamble...." Her eyes became distant for a moment, and I actually could imagine my father marrying a halfie, even understanding that there was a 50% chance any son he sired would be human. Maybe it was my father's bloodling nature--another surprise to me today--that made him equally willing to entrust his future to luck as to skill. Yet another puzzle for me to work through when my mind was less clogged with grief.

"I'm just glad you're okay," I told my stepmother quietly after a minute, because that much, at least, was true. Now didn't seem like the appropriate time to ask where Ethan had been sent off to in disgrace and how my father could have kept his bloodling past so well hidden, although these puzzles were threatening to pull me out of the wallowing I so badly craved. Nothing like concern about others to ruin a bout of self pity.

"Well," Cricket answered, jumping back to her feet and plumping up pillows that didn't need plumping. "I should get back to work on dinner. Call me if you need anything." Even as she spoke the words, my stepmother was moving toward the door, and I knew I should have offered to join her downstairs to help out with the task. But I couldn't quite make my legs move. I would have to take my place within the stifling women's realm of Haven eventually, but Cricket seemed to understand that I needed this one day to mourn the outside world, and I appreciated her quiet support.

I had already started to drift back into my grief when my stepmother turned back from the open doorway to face me. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "I forgot to ask if you read the letter from your sister that I put in your file?"

That woke me up, and my hand closed involuntarily around the unopened envelope I'd been carrying around in my pocket all day. When I first saw Brooke's letter, I'd been afraid to read it, knowing the presence of my sister's missive was part of my father's intricate plan to wind me up in his web of intrigue. Later, I'd gotten sidetracked by the joy of mingling with Wolfie's pack and had forgotten all about the note. But when I left Dale's house this morning, I'd reached out and put the envelope in my pocket, meaning to throw it back in Chief Wilder's face unopened. Now, discovering that the letter had been placed in the file by my stepmother was just...confusing.

But before I could answer Cricket, another familiar voice drifted toward us from the stairway. "Don't worry, I'll show myself up," the female werewolf called as her head crested the opening into the attic. Quetzalli hefted a duffel bag up behind her, nodded at my stepmother, then said to me, "Looks like we're roomies."

***

TO BE HONEST, I HADN'T really expected to see any member of Wolfie's pack again. But if anyone was going to show up, Quetzalli wouldn't have been the werewolf I'd thought most likely, nor would she have been the one I'd prefer. I could imagine Oscar being left behind as a sort of honor guard if Chase had felt some misplaced duty toward a woman who was once nearly a pack member, and I would have liked to imagine that Galena was enough of my friend that she might have chosen to help me through the weeks to come. Even one of the yahoos would have been preferred over Quetzalli, who was the rougher and more masculine side of her and Galena's partnership. While some of the other pack members might have glossed over my harsh words that afternoon, Quetzalli was bound to have taken offense, and she wouldn't hesitate to let me know it.

From the look in her eyes after my stepmother pattered away down the stairs, Quetzalli wasn't any more pleased to be here than I was to see her. "Not my idea," she muttered as she carried her duffel over to the spare bed under the window. Her tone said Case closed, but I couldn't let it go at that.

"Okaaay," I answered, drawing out the word, then settled on simply asking her flat-out. "Whose idea was it then?"

Quetzalli rolled her eyes at me before turning away to begin unpacking her possessions. She'd clearly known she was staying before leaving the pack's compound because the werewolf had filled her bag with underwear, a change of clothes, and toiletries. Which meant Chase must have talked to her since he was the only one who had known about my plan before the fact.

Or so I'd thought. "Wolfie, who else?" Quetzalli answered, her back still to me. "Although why he would bother worrying about you is beyond me."

Quetzalli's revelation silenced me for at least fifteen minutes, which might have been her intention. During that time, my mind raced over the events of the last twenty-four hours, honing in on Wolfie's visit the night before and on his subtle attempts to drag me back into pack life. Yes, it was no stretch to imagine that Chase might have told his friend about my planned betrayal--I'd always known that was a possibility, even though I'd hoped I was convincing enough to prompt Chase to keep my secret. And, although it was harder to believe, I could also see Wolfie deciding that the decision was mine to make, then squelching his own feelings in order to let me follow my chosen path. Despite being a bloodling, Wolfie was nothing like the domineering males I'd known in the past, and he probably guessed that if he had forbidden me to trade myself for Keith, I would have just sneaked away in the night and carried out my plan without the pack for backup.

But if the bloodling had the willpower to restrain himself from forcing me to stay home the way any other alpha would have, why didn't he also have the willpower not to attempt attacking Chief Wilder? It didn't seem possible that Wolfie's uncontrollable shifts and his lunges against the rope leash had been an act this afternoon, although that was the obvious conclusion. Perhaps the young alpha really was that skilled of an actor?

But if Wolfie's behavior had all been a farce, played out for my father's benefit, what was the purpose of the subterfuge? While I would have loved to think that Wolfie was simply buying time so he could come up with a longer-term solution to our problem, I wasn't so sure that Wolfie could still want me back after my inflammatory words. But, Quetzalli's presence suggested that the young alpha wasn't done with me just yet, which sent a tiny surge of hope flickering through my deadened soul.

The only clue I had to begin deciphering the puzzle was Quetzalli herself, so despite her angry silence, I attempted to draw the werewolf back into conversation. "How long are you staying?" I asked, breaking the extended silence at last.

Ever since joining me in the attic room, Quetzalli had seemed completely in control of her wolf, so I was surprised when I felt the first hint of a change in the air. The woman spun back around to face me, fur already beginning to elongate across her body. "I don't know that yet," she ground out between her teeth, face flushed with anger. "Look, I really don't want to talk to you right now," she continued, the words mangled as the shift overtook her. "But do bring me up some meat from dinner." Then a large, surly wolf was lying on the spare bed.

Great. Life in Haven had turned out to be even worse than I'd originally imagined.

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# Chapter 17

I kept expecting Wolfie to batter down the door and come to get me, so as the hours and then days passed, I became more and more agitated. Even though Quetzalli hadn't coughed up any more information, her presence--no matter how unpleasant--initially gave me hope that I hadn't been entirely written off by Wolfie's pack. I figured their alpha would just need a day or two to calm down and get over the events of Keith's retrieval, which surely meant he'd be here at any minute.

Not that I wanted to draw Wolfie back into this mess, I reminded myself. In fact, the theory behind my betrayal was still sound. I couldn't see any way short of a physical challenge for Wolfie to extract me from my childhood home, and that brought me back around to the whole reason I'd rejected the young alpha so publicly in the first place--I needed Wolfie to think I despised him so he would leave me alone and not get himself killed. In fact, I was so conflicted, between wishing to hear Wolfie's voice and yet dreading what would happen if he did show up, that I was a bundle of nerves by lunchtime.

My second day in Haven, Quetzalli had deigned to shift back into human form, so I followed Cricket's advice and took my roommate on a tour of the pack's land. Yesterday, I'd been so intent on retrieving Keith and on my own role in the drama that I hadn't taken the time to really look at the houses and people we'd passed, but now that I peered more closely, I saw that the village had turned into a strangely skewed version of the community I remembered. During my childhood, lawns were always mowed and houses shone with fresh paint, but now porches were leaning away from dwellings and a pall seemed to hang over Haven.

"This place gives me the creeps," Quetzalli muttered, her words mirroring my thoughts. Yes, Haven had been restrictive when I'd lived here, especially if you were born female, but many people had seemed happy then. I remembered my neighbors singing as they worked when I was a child. There had been barn dances and community dinners. Now, I couldn't quite imagine any of these werewolves laughing or dancing--the Haven werewolves today seemed to be barely managing to carry on their daily lives.

As Quetzalli and I walked through the middle of the green and took in the depressing sights around us, I was startled to hear my wolf chime in her two cents' worth: Look to the alpha. It had been so long since I'd heard so much as a whisper from my wolf that I stopped in my tracks to take in her words. I reached inward, but the lupine consciousness slipped away through my fingers and I almost believed I'd merely imagined her voice in my head. Almost, but not quite.

"What's wrong?" Quetzalli asked, and for the first time since our pack had left, there was a hint of concerned warmth in her voice. The thought flickered through my mind that Quetzalli was really a better companion to have in Haven than either Galena or Oscar since Quetzalli was tough but kind, and her words made me realize that she might actually forgive me one of these days. Echoing my thoughts, the ache in my stomach seemed to dull by a minuscule amount, reducing the pain from a mind-wrenching presence to something I could think past if I focused hard enough. The easing pain even made me smile at my unchosen companion.

"I thought I heard my wolf," I answered her question, then continued. "But you're right, Haven shouldn't be like this. It feels like a ghost town, but with the people still in it." In fact, Haven felt much the way I had when I sought my wolf out in her lair and found her missing, but there was no way the entire community's wolves could be absent.

"Your father," Quetzalli said simply, her words confirming the insight from my wolf. There was more here than met the eye, and I needed to strike to the heart of the matter if I wanted to figure out what was going on.

***

THAT WAS EASIER SAID than done, though, since Chief Wilder was far too busy to even take meals with his wife and daughter that day and the next. In fact, instead of hunting down the cause of Haven's collective depression, I ended up suffering through an afternoon surrounded by giggling cousins as they fitted me for my wedding dress (groom to be announced). The trauma was lessened only slightly when I realized that Quetzalli was even more shell-shocked by the episode than I was.

Since Cricket was darning socks in the corner as a sort of mood stabilizer, I did my best to smile and nod, otherwise ignoring what was going on around me. But even my hard-boiled mood couldn't overlook the excitement of my youngest cousin, Iris. "You're so lucky," the teenager trilled as she hemmed the edges of a petticoat several hours after the bridal shower had begun. I couldn't quite tell if the young werewolf was referring to the quality of the dress we were constructing or to my mate choices. Either way, I felt far from lucky.

In fact, I couldn't help counting how many hours it had been since I had last gazed upon Wolfie's face, which made for a more pleasant daydream than the one Iris would have chosen for me. Surely Wolfie must have calmed down enough by now to make an appearance here at Haven, I pondered. Unfortunately, it was beginning to seem more and more likely that Wolfie had ordered Quetzalli to join me, then had changed his mind about hoping to see me again. But if that was the case, why hadn't the young alpha sent someone to fetch Galena's spouse home?

"Mmmm," Fernanda hummed, bringing me back to the present and responding to Iris's enthusiasm. "Hunter is a nice specimen, and Reed isn't so bad either, if you like them young." She winked at me saucily, and I remembered that Fernanda had gotten married even before I left Haven. I guess she'd had a thing for young men even then.

I'd been trying not to think about the four potential mates, hand-picked by my father, who I was to meet at dinner the next night, but my cousins' banter finally made the future impossible to ignore. Just remembering what tomorrow held in store for me made my stomach decidedly queasy, but I couldn't expect a reprieve on that account. When it came to a bargain, my father would expect the other party to live up to their word even if they had to do so between bouts of vomiting, and as much as I hated the fact, the Chief and I had made a deal. I shivered, even though the room was hot from the coal furnace in the basement of my family home, and wished with all of my heart that I was back in Dale's basement with Keith pounding on the floor above me, playing Dance, Dance, Revolution at two in the morning.

My thoughts were once again interrupted, this time by Cricket, who was kind enough to put me out of my misery. She'd clearly joined us for a different purpose than to merely keep me in line, and I reminded myself that I needed to give my stepmother credit for making my confinement less painful than it could have been. "I think we should be able to finish up the rest later," Cricket said, rising to usher the young werewolves out the door, and I sent her a thankful smile.

Which reminded me of the very worst part of my voluntary incarceration. I was beginning to understand how I could learn to be content here, to turn into a plumper version of Cricket and to settle into Haven life, forgetting what I was missing in the outside world. I'd spent the morning helping my stepmother prepare the day's bread, and had ended up enjoying the yeasty odor and the feel of resilient dough between my fingers. Later, we hung sheets out on the line to dry, mopped the front hallway, and even washed windows, each task provided immediate gratification that had been lacking in my previous life. Now, a traitorous part of my mind told me that perhaps my father had my best interests at heart all along--maybe this simple women's work was what I had been born for.

"Well, that didn't end a moment too soon," groused Quetzalli, and I smiled in relief. At least I had Quetzalli present to take the edge off my internal craziness.

***

QUETZALLI HAD GONE on a walk to blow off steam and Cricket was down in the cellar gathering vegetables for dinner when Iris showed back up. The young werewolf knocked so timidly on the back door that I almost missed the sound, and when I let her in, she immediately began apologizing. She was sorry to bother me, sorry to interrupt, sorry to intrude. Despite myself, my heart warmed at the youngster's elaborate apologies, and I took pity on her at once.

"What's wrong, Iris?" I asked, channeling my stepmother as I put on a pot of water for tea. I even pulled out a tin of cookies to sweeten the poor child's mood, not that she herself could get much sweeter. If nothing else, the food would give me something to do while the young werewolf apologized.

Despite the cookies and tea, Iris was evasive, and it took me a full ten minutes to put my finger on her problem. My young cousin was unhappy with life in Haven, but was afraid to strike out on her own since female werewolves had such a hard time controlling their shifts. She'd heard that I was able to keep my wolf under control despite monthly hormonal surges. Was it true?

When I asked myself the same question, I realized that I probably could teach this young werewolf to squash her wolf just like I'd chained mine. But I didn't want to. Learning to partner with my wolf over the last few weeks had been one of the most profound experiences of my life, and my current shiftlessness was responsible for a solid half of the ache in my stomach. The truth was, I missed my wolf, and would do almost anything to get her back.

I opened my mouth to tell Iris that the solution wasn't worth the price, that losing your wolf was too painful to even imagine, but before I could speak, my body surged with my almost-forgotten wolf sense. Smells were stronger, the light brighter, and I could even make out Iris's wolf hovering just beneath the surface of my cousin's human form. The other wolf was young and scared, the most submissive canine I'd ever met, and with my own wolf rampant, I could almost see Iris's tail drooping between her legs even though she was currently two-footed.

"You're worried about what your wolf will do," I exclaimed, "but she's so tame and calm!" It was strange to be able to see someone else's wolf when they were in human form, but I was certain of my diagnosis. "You don't need to be concerned about your wolf hurting anyone," I soothed Iris. And then, before my own wolf could retreat back to whatever secret den she'd come out of, I finished silently, Thank you for coming back. My lupine half didn't answer me in words, but I could tell she was amused at my slowness to realize that I needed her canine presence, and I accepted her humorous rebuke gracefully.

I was still cheering up my cousin when Quetzalli walked in the door, which gave me an idea for solving Iris's problem. "Do you think your parents will give you permission to leave Haven?" I asked my cousin carefully, and she responded with an eager nod.

"Mom doesn't want me to stay in Haven," the young werewolf confirmed, "and she can talk Dad around. I was just afraid to leave...."

"Well," I interrupted, "in that case, I know just the place for you, and just the person to take you there. The pack I used to live with would be just right for you, and Quetzalli should be getting home soon anyway."

"Just what I need," Quetzalli groused. "Someone even younger to babysit." But I could tell from the glow of her lupine half that she was eager to get home to her partner. Even though I would be left alone in Haven, I was happy too. My wolf had returned.

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# Chapter 18

"I'll miss you," I emoted, pulling Quetzalli in for a lingering hug as she finished zipping up her duffel bag. The idea of sending Iris and Quetzalli away had seemed like a good one a few hours earlier, but now I was realizing how alone I'd be in Haven without Quetzalli's solid presence by my side. In a way, it felt like I was cutting off my last tie to Wolfie, admitting that I'd chosen to salvage whatever was left of Haven in exchange for losing the possibility of happiness with the man I loved.

Sappy, my wolf interjected, which prompted me to smile instead of cry. Nothing like a canine to bring me back down to planet earth, and to remind me that I wouldn't be entirely friendless here.

"Are you sure you don't want to come home with us?" Quetzalli asked, once I released her from the farewell embrace. It was a bad idea, but for a second, I allowed myself to imagine climbing out the attic window that night and slipping through the dark to meet up with Quetzalli on the road. Unfortunately, my mind continued on to the inevitable conclusion of that scenario--the Chief showing up on Wolfie's doorstep the next morning to take me back by force, the younger alpha challenging my father, and the cousins slaughtering every one of my friends. I might want to go home with Quetzalli, but I wouldn't do it.

"No, I have to stay here and figure out what's wrong with Haven," I told her. "Tell Wolfie...." My voice trailed off as I realized I couldn't think of anything to say to the young alpha. Tell him I loved him? Bad idea--that would just make the bloodling bring the fight to Haven. Tell him I was sorry? Same result, most likely, since it might make Wolfie forgive me for my harsh words. "Just tell him goodbye for me," I said finally, and I was glad Quetzalli didn't linger over her own farewell since I knew I wouldn't be able to speak again through the sobs trying to force themselves up out of my chest.

***

WHEN I WOKE, MY THROAT was still sore from the crying jag I'd succumbed to as soon as Quetzalli walked out the door. It was dark outside, but the waning moon was pushing through the curtainless window, filling my attic domicile with a soft glow and proving that I'd slept through the evening and half the night.

I stretched, suddenly wide awake despite the late hour, then glanced across the room at Quetzalli's empty bed. But the bed was no longer empty. Instead, a large wolf was sprawled across the mattress, and my heart leaped, imagining that Quetzalli had dropped off Iris and then crept back into the attic to rejoin me. Perhaps I wasn't so alone after all.

But as I tilted my head to the side to get a better look, the wolf tilted her head as well, and I realized the canine was simply my own reflection in the darkened window. My reflection, I tried out the words, and suddenly felt like I was flying. Shiftless no longer, my wolf had come to comfort me with fur.

If I'd been in my human form, I would have laughed at the notion that a fit of self pity was all that was required to break through my inability to change forms. But with the wolf brain and my human side merged into one mind and body, we were instead enveloped by a calm that I hadn't felt in years. We were able to think clearly for the first time in weeks, without any confusing human emotions to weigh us down.

To celebrate, my wolf and I decided to run together, releasing the last of the angstful emotions that had been churning through our belly. But as we rose into a crouch, we felt paper rather than sheets crinkling beneath our paws, and my human brain jolted back to the forefront.

Looking down, my nose knew what had happened before my eyes could focus on the torn envelope. My dead sister's scent wafted up from the disinterred sheet of paper, and the wolf and I breathed deeply, knowing that this decade-old aroma would dissipate before long. Despite ourselves, we whined, missing Brooke's soft lap and gentle hands. She'd sat right here beside us so many times, brushing the tangles out of our wayward hair and braiding it back into a simple plait, or comforting us when we'd clashed with our father over some rule we considered stupid and he considered gospel. Her scent on the paper seemed to bring long-forgotten pieces of my sister back to life in my mind.

"I'm sorry he's so hard on you," Brooke had told my human form once, not long before she left home. It had always seemed unfair that my sister could float through her days beneath my father's radar while I was the harridan who seemed in constant need of reprimands, but I didn't resent my older sister so much as I hated my father for the unwanted attention. "You know it's only because the two of you are so much alike, right?" Brooke continued gently, rubbing my back in slow, soothing circles.

"I'm nothing like him!" I retorted, stiffening in horror at the notion that the Chief and I shared anything other than 50% of our DNA. Even before our mother died, I hadn't wanted to grow up to be like my father, who never had a kind word for any of his children and who believed in an eye for an eye justice.

"You're just like him," Brooke disagreed quietly, which got my dander up further. But my sister was always the fence-mender in our family, so I knew she wasn't being nasty for the sake of getting my goat. "You're strong and smart and caring...."

"Caring?!" the younger me interjected. "Father doesn't care about us at all. Don't you think that if he did, he'd let you apply to colleges like you want?"

Brooke smiled sadly at me, pulling my stiff shoulders into her body until I softened against her curves. "He does care about us, Terra," she replied. "But he cares about the good of the pack even more."

***

THE FINAL HINT OF SANDALWOOD and tomato leaves drifted away even as the memory dissipated, and I knew that Brooke had finally faded from the earth. Actually, that wasn't true. Her letter was still here, along with the words she'd wanted me to have when I was sixteen and she was dying. Whether or not my father was using Brooke's letter as a means of manipulating me seemed academic now--my sister had been the one who wrote the words, and Brooke always had my best interests at heart. So I tilted my wolf face so I could squint down at the paper and I began to read.

Unfortunately, I could barely make out my older sister's greeting, and could parse that much only because I knew Brooke would begin her letter "Dearest Terra." Something about my wolf eyes or my wolf brain made the rest of the missive dissolve into squiggles, and despite waiting for weeks to open the envelope, now that my wolf had done that deed for me, I was desperate to know what Brooke had to say, the sooner the better. But since my shift to wolf form had been involuntary, I wasn't so sure I could regain my human skin so easily.

I sent the question toward my canine half, and her reply came back quickly. We'll run later, she conceded, and I almost felt like the sentence was a promised future treat for both of us rather than a deal that I was making with an unwanted darker half. The wolf and I would run later, and I trusted my wolf not to tear into any more toddlers in the process, and to let go of our body when I needed to return.

Now in harmony, we shifted forms in a millisecond, too quickly for me to even feel my snout retracting into my face and the fur sinking into my skin. With human eyes, the night made it too dark to read, so I fumbled for a minute until my hand found the bedside lamp and I could illuminate Brooke's letter. Then, clutching the paper in my lap, I read my sister's final words to me.

Dearest Terra,

I'm sorry I won't get to see you grow into the strong young woman I already know you'll be. And I'm sorry I never got to see your shining face after I left Haven. I don't regret the life I've built for myself here, but I do regret leaving you alone, the way Father made me promise to do.

I had to break Father's rules this final time, though, just in case what happened to me happens to you. I told Dale that the doctors diagnosed me with cancer so advanced there was no point in trying chemo, but I was lying, just like I lied to my kind husband about all of my runs in the woods. I hope you'll find a way to help Keith when the time comes since neither he nor his father will understand my son's first change. I've kept the wolf away from my human family.

But I digress. I'm dying, sweet Terra, because my wolf is eating me up from the inside out. I used to see signs of this in Father sometimes, when he'd gone too long without shifting, but I thought that was just his bloodling nature shining through. I was wrong. Father and I have something in our blood that makes our wolves fight against our human bodies. You probably have it too, but I hope you're smart and strong enough to find a way to make it work, like Father does. Cricket told me that you're learning to partner with your wolf in a manner I never would have dreamed possible, so maybe you'll be able to avoid the curse even if you hold your wolf in. I can't seem to do the same--I've never been as strong as you.

I could let my wolf out to run, but I'm too afraid. I know you'll think that giving up like this is no better than suicide, but I can't go back to Haven and my wolf can't be set loose here. So I'm holding her in, even though she's gnawing on my bones. It hurts so much. I don't think I'll last long.

Once I'm gone, I hope you'll remember me fondly. I thought of you every day, sweet Terra, even though I have a little boy to keep me busy now, and a husband I don't begin to deserve. I sent you my love every night before I fell asleep, and I like to believe I'll be able to love you even after I close my eyes for the last time.

Stay strong, smart, and caring like our father, Terra. But follow your own dreams.

Love from your sister,

Brooke

I could barely make out Brooke's signature through the tears that were once again streaming down my cheeks, but I was surprised enough at what followed to halt the waterworks. Beneath Brooke's final line, someone else had scrawled an addendum, and I had to lift the paper to my nose and ask for my wolf's help before I realized who had authored the postscript. Cricket's mousy scent of bleach and applesauce rose up from the page, stronger than my sister's decade-old aroma, but carrying fewer memories. My stepmother's words were definitely enough to pull me back into the present, though, despite lacking as much emotional impact.

Terra,

Your sister was wise. Your father has been fighting his wolf for years, but lately, I think he's losing the battle. I see the wolf through his eyes even when we're alone.

The pack is afraid, and so am I. Please come home. We need you.

There was no fond closing, just a hurried dash and then "Cricket" in the same spiky scrawl as the rest of the postscript. I could imagine my stepmother finishing her note and hurrying to reseal the envelope before my father returned to his office, the usually obedient woman slipping the letter into the back of Brooke's file to be carried to me. I shivered, imagining what might have happened if the Chief had caught his wife in the act, especially if Father's wolf was as out of control as Cricket made it seem.

But he hadn't caught her, and I had come home. And now, at least, I knew what was wrong with Haven.

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# Chapter 19

"Are you serious?" I asked the next evening when I came down for dinner.

The Chief had remained absent for most of the day, and I considered taking the opportunity to debrief Cricket. But, really, my stepmother's note and Brooke's letter said it all. Plus, the people of Haven who I saw scurrying around whenever I went outdoors backed up my hypothesis--my father was disintegrating and his pack was falling into shambles around him. There wasn't much I could do until the Chief showed back up, so I waited as patiently as I could until he was ready to put in an appearance.

I hadn't decided what I was going to do about Haven and my father yet, but that larger issue flew out of my mind when I walked into the dining room and saw my father and Cricket waiting for me at the table...along with the saddest set of suitors I'd ever seen. Okay, yes, my girl cousins were right--the potential mates my father had picked out for me were handsome enough. And the men sitting at our table were mostly the right age, although one was old enough to be my father and another looked like he might still be coming to terms with adulthood. But ever since my wolf and I had made up, we'd been sharing the same mind-space, and her senses told me that none of the four were even as alpha as Brooke had been. My older sister had enjoyed many good attributes, but she was not an alpha werewolf, and strong leadership is what Haven needed if it was going to pull itself back together. What was my father thinking?

As if to confirm my analysis, all four suitors bowed their heads at my tone of voice, and despite my concern over the situation, their reaction almost made me laugh. That was certainly a first in Haven--male werewolves submitting to a woman. Or maybe they just wanted to say grace?

The humor fled, though, when my wolf and I took in my father's canine counterpart. This was the first time in a decade that I'd seen Father while my wolf was wide awake, and she growled deep in her throat at the sight. The Chief's wolf looked rabid under his skin, twitching and baring its teeth, clearly begging to be let loose. For the first time in years, I felt real respect for my father, who was able to keep such a dominant wolf under control, even though the two sides of his personality seemed to be butting heads rather than working together.

And now that I knew where to look, I could see the strain produced by that internal battle. My father's face was lined, his jaw clenched, and the piercing eyes that I'd once thought could force me to do anything now seemed almost weak. Crazy Wilder was fighting the wolf...and losing. I spent a second wondering if this was how Brooke had looked during her final days, then I forced myself to focus on the more pressing problem right in front of me.

My father allowed the silence that followed my words to extend out until it was becoming painful, then he finally broke eye contact with me. If it hadn't been such a crazy concept, I would have almost thought the alpha was deflecting his gaze the way a submissive wolf might after trying to stare down the pack leader, but that idea was too ludicrous to hold onto. Instead, my father merely turned to scrutinize my four suitors, then quietly dismissed them from our presence. "You can go now, boys," he said abruptly, and as one, the male werewolves got to their feet, put their napkins on the table, and filed out the door.

Well, that was...unexpected. "I wasn't reneging on our deal..."I started, but the Chief talked right over me, any hint of submission long forgotten.

"I see you're finally ready to take on the job I've been grooming you for," my father intoned. But I didn't get to learn what job Father was referring to because a formidable knock on the front door stopped our conversation in its tracks.

"Right on time," the Chief said, taking a sip of water before leisurely rising from the table and leading our little family down the hall. His wolf looked quieter than it had a few minutes before, and the canine now seemed amused, as if we were all on stage, acting out a drama that the Chief had written. I wanted to hold onto that clue, but my breath caught in my throat and all other thoughts fled as the door was flung open and a non-Haven werewolf walked in. My knight in shining armor had arrived.

***

"RUDE" DIDN'T EVEN BEGIN to describe the act of one pack leader barging into another's home uninvited. In fact, Wolfie's behavior was tantamount to an act of war, but I couldn't avoid the silly grin that spread itself across my face when my favorite wolf stepped over the threshold. My canine half and I could smell his scent--like leaf mold and pine needles--and I realized we were leaning forward as if the young alpha was a huge magnet and our combined wolf and human brains were a pile of iron filings. If the stakes hadn't been so high and my father hadn't been present, I don't think anything could have stopped me from falling into Wolfie's arms.

And I was now sure that his wolf side, at least, would have caught me as I fell, quite gladly. The younger alpha's face was grim, but with my new wolf sense, I could see his canine half dancing in circles behind his eyes, as excited as I was to be back together. All at once, the last ache in my stomach faded away as I realized that Wolfie really had known I was acting, as Quetzalli's presence had suggested, even though I'd been loathe to believe a bloodling could be so poker-faced. Wolfie hadn't taken my words to heart or held them against me, and he was here now to back me up and to help solve the problem with my father.

As we stood in silence, I could almost feel our canine halves communing without words. What took you so long?, my wolf was saying, and his wolf was laughing at our impatience. As impetuous as a human, he was probably teasing.

The man was a little less sure of himself than the wolf, though. Ignoring Chief Wilder, Wolfie cocked his head and asked me, "Which one did you pick?" It took me a minute to realize the younger alpha was asking about the suitors, then my wolf and I huffed our amusement out through our nose. I couldn't believe it--Wolfie was jealous.

"Is that why you're here?" I answered, trying to get Wolfie back on track. Surely, hopefully, he had some kind of plan, not just a possessive urge to come and take me home before I could marry another man. Not that I minded a bit of alpha behavior in this context, but there were larger issues at play.

The young pack leader shook his head, not in negation, but as if trying to force water out of his ears, and I saw the wolf rise up behind his eyes to take command of the conversation. Wolfie's voice sounded the same, but his energy was more focused when he spoke again. "No, I'm here because your nephew, and your grandson," he said, turning to face my father at last, "has gone missing. Keith wasn't pleased when Quetzalli came home without you yesterday, and we now know he hitchhiked all the way to Haven after he found out Terra wasn't coming back."

To Haven? Soppy romantic notions were pushed to the back burner as I parsed Wolfie's words. I was positive I would have known if Keith was kicking around the village, which meant the boy hadn't arrived. But where could he get sidetracked between the highway and our cluster of houses? Nowhere--unless Keith's first shift came upon him unaware, in which case the teen werewolf could be running around the woods four-footed and confused.

"And you want permission to go hunt for the boy in my woods," the Chief said, his words coldly amused as the pack leader's wolf peered through my father's eyes to focus on the younger alpha. If Wolfie had the bad sense to request permission, it was obvious the answer would be no, so I figured I'd better derail this standoff before it could go any further.

"Can I speak with you for a moment, Wolfie?" I asked. Ignoring my father, I continued: "Alone."

***

EVEN THOUGH I HAD LEFT my childhood behind years ago, I couldn't help feeling a frisson of forbidden pleasure when Wolfie followed me up the stairs and into my loft. The male werewolf was almost too big for the space, his head bowing down so it didn't graze the ceiling as he moved to the center of the room--the one spot where he could stand erect. Despite the awkwardness of the low ceiling, though, I could see the tension ease from Wolfie's shoulders at this brief reprieve from the Chief's presence, and my wolf and I felt the same way. As we came into the room behind him, we immediately rushed to Wolfie's side and let the young alpha enfold us in his arms, then we pulled his head down to join us in a hungry kiss.

I would have liked to submerge myself in our shared passion forever, but I knew my father's patience was very limited, so I pulled back far enough that we could speak, although I didn't try to wriggle out of Wolfie's arms. "You forgave me," I said, smiling up into my mate's sparkling eyes.

"So I am man enough for you," he rumbled in reply, the words ironic because the wolf had the upper hand as the alpha spoke.

"Definitely," I answered, then I had to rein in my own wolf who thought now might be a good time to run our hand down Wolfie's firm jaw. Focus, I reminded her, and I felt my canine half settle. "I'm sorry it's taken so long," I continued. "At first I just wanted to protect you, but the longer I stayed here, the more I realized Haven was falling apart. I didn't want to leave them in the lurch."

"The pack needs a new alpha," Wolfie said, having understood a situation in two heartbeats that had taken me several days to untangle. "Your father's wolf is eating him alive."

"And we need to find Keith," I added. "That part's true, right? My nephew is missing? Has he changed forms?"

"We were waiting for you," the young alpha responded, and his words warmed me from head to toe. Not only had Wolfie believed I really would be coming back, he'd continued to abide by my wishes that I be the one to help Keith learn to shift. Unfortunately, that seemed to have been a poor decision on my part given my nephew's rash behavior.

"My father's too territorial to let you wander around in Haven's woods," I thought aloud. "And I don't know how we can challenge him here without having the pack tear the challenger apart. Did you bring anyone with you?"

"Out at the highway," Wolfie answered, then cut right to the chase in typical wolf fashion. "Do you want to challenge Chief Wilder or should I?"

Neither, I wanted to say, but I knew that answer wasn't going to hold water. It almost felt like my father had set me up to take over his leadership, but I couldn't quite believe it--I'd never heard of a female pack leader, and Haven was far too hidebound to allow one. Plus, was I really alpha material?

"You know you're an alpha," Wolfie said quietly, rubbing my back in the same gentle circles my sister had once used, but with far more interesting effects on my nerve endings. "Remember how you ignored me the second time I commanded you to stop running away in the city?"

It was true that I'd been able to pull away from Wolfie's bark, but I'd thought my reaction was only possible because Wolfie hadn't been my pack leader. That issue was academic at the moment, though, because who would challenge the Chief didn't seem as important an issue at the moment as how that challenger would win. "I don't want to kill my father," I whispered into Wolfie's shoulder, hoping the fabric would muffle my words. How's that for proof I wasn't pack leader material? The Chief wouldn't have spared a thought for the casualties that stood in the way of achieving his goal.

"No one is going to die," Wolfie said as if stating fact, putting one finger under my chin to tilt my face back up toward his and brushing a gentle kiss across my lips. "What do you think I spent the last few days doing while you were living here in the lap of luxury? I was working on my pool."

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# Chapter 20

Tearing myself away from Wolfie--again--was one of the hardest things I'd ever done. But I could just imagine my nephew's terror since the boy hadn't grown up among werewolves and was now facing his first shift alone and in a strange place. My urge to protect Keith was nearly as strong as my yearning to take Wolfie and run away from Haven as fast as I could, especially when I considered the fact that my nephew might even now be caught midshift. Or perhaps Keith's wolf brain had completely taken control of their shared body and was heading past Haven's boundaries and toward the normal human population. I'd do just about anything to prevent Keith from having to live with the same guilt I bore due to my wolf's actions during our shared teen years.

But hunting down a confused teenage werewolf seemed easy in comparison to the task Wolfie faced. The young alpha seemed confident in his ability to beat my father at pool, and my father had agreed to the proposed challenge, albeit with a mocking laugh, so the winner would be Haven's leader. But Crazy Wilder had filled the pool room with my most scary-looking male cousins, and Wolfie had no one to back him up. Plus, my father had won 95% of the games I'd seen him play during my childhood, and I couldn't quite imagine how Wolfie could have honed his skills enough during the last week to provide any kind of competition for the billiards master. It was traditional to put the losing werewolf in a pack-leader challenge to death, and the notion of returning from my own hunt to a world lacking Wolfie's calm presence made me shiver. Still, this was the best plan we'd been able to come up with, and the only one that could possibly result in everyone leaving the room alive...assuming Wolfie's skills were up to par.

"Trust me," the younger alpha said quietly as he walked past my dithering form and into the pool room. Wolfie had gone outside a minute earlier to pick up the cue stick he'd left on the doorstep, proof that his challenge hadn't been a spur-of-the-moment decision, and now he was screwing together the two halves of his stick even as he strode toward my father. Looking over Wolfie's shoulder, I could see the Chief frown slightly, aware that he'd lost one of his home-court advantages--knowledge of which cue sticks were perfect and which had just enough of a warp to send a ball swirling off in the wrong direction.

"Best two games out of three?" Wolfie asked, the phrase nearly a command instead of a question, and I saw the wolf behind my father's eyes snarl as the Chief nodded without thinking. As hard as it was to believe since I'd seen my father dominate everyone in his path for my entire lifetime, Wolfie was the more alpha of the two. But my father was far from whipped.

"As the challenged party, I assume I go first?" he asked, and I could tell that the Chief's words were meant to make Wolfie echo my father's earlier unconscious agreement. But, instead, my favorite alpha pursed his lips and shook his head slowly.

"I thought we'd go traditional and lag," rumbled his wolf.

I wanted to stay and watch, but I knew Keith was waiting, and there was nothing I could do now that the challenge was underway. So I turned away, the sound of pool balls on the sidewall echoing in my mind as I walked past my cousins and out the door.

***

I ASSUMED IT WOULD be a struggle to shift, but as soon as I stepped out of my clothes on the back stoop, my wolf surged to the forefront and we became canine so easily I didn't even notice the change occurring. After fighting against the shift and then fighting to force the shift for so long, it felt strange to realize that I was now able to change forms as seamlessly as Wolfie did. But I didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth, so I just relaxed into the transformation.

That thought reminded me of the competition going on inside, though, and my wolf and I scented the air, feeling my father's annoyance and Wolfie's elation as the younger alpha won the right to go first. A good sign. Let's hope Wolfie could keep up his lead while I was gone.

Before the two of us had descended from the loft a few minutes earlier, Wolfie told me that the rest of his pack was waiting along the highway at the location where Keith had left the road and cut into the woods. The younger alpha had given his pack instructions not to leave the vehicles, knowing that my father had wolves patrolling Haven's perimeter, and that those wolves would attack first and ask questions later. I, on the other hand, could come and go as I pleased, so the plan was for me to meet up with Wolfie's pack and then to follow my nephew's trail wherever it led.

I could smell the anxiety, but also the cohesiveness, of Wolfie's crew before I rounded the bend and padded to a stop beside their cars. The yahoos were in wolf form while the older adults sported their human bodies, ensuring cool heads all around due to Wolfie's calming effect on the wolves in his pack. As soon as I came into sight, Wade and Fen trotted up to greet me, licking under my chin, and I was so gratified by their acceptance that I shifted back to human form so I could take them into my arms like a pair of lap dogs.

"Not quite what a passing motorist should see," Chase said gruffly, interrupting our greeting and tossing an oversized t-shirt into my arms so I could shield my nudity from non-werewolf observers. Despite his tone, though, I could tell that even the pack's beta had forgiven my betrayal of his milk brother. Then Chase went a step further, dipping his head to me as if I were his alpha's permanent mate, and I couldn't prevent the blush that snuck up my neck at the gesture. Imagining what it would be like to act as Wolfie's mate was tantalizing, but I needed to keep my focus on Keith, so I was glad when Galena pulled me into a simple hug and cut off that train of thought.

"So, what's the plan?" Quetzalli asked, her words abrupt but her body language telling me that Galena's partner was as glad to see me as everyone else was. She dipped her head slightly as she met my eyes, and I couldn't really believe the pack had forgiven me so easily. I was sure there would be some lingering issues, but now was not the time to deal with hurt feelings.

"Wolfie challenged my father to a game of pool," I said, and nods all around suggested the pack had known that was their alpha's goal from the beginning. The werewolves kept their eyes trained on me for orders, though, so I continued talking. "Until that ends, it's not safe for any of you to go looking for Keith, so I'm going to try to track him from here."

A whine from Blaze brought my eyes around to the young werewolf, and my wolf had no difficulty parsing his complaint. "I know you want to come," I answered, "but we can't risk it. If Wolfie loses the challenge, I'm going to have a hard enough time getting Keith past the border patrol and back to you--it would just be that much harder if any non-Haven wolves came with me."

The pack was silent for a minute as we each imagined what would happen if Wolfie did lose the game of pool. But the werewolves' calm energy didn't falter, quite a tribute to their absent pack leader. "He won't lose," Chase said at last, and I nodded, looking both ways to make sure no cars were coming, then slipping off my t-shirt and regaining my fur. The hunt was on.

***

THE LAST TIME I'D TRACKED a child through the woods, I'd been too scared to let my wolf loose, and even though I now realized my canine half had done her best to help me at the time, she had been virtually blindfolded by my distrust during that earlier hunt. Now, the wolf and I acted in harmony, my human mind suggesting what Keith might have been thinking at the same time as the wolf used her superior senses to pick up the teenager's fading trail. The scents proved that Keith had come this way several hours earlier, probably arriving in the wee hours of the morning and cutting into the woods as soon as the day was bright enough to let him see where he placed his feet. Since my nephew had such a long head start, my wolf and I both knew that the sooner we found him, the better.

Despite the solemnity of the occasion, though, I couldn't help enjoying the way my wolf's muscles were able to stretch and push us through the forest at a trot. Dew was already coating the ground as a sunny autumn day turned into a chilly evening, and the water moistened our pads, helping us feel each imperfection of the ground beneath our feet. With the toughness of canine foot leather, acorns and twigs gently massaged our skin rather than causing pain, and we sidestepped a leafy area in favor of a patch of rounded pebbles to enhance the sensation.

Then all enjoyment receded into the background as Keith's scent abruptly mutated just as we ran upon a pile of rags that had once been a t-shirt and pair of boxer shorts. The teenager had clearly felt the shift coming early enough to pull off his shoes and jeans, which was a plus since denim can make a change of form extraordinarily difficult, but Keith hadn't had time to remove the rest of his apparel. I felt guilty, knowing I'd made my nephew wait too long for his first shift, and now he'd been forced to change into wolf form alone in the woods, with no pack around him.

Focus, my wolf reminded me, throwing back the same words I'd sent her no more than an hour previously. The wolf was right to stay calm, not just because there was no point in panicking, but also because we were still in the heart of Haven's forest, so Keith's wolf would have had nothing nearby to harm...as long as he didn't run too far in any direction.

Sucking in a deep breath through our nose, the wolf and I noted that Keith had turned up the mountain rather than down toward civilization, a perk given the unpredictable nature of a wolf on its first shift. We put our nose to the ground and began to run faster.

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# Chapter 21

Unlike Melony, Keith wasn't hard to find, although it felt like I ran in wolf form for hours through the dark before I finally tracked him down. The young wolf had passed beyond the safety of Haven's boundaries during his wolf's first exuberant dash, and when I smelled blood along with my nephew's scent, my heart sank into my metaphorical shoes.

I knew where we'd ended up due to my own meanderings as a young werewolf, when I'd pushed the boundaries quite literally and had run onto our neighbors' properties. The Clarks' farm wasn't the best spot for Keith to land, but neither was it the worst. I distinctly remembered Mr. Clark spraying my furred rump with BBs, chasing me back into the woods when I'd come out onto his land in my own teen years. What I didn't know was who owned the land now, or whether the current owners had young children who might have been allowed to go outside alone after dark. I shivered, realizing that the smell of blood was making my wolf's mouth water, even though she was letting me take the lead as we came close enough to hear Keith breathing.

"Relax, Aunt Terra," the kid's voice came toward me through the dark. "It was only a chicken." My nephew's tone didn't quite match the nonchalance of his words, but as we advanced, my wolf and I could see that there were indeed enough feathers lining the ground to prove that the young wolf's first kill had been of the avian variety. Heaving a sigh of relief, I quickly shifted to human form to join him.

"Whoa," the teenager said immediately, throwing a hand up over his eyes. "I don't think I'm ready to see you naked quite yet, Aunt Terra." For the first time since smelling blood, I was able to take a deep breath--if my nephew could joke around, he was going to be okay.

"Oh, yeah, because familial nudity is much worse than tearing out a chicken's throat with your teeth," I muttered, but sank to the ground and pulled up my knees to shield my bare breasts from view. "Okay, I'm moderately decent," I continued, my voice calm as I tried to soothe the shakes out of Keith's body. I could tell that my nephew's wolf was pushing against the boy's human form, begging to be let back out, but that Keith was afraid to set the canine loose after its round of chicken killing. And while I didn't blame his human brain for worrying, I needed the teenager to be able to shift back to wolf form as quickly as possible so we could return to Wolfie's pack. Plus, the sooner my nephew got back on the horse, the less likely he was to end up shiftless like me. "You know you're going to have to pay for that chicken out of your allowance," I added in mock rebuke, and was gratified to hear a faint chuckle coming from the teenager in front of me.

"I couldn't change back," Keith said just barely loud enough for me to hear after we'd sat for a few minutes in companionable silence. I hummed a gentle assent, but let the kid talk since he clearly needed to get the trauma out of his system. "The wolf wanted out, and then we ran and it was brilliant, Aunt Terra," my nephew said, excitement coloring his words, then dropping away just as quickly. "But after the chicken, we shifted back to human form and I realized I didn't know how to find the highway without my wolf's nose. And the wolf wouldn't come back."

"That's really normal, Keith," I told him, taking my nephew's hand in mine, an action that would have felt thoroughly inappropriate for a human aunt and nephew pair if they were naked in the woods, but which gave us both comfort since we were touchy-feely werewolves at heart. "The first few times you change, it's hard to control, but you'll get better at it."

"They say that if you're lost in the woods, you should just sit down and wait," Keith continued. "So that's what I did. I knew that you and Wolfie would come for me eventually, hopefully before I froze to death." He feigned shivers, which made my heart lift yet further. Keith's teen cockiness was apparently uncrushable, and I was glad. "So how's Wolfie doing against Grandpa?" he finished, and I sighed--even my teenage nephew had known more about Wolfie's plans than I had.

***

IT TURNED OUT THAT Wolfie had started practicing pool with my sneaky nephew nearly immediately after the two of us began hanging out with his pack. I did recall several times when Wolfie had taken Keith aside, presumably to give the teenager one-on-one lessons on shifting, and now I realized that the lessons had actually gone in the other direction, with Keith sharing the Wilder knack for pool with a worthy student. Unlike every other man I'd ever known, Wolfie had apparently listened to every word I'd said and had filed the data way for future reference. So when he learned the Chief was a pool aficionado, Wolfie figured the game was a skill he'd better perfect.

The news made my heart a little less heavy at the notion of having left Wolfie alone in Haven...but not much. Even if Wolfie managed to pull off a win against the king of pool, I couldn't quite imagine my father and cousins submitting to the outsider. "We need to get back there as quickly as possible," I said, once it had become clear that Keith was feeling more himself in spite of the chicken blood drying on his face and hands.

"Obviously," my nephew answered impertinently, and I rolled my eyes and paid him back by shifting without warning. The young werewolf was pulled into fur alongside me, but he clearly hadn't been shaken up by the abrupt transformation. Instead, the youngster pranced around me, making my own wolf seem old and slow in comparison, but cheering us both up with his antics. And once I began racing back along our trail, Keith fell in behind me obediently, almost like a dog trained to heel.

It was pitch black by the time we reached Wolfie's pack along the side of the highway, but the werewolves were still on full alert. While I was gone, they'd traded off wolf duty, with three of the yahoos sprawling out asleep in human form in the bed of the pickup truck so that Quetzalli and Oscar were the ones to greet us four-footed this time. Despite the collapse of the rest of the yahoos, Blaze came bounding along close behind the older adults, still in wolf form, and he immediately wrestled Keith to the ground in a show of male affection that transcended species boundaries.

"No sign of Wolfie?" I asked, having shifted back to human form the instant my toes hit pavement. Now that I was so close to Haven, every hair on my body seemed to be standing on end, itching to hotfoot it back to the village and check on my mate. Keith and I had been gone long enough that the pool-game challenge should have been long over, and I knew that no news wasn't good news. If Wolfie had won and the change of leadership had gone smoothly, Haven's new alpha should have come out by now to collect his original pack. The fact that they were all still present and waiting made me shiver.

"Nothing," Chase said quietly without getting up from the driver's seat of one of the cars. A plume of smoke rose into the night air, and I was shocked to realize that the beta was smoking. I'd never known a member of Wolfie's pack to partake of the habit previously, and to see the beta smoking now was a clear sign that I wasn't the only one with nerves. The realization only made me more worried.

"Okay," I said, taking command of the situation. I hadn't meant to, but I realized I was using the pack leader voice, which immediately pulled every eye to me. "I'll see what's going on," I told Wolfie's pack. "The rest of you wait here for half an hour, then go home if you don't hear from us."

"Go home?!" Glen asked from the bed of the pickup truck, our voices having pulled him out of his light slumber. "No way are we going home without you and Wolfie." A murmur of assent proved that the other yahoos had woken and were in accord.

Chase and I exchanged glances, and in that moment I knew the two of us were on the same page, just as we had been about my betrayal the last time Wolfie's pack had come to Haven. Whatever was holding Wolfie up couldn't be good, and we both knew there was no reason to risk the rest of the pack by sending them in after their leader. If my father had won the challenge, it was better for Wolfie's pack to go home and regroup without me, and I knew the pack's beta would make that happen. I nodded my thanks to my mate's milk brother, and he bowed his head in acquiescence.

"At least put on some clothes," said Galena quietly, handing over a t-shirt and jogging pants. As much as I hated to waste time by walking back to the village in human form, I had to admit that she was right--running around naked was a bit of a juvenile thing to do even in a werewolf village, and I needed all the gravitas I could muster if I wanted to get Wolfie out of whatever hot water he was in. I just hoped my mate was alive and waiting for me.

"Thanks," I said quietly, pulling on the clothes Galena had given me.

Keith got to his feet and began to follow as I turned away from the pack, so I figured I might as well start using my new-found alpha status now rather than later. "Stay," I told the young wolf, putting the full force of command beneath my voice, and my nephew plopped down onto his tail so fast I was a bit concerned he might never move again. Well, that worked better than I'd thought it would. Deciding to take my nephew's unusual obedience as a good sign, I broke into a run up the dark gravel road leading to my family home.

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# Chapter 22

As soon as I reached the village green, I could hear the raised voices pouring out the windows of my father's house. I couldn't make out the words, but the tone was angry, and my wolf extended our senses out to their limits, seeking clues about the situation we were walking into. Leaf mold and pine needles entered our nose, with no hint of the blood I'd been secretly expecting--Wolfie was alive. Although my new alpha leanings tried to make me care about the health of the Haven pack as well, if I was honest, Wolfie was all I'd really thought about for the last half hour, so the knowledge that he was unharmed gave me strength to enter what seemed poised to turn into a riot.

"Haven's been led by a Wilder for three generations," one of my uncles roared as I pushed open the back door and slipped into the heart of the pack. It seemed as if every man and half the women who lived in Haven had crammed themselves into my family home, and although the house wasn't small, it definitely wasn't big enough to host a town meeting. I began to push my way through the crowd, but the werewolves parted to let me through before I could shove anyone aside, creating a clear path leading toward the heart of the conflict. Sooner than I really wanted, I was standing in the open doorway of the pool room.

The scene inside wasn't at all what I had expected. Yes, my bulkier male cousins were clad in fur, menacing Wolfie, who remained in human form. My mate stood with his back against the wall, his cue stick held lightly, the tip slowly moving to face each verbal attacker. None of that was a big surprise. What was unusual was the fact that my father stood in front of Wolfie in canine form, the Chief's teeth bared as he growled at his own pack.

Or, rather, at Wolfie's pack, as the young alpha's next words made abundantly clear. "Is that a challenge?" Wolfie ground out, and my overbearing uncle ducked his head despite himself, one step away from prostrating his whole body on the ground. A wave of submissive gestures wound around the room, spurred on by the tone of Wolfie's voice, and I could see now why Wolfie hadn't been torn apart by Haven's angry wolves--no member of my family was able to disobey their new pack leader's commands.

Only when every Haven werewolf's eyes were safely on the ground did Wolfie look across the room at me and allow his face to melt into the sweetest smile imaginable. I grinned back despite myself, feeling more lucky than ever that Wolfie was mine. Ours, my wolf corrected indulgently, before drifting back to sleep. I would have thought she would be pushing against my skin, itching to protect me from the dangers of the current situation, but with Wolfie present, my own wolf clearly thought everything was under control.

I wished I could be that complacent. But I figured if Wolfie had been holding off my uncles and cousins for what must have been hours, he probably had another ace up his sleeve and was waiting for me to put in an appearance to set his plan in motion. Instinctively, I walked toward my mate, letting my hands trail across the heads of my wolf cousins as I passed. "Down," I said to them quietly, volume not necessary to push through commands that had to be obeyed. I didn't look behind me, but could hear cousins who I'd been afraid of all my life dropping like flies at my feet.

"Keith all right?" Wolfie asked me when I reached his side, the younger alpha's poker face back in place but a sparkle behind his eyes letting me know that all was well.

I nodded silently, then added, "Chase expects a status report within twenty minutes." I'd taken the private drive off the highway at a run despite my human form, so we had a bit of time to spare before Wolfie's pack would leave us in the lurch. Still, I wanted Wolfie to be aware of the deadline, even though no real harm would come from his pack going home...except for a lack of an exit strategy for the two of us. And it was clear that Wolfie did still need an exit strategy.

"I see you defeated the Chief," I said, making conversation in order to give myself time to figure out Wolfie's plan, but also wanting my words to carry throughout the house, making the conclusion of the challenge clear to every Haven werewolf. I looked down, expecting my father to bristle at my words, since I'd always assumed he'd be the last one to willingly give up his power over our little community. But my father's wolf instead seemed as content as my own wolf was to let me and Wolfie hash out the situation. With a huffing sigh, the older canine dropped to the ground and closed his eyes, either falling instantly asleep or doing a pretty good imitation of slumber. "I guess we should let sleeping dogs lie," I added, and was relieved to feel the mood of the gathering shift from edgy and dangerous over into something that approached contented and amused.

Wolfie smiled down at me, wolf and man united in their appreciation of my mild witticism, and I couldn't resist reaching up to kiss Haven's new pack leader, despite the family members pressing in on us from all sides.

"Go home," Wolfie said to the gathering once I gave him back possession of his lips, and my extended family instantly moved to obey. "My pack will spend the night here, and we'll all talk like human beings in the morning." Then, content that everyone would do exactly as he said, Wolfie pulled off his shirt, slipped out of his pants, and was running for the highway in wolf form before we even had time to parse the shift.

***

"HAVEN ISN'T GOING TO be ready for big changes right away," I told Wolfie a couple of hours later, once Cricket had pulled out sofas and unrolled mats to give each member of Wolfie's pack a place to sleep inside our family home. My stepmother had offered the two of us her room since my father had taken to the woods in canine form and seemed bound to stay gone for a good long time. But I'd felt weird about sleeping in my parents' bed and had instead pushed the two twin beds in my attic room together to give me and Wolfie a spot to sleep. It wasn't entirely comfortable to span the crack, but lying in Wolfie's arms felt good no matter what surface we were supported by.

"I think I should go home for a while," Wolfie rumbled softly, and my body tensed up. Yes, I knew that Haven's pack was going to have a hard time accepting Wolfie, but surely they'd have just as hard of a time taking orders from a woman. Plus, it felt like eons since Wolfie and I had been able to just laugh together, and I didn't relish the idea of spending more time apart.

As usual, Wolfie read between the lines and understood everything I didn't say, as well as what I did. "Crazy Wilder's daughter will be easier to stomach as the new pack leader than an out-of-pack bloodling would be," he murmured. "The separation won't last forever, but I think you'll be a better alpha for Haven than I would during the transitional period. Don't worry, though. I'll take the troublemakers home with me and leave you some of our pack in exchange."

"The troublemakers?" I said, Wolfie's words making me laugh despite myself. It was hard to imagine blood-thirsty werewolves like Milo being described by such a childish term. "Hit man" would be more appropriate, or maybe "murderer in training." On the other hand, I did see Wolfie's point, which had been aptly illustrated by the dissipation of tension within the pool room once I made my way home.

"How about this?" Wolfie bargained. "I take everyone from Haven between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, and you get the yahoos in exchange."

"Kids? Seriously? You want me to run this pack of wolves with the help of kids?" I retorted, only half kidding.

"You don't need any help at all, sweetheart," Wolfie answered, his mind clearly beginning to turn to other topics as his hands made their way over my body. "I'm leaving you with the yahoos because I'm sick of them."

"Some alpha you are," I growled, but the heat in my words had less to do with Wolfie's bargain and more to do with his hands, which made me shiver as they slipped over my skin and, yup, slid down below the waist. My wolf and I arched into his touch, and this time I really do think we purred.

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# Epilogue

I half expected the Haven werewolves to rise up in revolt after Wolfie and the majority of his pack hit the road with Haven's young adults in tow, but the remainder of the community instead came to me with heads bowed starting that first morning. They needed advice on this problem, help with that problem, and I found my hands full just getting the village back into shape.

In an effort to keep the yahoos out of trouble (and to lighten my own load), I kept Wolfie's loaned helpers running so ragged with errands from the first day that they didn't have time to get into mischief. Cricket fed their voluminous appetites, which seemed to give my stepmother something to worry about other than the fact that her husband's wolf appeared to have completely taken over his human side. My father spent most of his time hunting rabbits in the woods now, and when he came to the back door to check on his mate, I couldn't see any hint of the man I'd known in the canine's eyes. But that absence was almost a blessing--it seemed that the ruthlessness of Crazy Wilder had been within the man, not in the wolf.

Like the yahoos, I stayed too busy to worry over anything that wasn't directly in front of me over the next few weeks. Despite my full hours, I expected the ache in my stomach to reappear when Wolfie slammed his pickup truck door and sped off, but I seemed to have finally accepted that the young alpha wasn't walking out of my life permanently--he was just living somewhere else for a while. It also helped that my wolf and I were able to trade off responsibilities, and I often let her simple canine brain take over when exhaustion was threatening to turn me melancholy.

On one crisp winter day, the wolf had treated us to a run on four paws, and I was smiling when I stepped back into my clothes in the foyer of my family home, smelling stew bubbling in the kitchen and hearing the yahoos chattering away at the kitchen table. But I smelled something else too--leaf mold and pine needles and a hint of peppermint....

I whirled, hoping that the scent meant Wolfie had come to visit, even though I knew that wasn't true. Instead of my mate, a young woman in her late teens stood uncomfortably in the formal sitting room that no one ever used. I couldn't quite imagine Cricket parking a visitor there, but my wolf could see that the stranger's canine half was skittish and ready to bolt, so I immediately understood how this girl might feel more comfortable alone than in the midst of the revelry clamoring forth from the kitchen.

The girl looked me up and down, sniffing the air with a human nose much like I would in wolf form, then she silently extended the hands that had been hugging a book to her chest. Her offering was the new Patricia Briggs novel that I'd left in that bookstore so long ago, and even without bringing the paper to my nose, I knew the pages smelled of Wolfie. Although I should have been welcoming my visitor, I couldn't resist opening the cover of the book instead to see if my mate had written anything inside.

He had. "The whole pack misses you, but I miss you more," Wolfie had penned with a firm hand, then he'd signed his name with a muddy paw print. "P.S.," the inscription continued. "I'm sending you trouble. But you can handle it."

The leaf mold and pine needle aroma was strong on the pages of the book, but that wasn't the primary source of the odor I'd picked up on as soon as I came in the door. My wolf pushed to the fore and reported that the young woman smelled nearly identical to our mate, with the addition of a minty overtone. Did that mean she was Wolfie's relative? Heaven forbid--his daughter?

I looked back up at the young woman, who seemed to be restraining herself from bolting with an effort. "I'm the trouble," she admitted, her eyes on her feet, which were already turned toward the door. Despite her submissive gesture, I had a feeling she was right about her self assessment, and I already had plenty of problems to contend with. But Wolfie had sent her, and my heart went out to the skittish young werewolf, so I put out my hands to capture hers before she could flee.

"Welcome, Trouble," I greeted her. "I'm Terra."

***

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED Shiftless! If so, don't stop there--Terra's adventure continues with Pack Princess. To read an excerpt from the sequel, just turn the page.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to see how Wolfie defeated Chief Wilder over a billiard table, you won't want to miss Pool Party, free to email list subscribers.

Thank you so much for reading and for spreading the word! You are why I write.

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# Pack Princess

When I set off for my afternoon run, the whole forest smelled like my mate. Pine needles and leaf mold and that tinge of something extra that said "powerful male werewolf." Which is why I was smiling in a tongue-lolling canine fashion...right up until the moment when a huge wolf came barreling out from behind a bush and sent me spinning head over heels to land with a thud against the trunk of a tulip poplar.

Werewolves are pretty rough-and-ready, so it wasn't the crack on my skull that had me shaking my head in a daze as I scrambled back to my feet. Nope, it was just plain surprise. From the moment when I'd first stepped into my father's metaphorical shoes, I expected to have to face down power-hungry uncles and cousins in order to maintain my place as alpha of our current pack. But as days stretched into months without a challenge in sight, I'd slowly relaxed my guard. As a result, I now realized that it had been weeks since I'd bothered to peer at the inner wolf of each shifter around me, attempting to seek out insurrections before they had time to spark into flame. And I certainly wasn't expecting to be attacked here, deep in the heart of pack territory, where there were unlikely to be werewolves from other clans trying to slip past our defenses. So what the heck was going on?

Even as these bewildered thoughts tumbled through my mind, I was spinning on my heel, ruff raised to make me appear larger as I curled my upper lip back into a lupine snarl. But then I paused, even more confused, as I recognized my father's grizzled muzzle.

Chief Wilder had been the bane of my existence growing up, and he was also the primary reason I'd fled Haven in the first place to eke out a lonely existence in the human world. Yet, since then, my father had manipulated me back into our shared pack, and he'd recently seemed quite willing to let his sole surviving daughter take over leadership of clan Wilder. So what was with this out-of-the-blue attack? Could Crazy Wilder's nickname have become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Perhaps my father wasn't simply stuck in wolf form. Maybe now, he was truly cracked.

In the past, I'd always backed down when faced with the sight of my father's fangs, but as pack leader, I currently had shifters to think about other than myself. So even though it seemed a bit unfair to fight a werewolf who was probably at least partially out of his mind, I took a slow step toward the Chief and allowed a deep vibration to turn into a growl at the base of my chest. I hadn't realized my own power when I was a child, but now I understood that a simple stare from an alpha like me should be enough to squash any opposition from a weaker wolf. Why fight when intimidation would suffice?

But, unlike the other werewolves whom I'd spent time with recently, my father didn't back down in the face of my challenge. In fact, Chief Wilder didn't even bother to respond to my posturing. Instead, the huge wolf sprang again, his massive form suddenly looking nearly twice the size of my own, and I knew that I'd be crushed beneath the Chief's tremendous paws if I stayed put.

So much for plan A. Luckily, what I lacked in size (and, apparently, in ability to intimidate), I more than made up for in agility. Darting aside at the last moment, I snapped at the folds of flesh beneath my father's neck as he soared past, hoping to latch onto this piece of prime real estate. A wolf's under-belly was the ultimate prize in a shifter fight, but the neck wasn't far behind, and I knew that if I could just arrange my teeth on either side of my opponent's jugular, I'd be able to end this struggle before it truly began.

But unfortunately for me, the Chief was a wily old wolf, and no simple feint could elude his guard. Instead, he turned in midair, teeth snapping menacingly as his shoulder struck mine with a crack, and we both went down together in a pile of fur and claws.

Rolling across the leaves as part of an eight-legged jumble, I managed at last to latch onto the other wolf's shoulder with trap-strong lupine jaws. But I knew from experience that the Chief could barely feel the bite through his tough hide, and he certainly showed no signs of being vanquished. So I scrabbled with my hind legs, pushing against my father's belly in an attempt to reach a more delicate zone--the neck or belly would be perfect, but even the skin beneath my father's forelegs would suffice in a pinch.

And as I twisted, I felt the Chief's body shaking beneath mine, making me think that the deposed alpha might finally be struggling to hold his ground against a younger wolf. However, as I continued to bite and claw to no real effect, I soon realized that I was wrong--my father was simply laughing. In fact, the Chief was so confident of his own success that he was willing to give his daughter the opportunity to seek out a winning hold, waiting until I was forced to admit my own failure before ending the fight.

Then, just as I finally understood how severely I had been outclassed, the older wolf shook himself, pulling loose from my jaws with ease, and his own fangs sank deep into the tender valley of soft flesh beneath my chin. I yelped at the jolt of pain that rushed through my body, but that didn't prevent me from struggling against my father's grasp. Instead of freedom, though, I felt my hide tearing as a warm trickle of blood started to soak into my fur. Stilling at last, I knew that I was beaten.

If I'd needed proof that my father had allowed Wolfie and me to pull the rug out from under him six weeks prior rather than being truly vanquished, this farce of a battle was it. How could I have thought that I--a twenty-five-year-old female werewolf--was a match for the legendary Chief Wilder? Even half-crazed and unable to ally with his inner wolf, my father could have beaten me with one arm tied behind his back.

And as the Chief shifted seamlessly into human form, tossing me to the side and exposing my unprotected underbelly with one swipe of a muscular arm, I realized that my assumption that the wolf had completely taken over my father's mind was equally unfounded. Chief Wilder was as powerful as he'd ever been...and I was entirely at his mercy.

So, feeling like the cowed teenager I'd been a decade before, I instantly returned to my childhood demeanor. Pulling myself up to stand on four trembling feet, I cowered beneath my father's menacing form. And, with tail tucked between my legs, I whimpered my defeat.

***

AS I WAITED FOR MY father to decide whether to tear out the rest of my throat, I couldn't help thinking back to how accomplished I'd felt when I first set out for my solitary run. Separated from my mate and forced to manage a pack of grumpy, traditional relatives, the last couple of months had been a challenge. But I'd been surprised to find that I was able to extinguish both literal and metaphorical fires (darn those yahoos!), and to keep my inherited pack on a relatively even keel.

Okay, yes, when the loaned teenage and twenty-something werewolves from Wolfie's pack--the yahoos--ran Aunt Bev's panties up the flagpole, hindering the inter-pack merger that I was trying to ease the Wilder clan into, it took all of my self-control not to rip out any mischievous young throats. And it was true that the absence of my mate was made more difficult than it should have been since the Wilder village lacked all modern conveniences, even so much as a simple land line. Rather than broaching the topic of entering the twenty-first century, though, I'd chosen to keep my focus firmly on community priorities...all the while channeling my inner truant and phoning Wolfie on the sly. To that end, I'd stashed a mobile phone inside a tupperware container deep in the woods, and when I couldn't bear spending another instant without hearing my mate's voice, I'd slipped out of my clothes, dropped down to four paws, and run.

"Disgusting." The word that pulled me out of my reverie was gravelly as the Chief's human vocal cords protested weeks of disuse, but the old shifter's tone remained as cold as ever, proving that, despite my supposed successes, my ability to disappoint the pack's previous alpha was never-ending. Attempting to ignore my father's disdain, I crouched lower to the ground and fought the urge to turn tail and run, instead calming my wolf enough to let my human mind rise to the forefront. Hopefully the two sides of our character working together would be strong enough to get us out of our current situation unscathed. Or, if strength of character wasn't enough to finagle an escape, perhaps we could still ease out of this mess with just a little bit of luck....

"You'd think that somewhere beneath those breasts and curls, my own offspring would be a bit more like me," the Chief continued, his words proving that my wished-for luck wasn't going to materialize anytime soon. In fact, my father was so discontented with my lack of reaction to his words that he kicked out with one bare foot, and the hard bone in his heel was sufficient to drag a yelp out of my throat. "If I possessed even half of a son," he gritted out, ignoring my cry, "then I wouldn't be forced to turn a useless daughter into the leader that this pack so sorely craves.

"But that's neither here nor there," the Chief continued, picking up a broad stick and using it to sift through the leaves at his feet. I only realized as the wood clanked against something hard that my father was searching for my cell phone, meaning that he must have watched as I hid the device a few days earlier. Replaying the honeyed words that Wolfie and I had exchanged at that time, a small lupine whimper crept out of my muzzle, replacing the blood that would have rushed to my cheeks had I been in human form. Then I quickly cringed aside, knowing that my father detested any show of weakness from his offspring and hoping to escape another punishing blow.

But the alpha's attention was still focused on the tupperware container currently protecting the one link I had to the outside world, so I was spared another kick to the ribs. "I'm assuming that you still don't have the guts to fight for this clan the way I would have?" my father continued instead, his tone companionable, but with steel underlying the simple words. Without waiting for a reply, the Chief pried off my cached container's lid and I caught a tiny whiff of Wolfie's scent, the aroma enough to make me wish that my mate would appear and solve all of my problems with his typical blend of ingenuity combined with the subtlest threat of violence.

But my mate wasn't here, I was feeling decidedly unclever, and my father was watching me now with the hawk-like stare of a predator assessing his prey. "Well?" the Chief asked again, and his nostrils flared as he barely managed to hold his impatience in check. "This is your wake-up call, girl. Are you or aren't you willing to face down the other pack leaders in wolf form, to tear them apart if and when it becomes necessary, and to stand up as a true Wilder chief?"

In lieu of an answer, I cowered closer to the ground, and my father simply nodded as if my posture was reply enough. Turning away, the Chief set my cell phone atop a rock and brought down the end of his stick in a punishing blow, sending bits of plastic and metal spinning off in every direction. One fragment gashed open a small cut across my father's shin, but the Chief didn't flinch as blood welled up beneath the surface and then trickled down his leg. Instead, the shifter knelt to take my lupine cheeks in two strong hands, then he forced my nose into the pile of debris the way a cat owner might punish a feline for shitting in the house. "This will end," my father continued, his voice calm but cold.

If I'd been able to, I would have rolled over onto my back then and exposed my belly in an immediate show of submission. There was no other acceptable response to the alpha's command, and I was too frightened to even whimper, so I simply trembled and allowed the painful alpha energy to wash over me. My father was right--whatever the Chief wanted to come to an end would end. Immediately.

"I had hoped you might have grown a bit of spine by now," Chief Wilder continued, letting my fur loose at last and leaning back onto his haunches, as relaxed as if we were simply friends drinking beer around a campfire. In contrast to my father, though, I was far from relaxed. And as the Chief's gaze drifted away from mine for a split second, I scuttled away to place a few inches between us, then struggled to slow my frantic breathing.

"But you seem to think that being an alpha means being an administrator," the Chief continued, oblivious to my retreat. His last word was spat out as if the older shifter had meant to say "sewage-plant manager"...or, knowing him, probably something considerably more lewd and colorful. I tried to cheer myself up by imagining other possible job descriptions that my father would find equally unpalatable, but I wasn't able to focus on anything except my own terror...not when the Chief was clearly within a hair's breadth of ripping his own daughter to shreds so he could place someone more accomplished in charge of the Wilder clan.

And yet, a satisfied smirk widened my father's mouth as he paused to consider my reaction before speaking again. "You can't hide behind your boyfriend forever," the Chief said at last. "All-Pack is coming up, and I won't have my clan taken over by an unrelated alpha just because my daughter is too lily-livered to face down the inevitable contenders. So, since you can't seem to find your ass with both hands tied behind your back, I've come up with a solution."

And as I emerged from my fright long enough to consider my father's words, I was ashamed to admit that my thoughts had been so fully occupied with keeping my uncles and cousins in line over the last few weeks that I hadn't spared a single thought for All-Pack. The regional gathering of alphas met on every winter solstice to hash out rule changes and to smooth over disagreements, and while intra-clan succession wasn't usually an issue at All-Pack, my role as the first female alpha in living memory would definitely raise eyebrows. In fact, if I showed up without a plan, chances were good that I would go down beneath a pile of wolves on the first night, each alpha intent on becoming the new chief of clan Wilder.

Unfortunately, my father's troubled history with the other alphas definitely wouldn't help matters. The Chief had held the greatest authority in our regional gathering for as long as I could remember, which should have given his daughter some credibility now that I stood in his place. But while most alphas built alliances based on marriage and on favors, my father instead opted to utilize trickery and intimidation to gain the upper hand. I could only imagine how thrilled those same alphas would be to take the manipulative bastard's offspring down now that they had the chance.

"Listen carefully," my father said, nudging my furry chest with his toe and returning my attention to the more immediate danger. Yes, I'd likely be torn apart at All-Pack...but that was three weeks in the future, and my father looked inclined to save the other pack leaders the trouble of ripping out my jugular. So I obeyed my father's command, and I listened.

"You will cut off all ties with Wolf Young," my father gritted out, "and you will play those stupid young alphas against each other until each one thinks that he'll marry into my place. Then, if you do your job capably enough, maybe I won't be forced to take control of this clan away from you."

As he finished speaking, the Chief's face abruptly contorted and I could see his wolf clawing back up through his human skin, a strangled howl breaking out of my father's hairless lips. And I shivered, knowing that while the Chief might find it easy to vanquish me, the evidence of my own eyes proved that the once-great Chief Wilder was no longer able to defeat his own wolf.

Which might feel like a relief right now, while my father was stumbling away into the woods, his gait drunken as he fought against his lupine half...and lost. But the Chief's weakness also meant that during the upcoming All-Pack, the weight of protecting our familial clan would fall squarely onto my back alone. And my thin female shoulders hardly felt up to the challenge.

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