The Wolf Marshal's Pack

by Chant, Zoe

  “You might regret saying that.”

  Just seeing her made his heart feel like it was going to beat its way out of his chest. Now that she was no longer shaken up, she looked vibrantly alive again—warm, tender, funny, and purposeful.

  Colby had spent so much time lately feeling adrift. Looking at Aria, he knew he’d never have to feel that again. She was his solid ground.

  His solid ground handed him a pair of boxers.

  She said, defensively, “I sleep in them sometimes.”

  That was an appealing thought. He imagined lying against her back and slipping his hand in through the gap in the front of her shorts, feeling the heat of her bare, slick sex against his fingers. Her ass would press back against him as he parted her folds to stroke against her clit—

  In his defense, there was a long history of people making passionate love after some kind of near-death experience.

  But none of them probably involved a whole family being on the other side of a half-wall.

  Colby hastily stepped into the boxer shorts, amused—and delighted—by the way Aria couldn’t seem to bring herself to turn away from him.

  She met his eyes and grinned. “Can you blame me?”

  “I don’t know,” Colby said. He tucked his mouth against her ear and whispered, “I wish I could rip all your clothes and find out.”

  She let out a small, breathless gasp, and he knew he wasn’t the only one who was having trouble fighting off the urge to seize hold and never let go.

  To hell with it. He wasn’t going to have sex with her in her kitchen with her family in the other room, but he couldn’t bring himself to wait any longer before they even kissed.

  He could have died tonight, and if he’d done that without ever tasting her lips—

  He wasn’t alone in that thought either, because she suddenly went up on her toes and crashed into him.

  Their first kiss was graceless and hard, like they were both trying to breathe as much of each other in as humanly possible. He could feel her almost whimpering with need against his mouth. He held her tightly, wanting to feel every inch of her skin against his own. Her breasts heaved against his chest.

  She tasted like cinnamon. Her hair smelled like citrus and woods, like clean cedar bark and wind through leaves.

  All he wanted was to stay in her arms forever. All he wanted was to hold her.

  But that wasn’t all he needed—and it wasn’t all she needed either.

  Wolves weren’t solitary creatures devoted to selfish passions, and neither were their mates. They both needed the rest of the world. Aria needed to explore it, and Colby needed to protect it. They had to think about her family, his friends, and the people who might get hurt if Eli Hebbert continued on his rampage through the world. If they could give all that up to just fall into bed with each other and stay there, they’d be completely different people.

  This little moment in the kitchen was just an oasis before they tackled the next problem.

  But, God, it was a good oasis.

  When they finally parted, he saw the same wistful smile on her lips that he felt on his own.

  “When this is all over...”

  He couldn’t think of what to promise her, besides everything, so he just bent down and kissed the tip of her nose.

  “When this is all over,” Aria agreed.

  She handed him the next article of clothing: a pair of flannel pajama pants with little wreaths and reindeer on them.

  “I was doing some last-minute holiday grocery shopping last year, and these were on sale. I just chucked them in the cart. They never fit—they’re too tight in the hips and about a mile too long.”

  Colby looked at the pants in despair and then looked back at his mate. She was very clearly trying not to laugh at him.

  “It’s a good thing I l—” He stopped. “It’s a good thing I like you so much.”

  “You said anything would work,” Aria reminded him. She looked way too innocent.

  “I didn’t know clearance reindeer were a possibility!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said sheepishly. “I really don’t have anything else that would fit. I didn’t deliberately bring you terrible pajama pants, I’m just... enjoying it.”

  And since he’d trashed her living room beyond recognition and left a dead werewolf by her fireplace, maybe he owed her a little bit of entertainment. She’d been spending most of today scared, stressed, and thinking she was alone with her secret about Eli Hebbert’s true nature. She needed a break.

  And if seeing him in the reindeer pants would make her feel better, then he would damn well wear the reindeer pants.

  It’s important to sacrifice for our mate, his wolf said. It sounded genuinely unbothered. Besides, all human clothes are ridiculous.

  This is why no one ever asks wolves their opinions on fashion, Colby thought at it, mentally rolling his eyes in his wolf’s direction while he... donned him now his gay apparel, wasn’t that how the song went?

  The reindeer pants might have been a mile too long on Aria, but they turned into capris on him, with the cuffs hovering just above his ankles.

  And, since they’d been sized for a woman’s body, they were way too tight in certain places—which really wasn’t good when he was a newly-mated wolf currently in sexual hyper-drive. And around his mate’s family. He pushed the waistband of the pants down as low as he thought he could get away with. It made him feel like a teenager, but at least it gave him a little more room.

  Aria had mercy on him. The shirt she’d brought him was a massively oversized college tee, the kind women intentionally bought huge so they could wear them as cozy nightgowns.

  So now he was a werewolf in reindeer pants and a purple Wellesley T-shirt.

  “I’m sorry about the women’s college thing too,” Aria said.

  “Don’t be, I like it. It’s a great school. People will know I have a smart—” He had to do another split-second adjustment. “Girlfriend.”

  Mate, his wolf growled.

  Humans don’t know what that means! Not really!

  It licked its paws. I’m sure our mate, who went to this “great school” you’re talking about, is smart enough to learn a new word. Especially one you’ve already said to her.

  He had the feeling he’d just lost an intellectual argument to a wolf.

  What a weird day.

  He said, “Um. If you want to be my girlfriend, anyway.”

  His wolf covered its eyes with one paw.

  Aria somehow managed to listen to that with a straight face, and she didn’t even react like she was talking to an idiot high school kid (in reindeer pants). Her eyes were sparkling.

  “I haven’t done much dating lately,” she said, “but I thought the new thing was to play it super-cool and refuse to ‘put labels’ on anything.” Her luscious mouth curved upwards. “I like this better. I’d love to be your girlfriend.”

  Colby couldn’t stop his own smile, and he didn’t want to.

  “Good. Because I’m not really that cool.” He looked down at what he was wearing. “It has more of an impact when I say that when I’m wearing a leather jacket and a gun.”

  At least his gun and badge had survived his transformation. He could clip them on again—and watch as their weight pulled his pants the rest of the way down.

  Aria leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder.

  “I think you’re cool,” she said.

  He could feel her breath stirring on his chest.

  He had no idea how he’d ever lived without her. Maybe he didn’t know what they would do next, but with her at his side, he trusted that they would figure it out together.

  10

  “Does someone want to explain to me,” Doreen said, “why there is a dead wolf under the curtain?”

  Not really, Aria thought.

  “I’m also wondering what happened to these,” Ben said. He poked at Colby’s shredded clothes.

  She didn’t want to explain that either.
r />   I knew we should have stayed in the kitchen.

  “It’s werewolves,” Mattie said.

  She had tucked herself, with childlike complacency, under the one upright part of the coffee table, and she was using her colored pencils to draw a wolf in a flower crown.

  Aria looked at Colby, who looked back at her with a clueless expression.

  “What makes you say that, honey?” Aria said carefully.

  Mattie looked up in the middle of adding a bluebell to the flower crown.

  “It’s obvious. Everybody knows that you rip your clothes like that if you turn into an animal. That means the bad guy came here to get you, and he was a werewolf, and Marshal Colby turned into something too, and they fought.” She selected a violet pencil. “And Marshal Colby won.”

  “Mattie, I know you might see things like that on television—”

  Aria interrupted her mom. “Actually, that’s... pretty accurate, Mom. Eli Hebbert is a werewolf. He knows I saw him change from a wolf to a human, and he doesn’t trust anyone, so that’s why he’s after me. This was his brother, who was also a werewolf.”

  For the first time in her life, Aria saw her mother rendered speechless. Her mouth was even hanging open slightly.

  She wasn’t even this shocked that time I told her I might get a tattoo.

  “What I don’t know,” Aria said, “is how Mattie knows any of this. Is it just TV, honey?”

  Doreen managed to find her composure long enough to add that she didn’t think Mattie was old enough to be watching anything violent enough to have werewolves in it.

  “Pippa’s mom is a bear shifter,” Mattie said. “And her dad is a fox. Pippa says she has to wait a few more years before she knows what she’s going to turn into.”

  Aria thought of Pippa Malone, who was a cheerful, redheaded hurricane of pranks and mischief. She couldn’t go more than ten minutes without getting into some kind of trouble now. Aria didn’t know that it would be a great thing for the universe if Pippa hit puberty and gained the ability to turn into a bear.

  “This does happen sometimes,” Colby said. He looked like he was biting his lip to keep from smiling. “Kids aren’t always the best at keeping the family secrets. Most people don’t believe them if they start talking about it, but... it happens.”

  “I told you about her dad,” Mattie said. She sounded betrayed that her mom hadn’t listened to her. “I thought you knew already.”

  Aria dug through her memory, trying to figure out what Mattie could possibly be talking about, and then she groaned.

  “Mattie, coming home from a sleepover and saying ‘Pippa’s dad’s a silver fox’ is not the same thing as telling someone about shifters.”

  Ben made a strangled sound of suppressed laughter.

  “I thought it was cute,” Aria said defensively. “Pippa’s mom and dad are always wrapped up in each other—I figured Mattie had just overheard Pippa’s mom calling him that.”

  Mattie seemed to dismiss all this as adults being weird. She turned all her attention to Colby. “What do you change into, Marshal Colby?”

  He glanced at Aria before he answered, making sure he had permission. “A wolf.”

  “Oh,” Mattie said. She sounded faintly disappointed.

  “Mattie, we don’t react that way when someone tells us something.” Doreen’s face said she couldn’t quite believe that she was now scolding her granddaughter for not being excited enough about werewolves.

  Aria felt an intense admiration for her mom in that moment. How many people would come through an earth-shattering revelation and immediately start trying to figure out how to be polite to supernatural creatures?

  “It’s just that werewolves are sort of boring,” Mattie said apologetically. “Everybody knows about them. But I’m sure you’re a very pretty wolf.”

  “He is.” If they were boyfriend and girlfriend now, she definitely had to defend her man’s honor. “And he fought that other werewolf very bravely and saved us, and now he’s hurt.”

  Even if her daughter wasn’t especially impressed by werewolves, she had a kind heart. Mattie dropped her pencils immediately and scrambled upright, going over to wrap herself around Colby’s legs like she was going to try to climb him.

  “I’m sorry, Marshal Colby. I didn’t know you were hurt. You were really brave and you gave me a Rubik’s cube and I was being so mean, I’m sorry!”

  Colby patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, Mattie. You’re right: werewolves do get all the press. But we also know all the best people. We try to form packs, so we always get to know everybody. I’m lucky enough to have gotten to meet you and your mom and your grandparents today—and in a couple of minutes, when the people I work with get here, I can introduce you to a dragon.”

  “Good God,” Doreen said. “There’s no end to it.”

  “Afraid not. But most of us are pretty quiet.”

  All the humor leaked out of his voice as he looked at the blanket-covered lump on the floor.

  “The Hebberts are an exception,” Colby said. “Every community has its bad guys.”

  “We wouldn’t judge the man defending our daughter by the man who tried to attack her,” Ben said quietly. “What we would do—and need to do—is thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.”

  Aria was so used to her dad being just her dad—familiar, funny, folksy, and with an endless supply of corny jokes—that she felt a pinch of emotion around her heart at all this. She’d rarely seen him be so serious, but all of a sudden, she was plunged back into remembering all the other times he’d stood up for her and for what was right.

  Between him and her mom, she had always been surrounded by people who believed in treating people with dignity and always rolling up your sleeves and pitching in to help. She was pretty lucky in that. It was more than Luke, with his terrible cousins, had ever had.

  “Believe me, sir,” Colby said quietly, “I’d walk through hell to keep your daughter safe.”

  She was lucky in him, too—so lucky that it took her breath away.

  She gently separated Mattie from him. He was way too nice to say anything about it, but she was sure that, as sore as he was, having an eight-year-old girl hugging him with all her strength couldn’t have been too comfortable. She put her hand up to the back of his head and felt the fine, silky hairs at the nape of his neck.

  Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have done something this romantic—this intimate—with a man in front of her parents. Especially with a new relationship.

  But nothing about this was ordinary. And—outside of the delicious, intoxicating spin of sexual tension whenever she looked at him—nothing about this even felt new. It felt like some part of her had waited her whole life for Colby Acton.

  When she looked at him, she felt the way she had when she’d taken her first truly great picture. She had seen it developing in the darkroom, and before it was even all the way there, she’d thought, This is it. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is everything I’ve always wanted, and it’s perfect.

  He didn’t just make her knees weak. He made her soul strong.

  “I’m not going to let you walk through hell alone,” she said.

  The moment was dampened by a neighbor suddenly knocking at her doorframe.

  In the neighbor’s defense, she couldn’t have knocked on the door, since it was hanging cockeyed off its hinges like it had spent the whole night drunk.

  Colby tensed up, but Aria saw right away who it was.

  “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I know her. It’s safe—you can go hide out in the kitchen.”

  As a matter of fact, she could even take the opportunity to try to pump a little bit of information for them, if she could get her head on straight. She was still coming down from all the fear and adrenaline.

  But the neighbor in question was Susan Fowler, the same woman who had talked to Doreen about seeing wolves. Aria guessed she owed Susan a mental apology for doubting her, but it was just that Susan Fowler was an easy pe
rson to doubt. She was scared of her own shadow.

  Suddenly, she thought of Luke saying, He likes women who are scared of him.

  Maybe Luke hadn’t been as up-to-date on his cousin’s love life as he’d thought.

  “Hi, Susan,” Aria said. She forced a friendly, everything’s-fine-here smile.

  “Aria!” Susan threw her arms around her, burying Aria in her generous cleavage and the hyacinth smell of her perfume. “Your front door’s just wrecked!”

  “I’m going to get it fixed, don’t worry.”

  Though telling Susan not to worry was like telling rain not to be wet.

  “Anyone could just walk right in! And it’ll cost a fortune to get a contractor to do anything with it... What happened?”

  She tested the waters. “Would you believe a wolf ran through it?”

  Susan almost flinched backwards, a very real hurt creeping into her expression. “You’re making fun of me. You heard I saw one.”

  “I’m not making fun of you,” Aria said. “I promise.” And that was the truth, but she had to follow it up with a lie for good measure. “And I didn’t know you’d seen one! I was just thinking of the old ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down’ story, with the wolf and the three little pigs.”

  Susan’s face cleared. She was, as Aria had told her mom, very sweet; Aria wouldn’t have intentionally hurt her feelings for the world, even if Susan sometimes got on her nerves.

  “Oh, well, that’s okay, then. But I have seen a wolf, so that’s all the more reason to get this fixed up as soon as you can.”

  “We won’t stay here tonight,” Aria assured her. “We’re just going to clean up and then head out.”

  She tried to angle her body so that Susan wouldn’t see much of the wrecked living room, let alone the wolf-sized lump under her curtain. She was hoping Susan would just forget that Aria hadn’t explained what had happened. She wanted to explain about seeing a fugitive—that would let her show a picture of Eli and see if Susan recognized him—but she didn’t know how to do it smoothly. Especially since the longer Susan lingered, the more likely it was that she would notice that something really strange was going on.