by Ranae Rose
“Daniel told me that Jack was the only wolf shifter in these mountains, but I didn’t really believe it.” Clarissa shook her head. “So it’s just you and him, then – it’s true?”
Mandy nodded. “We’re the only wolf shifters here.”
The silence that followed Mandy’s statement was so absolute that had it been evening, she would’ve been able to hear crickets chirping. She sipped her iced tea, hoping the motion would hide her faint blush as all three of the other women stared at her with wide eyes. “You’re really a shifter?” Violet asked.
“Yes.” Mandy lowered her glass slowly, trying not to let her annoyance show. What had she done to make them think she wasn’t a shifter? Had it been her use of the word werewolf? Maybe shifters didn’t use that term – was it just something dumb she’d picked up on TV? “What did you think I was?”
Violet pressed her glass to her lips and mumbled something that sounded distinctly like “human”.
“Do shifters usually mate with humans in Alaska?”
“No, not often,” Violet said, “but I thought that maybe since there aren’t any other wolf shifters out here, Jack decided to go for a human.”
“Violet!” April frowned at her sister.
“You mean settle for a human?” Mandy gripped her glass too tightly, and the condensation caused her hand to slip. She fumbled for a moment, but it was too late – her glass tumbled from her grasp and spilled directly into Clarissa’s lap.
“Oh! Wow, that’s cold.” Clarissa leapt up just as the glass shattered on the floorboards.
“Careful!” April seized Clarissa’s hand and pulled her back, away from the glass shards that were glistening in a pool of sweet tea. “Don’t step on the glass.”
“I’m not, I’m not.” Clarissa glanced apprehensively back at her seat. “But the couch…”
Though Clarissa had absorbed the majority of the tea and most of the rest had spilled onto the floor, a little of the liquid had splashed onto the couch cushion. “Don’t worry about it,” Mandy said. “It’ll come out, and this couch is probably older than I am anyway.”
Tea dripped from Clarissa’s jeans and the hem of her t-shirt, splattering onto the floor.
“Clarissa, if you’ll come back to the bedroom with me, I’m sure I’ve got something you can wear.”
Clarissa nodded and followed Mandy across the room, leaving a sweet tea trail in her wake.
Mandy did, in fact, have plenty that Clarissa could wear. “I was about your size before I got pregnant.” She opened a drawer in the cherry wood dresser that stood in one corner and began rummaging through stacks of clothing. Clarissa was slightly rounder in the hips than Mandy had been, but anything with a little stretch would fit her just fine. “How about a pair of shorts?” She lifted a pair made of a stretch cotton fabric and held them aloft for Clarissa’s inspection.
“That’s fine. I’m not very picky when it comes to clothing.”
“All right, then.” Mandy tossed the shorts onto the bed and selected a matching tank top. The robin’s egg blue and white stripes would look pretty against Clarissa’s creamy-tan skin tone. “This should fit too.”
“What do you want me to do with these?” Clarissa had wasted no time in peeling off her tea-soaked clothing.
“Give them here; I’ll put them in the wash.” Mandy turned, reaching for the damp jeans and t-shirt, and nearly dropped them when Clarissa placed them in her hands.
“Is everything all right?” Clarissa’s eyebrows crept up her forehead, nearing her hairline as Mandy recovered, tearing her gaze away from Clarissa’s right shoulder.
“Sure. I’ll be right back.” She left the room, and though she didn’t look back, the image of what marred Clarissa’s shoulder was burned into her mind. As she started the small washing machine that sat in the back corner of the cabin, opposite the kitchen area, her stomach knotted with guilt. She never would’ve chosen a tank top for Clarissa if she’d known. And then, she’d made such an ass of herself by almost dropping Clarissa’s clothing in surprise. After tossing in a capful of detergent and lowering the washer lid, she hurried back to the bedroom.
She was just in time. “Clarissa.” She stopped her just inside the door. “I’m sorry.”
Clarissa’s smile faded and was replaced by a look of confusion. “Sorry?”
“About the tank top. I wouldn’t have chosen it for you if I’d realized…” Her gaze drifted to the brutal semi-circle of puncture wounds that stood out, each one a lurid bright-pink dot, beside Clarissa’s collarbone. They were healed over, and Mandy was no doctor, but wounds that color couldn’t be very old. Whenever and however they’d happened, they stood out like a sore thumb, only half obscured by the narrow tank top strap. “I have plenty of tops with sleeves that would fit you just fine, if you’d like one of those instead.”
A glimmer of something strange – surprise, or maybe misunderstanding? – passed through Clarissa’s eyes, and then her smile returned. “This is fine. Really. The stripes are cute.”
“Are you sure? I’d be glad to let you choose something else, or even bring your suitcase in if you’d prefer your own clothes.”
Clarissa waved a hand dismissively. “My suitcase is buried at the very bottom of the trunk under everyone else’s.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “And no pregnant woman should be lifting anything as heavy as April’s suitcase. This top is fine.”
“Hey!” April called from the couch. “I heard that.”
“It’s true,” Violet piped up, sounding the liveliest Mandy had ever heard her – well, since she’d been attempting to flirt with Jack, anyway. “You always overpack.”
April released an exasperated sigh. “We just moved all the way from Alaska! How is it possible to overpack for a cross-country move?”
“It’s very possible when five people are traveling in a mid-sized sedan,” Violet said drily.
Clarissa laughed, padding out into the living room in her socks, which, miraculously, hadn’t been soaked in tea. Mandy followed and was surprised to find that the liquid and broken glass had been cleaned up.
“I think we got all the pieces,” April said, “but be careful – there could still be a few little ones.”
Treading carefully, Mandy walked back to the couch and took her seat again. She wasn’t really looking forward to resuming the conversation, but short of shutting herself in the bedroom, there wasn’t anywhere else to go in the cabin. Remembering the look Jack always got in his gorgeous eyes when he talked about his family, Mandy decided to give civility another go. “So tell me a little about yourselves. What did you all do in Alaska?”
Unsurprisingly, Clarissa was the first to speak up. “I was apprenticing to a midwife.”
“A shifter midwife?”
Clarissa nodded.
“Wow. Out here, those are few and far between.” Even while in their human forms, shifters were physically different from regular humans in several subtle ways, including their higher body temperature, so it wasn’t like Mandy could just waltz into a regular doctor’s office or hospital for prenatal care. She’d been seeing a shifter midwife from Kentucky, and paying for the woman’s travel to Tennessee hadn’t been cheap.
“There are more shifters in Alaska than there are here,” Clarissa said. “But it’s still a bit of an unusual occupation.”
“Did you like it?”
“I loved it.” Clarissa’s smile took on a wistful edge, and it was hard not to feel sorry for her, knowing that she’d abandoned her home and a job she’d loved for her mate – something Mandy could easily relate to.
“I worked at a gun and ammunition store,” April said. “Most of our customers were hunters.”
“As someone who can shape-shift into an animal, wasn’t that a little scary at times?” Mandy asked.
April laughed. “It was the perfect cover-up.” She winked. “They had no idea that I spent my off-days on four legs.”
“April is great at target shooting,” Claris
sa said.
April shrugged modestly. “It’s a hobby of mine, though I’ve never hunted with a gun. Who would want to do that when they could hunt with the pack?”
Mandy smiled, unsure whether April’s statement was a joke or not. Had their old pack in Alaska really hunted together, bringing down wild animals as a team? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about living with a pack – even this conversation felt strange. “What about you, Violet?”
“No baby-delivering or target shooting for me. I waited tables at a bar.”
“I worked as a waitress for a while during college,” Mandy said, the ache in her feet flaring up in remembrance. “It was hard work.”
“Yeah. It is.” Violet stared down at her glass, looking sullen again.
The sound of a snapping twig saved Mandy from having to come up with a new conversation topic. The noise had been so slight that she probably wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been so desperate for distraction. “I think the guys are back.” She leapt up from her seat on the couch, careless of her aching feet.
The other women followed quickly – they were probably even more uncomfortable than she was. What must it feel like to have come all the way from Alaska to a remote mountain range in Tennessee? Probably like entering a strange new world. As she pushed open the screen door, Mandy thought of her old apartment back in Nashville and how it had felt to drive out of the city, knowing she’d never return to her lifelong home for anything longer than a visit.
Jack’s husky voice greeted Mandy as she descended the steps from the front porch. Smiling, she rounded the cabin with his name on the tip of her tongue. When she saw him, it turned into a gasp of dismay. “Jack! What happened?”
The left side of his face was livid with a fresh purple bruise, his cheekbone brushed with an angry red scrape where his skin had been broken.
“I’ll tell you later, sweetheart.” Jack stepped up and pressed a quick kiss against her cheek. “How are you and the girls gettin’ along?”
“Fine,” Mandy said dismissively. “We had tea and talked for a while. What in the world were you three up to?” Daniel’s lower lip was swollen to roughly twice its normal size, leaking a trickle of blood down his chin. Clarissa hurried to him and reached up to tenderly touch his face, frowning.
Jack settled a hand on Mandy’s shoulder and squeezed, his full, perfect lips parting as he donned a stubborn expression she knew well. Drawing herself up straight, she prepared to put her foot down if he tried to skirt her question again. Just as she was wondering if he and his cousins might have gotten into a fight with a wild animal, the phone rang from inside the cabin.
“Better get that,” Jack said. “Could be one of those companies you interviewed with.”
“Yeah, right,” Mandy huffed, struggling to fight down the small spark of hope Jack’s words and the sound of the ringing phone had kindled within her.
It was one of the companies she’d interviewed with. “Moore and Son?” she repeated into the receiver, hardly daring to believe her ears. She’d interviewed for a senior accounting position with the commercial landscape supply company over two months ago and had never heard back from them. “I thought you filled the position.”
“We did,” the female voice on the other end of the connection replied, “but another has opened up. It’s not the job you interviewed for, but you’re qualified for this position as well. If you’re still available, we’d like you to consider taking the job.”
“I’m still available. What’s the position?” Mandy gripped the phone a little tighter, her heart fluttering.
“We’re looking for someone who can work from home as a part-time accountant. We have more work than our accounting staff can handle, but frankly, we don’t have the office space to hire anyone new. Hours will vary from week to week, but we can guarantee at least twenty and no more than thirty. Is that something that interests you?”
Mandy relaxed her grip on the phone, biting her inner lip. The job offer certainly wasn’t what she’d been expecting. But then again, she hadn’t really been expecting to be offered a job at all. Glancing down at her belly, she considered what it would be like to work from her and Jack’s little cabin. It would definitely save her the trouble of having to commute out of the mountains and into a relatively nearby town every day. She’d get to spend more time with Jack than a typical job would allow, and it would be something she could swing even after the baby came. “Yes, I’m interested.” Best of all, she wouldn’t have to squeeze her feet into any torturous heels.
“We’re glad to hear that. You’ll need…” The woman told Mandy she’d need phone service and a reliable computer and that the company would supply their standard accounting software. Mandy agreed, and before their conversation ended, she’d set up a time to meet with the HR manager at Moore and Son’s main office to fill out new hire paperwork.
“Well, was I right?” Jack materialized from thin air at Mandy’s shoulder, wearing a sneaky smile.
Mandy couldn’t help but grin back. “Yes!” She told him all about the job, then frowned. “The only problem is, I really should have a better computer. My laptop is on its last leg and getting slow as a dinosaur.”
“We’ll get you a new one.”
Mandy frowned and pressed a hand to her belly. “I’d feel bad about spending money on a new computer with the baby on the way. We haven’t even bought a crib yet.”
Jack shrugged. “It’ll be all right. You need the computer to do your job, and you’ll earn back the money.”
Mandy chewed her inner lip, eschewing guilty thoughts as she mentally tallied the items she’d purchased so far for their baby – one cute outfit and a pair of booties she hadn’t been able to resist picking up soon after she’d first discovered she was pregnant. They’d been waiting to buy furnishings because Jack and Ronnie planned to build a small extension onto the cabin – a room that would serve as the baby’s nursery. “You’re right.”
He grinned. “I know it. Come on, I’ll take you into town.”
“You want to go shopping right now?”
“Why not?”
Minutes later, she was cozily ensconced in the cab of Jack’s old pick-up truck. Despite the fact that it was well past its prime and more rusted than not, Jack loved the thing. “So, are you finally going to tell me what the heck happened in the woods today?” Jack’s bruise hadn’t faded – if anything, it looked worse.
“Daniel and I had a fight.”
Chapter 2
“What?” Mandy could practically feel the bones in her neck creaking as she leaned in for a closer look at Jack’s wound. “He hit you?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” What on Earth could either Jack or Daniel have said to each other within a few minutes of their reunion that could have caused a fist fight?
“Seems he came back from Alaska with some ideas – ideas about being alpha of the Half Moon Pack.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’m serious as can be.”
“What a…” Mandy mumbled an obscenity as she glared out the window, staring daggers at the rugged terrain that belonged to the Half Moon Pack – Jack’s pack. “What the hell was he thinking?”
“I asked him that. That’s about when he hit me.”
“And then you hit him back.” A smug sense of satisfaction rose up inside her as she remembered Daniel’s busted lip.
“Yeah. And I made it clear there’s no way I’m stepping down as alpha.”
“Can an alpha even do that – step down, I mean?”
“It’s not common, but it can be done if there’s another pack member who wants to take the alpha’s place.”
Mandy crossed her arms above her belly and sighed. “So is that why they came back – because Daniel wanted to take over the Half Moon Pack?”
“I don’t think Alaska agreed with Daniel and Noah much. They found their mates, and they wanted to come back home.”
“And they still want to stay?”
Jack nodded.
“Are you going to let them?”
Jack tore his gaze from the road and fixed Mandy with a golden-hazel stare. “Of course I am. They’re family.”
“Right.” Mandy’s insides wiggled with guilt – or maybe that was just the baby kicking. “I know you’ve been hoping for years that they’d come back, and I’m glad you got what you wanted. It’s just so … weird. I didn’t know what to say to Clarissa, April and Violet today.”
“Won’t you like having friends though? We’ve only got Ronnie, and I know you’re used to life in the city, even if you put up with the mountains for my sake.”
“I like it here,” Mandy said defensively. “And I guess it’ll be nice to have some other women to spend time with, but… I don’t think Violet likes me.”
“She seemed friendly enough this afternoon when they first arrived.”
Mandy rolled her eyes. “That’s because she was flirting with you, Jack.”
“Well, if that was the case, she was barkin’ up the wrong tree.”
Mandy’s lips twitched, hinting at a smile. “I know. But that’s not the point – I won’t put up with it. You’re my mate.” She leaned across the seat and pressed a light kiss against his bruised cheek. “And I won’t put up with Daniel hitting you, either. You tell him that if he does it again he’ll have to answer to me.”
“I’m sure that’ll scare him straight.” He pulled the truck into the parking lot of the only electronics store in the small town at the foot of the mountain and put it into park. His lightly-stubbled jaw scratched Mandy’s cheek in a way that made her entire body heat up, and his lips were soft when he brushed them against hers.
“Damn right it will,” Mandy teased, staying close and breathing in his delicious scent – a combination of fresh pine and masculine, woodsy musk. He always smelled that way, had ever since she’d first met him. The aroma was like a siren’s call, drawing her closer and closer to him, until her belly bumped his side. “I’m full of pregnancy hormones. With their help, I can easily beat the tar out of a full-grown werewolf.”